Welcome to Rock Harbor Church's channel on Sermon Audio. We hope that this message is a blessing to you and it helps you in your daily walk with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So please settle in and grab your Bibles. Here's our guest speaker with this message. So let's get going here. Now, the main thrust of the presentation tonight is the idea that, how many times have relatives and friends told you, when you were trying to present your faith to them, they told you, well, you know what? If I could just see a miracle, I would believe. How many of you ever heard people say that? They say it all the time, okay? It's an excuse. It's an out for them, all right? And I want to submit to you tonight that There are miracles in the world to be seen if you will but see them, okay? Now, if you don't wanna see them, you won't, all right? They're not overwhelming. God, if he came personally and presented you with a miracle personally, you would be, to say the least, overwhelmed. Actually, you'd be obliterated, okay, if he came personally. He warned his servant Moses not to try to ask to see his full glory. He said, you can see a fraction of my glory as I pass by you, Moses, okay? And so, but God does miracles, and I'm not talking about even healing or things like that. Those are sometimes miracles too. But I'm talking about miracles in international relations, in politics, in the rise and fall of countries. And here is one tonight. I submit to you that the country of Israel, its founding and its establishment and its life, okay, as a nation, its growth into a viable nation is a miracle, okay? So let's see. When Mark Twain toured Palestine during the 1800s, what he saw was a desolate land with no cities, no roads, no trees, no crops or farmers, and very few people. How was this empty land turned into a modern, vibrant country in only 100 years? because he was there 120 years ago or so. One of the top countries in the world in GDP, okay, in technology, in agriculture, in medicine, and in weapons technology and production, including even, shh, don't say it, nuclear bombs, okay? It is a public secret. that Israel has, down in the Negev Desert, in their Dimona nuclear research facilities, produced a number of nuclear bombs, okay? Why did they do that? Because their neighbors threatened to do it all the time, or buy them, and they wanted to be prepared. They don't wanna use them, They pray to heaven they never will use one of their atom bombs or nuclear weapons, but they want to have them in case. And so they've let it become a public secret. Now there's a thing called the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the United States is big on and the United Nations is big on. Non-proliferation means non-spreading. of nuclear weapons, okay? And the UN and the US pressure countries to sign up. Now, some of the countries are willing to, like Canada, for example, made a decision early on in the 50s. It would not harbor nuclear weapons, okay? And so, for example, they're compliant with the Non-Proliferation Treaty. So the UN and the US go around the world and they try to get all the little countries to sign up on the Non-Proliferation Treaty, okay? Now, nevertheless, nuclear weapons tend to spread. The first one to have them was the US. Second one, USSR. And then Britain. And then France. And then China. That's five, I think. And then I think the next ones were India and Pakistan. Six and seven. And since then, North Korea and Iran on the edge. And you would have to include Israel. So that's about less than 10 countries in the world that have nuclear weapons. And the Non-Proliferation Treaty is, you know, pressured on countries to keep them. But of course, you know, some of the countries like North Korea, they feel like, Well, the US has weapons and it's used them in war, so why can't we have weapons too, okay? So there's some of that thinking, and that thinking was with India and Pakistan. They're deadly enemies, so when one got the bomb, the other one got the bomb. We're a little bit afraid if Iran gets the bomb, Saudi Arabia's gonna want the bomb too, and the more bombs there are out there, the more likelihood there is of an accidental war starting with nuclear weapons. Okay, so Israel has them, but in my opinion, Israel's very responsible about them. And by the way, I remember reading a book a couple of years ago about an Israeli, you know, officer in the IDF, And he's gonna tell me his whole career. And at the end of his career in his book, he goes to like a future weapons research laboratory or something like that. And I said, I'm looking for the bomb in this book. I'm looking for the Israeli bomb. I wanna see the Israeli bomb. I wanna see it in black and white. And I read that whole book and guess what? There was not one mention of an Israeli bomb. The Israelis do not admit to it. Okay, isn't that interesting? They've got this ambivalent position. They don't admit to it, but everybody knows they have it, all right? So they're not encouraging other countries to get it, and officially, they don't have it, so you don't have to worry about them. And actually, you don't have to worry about them, okay? The Arab countries are just waking up to that with the recent Abrahamic Accords, okay? Israel is less of a threat to them than Iran is. So let's, you know, get closer to Israel, maybe even form an alliance with them at some point against Iran, because Iran's a bigger threat. And Israel, they know, has bombs, but they're not going to use them, and they don't admit to it. Now, what could explain such a dramatic transformation? Never in human history has a neglected piece of land exploded into such a dynamic, innovative leader of countries. This cannot be explained humanly speaking, okay? This is what I'm submitting to you. The explosion of Israel in its land cannot be humanly explained. Now, I study a lot of history, and countries don't come like this, you know, exploding onto the scene. And even the US, you know, took 100 years to get going. This cannot be explained, humanly speaking. It can only be explained by the hand of God moving in history to fulfill prophecies. He recorded in the Bible thousands of years ago, okay? So Israel had its ups and downs in ancient history, and sometimes got dispersed, and sometimes got transported, and God promised he would bring them back, okay? And then they were finally dispersed by the Romans 2,000 years ago, and they've been dispersed ever since, right up until 1948. And then God brought them back dramatically, and then made a country out of them after 2,000 years, okay? So I think this qualifies as a miracle, in my opinion, anyways. And there's Mark Twain seeing his way around the desolate, what they called it in those days was the Holy Land, okay? And he was a skeptic, he didn't believe in any religion. And he didn't find it particularly holy. He was looking for the footsteps of Moses and the footsteps of Jesus. And he was open, he was open to possibilities, but he didn't find anything there to inspire him to faith. But Theodor Herzl did, okay, a little later in the 1800s. We're in the 1800s here. Jews had been scattered all over the world in the, I hope you know the term diaspora. It's really just equivalent to our word dispersion. The diaspora is the Jewish dispersion around the world. They were in every country of the world. but there were large pockets of Jews in North Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Russia, and New York City. They had settled comfortably in their various host countries, and while they prayed, next year in Jerusalem, It would take a miracle to get them to move to Palestine, okay, so they were comfortable in their host countries. The miracle came in the form of an Austrian Jew, Theodor Herzl, who covered the trial of a Jewish-French army officer accused of treason. His name was Alfred Dreyfus. He was obviously innocent, but was convicted and sent to Devil's Island off the coast of South America. Something snapped in Herzl's head as he covered this trial, and he realized that Jews would never be safe in other people's countries. They needed a country of their own to be safe, all right? So Theodor Herzl has a sort of life-changing revelation from the Dreyfus Trial, and he starts on his life mission, okay? By the way, when I was studying European history, they tell you about the Dreyfus Trial, And they covered it in terms of German-French relations and Jewish anti-Semitism in France at that time. But they didn't have a hint of the true significance of the Dreyfus file, which was on Theodor Herzl. They didn't mention Theodor Herzl at all. They missed that completely. But Theodor Herzl went on to do big things. Well, what did he do? He turned all his energies to persuading his fellow Jews of the need to emigrate to their former homeland, and by 1897 he had organized the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. They adopted their national flag with its broad blue stripes that you're familiar with, and the song Hatikvah as their national anthem. There's Richard, not Richard Dreyfus, that's an actor. Captain Dreyfus, if you please, s'il vous plaît, of the French Army, okay? And, you know, framed, sent to, you know, what it was, the French Army was very conservative, very Catholic, and they didn't like Jews particularly. And this guy had worked his way up into the army officer corps, but he was socially outcast. And they just used some opportunity, framed him up with some hocus case of spying for the Germans, and the French were between their first and second wars with the Germans. The French have had three big wars with the Germans in a century, okay? And the first one was 1870 to 71, and that was the Franco-Prussian War, which they lost badly, and Prussia declared itself now the Empire of Germany, and then they took Alsace and Lorraine away from France. and imposed a great big settlement of money on France and just generally humiliated France. And France sort of stewed under its humiliation all through while the Dreyfus trial was going on. And you know what was coming up next? Round two of the three wars was what? Was World War I. Right, and France wins it with Britain at great cost, gets Alsace-Lorraine back, and they mangled Germany so badly in Austria and Turkey that Germany came back for round three, which was World War II, okay? And there's Theodor Herzl. I envy him, his beard, that's a wonderful beard that it's got there. Very manly, you know, boy. all that testosterone there into his beard. World War I and the downfall of the Ottoman Empire. Okay, now I know you're getting familiar with this, right? The downfall of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire lasted for about 500 years from around from around 1400 to about 1920, okay? Something like that. Now, for the last 100 years of its history, during the 1800s, the British and French had supported this sick man of Europe, the Ottoman Empire, against the Russians, who were leaning heavily on it. And if you do some geography, and I don't have the map handy here, you will see that Russia is on the north side of the Black Sea, and on the south side is Turkey. and there's an entrance or an exit from the Black Sea down through past Turkey, past Greece, into the Mediterranean, and that is very, very critical for the Russians, that they be able to get out of the Black Sea down to the Mediterranean Sea and go places, okay, of strategic importance for them, and so they were always leaning on, you know, all through the 1800s, trying to pick on the Turks, and the British and French would support the Turks, But in World War I, the Turks chose Germany instead of Britain. And so the British and French got to hammer the Turks and do the settlements at the end of the war, which of course is, you know, hugely historic. But in 1914, the Turks disappoint the British and they join the war on the side of the Germans. Okay, when I was studying German history at university, the German professor told a story about, The Germans sending two, I don't know if they were battlecruisers or battleships, German-made