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<p style="FONT-FAMILY:arial"><span style="FONT-SIZE:36px">ISRAEL—THE
HISTORIC MIRACLE THAT DOES NOT LIE.</span></p>
<div style="FONT-FAMILY:arial"><span style="FONT-SIZE:18px"><i>The
evidence that the God of the Bible is who He says He
is—and can be trusted—not only in this life but for
all eternity.</i></span></div>
<div style="FONT-FAMILY:times"><br>
</div>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">Let's look together at what is
without doubt the greatest of all modern
miracles--that miracle is the Nation of Israel.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">I remember those years very
well. In fact, I can recall a sunny morning in midMay
when I jumped out of bed an hour early. Even my dad,
who customarily fetched the Philadelphia Inquirer
along with a first cup of morning coffee by 5:55, had
yet to show his face. I pulled on my clothes, and went
down to the front stoop to get the paper.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">The reason I remember this day
is because it was a big one in my life. That day, May
14 1948, Central High's varsity baseball team was
scheduled to play our arch-rival, the Northeast High
Spartans. And I personally had a lot at stake. Just
two days earlier, Coach Bennett told me I'd be
starting at third base this afternoon--which really
floored me, since I'd spent all my baseball days
including every Little League season playing left
field. Talk about being thrown a curve.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">With a heart totally focused on
baseball, I gave little more than a passing glance to
the Inquirer's headline that morning: JEWS AND ARABS
TO DECIDE FATE OF PALESTINE. Filling a bowl with
cornflakes and milk, I spooned down breakfast and
began the daily five-mile walk up Broad Street toward
school at Ogontz and Olney Avenues. I was a good hour
and fifteen minutes earlier than usual. As things
turned out, I should have slept in another hour.
Northeast clobbered us 9-2, I went one bloop single
for four and played uninspired if officially errorless
infield. Everything considered, not exactly a
memorable day for the baseball-crazed teenager I was
in those days.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">But halfway around the world,
in a small sliver of land along the Mediterranean
Seacoast, events were swiftly unfolding that would
prove nothing less than miraculous. On that very day,
May 14, 1948, a few hundred thousand Jews then living
in British-mandated Palestine were getting set to
proclaim the re-establishment of a "Jewish State to be
called Israel." After a gap of more than two thousand
years when there was no "Israel," the Jewish people
were about reunite in both name and identity with
their Biblically promised land of Tzion, Zion,
otherwise known as Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel.
The Chosen People, whose very existence was based on
historical miracles, was poised to be resurrected
under even more miraculous circumstances.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">At the time, even though raised
in an Orthodox Jewish family that boasted a rabbi for
my maternal grandfather, I knew very little about the
post-Biblical history of the Jewish people. And even
less about the tiny landbridge called "Palestine"
linking Europe, Asia and Africa. In fact, it was only
in recent years while I was researching a book on
Eastern European Jews that I had become familiar with
the facts surrounding historical Palestine.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">I was surprised to learn that
up to a hundred years ago, fewer than 50,000 Jews
lived in the country the Romans in 135 A.D. had
renamed "Palestine." This name change was a calculated
imperial move that accomplished two purposes. First,
it severed the Jewish people from their historical
roots and so tended to discourage future uprisings.
Renaming the land after the Philistines (Latin =
"Palestina") served to further humiliate the
Israelites by honoring their hated arch-enemies, the
people of the giant Goliath. By 70 A.D., the Romans
completed their obliteration of the ancient Jewish
homeland by razing the sacred Temple, burning
Jerusalem and scattering the Jewish people throughout
the Empire.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">Thereafter the land became a
dustbowl, a reproach to the world. The country that
had produced the Holy Bible, Moses, King David, and
Jesus Christ, and had spawned three great world
religions--Judaism, Christianity and Islam--was
reduced to a barren shell where for eighteen hundred
years a small handful of diehard Jews scratched out a
living and cried out to God at the wailing wall that
He might grant them mercy and restore Israel even as
the prophets had promised would happen in the Last
Days. But God appeared in no great hurry to answer
those prayers.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">Waves of invaders and
counter-invaders swept through the land over the
centuries. Political control variously switched from
Moslems to Egyptians to European Crusaders to
Mamelukes to Turkish Ottomans, but the land itself
seemed little affected by the changes in ownership.
