One of the best proofs that the Bible is true is the fact that the Bible prophesies the history of the Jews before it happens. This Jewish history is surely the most improbable history of any nation and yet the Bible prophesied it flawlessly thousands of years in advance.
Some of this Jewish history is history you know. You know Jews are found scattered throughout the world;1 you know Jews have suffered great persecutions,2 and you know there is now a young Jewish nation called Israel,3 but did you know that the Bible prophesies all this history. God Himself foretold this very improbable history before it happened. Folks, the fact that God’s own words are in the Bible foretelling Israel’s improbable history and the fact that this improbable history happened is compelling evidence that the Bible is supernaturally inspired by God Himself. In other words the Bible is absolutely true, and you can confirm its truth for yourself because you know some of Israel’s recent history but you probably haven’t considered how very improbable this history is.
Consider; the Jews are an ancient people like the Phoenicians or the Philistines, but the Phoenicians and Philistines, like almost all ancient peoples, have lost their ethnic identity while the Jews have not. The Jews kept their ethnic identity despite being utterly defeated and dispersed by the Romans;. Jews were dispersed world wide; their language was no longer spoken, but incredibly, they kept their ethnic identity. Even more incredibly they reclaimed their original homeland and relearned their original language two thousand years after being dispersed. Impossible! but God said it would happen and it happened just as God said.
As improbable as was the re-establishment of Israel, the survival of Israel was even more improbable because the day Israel was reborn4 it was attacked by five modern, well equipped Arab armies which outnumbered Israel’s tiny army forty to one. Israel’s tiny improvised army was so poorly equipped it had no tanks and its air force was two Piper Cubs. Many Israeli solders were untrained, spoke only foreign languages and some didn’t even have rifles.
Until Israel was declared a state it was a British protectorate, protected by the British Army, but the British would leave as soon as Israel was declared an independent state and those five modern, well equipped Arab armies would attack. They would attack the ill-equipped, improvised, ragtag Jewish Army which they outnumbered forty to one. The horrible outcome of that attack was so obvious the British pleaded with Jewish Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion not to declare Israel a Jewish state. They told Ben-Gurion “If you declare a Jewish state, there won’t be one Jew left alive in all of Palestine in forty-eight hours.”
Most news items about this situation did not report this utter hopelessness of the Jewish position. We Americans knew the Jews were outnumbered and the news spoke of bloodbath but we did not know the Jews faced imminent total massacre. Even so Bible-believing Christians everywhere knew the restoration of Israel as a nation was the great Bible prophesy to be fulfilled in our time so the compelling question was could God make it happen despite the hopeless odds?
Of course God did make it happen and I think God deliberately created those hopeless odds in order to show that the restoration of Israel was His supernatural act.5 Every step in the restoration of Israel as a nation was very improbable, but when that ragtag, ill-equipped Israeli Army beat five combined modern well-equipped Arab armies it was nothing short of a miracle.6 By the way that ragtag army not only won the war, it doubled the size of Israel.
God said in His Word, in the Bible, that He would restore Israel and He did. Therefore we conclude God’s Word, the Bible, is inspired by God and is absolutely true. God’s plan of salvation is also in the Bible so it is also inspired by God and it is also absolutely true.
1 Leviticus 26: 33
2 Deuteronomy 28:64-67
3 Leviticus 26: 44,45; The covenant referenced is God’s Promise of land: The Promised Land. See Genesis 17: 7-8. Ezekiel 36: 24
4 Isaiah 66:8
5 Ezekiel 36:11,23; 37: 12-13
6 Despite heavy Arab representation in the United Nations, the United Nations still voted nationhood for Israel.
Even though there were five Arab nations poised to attack Israel if Israel should become a state, these Arab nations were not opposed to the United Nation’s declaring Israel a state. The Iraqi U.N. Ambassador even demanded statehood for Israel on the grounds that the United States U.N. Ambassador had set a deadline for the statehood decision which deadline had passed. The Iraqi Ambassador argued that the United States U.N. Ambassador had said that if a decision about Israeli statehood had not been reached by six o’clock on the day of debate, then Israel should be declared a state.
The reason that Iraqi Ambassador and other Arabs favored Israeli statehood was that the Arab forces arrayed against Israel were so utterly overwhelming. The five Arab nations were so powerful they outnumbered Israel forty to one in solders, and they had modern, well equipped tanks and aircraft while Israel had none. Therefore the Arabs with this super overwhelming modern, well equipped army assumed they would so easily crush the improvised ragtag Jewish Army that they were eager for Israel to be declared a state. They figured that as soon as the United Nations declared Israel a state that declaration would remove the British protectorate over Palestine. Without that British protection, the Jews would be left virtually defenseless. Five modern Arab armies would then attack these virtually defenseless Jews, would wipe them out and the nation of Israel would die on the day of its birth.
To show how utterly hopeless this situation was for the Jews, let me draw a picture of their situation. The year was 1948, just three years after the end of World War II. Remember World War II was the war of the anti-Jewish Holocaust where six million Jews were murdered and many more were made unwelcome refugees in Europe.
Many of these poor European refugees fled to Palestine where there were already some Jewish communities because of a movement called Zionism.
