Saturday, June 26, 2010

Letter to Pastors

June 24, 2010
 
Dear Preachers:
 
Having been in Israel for the Givati Brigade Family Celebration of their 197 KIA families, we were there during the time of the "Flotilla" operation.
 
However, from the Headlines in Arutz Sheva I see the following:

Armed Iranian Ships Set to Sail
 
Two Iranian ships to Hamas-controlled Gaza are waiting for government okay to challenge Israel on the high seas, escorted by "volunteer Iranian Marines.

Preachers, something has to "set off" End Time Events, and this might just be that. The coming of our MESSIAH is soon!

Another story I picked up on is the Measure on which the Presbyterians are soon voting:


In just a few days the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) will be voting on a measure that calls for Israel to withdraw from the "illegal occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza...and for the United States to halt all military and economic assistance to Israel. 

This move is not surprising given the past track record of the PCUSA which voted to divest all of its economic holdings in Israel back in 2004, but it represents a startling willingness on the part of American Christians to ignore the clear teaching of Scripture regarding God's prophetic plan for Israel and the Holy Land. The land in question is part of the land that God promised to Abraham for Isaac and Jacob and King David!!
 
I am preparing for an upcoming trip, which will be very difficult upon me. My heart has gone back into Atrial Fibrillation, which means that the left ventricle is "fluttering again" instead of pumping. What that means "practically" for me, is, that I am much more susceptible to a heart attack or stroke now, than I was, when they shocked my heart, on May 27th, and it beat as it should until May 30th. In hindsight, I think it went back into Atrial Fibrillation the morning I was getting ready to leave the house for Israel on May 30th. Anyway, that is my problem at the moment. I shall be in Texas today, then Arkansas Sunday, Kentucky Monday to Friday. Then I will travel on to Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. I am looking forward to being with Dr. Denny Corle and Dr. Bryan Sharp at Claysburg, then our good friend, Brian Korner, Wapwallopen at Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. I call him "Mr. Clean." With my tumor, Gall bladder problems, and high blood pressure, I am "an accident" going somewhere to happen.
 
However, the Lord God of the Hebrews gives me strength to get out of bed each day — 5 AM this morning, and the strength to read Scriptures and pray with the Bride of my youth. When we simply allow God’s Word to be Precious to us, IT SHALL CERTAINLY BE!
 
Then, I’m privileged with the strength to go to work on THINGS OF THE LORD.
 
Preachers, I love to read history. Because I believe if a person knows history, he can get a glimpse of the future for so much of history can teach us lessons about history.
 
I love to read of the "strangers" and "sojourners" in the Bible. I love to read of the Ur of the Chaldees, and that man Abraham, called the Friend of God. I love to read of the "promised land" the Tribes, and amphictyonies. I love to read about Joseph — one of my favorite Bible characters. I love to read of Moses, the Laws, Divine Sovereignty, human sanctity and the democratic Theocracy. I love to read of Joshua [Oshea called Je-hosh-u-a] the conqueror, and his sidekick Caleb. Their Wholly following the LORD blesses my soul. I love to read of Judges and their charismatic delinquents; of Samuel and state prophecy; of Saul and the great constitutional debate; of David, the sacerdotal king; of Elijah’s hearing the still, small voice; of Amos and class warfare; of Isaiah and the birth of conscience; and of Jeremiah, whom several Jews, have to me, called him "the first Jew."
 
I mention above the Presbyterian Church, and their 2010 stand against the Jews in Israel and for the Palestinians.
 
I love to read about Boston’s Old South Church meeting of October 31, 1819, more attended by Presbyterians than Methodists, Baptists, or anyone else.

That "Restorationist" meeting voted to send Levi Parsons and Pliny Fisk to Palestine, where the Jews, for then for eighteen centuries had lived in political limbo, homeless and shorn of independence. Parsons told those Presbyterians, "Admit there still exists in the breast of every Jew an unconquerable desire to inhabit the land which was given to their Fathers; a desire, which even a conversion to Christianity does not eradicate." Further, he said, "...Were the Ottoman occupation of Palestine to vanish, nothing but a miracle would prevent their [the Jews] immediate return."

Now, let me invite your attention to "Texas history" where I grew up in Comanche Indian country, where the Pehnahterkuh Comanches, led by Buffalo Hump, decided to make war on the Anglo-Americans yonder in Texas.
 
Most of the Yampahreekuh and Kuhtsooehkuh Indians were occupied in peacemaking with the Cheyennes and Arapahos at Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas River, but Buffalo Hump, a scatological namesake, as most Commanches were so named, was not in the peace making business! What names those were.
 
In late July 1840, Buffalo Hump’s great Pehnahterkuh Comanche war band was ready, fortified with provisions and dancing. On August 1, his band rode off the high escarpment toward the level plains that fell away to the Gulf of Mexico. They avoided "bad medicine" San Antonio, with its bristling encampments of Texas Rangers and soldiers.
 
Texans call Buffalo Hump's raid "the great Linville raid," which went into that hot, dry, and harsh country of gently rolling coastal prairies and fertile river bottoms, vast open spaces thinly dotted with farms, and small towns and settlements.

Buffalo Hump’s host passed near San Antonio during the night of August 4th, moving south on a route between San Antonio and Gonzalez. He rode by the rising moon, and his tactics were flawless. He penetrated that borderland undetected with over 1,000 Comanches, being deep into Anglo-Texas before his trail was discovered. The sight of the broad, beaten path made by the passage of thousands of unshod ponies raised instant alarm with Texas Ranger Captain Ben McCulloch reading the sign perfectly and grimly, sending riders in all directions to cry the alarm and to call out the militias.
 
Those small town farmers little resembled their cousins in Europe, for the entire male population habitually went armed, claiming and using their Second Amendment rights; a boy got his first gun and learned to shoot it accurately at the age of six or seven. These folks were heavily salted with frontiersmen who had been accustomed to violence most of their lives.
 
Their leaders, like Ranger Captain Ben McCulloch, were almost never rich, propertied, or professional people; but, rather that cool, grim, pistol-heavy breed of border rider who had grown up along the frontier and therefore reacted calmly and purposefully to violent emergencies.

When Ben McCulloch’s band came to Victoria, Texas, whooping warriors appeared out of the blue, taking the settlement by complete surprise, and cut down several inhabitants on the outskirts. Had the Comanches immediately ridden into the town, being prepared to hunt down the whites therein on foot, there is little question bu that their numbers could have slaughtered the entire population. However, the Comanches had to do their "circling" of the town, intending to intimidate the inhabitants. What every occurred was "such Comanche medicine" worked no magic on Victoria townsfolk, nor their buildings. Therefore, while the Comanches were mutilating the corpses of those they had killed on arrival, speared cattle, and were riding around the community screeching their "supposed" triumph, doing this all day and then all night, on the 7th Ben McCulloch sent Commanches into the town, to set fire to the houses.
 
The townsmen [and women and boys] opened up with blistering fire from roofs and windows. Quickly, those [sic] brave Comanche killers lost stomach for a real fight, and therefore retreated, driving off some 2,000 mules and horses. Fifteen Anglo Americans had died in Victoria, but the town stood. This event, however, was an Indian raid which no living Texan had ever experienced.
 
On August 8th, the Comanches came upon Linville, seizing a woman who was a granddaughter of Daniel Boone, the great Kentucky frontiersman. They killed her baby and took her with them on a horse!
 
They captured a Major Watts’ widow and tied her to a pony. That diversion allowed most Linville residents to run to the shore and escape into the water in little boats.
 
The bonanza of Linville was Buffalo Hump’s warrior’s undoing. There they broke into John Linn’s warehouse, packed with goods waiting for shipment: bolts of red cloth, boxes of fashionable stovepipe hats, umbrellas, and assorted ladies’ finery. The warriors, with their Comanche women close on their heels, joyously broke up and despoiled a two years’ store of merchandise. They put on the tall hats and galloped about trailing bolts of crimson cloth, carrying opened umbrellas. Much was destroyed. But, the Comanche women packed much onto the stolen pack mules. The horde spent the whole day looting Linville, then set the town afire while its unhappy residents watched from far out on the bay. Unable to drive off the cows and other livestock, for sport, the Comanches lanced the animals, roaring with savage humor as the beasts moaned and died.
 
Buffalo Hump didn’t know it, but he had lost control of his Comanche band, as the unexpected windfall of loot was destroying the war chief’s strategy.
 
Normal practice after such a raid would have been to "turn about" and ride "hard and fast" for many hours, choosing a route through the least populated country, resting only when pursuit was far outdistanced.
 
But, because of all the "heavy load of loot" being transported by slow walking mules, the whole party had to match the slowness of their captured mules. Arrogantly, Buffalo Hump took his time.
 
McCulloch’s Rangers had grown to over 100 in number, and they ran into Buffalo Hump’s rear scouting parties early on the 9th. Sorting out that the Comanches would cross Big Prairie near Plum Creek, which was a small tributary of the San Marcos River, McCulloch set harassers in place to stay behind the Comanches, and he skirted them to meet them at Plum Creek.
 
The Rangers were under hard bitten captains: Tumlinson, Matthew Caldwell, John Moore, Edward Burleson, and Big Foot Wallace. All of these men who had previously faced Comanches along the Colorado frontier, arrived, along with the Bastrop militia, a large contingent, and Brigadier General Felix Huston of the Texas Army, who, as the ranking regular officer, took command of all Rangers, Militias, and Volunteers.
 
Fourteen Tonkawa warriors under their chief, Placido, arrived at Huston's headquarters. Their chests were heaving; they had trotted thirty miles to join the Texans against the hated Comanches. They had no horses. But, General Huston realized they’d make excellent scouts.
For identifying them, Huston had them tie white rags around their arms, and sent them out on the most arduous and dangerous task of the day—to scout the Comanche column on foot, and bring him continuous reports.
 
When the Comanches saw the Ranger-Militia-Soldier force, they did the wheeling and prancing, engaging in mounted aerobatics, shouting out their prowess and their mighty medicine, performing feats of horsemanship possible only to the Comanche Indians.
 
A tall warrior in a feather headdress rode out of the Comanche band and yelled insults, daring the white men to single combat. Ranger Captain Matt Caldwell, known as "Old Paint" from his beard and mottled complexion, unimpressed by this savage chivalry, told someone to shoot him. A long rifle cracked and the "Comanche Challenger" tumbled into the dust. A throaty moan rose from the passing Comanches; this was evil medicine.
 
Caldwell called to the General, "Charge 'em Now!" Huston gave the order. The Texans emptied their rifles at the Comanche throng, then, themselves shrieking like Indians, spurred into the flanks and crashed into the main body.
 
The captive horses and mules were spooked. The heavily laden mules plunged into a spot of marshy ground; tired and overloaded, they piled up, and then the huge mass of horses crashed into them.
 
The Texans stayed on the flanks, chasing and killing Comanches. All the Comanches who could free themselves of this press of animals, scattered, and fled in all directions. Their heart had gone out of them. As the Comanches fled, they killed their captives first, in hope of delaying pursuit. The battle went on for fifteen miles. Only one white captive survived, the widow of Major Watts of Linville.
 
Afterward, the Texans counted more than eighty dead warriors; finding only one body of a Texan. Buffalo Hump’s great war party had lost "all its loot" and perhaps one quarter of its effective fighting men.
 
After just a bit of time, then Texas President Lamar sent out Colonel John H. Moore with twelve Lipan Apache scouts and ninety buck-skinned riders, who hit the Pehnahterkuh Comanches close by the Red Fork of the Colorado with its junction by the Concho. The weather was turning chilly on that high, semi-arid, grassy plateau.
 
