Thank You, Lord, for Bibi - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Standing in support of Israel, Jews, and believers in all the nations, in the name of Jesus (Yeshua). Sharing biblical truth, encouragement, news, and messages by Steve Martin.
Sunday, May 24, 2026
Saturday, May 23, 2026
Barbara J. Yoder: The Next Move of God - Building His House Barbara J. Yoder, Ann Arbor, MI May 22, 2026 The Elijah List
Barbara J. Yoder: The Next Move of God - Building His House
May 22, 2026
Trained in the Crucible of Conflict
Something profound is not merely approaching; it is already unfolding.
For years—quietly, beneath the surface, often unrecognized—God has been moving with intentional precision toward a divine birthing in the earth. What many have interpreted as loss, disruption, or even unbearable pressure was never designed to destroy. It was surgical. It was purposeful. It was God unhooking His people from what was, severing dependencies on former structures, mindsets, people, and identities that could not carry what is now emerging.
He has been training a people in the crucible of conflict—strengthening them, fortifying them, awakening them. Through struggle came strength. Through pressure came clarity. Through fire came revelation. And through it all, He has been repositioning a remnant for what is next. This next move of God will not coexist peacefully with the old. It will confront it.
The Dismantling of Every Misaligned Structure
Every misaligned structure, every ineffective paradigm, every man-built system that could not produce the heart and purposes of God has been—and is being—dismantled. Some of it has happened quietly. Some of it has been chaotic and totally disorienting. But make no mistake, what appears as chaos is often the sound of God deconstructing what He never intended to sustain, because there has always been something greater unfolding beyond what could be seen and perceived. (Photo via Pxhere)
God has been tearing down in order to rebuild (Jeremiah 1:10), reforming both people and structures, and preparing for the unveiling of something far more aligned with His original intent—the formation of a people into a temple which He will fill with His glory and His presence, living in their very midst.
The Rebirth of God's Original Design and Intent for His Church
What is this "new"? It is not new in origin; it is ancient. It is the rebirth of God's original design and intent for His Church. A generation is arising that is not marked by self-preservation but by surrender. Like Isaac, the prophetic archetype of Jesus, they will willingly lay themselves on the altar—not for recognition, not for a platform, but to make God known, truly known, in the earth.
They will carry a singular conviction: It is not about us; it is about Him, His name, His glory, and His purpose in creation. God has been forming a force, not just individuals.
What is a force? A people of one heart, one mind, and one Spirit gathered around a common vision. A people who see together, move together, and burn with a unified revelation of what God is doing in the earth. And when that convergence happens—when those called find one another and come into divine alignment—the birthing of what can only be described as the "latter house" will begin (Haggai 2:9).
In the Biblical timeline, the month of Iyar, which we have just come through, marks a season of formation and alignment for builders. In Ezra 3:8, it was in this very time that those appointed were set in place to oversee the rebuilding of the house of God, not the first structure but the restoration of what once was.
As it was in the Old Testament, so it is now—the rebuilding of what He originally intended but was destroyed. And this is where we stand. God has been calling and releasing a people to rebuild His true dwelling place—not a building made with hands but a people who become the habitation of His presence. (Photo via Unsplash)
Building a House for God
This is far beyond gifts, beyond prophecy, and beyond preaching. This is about building a house for God, a dwelling where He is not visited but enthroned—where He does not pass through but abides, where His glory is not occasional but constant. God is actively undoing the constructs of man to establish something wholly centered on Himself. God has made it clear who can carry this.
In Isaiah 66:1–2, He declares that He is looking for those who are humble, contrite in spirit, and who tremble at His word. These are the ones who are selected to build and become His dwelling place, not the gifted, not the impressive, but the surrendered.
When He finds such a people, and when He fills that house with His glory, everything will change. Because where His glory dwells, impossibility bows. Miracles become normal. Signs and wonders follow as evidence, not exception. And the very things that have been prophesied, longed for, and contended for will erupt into reality—far beyond anything we could have imagined. This is not hype. This is habitation.
God is preparing a people to host Him, a people transformed into living stones, repositioned to become the very tabernacle of God, the dwelling place of God—the latter house—which will be far more glorious than the former.
Whatever you do, don't miss another ELIJAH LIST email! Subscribe at this link: elijahlist.com/subscribe.
Barbara J. Yoder
Shekinah Church
Email: info@shekinahchurch.org
Website: www.shekinahchurch.org
Barbara J. Yoder's passion is to see the heart and spirit of the New Testament Church of Acts restored today—a Church grounded in the Word, addicted to prayer, baptized in the Holy Spirit, and led by God's voice; a Church that releases miraculous power and penetrates people, cities, regions, and nations; a Church that initiates and sustains the eruption of revival awakening and the harvest. Barbara is known for her cutting-edge, apostolic breakthrough anointing, infused with prophetic revelation. Prior to the ministry, Barbara worked in academia.