The soil remained cursed, parched and unfruitful, with
few human inhabitants there to honor its once glorious
past.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">Then, in the mid-19th century,
persecutions against Jews erupted in Russia and
Poland. That triggered a wave of several thousand
European Jews who dared to abandon their homelands for
a dream in Palestine where they set up farming
collectives called kibbitzim. A few decades later,
pogroms unleashed by tensions leading to the Russian
Revolution in 1917 gave a new impetus to Ashkenazic
Jewish immigration. Many, including my parents'
families, succeeded in gaining admittance to America.
Others resettled in other European countries, Canada,
and Australia. Far fewer, perhaps 10,000 or less,
chose to live in the Holy Land. At this point, out of
some 100,000 Jews then living in Palestine, 75,000
were European Jews, only 25,000 Arab or Sephardic
Jews.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">Following World War One,
Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann met with British foreign
minister Lord Arthur James Balfour, author of the
historic Balfour Declaration that advocated
establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Balfour
told Weizman the time was now ripe for Jews to pour
into the Holy Land, since the door might not stay open
indefinitely. Balfour's exhortation in 1921 proved
prophetic, with the rise of Hitler's Germany looming
ahead. Tragically, only a handful of Jews seized the
opportunity. In fact, the 1920s saw more Jews who
wearied of the harsh pioneer life and returned to
Europe from Palestine than the numbers of those
choosing to emigrate there.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">Many Jews, particularly those
from Russia and Eastern Europe who settled in America
where they prospered, supported the Zionist dream by
buying plots of land from absentee Arab landowners,
gaining a tangible if vicarious stake in any future
Jewish homeland. My parents were among those who
exchanged several hundred dollars for a titled deed in
the 1920s, and even today my sister and I are the
paper co-owners of 2 1/2 acres in the Galilean city of
Afula.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">By 1931 the Jewish population
in Palestine had grown to 175,000, European Jews
constituting the overwhelming majority. The few Arabic
Jews welcomed the Europeans with open arms, impressed
by their cash, energy and modern technology that
launched the Zionist miracle of "making the desert
bloom." But most of all they marveled at Ashkenazic
boldness in dealing with ruling British authorities
and hostile Arabs, a sharp contrast to their own
submissiveness. Though they found the Europeans
"pushy," as a large, tough co-Jewish presence in a sea
of Arabs they were a reassuring defense force. But the
millions of Sephardic Jews who still lived in Arab
lands were afraid to return to Palestine where local
sheiks sponsored cross-border terrorist raids against
the new Jewish settlers.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">When Hitler launched his
killing crusade against Europe's Jews in 1936,
refugees began pouring into Palestine until the Jews
numbered 200,000. The Arabs rioted in protest against
their British overlords and, with World War 2 on the
horizon, the British government--with Winston
Churchill, God bless him, dissenting--believed Arab
good will should be the Crown's highest priority. So
they restricted Jewish immigration to 15,000 a year
for the next five years. After that time, no Jews
would be allowed into Palestine without Arab consent.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">History records how the Nazis
slaughtered 6 million Jews in the death camps of
Poland and Germany. In the space of three short years,
one third of the world's Jews vanished off the face of
the earth. But out of that horror, a quarter million
Jews crawled out of the killing barracks into
resettlement camps. These were joined by an equal
number of homeless Jews who had survived the war by
fighting in partisan units, hiding out in forests,
mountains and caves, or living underground with
"righteous gentiles" who kept them alive. Now, their
old lives destroyed and with no place to go, their
hopes turned to Biblical Palestine and they clamored
for admission.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">But for the intervention of
Divine Providence, their pleas may have gone unheeded.