The Lipan scouts had smelled out a large encampment of Pehnahterkuh Comanches, scattered in their usual half moon arch numbering sixty lodges numbering approximately one hundred warriors. Security was lax, the Comanche weakness when deep in supposedly safe domain. Moore’s orders were as follows: hunt and kill Comanches.
 
Sending a contingent of riflemen across the river on the most likely Comanche escape route, at first light, Colonel Moore’s Texas Rangers were within 200 yards of the encampment before they were discovered.

Attacking on horseback, they stampeded the Indian horses. Then Lt. Owens's sharpshooters, from their ambush position across the river, operating on clear orders, cut loose on the approaching Pehnahterkuh. This was a punitive expedition, in memorial for Linville and Victoria and a dozen roasted victims of the Comanches, spared none. Men, women, and children, on every hand, were dead and dying. Fifty Comanches met their Maker in the camp, more than eighty in the river, all at the cost of one Texan KIA [killed in action].
 
Whatever later historians make of those Texas men, and their methods, the results were decisive! War is war!
 
That year the Pehnahterkuh made no more raids on the Texas frontier where this ole man grew up.

 
These lines shall help the IDF as they prepared to face down their enemies; they SIMPLY MUST, in the next few days.  Whatever historians might make out of "necessity" in these days, we cannot worry about or concern ourselves in the least!  What is needed is decisive results as the Jews had in 1949, 1967, and 1973!!
 
May the L-D G-D of the Hebrews give them wisdom to heed the words of history’s lesson in Texas!
 
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.yedidimofisrael.com
http://www.jav-yedidimofisrael.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Letter to Pastors - June 23, 2010

June 23, 2010
 
Dear Preachers:
 
Obama continues to look for "scapegoats" rather than Victory, with his shabby treatment of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and the upcoming Friday Publication in Rolling Stone. [http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/538160/201006221911/Unfriendly-Fire.aspx]
 
The piece contains unflattering criticism of administration officials and policy in a war that candidate Obama said had to be won in a place we should be fighting.
 
We've become accustomed to rhetorical flourishes by the president that end up meaning not much.
 
That apparently was one of them, along with the part about McChrystal being hand-picked.
 
In the piece, their first meeting was described as more of a blind date than a strategy talk between commander in chief and commander in the field. It quotes an adviser to McChrystal dismissing the early meeting with Obama as a "10-minute photo op."
 
"Obama clearly didn't know anything about him, who he was. The boss was pretty disappointed," the adviser told the magazine. This blind date appears to be ending badly.
 
McChrystal clearly still smarts over Obama's Hamlet-like hand-wringing over the general's request for more troops, particularly when Obama called McChrystal on the carpet last fall for speaking too bluntly about his desire for more troops. "I found that time painful," McChrystal said in the article.
 
The commitment for fewer troops than McChrystal asked for came with a large string attached. The White House's troop commitment was coupled with a pledge to start bringing them home in July 2011. McChrystal would be forced to play "beat the clock" while the Taliban pressed the snooze alarm.
 
McChrystal said he felt betrayed and blindsided by his diplomatic partner, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry.
 
If Eikenberry had any doubts about the troop buildup, McChrystal said he never expressed them until a leaked internal document threw a wild card into the debate over whether to add more troops last November.
 
In the document, Eikenberry said Afghan President Hamid Karzai was not a reliable partner for the counterinsurgency strategy McChrystal was hired to execute. McChrystal also felt he was being set up.
 
"Here's one that covers his flank for the history books," McChrystal told the magazine. "Now, if we fail, they [Eikenberry and Obama] can say 'I told you so.' "
 
Our Afghan policy is clearly in chaos, and the only thing the administration appears committed to is heading for the exits with a good cover story.

Despite reassurances to Congress by Gen. David Petraeus, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said Sunday: "The July (2011) date, as stated by the president, that's not moving, that's not changing. Everybody agreed on that date."
 
Well, maybe not everybody.
 
From this ole preacher-warrior’s viewpoint in Oklahoma, there are issues with McChrystal’s politically correct rules of engagement, which, have, in my opinion, led to higher-than-necessary casualties.
 
What's clearly needed is a "president and a general" who are both fully committed to unconditional victory with no arbitrary troop levels or timetables. Our "Muslim-Marxist" is still the president, our new General is General Petraeus, who, by and large was greatly responsible, again, in my opinion, for the "surge" tactics in Iraq, so we may not have "downsized" in changing Generals.
 
Otherwise, if all this doesn’t work, for all you folks whose memories go all the way back to 1975, all we may need to do is wait for the helicopters on the roof of our embassy in Kabul.
 
President Obama, sure, was in his rights to fire McChrystal for insubordination.
 
Unfortunately, we're stuck with our commander in chief until long after the Afghan war may be lost. [end of article]
 
On a less serious, but, still serious side, a federal judge overturned President Obama's six-month moratorium on new deep-water drilling projects. [http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/538164/201006221911/Gulf-Drilling-Season-Reopens.aspx]

It's a good decision, one that puts reason and the law before populist politics.
 
In rejecting the moratorium, New Orleans federal judge Martin Feldman said "the Interior Department failed to provide adequate reasoning for the moratorium" and suggested it intentionally misled the public.
 
The administration's case, from the beginning, lacked either a moral or a legal basis, and the judge saw right through it. The moratorium was political pandering, pure and simple.
 
Not tough to see why. The president's popularity is in a nose dive that has accelerated since the Gulf oil blowout.
 
A CBS-New York Times poll taken last week found that only 32% believe the president has a plan to deal with the disaster, vs. 59% who believe he doesn't.
 
Some 61% fault the White House for reacting too slowly to the Gulf spill, which has gushed 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil a day since April 20.

It's been an epic PR disaster for a White House already hurt by growing charges of incompetence and inexperience.
 
Given the steady drip-drip of bad news for the White House — even many of Obama's most ardent liberal supporters in the media, like MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, have abandoned him on this issue — the logical impulse was to do what has always seemed to work in the past: politicize the blame.
 
That's why the president announced the moratorium on May 26, affecting some 33 exploratory drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.
 
Early on, he vowed to kick BP's backside, a nice bit of populist theater he followed up by compelling the oil company to fund a possibly illegal $20 billion "trust," to be administered by the White House.
 
He knew the extortion from BP and the even-broader industry moratorium would be popular with many voters, who are in no mood to be nice to Big Oil after BP's blowout.
 
We can't blame people for being mad. But the simple fact is, the moratorium was a disaster that would have made things worse.
 
Not only did it punish oil companies that had done nothing wrong for BP's mistakes, but if carried out, it would have wreaked devastation on the Gulf region's economy — and on U.S. energy security.
 
The Gulf produces nearly a third of our nation's oil. And we will rely on crude oil for 85% of our energy needs at least through the middle part of this century, according to the Energy Department.
 
To halt exploration in an oil-rich area because of one very bad mess-up — and without evidence that the drilling process is inherently dangerous — would be foolish.
 
That was why Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal took the federal government to court.
 
He knew that each of those idled rigs employs an average 230 people.
 
According to oil industry data, the moratorium would cost about $330 million a month in lost wages alone.
 
The knock-on effects would have been worse. Some 40,000 jobs total would have been at risk in the Gulf, according to a report in Popular Mechanics — billions of dollars a month in lost income, during one of the worst recessions in our nation's postwar history.
 
By the way, many of those rigs, which rent out for as much as $1 million a day, would have gone elsewhere, leaving the U.S. high and dry when it finally came back to its senses months from now.
 
Where would they have gone, you ask?
 
How about Brazil, which has embarked on a massive offshore drilling program in recent years, and desperately needs U.S. equipment and know-how.
 
Ironically, the Obama administration has pledged at least $2 billion to help Brazil drill.
 
And this White House seems willing to let China drill not too far off our coast. Apparently, it's only off-limits to us.
 
The response during this crisis by the White House has been pathetic. For petty political reasons, it initially refused to let Louisiana's Jindal build barrier islands to protect his state from the oil.
 
And it still hasn't suspended the Jones Act, which protects union workers by requiring use of U.S.-flagged ships in our waters.
 
That has kept countries like Britain, the Netherlands and Norway, all with lots of deep-water oil experience, from helping clean up.
 
Congress, too, is playing politics — trying to use the crisis as a way to pass cap-and-trade and a ruinous new oil tax.
 
On Page 138 of the recent "tax extenders" bill, Senate Democrats even tried to sneak in a 612% hike in the per-barrel oil tax. You'll pay if they succeed.
 
Nothing the White House or Congress has done will stop the flow of oil into the Gulf. But in the case of the ill-considered moratorium, at least, common sense and the law have prevailed. [end of article]
 
Preachers, your economy, my economy, your country, my country, your future, my future, your kids' future, my kids' future, all — appear to be soon put on the trash heap by the "Muslim-Marxist Commander-in-Chief!"
 
Some of you become upset that I call our "Commander-in-Chief" a "Marxist." Let me tell you about about Karl Heinrich Marx, as he was renamed on August 26, 1824, and his son - Karl Marx.
 
Marx’s grandfather was rabbi in Trier until he death in 1789; his uncle in 1824 was still the rabbi.
 
Marx’s mother came from a long line of famous rabbis and scholars, going back to Meir Katzenellenbogen, a sixteenth century rector of the Talmudic college in Padua.
 
But, Marx’s father, Heinrich, was a "child of the enlightenment," becoming a follower of both Voltaire and Rousseau, before becoming an Ambitious Lawyer.
 
Trier, then, was in Prussia, where Jews had been emancipated since the edict of March 11, 1812. In theory it was still in force, despite Napoleon’s defeat. In reality it was evaded. Thus Jews like Heinrich Marx could train for law, but not practice it.

Supposed conversion to Catholicism [called Christianity] was the avenue Heinrich took to then become a lawyer, and later, the dean of the Trier bar. Karl Marx, then, "mentor" of our Muslim-Marxist President, instead of attending a Jewish yeshiva, went to Trier High School, and his being baptized into "Catholicism-called-Christianity" proved to be even more significant to the world than had that of the 1817 baptism of a twelve-year-old precocious boy, Benjamin Disraeli, who later was British Prime Minister.
 
Today, through Saul Alinsky’s methods, you and I have a President who is bound and determined to bring this country "to ruin." God help us to get the "help we need" from God Himself to avert such nonsense.
 
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL 
www.yedidimofisrael.com
http://www.jav-yedidimofisrael.blogspot.com/

Monday, June 21, 2010

Letter to Pastors

June 21, 2010
 
Dear Pastors:
 
The reality of 2010 is that we are "in the last days" and Satan will do everything he can to get our focus off where it should be, and put in on something such as our mind's eye of "our importance" to God. God doesn’t need us.
 
In the Divine Dispensation, for all you who might be "dispensationalists," Israel was destined to sustain the highest and most important part that can be assigned to any nation.
 
Originally chosen to be the depositary of Spiritual Truth, and separated from all other nations in order to fulfill this mission, it was preserved till the Divine purposes were accomplished. These purposes served as the channel and as the exemplification of Divine truth, and to afford a medium by which the fulness of Divine truth, and of Divine fact, might become embodied in Him, my SAVIOUR, the LORD JESUS CHRIST.
 
With a Muslim-Marxist-Socialist sitting in the White House, our nation no longer is the representative, and its 2010 history the embodiment, of some truth, as would have applied in a special manner, or had at least became specially manifest in our 200 plus year history. In the case of Israel, Israel was mean to be a theocracy. Our Forefathers, in America’s case, had enough sense to establish this Republic with a Constitution displaying and embodying the Truth of Divine Providence!
 
