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| At the end of the Six Day War, Israeli soldiers hug and kiss the stones of the Western Wall. |
"Years ago, I canceled a subscription to a newspaper after it landed on my doorstep with a headline shouting “Crazed snow plower kills 1, rams 50 cars.” I wasn’t protesting its decorum or even its journalistic accuracy — though I doubted the news staff had the medical training necessary to diagnose the snow plower as “crazed.”
"Rather, my cancellation was to protect my own sanity. Whatever reasons the editors had for sensationalizing the front page, it left me on edge, expecting any day to see a headline blaring “War with China.”
"I felt the same way last week when turning on a CNN broadcast to a news crawl and graphic blaring “Israel under attack on seven fronts.” Shocked, I immediately checked other sources to learn if Israel really was at the brink of destruction. The volley of attacks from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, Yemen, Iraq and Iran were real, I learned, according to Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant, but not quite the armageddon suggested by the CNN crawl.
"Yet there was a difference between CNN’s hype and that long-ago newspaper headline: This time, the calamity was very much imaginable." . . .
"Today Israel’s Jewish population numbers about 5.3 million.2 In the past 59 years, those returning have rebuilt and cultivated the land, bringing it back to life and beauty (36:8–12). But they do so in unbelief.
"Some people question whether today’s Israel is the Israel referred to in the dry bones passage and believe the prophecy will not be fulfilled until the Messiah’s return. However, other prophetic passages show that Israel must be in its land as a recognized nation before the Messiah returns: . . ."