At war's end during the disastrous Yalta Conference,
Franklin D. Roosevelt handed over Eastern Europe to
Russian domination, only now being overthrown. Then
FDR met with Arab King Ibn Saud, founder of Saudi
Arabia, who threatened Arab reprisals if the United
States supported Jewish emigration into Palestine. As
a result, Roosevelt's already anti-Zionist sentiments
hardened. Chief FDR aide David Niles later noted, "If
Roosevelt had lived, I have serious doubts that Israel
would ever have come into being." But on April 12,
1945 FDR suffered a massive brain clot and died before
his views could move world opinion.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">Meanwhile, the United Nations,
moved by Holocaust compassion, begged the British to
admit at least 100,000 displaced Jews. But their pleas
fell on ears deafened by British pro-Arab oil
politics. So Jewish Zionists leased any old ships they
could find in an effort to slip through sea blockades
set up by the Royal Navy. But these aging vessels were
relentlessly pursued, intercepted and turned back.
Most of the Jews who tried to reach land were captured
and imprisoned in Cyprus, while a few thousand at most
managed to jump overboard and swim or be rowed ashore
to join the growing Jewish resistance.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">By 1947, the United Nations had
agreed on a plan to solve the situation. According to
this scheme, the territory of Palestine would be split
in two. The proposed Jewish state would include rocky
Eastern Galilee, the central coast--including Haifa
and Tel Aviv--and the Negev desert. The Arabs were
ceded the more fertile central and western Galilee
plains, the southern coast including Gaza, and nearly
all the central inland territory. But, despite
receiving the lion's share of the bargain, the Arabs
were still unhappy. Accepting a piece of the Palestine
pie--even if it were the largest piece--grated against
the Moslem commandments to rule the entire Holy Land.
So the Arabs boycotted the Committee. On the other
hand the Jews, desperate for any haven in a storm,
agreed to accept only a small part of the original
territory promised to them.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">U.S. President Harry Truman
sympathized with the Jewish refugees as international
underdogs. Facing the election of 1948, he found
himself a decided underdog who needed Jewish political
support in swing states like New York, Illinois and
Pennsylvania. So when the question of partitioning
Palestine into Jewish and Arab states came up for a
vote in the U.N., both Truman and Joseph Stalin, who
believed the European Jews of Palestine would favor
his Socialist Republic over the Imperial British in
international forums, joined forces to push hard for
ratification.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">On November 29, 1947, the roll
of the 56 U.N. representatives was called.
Thirty-three nations voted yea, thirteen nay, and ten
countries including Great Britain abstained. The plan
was officially adopted. Immediately the Arab nations
walked out of the UN General Assembly, vowing to
settle the matter in blood. The next day, Arabs blew
up a busload of Jews on the road to Jerusalem. Armed
patrols from neighboring Arab lands crossed the border
in unprovoked attacks against Jewish farm settlements.
By the end of the first week, over a hundred Jews had
been killed. At this point, David Ben Gurion and his
advisers knew how close to extinction were the Jews of
Palestine.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">On their newly mandated borders
stood the combined armies of six nations--Egypt,
Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. A
half-million Arab soldiers stood fully poised for
Jihad, or Holy War. According to Ben-Gurion's own war
diary, he had only 16,400 Jewish fighters, with rifles
for less than 10,000. Beyond their rationed rifles,
Jewish weapons consisted of forty automatic weapons,
four artillery pieces and forty trucks converted to
serve as mobile armor.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">U.S. General George C.
Marshall, after whom the Marshall Plan was named,
sympathized with the Jews but saw their position as
impossible. So he sent the following telegram to Prime
Minister David Ben Gurion--"For God's sake, Ben
Gurion, tell your people in Palestine not to proclaim
a Jewish state. If they proclaim a Jewish state,
within ten days or maximum fifteen days, not a single
Jew will remain alive." Though Marshall knew his
military strategy and classical conflict
probabilities, what he didn't know was that God
Himself had determined the outcome.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">At midnight Friday, May 14,
1948, the British mandate over Palestine was to
formally end. At 4 o'clock that afternoon, David Ben
Gurion assembled a hundred associates at the Tel Aviv
Museum of Art on Rothschild Boulevard. On its rooftop
flew the blue and white flag with its Star of David,
while inside Ben Gurion delivered a 650-word
proclamation that read in part:</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">"The Land of Israel was the
birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual,
religious and political identity was shaped. Here they
gave to the world the eternal Book of Books. By virtue
of our natural and historical right and on the
strength of the Resolution of the United Nations
General Assembly, we hereby declare the establishment
of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel. This state will be
known as the State of Israel. The State of Israel will
be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering
of the Exiles."</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">Eleven minutes later, Harry
Truman announced U.S. recognition for the State of
Israel. That night Arab armies began to attack in
force. Arabs in Haifa, Jaffa and other places were
warned by the Arab League to leave Jewish population
centers or the invading Arab soldiers would treat them
like enemy Jews. Most Arabs complied as the Arab
League announced to the world press that "This will be
a war of extermination, a momentous massacre which
will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the
Crusades."</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">But even as the bombs and
shells exploded and Arab legions roared across the
borders, while Jewish casualties mounted amid a spirit
of grim desperation, wretched survivors of the
Holocaust ovens began to pour into the besieged land.