In Israel’s case, in its ecclesiastical, but, also, in its political constitution, was it to show forth the supremacy, the authority, and the continued presence of JEHOVAH GOD with HIS Everlastingly Covenanted people.
 
For that truth to be "exhibited to the world," it became necessary to fix upon and to separate from all the rest of the world’s nations, one nation, i.e, the JEWS OF PALESTINE!
 
Now, Praise be to HIS HOLY NAME, though in the preparatory stage national, these were spiritual facts and truths, which ultimately could not belong, and were not meant to be, confined to any one race.
 
These realities are necessarily universal; they are designed for, and apply to all, both "to those who are afar off," and to "those who are nigh."

But, something else of a kindred feature, was Israel’s typical character. Israel, its history, its ordinances, its prophecies, all — were not only so many present realities — they pointed also to something future, to which they stood in the "relationship of shadows."
 
The grand end and meaning of the preparatory stage was to show the need of, and to open the way for, the ADVENT OF THE SAVIOUR! With His Coming, (my Jewish friends has not seen the reality of "Its happenstance") what was "typical" gave place to what is "real," which we Christian Friends of the Jews should not forget.

The "truths" which the Old Testament dispensation and history embodied, were chiefly these: that Jehovah is the "living" and that HE “is the True God,” all other “gods” such as this Ishmaelite created one named “allah,” are but figments of someone’s imagination. In opposition to heathenism, which so much of the "allah followers" play best in making their "women" follow, worship of the TRUE AND ONLY GOD, JEHOVAH GOD, exhibits "the unity," "the personality" "the Character," and "the Purpose" of our TRUE DEITY!
 
We cannot and do not deny that certain traditions, containing some portions of spiritual truth, circulated among the heathen, nor that the Spirit of God Who moved over that chaotic deep awakened among them aspirations after, and ultimately produced a general preparedness for, the coming of the Kingdom.
 
“The World by Wisdom Knew not God,” and the Jewish Nation also, notwithstanding the eternal seed in the midst of it, misunderstood its mission, and, when finally left to its own development, only exhibited by its judgments the truths which at one time it had, and is designed to "declare" and to "enjoy," just as Mrs. Vineyard and I read in the thirty-fifth chapter of Isaiah this morning.

The misunderstandings of the Jews relative to God’s purpose as "Light Bearers" for them (Isaiah 42:6 and 49:6) to us poor dumb Gentiles, and their rejection of THE MESSIAH climaxed not too long afterward in the downfall of Jerusalem and destruction of the temple and the city. Consequently, I have "kindly, but comfortably," told hundreds of Jewish friends who would take me telling them, that same religious tendency led them to that catastrophe, and developed the formalism of true religion to its utmost, until their religion became only a recollection of the past.
 
When "the world by wisdom knows not God," man, left to himself in that state, with all the different "unGodly" tendencies for thought, of morals, and of fact, are allowed to ripen into maturity. That, in turn, proves that, in the highest and only true aim, man left to himself is as unprofitable, and hence must, in the righteous dispensation of his LORD, meet with the same doom as did the unfruitful fig-tree which our LORD cursed.
 
The Jewish nation, bless their hearts, notwithstanding the eternal seed in the midst of it, misunderstood its mission, and, when finally left to its own development, only exhibited by its judgments the truths which at one time it had, and is again, designed to "declare and to enjoy!"
 
Viewed in this light, the history of the Jews gains additional interest and importance. Their past importance can scarcely be overstated:

[1] They gave the world a Bible.

[2] They preserved for the world "the home."

[3] As to HIS humanity, they gave us our SAVIOUR.

[4] Jewish loans made George Washington’s Revolutionary Army capable of purchasing cannon, muskets, and powder to take on the British.

[5] They gave us our system of government [Isaiah 33:22, judicial, legislative, and executive powers of government].

[6] The inventions of their clever minds have given humanity so much.

[7] The "blessings" we can get for befriending and being a blessing [Genesis 12:3] to them are incomprehensible!
 
Yes, they were scattered by the Almighty God for their disobedience to HIM! Still, Israel was to have a future history, and it could not be destroyed.
 
They wandered, but could not be lost. However, in none of their undertakings could they really prosper. It was vain for them, once and again, to renew the unequal contest for national restoration, without the Favor of God Almighty. In my opinion, they gained that back through the efforts of Evangelists D.L. Moody and William Blackstone, who had that great influence upon Arthur Balfour and England’s World War I Prime Minister.
 
Now, Pastors, everything for me for 2010, is future. It is in that light which I have to look at the reality of today. GOD ALMIGHTY DOESN’T NEED ME. I need HIM! He could use anyone to do all that I do.
 
The Jews present importance to us Truly Born Again Christians is indicated by their almost miraculous national preservation, and the fact of their being scattered by the DIVINE HAND broadcast over the fields of the world and of its history, as so many seeds of spiritual truth.
 
The "future importance" lies in this, that they are seeds which are yet to take root, to spring up and to bear bruit; and that their future is connected with the last and brightest events of coming history. Israel and its history are inseparably connect with Scripture. We meet Jews everywhere; and everywhere their past, their present, and their future are full of the deepest meaning.
 
It was during the time of "that root out of Jesse," or King David’s reign, that the nation of Israel gradually gained in unit and strength, and it enjoyed its greatest prosperity in a political point of view under that reign of Jesse’s root, David!
 
In applying that to the Jews, during Solomon’s reign, the introduction of "foreign luxury," and "foreign customs" soon produced its natural result. From that period we may date the commencement of the peculiar pre-Babylonian form of religious apostasy. It had, indeed, appeared even before that event but now it rapidly developed, and finally assumed gigantic proportions.
 
In that stage, the idolatry of Israel, a lesson again for us Independent Baptists in 2010, consisted not so much in "the rejection of the truth," as in "its admixture with and neutralization by, foreign elements."
 
The worship of JEHOVAH GOD was not wholly set aside, but HE was only looked upon as their national DEITY; and along with HIM other national DEITIES were more or less avowedly made objects of worship.
 
The sad consequences of this made themselves feel that, in the series of national judgments, which terminated in the deportation of Israel, and then of Judah, to Babylon, there were, in fact, failures "nationally" to their God, the LORD GOD OF ISRAEL.
 
Israel, then, without her GOD, became Israel without her country.
 
With HIS OWN HAND, then, we can conclusively say, GOD ALMIGHTY took down the tabernacle, and closed the temple doors; HE put HIS SEAL to what had been done in Judgment upon the Jews!
 
Then, after the Jews returned from Babylon, they continued subject to the kings of Persia, and under the administration of their own high priests. But, when Alexander the Great on his march of conquest subdued Syria, Judea also fell into his power.

A Jewish tradition relates that the high priest Jaddua refused to pay to him in future the customary tribute. On the plea of his oath of allegiance to the Persian Monarch, Alexander advanced against Jerusalem. But, at some distance from the city, Alexander was met by a solemn procession, with the high priest at its head, who had come to welcome the conqueror, in obedience to a command Jaddua, the high priest, had in a vision.
 
The tradition adds that Alexander had seen a similar vision, and, in accordance with its injunction, he then received the deputation most graciously, not only sparing their city, and temple, but, even offering sacrifices there, and according great privileges to the Jewish nation.
 
This narrative, whatever may be its historical value, and the numerous other stories about Alexander the Great which Jewish legend has to record, prove, at least, the deep impression which his appearance made. Certainly ever afterward the Jews remained attached to his interests.
 
But, after the death of Alexander, his former generals began to take power in the various provinces which had constituted his empire. They became speedily involved in mutual hostilities, and it was a downhill path then for the Jews!
 
Now, as I try to close out this lengthy email, let me state that, Israel, and its history, are typical; yet will they, as such, meet with a blessed "realization" and it is "reality" which I am dealing with in this letter.
 
Let me mention to you the new public relations stunt, featuring a ship heading for Gaza and carrying Muslim and Christian women headed by a Hizbullah backer, is aimed at embarrassing Israel into using its mighty force against what will be portrayed as defenseless women. [http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/138126]
 
The Lebanese ship has been christened the "Mariam" and received the blessing of Catholic women who gathered last week at a statue of the Virgin Mary in southern Lebanon to pray for her to bless another attempt to break Israeli sovereignty over the coast of Hamas-controlled Gaza.
Flotilla spokeswoman Rima Farah told the French news agency AFP, "The participants are committed to making progress and our only weapons are faith in the Virgin Mary and in humanity."
 
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon stated, "If there was a mask of humanitarianism on previous flotillas, the mask has been removed completely from these boats, which are carrying representatives of Hizbullah and Iran."
 
The women insist they are not affiliated with Hizbullah, but the organizer of the Miriam, Samar al-Hajj, is the wife of Lebanese general Ali Hajj, who is in a Lebanese jail for involvement with the 2005 assassination of former anti-Syrian Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. She reportedly met with Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah last month.
 
Muslim publicists have pulled out all stops for the women’s flotilla. Al-Hajj called women the "new secret weapon" against the "thieving enemy." She claimed that some of the women aboard will include those allegedly suffering from cancer as a result of "chemical bombs" that Israel supposedly used in the Operation Cast Lead war against Hamas terror last year.
 
"This has nothing to do with Hizbullah, although it is an honor for us to be supporters of the resistance," she declared. She also thanked Israel, which has vowed to stop the ship from reaching Gaza, "for its threats which only strengthened these women's willpower to make the trip. We are not afraid."
 
The financial backer of the Mariam and one other ship is Syrian businessman Yasser Kashlak, who previously has stated support for Hizbullah. He told the terrorist organization’s Al-Manar television satellite network that the boats will take "Europe’s refuse [the Jews] that came to my homeland back to their homelands."
 
Kashlak, like Al-Hajj,insists he has no ties with Hizbullah or Hamas, but last year, he wrote Nasrallah in a letter published in a Lebanese newspaper, "In the name of the Palestinian people… we stress that we are taking the path of resistance…. We ask [sic] allah to extend your life and the lives of all who support Palestine and the noble 'resistance,'" the letter stated. [end of article]
 
 
From Nonnie Darwish, let me give you the following:
 
In the Muslim faith a Muslim man can marry a child as young as 1 year old and have sexual intimacy with this child. Consummating the marriage by 9. 

The dowry is given to the family in exchange for the woman (who becomes his slave) and for the purchase of the private parts of the woman, to use her as a toy. 

Even though a woman is abused she can not obtain a divorce. 

To prove rape, the woman must have (4) male witnesses. 

Often after a woman has been raped, she is returned to her family and the family must return the dowry. The family has the right to execute her (an honor killing) to restore the honor of the family. Husbands can beat their wives 'at will' and he does not have to say why he has beaten her. 


The husband is permitted to have (4 wives) and a temporary wife for an hour (prostitute) at his discretion. 

The Shariah Muslim law controls the private as well as the public life of the woman. 

In the West World (America) Muslim men are starting to demand Shariah Law so the wife can not obtain a divorce and he can have full and complete control of her. It is amazing and alarming how many of our sisters and daughters attending American Universities are now marrying Muslim men and submitting themselves and their children unsuspectingly to the Shariah law. 

By passing this on, enlightened American women may avoid becoming a slave under Shariah Law. 

Learn More.... Read: Cruel and Usual Punishment just released in most bookstores. 
Ripping the West in Two.  

Author and lecturer Nonie Darwish says the goal of radical Islamists is to impose Shariah law on the world, ripping Western law and liberty in two. 

She recently authored the book, Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law. 

