Israel, Past and Present 

Janie B. Cheaney, WORLD magazine, provides thoughts on Israel.

     "Israel has played a parallel soundtrack to Sunday school lessons and daily Bible readings. From King David to David Ben-Gurian, from Philistia to the Gaza Strip, its story is always news." 

     "What hold does this land have on our imagination? Everybody seems to have an opinion, religious or secular, Zionist or anti-Zionist, eschatological or temporal." 

     "When Hamas terrorists boiled over the border to slaughter over 1,000 Israeli civilians in October, they set the world on fire. Such barbaric acts are not unheard of. The blood lust in Rwanda in the 1990s was equally horrific. Warlords in Africa and drug cartels in South and Central America regularly splash their gore across the news. Then we hear no more. 

     "But every time Israel is attacked or when it strikes, the world trains a critical eye for weeks. The IDF hovers on the edge of all-out war while hysterical denunciations rain down on them from all over the world. 

     "The last few weeks have unleashed some jaw-dropping reactions from the campus, the Congress, and the media. 

     "This much is obvious. The Hamas militants didn't suddenly "break out" from under Israeli aggression. When they arrived, they didn't somehow bring about Israelis being "subsequently killed" (notice the passive voice). Hamas militants butchered and raped and pillaged and returned to cheering crowds in Gaza, parading the bodies of their victims, as the Philistines must have paraded and blinded Samson in the same city. 

     "To me, this is much more than a political struggle. It's a spiritual one...with Israel itself: a secular nation built upon divine covenants. A people like no other, with a history as mystifying as their founder's wrestling match with the Lord. Israel wrestles still, with modern-day Philistines. And with the Lord. 

     "This tiny nation remains at the center of the world. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! (Psalm 122:6), and especially pray that they be reconciled with their Messiah before He returns."