Can You Trust the Bible? by Harold Sala

Author:Harold Sala
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781649380111
Publisher: Rose Publishing
Published: 2021-01-28T19:01:25+00:00

The Development of Modern Israel

This event was the most significant fulfilled prophecy of the twentieth century. It was September, 1967—barely ninety days after the Six-Day War—when I visited Israel for the first time. Taking a small tape recorder, I interviewed as many people as I could, asking a basic question: “How do you account for the remarkable victory that Israel won?” Taxi drivers, tourist guides, government workers, soldiers in uniform, and people on the street all were quick to relate how the odds were stacked against them. Fifty million Arabs were intent on driving some two millions Jews into the Mediterranean. But there was singular and unanimous agreement. “God gave us the victory,” they said. Forget about military hardware, superior equipment, better strategy, or bravado.

Hardened soldiers told me their parents had been victims of the Holocaust and that they had not wept openly from the day their parents were taken from them until the day they stood at the Western Wall of the temple; but as they stood on the perimeter of what had once been the foundation of the temple, something inexplicable happened, something deep inside broke up in a flood of tears and emotions.

What is the fascination with this piece of stone wall about 150 feet long and 90 feet high—the remnant of the foundation of the first-century temple—overlooking the Kidron Valley? Here stood the temple originally built by Solomon, destroyed by the Babylonians, rebuilt following the captivity under Zerubbabel, then enlarged and refurbished by Herod the Great around 20 bc. On this spot, the Holy of Holies and the ark of the covenant stood. It was sacred ground, the meeting place of God and man.

You might also wonder, “What’s so special about Israel?” It’s not a large country—just a narrow piece of land sandwiched between the Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian Desert. Yet, the establishment of the modern state of Israel and how it came about, when never before in all history has a people so scattered across the surface of the earth come back to their roots, constitutes one of the most astonishing and remarkable prophecies of Scripture, one fulfilled in the past century.

To understand why the re-establishment of Israel is significant, you need to know something of the historical developments. Following the destruction of Jerusalem in ad 70 when the temple was demolished, the Jewish people were spread across the face of the earth—some going into Egypt, some to Europe, some to Asia; and wherever they went they took the Torah, or Old Testament Scriptures, and for centuries observed the Passover with the words, “Next year in Jerusalem!” That hope never died.

Meanwhile Jerusalem was overthrown some forty-three times by various and assorted armies, including waves of Crusaders in the Middle Ages intent on driving infidels from the holy places.

In 1897, however, God significantly used an unlikely person, an atheist named Theodore Herzyl, to convene the first Jewish Congress in Basil, Switzerland. From all over the world, prominent Jews came to talk about how wonderful it would be to have a homeland for the Jewish people.

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