Darwish was born in Cairo and spent her childhood in Egypt and Gaza before emigrating to America in 1978, When she was eight years old, her father died while leading covert attacks on Israel He was a high- ranking Egyptian military officer stationed with his family in Gaza . 

When he died, he was considered a "shahid," a martyr for jihad. His posthumous status earned Nonie and her family an elevated position in Muslim society. 

But Darwish developed a skeptical eye at an early age. She questioned her own Muslim culture and upbringing. She converted to Christianity after hearing a Christian preacher on television. 

In her latest book, Darwish warns about creeping sharia law - what it is, what it means, and how it is manifested in Islamic countries. 

For the West, she says radical Islamists are working to impose sharia on the world. If that happens, Western civilization will be destroyed. 

In twenty years there will be enough Muslim voters in the U.S. to elect the President!
 
I think everyone in the U.S. should be required to read this, but with the ACLU, there is no way this will be widely publicized, unless each of us sends it on! [end of article]
 
Reality is about to set in upon us. Israel will probably be at war before August 1st. If they are (even as I found out a few minutes ago from my cardiologist that my heart has gone back into "Atrial Fibrillation," which I have known now for some three weeks, or greatly suspicious it had), this ole man is planning to go back over there to be with the Jews in their time of need. Pray for me about all this. And, should I go, it will be very expensive in "war time" which I will need to be calling on all my friends to help with those incurred expenses.
 
I remain, sincerely and gratefully, your dutiful friend and obedient servant,
 
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.YedidimofIsrael.com
http://www.jav-yedidimofisrael.blogspot.com/

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Second Letter to Pastors

June 19, 2010
 
Dear Preachers:
 
Dr. Yoram Ettinger was Israeli Ambassador to the South West (I think based in Houston) for several years.  I have been privileged to become friends with this brilliant man.
 
I thought you would find the below article very interesting.
 
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Follow me @YoramEttinger http://twitter.com/YoramEttinger
For previous OpEds and documents, please visit my reconstructed website, The Ettinger Report,http://www.theettingerreport.co.il.
Shabbat Shalom,
Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, "Second Thought: A US-Israel Initiative", Jerusalem, Israel

The Gaza Flotilla of Hypocrisy
Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought”
Jerusalem Cloakroom #236, June 18, 2010

1.  400,000 Uzbek refugees, and 2,000 fatalities, during June 11-18, 2010 riots in Kyrgyzstan; 3 million refugees in Pakistan during 2009 and 600,000 refugees in the Philippines during 2008; No international investigations; No UN special sessions; No UN special agencies set – such a UNRWA for the 350,000 1948/9 Palestinian refugees – for assistance, protection and advocacy of these refugees.
2.  Joel Brinkley, Stanford University Communications Department and nationally-syndicated columnist, Pulitzer Prize winner for international reporting, former New York Times Bureau Chief in Jerusalem (San Francisco Chronicle, June 13, 2010):
“On May 31, the day activists assaulted Israeli troops as they boarded the Mavi Marmara, prompting the Israelis to shoot and kill nine of them.  In Lahor, Pakistan, that same day, gunmen stormed into a hospital, where they shot and killed 12 badly wounded patients...Those victims were survivors of murderous attacks on two mosques a few days earlier, when 93 worshipers were killed…Didn’t that warrant even a nodding acknowledgment? No, Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said almost nothing about the dead Pakistanis, but did manage to declaim: ‘I unequivocally condemn what appears to be disproportionate use of force, resulting in the killing and wounding of so many people attempting to bring much needed aid to the people of Gaza…’ The week before the aid-flotilla incident, international discussions centered on North Korea and its attack on a South Korean naval vessel.  A torpedo sank the ship, killing 46 sailors. The UN Security Council was to begin discussion of possible action against North Korean.  But the a few days ago, Council members made it clear they were going to drop the North Korea matter and take a resolution condemning Israel…At the same time, all of the blame for the sad state of affairs in Gaza falls on Israel, even though Egypt usually keeps its gates to Gaza locked tight, too…’From our ideological point of view, it is not allowed to recognize that Israel controls one square meter of historic Palestine, Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hams leader, told me. Ismail Abu Shanab suggested: ‘There are a lot of open areas in the US that could absorb the Jews [of Israel]…’ Hamas leaders are single minded…Last week these leaders made their position clear. They fired four missiles into Israel…”
3. Christopher Caldwell, senior editor at The Weekly Standard, contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times and Washington Post (Financial Times, June 4, 2010):
“Imagine the dangers, if, during the Cold War, non-governmental organizations from the Soviet Bloc had sailed flotillas into US waters to protest about racial conflicts or into British waters to protest against IRA internment… Protecting borders is about sovereignty, not sentiments. The fact that, say, a door-to-door evangelist wants to save your soul rather than rob you, does not give him the right to enter your house. The insistence that Israel behaved stupidly rests on the idea that it had other options… Let the boat through, and you have issued an invitation to Iran and others to re-arm Hamas. Stop the boat and you have an ‘incident’…Israel has been held responsible for the actions of others – notably, this week - for the deterioration in its relationship with Turkey… [But,] the deterioration of Turkish-Israeli relations has proceeded steadily since Erdogan brought the AK party to power. Erdogan wants a more Islamic Turkey…Turkey’s growing hostility to Israel is a cause, not a consequence, of the Mavi Marmara incident…The most alarming think this week was not the raid.  It was the way internet opinion fell in behind activist opinion, and then the opinions of political and journalistic elites fell into line with the web…”    

Letter to Pastors

June 19, 2010
 
Dear Preachers:
 
We have 17 Afghanistanis AWOL (absent without leave) from Lackland Air Force Base in the last 18 months, all of which had finished part of their flight training.
 
At the GOD SAVE AMERICA RALLY in Illinois in 2001, right after 9/11, I had the young men stand, and told them something to the effect that a good number of you shall die in the WAR which the Muslims have started against us. I don’t know how many, or what percentage, of those have died. I can’t say on that.
 
However, this week I received a letter from Mrs. Jill Beard asking that I be an encouragement to her young LCPL son is in the United States Marine Corps in Afghanistan. The LCPL’s job is to be point man and lead his unit when they are seeking out Improvised explosive devices. What a dangerous assignment that young man has! I am trying to make it so that I can be a real blessing to him.
 
Nineteen Muslims did a number on us on September 11, 2001! Seventeen can do a number on us today. From 2001 to the beginning of 2007, while I still pastored Windsor Hills Baptist Church, we were putting up on White Crosses the names of Oklahomans who were killed in Action, either in Iraq or in Afghanistan. I think our son Tom, who is our Pastor, continues that same process.
 
Regularly at the Sunday closest to the July the 4th, while I pastored, we honored the families of those Oklahoma KIA. What touching services those were!
 
Each time we would have one of those services and I’d look out over those Mamas who’d lost Sons, I’d think of those young men I’d stood up. Recently, in Israel, just with the Givati Brigade, which numbers about 4,500 soldiers, Commanded by Colonel Muni Katz, I looked out at some of the Mamas of the 197 soldiers the Givati Brigade has had Killed in Action.
 
In a few days I shall be delivering plaques from Givati in appreciation to churches which have participated in this most recent "Givati Family Celebration." It is a very touching time for those Mamas who’ve lost loved ones to the Ishmaelite Throat-Slitters.
 
If my memory is correct, while I was in Shattuck, Oklahoma last Nov. 5 speaking to a Veterans Group at the Shattuck High School, of which my friend Dr. Randy Holly is superintendent, Major Hasan got loose at Ft. Hood and gunned down over 40 — killing I think 12, and wounding 31.
 
Regardless of my being right or wrong on the count, that Ishmaelite did a number on Ft. Hood soldiers. About Hasan I just read:
 
The cards make no mention of his military affiliation, but underneath his name he listed himself as SoA (SWT).
SoA is commonly used on jihadist Web sites as the acronym for Soldier of Allah, according to investigators and experts who have studied such sites. SWT is commonly used by Muslims as an acronym for Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, Glory to [g]od.

"He was making no secret of allegiances," said former FBI agent Brad Garrett, an ABC News consultant. [http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/hasan-multiple-mail-accounts-officials/story?id=9065692]

It amazes me how "Truly Born Again" Christian people can read their Bibles, and using the law of First Mention, which all we Bible Preaching Preaches do, take Genesis 12:3 to mean anything other than what it says it means "blessings upon us if we bless the Hebrews" and "curses upon us if we curse the Jews."
 
In Kentucky back in April at the Revival Fires Conference hosted by Dr. Jeff Fugate for Dr. Denny Corle, I preached on those who call me "A Jew Lover." Dr. Bob Smith, outgoing as a pastor down in Arlington, Texas, heard that sermon and sent me a nice note with a $1,000.00 check asking that I "Put That On His Account" as a Jew lover.
 
Just this week, from Washington, I read that thirty-four of the twenty-four told al-Qaida people in Iraq have been captured or killed over the past three months according to our Top American Commander,
the General in charge in Iraq.
 
And, I don’t have it right before me at the moment, but if memory is correct, up in upper Ohio and lower Michigan 9 White Supremacists are being held for practicing with weapons. At any moment they could do something like that to ole JAV who is going all over America teaching ladies how to shoot weapons, and will be doing so a week from today down in Texas, and the following week in Kentucky, then the next week in Pennsylvania.
 
If and when things cave in on us world-wide because of this Obama-led "Borrow everything we can" philosophy, you have’s best know how to shoot when the "have not's" come to take what you "have."

We really are living in troublesome times. Praise the Lord anyway!!!!!
 
From Caroline Glick I read in the Jerusalem Post:
 
Our World: Hamas rises in the West By CAROLINE GLICK, The Jerusalem Post June 15, 2010

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=178470
 
By backing the terrorist group against Israel, western countries are backing Hamas against Fatah and Islamist states against ME moderates. Since the navy’s May 31 takeover of the Turkish-Hamas flotilla, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his advisers have deliberated around the clock about how to contend with the US-led international stampede against Israel.
 
But their ultimate decision to form an investigatory committee led by a retired Supreme Court justice and overseen by foreign observers indicates that they failed to recognize the nature of the international campaign facing us today.
 
Led by US President Barack Obama, the West has cast its lot with Hamas. It is not surprising that Obama is siding with Hamas. His close associates are leading members of the pro-Hamas Free Gaza outfit.
 
Obama’s friends, former Weather Underground terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and William Ayres participated in a Free Gaza trip to Egypt in January. Their aim was to force the Egyptians to allow them into Gaza with 1,300 fellow Hamas supporters. Their mission was led by Code Pink leader and Obama fund-raiser Jodie Evans. Another leading member of Free Gaza is James Abourezk, a former US senator from South Dakota.
 
All of these people have open lines of communication not only to the Obama White House, but to Obama himself. Obama has made his sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood clear several times since entering office.
 
The Muslim Brotherhood’s progeny include Hamas, al-Qaida and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
 
Last June, Obama infuriated the Egyptian government when he insisted on inviting leaders of the
 
Muslim Brotherhood to attend his speech at Al Azhar University in Cairo.
 
His administration’s decision to deport Hamas deserter and Israeli counterterror operative Mosab Hassan Yousef to the Palestinian Authority where he will be killed is the latest sign of its support for radical Islam.
 
Given Obama’s attitude toward jihadists and the radical leftists who support them, his decision to support Hamas against Israel makes sense. What is alarming however is how leaders of the free world are now all siding with Hamas.
 
That support has become ever more apparent since the Mossad’s alleged killing of Hamas terror master Mahmoud al-Mabhouh at his hotel in Dubai in January.
 
