Two thousand years ago at this time of the year a child was born in the Jewish Town of Bethlehem. He would draw both Jew and Gentile to the God of His Fathers –The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He was named Yeshua which means God Saves.

The Feast of Tabernacles at which Yeshua was born is the final Feast in Gods Calendar and He commands us all, Jews and Gentiles, to remember that when the Jews were in the wilderness after escaping the persecution in Egypt He Tabernacled with them and provided for all their needs.

During the time of His ministry in Israel, Yeshua continued the age old practice of teaching Biblical Judaism which is the oldest religion in the West. Biblical Judaism is the way in which God separated the Hebrews from the ways of the heathen Nations, enabling the Hebrews to teach the Nations about the one true God.  Biblical Judaism is 2000 years older than Christianity and 2700 years older than Islam.

Yet the majority within these two younger religions still persecute the Jews and want to divide their homeland including the Holy City of Jerusalem. Yeshua wept over Jerusalem, the city whose name means PEACE. He said there would come a time when he would return to that city and to the Jewish people and again dwell with them as their King. In the meantime we are commanded to pray for the peace of that, the holiest of all cities.

But the story didn’t begin at the time when Yeshua was born. The story began with the call of Abraham over 4000 years ago. Abraham became the Father of the Nation of Israel which is the oldest Nation in the West.

God had Abraham, whom He called His friend, to establish the Nation of Israel in the Middle East as an everlasting possession for the Jewish people and as a sign that there is a God in Heaven. He gave Abraham a piece of land which at that time, and even through to the time of David, extended from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates which in modern times would take within her borders, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordon, Lebanon and Egypt. Since the time of Abraham Israel has been constantly attacked by the Nations who surrounded her.

On three separate occasions Jews were forced out of the land by Nations far larger than her. The last time being in 135 AD, some sixty years after the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem.

For nearly 2000 years Jews have never lived through a generation when they have not been persecuted, murdered and abused by the people with whom they lived. Despite them blessing those communities they were never allowed to assimilate.

But God said that one day He would gather them back into the land of Israel and there, they would be a reminder to the nations that there is a God in Heaven who is faithful to all His promises.

On 14^th May 1948 before the eyes of the world Israel was again made a Jewish nation. This was a place where at last, after the horrors of Europe over centuries, culminating in the most horrific slaughter of Jewish men, women and children, Jews could live in Peace.

A place where the Jewish people could once again have a land--- the land of the Bible which was promised to them 4000years before.

A land on which they could finally live in peace.

 A land in which they could speak their own language - Hebrew, the language of the Bible.

A land to use their own currency - the Shekel, the currency of the Bible.

A land on which they could keep Gods Festivals, Days of rest and worship as He had commanded them to do.

A land on which they could establish communities of their own, without fear of being persecuted by their neighbours simply because they were Jews.

Sadly this was not to be. Despite the promises of 1917 regarding the borders of Israel, 73% of the land promised to them was given to the Arabs to form a new nation called Jordan.

On 15^th May 1948, within 24 hours of being re-established, Israel was attacked by the Arab nations which surrounded her. This newly formed small nation of only 600,000 people, mainly unarmed and still staggering from the tortures of the Holocaust, in faith that their God is a faithful God, stood firm against the might of those Arab nations whose population numbered more than 45 million. God was with them and they survived a second attempt at genocide within a decade.

From that time these survivors, many now suffering from malaria caused by the neglected stagnant waters of the desert, cultivated a land which had laid waste for thousands of years, a land which until that time no one really wanted.

 From the sands of Gaza and the Negev, to the rocky hills of Jerusalem and Galilee, and to the heights of Haifa and Carmel they had to build an infrastructure ready to receive the constant flow of Jews who were arriving not only from Europe but also from the surrounding Arab lands. The Arab Nations had thrown 856,000 Jews out of their homes and land, land which is equal to four times the size of Israel. They arrived from over 100 nations and spoke eighty languages with nothing except a hope and a future which God himself has promised them through the Prophet Jeremiah.

Not one nation assisted them on their journeys and even Great Britain hindered their arrival by turning around the boats which arrived with their cargos of hungry, desperate people.

The Jews had not only to create a Physical infrastructure but had to create an economical and Political structure for this new Nation.

In 1967 her neighbours proclaimed that they would drive this new democratic Nation, the only democratic nation in the Middle East, into the sea. Those threats were followed by the six-day war in which Israel took back, in a defensive action, land which in 1948 Egypt and Jordan had taken from them by force.  The Temple Mount, the Holy site for the Jewish people, was again fully under the control of Jews for the first time in 2000 years.  However, under pressure from the international community they resolved to hand back that very place to the Arabs for the sake of peace.

Again there was no peace and in 1993 Yitzchak Rabin, Israel’s fifth Prime Minister, made a speech pleading with the Arabs for peace. In 1994 suicide bombings resumed and Arab terrorists targeted buses and restaurants violently taking the lives of the innocent. In 2000 Yasser Arafat called for another uprising and the attacks on Israeli civilians increased.

