Thoughts for the New Year

According to the Roman calendar we have just started the year 2011. The Romans counted the years starting from the date of the birth of Jesus. The Jewish calendar starts the year in September. It counts the number of years since creation, calculated by adding up the ages of people in the Bible back to the time of creation, which happened 5771 years ago.

All throughout the Jewish Bible, from Genesis to Malachi, hundreds of specific scriptures declare that G-D gave the ancient land of Canaan to the Jewish people, as their Promised Land to enjoy forever, with Jerusalem as their sacred capital.

The understanding of this covenant to Abraham is vital. The important point to realize is that this covenant is unconditional, that is, G-D never breaks a promise and will therefore not break this promise that He made to Abraham so long ago. - Even though sin and disobedience caused a temporary loss of this covenant blessing (2000 years), the covenant itself never got cancelled.

Prophet Isaiah predicted the rebirth of Israel with these words: “Who ever heard such a thing? Who has ever seen such things? Is a country born in one day? Is a nation brought forth all at once? For as soon as Tzyion went into labor, she brought forth her children” - (Isaiah 66:8). Remarkably, when the British mandate over Palestine, authorized by the League of Nations, ended at midnight on May 15, 1948, Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, declared publicly that Israel was once again a nation and now took its rightful place on the stage of world history.

Without doubt, the rebirth of the nation of Israel on May 15, 1948, is one of the most extraordinary of all the prophecies in the ancient Scriptures. During the last century, millions of Jews from more than seventy nations, often at great personal cost, have undertaken the arduous journey toward the fulfillment of the age-old Passover dream: “Next year in Jerusalem”.

Some people object; it can’t be the current State of Israel, because it is a secular government. – While the return to the Land today is a physical and political event, the Scripture makes it abundantly clear that the physical re-gathering and restoration of Israel is only a prelude to ultimate spiritual restoration. (Ezekiel 36:25-27)

Others say that the Land was stolen from the Palestinians and should be returned to them. - There never was a Palestinian state governed by Arab Palestinians in the history of civilization nor a nation referred to as "Palestine". After the 1967 Six-Day War, when the Jordanians lost the West Bank [Judea and Samaria] and Gaza, Jordanian soldiers became “Palestinians” - basically over night. Even the so-called leader of these "Palestinian" people, Yasser Arafat, was an Egyptian! In short, these Arab "Palestinians" are a manufactured people...a people with no history and no authenticity... whose sole purpose for existence is to destroy the Jewish State! The very notion of a "Palestinian Arab nation" having ancient attachments to the Holy Land going back to time immemorial is one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetrated upon the world! – I don’t know if it was Lenin or Hitler who formed the philosophy that if you told a big enough lie and you repeated it often enough, the people would begin to believe it as truth. We're seeing exactly that strategy at work in the world today. In fact, the conflict that most threatens world peace is built on an enormous lie.

So, what will happen next? The Bible says there will be a battle over Jerusalem. There is also a prophecy about Damascus going up in flames. There is the promise of the Messiah and the Temple being re-built.

Don’t wait for your newspaper if you can read tomorrow’s headlines ahead of time. I encourage you to read these Scriptures if you want to understand where we are in God’s prophetic timetable.

Look to the nation of Israel as G-D’s promise for His Land and His people will be fulfilled.