Zionism was a movement of Jews back to their original homeland and Palestine as a British protectorate provided a place where poor homeless Zionist Jews could flee. Of course these Jewish refugees were very poor. They spoke different languages; they were not yet a real nation. They were still in the process of organizing a society so they were in no condition to fight a war against any kind of army, much less against five modern armies attacking them from all sides. They had a very informal improvised army. They had no tanks; no military aircraft; they didn’t even have enough rifles to supply the few solders they could field. Many of these solders were untrained and did not even speak a common language.
Even if these Jews had had a modern well trained, well equipped army, they were outnumbered forty to one. For every Jewish solder there were forty Arab solders: five well equipped, well trained Arab armies which were poised on the borders of Israel eager to attack as soon as Israel was declared a state
The Jews not only had very few solders, they had very few weapons, and the British protectorate would not let Jews ship weapons into Palestine. Nor would Britain allow Jews to manufacture weapons. These British prohibitions would end when Israel was declared a state, but the moment Israel was declared a state, five large, well equipped Arab armies would attack.
To defy this British prohibition one Jewish genius bought weapons-making machinery from American junk yards and scrap metal dealers. This genius assembled the machinery he had bought on a farm to insure it would work. There he disassembled it, labeling every part, and shipped these 75,000 disassembled parts to Israel. Since the British could not recognize these disassembled parts as a weapons factory, they let them into their protected land which would soon become Israel, but the Jews still could not reassemble these parts and produce weapons until the British left.
Of course the Jews also needed money to buy arms. After one fund raiser had totally failed to raise funds in the United States, Golda Meyer, a future Israeli prime minister, volunteered to try. She arrived in New York with ten dollars. However, she learned that there would be a convention of prominent Jews (many of them rich) in Chicago. She flew to Chicago and talked her way onto the speaking schedule.
She spoke, and her speech was so effective she got promises for over a million dollars that very day. Furthermore the Jews got Golda Meyer more speaking engagements so that by the end of the month she had fifty million dollars.
Israel’s problem was that even though they could now buy weapons, they could not import them to soon-to-be Israel as long as the British were present. Of course the British left as soon as Israel was declared a state, and as soon as Israel was declared as state, five Arab nations attacked. Egypt attacked from the south. Jordan and Iraq attacked from the east and Syria and Lebanon from the north.
The few Israeli solders fought bravely, bombing the Arabs with their air force of two captured piper cubs by dropping hand grenades. When they ran out of grenades, they dropped crates of beer bottles with shrieking whistles on them.
Amazingly, no, miraculously, the Arab armies seemed paralyzed, so the ragtag Israeli Army, some of it under siege in Jerusalem, fighting on starvation rations, held the Arab armies for a month until the Arabs agreed to a truce.
It was during this truce that Israel imported all the weapons it had bought. Starting June 15, 1948: 29 canons, 10 tanks, 4 antiaircraft guns, 45,000 mortar shells, 110 tons of TNT, and 200,000 detonators. From Mexico, 36 canons, 500 machine guns, 17,000 shells and 7 million rounds of ammunition. From the U.S. 2 ships with war surplus jeeps, trucks and half tracks, machinery for manufacturing bazooka rocket launchers. From Italy 30 surplus German tanks and on and on. The Israeli air force got real fighter planes and bombers,
Israeli President, David Bengurian knew that with these weapons Israel could now win, but he also knew that he would be vilified if he refused to push for a continuation of the truce, but he thought the Arab nations would insist on renewing the fighting. He was right.
The Israeli Army now won victory after victory so that in just ten days they had won so much the U.N. called another truce, but by this time the nation of Israel was miraculously secure.
It was a real miracle when Israel won the war against all five Arab armies, and secular historians could not bring themselves to deal with it, so they made excuses for the Arabs. They made excuses like the Egyptian Army had not been tested in war or their commander was too much of a playboy or the Arab solders were suffering from mental stress.
Actually, by reading the secular historical accounts very carefully, we can surmise some of the reasons why the Arabs lost the war. For example, an Arab propagandist, a Doctor Kaleegee tried to incite Arab fighters against the Jews by falsely claiming Jewish solders were committing atrocities. That false claim backfired because instead of inciting Arab fighters against the Jews, it caused the Arabs to flee. There were multiple occurrences of things like Arabs fleeing in response to their own propaganda that caused them to lose the war. For instance when an unseasonable rain occurred during the normally dry season, a rumor spread among the Arab solders that this unseasonable rain was caused by nuclear fallout. (Hydrogen bombs were being tested by super powers, so nuclear fallout was in world news.) The Arabs escalated this fallout rumor to reports that the Jews had nuclear weapons and many Arab solders fled in terror. Another serious Arab problem was the fact that Arabs stole many of their own army’s military supplies. Supplies would be sent to the battle front but they would be stolen en route and would never arrive at the battle front.
On the Jewish side there was massive heroism. Jews destroyed or captured Arab tanks by climbing onto moving tanks and throwing bottles of flaming gasoline (Molotov cocktails) into their hatch.
Of course the real explanation for the Jewish victory was due to God’s divine intervention. The Jewish victory was truly a miracle of God.
a few more articles:
Israel, nation of miracles
by Hal Lindsey
Gaza's place in Bible's prophecies
Why God won't allow Israel to perish
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