Happy Re-Birthday Israel!

The history of Israel has been turbulent no doubt. This little nation smaller than the state of Florida has been a thorn in the world’s side for millennia. If we only look at the last 2000yrs since the time of Christ, Jerusalem was completely destroyed as prophesied by Yehshua. Under Caesar Titus of Rome, the Roman armies would destroy Jerusalem and kill over 1 million Jews. When Rome split under Emperor Constantine, Jerusalem came under the authority of the eastern leg of Rome called the Byzantine Empire. From there, the Persians capture Jerusalem in 614AD, only to lose it again 15 years later to Byzantine Christians. 10 years later, the religion of Islam was invented as a way to control the growing expanse of Christians as Rome lost its ruling authority, and Jerusalem remained under Muslim control for the next almost 500yrs.

Then the Crusader movement takes Jerusalem from the Muslims, and this battle goes on back and forth between Christians and Muslims for the next 150 yrs until the Ottoman Turks come along and take everything from everyone in that region of the world that was the Byzantine Empire. Jerusalem would remain under Ottoman control for 500yrs until World War I, where it would fall under control of the British.

On November 2, 1917, the Balfour Declaration written by British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour, was a statement of British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” This was an enormous step where the international community would begin to recognize the process of the Rebirth of Israel.

As usual, the little nation of Israel was a source of major international controversy, and the Balfour Declaration was set to expire in 1948. The League of Nations was instrumental in quickly drafting documents that would favor the Jewish people over neighboring Arab nations, and 11 minutes after it’s formation by the League of Nations, at 11:50pm Tel-Aviv time on May 14, 1948, President Harry Truman quickly signed the US Government’s recognition of the “temporary” State of Israel, fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy:

Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children.

Happy Re-Birthday Israel!!