To receive more words like this in YOUR inbox, subscribe FREE to the Elijah List at this link: elijahlist.com/subscribe.
Thank you for making the always-free "ElijahStreams" possible. To partner with us, click here.
Your donations truly help us keep these emails free for you. Donate at:
Find us on:
* Facebook click here
* XAPiT click here
Gathering Together - message by Steve Martin
Gathering together for special events reminds me of several in the past where we enjoyed getting together in large numbers - ministry conferences, graduations, weddings, family reunions, and beyond.
Even NASCAR races, as with the one I have often gone to in Charlotte, North Carolina - the Coca-Cola 600 every Memorial Day weekend. This year will be no exception. Five guys!
Our good friend for over 39 years, Indira Persad, having first met in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1987, along with her husband Edgar, graduates this May 23, 2026 with a doctorate from CMM. The ceremony is in Wilkesboro, NC. Laurie and I made the two hour trek by car to celebrate with her and the ministry/college founders Jorge and AnnamarieParrott, along with many others.
Prior to the event, as I sat in the hotel room waiting for the sun to get up too, I happened to listen to a YouTube message on house churches. We have had a small home group for many years, and I look forward to once again resuming our precious times together, once I return back from a month-long ministry trip to Texas in June with Christian Friends of Israel and the Jerusalem team.
The early church met in house churches. We need to rethink our gatherings in these days, and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.
“Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread [as]from house to house, they were taking their [at]meals together with gladness and [au]sincerity of heart, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding [av]to their number day by day those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:46-47, NASB)
Ahava and shalom,
Steve Martin
P.S. Check out the video I watched:
Why People Are Switching to House Churches
In this video, I’m diving deep into a movement that is growing rapidly: the shift from large, high-tech traditional churches to smaller, intimate house churches. Having led a house church for the past five years, I’ve seen this shift firsthand.
We’re exploring the top 9 reasons people are making the switch—from the search for radical authenticity to the desire for a biblical, family-style community where everyone is a participant, not just a consumer. I’ll also share the #1 personal reason I decided to make the switch at the end of the video.
Friday, May 22, 2026
From Restorationism to Zionism: The Christian roots of support for Israel. All Israel News
ALL ISRAEL EDU
From Restorationism to Zionism: The Christian roots of support for Israel
Christian supporters of Israel march with others during a parade for the Feast of the Tabernacles or Jewish holiday of Sukkot, in Jerusalem, Oct. 10, 2006. (Photo: Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)
In 1896, Theodor Herzl walked into the home of Reverend William Hechler in Vienna, Austria, and was bewildered by what he saw. The room was lined with Bibles from floor to ceiling. Hechler showed him charts and maps, and played Zionist songs on his organ, which he had composed himself. “I take him for a naïve visionary with a collector’s enthusiasm,” Herzl later wrote in his diary. A year and a half later, Hechler would become a guest of honor at the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland.
That meeting was more than just a curious encounter between a Jewish journalist and an eccentric Protestant minister. It was a meeting between Christian and Jewish Zionism; two different Zionisms with different histories converging at the perfect moment. In this article, I want to go back in time to show you where it all began. Because modern Christian Zionism didn’t materialize out of thin air. It was an activation of a much older, deep-seated theology called Christian Restorationism.
Restorationism is the belief that one day the Jews will return to the land of Israel, while Zionism is the active attempt to make it happen. In Judaism, a longing for Zion and faith that it will one day happen has always been a part of the religion, while active Zionism is a child of the 19th century.
In Christianity, both Restorationism and Zionism developed slightly differently, often coupled with Philosemitism – a favorable attitude toward Jews. But let’s not be naïve. Christian support for Jewish restoration was not always philosemitic. It often had a snooty, paternalistic attitude or reduced the role of the Jews to mere apocalyptic expectations.
Before the Reformation, mainstream Christianity was dominated by replacement theology: the belief that the Church had replaced Israel in God’s promises. Every time they saw “Israel” negatively in the Bible, they interpreted it to be about the Jews, and every time they saw it positively, they interpreted it as about the church. This was unquestioned.
The Reformation did not immediately change this. Martin Luther and John Calvin both rejected the idea of a future Jewish kingdom. But something important shifted. People started reading the Bible as is. Protestants returned to the Hebrew Bible, studied Hebrew, and read the prophets more literally. Once Christians began reading passages about Israel in their original context, cracks slowly began appearing in the cemented replacement theology. Occasionally, radical voices even suggested openly that the Jews would one day physically return to their land. One such preacher, Francis Kett, was burned at the stake in 1589.