that were trapped on the wrong side of the English Channel at the beginning of the war. The British fleet, the Royal Navy, is very powerful, and they would immediately hunt down any German ships that are out at sea. So these two German battleships, they were on the wrong side of England, far from Germany, and they were gonna get hunted down and sunk. And they knew it, and Germany knew it, so Germany telegraphed them and said, go to Istanbul. So go in the Mediterranean, along the Mediterranean, and up past Greece, and up to Turkey, and we're gonna give the Turkish government those two battleships, and the Germans did. So the British couldn't sink them. And then the Turks, in gratitude, partly because of that, joined the war with the Germans, okay? Now this is very, very critical. This meant that if the Allies won the war, they could finally dispose of the rickety old Ottoman Empire and divide up its territories. In 1917, General Allenby led a British force into Jerusalem. Some see this as the beginning of the end of the time of Gentile domination of Jerusalem. Now, there's a tricky passage in Luke, okay? In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, not John, there is the Olivet Discourse, where the disciples are sitting with Jesus in the courtyard of the temple, they're looking at the beautiful big temple, and they say, Lord, what do you think about this wonderful temple? He says, not one stone's gonna be left lying on another soon. And they're kind of shocked by that, and they say, well, what are the signs of your kingdom and the coming of your kingdom and the end of time? And he goes right past the rapture, doesn't mention the rapture at all, and he goes right into tribulation talk, and cautioning them about the tribulation and things that will happen during and after the tribulation, all right? Now in Luke, there's an extra verse and it says, now Luke was a Gentile writer, maybe this is why he put this in there. And Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles, now the Gentiles are non-Jews, right? So Jerusalem's gonna be trampled by Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles are fulfilled. Okay, so this tricky verse is very interesting to try to interpret. Okay, so the Gentiles are gonna rule Jerusalem until their times are fulfilled. It will end in the future sometime, but we're not sure when. Well, some people say the Gentiles started maybe with the Babylonians, 500 BC, okay? All right, fine, and then, There was a period or two of a little bit of independence, okay? Some of the Bible scholars don't like to mention this, okay? But we history majors remember some of this stuff. Actually, it's pretty biblical too. It's the Maccabees. The Maccabean period led to 100 years of independence. No Gentiles dominated, no Greeks, no Romans, yet, okay? So the Bible scholars like to say, well, that was just a little interlude, okay? Because the Gentiles dominated before, they're gonna dominate for a long time afterwards. Very true, okay? The Romans came around 63 BC and started dominating. And so you got Gentiles dominating all the way through the church age, all the way for the last 2,000 years, right up until modern times. When did it stop? Did it stop when? General Allenby walked on foot out of modesty and humility and out of biblical sensitivity. He walked through the gate where Jesus went on foot, said he wasn't going to ride his horse into Jerusalem. And he did that in 1917 and the British government is now in control of Jerusalem. Now, they're Gentiles also, so the times of Gentile domination have not exactly ended. What has changed is the British are a lot nicer than the Turks, okay, to rule you. If you're going to be ruled by somebody, you'd rather be ruled, generally speaking, by the British than the Turks. And in the same year, the British got so enthusiastic about capturing Jewish Palestine that they made a promise to the Jews of the world, of Europe. And they said, hey, basically, now what they don't say in this letter is, if you help us in the war, we will do this, okay? They don't say that. What they said was, his majesty's government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national homeland for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object. Signed by Sir Arthur Balfour. November 2nd, 1917, and I think it was addressed to one of the Rothschilds or somebody, and it was for open, it was an open letter, it was for everybody to read. So everybody during the war could see that Britain was saying, we will try to help the Jewish people establish a homeland in Palestine, and this would obviously be after the war. In the middle of World War I, the British government, this is it, this is what they did. They made a public declaration that it favored of Jewish homeland and Palestine. Now this is a miracle. Nobody has talked like this for 2,000 years. In fact, 2,000 years earlier, the Roman Emperor Hadrian had said, Fed up with you Jews, and I hate you and what you, you know, fighting my Roman legions and costing me soldiers, and I am banishing you from your land of what I'm gonna rename as Palestine, okay? after the ancient Philistines and I'm going to erect a new capital on Jerusalem's ruins and call it Elea Capitolina, okay, and put a statue of Zeus in the temple there. So he really messed up with the Jews, messed the Jews up in 136 BC. And so here is Great Britain now saying, and they're referring to the area as Palestine, but they're saying they're open to establishing a Jewish homeland in the old country of what would have been Israel. around the capital city of Jerusalem. At the end of World War I, Britain would be awarded a mandate, you heard me talking about that last week, to administer the former Ottoman territories of Palestine, Transjordan, and Mesopotamia. Britain was to prepare these territories for independence. It wasn't to keep them, that's why they were called a mandate. They were not called colonies. They were not given to Britain in perpetuity. They were awarded temporarily for Britain to prepare the territories for independence on behalf of the new League of Nations. So they got this power, this mandate from the League of Nations. And there's a map of Turkey in 1914. And you can see Turkey kind of straggles all the way down the Red Sea to Aden down there, and it would take all of the coastline of Saudi Arabia, and it would take also the area we would call Mesopotamia. Now, are you alert enough to identify the seas? Okay, I know, I used to work with my students, just make them identify all the bodies of water. Now, the only trouble is, starting somewhere, can you identify Italy and the Mediterranean? Okay, let's go. Is it counter? I think it's counterclockwise. Let's go down to the right then. And what is that red body of water called? Ah, very good, okay. And then going around the circle again, what's that Persian body of water called? The Persian Gulf, very vital to us, very important to us today because of oil. And then just above the Persian Gulf, 500 or 600 miles, Yeah, that's a hard one, the Caspian Sea. I'll give you an even harder one, the Disappearing Sea, just to the right of the Caspian Sea. That's not really germane to our thing today, this is geography. But I told you, if you're gonna be a Bible student, you have to study history and geography as well. Anybody know what that sea's called? It's the what? No, the Black Sea's coming up to the left. To the right is the Aral Sea, A-R-A-L. Now why did I call it Disappearing? Because 30 years ago, I read a National Geographic. I used to read National Geographic, okay? I know only nerds read it, but I read it, read it. And it was an article on the Aral Sea. And you know what the Aral Sea did? It dried up and disappeared. It disappeared, utterly. You know what's there? Salty sand, okay? And empty fishing boats. floating on the sand in the Aral Sea. You know why? Because the Soviets, in their wisdom, the Russians, with their central planning, decided to dam up the rivers leading into the Aral Sea. I bet you didn't know you were gonna hear about the Aral Sea tonight, did you? Okay. And they dammed it up for irrigation of cotton fields all around, you know, Central Asia there, Kazakhstan and stuff like that. And they just held too much water out of the Aral Sea. The Aral Sea could not, what's the word, survive or something with so much water cut off. And it actually dried up. Okay, so there's the Caspian Sea, as we said. Now to the left, the Black Sea, and that will do it for now. But I want you to look very carefully from the Black Sea out into the Mediterranean. It's actually first the Aegean Sea and then part of the Mediterranean. And I know you can't see it, but there is an entrance there, okay? There's two passageways, very narrow passageways from the Black Sea into the Aegean Sea. And those, of course, are what the Russians wanted. They wanted the entrances into the Mediterranean Sea. Okay, there's Sir Arthur Balfour in all his glory. And it's hard to imagine what motivated him, but I do know this, that in the 1800s and the early 1900s, the early 1900s, there were a number of British politicians, David Lloyd George was one of the more famous ones, who, unfortunately, not Sir Winston Churchill, but David Lloyd George, and others, like Balfour, who thought if they could get, they were Christians, and they thought if they could get the Jews back to their home, okay, and I'm not sure if they had to become Christians or not in their theology, in their thinking, but if they could get the Jews back to their home, they thought it would greatly facilitate and greatly encourage, guess what? The coming of the Messiah, the second coming, okay? And so they were actually working in their politics to try to encourage, some of them were Christians and they had that theology that if you can get the Jews back to the homeland, it'll help the return of Christ. But Satan really got loose during World War II, as you know. And the Jews call this catastrophe the Shoah. But what you have to remember is God is moving, right? And so, like, where's God? You know, Eli Weasel writes tonight, where's God, where's God? In the Shoah, in the Holocaust, where is he? Well, believe it or not, he was moving. And he used the Shoah because almost nothing less would have led to the miracle of the establishment of Israel. So Satan's loose, he uses the military political war of World War II to cover up Hitler's other war on despised groups, especially the Jews. But Hitler also picked on homosexuals, gypsies, handicapped, many mentally handicapped people, and a few other groups. Jehovah's Witnesses too, he hated those really badly. From all across Europe, the Nazis gathered up Jewish families and sent them into the ghetto in Warsaw. Sometimes people say, well, how come, why didn't the Jews fight back? Well, because for 2,000 years, they had no tradition of fighting because no army, no nation would take them in. with the exception of the French army taking in Captain Dreyfus, of course, they would not take them in, generally speaking, to train them as soldiers. So the Jews were civilians, and they just did not have a martial tradition. Well, that changed, and we don't have the story here, but I mentioned it very briefly. In 1943, in the Warsaw Ghetto, some of the younger Jews decided it was time to fight and they had nothing to fight with but their bare hands and they fought the Germans to a standstill for six weeks. It took the Germans to squelch, to crush the Warsaw, the Jewish Warsaw Uprising in 1943. So they did fight back and there were other occasions of other rebellions against the Germans too, but we don't hear about them too much. Seemingly, nothing could stop these factories of death with their gas chambers and their crematoria. FDR, I hope you know who that is, refused to bomb them. German trains transported Jews to the camps until the end of the war. Now listen to this, in spite of complaints from the army generals who said, hey, you know, Fuhrer, you gotta give us the trains for supplies, okay? Do you know the old saying, amateurs discuss