In the aftermath of Mabhouh’s death, both Britain and Australia joined the Dubai-initiated bandwagon in striking out against Israel. Israel considers both countries allies, or at least friendly and has close intelligence ties with both. Yet despite their close ties, Australia and Britain expelled Israeli diplomats who supposedly had either a hand in the alleged operation or who work for the Mossad.
 
[JAV -While we were in Israel in late February and early March, the Ishmaelites were still having a "hey-day" over the Mossad’s successful Hit in Dubai. The Jerusalem Post even ran all the pictures the Ishmaelites posted of the Mossad hit-men and hit-ladies! I got a chuckle out of all that!]
 
It should be noted that neither country takes steps against outspoken terror supporters who call for Israel to be destroyed and call for the murder of individual Israelis.
 
For instance, in an interview last month with The Australian, Ali Kazak, the former PLO ambassador to Australia, effectively solicited the murder of The Jerusalem Post’s Palestinian affairs correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh. Kazak told the newspaper, "Khaled Abu Toameh is a traitor."
 
Allowing that many Palestinians have been murdered for such accusations, Kazak excused those extrajudicial murders saying, "Traitors were also murdered by the French Resistance, in Europe;
this happens everywhere."
 
Not only did Australia not expel Kazak or open a criminal investigation against him, as a consequence of his smear campaign against Abu Toameh, several Australians cancelled their scheduled meetings with him. AND OF course, this week we have the actions of Germany and Poland. They are considered Israel’s best friends in Europe, and yet acting on a German arrest warrant, Poland has arrested a suspected Mossad officer named Uri Brodsky for his alleged involvement in the alleged Mossad operation against Mabhouh. Israel is now caught in a diplomatic disaster zone where its two closest allies  who again are only too happy to receive regular intelligence updates from the Mossad  are siding with Hamas against it.
 
And then of course we have the EU’s call for Israel to cancel its lawful blockade of the Gaza coast. That is, the official position of the EU is that an Iranian proxy terrorist organization should be allowed to gain control over a Mediterranean port and through it, provide Iran with yet another venue from which it can launch attacks against Europe. For their part, the Sunni Arabs are forced to go along with this.
 
The Egyptian regime considers the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood took over Gaza a threat to its very survival and has been assiduously sealing its border with Gaza for some time.
 
And yet, unable to be more anti-Hamas than the US, Australia and Europe, Mubarak is opening the border. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa’s unprecedented visit to Gaza this week should be seen as a last ditch attempt by Egypt to convince Hamas to unify its ranks with Fatah.
 
Predictably, the ascendant Hamas refused his entreaties.
 
As for Fatah, it is hard not to feel sorry for its leader Mahmoud Abbas these days.
 
In what was supposed to be a triumphant visit to the White House, Abbas was forced to smile last week as Obama announced the US will provide $450 million in aid to his sworn enemies who three years ago ran him and his Fatah henchmen out of Gaza.
 
So too, Abbas is forced to cheer as Obama pressures Israel to give Hamas an outlet to the sea. This will render it impossible for Fatah to ever unseat Hamas either by force or at the ballot box.
Hamas’s international clout demonstrates to the Palestinians that jihad pays. THERE ARE three plausible explanations for the West’s decision to back Hamas. All of them say something deeply disturbing about the state of the world.
 
The first plausible explanation is that the Americans and the rest of the West are simply naïve. They believe that by backing Hamas, they are advancing the cause of Middle East peace. If this is in fact what the likes of Obama and his European and Australian counterparts think, apparently no one in the West is thinking very hard. The fact is that by backing Hamas against Israel, they are backing Hamas against Fatah and they are backing Iran, Syria, Turkey, Hamas and Hizbullah against Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. They are backing the most radical actors in the region  and arguably in the world  against states and regimes they have a shared strategic interest in strengthening. There is absolutely no way this behavior advances the cause of peace.
 
The second plausible explanation is that the West’s support for Hamas is motivated by hatred of Israel. As Helen Thomas’s recent remarks demonstrated, there is certainly a lot of that going around.
 
The final plausible explanation for the West’s support for Hamas is that it has been led to believe that by acting as it is, it will buy itself immunity from attack by Hamas and its fellow members of the Iranian axis. As former Italian president Francesco Cossiga first exposed in a letter to Corriere della Serra in August 2008, in the early 1970s Italian prime minister Aldo Moro signed a deal with Yasser Arafat that gave the PLO and its affiliated organizations the freedom to operate terror bases in Italy.
 
In exchange the Palestinians agreed to limit their attacks to Jewish and Israeli targets.
 
Italy maintained its allegiance to the deal  and to the PLO against Israel  even when Italian targets were hit. Cossiga told the newspaper that the August 2, 1980 bombing at the Bologna train station  which Italy blamed on Italian fascists  was actually the work of George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Eighty-five people were murdered in the attack, and still Italy maintained its agreement with the PLO to the point where it prosecuted and imprisoned the wrong people for the worst terrorist attack in its history. Cossiga alleged that the deal is still in place today and that Italian forces in UNIFIL have expanded the deal to include Hamas’s fellow Iranian proxy Hizbullah.
 
It isn’t much of a stretch to consider the possibility that Italy and the rest of the Western powers have made a similar deal with Hamas.
 
And it is no stretch at all to believe that they will benefit from it as greatly as the Italian railroad passengers in Bologna did.
 
True, no one has come out and admitted to supporting Hamas. So too, no one has expressed anything by love for Israel and the Jewish people.
 
But the actions of the governments of the West tell a different tale.
 
Without one or more of the explanations above, it is hard to understand their current policies.
 
Since the flotilla incident, Netanyahu and his ministers have held marathon deliberations on how to respond to US pressure to accept an international inquisition into the IDF’s lawful enforcement of the legal blockade of the Gaza coast.
 
Their deliberations went on at the same time as Netanyahu and his envoys attempted to convince Obama to stop his mad rush to give Hamas an outlet to the sea and deny Israel even the most passive right of self-defense.
 
It remains to be seen if their decision to form an investigative panel with international "observers" was a wise move or yet another ill-advised concession to an unappeasable administration.
 
What is certain, however, is that it will not end the West’s budding romance with Hamas.
 
The West’s decision to side with Hamas is devastating.
 
But whatever the reasons for it, it is a fact of life.
 
It is Netanyahu’s duty to swallow this bitter pill and devise a strategy to protect the country from their madness.
 
[End of Glick Article]
 
 
 
 
Now, the Flotilla Ship sent latest to embarrass Israel, sits, as I type these lines, yonder in a Lebanese harbor, not having yet left to confront the Israelis. The ship has American, Egyptian, Lebanese, and Syrian women on it.
 
Now, as I told the Givati Family Celebration about the May 31 flotilla, "Had ole JAV been your Prime Minister, that ship would be sitting on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea." They applauded those remarks. Now, with the one coming, those women on board, if ole JAV were in charge, had better have on life vests or be good swimmers, "cause I’d put their ship on the bottom" as soon as they got into Israeli territorial waters — after warning them to stop.
 
In Mrs. Vineyard's and mine "continued Bible reading out of Isaiah’s prophecy," as we read there together this morning, I was reminded of the third great crisis in Isaiah’s ministry — that of the Siege of Ashdod [711 B.C.].
 
Azuri, its king, following the example of Hoshea in depending upon Egypt for protection, refused to pay his accustomed tribute to Assyria. Whereupon Sargon sent his "Tartan," or "General-in-chief," who besieged Ashdod, and carried its inhabitants into captivity.
 
Just prior to the siege [about 713 B.C.], Hezekiah had come down with something and was quite ill. When he recovered, Merodach-Baladan sent an embassy, ostensibly to congratulate him, but "his real aim" doubtless was to persuade the Judean king to join in a plot against Assyria.
 
Hezekiah was a good king (you must remember), but at that moment he was in a weakened condition (believe you me, I have experience in such). He foolishly showed "all" his royal treasures to the Babylonian ambassadors, forgetting that the sight of such vast riches would excite their cupidity [see Isaiah 39].
 
But, not actual breach between Hezekiah and Sargon took place at this time: "Sargon’s troops before Ashdod probably intimidated Judah, and the Assyrian king may have demanded fresh proof of Hezekiah’s allegiance."
 
Between Assyria on the one side and Egypt on the other, the little kingdom of Judah remained in a semi-independent state. Not long after, however, Judah became implicated in treasonable negotiations with Egypt; but the Egyptian party in Jerusalem was not yet powerful enough to carry the king with it.
 
Though originally averse to the original application of Ahaz to Assyria for help, now, that the false step was taken, Isaiah was steadfastly opposed to a rupture with Assyria. Therefore, Isaiah advises loyalty to the foreign suzerain.

JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.YedidimofIsrael.com
http://www.jav-yedidimofisrael.blogspot.com/
 
PS # 1 - It appears Israel will be in war by August 1. Ole JAV has been invited to come and be with a Division Commander in the IDF for this war. He will be needing your help to pay for the trip — more expensive than it would be in peace time. HE SHALL BE IN TOUCH when, and if, the need arises.
 
PS # 2 My friend Helen Freedman (AFSI) sent the below:


Dear Dr. Vineyard,

Thank you for your inspirational message. I would like to ask you to remind your preachers that this coming July 21 is the 5th year anniversary of the expulsion of the Jews from 21 Gush Katif communities, and four communities in Samaria. We are hoping that Christians and Jews nationwide will commemorate this anniversary with prayer, seminars, films, and through whatever channels you might think best. We have a great deal of material to help you with programming. Please let me know if we can be of help.

Very best,
Helen Freedman
Executive Director
Americans for a Safe Israel/AFSIwww.afsi.org
afsi@rcn.com
212-828-2424

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Letter to Pastors

June 17, 2010
 
Dear Preachers:
 
I woke this morning to the Bride of my Youth’s birthday. As I got up much earlier than she this morning, I wrote her a Happy, Happy, Happy Birthday Card and had it beside the coffee so that she’d see it when she first came out. She did, and we rejoiced at the goodness of the LORD to us, sinners, saved by the Grace of Almighty God.
 
While we drank coffee together, we read Isaiah chapters 19, 20, 21, and 22! Then we had our Prayer Time together. God was really special and real to the both of us this morning. Isaiah has already dealt with the Syro-Ephraimite war, and then the downfall of Samaria [722 B.C.] comes about.

Hoshea is the King on the throne in Israel. He was the son of Elah and the last king of Israel. To come to the Kingdom he conspired against and slew his predecessor, Pekah.

2 Kings 15:30
And Hoshea the son of Elah made a conspiracy against Pekah the son of Remaliah, and smote him, and slew him, and reigned in his stead, in the twentieth year of Jotham the son of Uzziah.
 
But, Hoshea was not established on the throne till after an interregnum of at least eight years, in the twelfth year of Ahaz.

2 Kings 17:1 In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah began Hoshea the son of Elah to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years.
 
Verse 2 tells us: "he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, but not as the kings of Israel that were before him." Shortly after his accession he submitted to the supremacy of Shalmaneser, who appears to have entered his territory with the intention of subduing it by force if resisted.

2 Kings 17:3 Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his servant, and gave him presents.

Here the Assyrian king Shalmaneser is taking tribute from Hoshea, the king of the ten tribes of Israel.
 
In looking at Isaiah’s prophecy, borne out by what we read in 2 Kings, we also find mention, I think of this time, in that great Chapter of Hosea, the chapter about Revival, Chapter 10.
 
Hosea 10:10 It is in my desire that I should chastise them; and the people shall be gathered against them, when they shall bind themselves in their two furrows.
 