But then the Puritans showed up and began interpreting the Bible literally. Thomas Brightman (1562-1607) was pivotal, but he dared publish his views on the 'end times' only posthumously. Henry Finch (1558-1625) wrote that all nations would one day become subservient to Israel, and was imprisoned by King James.
With the Civil War and the rise of Oliver Cromwell, the Puritans were no longer censored. Now, Restorationism started to gain traction. In 1649, there was even a Baptist petition, asking the State of England to make it happen – to restore the Jews to the land of Israel. The Puritans had injected the idea of a literal return of the Jews to Israel into the bloodstream of English Protestantism.
But proto-Zionism, thoughts on actual activism, like in 1649, were rare. Restorationism was chiefly a theological issue. A specific belief about what the end times would look like. The end-times timeline of the Puritans often included all Jews coming to faith in Jesus first, and then God would bring them to Israel.
But then the American Puritan Increase Mather (1639-1723) scandalously suggested reversing that timeline. He said in 1669 that the Jews might be restored to Israel first and come to faith in Jesus later. This was a revolutionary idea, and it got a lot of pushback. One of his critics, Richard Baxter, actually said, “What about the rights of the current native population of Palestine?” This might have been the earliest foreshadowing of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This did not occur in a vacuum. The 1660s, and especially the scary-looking year 1666, were filled with expectations about the end times among both Jews and Christians for various geopolitical reasons. Around the same time, the false messiah Sabbatai Zevi gathered Jewish followers from all over the world, and his rabbi, Rabbi Nathan of Gaza, made the city of Gaza the Jewish center of this Sabbatean movement before it disintegrated.
Spoiler alert: the end times did not occur in the 17th century. But as the 1700s rolled along, Restorationism had become a recognizable and increasingly respectable Protestant theological position, and not something that would get you burned or imprisoned. John Gill (1697-1771) wrote specifically that the Jews would be restored to Israel, assisted by “Protestant princes.” Yet, it was still just an end-times idea and hadn’t morphed into active Zionism. That changed in 1799.
In 1799, Napoleon marched from Egypt into the land of Israel. After conquering Gaza and Jaffa, he laid siege to Akko. A rumor spread that he called on Jews to gather under his flag to liberate Jerusalem and turn it into a Jewish homeland. Whether that rumor was true or not – and whether he was sincere or bluffing – is lost to history forever. He abandoned Akko and turned back to Egypt, so we will never know. But it electrified and energized the Christian proto-Zionist fervor. For the first time in world history, a secular world leader talked about resettling Jews in Palestine, and people started thinking that maybe this end-time scenario of Jews returning wouldn’t occur by the heavens parting and angels coming down. Maybe it would happen by regular secular world leaders making geopolitical decisions that, through God’s providence, also advance His plans.
Throughout the early 1800s, Protestant missionary societies, like the “London Jews Society” (LJS), focused increasingly on the Jews, establishing Hebrew-Christian congregations and sending missionaries to Jerusalem itself.
A key figure in this Victorian era is Lord Shaftesbury (1801-1885). He functioned as a bridge between the pulpit and the parliament, and lobbied the British government to make Israel a British protectorate and allow Jews to resettle there. Not because “God wants it,” but because it would benefit the British Empire. The first British consulate in Jerusalem was established in 1838, and the “Palestine Exploration Fund” began to dig around in Israel and authenticate the Bible. Shaftesbury moved the needle from “God will make this happen someday” to “God wants this to happen and the British Empire is the divine instrument chosen to execute it.”
But it wasn’t just people like him who worked the government from the top. Preachers, like Charles Haddon Spurgeon, excited the masses from the bottom. He was immensely popular, and his sermons were printed and circulated widely. In 1864, he said that the promises to Israel were true and should “not be spirited or spiritualized away.”
This Victorian-era proto-Zionism created the environment in which Hechler emerged that fateful day, singing Zionist songs to a bewildered Herzl. It was in this environment that the Balfour Declaration was written in 1917. If this environment had penetrated the British government more thoroughly, the era of the British Mandate for Palestine, 1917 - 1948, would likely have looked very different.
The problem with Christian Zionism at this time was, of course, that it was all about convincing someone else – the Jews – to move to Israel. And most Jews just shook their heads at the “crazy Christians.” Sure, there was a longing for Zion in the Jewish religion, but only the most religious Jews actually took the huge sacrifice of moving to that malaria-infested corner of the world. There were early rabbinic proto-Zionists, such as Zvi Hirsch Kalisher (1795–1874), who urged Jews to begin returning to the land before the Messiah. But even for him, cooperation with the Christians was still unthinkable. However, with the emergence of secular Jewish Zionism in the late 19th century, this changed. Suddenly, the longing for Zion was a secular nationalist movement, similar to many other nationalist movements of the 19th century. They quickly realized that Christians like Rev. Hechler had something Jews like Herzl lacked: geopolitical access to world leaders.