tactics, professionals discuss tactics. logistics, okay? And the German generals were saying, we need the trains, you know, the logistics support, you've got to, you know, supply us, we're fighting the Russians trying to keep them back. And you're sending Jews, you know, on the trains, filling up the trains with Jews. The Russians finally reached the camps to liberate them, because most of them were in Eastern Europe, very late in the war. And what this did was it You know, Day of the Dead, The Undead, coming zombie apocalypse. Well, there was a zombie apocalypse, but it's not funny, really, in 1945. And it was walking skeletons. The skeletons came still alive, barely, out of the concentration camps. And they had, nobody received them and told them, okay, go over here, go over there, we'll take you back home. They could not go back home. Their homes were long since, four years, five years, occupied. okay, by the Poles, by the Germans, by whoever, they could not go home. Some of them did go home to Poland, but they were shot by the Poles after the war, okay, after the war. And so here come all of these walking skeletons coming out and just walking across Europe, not knowing where they're going, wondering where they're going, where they could go, and they just kind of went south. They drifted south toward the Mediterranean. And my mother used to use this term, she was from Northern Ireland, and she used this term, DPs, okay? And she explained to me one day, DPs were displaced persons because she had lived through that whole three-year period of where Europe had to decide what are they gonna do with this walking zombie apocalypse, all these people, you know, skeletons coming down into their cities and towns and stuff. What are we gonna do with them, okay? Well, Theodore Herzl knew what he wanted to do with them. Okay, what do you notice about the sizes of the jackets? These are all children here. I just thought I would show you this Holocaust picture for a different day, because the kids are not in too bad shape. They're wearing adult clothes, okay? Which one of them do you think is the, I don't know what the word is, is the gamer in this group? The kid on the end, at the right. Do you notice what he's looking at? He's looking at the photographer, trying to figure him out. The rest of the kids don't know what's going on. They're looking all over the place. How many of you have seen Schindler's List? How many of you haven't seen Schindler's List? Shame on you, okay? Schindler's List is mandatory homework for any serious student of Israel, okay? I wanna talk about, I can't talk about, okay? But he actually spares you some of the worst, but he makes sure you understand what happened in Europe, okay, during the Holocaust. And what was I gonna say? There's a scene where the kids are being rounded up in the camp for transportation to the gas chambers, and some of the kids who are alert and who are smart, You see them scrambling, remember that scene? Scrambling to hide in the camp, you know? Where do you hide? Under the floorboards, okay? In the furnace, okay? And I can't even tell you where some of them hid at the end that were desperate to get out of the way of the guards rounding them up. Okay, now, if you want to see God moving in history, you have to look at the American presidential election of 1944. And you have to understand FDR, the phenomenon of FDR. FDR was fantastic, okay? Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Delano, the same as the town up the road there, okay? Which I would wonder, you know, somebody look it up, see if it was named after his middle name. FDR came in 1932. Herbert Hoover got blamed for the depression. FDR said he would fix the depression. He got elected in 32. Four years later, he hadn't fixed the depression, but he said he would if they reelected him. So they reelected him in 36, okay? So he's into a second term. It comes 1940 and the war is approaching and he was able to convince people that they ought to keep him in power because he knew more about what was going on in the world than anybody else and so he would be better president and he gets re-elected for the third time in 1940. Well that was un... whatever, historical, nobody had ever done a third term in U.S. history, and here he is with a third term. So he's conducting World War II very happily, you know, like it was very fulfilling for him, it was great, you get to hodnob with Winston Churchill and Stalin and guys like this, and lead the forces of the U.S., and plus, you're safely out of the worst of the war, right? protecting you, and you can move around all these air forces and navies and armies and have fun, you know? And so FDR's enjoying himself during World War II, and you may remember that he had polio, right? He was crippled, he couldn't get up out of the wheelchair, they wheeled him everywhere, and he smoked a lot. okay, and drank a fair amount. And when they wanted him to stand, they had to get him to the podium early, like me there, you know, and prop him up with braces on his legs, and he had to lean on the podium, and then he could deliver a speech standing. He did that on December 8th, 1941. Now what's December 8th, 1941? It's the day after Pearl Harbor. Where was he standing? In the well of the House of Representatives, and it was a joint session of the Senators, the 40, 90, 96 senators, I imagine, were there, and the 435 representatives, more or less, and he began his speech yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a day which will live in? Infamy, the forces of Imperial Japan attacked our naval forces in Pearl Harbor, okay? And he asked them for a formal declaration of war and they gave it to him. All right, now back at the beginning, that brings us up to 44, more or less. And in 44, the Democratic Party looked at the ticket. And they didn't like Henry Wallace. Most Democrats and most American politicians were anti-Semitic, but quietly so because they couldn't come out loud with it. It wasn't fashionable, it wasn't a nice thing to do. But most people, they really didn't like Jews that much. It was social persecution, not physical persecution in the United States. And this guy, Henry Wallace, he was an out-and-out anti-Semite. All right? And had he stayed and been elected vice president with FDR for the fourth term, and FDR by this time is sick, he's aged, he's crippled, he can't get around, he's got to be propped up everywhere and helped everywhere, does that remind you of anyone? I didn't say that. You thought it. You jumped to the conclusion. but they still got him elected in 44. However, and God knows what's gonna happen, okay? Ecclesiastes say we hang by a silver thread. And who knows when the thread is going to break? Do you know when you're gonna die? Nor do I. Probably soon for me, but you know, long time for you guys. But still, you don't know when, do you? Okay, it's a silver thread. God knows, but you don't know. Well, God knew about FDR. He gets elected for the fourth term, but the Democratic Party was very unsatisfied with his VP, okay? It sounds like, no. Okay. And, you know, they would get together in a back room filled with cigar smoke, okay, all the Democrat big wigs, and they had to say to FDR, you know, we don't like Henry Wallace. You can't, well, I do. Well, yeah, but we don't like him. Get rid of him, okay? So he says, well, you know, yeah, but if I do that, who am I going to replace him with? Well, they, you know, argued and wrangled and compromised, and they came up with a nobody, a senator from Missouri, okay? Nobody had ever heard of him. Harry S. Truman is going to be your VP. You don't have to talk to him. You don't have to do anything with him. You don't have to show him anything. You don't have to even shake his hand. Just he'll be there for your VP, okay? And God was at work, because if Henry Wallace had been in there, it would have been a different story for the birth of Israel. But Truman came, and nobody knew. Nobody knew all the stuff that was gonna happen. And then a couple of months later, April something in 45, just less than a year later, FDR died in Georgia at something Springs. And they had a big funeral for him, okay? Truman suddenly, unexpectedly, totally by surprise, is catapulted into the presidency of the United States. Nobody knew it, but he had been in business with a Jewish businessman back in Missouri. They were still good friends and they stayed in contact. God was preparing the way for the establishment of Israel. These are miracles, small miracles along the way that happened for the establishment of Israel. Do you see, you know, the story unwinding and God setting up the pieces, the chess pieces for, you know, because if you went back to World War II and you saw what was happening to the Jews, you would never believe anything good was going to happen for them. You know, it was just impossible. They were getting hammered so badly. Okay? And God was at work. There's the funeral of FDR. And, of course, the nation mourned him greatly. And they had a big funeral for him. And, you know, nobody has been elected for four terms since Of course, they passed an actual constitutional amendment saying you can only be elected for two terms soon after World War II. And there he is. Now, you know, in my lifetime, I've never really seen a Democratic president I wanted to vote for. I always said I would vote for one if they won my whatever you want to call it, my respect or something, okay? And I haven't seen one, but I would have voted for this guy, okay? And there's his famous sign on the desk. What's it say? The buck stops here. He takes responsibility for his actions. He dropped two atom bombs on Japan to end the war, and he said, I never lost a night's sleep. I commanded it. I'm the commander in chief. I did it. I would do it again, because it ended the war quickly. It saved Japanese lives, and it saved a lot of American lives, and he took responsibility. He didn't blame it on Trump, okay? And I like them. Now, the victorious allies, this time after World War II, and by the way, the United States decided it had better join the International Peacekeeping Organization this time around. They had not done it in 1919 with the League of Nations, they'd sat it out. But now they decide, okay, we better join the United, not only that, but we'll host them here in our country. quickly formed the UN to replace the old League of Nations, tasked with keeping the peace worldwide. They tried to find a way to allow Jewish displaced persons to migrate to Palestine, but the British were still maintaining their mandate in Palestine and they discouraged most of the Jews for coming. for fear of increasing Arab opposition. The British actually intercepted ships from Europe in the Mediterranean Sea, arrested those on board, and get a load of this, placed them in camps, which could be termed concentration camps, although we must admit they were different from the German concentration camps. They placed them in camps behind barbed wire on Cyprus, okay? But the British were getting tired of the bad press. A lot of people criticized them for this. Well, you know, rightly so. And the cost of maintaining their empire. And by the way, the British were grumpy, okay, about their empire. Does anybody know what they lost in 1947? What they had to sign away? the crown jewel of the empire, India, okay, became independent. And it chose to leave the empire and the commonwealth. It didn't sign up for the commonwealth of English-speaking countries, all right, like Canada did, Australia, South Africa, stuff like that. So the British are grumpy because they've lost, you know, this wonderful, their empire, a big piece of their empire, India. On January 22nd, 1947, they announced, we're gonna be leaving Palestine and we're gonna turn over the whole mess to the United Nations. Ha, ha, ha. They thought this was really funny. This was critical because the British were not sympathetic to the founding of a new Jewish state, even though they were supposed to do it. But the UN was much more sympathetic because, guess why? Because