Tonight Israel celebrates her 64th year of ‘independence’.  These 64 years certainly give reason for people everywhere to pay heed to her miraculous revival as a nation: whether if from God according to Biblical prophecy; or of man apart from any direct intervention of God; or merely a quirk of history allowed for in the sovereignty of God ruling through history, without any specific purpose.

Last night and today Israelis remembered all those who sacrificed their lives in the numerous wars from the beginning in 1948, as well as those killed in the many terrorist  attacks during the past 25 years.  The Passover was recently remembered, when unnumbered first-borns of Egyptians were killed as a price of Pharaoh’s hardness of heart.  Shortly afterward, Israel remembered the 6,000,000 Jewish people deliberately and systematically victimized,  killed, and stripped of all dignity (including tattooed numbers for identity, and cremation) in the Holocaust by the Nazi regime of WWII.

Israel’s history is replete with suffering and death as the price of gaining freedom and liberty.  Messiah Yeshua/Jesus suffered the shame and brutality of the cross for the victory and glory which came forth from His sacrificial suffering and death.  It is with much tribulation that we enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  Israel is given as an example (not a contrast) to the Church.

We look forward to that day when the full remnant from all the tribes of Israel will return to YHVH their God through calling on the only One given to her for deliverance and salvation — blessing the Lord Jesus Christ who alone will come in the name of YEHOVAH — and looking on Him whom they have pierced.  Their true freedom will come when they become fully dependent upon their Father and His Son.

May we see this in our generation!