Meanwhile, in the US, Christian Zionism started gaining traction as well. William Blackstone (1841-1935) led a petition in 1891, signed by hundreds of mayors, governors, and businessmen, urging then-President William Henry Harrison to support the idea of a Jewish state. Like Shaftesbury before him, he framed the issue in political rather than purely theological language. He pointed to the pogroms in Russia and stated that just as the Bulgarians and Greeks had gotten independence from the Ottomans, the Jews should get that too, in their ancient homeland of Palestine. Later in his life, Blackstone convinced President Woodrow Wilson to support the Balfour Declaration.
What made Christian Zionism reach the grassroots of regular Americans wasn’t political petitions, but theology. John Nelson Darby developed dispensationalism, which states that God is not done with the Jewish people. This theology was popularized through the Scofield Reference Bible, published in 1909. Darby himself was against political activism. He believed the restoration of the Jews to Israel would occur only after the rapture, but his work unintentionally made many Americans receptive to political Zionism. Fifty years later, in 1948, they saw biblical prophecies fulfilled in newsreels, and Christian Zionism grew significantly and exploded after the victories of 1967. It’s still a huge part of American evangelicalism, even if it’s losing momentum lately.
In the UK, however, the development went in the opposite direction. Christian Restorationism gradually collided with imperial pragmatism after Britain conquered Palestine in 1917. Once Britain actually had to govern the land, oil politics, Arab alliances, and strategic concerns increasingly outweighed theological enthusiasm for Zionism. The clearest expression of this shift was the repeated British restrictions on Jewish immigration during the Mandate era, especially in the years leading up to the Holocaust.
Now to the elephant in the room: Christian Zionism contains a contradiction. The core Christian calling to spread the Gospel often had the unintended effect of assimilating Jews into gentile Christianity, thereby undermining Zionism itself. This led to some Christians abandoning missionary endeavors altogether, at least when working with the Zionists, while others abandoned Zionism altogether, going back to universal missionary activity and replacement theology. And then there were some who walked the fine line of not compromising on either of those principles - strongly supporting Zionism while also desiring that the Jews come to faith in Christ. How is that possible? Only if Jews who believe in Jesus hold on to their Jewish identity. And this really became possible only through Zionism itself.
The “non-missionary Zionists” are Christians who put the missionary aspect of their faith aside in order to cooperate with Jewish Zionists and gain their trust. They believed that establishing the Jews in the land of Israel needed to be the focus, and they trusted God to reveal the truth of the Gospel at some point in the future. Hechler was one of those. There were many others. The “non-Zionist missionaries” are the ones who took the opposite approach and conducted missionary activity among the Jews, and didn’t care if it erased their Jewish identity. The Zionist missionaries are those who insisted on both. It was rare, and before 1948, almost impossible, often actively opposed by powerful Christian churches.
The one thing needed for both to exist simultaneously is a way for Jews to come to faith in Jesus while still maintaining their Jewish identity. Since 1948, that tension has become easier to navigate. In a Hebrew-speaking Jewish society, it is now possible for Jewish believers in Jesus to maintain a visible Jewish identity. In fact, many of us increasingly see our faith in Jesus as a form of Zionism. In 1960, a Messianic leader wrote, “Just as we didn’t occupy Israel, but returned to our homeland, we Messianic Jews didn’t convert to a foreign religion, but returned to our original spiritual heritage.” Here, we see a real convergence of Zionism and missionary work together. Just as we took back the land, we are taking back the faith in our Messiah.
There are now about 30,000 Messianic Jews like me, who speak Hebrew, serve in the IDF, take part in Israeli society, and believe in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. So is it possible to be both a Christian Zionist and also a missionary? For foreign Christians, that tension still remains difficult to navigate. For Israeli Jewish believers, however, the two identities coexist naturally.
We’ve covered centuries of Christian Zionism in this article, and we have seen that an idea that started as an “extremist” way of reading the Bible “as is, actually came true exactly as the Bible said it would. At the exact right time in history, secular nationalism, Christian Zionism, and religious Jewish longing for Zion met “by chance” to fulfill the exact promises God had made thousands of years before. Just 200 years ago, a restored Jewish state sounded crazy to most people. Today it exists. That raises the question: which biblical promises sound impossible today?
Tuvia Pollack is an Israeli writer based in Jerusalem, a Jewish believer in Jesus, and a regular contributor to All Israel News. He writes for Christian readers about the Bible, Jewish history, and the Hebrew language, bringing Scripture to life through the realities of modern Israel.
He publishes weekly on Substack at
tuviapollack.substack.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)