Israel.

This is all taken from one of my dad's sermons. This is rich. Worth the read.

"Contrary to what politicians and pundits may say, Israel, not the United States, not Russia, not China, not India, but Israel, is the most important nation on earth. Jerusalem, not Washington, not Moscow, not Peking, not Paris, not London, is the most important city on earth. Why?

You cannot understand the future, you cannot understand Bible prophecy,you cannot even understand the ways and the workings of God,

if you don't understand Israel. The Jew is God's yardstick; God's measuring rod; God's blueprint; God's outline;

God's plan for the future.

Israel is to the nations what the sun is to the planets. Just as surely as the planets revolve around the sun, the nations of this world revolve around Israel.

According to God, Israel is the center of the world.

First, it is the geographical center

Ezekiel 5:5 tells us, "Thus says the Lord God: 'This is Jerusalem; I have set her in the midst of the nations and the countries all around her.'"

it is also the spiritual center of the world

It is here that Jesus was born; Jesus lived; Jesus died; Jesus was raised; Jesus ascended; and one day Jesus will return to rule and reign over this earth. The three monotheistic religions of this world - Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all claim Jerusalem as their spiritual capitol.

It is the prophetical center of the world.

If you want to know what time it is on God's clock, look at Israel.

If you want to know what day it is on God's calendar, look at Israel.

If you want to know what degree it is on God's thermometer, look at Israel.

You can summarize biblical prophecy in three words:

Jews, Jerusalem, and Jesus. All are inextricably interwoven.

It is the political center of the world

It is here that Armageddon, the last battle of the last war, will be fought.

David exhorted in Psalm 122:6, "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem."

Now why did he not say pray for peace on earth?

Because there will be no peace on earth until there is peace in Jerusalem. There will be no peace in Jerusalem until the Prince of Peace returns

Every Jew on the face of this earth is a literal miracle. If you ever begin to doubt that God is alive and well and still on the throne, just look at Israel.

No other nation, and no other people is as relevant to the child of God today, as is the Nation Israel, and the people called the Jews.

God’s Chosen

It was God Himself who loved this nation and called this nation and blessed this nation from all the peoples of the earth.

Do you realize that the Jewish nation is the only nation whose origin can be traced with total accuracy. No one knows who the first Englishman was, or the first Swede was, or the first German was, or the first Chinese was.But the entire world knows that Abraham was the first Hebrew.

So today there are 14 million Jews, Hebrews, Israelites who inhabit the earth all because of the miraculous birth of a baby boy to a 100 year old father and a 90 year old mother who dared to believe God.

God’s Gifted

For almost 4,000 years Israel has had a marvelous heritage.

When God founded the nation of Israel He gave Israel four things:

He gave Israel a land;

He gave Israel a law;

He gave Israel a language;

He gave Israel a Lord.

But Israel defiled the land;

Israel defied the law;

Israel deserted the language;

and Israel denied the Lord.

Because of their rebellion against God, God allowed them to be taken from the land He promised them as a discipline and as a chastisement. The Lord even predicted that this would happen.

What God predicted is exactly what happened.

Israel rebelled, they rejected God, and they were overwhelmed by pagan nations and deported from the land. The final time this happened Jesus predicted in

Luke 21:24,

"And they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led away captive into all nations. And Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled."

For two thousand years the Jews have been dispersed, dispelled, displaced, and despised by the nations. Jerusalem has been trampled by the Gentiles.

During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times.

But does this mean that God is through with the Jew?

God’s Correction

God punishes his children, God chastises his children, but God never completely rejects his children. Listen to what the Lord said concerning Israel in Psalm 89:28-27

My mercy I will keep for him forever,

And My covenant shall stand firm with him.

His seed also I will make to endure forever,

And his throne as the days of heaven.

If his sons forsake My law

And do not walk in My judgments,

If they break My statutes

And do not keep My commandments,

Then I will visit their transgression with the rod,

And their iniquity with stripes.

Nevertheless My lovingkindness I will not utterly take from him,

Nor allow My faithfulness to fail.

My covenant I will not break,

Nor alter the word that has gone out of My lips.

Once I have sworn by My holiness;

I will not lie to David:

His seed shall endure forever,

And his tongue as the sun before Me;

It shall be established forever like the moon,

Even like the faithful witness in the sky.

Now if you listened carefully, you heard a great principle there.Discipline is not denial, and discipline is not rejection. Let me tell you three rock-ribbed truths about God’s relationship with Israel that I wish every American Politician would never forget.A. God's people cannot be destroyed.

B. God's promise cannot be denied.

C. God's purpose cannot be defeated

God made a promise to the Nation of Israel.

Hear the word of the Lord, O nations, And declare it in the isles afar off, and say, 'He who scattered Israel will gatherhim, And keep him as a shepherd does his flock.'" (Jere. 31:10) That promise was repeated again in Ezekiel 11:17.

That is why the Jew cannot be eliminated.

Where are the Babylonians, the Hittites, the Amalekites, the Philistines, the Assyrians who tried to annihilate the Jews?

They are no more, but the Jew still stands.

Where are the Adolph Hitler’s and the Russian Czars and the Joseph Stalins?The world and the devil have tried to exterminate the Jews, but I am sure to the amazement of all, the most important date in the Twentieth Century, May 14, 1948, finally came to pass, and the most important event of the Twentieth Century finally took place, a nation was born in a day. A nation that was dormant and dead for 2,000 years was raised to life. How do you explain that?