of the Holocaust. So God took this awful thing, the Holocaust, and turned it into the miraculous founding of Israel. And I submit to you that if you want to see it, The miracles are there, God moving in history. And you probably know they started in San Francisco and then the UN moved to New York, and there's the famous building. And it's wonderful about man's efforts to help himself and keep the peace and stuff like that, and you know, that's great, but they're missing something. They're missing Jesus helping them, the Prince of Peace. And there he is knocking at the door of the United Nations asking if they'll let him in to help with what they're trying to do. Now, the United Nations took this responsibility of inheriting the mandate back from the British very seriously, and on May 15th, 47, they formed a committee called UNSCOP. Isn't that great? UNSCOP. How would you like to go around saying that all the time? I belong to UNSCOP. I'm from UNSCOP, okay? To find a solution to the problem of Palestine. The committee traveled to Palestine, which is misspelled, horrors, okay, and studied the situation intensively for three months. Okay, now here, listen to this. I know I'm being funny there. I was gonna say, so I'm not perfect after all. Ha ha ha ha. Okay, all right, you got it out of your system. All right, now listen to this serious stuff, okay? This is very serious and this is key, it's critical. So United Nations sends its committee over to Palestine to interview both sides and to work on with them the coming fabrication of two countries, one for the Jews, one for the Arabs, in Palestine. So here's the committee, they arrive from United Nations. And this is what happened. The, let's see, they travel to Palestine, study the situation intensively for three months. The Arabs immediately announced they would boycott all meetings and discussions with UNSCOP. They would not talk to the commissioners from the UN. Well, what's going to happen? Are you going to make a country out of that? You know, you don't even talk to these commissioners that have to go back and make recommendations to the UN. Ah, it's going to be kind of tough, isn't it? So they wouldn't talk. They said, no, we're not even talking about it. We don't, you know, don't make any countries here. Don't give any countries to the Jews and one to us. Okay. We want it all. And don't you dare do anything, blah, blah, blah. So they wouldn't even talk to them. And the Jews did. Okay. And on September 1st, 1947, The UN committee proposed a partition of Palestine into, the committee said, hey, this is what we recommend to the UN, the General Assembly of the UN, a partition of two countries into a Jewish and an Arab state, two states. There's your two-state solution, okay? The Jews would have 55% of the land, but much of it was desert, the Negev Desert. Worse, remember last week I joked with you about the UN giving Israel the Negev, ha, ha, ha, you get a desert, but they made the desert bloom, okay, and the desert is fantastic now. The Jews would have 55% of the land, but much of a desert. Worse, the population of the Jewish state would be 498,000 Jewish. Now, I know numbers are dull and stuff like that, but look at the numbers. 498,000 Jewish, 407,000 Arab, ooh. And who had the higher birth rates? The Arabs. What would happen in a few years? Had the Arabs accepted the offer? Now, if they had said yes and taken the offer from the UN, They would have taken over the Jewish state in a few generations. Now, what's their goal? To obliterate the Jewish state. Well, they would have done it demographically or birth rate-wise in a few generations had they stayed based on birth rates alone. But first, the UN would have to vote on the proposal put to them by their committee, the UNSCOP, okay? So we gotta have a vote. The General Assembly's vote of November 26, 1947. In 47, the UN was still meeting in San Francisco and was composed of 55 member countries in the General Assembly. That's 55 countries with votes in the UN. Germany did not have a vote. It was a defeated fascist power, nor Italy, nor Japan. The Jews would need a two-thirds majority to win approval of UNSCOP's partition plan. The CIA and the State Department, led by George Marshall, Okay, big, you know, famous American guy who helped FDR win, you know, a general, win World War II. He counseled Truman to vote against the Jewish state based on its inability to defend itself. Okay, you look at paper, you look at maybe the forming state of Israel, and whatever forces it might have, and then you look at the Arab countries around it who are threatening it to invade it and wipe it off the map. And George Marshall, being a military man, looked at the numbers, looked at the map, and said, there's no way Israel can defend itself. Truman, Mr. President, don't approve of them, don't encourage them, don't vote for them to, you know, have a country. and don't recognize them, okay? So the vote was slated for November 26th. That was a big date, okay? And I remember asking David there last week, does he see any streets in Israel named November 29th, actually? But I don't think he did, but I know there are some for some of the YouTube things I've seen. There are streets in Israel named after November 29th. So it was slated for the 26th, but it was delayed, and while it was delayed, Jewish lobbyists okay, worked furiously to win a few more votes because many of the countries had said they would abstain, and abstain means they weren't gonna vote, yes or no. So they wouldn't count for yes or no either way, but it doesn't help Israel, okay? And so they're working on some of those abstentions, those, you know, announced abstentions. They haven't voted yet, but they're working ahead of time, ahead of the vote to change some of the abstentions into votes for yes. The UN reconvened after Thanksgiving on November 29th, and Jews around the world lined up beside their radios to hear the roll call of the vote. Truman ignored his advisors and ordered his ambassador to vote for the partition, and so did the USSR and the occupied states of Eastern Europe. Britain abstained. 17 countries were expected to abstain, 17 out of 55. The Jews were not sure they had enough votes, okay? And I'm gonna risk putting you all to sleep. My wife really cautioned me about this. She said, don't read to them, okay? But I want to read to you out of Leon Uris' book, Exodus, which I assigned to you last week, okay? How many of you went out and ordered it? Anybody order it? Oh, come on. I know you haven't all read it, so order it on Amazon, it's real easy, and it'll be there in two days, okay? And I guarantee your life will be changed, all right? Now, here is Friday, November 29th, 1947. The gavel rapped. The General Assembly of the United Nations was ordered into session. We shall have a roll call of nations on the partition resolution. A two-thirds majority is needed for passage. Delegates will answer in one of those three ways, for, against, or abstain. A solemn quiet fell over the great hall. Afghanistan, Afghanistan votes against. The Yishuv, now that's the committee of Jews in charge of trying to make the country, create the country, okay? The Yishuv had lost the first vote. Barak marked it on a pad. Argentina, the government of Argentina wishes to abstain. We have to cut the abstentions down, Barak whispered. They could kill us. Australia. Everybody leaned forward at Ivat and got to his feet with the first vote of a British Commonwealth nation. Now, they're dominated by the British and the British are sort of anti. Australia votes in favor of partition, Ivat said. A buzz of speculation went up. Weizmann leaned close to Barak's ear. Do you think it might be a trend in the Commonwealth? We'll just have to count them one at a time. We can't tell. Belgium. Belgium votes for partition. Another buzz arose in the Great Hall. A few days earlier, Belgium had abstained on the test vote. At the last minute, Spock had defied British pressure. Bolivia. Bolivia votes for partition. Brazil. Brazil favors partition. The South American countries were sticking. A vital vote was coming up on the next call. If the Soviet Union had a double cross up its sleeve, the world would know it now for a satellite. White Russia was next. Byelorussia. White Russia votes for partition. In unison, the Jews breathed a sigh of relief. The Slav, or communist vote, or Eastern European vote, was going to come in, the signs were bright. Canada, what's that liberal country up north going to do? Lester Pearson, one of their famous prime ministers, arose and spoke firmly. Canada votes for partition. The second of the Commonwealth countries had gone against Great Britain. Chile. or Chile. Another delegate arose in place of the chief who had resigned in protest to his orders to abstain. Chile has been ordered to abstain, he said slowly. China, China jockeying to become the dominant player in Asia, and China would have been still nationalist China in the civil war against the communists, so it would have been kind of mixed up too. Feared to go against the Muslims of India and Pakistan, China abstains. It was a setback for the Yishuv. Costa Rica. The Costa Rican delegate had been approached by the Arabs who tried to bribe his vote by a promise to support him for an important United Nations post. He stood and looked at the Egyptian delegation. Costa Rica votes in favor of partition. The man who would not be bought sat down smiling. Cuba. Cuba votes against partition. This came as a complete and unexpected shock for the Yishuv. Czechoslovakia. Remember, Czechoslovakia was communist at this time, right after World War II. Czechoslovakia votes for partition, Jan Masaryk said. Denmark favors partition. The Dominican Republic favors partition. Egypt. Egypt votes against and will not be bound by this outrage. The gavel-wrapped order came about slowly following the Egyptians' angry outburst. Ecuador. Ecuador votes for. Ethiopia. Ethiopia abstains. It was a bombshell. The faces of all the Arab delegates turned to the Ethiopian with stunned expressions. The Syrian delegate shook his fist in his face because the Ethiopians were supposed to vote against. France, the first of the big powers. Reluctant France had its turn. Parodi came to his feet slowly. An abstention by France could prove disastrous for the Yishuv. Had Blum and the French people succeeded? The Republic of France votes for partition, Patrodi said to a voice filled with satisfaction. An expectant murmur went up. It was the first excited awareness that the miracle might actually take place. Guatemala, the champion of partition, or Granados, the champion of partition, spoke for, he said, Greece. Greece votes against. In the last moment, the Greeks had bowed to Egyptian pressure. Haiti. Haiti was a key vote that's suddenly been left without instructions in the last two days. The government of Haiti has just sent instructions for the delegation to vote in favor of partition. Honduras. Honduras wishes to abstain. Iceland. Iceland votes for partition. The world's oldest republic had worked to make the world's newest republic. India. India votes against partition. Iran. Iran votes against. Iraq. Iraq votes against. And we will never recognize the state of Israel. There will be bloodshed over this day. We vote against. Lebanon. Lebanon votes against partition, Malik said. How does the vote stand, Weizmann asked Barak. Fifteen for, eight against, and seven abstentions. Now, it took me a long time to figure this out, but if you have to win something by a two-thirds majority, you have to get twice as many votes as they do, okay? You guys probably understand that faster than I did, but I had to figure that out. So if they get 10 votes against, you have to have 20 votes for to have a two-thirds majority, okay? So what do you think, Barak? We will know when, They come to the next three South American countries. I think we shall have to start pulling away. We are near the halfway mark and we show no decided strength, Weizmann said. Liberia, Liberia votes for partition. Luxembourg, another small country