In 2005, after years of bombings and mortar attacks which killed over 47 Israeli civilians in the community of Gush Katif, a Jewish community who had lived in Gaza for over fifty years, employing over 500 Arabs in their agricultural and horticultural businesses, were forced to leave there homes, synagogues, businesses and farms after Israel negotiated their withdrawal in return for peace.

Again sadly, the promise of peace by their Arab neighbours was broken and the peace Israel longed for was not achieved. Bombings continued and rockets targeting the civilian communities of Sderot and the surrounding Kibbutz were fired from the land left by the Gush Katif community.   More innocent lives were lost as over 8000 rockets within 8years devastated lives and communities surrounding Gaza.

In December 2009 Israel defended herself by targeting terrorists in Gaza in an operation called operation Cast Lead. Despite evidence that Israel had protected not only her own civilians, but the Arab civilian population of Gaza, she was internationally condemned.

Colonel Richard Kemp, a former Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland who is also an expert in world terrorism, gave evidence to the United Nations regarding this operation and gave the following evidence: “Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the civilians in the combat zone (Gaza) than any other army in the history of warfare”. He went on to say, “Israel did so whilst facing an enemy (HAMAS) that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of its own civilian population”.

There are 82 Christian nations in the world, 56 Muslim nations and only one Jewish nation. Israel is less than a quarter of one percent of the size of the Arab world, the same size as Wales as but smaller than the Kruger National Park.

The population of the world stands today at 6.6 billion. There are 17 million Jews in the world -7 million living in Israel. That is despite the efforts of the greatest Empires from Babylon to Rome and Russia to Germany putting their full force behind continued attempts to destroy every Jew on earth.

This is unexplainable hatred of a tiny people group which has more Nobel prize-winners than any other peoples ... They gave us the moral and ethical codes we in the civilised world hold dear.

They are a people who are constantly raising our quality of life today by advancing the sciences, their medical research is today saving lives throughout the world including the lives of Arabs living in Gaza and Judea and Samaria (West Bank).

They are bringing to the world of education and commerce, communication technology advancements which we could never have imagined just a few years ago.

They are a people who are first to help at the scenes of national disasters.

A people who continue to help over 80 nations throughout the world in matters of irrigation and horticultural / agricultural advancement.

The blessings from Jews in Music and the Arts are not only of contemporary significance but also of historical significance.

The murder of thousands of Jewish Doctors, Scientists, Musicians and Artists during the Holocaust has not succeeded in destroying the ability of the Jewish Nation to bless the World as was the promises of God made to Abraham over 4000 years ago.   

Israel is a land spoken of by God throughout the Bible. God never once mentioned a land called Palestine. Jerusalem is a city which God says is the place where His Holy Name shall dwell with the Jewish people for ever.

The Feast of Tabernacles is the Feast which God gave to us all to remember His faithfulness to the Hebrews in the wilderness whilst they wandered without a home, AND to point forwards to that very day when He will once again tabernacle with His people in Israel.

As Our Father commanded, Yeshua celebrated all the Feasts in Jerusalem and it was at this very Feast of Tabernacles that He said “I am the Light of The World.” That light and His commands will once again shine and go out from Jerusalem.

When Solomon dedicated the first Temple he prayed that those in the nations who were not Jews would go to the Temple in Jerusalem to pray to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and would come to know Him.  The Prophet Zechariah prophesied that when the God of Israel dwells again with man the nations who remain after their judgment must visit the Temple in Jerusalem during the Feast of Tabernacles and worship God.

God is a God of the miraculous, and He is showing us today the miracle of His restoring the Jewish people to their homeland after 2000 years of wandering and persecution. He has done this to show the world that there is a God, but sadly the world is ignoring this miracle and looking away from the God of hope.

Hatikva meaning “ hope”  is the  title of the national anthem of Israel and is the word that describes the hope that the Jewish people have in God - God who is faithful - God of The Promise.

As Christians, we believe that Yeshua was the Messiah who is to return to Jerusalem as He promised He would. There in that great City He will Judge the world specifically concerning how they have dealt with the Jewish people and divided up the land of Israel. We know that Christendom, more than any other group in history, has persecuted the Jews. So why today, having that knowledge, do many in Christendom speak of dividing the land of Israel and why do so many in Christendom not support Israel’s God- given and political right to exist?

Why is it, when the Quran does not even once identify Jerusalem as an Islamic Holy site, that Muslims claim Jerusalem as their own and say that the Temple Mount is a holy Islamic place?

 Why then do they fight so violently for every inch?  Muslims have their own Holy site, Mecca, and they have many lands filled with oil which brings them tremendous abundance and wealth, and yet they still want to occupy Israel and Jerusalem.

Why does the world want to see this tiny nation, who has suffered so much, suffer more?

Why do the nations want to see this nation, which has given so much to enhance our society, stop giving more?

Why do the nations who remain silent about the cruelty within many countries throughout the world, shout loudly when Israel simply defends herself?

Why do many curse her when we are commanded to bless her and have been so blessed by her?

For those who don’t believe in the promises of God for the Jewish people as detailed in Scripture, they will have to wait for the answer to these questions until Yeshua returns and once again tabernacles with His people in Jerusalem, BUT on THAT DAY it will be too late to put right all the terrible wrongs the world has done to the Jews.

Hope this helps.

Michael Fryer