I think God Almighty is speaking of the “binding” He did of them, for their two transgressions.
 
11 And Ephraim is as an heifer that is taught, and loveth to tread out the corn; but I passed over upon her fair neck: I will make Ephraim to ride; Judah shall plow, and Jacob shall break his clods.
 
The very next verse is one that I have used many times in trying to sow the seeds of Revival amongst God’s People, and it might very well be that we shall have Revival in America, only, after we have Judgment!
 
12 Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.
13 Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies: because thou didst trust in thy way, in the multitude of thy mighty men.
 
The Shalman of verse 14 is the same as Shalmaneser, and the caves are those of Betharbel.

14 Therefore shall a tumult arise among thy people, and all thy fortresses shall be spoiled, as Shalman spoiled Betharbel in the day of battle: the mother was dashed in pieces upon her children.
15 So shall Bethel do unto you because of your great wickedness: in a morning shall the king of Israel utterly be cut off.
 
Now, information that Hoshea had entered into negotiations with So, king of Egypt, prompted Shalmaneser to return and punish the rebellious king with imprisonment for withholding the tribute as in seen in 2 Kings 17:4.
 
He was then, however, released by the payment of a large ransom, but a second revolt soon after provoked the king of Assyria to march an army into the land of Israel. After a three-year siege, Samaria was taken and destroyed, and the ten tribes were carried away beyond the Euphrates, B.C. 721. Of the future fortune of Hoshea, the Holy Bible is silent!
 
2 Kings 17:5 Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years.
6 In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
 
2 Kings 18:9 And it came to pass in the fourth year of king Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, that Shalmaneser king of Assyria came up against Samaria, and besieged it.
10 And at the end of three years they took it: even in the sixth year of Hezekiah, that is the ninth year of Hoshea king of Israel, Samaria was taken.
11 And the king of Assyria did carry away Israel unto Assyria, and put them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes:
12 Because they obeyed not the voice of the LORD their God, but transgressed his covenant, and all that Moses the servant of the LORD commanded, and would not hear them, nor do them.
 
What all this teaches, to the child of God in 2010, be we Truly Born Again Christian, or Hebrews who believe the Old Testament, is, "Watch Out" when you place your trust in "Egypt" [always a type of the world] instead of trusting in the Lord God of the Hebrews!
 
Now, back with the two tribes, in Judah, Hezekiah, had already ascended the throne. Though weak, he was a much better ruler than Ahaz. He improved the water supply of Jerusalem, cutting a tunnel from Gihon to the Pool of Siloam. He cared for the military interests and financial resources of the kingdom, subduing the Philistines, the only warlike enterprise related to him, and encouraged agriculture, for which, even today, the Israelis are much vaunted in.
 
2 Kings 18:8 He smote the Philistines, even unto Gaza, and the borders thereof, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city.
 
Isaiah 38:9 The writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick, and was recovered of his sickness:
10 I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave: I am deprived of the residue of my years.
11 I said, I shall not see the LORD, even the LORD, in the land of the living: I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world.
12 Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd's tent: I have cut off like a weaver my life: he will cut me off with pining sickness: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.
13 I reckoned till morning, that, as a lion, so will he break all my bones: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.
14 Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter: I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward: O LORD, I am oppressed; undertake for me.
15 What shall I say? he hath both spoken unto me, and himself hath done it: I shall go softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul.
16 O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit: so wilt thou recover me, and make me to live.
17 Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back.
18 For the grave cannot praise thee, death can not celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth.
19 The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day: the father to the children shall make known thy truth.
20 The LORD was ready to save me: therefore we will sing my songs to the stringed instruments all the days of our life in the house of the LORD.
King Hezekiah was devoted to Jehovah God, and very early in his reign reformed the religion of his people, restoring the Temple, removed the idolatrous high places, overturning the obelisks and images, and destroyed the brazen serpent of Moses, which had become an object of veneration to the Jews.
 
The reforms of Hezekiah gave "practical effect" to the "Revival encouraged and brought about by Isaiah’s preaching!"
 
2 Kings 18:4 He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan.

The images were the idolatrous things the Hebrews worshiped prior to Hezekiah’s day. Nehushtan was that piece of brass set up as a ‘god’ to represent Moses Brazen Serpent!
 
2 Chronicles 29:1 Hezekiah began to reign when he was five and twenty years old, and he reigned nine and twenty years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah.
2 And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, according to all that David his father had done.
3 He in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of the LORD, and repaired them.
 
2 Chronicles 31:1 Now when all this was finished, all Israel that were present went out to the cities of Judah, and brake the images in pieces, and cut down the groves, and threw down the high places and the altars out of all Judah and Benjamin, in Ephraim also and Manasseh, until they had utterly destroyed them all. Then all the children of Israel returned, every man to his possession, into their own cities.
 
It would seem to me that the fact that the other ten tribes, the Kingdom of Israel, were carried off into captivity, would have a "soul-searching" effect upon the two tribes of Judah; and the Hezekiah-Isaiah Revival, is again, I think, THE RESULT!
 
Now, preacher friend, bear with me, and don’t lose me, please pay attention to what I am writing! I’m just a sinner saved by the Grace of God. However, God Almighty has given me the "pulse-beat" of events as they are coming down the pike yonder in the Little nation of Israel, that little tiny piece of land that will the the EPICENTER of all events happening in the future, as is taught by our Holy Bibles.
 
I was there the day the "Muslim-Marxists" friends brought their little flotilla into the country. Now, our "Muslim-Marxist-Mohammedan-in-Chief" has friends that are planning a repeat of sorts. Let me explain this way:

New Flotilla Organizer is Wife of Hizbullah Supporter

by Eli Stutz

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/138126
 
Evidence is mounting that the organizers of a new flotilla set to leave Lebanon toward Gaza are not neutral peace activists, but are in fact tied closely to the Hizbullah terrorist organization, and openly profess their hatred of Israel.

Samar Al-haj, one of the organizers of the new ‘Miriam’ flotilla, is the wife of an officer with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Lebanese Internal Security Agency who was jailed for four years on charges of involvement in the murder of former Lebanese PM Rafik Al-hariri.
Syria and Hizbullah are accused for orchestrating Al-hariri’s murder. Al-haj’s husband was released from prison a year ago.

Three weeks ago, to mark the anniversary of her husband's release, the couple met with Hizbullah Chief Hassan Nasrallah.

At the meeting, Al-haj thanked Nasrallah for standing by her and her husband during his imprisonment.

In interviews to the Arab media, Al-haj said that her group is composed of Lebanese women from all ethnic groups, and that their common denominator is, among other things, hatred for Israel.

She denied that Hizbullah was behind the new flotilla, but said that she was motivated to organize the flotilla after the Hizbullah chief publicly called on the Lebanese people to organize flotillas to Gaza.

The ship ‘Miraim’ consists of approximately 50 women–30 of them Lebanese and the rest foreign.

Three of the foreigners are known to be from Kuwait. The Labenese flotilla’s head organizer, Yasser Kashlak, is a Syrian businessman of Palestinian descent, who operates in Syria and Lebanon.

Kashlak heads the "Free Palestine" movement, and also serves as chairman of the Lebanese Institute of International Studies, chairman of the Palestinian Businessmen’s Club, the Syrian-Palestininan Investment house and other organizations.

Kashlak is said to be close with the Syrian regime. Aged 39, he is a regular columnist in several Lebanese newspapers and is also a publisher of a small Lebanese newspaper.
On Kashlak’s website is a personal letter he wrote to the head of the Hizbullah entitled, "A letter from the heart to Hassan Nasrallah.
 
[end of article]

Above are the names: Hassan Nasrallah, who did the Spiders Web speech at Bint Jbeil in Lebanon; the "Free Palestine" movement; Syrian-Palestinian Investment house!
 
PRAY FOR THE PEACE OF JERUSALEM as we are admonished in Scripture.
 
If our Muslim-Marxist-Mohammedan-in-Chief gets his way, no Jew will be spared, simply as there was no sparing of the Jews in the little Austrian Paper Hanger’s day.
 
But, taken all the Camps, study them, and even those run to "preserve pretence" as was the Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia, where I visited as a young soldier-boy, it was just "pretence resettlement" under Adolph’s apocalypse. To Theresienstadt were sent so-called "privileged Jews," holders of the Iron Cross First Class or better, and 50 percent disabled war veterans. But, of the 141,184 sent there, only 16,832 were alive when the camp fell to the Allies on 9 May 1945. Of that perishing number, more than 88,000 had been gassed, the old, and the brave, alike.
 
No Jew was too old to be murdered. After the Anschluss, the friends of Freud, old and dying of cancer, had ransomed him from the Nazis and brought him to England. It never occurred to Freud, or to his friends, that his four elderly sisters, left behind in Vienna, were at risk.
 
But, they, too, were swept into the Nazi net: Adolfine, aged 81, was murdered in Theresienstadt; Pauline, 80, and Marie, 82, in Treblinka; Rose, 84, in Auschwitz!
 
 
I remain, sincerely and gratefully, your dutiful friend and obedient servant,
 
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.yedidimofisrael.com
blog: http://www.jav-yedidimofisrael.blogspot.com/

Letter to Pastors - June 17, 2010

June 17, 2010
 
Dear Preachers:
 
Eight days ago, Jonathan Magas and I stood on the Israeli side of the Lebanon Border and looked out over Bint Jbeil, Lebanon, the place where Nasrallah delivered his "spider web" speech following the IDF pullout in May 2000.

If you have not read the book “Shula: Code Name The Pearl,” by Aviezer Golan and Danny Pinkas, it is my recommendation that you do so. Shula was born in 1920 and while sixteen, Mademoiselle Marie Kishak and Monsieur Joseph Kishak came to visit during her last Passover at home. Joseph would sit in the large armchair in the corner of her parents' living room there on Alfandari street, where Naomi and Shula had grown up, not asking any questions, not saying a word, not moving, his head hunched between his shoulders, following every move of the beautiful lass about to become his wife. This is the remarkable true story of the amazing woman who became the Mata Hari of the Middle East, a woman whom this ole preacher greatly respects. Shula was born and raised in Israel, but, her father needed to make that "arranged marriage" of her to wealthy Jewish businessman, Joseph Kishak-Cohen, and then at age sixteen, she went off to live in Beirut where Joseph had his business.
 
The Kishak-Cohens were one of the community’s most prominent families. Mrs. Kishak-Cohen was the scion of a long line of learned and renowned rabbis who had served in the rabbinates of Aleppo, Qamishli, and other Syrian cities. The Kishaks had been successful textile merchants for generations. Joseph and his older brother Chaim, had inherited a large shop in the Suk Sursuk, the Sursuk market, behind the Place de la Bourge, and had enlarged and expanded their trade.
 
Their word was "as good as money" among the various merchants in the marketplace as well as in the great banks on Hamra Street. They also contributed generously to the synagogue and charitable institutions.
 
Although they had done well in business, their only faults were they hadn’t done well in arranging marriages for their children. Marie, the eldest daughter, was a bitter old maid; and Joseph, til the age of thirty-six, when marriage with Shula was arranged, hadn’t fared too well.
 
The repugnance she initially felt for Joseph, who then became her mature, balding Jewish husband, with darting, inquisitive eyes, who was neither young nor handsome, but was rich and apparently kindhearted, was the least of the problems she overcame.
 
She rode in a Taxi from Haifa to Wadi Abu-Mail, and when it stopped in front of the Kishak-Cohen family apartment building, all the crowd agreed: "She was definitely worth waiting for!"
 