under the duress in the British economic sphere. Luxembourg votes for partition. And again, the British had been directly rebuked. The Yishuv now stood one vote over two thirds. Mexico. Mexico abstains. The entire Yishuv delegation winced, ouch, ooh, that hurts. Netherlands. The Netherlands votes for partition. New Zealand. New Zealand votes for. Nicaragua, for. Norway, for. Pakistan votes against partition. The pivot votes were coming in. If we get over the next four, I think we are in, Barack said shakily. Panama. The Republic of Panama favors partition. Paraguay. Paraguay had just received new instructions not to abstain. Instead, Paraguay votes for partition. Peru. Peru favors partition. Philippines. For a breathless second, the world stood still. Romulo had, this is the Philippine leader, had been called away from Flushing Meadow, or the delegate. The alternate stood up. The Philippines votes for partition. A roar went up. The members of the Jewish delegation looked to each other with dazed expressions. Dear God, Barak said, I think we've made it. Poland, Poland votes in favor of partition. The Jews were beginning to pull away. Poland had paid in small, a small indemnity for the years of persecution. Siam, which would be Thailand, was not represented. Saudi Arabia, the white-robed Arabs screamed out against partition in a hate-filled voice. Sweden, Sweden is for partition. And now the Arabs had their backs to the wall. So they went to the last ditch. Syria, against. Turkey, against partition. Barack scanned the balance of the roster quickly. The Arabs still had a breath of life. They now had 12 votes with one more coming. One more certain. If some last minute change came through, it could upset everything. The Ukraine. Now this is interesting. Because all during the Cold War from 1945 with the establishment of the UN to right up, I don't know, until today, the Soviet Union, which had 14 member republics, including the Ukraine, and they were all totally under the domination of Moscow, somehow the Soviet Union got, hornswoggled the UN into saying, You know, you ought to give the Ukraine its own vote, because they're really sort of semi-independent from us. And for whatever reason, the UN did it. And I remember seeing some of the votes there, and you'd see blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, USSR, and then underneath it, Ukraine as a different country. It wasn't different. It was part of the USSR. And of course, now it's fighting to stay away from the embrace of Russia, okay? But with different circumstances going on. So Poland, at this time, had an independent vote, and it counted for Israel. Four. Union of South Africa. Four. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Vyshinsky got up to his feet. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics votes for partition. The United Kingdom of Great Britain. The hall became silent. The British delegate got to his feet and looked around the room ashen-faced. because he knew this was important and he had something bad to do. At the awesome moment, he stood alone. The Commonwealth nations had deserted. Canada and Australia had voted for. France had deserted, had voted for. The United States was going to desert. His majesty's government wishes to abstain, the Englishman said in a shaken voice. United States of America. The United States of America votes for partition. It was all over. The reporters scrambled in their phones to flash the news around the world as the last vote was cast. Yemen gave the Arabs their 13th vote. Yugoslavia abstained in deference to a large Muslim minority. Professor Faragat of Uruguay and the delegate of Venezuela gave the partition plan its 32nd and 33rd votes. In Tel Aviv, pandemonium broke loose, okay? And so there's the story of the vote in November 29th, 1947 for the two countries in Palestine. And so we can go to the next one. And then just, this is a summary of it that I put in the vote, okay? As the roll call progressed, first one, then two, three, four, five, six, and seven of the expected abstentions voted yes, and the proposal passed 33 for, 13 against, and 10 abstentions. Jews all over the world and Palestine broke out in riotous celebrations. They did not have a country yet, but the way was open. But what would the British do? What would the Arabs do? And would the Jewish committee actually vote to found a new Jewish state? These were still all open questions, okay? But in case you didn't see it, a miracle just slipped by, okay? Any of you here see the miracle? Okay, a long time ago I saw it, the founding of Israel. This is the first part of the miracle, the UN vote for the creation of the two countries, all right? And so now we've got to trace what's going to happen from here on in. What are the British going to do? What are the Arabs going to do? Well, fighting broke out between the Israelis and the Arabs, but it was unorganized fighting, not armies fighting, groups here, there, and communities fighting and shooting at each other. And the British trying to control it and usually favoring the Arabs. For example, they turned over all the police stations to the Arabs, they didn't turn over any to the Jewish Palestinians. They turned over their equipment and their armaments to the Arabs, okay? And they didn't turn over, give the Palestinian Jews anything. They had to fight with what they had and what they made and what they bought and what they smuggled into the country. Ben-Gurion, well let's see, the British announced they're gonna leave by May 14th the next year, the next spring. Ben-Gurion made that date his goal for statehood. The Arabs announced they rejected their state and denounced any Jewish state. They further threatened that five of their countries would immediately attack and destroy any such Jewish state formed out of the UN partition vote. So that means it's almost like in Revelation 12 where the dragon is trailing the woman. She's about to have her baby and he's there to gobble up the baby. The five Arab countries thought that'd be really cool. We just attack this new country. They're not organized yet. They don't have an army yet and we will destroy them. We'll drive them into the sea. The British helpfully left most of their equipment and strongholds to the Arabs. Serious questions rose as to whether a new Jewish state with no army, no weapons, and no money could even defend itself against such determined opposition. Fighting broke out months before the UN vote. But for the most part, as I said, disorganized fighting, not actual countries. Now, the Yishuv in Palestine knew they had to make tracks. They had to do something in the months leading up to the announcement of the independence of Israel. And they had to find weapons, they had to get organized. So they began to organize their militia groups. Now their militia groups all hated each other and they even fought. They even shot at each other sometimes. I'm talking about the Jewish, Militia groups, okay? Haganah, the Palmak, and the Irgun, and others too. And sometimes Irgun and Haganah, Haganah was moderate, and they didn't want to kill British soldiers. Irgun, under Begin, was radical, and they didn't mind killing British soldiers to help, you know, ease their exit from the Palmak. But Ben-Gurion was pulling his hair out, and he says, don't do that. You know, Irgun, you're gonna make them come down on us harder, okay? Let them go at their own pace and don't, you know, hold them up. And Irgun said, no, we're gonna kill them. And they did. There was a famous bombing of the King David Hotel, which is a famous tourist landmark in Jerusalem. And Irgun, I think, blew it up. Now they did phone the hotel. And they told the hotel, you're about to be blown up. And somehow the message back in those days, it didn't get through. And it was the center of the British headquarters for Palestine. And so it blew up a big bomb and killed 12 British. Well, the British did not like that at all. And so they become even harder in their attitude toward the Israelis in general. But not all the Israelis did it. Your gun did it, but the British couldn't sort that out. And Ben-Gurion was really, he was just furiously angry with them. And a boat came in and beached itself. When the boats came to Palestine, for the Jews, or full of Jews, they couldn't stop. They couldn't stop at a port and debark, you know, like civilized people. They had to beach their boats at nighttime and the people would run on the beach and militiamen would come down from Haganah or Palma and help them get into the bushes and get into the, you know, countryside and get on the kibbutzes and stuff. Illegally. Illegal immigration. Ever heard of that? And so all this kind of stuff is going on. And then one time, there was a boatload of ammunition that came in for the Jews. And Irgun and Haganah had a gunfight and shot a couple of guys from each other. And Ben-Gurion was going nuts. He's saying, oh, Jews are killing Jews. This is the worst thing, the worst thing. And he was trying so hard to keep them from, so it was a very difficult, disorganized period of time leading up to May 14th. May 14th is the next big date in this miracle, okay? Now, the Jews themselves were mixed up about whether or not to make a country. How do you make a country out of a few little territories strung together, okay, and a desert? It's not much of a country, is it? Okay, so a lot of Jewish leaders were saying, you know, I think we should take a pass on this. Maybe the Arabs are right. Maybe it's not a good time. Maybe it's not a good chance to make a country. But David Ben-Gurion was a man of vision and a very courageous leader. This is why he's still famous today. The airport at Tel Aviv is named after him. because he said to the Jewish leaders who were a little afraid, they were afraid, circumstances look bad, and said to them, we have to vote for statehood when the time comes, May 14th, we have to vote for statehood because this chance might not come again for another 2,000 years. And that was the clinching argument that he gave to them. On May 12th, the 10 men of the Jewish People's Administration met in Tel Aviv and discussed and voted narrowly, six to four, to declare the first sovereign Jewish state since Judea had fallen 2,000 years before. So on May 12th, the Yeshuv, the Jewish commission, okay, the Jewish committee, they vote for independence. But it still has to be declared, all right? And the Arabs are gonna react. On May 14, 1948, as the British were loading into their ships to depart the People's Assembly gathered in Tel Aviv Museum at 4 p.m., the meeting was not publicized for fear of Arab attack, but word got out and the place was crowded out. Promptly at 4, David Ben-Gurion stood at the podium with his enormous, you know, head of white hair, okay, I'll show it to you in a minute, under an enormous portrait of guess who, Theodor Herzl, who began the Zionist movement, began Jews moving to Palestine. They sang the Hatikvah and Ben-Gurion started reading this declaration. By virtue of our natural and historic right and on the strength of the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, We hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in the land of Israel to be known as Israel. And I told you last week that if people say, you know, it's illegal, Israel occupying the Arab land, blah, blah, blah, just remind them that the United Nations voted for the country of Israel in 1947. That's the founding. And it's the answer to the question, is Israel legal? Okay. Now, you want to have some of these points firmly in your mind. Israel is a legal creation of the United Nations. And then what the Israelis have done is they've gone and made a country, what a country, out of this little, you know, bitty thing, okay? So they have vindicated the courage of the United Nations in founding this state. The Arabs, very negative for various reasons, They had their moment in history back around 1000 AD, and it's passed them by since then. Europe sort of came and took them over, and they've been bitter about that. And then they