EPOCH-MAKING EVENTS IN THE BIBLE AND MAN’S HISTORY
In the Bible, many epoch making events are recorded, which were caused by God’s intervention to human history....
This is what the LORD says: ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting-place be?
Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?’ declares the LORD.
‘These are the ones I look on with favour: those who are humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word. But whoever sacrifices a bull is like one who kills a person, and whoever offers a lamb is like one who breaks a dog’s neck; whoever makes a grain offering is like one who presents pig’s blood, and whoever burns memorial incense is like one who worships an idol. They have chosen their own ways, and they delight in their abominations; so I also will choose harsh treatment for them and will bring on them what they dread. For when I called, no one answered, when I spoke, no one listened. They did evil in my sight and chose what displeases me.’
Hear the word of the LORD, you who tremble at his word; ‘Your own people who hate you, and exclude you because of my name, have said, “Let the LORD be glorified, that we may see your joy!” Yet they will be put to shame. Hear that uproar from the city, hear that noise from the temple! It is the sound of the LORD repaying his enemies all they deserve.
‘Before she goes into labour, she gives birth; before the pains come upon her, she delivers a son.
Who has ever heard of such things? Who has ever seen things like this? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zion in labour than she gives birth to her children. Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery?’ says the LORD. ‘Do I close up the womb when I bring to delivery?’ says your God. ‘Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice greatly with her, all you who mourn over her. For you will feed and be satisfied at her comforting breasts; you will drink deeply and delight in her overflowing abundance.’
For this is what the LORD says: ‘I will extend peace to her like a river, and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream; you will feed and be carried on her arm and dandled on her knees. As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.’ISAIAH 66:1-13.
On 27th May, U.S. President Barack Obama visited Hiroshima, an atomic bomb afflicted city
in western Japan, shortly after the Ise-Shima Group of Seven summit was held in Mie prefecture. During this period, including the two days of the summit, tight security was in place. The U.S. government even brought in its own helicopter and vehicles for transporting President Obama. He paid tribute to the 140,000 people killed by the world’s first atomic bomb attack as the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima. On 6th August 1945 in Hiroshima, and also 3 days later, on the 9th in Nagasaki, U.S. forces dropped atomic bombs that ushered in the nuclear age. By the latter second bomb in Nagasaki 74.000 people were killed. While in the U.S., there is still a strong sentiment that the dropping of the atomic bombs was necessary for ending World War Ⅱ, President Obama has reasoned his decision of visiting Hiroshima that it reminds us that war, no matter the cause, results in tremendous suffering and loss, especially for innocent citizens.
His speech started with an impressive emphasis on the fatal nature of war:
‘Seventy-one years ago, on a bright, cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself. Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in the not-so-distant past. We come to mourn the dead, including over a hundred thousand Japanese men, women and children, thousands of Koreans, a dozen Americans held prisoner. Their souls speak to us and ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are and what we might become. … Yet, in the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of humanity’s core contradiction, of the very spark that marks us as a species, our thoughts, our imagination, our language, our tool making, our ability to set ourselves apart from nature and bend it to our will, those very things also give us the capacity for unmatched destruction. How often does material advancement or social innovation blind us to this truth, how easily we learn to justify violence, in the name of some higher cost. Every great religion promises a pathway to love and peace and righteousness, and yet no religion has been spared from believers who have claimed their faith as a license to kill. Nations arise, telling a story that binds people together in sacrifice and cooperation, allowing for remarkable feats, but those same stories have so often been used to oppress and dehumanize those who are different. Science allows us to communicate across the seas and fly above the clouds, to cure disease and understand the cosmos. But those same discoveries can be turned into ever-more-efficient killing machines. The wars of the modern age teach us this truth. Hiroshima teaches this truth. … And yet, that is not enough, for we see around the world today how even the crudest rifles and barrel bombs can serve up violence on a terrible scale. We must change our mindset about war itself, to prevent conflict through diplomacy and strive to end conflicts after they’ve begun, to see our growing interdependence as a cause for peaceful cooperation and not violent competition, to define our nations not by our capacity to destroy but by what we build. … The irreducible worth of every person, the insistence that every life is precious, the radical and necessary notion that we are part of a single human family, that is the story that we all must tell. That is why we come to Hiroshima … That is the future we can choose, a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as “the dawn of atomic warfare,” but as the start of our own moral awakening’ (Excerpt from Obama’s speech in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park on 27th May).
One of the survivors, a 91 year old man, was given an opportunity to directly talk to Obama and he emphatically appealed to Obama not to express apology on the part of the U.S. for dropping the bomb but to pursue the peace and security of a world not only without nuclear weapons but also without any war at all, so that his visit will mark a new era, the dawn of a warless world. The next step is a pragmatic approach to the process of reaching this goal, in which the Japanese government should take a role in advocating worldwide peace as the only country to have experienced atomic bombs, by continually observing the Peace Constitution Article 9 of Japan that declared war renunciation forever, despite the worldwide tide of nuclear armaments.
In the Bible, many epoch making events are recorded, which were caused by God’s intervention to human history. God has been busily involved in man’s history since He created the heavens and earth and all living creatures. This is especially true in His chosen people, Israel’s history. God prophetically revealed His plans upon His people and fulfilled them in the past, and He will still fulfill the rest of them until all prophecies come true. The passage quoted in the beginning from the last chapter of the ‘Book of Isaiah’ is an exciting prophecy of the State of Israel, who was to be formed in a day, and actually was fulfilled in 1948. Knowing the historical fact of how enigmatically and graciously the State of Israel was created would move many people’s hearts and they will undoubtedly see God’s merciful hand behind the scene.