From the detention camps of Cyprus and the
displaced-persons camps of Europe they came in by the
thousands, and before they even learned how to speak
Hebrew, they were taught how to fire a rifle. Five
thousand arrived the first week, 150,000 over the next
six months. Despite being outgunned and outnumbered,
in amazingly short order these survivors of Dachau and
Auschwitz proved themselves as valiant and tenacious
on the field as any Sabra born and raised on the
hallowed soil of historical Israel.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">Field guns, tanks, automatic
rifles and machine guns were airlifted in from
Czechoslovakia. Small arms were bought with private
Jewish money in the U.S.A., South Africa, England and
France, then shipped in on leased vessels. Colonels,
majors and air force pilots came from the United
States and Britain, eager to join their fellow Jews in
the struggle for survival. The "lightning victory"
predicted by Arab leaders hit a stone wall of
unexpected Jewish resistance.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">Suddenly, the tide of battle
swung. Egyptian attacks against Beersheba were
repelled by kibbutz pioneers, dug into desert bunkers
with ancient mortars and machine guns. Settlements in
the north won victories, using the Bible as a source
of military strategy against the Syrians. In JOSHUA 6
they read how Joshua and his "mighty men of valor"
vanquished the Canaanites by marching seven
trumpet-blowing priests at the head of a small column
of Hebrews around the city of Jericho seven times a
day for seven days until, on the seventh day the
people gave a "great shout and the walls came tumbling
down."</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">Faced with assaulting the holy
city of Safad, which had fallen into Arab hands, the
Israelis concocted a "new weapon" inspired by Joshua,
consisting of a home-made mortar which, though useless
as a weapon of mass destruction, set off an enormous
blast when it went off. When they exploded it on the
streets of Safad, Arab soldiers--convinced the Jews
were using nuclear bombs against them--turned tail and
fled in horror.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">Down south in Jerusalem, the
situation was even more desperate. Starvation was
widespread and Jordan's crack Arab Legion controlled
the road from Tel Aviv to the Holy City, with heavy
fortifications based at Latrun. Ben-Gurion ordered a
series of attacks against the Legion and all three
were repulsed with heavy Jewish casualties. Then,
reading in The First Book of Chronicles of an ancient
Latrun bypass, under cover of darkness one morning a
crew of several hundred Israelis followed the old
Biblical trail and laid down a primitive track which
bypassed Latrun.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">That night the first armored
truck was able to enter the Holy City carrying flour,
water, weapons and ammunition to their trapped
countrymen. With the siege of Jerusalem broken, Arab
spirits sagged and white flags began flapping from
weary Arab foot soldiers. By January 7, 1949, Egyptian
forces in the Sinai surrendered unconditionally and a
few days later on the Island of Rhodes, the Israelis
and Egyptians at last concluded a firm armistice
agreement.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">By July, similar agreements
recognized by the United Nations were arranged with
Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. But the Iraquis and Saudis
adamantly refused to sign. At the end of hostilities,
Israel consisted of enlarged boundaries as a result of
the fighting. The Kingdom of Jordan held the West Bank
of the Jordan River, Egypt controlled Gaza--and
Jerusalem was cut in half. Jordanian King Abdullah
annexed the sacred Old City with all its fabled sites
holy to three world faiths, while Israel held the
hollow shell of the New City outside the ancient
Temple's western wall.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">The population of the new
Jewish homeland was now just over 800,00--one fourth
Arab, three-quarters Jewish. The great majority were
Ashkenazic European Jews, toughened like steel by the
fires of persecution and genocide, looking ahead to
reborn lives as Israelis. The real losers were the
Arab residents of Palestine, who had abandoned their
homes expecting to return after the Arab armies had
crushed the Jews, seized their possessions, and driven
them into watery graves in the Mediterranean.</span></font></p>
</font></b></span><span style="COLOR:rgb(255,255,0)"><b><font
color="#000000">
<p style="DISPLAY:inline!important"><font face="'Prestige
Elite Std'"><span style="FONT-SIZE:15px">The rebirth of
Israel in our times was a true miracle in many ways.
