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In 1948 a baby boy was born with great distress. He was a month overdue, and born at 10.5 pounds to a very small mother. He was blue from not getting enough oxygen in his lungs and had a heart murmur. Doctors said he should never have been conceived. I was that baby boy.
Also in 1948 a baby nation was born with great distress. It was ravaged and maligned from all corners of the earth. It was born amidst prejudice, hatred and mass murder. It was made up of people from all over the world but not having a land of its own, speaking many different languages but not having a language of its own. Many world leaders said it should never have been conceived. Israel was that baby nation.
In the years leading up to World War 2, some interesting things were happening thought-wise in Europe. The ideas of evolution had gained popularity and had begun to burgeon into other areas. For instance, Dr. Richard Wagner, a university professor in Switzerland, had popularized the idea that not only was humanity at the top of the evolutionary food chain, but that the pure Arian race of Germany was at the very top. They were the superior people of the human race and Jewish people were the bottom.
According to the principle of the survival of the fittest, a teaching within evolution, the Jews needed to be eliminated from the human race to make room for the superior races to grow fuller and stronger still.
Adolf Hitler grew up to dislike Jews in Germany, where he lived, and later used Wagner’s teaching to help support the eradication of all Jewish people. During his war to create Arian dominance in the world as the superior race of people, he strove to exterminate over 6,000,000 Jewish men, women, boys and girls from all over Europe.
All of the Jews who could be identified were arrested and sent to special ghetto communities throughout the conquered countries of Europe, where they were confined and later sent to camps where they would work and/or be exterminated en masse.
At the end of the war, the Jewish people left alive throughout Europe were homeless and penniless. They had been displaced from their homes in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France, Italy, Romania, parts of Russia…all over. All their possessions had been seized and stolen. And to make matters worse, much of the populace in Europe and around the world still had a burning distaste and resentment of the Jewish race.
A movement began among the Jewish people of the world to go “home,” back to the land that had been the home of their ancient ancestors, back to the land God had promised them.
At the end of the WW2, in 1947, after Israel had not existed as a nation for almost 1900 years, a large contingent of Jews from all over the world moved back to the land of promise, and they sought nation status from the United Nations. There was much debate and question if they were entitled to this land.
Then one day three shepherd boys were grazing their sheep in the rocky, hot, arid region of the northern Dead Sea, on the eastern slopes of the Judean Mountains. The youngest of these brothers was apparently a little bored and did what boys do: threw rocks. In the slopes of the Qumran Mountains beside him, he slung rocks trying to hit some of the tens of thousands of caves in that region.
With one perfectly thrown rock, he hit the mouth of a cave and was instantly terrified because he heard the shattering of pottery. It was there that the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, proving the book of Isaiah had to have been written before the time of Christ even though many had argued that couldn’t be the case because the descriptions were too specific, and they did not want to rely on anything supernatural.
To Christians, the Dead Sea Scrolls represent God’s stamp of approval on the Old Testament Scriptures and their accuracy. (All but two books of the Old Testament were found in the caves of Qumran.) But what about to the Jewish people who were seeking nation status for their land?
For them, discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls was the equivalent of God reaching down and handing the fledgling Israelis a title deed to this land. These scrolls predated the religion of the occupants of the land by the better part of a thousand years.
These scrolls showed that this had been the home of the Jewish people, and the only reason they were no longer there was because another nation, or empire, had destroyed them, chased them off, and in many cases exterminated them. The UN quickly recognized them as a nation in their land.
God was keeping His promise to the Jewish people. He gave this land to them as a perpetual gift. In giving this land back to Israel, God was once again telling them to remember, and never forget!
What are the future promises regarding the land?
To be continued…
Originally posted on drricktaylor.com.