The Kishak-Cohen establishment dealt primarily in wholesale trade, although the brothers were never known to turn down a retail sale. Most of their sales were to peddlers who traveled from village to village. These men carried their goods on their backs, together with a yard-long iron rod, which was their trademark.
 
They conducted their business on credit and mutual trust—between peddler and client on one hand, and between wholesaler and peddler on the other.

She had born Joseph five children and was expecting the sixth in the eleventh year of their marriage. In the time frame of the Independence War of the baby nation of Israel, one day while standing in her husband’s shop, in the Wadi Abou-Jamil of Beirut, she overheard the peddlers chatting. One of them told of his good fortune at having stumbled upon a "big wedding" in Kafr Hadsa. A big wedding was the dream of all peddlers. It meant a dowry of dresses, linens, table clothes, napkins, and sometimes even curtains.
 
But, while listening, she heard the peddlers begin to speak of the war then going on with Israel. One told that there were ten volunteers from his village who were currently training and would soon join the fighting across the border in Israel. Another bragged that he had seen with his own eyes the commander of the Arab Liberation Army, Fawzi Kaukji, recruiting new volunteers in the village of Tibnin.
 
The third, not to be outdone, boasted that he had also seen the commander, in the village of Bint Jbeil.
 
Bint Jbeil, back then, just after Israel was declared to be a Nation, this peddler continued, was soon to become an important military base of operations. He said that arms from Iraq had been delivered there in great numbers the week before and that Syrian officers were offering large sums of money to people who would smuggle the weapons across the border. They were saying that Bint Jbeil would soon become a permanent base...
 
As Jonathan and I stood with those IDF officers a few days ago, my mind went back to the Battles fought there in Israel’s Second Lebanon War, for which I was privileged to make acquaintances with IDF officers and troops.
 
http://wapedia.mobi/en/Battle_of_Bint_Jbeil

Late in the night of July 24th, 2006, one IDF soldier was killed when his Merkava tank flipped over after driving over a powerful landmine. Another IDF soldier was killed when an anti-tank missile hit his Merkava.
 
On July 25, the battle began at approximately 5 A.M. when two Israeli companies from Golani Brigade's 51st Battalion, "A" and "C", began advancing down one of Bint Jbeil's streets on parallel routes. Contrary to previous reports, the Hezbollah fighters were not lying in ambush. "Both sides were unaware of each other and it was actually one of our (IDF) soldiers who saw them first and opened fire."
 
However, the Hezbollah fighters were in upper stories of buildings, and had a commanding view of the IDF troops, who were in the streets and narrow alleyways. Hezbollah fighters opened fire with small arms and antitank rockets, while other Hezbollah units flanked the IDF troops and fired on them, as well as on other IDF positions in the town. The IDF troops returned fire and fought to regain control of the situation. The fighting lasted for several hours. Some of the gun battles took place in close quarters at point-blank range. In the initial firefight, 30 members of "C" company, comprising one third of its total strength, were hit, and eight of them were killed.
 
The battalion's deputy commander, Major Roi Klein was among the dead, having been killed when he covered a grenade with his body to save his troops. Forty Hezbollah fighters were also killed.

"A" company began supportive fire to enable the remaining soldiers of "C" Company to evacuate their wounded while continuing to shoot at the enemy. Two additional Golani companies were rushed in to help with the evacuation, which proceeded under a screen of smoke grenades and heavy artillery fire.

Hours later, Israeli Air Force Blackhawk helicopters managed to land under heavy fire and fly the wounded to Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. The commanders decided not to risk pilots to evacuate the dead; they were carried out under cover of darkness by a company from the Golani Brigade's 12th Battalion.
 
"The battle began to their advantage. They were in a much better position, but we won and killed at least 20 Hezbollah fighters. None of the soldiers panicked, they were professional throughout, and that's our advantage over Hezbollah," commander of "A" Company said.
 
Most of the fighting took place at extremely short-range, sometimes only a few meters, also using hand grenades and rocket-propelled grenades. The IDF said its military operations have hit dozens of militants during ongoing fighting in Bint Jbeil, a town it dubbed Hezbollah's "terror capital."
 
[Today, in 2010, ole JAV still calls it "Hizballah’s terror capital."]

The following day, the IDF reported that it had secured the town. Hezbollah officials confirmed that IDF troops had indeed captured several positions in Bint Jbeil, but had not yet reached the city centre.
 
Outside the town, a force of the Israeli Paratroopers Brigade was hit by a Hezbollah anti-tank missile, resulting in a gunbattle. One IDF officer was killed, and three soldiers were wounded.
 
On July 28, troops from the Paratroopers Brigade's 101st and 890th Battalion exchanged fire with Hezbollah and killed at least 20 Hezbollah fighters, according to Israeli sources. The fighters were of Hezbollah's elite forces, which were involved in the kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers.
 
On July 29, the battle ended as IDF troops pulled out of Bint Jbeil, after clashes with Hezbollah left 6 Israeli soldiers wounded and some 26 Hezbollah fighters dead, according to the IDF. Armored forces continued to operate in the area, however.
 
Since Israel left Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah has built up the area around Bint Jbeil, according to Israeli government spokeswoman Miri Eisin. "Not only [do they have] a terrorist army, but they are sort of waiting for us to come in," she said. "They have booby-trapped the entire area. They want us to walk into those booby traps."
 
According to Human Rights Watch, despite efforts to avoid civilian casualties, Lebanese civilians were also killed during this battle including a Lebanese citizen who also had US citizenship.

As of July 30, Israel confirmed 10 of its soldiers died in the battle, although several international media organizations had initially reported 18 Israeli casualties. Dozens of Golani Brigade soldiers were evacuated into Israel. Israel claims to have killed over 80 Hezbollah millitants, although Hezbollah claims to have lost 32 in the entire conflict as of July 28 and only 12 in Bint Jbeil.

Hezbollah secretary Hassan Nasrallah said that Israel suffered a "serious defeat" in ground fighting around Bint Jbeil. And on July 30, it was reported that the IDF forces withdrew from Bint Jbeil and that Hezbollah still held the area. Teams from the Red Cross and United Nations arrived in the southern Lebanese town to survey the damage and evacuate residents, a day after heavy fighting reduced much of the area to rubble.
 
On the evening of August 6th, [when ole JAV was feeding 385 IDF soldiers barbecue]  the battle began again.
 
As of August 7th, Hezbollah claimed to have killed three Israeli soldiers in the town.
 
At first, the Israeli Defense Forces confirmed only one death, a soldier from the Paratroopers Brigade. However, the Israeli Defense Forces later confirmed that two other soldiers had indeed been killed when their tank was hit by anti-tank rockets and missiles.
 
The Israeli Defense forces claimed that they killed five Hezbollah fighters in the same round of fighting.
 
The fighting continued as the Israeli Defense forces claimed to have killed three more Hezbollah fighters in Bint Jbeil and the nearby village of Ramiya. In addition, the Israeli military claimed to have captured five Hezbollah guerrillas in Bint Jbeil and a nearby village, Shihin.
 
However, two Israeli soldiers, also from the Paratroopers Brigade, were killed in combat that day.
 
Fighting continued on August 9th, as two more Israeli soldiers were killed during a night offensive.
 
As of August 9th, the Israeli Defense Forces report that dozens of Israeli soldiers have been injured in fighting in around Bint Jbeil and the surrounding panhandle of Galilee.
 
By August 12th, Bint Jbeil had become part of the greater Litani offensive. As a tentative ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon began, Journalists who visited the town reported that while "Hizbullah's fighters were as elusive last week as they were deadly", on the 14th "There was no sign of Hizbullah fighters".
 
As of September 3rd, the town was reported to be in the control of United Nations peacekeeping forces, and Israeli forces had withdrawn from the area.
 
Some have commented that this battle had a psychological component outweighing its military significance.
 
Uri Bar-Joseph wrote about
Dan Halutz in Haaretz "He pushed for ineffectual military initiatives with a high casualty toll, like the conquest of Bint Jbeil, which was meant to create a spectacle of victory in the place where Nasrallah delivered his "spider web" speech following the IDF pullout in May 2000."

[end of article]

Now, going all the way back to that eleventh year of Shula’s marriage to Joseph Kishak-Cohen, what she’d overheard, she said to Joseph must be passed on to Israel.
 
At first Joseph argued, but finally, he yielded because she was a woman, and he remembered a proverb he had once heard: "When a woman is stubborn about little things, it is best to give in before she gets involved in bigger things." "Especially," he added to himself, "when the woman in question is pregnant!"
 
Even though they’d been married for eleven years, Joseph was still amazed that a shortsighted, slight, and balding man such as he had sound such a beautiful young woman who made him feel young again and elevated him in the eyes of his friends and acquaintances.
 
Therefore, Joseph called one of the peddlers to him. "This is Abdul Salam Hanoon from Adeisa village," he said, introducing the man to his wife. "His village is right on the border...."
 
He then turned to Hanoon, addressing him by his more familiar name: "Abu-Yihyeh, my wife has family in Jerusalem. I would like for you to help her..." The Arab immediately agreed, for if he helped hawaja Kishak, hawaja Kishak might see fit to raise his cred....
"Tahat omrak, at your command," he replied. "....by passing a letter across the border for her so that it will reach Jerusalem quickly."
 
And, with that letter passed on from Arab to Arab, and then finally to the Jews in Misgav ‘Am, who sent the letter on to the appropriate people, "Shula" became recruited as an Agent of the Mossad.

Until February 22, 1961, Shula operated as a Mossad agent in Lebanon, and when one studies her career in detail, one has to say that she truly did very well as a spy, even though she a mother and a wife. As a matter of fact, she carried on “excellently” in all three categories.
 
Coming back to Beirut in February 1961 from Rome, Shula was arrested, tried, convicted, and served, first, thinking she was to be executed, but then the "death sentence" was renamed to life in prison.

Moving ahead to the time when Israel took Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the Six Day War of 1967, in the Old City of Jerusalem there were many Lebanese citizens, including the Lebanese consul and the entire staff. A few days later, on the Golan, they captured a great deal of heavy equipment the Syrians had planned to use to construct a channel to divert the Jordan River. That equipment, which was worth millions, belonged to a very rich Lebanese contractor.

Israel placed the Lebanese citizens on the bargaining table, along with the costly equipment. In exchange the Israelis demanded the return of an Israeli pilot who had parachuted into Lebanon after his plane was hit in battle above Syria, and another soldier who had crossed the Lebanese border by mistake prior to the war. At the last moment, they added imprisoned Mossad Female Agent "Shula" [Shulamit Kishak-Cohen] to their list of demands.
 
And that is how Shula was freed from prison in Lebanon.
 
And, all that started at Bint Jbeil, where Jonathan Magas and I were last week.

JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.yedidimofisrael.com
Blog: http://www.jav-yedidimofisrael.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Letter to Pastors - June 16, 2010

June 16, 2010
 
Dear Preachers:
 
I am recouping, readjusting, and reading, here at home, as I make preparations to leave for Texas a week from Friday. From there, I will go to Arkansas, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, and on to Pennsylvania.

My "brilliant" Jewish friend, Retired Major General Joseph Doriel, with whom I was privileged to meet on most recent Givati Brigade Family Celebration trip, sent the below article to me. It is an excellent synopsis of our predicament!

Obama administration conflicted about relying on BP to stop gulf oil spill
By Karen Tumulty and Steven Mufson
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/24/AR2010052404071_pf.html
 
The ecological disaster developing in the Gulf of Mexico threatens to spread, while at the same time exposing President Obama's style and political methods. According to the Washington Post , Obama is furious with British Petroleum about the flow of oil into the Gulf, but continues to present himself to the media as being in control of the situation.
 
