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Stan Goodenough is an experienced journalist who has written about politics in South Africa and the Middle East for such organizations as The Daily Dispatch of East London, South Africa, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, The Jerusalem Post, and the Virtual HolyLand website. He has been a South African gentile resident in Israel for 12 years. Stan is editor of and .
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By Stan Goodenough
July 26, 2006
Christians are not superstitious. We do not believe in fate or chance. All things are ordered by God and there are no real "coincidences" in this life.
Many of us holding this conviction do, however, look for signs as we seek to hear the Lord speaking to and directing us. And when really amazing things do occur, it can seem -- to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear -- that the Lord Himself is shouting a message from the heavens.
This, for example, is how I view the discovery of the Isaiah manuscript of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, and its identification in 1948.
For me the timing of the find -- precisely in the years when the United Nations voted to partition Palestine and David Ben Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel -- together with the identity of the book -- Isaiah perhaps being the primary prophet foretelling the restoration of the Jews to their Land -- put God's "stamp of authenticity" on this momentous event.
Biblical scholars have remarked that the Scroll's discovery blew away much of the skepticism that had taken root concerning the divine Authorship of the Bible.
Something similar -- if not of quite the same magnitude -- happened for me today, a fortnight into Israel's two-front conflict with Hamas in the south and Hizb'allah in the north.
Early this morning (Wednesday, July 26, 2006), I met with nine other men in the new King of Kings Pavilion Prayer Tower high above downtown Jerusalem. On top of our prayer agenda, naturally enough, was the ongoing war that has been triggered by Muslim Arabs bent on destroying the Jewish state.
It is not always easy to know what or how to pray in such circumstances. We know that God's thoughts are not our thoughts nor are our ways His ways, and we do not wish to pray presumptuously. We even have to submit our understanding of what we read in God's Word, the Bible, to His Holy Spirit. Sometimes it is perhaps best to simply pray that Word back to God and, as it were, remind Him of what He has written.
Early in the meeting today Pastor Wayne Hilsden was prompted to read Psalm 83. For those of us living in Israel, this is a well known imprecatory psalm -- one of the "War Psalms."
Part of it reads: For behold, Your enemies make a tumult; and those who hate You have lifted up their head. They have taken crafty counsel against Your people, and consulted together against Your sheltered ones. They have said, "Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel may be remembered no more." (Psalm 83:2-4)
We prayed into it.
Upon returning home two hours later, I found that someone had emailed me a fascinating AP wire report off the CNN website (reprinted in Israel Insider). It was headlined:
"Medieval book of psalms unearthed -- First millennium manuscript, open to Psalm 83, found in Irish mud."
According to the report, the 20-page book, which was found by a construction worker digging in the bog last week, has been expertly dated to the years AD 800 to 1000.
It was the first time in more than 200 years that an early medieval Irish document had been unearthed.
AP quotes the director of the National Museum of Ireland, Pat Wallace, who described the discovery as "really a miracle find."
"There's two sets of odds that make this discovery really way out," Wallace said. "First of all, it's unlikely that something this fragile could survive buried in a bog at all, and then for it to be unearthed and spotted before it was destroyed is incalculably more amazing."
What's even more incredible to me is that this book, opened to this psalm, was discovered at this specific time in history.
For right now Israel's enemies are again united in their desire to "cut Israel off from being a nation, that the name of Israel may be remembered no more." They purpose to take for themselves the "pastures of God for a possession." And that they are in league -- or in a confederacy -- is clear.
From Gaza, supported by most of the Arab states, the violence is being directed by the Palestinian Arab terrorist groups: the PLO, Hamas, the Palestine Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front For the Liberation of Palestine and the popular resistance Committees.
In the north, the Lebanese group Hizb'allah, supplied and enabled by Syria and the non-Arab but also Islamic Iran, is raining rockets down on Israel.
This, given the current situation, makes Psalm 83 a fascinating and fitting read, the ancient find nothing short of a phenomenon.
I don't want to take it any further than I should, but time may also show that the discovery of the Irish psalm book was a warning.
Many people have sensed that Damascus could be sucked into this war. Twelve days ago the Islamic Republic of Iran warned that an Israeli strike on Syria would be considered an attack on the whole Islamic world and would elicit a "fierce response."
Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly spelled out his vision for Israel.
"Israel must be wiped off the map." (October 26, 2005)
"The West [must] remove what they created sixty years ago ... [or] the Palestinian nation and other nations will eventually do this for them." (February 11, 2006)
"Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation. The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm." (April 15, 2006)
And on July 8, 2006 Ahmadinejad told the foreign ministers of Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey, Bahrain and Egypt, together with the heads of the Arab League and the Islamic Conference that "all the conditions for the removal of the Zionist regime are at hand.... It won't take long before the wrath of the people turns into a terrible explosion that will wipe the Zionist entity off the map."
Wrote one commentator: None of the foreign ministers present, including Jordan, Egypt or Turkey -- commonly regarded as Israel's friends in the Arab/Muslim world -- objected to the call for annihilation.
Will today's Rome Summit bring about a ceasefire, or even perhaps a new "peace plan" that will see the war now raging brought to an end?
Or could we be on the verge of an all out Middle East conflagration concerning which we need to pray like Asaph, regarding those bent on Israel's destruction:
O my God, make them like the whirling dust, like the chaff before the wind! As the fire burns the woods, and as the flame sets the mountains on fire, so pursue them with Your tempest, and frighten them with Your storm. Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek Your name, O LORD. Let them be confounded and dismayed forever; yes, let them be put to shame and perish, that they may know that You, whose name alone is the LORD, are the Most High over all the earth. (Psalm 83:13-18)
May His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. All glory to our wonderful God and His living and mighty Word!
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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