Retired Israeli General Yehezkel "Hezzi" Schachar,
whose Ashkenazic family had lived in Palestine since
1864, had led Jewish soldiers in all the major Israeli
wars. A few years ago I had the privilege of hearing
Hezzi speak when he visited the USA and sat on a panel
discussing the War of Independence.</span></font></p>
</font></b></span><span style="COLOR:rgb(255,255,0)"><font
color="#000000">
<p style="FONT-WEIGHT:bold"><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">"It looked totally impossible,"
he related. "There was no such thing that so few people
could resist all those Arab countries. I was head of one
of the two battalions--actually not even battalions but
two companies with platoons. Every platoon was so
important we knew who was the commander of that platoon.
A commander of a section was like a general in the U.S.
Army. For every ten men, we had two rifles and two
grenades. When I think about it now when we have a
modern army, it was something from FANTASY LAND. And
what happened there was totally miracles. Only the hand
of God could have done such a thing.</span></font></p>
<p style="FONT-WEIGHT:bold"><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">"I remember one day when five
Egyptian companies, maybe a thousand men, were attacking
our thirty-two. Everyone was saying prayers, and we knew
it was all over. Suddenly, I don't know why, they
retreated! They turned all their men around and started
a full retreat so when their backs were to us we started
chasing them, firing our guns, and many were killed.
There were so many miracles like that.</span></font></p>
<p style="FONT-WEIGHT:bold"><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">"Many years later, after Sadat
came to Jerusalem and we made peace with Egypt, I
visited Cairo and sat down together with the Egyptian
general who commanded troops in the Sinai. Later, at
dinner, I asked him because it had always amazed me, why
did an entire Egyptian army run away from thirty-two
poorly armed Israelis. 'You had us right in the palm of
your hand,' I told him. 'You could have finished us off
in twenty minutes, we were so outnumbered.'</span></font></p>
<p style="FONT-WEIGHT:bold"><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">'Outnumbered?' he answered in
astonishment. 'How can you say that, Sachar? You know as
well as I do that right behind your small forward
emplacement stood thousands of Jews dressed in white
desert uniforms, backed by hundreds of tanks racing at
us across the desert. We were the ones outnumbered, not
you!' My heart filled with joy when he told me that
because I knew that our victory came, not because we
were such great fighters, but because God had sent His
angels to fight for us." (See Footnote 1)</span></font></p>
<p style="FONT-WEIGHT:bold"><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">On May 11, 1949, four days before
her first anniversary, Israel was formally admitted as
the fifty-ninth member of the United Nations. That
certified what many Biblical scholars had been yearning
for for hundreds of years. The rebirth of Israel as a
nation was the sure prophetic sign that the world had
entered the time of the Latter Days, the era described
by the prophet Jeremiah in Chapter 23, verses 7-8.</span></font></p>
<p style="FONT-WEIGHT:bold"><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">It was only after the
predominately Ashkenazic warriors had reclaimed the land
through warfare that the Arab and Oriental Jews began to
return to the land in any significant numbers. More than
600,000 were forcibly expelled from Arab countries, and
over the next decade over a million and a half more
poured into Israel from Moslem lands until at last they
outnumbered the European Jews. Soon there was scarcely a
Jew to be found in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and the
other Moslem countries. Again, exactly as foretold as
happening during the "latter days" by the prophet
Zechariah in Chapter 10, verses 9-10--check it out for
yourself.</span></font></p>
<p style="FONT-WEIGHT:bold"><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">What had been a barren wasteland
for centuries was now being transformed into a Mideast
garden. In 1910 Mark Twain toured Palestine and wrote on
his return that "This is the most desolate and
Godforsaken dustbowl I've ever seen, where even the
grasshoppers starve to death." Rainfall was so scarce as
to be virtually negligible. But, since then, something
happened. The Pilgrim Bible records an amazing change
that has taken place in this very century-- "There
always used to be two rainy seasons in Palestine, one in
the spring, the other in the fall. The second rain God
withheld while Israel was scattered, but He promised in
JOEL 2 to send it again when Israel would be returning.
