Shabbat shalom mishpachah. Because of illness I am publishing this short message and will not be delivering a sermon today. I pray that it will be a blessing for those of you searching for the consolation and restoration of Messianic Israel.

What I want to share with you today, as part of the end-time Restoration of Messianic Israel and the Melchizedek Order, is a vision Yahweh gave me on the morning of the 17th day of the 8th month (Thursday 29 October 2015) as I was waking up. Standing before me was a woman dressed in a long white robe with a glass filled with what looked like red wine almost to the brim, one identical glass in each of her hands. Inside each glass, submerged in the wine, and merged with the glass stem, was a small menorah made of gold that almost filled the entire volume of the glass (see illustration above). She handed me the glass in her right hand and then, with the other glass still in her left hand, seemed to be supernaturally drawn backwards in the direction which I supposed she had come from. Then the vision closed.

As with all revelations of the Father, they are multi-layered and potentially very deep. This particular vision has both a personal and a general application. The allusion is very clearly to the wine component of the Master's (Lord's) Supper which is a memorial of the atoning blood of the Saviour (Lk.22:19) by which the B'rit Chadashah or New Covenant was established (Heb.9:18-28). By partaking of it we proclaim the Master's death (1 Cor.11:26), forcing us to look back through time to a specific event. Though a terrible and painful event for the Master in its execution, its result was both good news for us and simcha (joy) for Him when we receive it with gratitude and ahavah (love).

So much is tied into this spectacle of horror which held the Messiah captive for three days in death, an event that led to the cleansing of the whole of creation. In some respects it is possible to make a parallel human midrash of this by likening those three days, on a lower level, to our own mortality with all the trial, tribulation and suffering that gets compressed into it on this death planet. Yah'shua (Jesus) endured what He did for the tiqveh (hope) and simcha (joy) of redeemed souls and we in our turn, having Messiah as an anchor throughout the days of our salvation on earth, can look forward with tiqveh (hope) and simcha (joy) too to a better world.

Nevertheless there are very real advantages to having that salvation in the here-and-now too. We need no longer fear death (Heb.2:14-15) and can live both in the tiqveh (hope) of the future reward as well enjoying the fruits of the resurrection life right now in spite of life's hardships. Yah'shua's (Jesus') triumph over death and sin is the greatest news mankind could ever have, because it gives him a future not just in mortality but throughout eternity too. By claiming that resurrection power today we are set free to serve Yahweh according to our gifts and callings. Thus the Master's Supper is a reminder both of this defining moment in history as well as the defining moment in our own histories when we surrendered to Him and changed our allegiance from Satan to Yahweh, and from death to chayim (life).

The Master's Supper is the completion of another defining event in history, the Passover or Pesach. This was the moment at which the children Israel obtained a new identity in the same way that both Israelites and Gentiles obtain a new identity in their commemoration of their New Birth in their first Master's Supper.

The symbolism of the vision contains an interesting element, the menorah (seven-armed candlestick) which first appears in the history of the qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones) upon the construction of the Tabernacle of Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai. It was installed in the Holy Place both in the Tabernacle and in the future Temple of Solomon. The understanding of the menorah symbolism is itself incredibly deep and if you don't know much about it, I would invite you to study my sermon given about 9 years ago entitled, Wisdom Hath Seven Pillars: The Mystery of the Holy Menorah as I shall only be making a short summary of it so that we can examine even more important matters that the vision is showing us.

Though the Menorah has come to be adopted as a symbolism of Judaism, it is in fact much older than that relatively modern religion and symbolises, in essence, the fullness of the Besorah (Gospel) represented by the Messiah Himself. As the simplified diagram below shows (there is much more), the Menorah means very many things:

Why is the menorah immersed in the wine? Yah'shua (Jesus) said that He would not drink of the fruit of the vine again until He came in the fullness of the Kingdom (Mt.26:29; Lk.22:18; Mk.14:25) whose restoration, both in doctrine and spiritual power, we eagerly await. That is to say, a time would come when there would be a full presence of the Besorah (Gospel) in that which is represented by the wine from which the Remnant qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones) would obtain their identity and empowering. Each time we partake of the Master's emblems we are reminded of His promise of the Great Banquet to come. The bread and the wine are, in a way, miniature rehearsals of what will come to be seen one day as the greatest victory celebration in all history.

In the meantime - in that period of space between that first Master's Supper and the Great Banquet-to-come, we both have opportunity to proclaim His death until He returns (1 Cor.11:26) as well as to look forward to the Great Banquet, to look upward to our Heavenly Father, Yahweh, inward at our own state and around at the opportunities given to us to bear witness of that Kingdom and its King.

Messianic Evangelicals have laboured hard for three decades and searched for the fullness of the King and His Kingdom and have been brought to this day of great change and opportunity. The vision, you will recall, had two glasses, not one, because part of the restoration of this Kingdom must includes reconciliation. In the general sense, the other glass was being taken to the second party to be reconciled to the first, because we are to seek reconciliation by all legitimate Gospel means. In the specific sense, we are to work it with one another, even with those who are no longer 'visible' to us, for in the vision I could not see the other party.

As the occupants of the ark, presently lodged on their 'Ararat', see the tops of other mountains arising from the watery depths of judgments and cleansings, so we may fix coordinates and prepare to make the journeys of reconciliation that Yahweh wants made once the land is traversible. We have had much time for ourselves but soon it will be demanded of us to minister the Gospel of Reconciliation to others.