God’s Protection

When this nation was born and recognized by the United Nations, there were approximately 650,000 Jews living in the land. Just enough people to inhabit a large metropolitan city in America.

What has happened since the people have been restored to their nation?

The Land:First of all, the land has been revived. In Israel it only rains in the winter. There is a scarcity of water. Yet because of the most effective irrigation system in the world, the land now blossoms like a rose. Israel today is only one of six nations that produces enough food to feed itself and to feed others. Just forty years ago, the beautiful valley of Armageddon that many of you have seen, was a mosquito infested swamp, but is now a fertile valley that yields up to four different crops a year.

The Law: Another thing has happened. The law has been re-instituted.Even though God-fearing orthodox Jews only make up 5% of the population of Israel, the foundation and cornerstone of their law, the Sabbath, has been established. It is now the law of the land, and from sunup to sundown on the Sabbath, restaurants are closed, buses do not run, there is no television. Even hospitals shut down except for the most dire emergencies.

The Language:. But what has even been more amazing is the language has been resurrected. The entire Old Testament, thirty-nine books of the Bible, was written in Hebrew. When the Lord Jesus spoke to the Apostle Paul, Paul testified that He spoke to him in Hebrew. (Compare Acts 26:14)

Yet, Hebrew was a dead language even in the time of Christ. But a man by the name of Eliezer Ben Yehuda had a vision to revive that Hebrew tongue. He took a vow never to speak any other language, and reared his children in Hebrew, and fought until on September 23, 1922, the League of Nations officially recognized Hebrew as a spoken language of the world. It is the only dead language that has been restored to life in the history of mankind.

there is an invisible hand on these people, and it is the hand of God. You see, the Jew not only survives, the Jew succeeds.

The Jews are not a great people in number.

Only one-fourth of one percent of the world's population is Jewish.

Yet they have won 12 percent or more of all of the honors in medicine, health, music, public life, and science. Think of this: Though making up only one-fourth of one percent of the world's population in the last twenty-five years,

25% to 1/3 of the Nobel Prize winners have been Jews.

But just think about what a mark they have made here in America. Did you know that it was a Jew that financed Christopher Columbus' overseas voyage to the West when he discovered the Americas? Did you know that it was a Jew that first set foot on this soil when the ships finally landed at the Americas?

Did you know that it was a Jew, Hiram Solomon, that financed General George Washington in the Revolutionary War? You may not know it, but practically every day you are affected in some way or another by a Jew.

Have you ever taken an aspirin for a headache?

Fredrick Bayer, who developed the aspirin, was a German Jew.

Have you been vaccinated for polio?

Jonas Salk was a Jew.

Have you ever gone to the dentist and had him deaden your gums before he started to drill away? Well, Alfred Einhorn, who developed novocaine, was a Jew. Maybe you have gotten sick and had the doctor prescribe for you streptomycin. Sleman Waksman, who developed that, was a Jew.

Have you ever given money to the Salvation Army, or been helped by the Salvation Army? William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army had a Jewish mother, which according to Jewish law, made William Booth a Jew.

Are you a student of philosophy? Spinoza, the great father of philosophy, was a Jew. Karl Marx, the founder of Communism, was a Jew. Do you wear blue jeans? Levi Strauss was a Jew. The greatest scientist who ever lived, Albert Einstein, who discovered the theory of relativity, was a Jew.

Now you may think all of this is pure coincidence. I think it is sheer providence. I tell you, Israel is the nation that will not go away. She is an indestructible people. Do you know what it would take to destroy Israel?

"Thus says the Lord, Who gives the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night, Who disturbs the sea, and its waves roar (The Lord of hosts is His name): If those ordinances depart from before Me, says the Lord, Then the seed of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before Me forever." (Jere. 31:35-36) If the sun quits rising and the moon quits shining, and the waves of the sea roll no more, then Israel will cease to exist.

But Israel still has one problem: They recaptured the Land, reinstituted the Law, revived the Language, But rejected the Lord, which leads me to my last point.

Israel's Matchless Hope

"Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah--not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more." (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

Now you go to Israel and you know that this has not happened.But if you believe the Word of God you know that it is going to happen. Now the question is, how is it going to happen?

Well even as we are seeing now world opinion is going to continuously harden against Israel. What I read in the newspapers I have already read in the Word of God.

"And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it. (Zach. 12:3)All of the nations of the earth are ultimately and eventually going to gather against this nation of Israel to destroy her once and for all. It will look as if the final curtain has been drawn on this act that steadfastly refused to die.

Did you know the United States of America will not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel? We have our Embassy in Tel Aviv and will not move it. Even though the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which calls for Jerusalem to be recognized as the capital of Israel, was passed by Congress in 1995, neither Bill Clinton, nor George W. Bush, nor Barach Obama has implemented it.

America backing away from support of Israel is foolishness.

Yet, that is exactly what the Bible says will happen.

But let me tell you a great truth. When it appears that all is lost, and the nations of this world will finally do to Israel what heretofore was not able to be done, the Lord Jesus is going to come to the rescue.

"And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they have pierced; they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn." (Zech. 12:10) Scales of blindness will finally fall from Israel's eyes. Her heart will be softened toward the Lord Jesus Christ, and in an instant, an entire nation will not only be saved physically, but will be saved spiritually.

The only hope for Israel is not in the land, the law, or a language. It's in the Lord. It's not in missiles, might, money, or manpower, it's in a Master. Her only hope is not in a politician, it's in a Person, and his name is Jesus. "