It is interesting that the fall rain began again,
lightly, at the beginning of the 20th century, and has
been increasing ever since." You can check out this
prophesy for yourself by reading JOEL Chapter 2, verses
23-25.</span></font></p>
<p style="FONT-WEIGHT:bold"><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">Most recently, the Jerusalem Post
ran a first-page story headlined RAINIEST WEEK IN 50
YEARS. Reporting that six people, including two
soldiers, were killed by resulting floods, the Post
noted that "the rainfall reached an intensity not
matched in half a century. Only once previously in this
century, in December 1941, were comparable rains
registered. The depleted level of the Sea of Galilee
rose again dramatically after four years of
semi-drought. On the average, more than 200 mm. (7.87
inches) of rain was reported in seven consecutive days.
Between 50% and 70% of the entire annual average quota
has fallen already in north and central Israel."</span></font></p>
<p style="FONT-WEIGHT:bold"><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">The last time such intense
rainfall was recorded in Palestine, the Nazi death camps
were just preparing to launch their gas-and-cremation
genocide, seven years before modern Israel was reborn.
Can these rains be the forerunner of other Latter Days
events about to take place? Or is all of this, including
the resurrection of Israel after two thousand years,
nothing more than sheer if uncanny coincidence?</span></font></p>
<p style="FONT-WEIGHT:bold"><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">In a nutshell, can any rational
20th Century mind seriously consider such ideas as
mystical signs, natural wonders, Biblical prophesies and
Divine Plans? That is surely the great question of our
times, the one question every single human being alive
today is being forced to answer one way or the other.
For the stakes involve nothing less than physical
survival now, and the ultimate eternal destiny of every
living soul on planet Earth.</span></font></p>
<p style="FONT-WEIGHT:bold"><font face="'Prestige Elite Std'"><span
style="FONT-SIZE:15px">What about it? Is there really
such a thing as Divine Prophesy? And, if so, can it
actually be proven "beyond a reasonable doubt?" I
challenge you, if you are really a true "seeker of
truth," to explore the articles on fulfilled Biblical
prophesies designated by God Himself to come to pass in
these, The Last Days of this stage of human history.</span></font></p>
<p><font face="'News Gothic MT'"><span style="FONT-SIZE:15px"><i>FOOTNOTE
# 1 The best part of Hezzi Sachar's story happened in
the 1980s during the time he worked for the Israeli
Tourist Agency promoting travel to Israel and
promoting Israeli bonds. In the course of his work,
Hazzi met many Christian tourists to his country. Some
of them became his friends, encouraged him to study
the Scriptures. To make a long story short, in 1988
Hezzi became a born-again child of God in Yeshua
Hamaschiach, Jesus Christ. Hezzi came to the United
States in 1989, continued to study and give his
testimony here to whomever would listen, and just when
he was ready to go back home to evangelize his own
people in Israel, the Lord took him home with a sudden
heart attack. Evidently, from God's perspective,
Israel's time of redemption had not yet arrived. But
the Bible tells us that the best is yet to come for
His own Chosen People.</i></span></font></p>
</font></span></div>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
"For so long as a hundred of us remain alive, we will yield in no
least way to English dominion. For we fight, not for glory nor
for riches nor for honour, but only and alone for Freedom, which
no good man surrenders but with his life".
The Arbroath Declaration -
Noble Scots to Pope John XXII in 1320</pre>
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