Israel: A Modern-Day Miracle
Note: The following are excerpts from the message given at the recent “One in Messiah” pastors conference in Jerusalem.
There are constant reports of miracles taking place to protect this young tiny state of Israel. If God were not keeping His promise to resurrect the ancient nation of Israel and protect it from annihilation, the Jewish state wouldn’t last a day.
Most of the Israeli people do not yet know the God of Israel and His Son, the King of the Jews. But God has made a solemn promise that when he brings the Jewish people back to the land of Israel, He will also bring them back to the God of Israel.
Last spring, the Israeli news carried a story about a certain rabbi who went down to the border between Israel and Gaza, and prayed for God’s help against the enemies of Israel. He prayed that the attack tunnels Hamas was digging would collapse. Since his prayers, nine tunnels have collapsed.
Israeli media wrote: “As Hamas blames everything from Israel to Egypt to bad weather for the collapse of their terror tunnels, the true source may be a lone rabbi with enough faith to bring down the tunnels with the power of prayer.”
“Hamas has invested millions of dollars and much of its manpower into building its network of terror tunnels, used to deadly effect against Israel in the last war in 2014, under the Gaza-Israel border. However, despite all the concrete and effort … in the last two months, nine tunnels have collapsed, leading tunnel workers to refuse to continue digging. Earlier this week, a high-ranking Hamas officer was killed in a tunnel collapse, bringing the total number of militants killed in tunnel accidents since the beginning of the year up to 17.”
Now, even the Gazan media has written about this Rabbi Shriki who is praying against their tunnels.
Israel has, in fact, never been outnumbered in any war by less than 3 to 1. In our War of Independence in 1948, the Arab armies were four times greater than the Jewish army of the newborn state. Many of these new Jewish soldiers didn’t even know enough Hebrew to understand their commanders’ instructions. But God gave a great victory to Israel.
Do you know how many missiles it takes on average to create one Israeli casualty? Before the existence of the Iron Dome System, the casualty ratio was one death for every 445 Hamas and Hezbollah missiles. Is this just because our enemies have really bad aim, or do we serve a miracle God?
Besides, I ask, what can be a more daunting task for God? To remove 600,000 men from one nation (Egypt) through one Red Sea, or to gather 3,600,000 Jewish immigrants from 70 different countries over sea, land and air?
Our first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, said, “In Israel, in order to be a realist, one must believe in miracles.”
Miracles So Big You Could Miss Them
It is unprecedented for any people in all of history to maintain their culture and speak their same ancient language after 2,000 years of expulsion. It takes only two generations after immigration for a people to lose their language. How many of you speak the native language of your great-great grandparents?
Immense efforts have been invested in reviving old, “dead” languages, such as Native American languages, Welsh and Gaelic, but none of them became the base language of a new nation.
Less than a century ago, not one person in the world spoke Hebrew as a first language. Now there are over 6 million people speaking Hebrew as their main language.
Israel is the only nation in the world that is governing itself in the same territory, under the same name, and with the same religion and same language as it did 3,000 years ago. To think that there was a 2,000-year lapse of dispersion and exile in between is mind-boggling.
In the 1930s, British scientists claimed there were enough water resources in this land to support only 2 million people. Today, because of our desalination and drip-irrigation technologies, those same water resources are supporting 12 million people, because we are exporting water and water technology to our neighbors.
So why are we seeing this miraculous restoration of Israel? The Scriptures explain:
“When they [Jews] came to the nations, wherever they went, they profaned My holy name—when they said of them, ‘These are the people of the Lord, and yet they have gone out of His land.'”
“And I will sanctify My great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst, and the nations shall know that I am the Lord,” says the Lord God, “when I am hallowed in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the nations and bring you into your own land” (Ezek. 36:20-21).
God is saying that His Name was profaned when nations pointed out Israel had been exiled from her land. And God would hallow His Name when He brought the Jewish people back to their land. So let’s pause for a moment to ask an obvious question: What does the physical restoration of Israel have to do with the name of God?
The answer is that Almighty God has sworn with an oath and a statue and an everlasting covenant to return Israel to her own land:
“He is the Lord our God; His judgments are in all the earth. He remembers His covenant forever, the word which He commanded, for a thousand generations. The covenant which He made with Abraham and His oath to Isaac. And confirmed it to Jacob for a statute to Israel as an everlasting covenant, Saying, ‘To you I will give the land of Canaan as the allotment of your inheritance'” (Ps. 105:7-11).
There is no other passage in the Bible that combines so many words that express a solemn commitment of God. God considered this issue so important that He caused it to be recorded in the Bible in 47 places.
The struggle over the land of Israel is not just a dispute between two neighbors over a property boundary. It is a question of the very sovereignty of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the integrity of His Name. {eoa}
For the original article, visit maozisrael.org.