In the Apocrypha there are the First and Second Books of Maccabees, where the fierce struggle of Judaism to resist absorption into the Hellenistic world from 167 to 151 BCE is recorded in detail. During the time of the Second Temple, the Greek king of the Seleucid Empire, Antiochus Epiphanes outlawed the entire Jewish religion, which produced a furious opposition from all those faithful to the Jewish Law, while some of the Jews began to assimilate into Greek culture and life style. The Maccabees led the opposition and miraculously brought them victory. Behind this forty year struggle to establish independence, was surely God’s hand. Intriguingly, such insurmountable odds took place to the Jews again in 1948. The following article depicts how miraculously Israel survived the attacks by five surrounding Arab nations: Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan from the day after she gained independence onwards.
The victory of the Maccabees against the pressure of forced assimilation facilitated the restoration of Jewish religious and communal life. The modern-day Maccabees continue to fight for the survival of the Jewish people against all odds and with the help of God. We present here a short series of miraculous events that occurred during the modern State of Israel’s major wars.Such a miraculous story that though Israel was greatly outnumbered and very poorly armed, which consisted mostly of war refugees, mainly coming from the death camp of Europe, and equipped with no air force but six tanks at best, she was able to repulse the invading far mightier Arab nations, often necessitates an explanation of how it can be done. Like other people, even acknowledging it as God’s miraculous intervention, I have long been fascinated to know more details about exactly how Israel managed to conquer the fully-equipped and much larger Arab armies that attacked from every corner of the state.
The Creation of the State of Israel
As the modern Zionist movement began to solidify and gather steam, Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel began in earnest. Beginning in the 1880s and peaking in the 1940s with the flight of Jews from Europe who had survived the Holocaust, Jews began to eye the Holy Land, the ancient Jewish homeland, as a place of refuge. Their plight, combined with the fact that there wasn’t a single country willing to accept any significant number of Jewish refugees, created a sense of urgency for the establishment of a Jewish state.
After World War II, hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe attempted to immigrate to Israel (then called Palestine), which was then British-mandated territory. The British, always wanting to avoid friction with the Arab world, refused to allow the Jewish refugees to settle in “Palestine.” The increasingly volatile and violent situation between Jews, Arabs and the British convinced the British to leave Palestine to the United Nations.
In 1947, the UN proposed the partition of Palestine into two states – one for the Jews and the other for the Arabs, with an internationally controlled area around Jerusalem. The Zionists, desperate to enable Jewish immigration, accepted the offer. The Arabs rejected it as they opposed any Jewish rule in Palestine.
Tensions peaked on November 29, following the UN General Assembly’s vote in favor of partition (dividing Palestine into two states), and Jewish communities throughout the Land of Israel found themselves under attack by local Arab gangs. On May 15, 1948, Israel officially declared statehood. The very next day, the nascent Jewish state was invaded by the armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq.
One Miracle Among Many
While stories abound of miracles that took place during Israel’s War of Independence, one story sticks out. It is referred to as the Battle of Netanyahu. (The definition of the Hebrew word netanyahu is “God has given.)
As soon as Israel declared independence on May 15, 1948, she found herself in an untenable situation. The new state was populated almost entirely by war refugees and possessed no means of protection. With no army and no weapons, she was a sitting duck. According to legend, the fledgling nation possessed approximately five machine guns with about fifteen rounds of ammunition and one tank.
Miraculous Ingenuity
As if to give Israel a false sense of hope, the surrounding Arab nations did not attack immediately. They planned a major offensive against Israel for the eighth day after declaration of statehood. However, the Israelis, understanding that their very lives were yet again on the line, came up with a plan that they hoped would at least buy them some time to prepare for war. On May 23, at midnight, they lined up cars, trucks, taxis, and anything they could find with an engine, side by side along the beaches from Tel Aviv through Netanya and Haifa. They then removed the exhaust pipes from the vehicles, making them sound much louder.
They then loaded large oil drums with rocks and took them to the top of the adjacent hill. When the time was right, early in the morning, the signal was given and the engines were started while the oil drums were rolled down the hill.
The unsuspecting Arab forces were suddenly awakened by the incredible noise, which completely shook the area. Since they had no idea from where the racket was coming, they could only guess – and they assumed that American forces had come to Israel’s rescue with Sherman Tanks. The entire Arab army fled, leaving behind a treasure trove of artillery and thus arming the Israelis (Author: Penina Taylor, United with Israel≪With files from NYJtimes≫ http://unitedwithisrael.org/1948-the-miracle-of-israels-birth/).
The article above explains how God has revealed His wisdom to His people Israel to conquer the opposing nations against His people, (meaning against God Himself). There are many stories in the Bible that testify to God’s wisdom and presence on the battlefield. For example, in the time of judges, Gideon’s army defeated the Midianites by God’s shown strategies, i.e., noise. When David defeated the Philistines in ‘Baal Perazim’ (meaning that the Lord breaks out), the Valley of Rephaim, he followed God’s instructions, where he took an action after hearing the enemy’s sound of marching. Likewise, Israel’s fight for her independence on the battlefield in 1948 was one of a series of miracles because it is said that Israeli defenders held off the entire Egyptian army by homemade weapons that many times did nothing but made only noise, and that the Davidka they used was an extremely inaccurate but noisy light-artillery. They also devised cut-out wooden soldiers, which were moved from trench to trench to give the appearance of greater numbers.