Israel: God's Holy LandSample

A Modern Miracle

The LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. — PSALM 118:23

After WWII ended, the Jewish people stood in the ashes of the Holocaust. Over six million Jews had been murdered — two million of them children — just for the “crime” of being Jews. It was the worst devastation that the Jewish people had suffered in their nearly two thousand years of exile, persecution, expulsion, humiliation, and assimilation. More than one-third of the world’s Jewish population was murdered during the Holocaust. Like the prophet Ezekiel, we looked down in the valley of death, Sheol, weary and weak, and asked, “Can these bones live?” (Ezekiel 37:3)

And behold a miracle! God breathed life into those dry bones and they came together, bone to bone, sinew to sinew. They took on flesh and spirit, and the nation lived again!

As God said through the prophet, “…these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off’… ‘My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. ” (Ezekiel 37:11-12)

Just years after the Holocaust, the modern nation of Israel was born. On November 29, 1947, in nothing less than a miracle, the United Nations voted to support the creation of the modern state of Israel. However, it wasn't until May 14, 1948, that a group of Jewish leaders gathered in Tel Aviv to sign the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel.

We endured those first years after declaring independence when we were outnumbered and outgunned. We didn’t give up when challenged in war after war, terror, and bloodshed. Despite being surrounded on all sides by enemies intent on our destruction, the nation of Israel not only survived, but thrived.

The land itself, which had been barren for thousands of years, began to give forth its fruit once again as prophesied: “The LORD will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the LORD” (Isaiah 51:3). Hebrew, a language all but forgotten, was resurrected and spoken by the average Jew in the street once again.

We witnessed the miracle of aliyah, immigration to Israel, a miracle that many of you support through The Fellowship, with Jews pouring into the country from all four corners of the earth. While there had always been a persistent, continuous Jewish presence in the land, never before had so many and such a diverse group of Jews come home.

As the prophet Isaiah wrote: “In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the surviving remnant of his people from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Cush, from Elam, from Babylonia, from Hamath and from the islands of the Mediterranean.” (Isaiah 11:11) Prophecy upon prophecy, miracle upon miracle — the words of the Bible have come to life in the Jewish state.

Today, Israel is a light unto the nations (Isaiah 42:6) as the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel is on the cutting edge of technology and medical breakthroughs, giving the world ways to make life better, safer, and healthier. Throngs of people visit Israel each year for the inspiration and connection to God that the Holy Land has to offer.