thought, well, God gave us oil, you know, but then even with the oil, they're still not like catching up, and they just don't seem to get it. And they're always catching, you know, copying, you know, the West and buying stuff from the West, expertise and know-how and technology. And here they refuse their chance, the Palestinian Arabs refuse their chance at a country. They refused it and this is history. This was historical unfolding. And you know, God actually was probably behind it because who knows what damage and harm a Palestinian state might have done to Israel because they do a lot of damage unorganized and without a country, who knows what they could have done with the country. A little bit later, David Ben-Gurion declared, the state of Israel is established. This meeting is adjourned. It took only 32 minutes and a new nation was born. Who has heard such a thing, said Isaiah in chapter 66? Who has seen such things? Shall the earth be made to give birth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once? Nations aren't born typically at once, okay? The United States was born July 4th, 17, what? 76, right? Now then it had to fight for 15 years for its independence. It had to fight for it. It declared it. in 1776 and then had to fight for 10, 12 years to win it. And Israel was born in one day and Isaiah 66 predicted it. How can you go back 2,000, 3,000 years ago, make a prediction and then watch it come true, arrange for it to come true? You can't do that, okay? Only God would be able to do that. Who would be the first to recognize this new country? Well, there's a picture of, David Ben-Gurion, and you can't see his white hair so much there. You can see Theodor Herzl's full beard, okay? You know, smiling over them. He was dead by that time, but he was the founding Zionist. And there they are in Tel Aviv, 4 p.m., May 14th, 1948, declaring the creation of the state, the establishment of the state of Israel. There's some history, in case you haven't seen any history earlier today, okay? And remember, this is a miracle. Tell all your non-Christian friends that. Yeah, God still does miracles today. You know, the state of Israel is a miracle. Against all advice from everyone around him, Harry Truman instructed the State Department to extend diplomatic recognition to Israel immediately after its establishment. And he had to be strong. He had to be strong because the State Department and George Marshall were stronger than him. They had more prestige than him. George Marshall probably would have been a president instead of Eisenhower after Truman if things had worked out differently. And he stood up to Truman and he said, no, we can't do this because of the Arabs. You know, we're going to lose the Arabs. We're going to lose the oil. And Truman said, I don't care about that stuff. Recognize Israel. Okay. Now he had a friend who came and visited him and tried to persuade him to do that. That's his Jewish businessman friend from Missouri. He brought, he actually brought Haim Weitzman with him. Okay. And Chaim Weizmann talked to Truman in the Oval Office. Truman didn't want anything to do with them. He said, instructed his staff, keep all the Jews out of my Oval, out of my office. I don't want to hear from them. I'm sick and tired of hearing about Israel. I don't want to hear more. And his friend came and came, and his friend walked into the Oval Office. I don't know how he did that, but he walked into the Oval Office. He said, Mr. President, we need to talk to you. And Truman said, okay, bring him in, let's sit down and talk. So Haim, you know, Weizmann, the guy who had been creating Israel out of, you know, sand and dirt for 30 years and creating the legal background for Israel to be created and creating support from the Jewish communities around Europe and around the world, you know, to fuel Israel when it would be founded talked to Harry Truman and convinced him that it would be a good move for the U.S. It would be the only democracy in the Middle East and it would be the only military ally of the United States in the Middle East and they would be loyal to the U.S. and they have been. through thick and thin, even when the U.S. has stood them up and disappointed them. Israel has still been loyal to its, it doesn't have an alliance with the United States, not a formal one, it's an informal one. And they have been loyal to that and faithful to that ever since 1947, 48. And Truman, Harrius Truman, he turned around finally to Chaim Weizmann and to his Jewish businessman friend, And he said, you know what? I'm Cyrus. And he actually was aware of Cyrus in the Old Testament at the end of the book of, for second Kings and the beginning of first Chronicles. Cyrus, the first Persian emperor makes a declaration to the Jews in Babylon. He finds them wandering around Babylon. What are you guys doing here? Oh, we were captured, you know, a hundred years ago, 70 years ago. And now we're, you know, here. we're stuck here, well, you wanna go home? Yeah, but you know, and Cyrus says, well, what if I let you go home, what will you do? We'll build a temple, we'll pray to our God. Would you mind praying for me and my sons, Cyrus said to the Jews in Babylon. They said we would be glad, your majesty, to pray for you and your sons. They went back and rebuilt the second temple, okay, with Nehemiah's help building the walls later. And so, Cyrus facilitated the Jews rebuilding their city and rebuilding the Second Temple. And Truman said, I'm Cyrus. And there's a book called I'm Cyrus, and it's all about Truman's relationship with Israel. The U.S. soon opened its embassy in where? Where'd they open the embassy? In Tel Aviv, like all the other embassies in Tel Aviv, the Jews were saying Jerusalem is our capital, but I think actually they didn't really fully control it, and I think the Jordanians had won at least part of it in the first war, the 48th war. So the Jews really couldn't do everything they wanted with Jerusalem, but they would capture it all in the 67 war. And after that, they would sort of invite people, hey, you want to move your embassy? Oh, no, no, no, can't do that. The Arabs will get mad at us, okay? And in 1994, U.S. Congress voted saying we've got to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to their capital, city of Jerusalem. But Clinton wouldn't do it. Well, we got a Republican president next. Bush and Bush wouldn't do it. And Barack Obama wouldn't do it. And who was after that? Trump? Trump comes along and he did it. He moved the embassy to Jerusalem, okay? And talk to a Jew. And wherever they are in the political spectrum, even if they're actually liberal, they're going to like Trump at least for moving the embassy to Jerusalem. There he is with his white hair. And it looks like he's just been electrified. It's not a flattering picture, is it? If you had to guess, would you guess that Time Magazine was in favor of Israel or against? Okay, so they picked him as man of the year, but you know, there was something. Now, another miracle is coming along, okay? And gotta read this quickly. Celebrations were more muted this time. We're talking about May 14th. because the Israelis knew, the Jews knew, yeah, we got a country, this is great, fantastic, we got a country, it's declared, it's on paper, but we're gonna get attacked, okay? They realized they'd have to survive the attack of at least five Arab countries on paper. It did not look like Israel could avoid being wiped out in its infancy. The war lasted about eight months. It's too long and complicated for us to cover here, for which you may be thankful, okay? since I'm into military history as well as normal history. Suffice it to say, don't you like that? Suffice it to say. Okay, suffice means it's enough, okay, sufficient. All right, suffice it to say that the Israelis managed to raise money from the Jews around the world. Guess who their big ambassador, messenger to the rest of the world was? She was a female, and I think she'd come from Russia. Golda Meir, she went all around the world, globe-trotting, raising money from Jewish communities. They made some of their own weapons, and if you were into weapons, there's a whole story about Israel having to create a weapons industry, okay, with all kinds, you know, let me just abbreviate it, from the Uzi submachine gun to the Iron Dome. I'll show you how the Iron Dome works, okay? OK? You like that? OK. Don't try that at home, by the way. OK. The Israelis managed to raise money, they made some of their own weapons, they managed to find places like communist Czechoslovakia that would actually sell weapons to them. American volunteers, veterans of World War II, guys who had flown P-51 Mustangs, B-25 Mitchells, B-17s, veterans of World War II, arrived bringing their own aircraft with them and formed the new Israel Air Force. Haganah formed the new IDF, or Israeli Defense Force, and slowly began, what was happening with the first couple of months was the Alamo. What was the Alamo? 183 Texans and Tennesseans in San Antonio in a mission outside the town of San Antonio decided they would stand in the way of Santa Ana's invading Mexican army and defend Texas. Okay, well, what's his name, Sam Houston. trained an army further into Texas. And for 13 days they held out. And at the end, they died to the last man, 183. There was a certain William Howell there. And I'm not sure what relative he is to me, but it's really neat to see his name on the list, okay? I'm glad I wasn't there, he was. And it shortened his life. He died at the Alamo. But, of course, he's distinguished forever after. Well, there were a number of Jewish Alamos on the borders. They were kibbutzim. And these guys just had pistols, rifles, a lucky one might have a machine gun, a few hand grenades, and they had to face regular Arab armies with tanks and artillery. And they did, and many of them were wiped out on the borders, giving Israel time to organize itself back. in the interior. So Haganah formed the new IDF, but it took time to do it. And the time was bought by the kibbutzniks and their standing to the last man in some of these kibbutzes that were overrun by the Arab armies. The Arabs were pushed back slowly after about six months. It was an eight or ten month war. And so the Israelis began to push back in about six months, and the Arabs began to quit the war in January 1949. Now, get this, okay? Notice this. They only signed ceasefires. They never signed a peace treaty or a treaty. So they were always in a state of war with Israel. Do you understand? all through the 40s, 50s, and into the 60s, the Arab countries that had declared war on Israel and invaded it, they were still in the war, okay? And Israel was at war with, and there was fighting, you know, skirmishing along the borders, and people died along the borders. And Israel had to guard, and the Kibbutz guys had to guard at night, okay? People would come sneaking in to kill some of them, you know, all during the 50s and 60s, all right? And so a peace treaty was never signed. By the way, does anybody know? Eventually, years and years later, somebody signed a peace treaty with Israel. Anybody know who did it first? Egypt and Sadat, okay? Egypt under Sadat. And who was the president who brokered that peace treaty? Jimmy Carter. I know you don't like Jimmy Carter, but you know what? He did at least one good thing, okay? Peace treaty with Egypt and Israel. Okay, there's, how can you tell these are kibbutzniks? Because there's little trees growing in the background. That's what Israel was all about. You know what it's all about? It's not about fighting, not about grabbing territory, it's about planting trees. Planting trees. And they did it all over. Anybody identify those rifles? Those are? Nope. Look at the bolt. See the bolt on the side? These are bolt-action rifles, single-shot, you know, like they made an eight-shot magazine or a six-shot magazine. But they were one shot at a time. You had to work the bolt. They were Lee-Enfields, Lee-Enfields from the British Army in World War II. Does that make any sense? See, the British left