A Nation Born In A Day

Author : Tan Nget Hong
Publisher : 文桥传播中心
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book Can a Nation Be Born in a Day? written by Tan Nget Hong and published by 文桥传播中心. This book was released on with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before she goes into labour, she gives birth; before the pains come upon her, she delivers a son. Who has ever heard of such things? Who has ever seen things like this? Can a nation be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zion in labour than she gives birth to her children. (Isaiah 66:7-8) Can a nation really be born in a day? For almost two thousand years, Christians struggled to know how to interpret the numerous references to the restoration of Israel in the prophetic books of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel; including this passage from Isaiah 66. For hundreds and hundreds of years since the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, the Jewish people were scattered all over the world, and with every passing century, it seemed less and less likely that the nation of Israel would be restored. In order to make sense of those promises to the nation of Israel that seemed to have disappeared for good, theologians began to suggest that all the references and promises of restoration of Israel should be transferred to the church, and Isaiah 66:7-8 has been interpreted as the rapid spread of the gospel and the birth of the Church after Pentecost in the time of the apostles. But on May 14th, 1948, a great miracle happened! Just as the Jewish people were still reeling from the horror of the Holocaust, where two-thirds of European Jewry had been gassed or gunned down en masse, the Jews who returned to the Land of Israel were able to declare the establishment of Israel as a sovereign nation, 2600 years after the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah. On the same day, the United States government recognized Israel’s sovereignty. Only hours beforehand, the Brash control of the land ceased formerly, modern Israel was literally born in a single day, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 66:7-8! The restoration of Israel is also the fulfilment of the prophecies in Ezekiel 37. In a vision, Ezekiel was brought by the Spirit of the Lord in the middle of a valley full of dry bones. The Lord asked Ezekiel, “Son of man, can these bones live?” Ezekiel said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”. And then the Lord told Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones, that the Lord would make His breath enter the bones, and the bones will come to life. And as Ezekiel was prophesying, he saw the bones came together, and then tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them. Then the Lord spoke to Ezekiel again to prophesy to the breath to come into those slain, and as Ezekiel prophesied as the Lord commanded him, breath entered them, and they came to life and stood up on their feet! And then the Lord said: “These bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone, we are cut off.’ But the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open the graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land.” The modern-day restoration of Israel is indeed like the reviving of the dry bones. Humanly speaking, it is impossible. Yet the restoration of the nation of Israel and the return of the Jews to the land of Israel, as prophesied in this passage, really came to pass in our generation! To understand the significance of the miraculous restoration of Israel, we need to know the entire background of the fall of ancient Israel. The fall of ancient Kingdom of Israel and the restoration of Israel as a sovereign nation 3,500 years ago, the Prophet Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and then entered the promised land of Canaan (today's Land of Israel) to establish the nation of Israel. During the reign of King David in 10th century BC, Israel was the most powerful country in the Middle East. But after King David's death, the Israelites began to turn away from God. After the death King Solomon, the successor of King David, Israel was further divided into the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah. The Northern Kingdom was destroyed by the Assyrian in 721 BC, and the Southern Kingdom by the Babylonian in 586 BC. With the fall of the Kingdom of Judah, Jerusalem was burned to the ground, and the survived Jews were exiled to Babylon, this was the first exile of the Jews. After 70 years of Babylonian captivity, God moved the heart of the Persian King that ruled Babylon and allowed the exiled Jews to return to the Land of Israel to rebuild their homeland. But apart from a brief period during which the Jews managed to establish their own Hasmonean Kingdom, the land of Israel were mostly ruled by foreigner conquerors. In Jesus' day, the Land of Israel was a province of the Roman Empire. In AD 66, the Jews rebelled against the Roman authority, but the insurrection was quickly and bloodily suppressed by the Roman Legions. In AD 70, the Romans captured Jerusalem, the Jews were slaughtered and the city of Jerusalem, including its magnificent temple, was once again razed to the ground. In this Jewish-Roman wars, more than a million Jews were killed, and a hundred thousand were taken into slavery, and the rest were scattered to every corners of the world. This was the second exile of the Jews. And for the past two thousand