Fogel Family Murderers
©June 12, 2011 Revive Israel Ministries

by Asher Intrater

On Friday, March 11, two young Muslims, Amjad and Hakim, ages 18 and 19, murdered the Fogel family in their home in the Jewish settlement of Itamar. This week the two murderers were brought to trial.

They appeared in the courtroom smiling, showing no remorse for their actions. They openly confessed to the crime: They snuck into the house in the middle of the night. Amjad jumped on Yoav (11), covered his mouth, dragged him into the bedroom, and stabbed him with a knife. Hakim motioned to Elad (4) to be quiet, turned him around so as not to see his brother being murdered, pinned him down on the floor, and stabbed him with a knife as well.

The parents were asleep in the other room with the baby in the bed with them. The murderers entered the room and turned on the light. Amjad stabbed Udi, the dad. Ruti, the mom, fought against Hakim. Amjad came over and stabbed Ruti as well. But Ruti continued to fight. Hakim then shot her in the stomach with an M-16 rifle.

They did not notice the baby and left the house. Amjad returned to see if there was a weapon in the house that they could steal. Then he noticed the baby Hadas (3 months old!), and stabbed her with a knife as well. The detailed descriptions are grotesque.

Ruti's brother Yochai said that the murder was not really directed at their family, but at all the people of Israel, since the murderers did not even know the Fogel family [Ma'ariv (p 20, 6-6-11)]. Were these youths simply deranged psychopaths or were they "normative" products of Islamic extremism?

That there were two of them, that they were so young, that they show no remorse, and that they openly confess to their deeds, all point toward education and upbringing, rather than psychosis. In the Hamas and Jihad influenced environments in which they were raised, they are not considered aberrant but acceptable. Their answer as to why they murdered the Fogel family was simple and self evident: "We killed them because they were Jews."

God's Thoughts Revealed

God has thoughts that are above and beyond the thoughts that we have in our limited minds (Isaiah 55:8). The thoughts that God has that we do not yet know are called a mystery.  Nothing is a secret or mystery to God; He already knows everything. 

When one of God's secret thoughts gets transferred into our minds, into our realm of understanding, we call that a revelation. A revelation is a God thought that we did not know before, but we do now. God has no revelations – again, because He already knows everything. We pray that God would give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation (Ephesians 1:17), so that we can understand His way of thinking.

When we pray in tongues, we are uttering God's mysteries (I Corinthians 14:2), which means that we do not understand what we are praying. The interpretation of the tongues provides an understanding of what was prayed. That understanding is a kind of revelation. Tongues and interpretation lead to various other kinds of revelations as well (1 Corinthians 14:6).

True believers in Yeshua have the potential to hear God's voice. Yeshua said that His sheep hear His voice (John 10:3, 4, 5, 16, 27). This ability is not only for prophets and apostles, but for all believers. It is the sheep who hear His voice. People of the world do not have access to this special information, yet it is communicated to us from within by the Spirit of God (I Corinthians 2:6-10).

A prophecy is hearing words from God in our inner man. Since an interpretation of a tongue allows a person to understand what was said, tongues plus interpretation are equal or equivalent to a prophecy (I Corinthians 14:5).

A vision is seeing a picture from God's heart in our inner man. Everyone has the ability to see a picture in his heart. Most heart pictures are not from God. When an inner picture does come from God, it is called a vision (on the simplest level).   To summarize:

Mystery: a God-thought not yet known

Revelation: understanding a God-thought not known beforehand

Wisdom: God's way of thinking

Prophecy: hearing words from God in the inner man

Vision: seeing a picture from God in the inner man

All prophecy must be according to Scriptures and not our own personal will (II Peter 1:20). We must discern between what is from God and what is from our own soulish desires (Matthew 26:39, I Corinthians 14:14, Hebrews 4:12).

Shavuot Prayer

By Betty Intrater

Our all-night prayer meeting was a great breakthrough. The overall theme was spiritual revival in the end times (Acts 2:17).  Watches throughout the night focused on: Unity of the Body (John 17:21), Coming of the Kingdom (Mathew 6:10), Reaching the Nations (Acts 1:8), Power of Holy Spirit (Acts 4:30), Salvation of Israel (Romans 11:26), and Coming of Yeshua (Matthew 23:39). The meeting was directed entirely in Hebrew, but during the watch for reaching the nations, prayers were lifted up in over a dozen languages by native speakers (Acts 2:9-10).

Over 100 prayer warriors joined us, mostly young adults who rose to the challenge. Some stayed for a few hours, others for the entire night. Messianic pastors Eitan Shishkoff, Hanan Lukas, Ari Sorkoram, Shmuel Birnbaum, Simcha Davidov, Ofer Amitai, Yakim Figueras, and Guy Cohen gave short exhortations from the word of God. Teams from Sukkat Hallel, King of Kings, Dugit, Ohalei Rachamim, and Nazareth Prayer houses took part, along with the Revive Israel staff.

The atmosphere was electric. Although some felt on the verge of physical exhaustion, the anointing of the Holy Spirit invigorated us with excitement and anticipation. We ended with the Lord’s Supper and the blowing of shofars. Everyone sensed that we had experienced a historic turning point and the beginning fulfillment of Joel's end times' prophecies.