armories and firearms, and the Jews got some of them, the Jews grabbed some of them. And here's a guy training his guys in the kibbutz to defend the kibbutz. And the Israelis always took our equipment, they always improved on it, okay? So here's an American Jeep, the war horse of World War II, and it's got, you see, what's that slung on the side? It's a stretcher, okay? And there's a radio and a radio man in the back. And you know, by the size of the machine gun under the cover, I would guess that's a Ma Deuce 50 caliber. It's an enormous American machine gun, okay? That does a ton of damage once it's fired at a target. And here are the Israelis and they've got this jeep all, you know, all souped up, you know what I mean? It's all geared up, it's all souped up for combat. And an obviously posed picture. of Israelis on the attack. They didn't always defend. Sometimes they attacked unsurprised. And often the Arabs would just fold and retreat when they were attacked by even minor Jewish forces. So here they are rehearsing a charge across a field. Now, there was a miracle in the demography of the two countries. I know you're tired, but demography is very important. Not democracy, demography. Demography is the study of what? population and population trends, okay? And it's very, very important. And here's something that happened, and it's basically this. I'm gonna tell it to you very quickly, okay, instead of reading this long text to you. Had the Arabs accepted and stood pat, they would've out-birthed Israel and the Jews in the 20, 30 years ahead. They would've swamped Israel with Arab population, demographics, okay? Do you understand? The Arabs had more babies than the Jews did, okay? And they would've swamped the country. Here's what happened. the Arabs were told by their compatriots out there in the armies attacking, get out of the way. Just get out of the way, leave your homes, come out of Israel, and we'll come back in, we're gonna crush Israel, and you can come in and loot Israel to your joy, to the end of your fun, when we come back, okay? So they went out. But the Arabs did not win. They didn't go in to Israel. They got pushed back. Well, these poor refugees are now on the outside of Israel. And what's Israel gonna do? Like they were sort of asked, well, can you be nice and let us back in? Well, nobody had been nice to Israel yet, okay? You know, except the United Nations maybe, and maybe Truman. And you couldn't let them all back in. What Israel did do was it kept the Arabs that stayed. And they had asked the Arabs to stay. They had a vision, the Jews, of an Arab-Jewish society getting along, Muslims and Jews working together, creating a couple or, you know, a big, you know, a nice country. The Jews had that vision, many of the early Jews. And they did get along with the Muslims to a certain extent up till about 1940s. And sometimes, anyways, with some of the Arabs. This was such a tragedy, but it worked for the welfare of Israel because it removed large chunks of the Arab population from the area that was going to become Israel so that Israel could remain a Jewish state. Do you understand? Demographics. Very important, and God arranged things for Israel's demographics. But meanwhile, the Muslim countries are being really mean and nasty to all the Jewish communities across North Africa and the Middle East. The Jews are thrown out of their homes. I know I've told you this many times, but when I was in Northern Iraq, John took me and showed me an empty synagogue. It was emptied in 1948. What happened was Israel was founded, the news went around the world, and the Arabs in Iraq said, you Jews, you dirty Jews, get out of here. And they had to leave after being there for centuries. Now they were there, some of them since 2,500 years ago, the Babylonian captivity. Babylon was just a little ways down from where this synagogue was located. They might have been part of the Jewish community that came over in the time of Jeremiah, maybe. They've probably been there for a long time. So I saw this Hebrew writing on the wall, it was all empty. birds inside because the wall had caved in, and they actually had an iron cage around a sarcophagus, a stone, you know, coffin, and they thought this coffin was the coffin, the grave of Nahum. Nahum, you read about him in the Old Testament, in the 12 Minor Prophets, okay? He wrote about Assyria. Assyria is just a few miles from there, by the way. And so, all these Jews were thrown out. Well, now, where did they go? What did they do? Did they go to America? No. Did they go to Russia? No. Okay, they went to Israel. Well, wait a second, Israel's just been established, doesn't have any money, doesn't have any territory, doesn't have anything. Israel took in, by policy, from the beginning, David Ben-Gurion insisted, he was very clear about this, any Jew who comes to Israel will not be turned back. Any Jew is welcome in Israel. So they came by their thousands to this new country that didn't have shelter for them, didn't have buildings for them, and Israel quickly put up tent cities, you know, in valleys, and put them in there. And I mentioned to you last week, I think, and what was the first thing they did after the medical checkups? They began teaching them. Hebrew, another miracle. Can't get into it, don't have time. Hebrew, okay? So the establishment of Israel, one miracle. The defense and survival of Israel in the face of overwhelming odds, a second miracle. And you want a third one? The reestablishment of the Hebrew language. I remember in 1960 seeing a movie about Israel. I forgot what it was called. by Billy Graham, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. You ever heard of them? Okay. They still put Billy Graham on late at night in some of the TV channels. And I'm telling you, that guy, I don't know what it was. He was anointed. He would just say simple words and people would jump up out of their seats and come down to receive Christ as Savior. The guy was incredible. And you can see some of his sermons during his 40 year career. The Jews are thrown out of their homes. They come to tent cities. Israel welcomes them in, and Billy Graham makes this film, and he said in the film, he showed you some neon signs in Israel. In Hebrew, the neon signs are in Hebrew. You and I couldn't read them, okay? And Billy Graham said, but if Isaiah came here today, was resurrected somehow, and came to the streets of Tel Aviv and saw these signs, he would be able to read them. Isn't that amazing, incredible, okay? I mean, that's a miracle if you can see it. Okay, so Israel then put into force, and I have to repeat it again. I know we said about it last week, and we have to make a big deal about this, okay? David Wingarian, they insisted on this policy from the beginning, and that is any Jew who sets foot in Israel will instantly be considered an Israeli citizen. Can you imagine? A country saying that, any Jew. So all these North African and Middle Eastern Jews, they came to Israel. And guess what? Israel was strengthened and fortified by them. They all chipped in, their children became successful and learned Hebrew. And they're in the army and they're in the sciences and Israel has been strengthened by them. Meanwhile, the Arabs who left Israel, were ushered into camps to be kept there, rotting, okay, for the rest of their lives. But Israel took their refugees and made citizens. Don't let anybody tell you about, you know, citizens and refugees and stuff like that. The Arabs have kept They're surplus people as refugees on purpose, all right? Because it suits their political purposes. It's the way that they can criticize Israel. But Israel took in all of their refugees and made citizens out of them, useful citizens, okay? Unfortunately, Arab refugees were kept in camps in Gaza and were not allowed to integrate into the Arab host countries. They were deliberately kept as refugees. for generation after generation to provide an excuse to criticize Israel. Meanwhile, Israel grew stronger with its new citizens, and the Palestinians can only manage to teach their children to hate Israel. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. What am I gonna do now? Okay, my wife will... I found this passage in Leon Uris' book Exodus. which I thought brilliantly summarizes the situation. And I'm probably, I'm gonna have to cut it down a little bit. I'll start it from here. The United Nations gave $250,000, million dollars rather, for resettlement of Arab refugees. Not one penny of this resettlement money has been used. On the other hand, Israel, an unfertile land whose 7,000 square miles are half desert, has taken in more than a half million Jewish refugees from Arab countries and stands ready to take in that number again. The Arabs argue that the Palestine refugees themselves do not want to be resettled but want their farms in Palestine back. This is sheer nonsense. The Arabs have cried crocodile tears over the great love these poor fellaheen have for their lost homes. The fact is the Palestine fellahin were victimized by men who used them as a tool, deserted them, and are victimizing them again. Kept penned up, fed with hatred, they're being used to keep Arab hatred of Israel at the boiling point. If the Arabs of Palestine loved their land, they could not have been forced from it, much less run from it without real cause. The Arabs had little to live for, much less to fight for. This is not the reaction of a man who loves his land. A man who loves his land, as the Arabs profess, will stand and die for it. The Arabs tell the world that the state of Israel has expansionist ideas. Exactly how a nation of less than half a million people can expand against 50 million is an interesting question. The Arab people need a century of peace. The Arab people need leadership. I like this part here. Not of desert sheiks who own thousands of slaves, not of hate-filled religious fanatics, not of military cliques, not of men whose entire thinking is in the dark ages. The Arab people need leaders who will bring them civil liberties, education, medicine, land reforms, equality, They need leaders with the courage to face the real problems of ignorance, illiteracy, and disease, instead of waving a ranting banner of ultra-nationalism and promoting the evil idea that the destruction of Israel will be the cure for all their problems. Unfortunately, whenever an enlightened Arab leader rises, he is generally assassinated. The Arabs want neither resettlement of the refugees, alleviation of their plight, nor do they want peace. Israel today stands as the greatest single instrument for bringing the Arab people out of the dark ages, but they will not use it. Only when the Arab people get leadership, willing to grasp the hand extended in friendship, will they begin to solve the problems which have kept them in moral and physical destitution. And I have not found a more brilliant summation of the Palestinian problem than that, written in Leon Yerse's Exodus, pages 553 to 554. And this book was published in 1958. Does it seem out of date? Does any of that ring true from today? Unfortunately, yes. Okay? Alright, so what else have we got here? We should be finishing up soon and get out of here by midnight. Isaiah prophesied a long time ago about the Jews returning to Israel. Okay? You know chapter 11 of Isaiah, I hope. If you're not familiar with it, get a highlighter out and open your Bible at home and read and then reread Isaiah 11, okay? Read it three times and then highlight it, the parts that speak to you. And in it, he says, Isaiah says, it will come to pass in that day that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time, okay? Now Isaiah's first time would have been Cyrus letting Jews go back to Jerusalem in the 500s and then in the 400s BC. But here it says, Isaiah says, there'll be a second time to recover the remnant of his people who are left from Assyria to Egypt, from Pathros to Cush, from Elam to Shinar, from Hamath and from the islands of the sea. The islands of the sea, wow, you know, that's way out there. He will set up a banner for