years, very few Jews remained in the Land of Israel, the bulk of the Jewry were in exile, and in most countries, they were oppressed, persecuted and discriminated against. After the 7th century, the Land of Israel was ruled by the Arab Muslim regime and then by the Ottoman Turks until the First World War. Throughout this period, the Jews were not welcomed to settle in the land of the ancestors. By 19th century, there were less than 30,000 Jews in the land, living among hundreds of thousands of Arabs. By this time, the nation of Israel was like “dry bones without any hope.” (Ezekiel 37:11) Yet according to Biblical prophesies, one day Israel will be restored and will play an important role in God's plan for the last days. For example, the prophet Micah prophesied: The day for building your walls will come, the day for extending your boundaries. In that day people will come to you from Assyria and the cities of Egypt, even from Egypt to the Euphrates and from sea to sea, and from mountain to mountain. The earth will become desolate because of its inhabitants, as the result of their deeds. Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock of your inheritance, which lives by itself in a forest, in fertile pasturelands. Let them feed in Bashan and Gilead, as in days long ago. “As in the days when you came out of Egypt, I will show them my wonders.” Nations will see and be ashamed, deprived of all their power. They will put their hands over their mouths and their ears will become deaf. They will lick dust like a snake, like creatures that crawl on the ground. They will come trembling out of their dens; they will turn in fear to the Lord our God and will be afraid of you. (Micah 7:11-16). On May 14th , 1948, this prophetic words were fulfilled! With the ending of the British Mandatory rule over Palestine, and as the British troops completed their withdrawal from the land, the leader of Jewish Agency, David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the sovereign state of Israel in Tel Aviv! However, at that time, few in the world believed Israel could survive in the ensuing Israel-Arab war. Could 600,000 Jews with 30,000 lightly armed soldiers survived the attack of the well-equipped armed forces from the surrounding seven Arab nations? The Arab coalition was very confident of a quick victory. They urged the Arabs in Palestine to quickly leave the war zone, and promised that "in two weeks or so, you will be able to return to your home, and by then there would be not even one living Jews in Palestine!” They promised a massacre of the Palestinian Jews. Not only did the Arabs think so, but the British and American military experts at the time also shared the same view. They all believed that the lightly armed Israel army was no match for the Arab armies equipped with heavy artillery, tanks and aircraft. In fact, on the eve of Israel's independence, the U.S. Secretary of State, General Marshall, warned the Jewish representatives in the United States that in the coming military conflict with the Arabs, the Israelis would surely be defeated; and if the Jews insists on declaring independence, they should not expect military assistance of the U.S. Marshal Montgomery, the famous British general in World War II, believed that the Jews would suffer a terrible defeat this time. General Gordon McMillan, the Commander-in-chief of the British Forces in Palestine, also said that the Arab coalition would be able to destroy the Jewish forces effortlessly. However, the fact is, although the Jews paid a great price in the war of Independence of Israel, the Arab coalition forces besieging Israel were eventually routed. Instead of being destroyed, the newly formed State of Israel expanded its territory in the war, and in the years that followed, hundreds of thousands of Jews poured into the new nation from all directions! The prophecy of the prophet Micah more than two thousand years ago was fulfilled: “Nations will see and be ashamed, deprived of all their power. They will put their hands over their mouths and their ears will become deaf.” Not only the military and political leaders of the Arab League were frightened and humiliated, the British and American generals had literary “put their hands over their mouths” as they saw with the own eyes the total defeat of the supposedly much more powerful Arab armies! To be fair, from the perspective of military strength and strategic analysis, the opinions of these military experts were correct. It's just that this war of independence of Israel was not just the war between the Jews and the Arabs. The Arabs were not only fighting the Jews, but their real opponent was the God of Israel, the God who created the heavens and the earth! The theme of this book entitled "Can a Nation be born in a Day?” is about how God restored the nation of Israel in the last days and the roles that Israel will play in God's plan for the end times. This book was written originally in Chinese, with the title: “The Iron Tree Has Bloomed”. “The iron tree blooms” is a Chinese idiom used to describe a highly improbable occurrence. Indeed, a careful study of the history of the restoration of the nation of Israel, which is the main subject of this book, shows that the establishment of the modern state of Israel is essentially impossible without the interventions of the Living God. And this book challenges you to think, how are you going to respond to the fulfilment of God's prophecies in our generation, in this last day?