The State of Israel
[An excerpt from Biblical Backgrounds of the Troubled Middle East
by Guy N. Woods, originally published in 1991]
Christians, Arabs, Jews are deeply concerned about matters occurring in the Middle East . . , a land which has so long and so profoundly influenced the rest of the world. Well-informed people are not indifferent to matters that the news media keep ever before them and which could very materially affect them in the future. Whether we approve or not, we are directly involved in events occurring in faraway Palestine—an involvement that may well become more direct before this generation passes. All people, whatever their religious prepossessions, must concede that the holy land is unique and has a distinctiveness unlike that of any other place on Earth.
From the purple rim of Mount Herman’s snow-capped summit to the Salt Sea’s brackish and forbidding waters, from the sunny sand-strewn beaches of the Mediterranean Sea to the storied banks of the historic Jordan River, each square mile of this land made sacred by prophets, priests and kings, and blessed by the footsteps of our dear Redeemer and Lord, has immeasurable biblical significance for us all. The contemplation of its famed cities, towns and villages—Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Bethany—and the events having there occurred in the long ago.
How can any thoughtful person be indifferent to the land where our Lord was born; where His gracious offer of salvation was first made to all the sons and daughters of men; where He gladly gave His life and died for all the world of mankind; where in triumph He rose from the dead, bringing life and immortality to light through the gospel, and through whose consecrated skies He returned to His heavenly home?
Sadly, His gentle voice is neither heeded nor heard today in the land of His nativity, and the song of the heavenly hosts once heard by shepherds on a star-lit night in Bethlehem with the glorious message of “Peace on Earth, good will to men,” is heard and acknowledged in Judaea no more. Instead are the shrill and angry voices of bitterness and hate, and the fearful roar of terrible weapons of death and destruction that people with the same ancestral father turn against each other. The soft, moon-lit skies through which the angels came near the Earth with their message of love, kindness, and good will now echo to the piercing screams of supersonic war planes with their lethal loads on their way to bomb Palestinian targets. The gentle murmur of waves along the sun-drenched crescent coast of the beautiful blue Mediterranean is drowned out by deadly bursts of machine-gun fire turned on Arab terrorists, who deliberately walk into the range of the Israeli guns on the false and fatal assumption that this is, for those who thus die, the certain path to Paradise.
David, Israel’s sweetest singer and her most beloved monarch, once a shepherd lad himself, skilled in leading his flocks to cool, refreshing waters or meadows green, and ever on guard to protect them from danger through the long and silent watches of star-studded nights in Israel’s quiet valleys and along her gentle, undulating hills, passionately loved the land of his fathers and its capital city, and he urged his people, as he must himself have often done, to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6).
This petition seems especially appropriate today.
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