the nations and will assemble the outcasts of Israel and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. So highlight that in your Bible and when somebody says, show me a miracle, you take them to Isaiah 11 and read this passage and maybe more and say this literally came true in 1948 when the country of Israel was established, okay? And that's our miracle for today, our miracle for the modern age. From the four corners of the earth. You really wanna know if there's a God? Actually doing stuff together? You know, a lot of people say, you know, prove to me there's a God, okay? Well, he can't come down and shake your hand. Your frail body couldn't stand that. Look at Israel. Now, we've been looking at Israel through this presentation and last week, okay? You look at Israel, you will see God at work. He's not gonna, you know, show you his full glory, but he will show you enough to convince you. For me, this was enough, this whole process of studying Israel. This was enough. Is it enough for any of you tonight? Have you seen the miracle? You know, the miracle, you know? Yeah, you didn't expect to see a miracle tonight, did you? But I give you one, not me personally, but I call your attention to God working in history and politics, you know, in world wars to work a miracle about his country, his people coming back to their country. If you seek him, you will find him, 2 Chronicles says, okay? What's this say? Shabbat shalom. Who said that? David. Anybody else here read Hebrew? He does, you know why? Because he was raised in Israel, okay? He speaks Hebrew. Shabbat shalom, okay? Everybody say it with me. Shabbat shalom. Shabbat shalom, okay? When does shalom, sorry, when does Shabbat begin? When does it begin? This is Wednesday night. When does Shabbat begin? Friday night and sundown, okay? Till Saturday night, sundown. Yet another miracle concerns the Israeli national language, Zephaniah 3.9. For then I will restore to the people a pure language that all may call on the name of the Lord to serve him with one accord. In 1981, and I'm just talking about the actual historicity, the actual historical events here. Some people think Hebrew is the language of heaven. Maybe, I don't know about that. But I do know it's the language of Israel. And it's an ancient language. You try and get a bunch of people to speak Latin, to each other. They did through the middle ages in the church, but it gradually died out. Ancient Greek, Logos and all of that, Dulos. Get people to try to speak ancient Greek to you, and you can't do it. You cannot revive an ancient language. How many of you have been to Ireland? and seen the Gaelic under the English on the signs, they're trying in Ireland to keep alive and to revive the ancient Celtic language of Gaelic, okay? And just a few people spoke it, but now they're starting to teach it in the schools. And since Ireland became independent from Britain, or most of Ireland, they've been teaching Gaelic in the schools, trying to revive it. But it's an uphill battle. Nobody wants to speak Gaelic, least of all the Irish kids, okay? They want to speak English, like everybody else in the world, all right? And, you know, so imagine they revived Hebrew. Well, that's incredible. It's unbelievable. It's impossible. It was a miracle, okay? If you will see it. And Hebrew was eventually declared to be one of their two official languages. You know what, David, I'm gonna ask you, I don't know if you know this, but what's the other official, is it English, Russian, German, what is it? Oh, it's Arabic, okay, that makes sense, yeah. Okay, so the other official language is Arabic, in case you didn't hear it. And I gave this presentation in my Sunday school class back in May 19, yeah, May 19. Okay, my head is whirling around here with dates and stuff. In May this year, because May this year, 2023, was the 75th birthday of Israel. And I wanna say something about this picture. You see there the mosque of, the dome of the rock, okay? And what I want to say is about occupation, okay? You know, the Israelis get accused of occupying things. Okay, well, they captured the Sinai Desert in 67, they gave it back to Egypt. They captured the Gaza and they set Gaza free in 2005 and now they have to hammer it because it does nothing but shoot rockets at them, okay, and teach their kids to hate Jews and kill Jews. And the Israelis captured Jerusalem and then they captured the Temple Mount, okay, with the Arab Muslim mosques up there on it, the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. And by the way, the Dome of the Rock proves that they built it on a Jewish temple, you know how? Because the Dome of the Rock is supposed to be built on the spot where Abraham was going to sacrifice his son. To the Muslims, they go in there and they imagine, and it may well be the spot. Abraham's going to sacrifice his son. Well, if that's true, that is the location of the Holy of Holies in the temple. Okay, so by saying that they built their Dome of the Rock over, they're saying, well, the Jews were here first. Okay, we were talking about that last week. Remember, one of the great lies is that the Jews came after the Arabs, not before. Okay, but then they tell you that, oh, by the way, we built the Dome of the Rock over, you know, the second temple, okay, over the Holy of Holies. and the spot where Abraham was gonna sacrifice his son. And I wanna say this about Israel, that one of the things that impresses me the most about all this whole big mess between them and the Palestinians, blah, blah, blah, is that, and I would not be this generous, I would not be this kind. If I had captured the Temple Mount as a, whatever, Jewish officer or Jewish politician, I would not have done what Israel did with it. Now what do you think Israel would do in 1967 if they captured the Temple Mount? Which they did. And remember this. They used to be able to come in a narrow alley and pray by the wall. In 1948, Jordan captured all that part of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount area, and Jordan cut off all Jewish worshipers coming to the wall, okay, the Western Wall. So they couldn't do it. From 1948 all through the 50s, no Jews allowed anywhere near the Temple Mount. Up until 1967. In 1967, Jordan ill-advisedly joined the war against Israel and got hammered. A miracle war. None of miracles in 1967, but we don't have time for that tonight. And guess what they won? The Jews won the Temple Mount. Now, if you had been kept from the Western Wall ever since 1948, and in 1967 you capture it, what would you do with the Temple Mount? Well, I'd open it up to all the Jews of the world to come and worship up on the Temple Mount. And if you don't like it, you can take your golden dome and put it somewhere else, you know? I might even, you know, find a convenient earthquake, okay, to knock it down. Like I told you, I'm not as kind as the Jews are. Okay, I would have opened it up for Jewish worship. Do you know what Israel did with the Temple Mount? They turned it over to the Jordanians first to administer it out of respect for their religion. They said, okay, we got it back. We want it. It's important to us. We're never going to give it back. but you may administer the worship that takes place on top. And they promptly said, no Jews allowed up on top, okay? So Israel then said, well, okay, but we gotta do something. So they said, we're gonna take out the neighborhood by the Western Wall. We'll just take out all the houses there. for a space, and we're gonna create a nice big space leading up to the Western Wall, and we will allow, and we'll supervise, and we'll guard and protect the Jews going, and anybody else who wants to go worship at the Western Wall. And you've all been there, right, to the Western Wall? And the Jews do what? They write up little what? Prayers, they roll them up, and what do they do with them? They stick them in between the bricks of the Western Wall to be a prayer to God, right? Because the way has been opened up for them since 1967. A miracle. But Israel, in its generosity and sensitivity to its neighbors, actually lets the Jordanians, and they turned it over to the Palestinians, administer the top of the wall, which is, you know, the top of the mountain, which is where the Jews used to have their temple, and they used to worship up there, but they don't worship up there anymore. And I remember a couple of incidents where, like Ariel Sharon, he went up there one time, and it was a big, and they started an intifada. The Arabs had a big tantrum and burned tires in the streets and throw rocks at the Israeli policemen. Because a Jew went up on top. Well, big deal, they were there first. But the Israelis don't push that. In fact, when they captured it, one Israeli soldier put an Israel flag up over it. And when Moshe Dayan, the guy with the eyepatch, came, to see the Temple Mount, and he saw that flag, he said, take that down right now, rip that down right now. He wasn't disrespecting his own flag, he was saying, I'm respecting the Muslim reality here. So Israel actually lets them administer the Temple Mount. And in all cases here, what we have is a miracle from God. Okay, that's what this is all about. It's a miracle if you can see it. You know, and again, I ask you rhetorically, can you see the miracle? It will fortify your faith personally. To me, it's evidence of God. If you ask me. Give me a proof for God, I would say Israel, okay? Give me another proof, the Jewish people, okay? And those are my proofs for God. I mean, there's a lot of other ones that people have, right? For the existence of God, but Israel is proof of God and it's a miracle. And for that, I think we have to praise God. And of course, you know, we're standing strong in support I'm not gonna ask you to stand this week, I did last week, but I do want you to do inventory over your own support and feelings for Israel, and you know that we're all about helping them, and there are several projects coming up, and you're gonna have opportunities to do things with Israel and for Israel. I have a little question. Is there somebody called Caesar Arvizu here tonight? Caesar, Caesar, he's my banker's father. And my banker tells me, and my Chase bank says, I hear really good things about Rock Harbor from my dad. Who's your dad? Caesar of Aizu, okay. Sorry about that. If you see him there sometime. He said he attends regularly. Let's bow in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your open hand, talking to us directly, providentially, not overwhelming us with all of your glory and power, but speaking to us so directly, so uncompromisingly, so unmistakably from the ancient scriptures and from the ancient prophecies that you will and did bring your people back through thick and thin, horrible events in World War II, back to the land and allowed them to establish and found this wonderful country of Israel, and we see its economy, we see its scientific advances, we see its vibrancy, and we realize that your hand is upon it, and that's in unbelief. Just wait till they believe. and the world is gonna be astonished. And we will see that time in the millennium, the time when their Messiah rules from Jerusalem. We thank you for your promises tonight, Lord. We pray that you'll help us to stand by Israel, to support her. We pray that you would bless our church and bless us individually as we do things for your people. And we pray that you'll keep the IDF safe, the soldiers tonight as they labor. And again, Micah and Yuri, keep them safe and be with the government of Israel. Make it smart, make it cunning and make it effective, Lord. Bless the Mossad also and help them to be able to do what they need to accomplish. Watch over them. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for joining us for another lesson. We hope that this message is a blessing for you and helps you grow towards a more mature understanding of God's Word. For more information about our ministry, we invite you to check out our website at rockharborchurch.net. Until next time, remember, keep looking up for our redemption draws near.