The Post reports that Obama is becoming more and more tight-lipped in his media briefings . . .
 
[JAV opinion- Obama was the Post’s baby while running. Pray they’ll continue to write "the truth" as this is about our Muslim-Marxist-Socialist occupying the White House!]
 
Obama's predicament is not very different from that of the sorcerer's apprentice who tries to control forces greater than he. Having implemented his liberal-green policy of prohibiting the drilling of oil on land and on the continental shelf (for ecological reasons), he left the vilified oil companies with no choice but to drill further away and at dangerous depths, in this case at a depth of more than 1.5 kilometers below sea level, at the limits of technological know how.
 
Obama ignores the human tragedy of 11 fatalities in the gas explosion that occurred in the off-shore drilling rig.
 
What bothers him is the threat the oil spill might have on his ambitious agenda and public
image.
 
His orders and his threats, and his apparent assumption of responsibility – of not limiting the oil companies sufficiently (meaning that now he will limit them more) - cannot contain the leak. But what they can do is bring on further damage: oil price increases, the impaired functioning of the oil companies, and the setting up of another corrupt bureaucratic control system.
 
Control and threats by the administration have never solved a technological or economic problem. They didn't repair a single clutch in the cars of Toyota, the previous corporate victim of the administration's anger. Threats won't plug the oil leak, either.
 
What is needed are free-working and innovative engineers and businesspeople, promoting technology and knowledge.
 
The preliminary signs of Obama's belligerent mode of operation were evident to anyone who was prepared to observe reality. About two years ago the young senator Obama joyously declared that his nomination as the Democratic Party's candidate for the presidency indicates the moment at which "the planet begins to heal" and "the rise in the oceans begins to slow."
 
Today, two years after he commanded the oceans to recede and started revitalizing the planet, we can see the results of this amazing arrogance as we find ourselves surrounded by demons that have escaped from their lair, like the oil spill, which typifies the policy of President Obama, the sorcerer's apprentice.
 
The steps he took against the large corporations are just one manifestation of his agenda.
 
In the first week of June 2010, we have seen Obama support the removal of the ambiguity surrounding Israel's nuclear policy, and allow the dragging of Israel to the butcher's block of the organization of dictators known as the United Nations.
 
Instead of shutting down this corrupt organization and draining the swamp in which it dwells, as a first step for creating in its stead an organization that unites the free, peace-seeking countries, Obama, the revolutionary idealist, prefers the idea of equality and multiculturalism, for the sake of which he is prepared to sacrifice the freedom and security of freedom-lovers everywhere.
 
One of Obama's first acts in the White House was to remove the sculpture of Winston Churchill from the Oval Room. This was a symbolic gesture by someone who wished to distance the values of liberty and freedom from his administration, and someone who, facing danger in the future, would implement the policies of Chamberlain.
 
Instead of fighting America's enemies, Obama is turning America into a country of their ilk, depleting it economically and cutting off its productive juices, destroying its large defense projects, increasing the public debt to astronomic proportions, and punishing Americans for being the freest nation in the world, while at the same time apologizing to third-world dictators.
 
This dangerous ideology, accompanied by the humiliation of and harm done to America's allies, including Israel and Great Britain, will only help to consolidate the "the axes of evil" in the Middle East, South America and Asia.
 
Some of Obama's supporters, albeit very late in the game, have already drawn their own conclusions. Haim Saban, one of the Democratic Party's biggest financial supporters, recently described Obama as someone who identifies ideologically with the extreme left, and expressed criticism of the Obama administration's hostile attitude towards Israel.
 
Obama is executing by the book what his friends who chose an academic career are teaching: anti-Americanism from the doctrines of Marx, Marcuse and William Ayers. As this ideology becomes policy, the government turns into that of the angry crowds. And "when the massesare hungry, " as the philosopher
José Ortega y Gasset said "they destroy the bakeries".
 
When this conduct becomes the official policy of the most powerful administration in the world, lovers of freedom and producers would do well to maintain a safe distance from it. [end of article]
 
Then, let me give you an article sent me from Yom Kippur War Hero, another "brilliant" Jewish friend I have, Dr. Gadi Eshel, one of my longest-known friends in Israel. Gadi has a Ph. D. in Engineering from Purdue University in Indiana:
 
 
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said he had a one-on-one meeting with Obama, in which President Obama told him that he was still a Muslim, the son of a Muslim father, the stepson of Muslim stepfather, that his half brothers in Kenya are Muslims, and that he was sympathetic towards the Muslim agenda.
Finally, during the week of 14-18th of January 2010, just on the eve of my winter tour to the US, Rachel picked up a Nile TV broadcast in which Egyptian Foreign Minister Abul Gheit said on the "Round Table Show" that he had had a one on one meeting with Obama who swore to him that he was a Moslem, the son of a Moslem father and step-son of Moslem step-father, that his half-brothers in Kenya were Moslems, and that he was loyal to the Moslem agenda. He asked that the Moslem world show patience. Obama promised that once he overcame some domestic American problems (Healthcare), that he would show the Moslem world what he would do with Israel.
http://888webtoday.com/articles/viewnews.cgi?id=EkZEpkpklAfbjJyHhD

This is according to Israel Today here. Here is the passage from the May 2010 issue of "Israel Today." It is on page 3 in an article titled "Obama, a 'Strategic Catastrophe,'" by Aviel Schneider:
The feeling among the Israeli public is that Obama is appeasing the Muslim world at the expense of Israel."The American President told me in confidence that he is a Muslim," said Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit on Nile TV.
That could explain why Obama has instructed that the term "Islamic extremism" no longer be used in official government documents and statements. Furthermore, the US is now accusing Israel of harming American interests in the Middle East. General David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command, said Israel’s intransigence on resolving the conflict with the Palestinians is endangering US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Even the US Congress considers Obama’s behavior toward Netanyahu humiliating. Three-quarters of the House of Representatives, 337 of 435 members, signed a bipartisan letter to Clinton expressing "deep concern over recent tension" between the two countries, and demanding that it be smoothed over quickly and in private.
"Obama is a real problem for Israel," a senior official told told Yediot.
"He is Israel’s biggest strategic catastrophe." The newspaper also quoted another official who believes that for the first time Washington has switched sides.
"The Obama White House is putting pressure only on Israel but does not expect anything from the Palestinians," he said.
"These American demands are unacceptable."
 
 
This was a statement by Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit on Nile-TV. It was made on the «Round table show».
This is the statement recorded:
Adul Gheit said he had a one-on-one meeting with Obama, where the US President told him that He was still a Muslim, the son of a Muslim father, the step son of Muslim stepfather, that his half brothers in Kenya are Muslims, and that he was sympathetic towards the Muslim agenda.
Adul Gheit claimed Obama told the Arabs to show patience. Obama promised that once he overcame some domestic issues, like the Health care reform, he would show the Muslim World how to deal with Israel.
Source: Israeli magazine, Israel today.
This is akin to an SS officer getting elected president during WW II.
Every country in the free world must be cognizant of such a catastrophic sea change in the leadership of the free world (as witnessed by events over the past year).
This changes everything. He took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, and yet he has gone around the world promoting Islam, the sharia (Islamic law).
The alleged exchange between Obama and Gheit would almost certainly have happened in early January 2010, when Gheit was in Washington, D.C. regarding "Mideast peace talks

[End of article!]
 
You and I, my preacher friends, ought wake up and see, that very possibly we have the privilege to live in the Time Just Preparatory to the coming of our MESSIAH, and the Holy Scriptures give enormous examples of times such as we see happening with our Muslim-Marxist-Socialist sitting in the White House!

 
It is amazing how Scriptures, when we will but read them, apply to current events, personally, publicly, and all about us.
 
In Isaiah 7, Ahaz was the twelfth king of the separate kingdom of Judah, being the son and successor of Jotham. AHAZ REMINDS ME SO MUCH OF THE MUSLIM-MARXIST IN THE WHITE HOUSE.
At the time of his ascension, Pekah, king of Israel, and Rezin, king of Syria, were in league "against Judah."
 
They proceeded to lay siege to Jerusalem, intending to place on the throne Ben-Tabeal, a Syrian noble.

Isaiah 7:3 Then said the LORD unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou, and Shearjashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field;
 
4 And say unto him, Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither be fainthearted for the two tails of these smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin with Syria, and of the son of Remaliah. [The Jews in Israel have problems in this area, in my ole opinion, because they become "fainthearted"—letting their hearts be tender toward their surrounding enemies!]
5 Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah, have taken evil counsel against thee, saying,
6 Let us go up against Judah, and vex it, and let us make a breach therein for us, and set a king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeal:
 
Four great crises mark the period of Isaiah’s active ministry: [1] the Syro-Ephraimite war of 735-2; [2] the captivity of the Ten Tribes in 722; [3] the siege of Ashdod in 711; and [4] the invasion of Sennacherib in 701.
 
Now, preachers, I am just a hell-deserving sinner saved by the Grace of God. I try daily to remember that. When Mrs. Vineyard and I pray, I thank God for her! Yes, she’s a sinner just as I am, and she has her faults. Her birthday will be in 2 days. But, she really pours her heart out to God, for our families, their needs, then Israel as a nation, and its needs, and then for our country since we’ve elected this Marxist-Socialist-Muslim to the White House.
 
Having said all that, I know that I am no Isaiah. But, very much like Isaiah’s time, there was "danger from without" and "intrigues of opposing factions within." A wise man in the Ministry was needed to advise those at the tiller of the "ship of state." That man then was Isaiah, the king of the prophets, and the greatest statesman of his age. Again, I know that I am no Isaiah.
 
However, the LORD GOD OF THE HEBREWS has given this ole preacher-warrior a degree of discernment about events world-wide and particularly those for Israel, which, when we read, and heed, our Bibles, we see will be "center-stage" for everything going on from now on!
 
Isaiah was a "keen discerner" of the national issues; his horizon, however, was world-wide. Our horizons have to be larger than our "existing county lines." In the year that King Uzziah died, Chapter 6, Isaiah was called to the prophetic office. He saw a triple vision:
 
1. Of Jehovah as holy;
 
2. Of himself as sinful [which we need remember, about ourselves, every hour of every day];
 
3. Of Grace and Forgiveness.
 
And, when he heard a voice inquiring from heaven, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" he immediately rejoined, "Then said I, Here am I; send me!"
 
Jehovah God gave Isaiah a commission of judgment and mercy to the effect that the nation must never perish, but a "holy seed" should be saved. Isaiah never forgot the promise that a "remnant" should be saved.
 
The vision bears the impress of that grandeur of immigration which is the distinctive mark of Isaiah’s genius.
 
Imagine, Preachers, if you will, why the account of Isaiah’s call in chapter 6 should immediately follow the threats in chapter 5?

As I’ve mentioned, the first of the four great political crises of Isaiah’s time, the Syro-Ephraimite war comes on the scene in 735 B.C. Pekah of Israel, and Rezin of Damascus, make that conspiracy against Ahaz, King of Judah, hoping to depose him and place upon the throne of Jerusalem a "good-for-nothing" [like Obama] son of Tabeel, who would ally himself with them against Assyria.
 
Ahaz, like Obama, wasn’t true to his Judaism, just like Obama is not true to "his Americanism," whatever, in his case, that might be! Therefore, Ahaz, the man not to meet successfully such a crisis, appealed for protection to Tiglath-Pileser III., king of Assyria.
 
Isaiah was divinely charged to remonstrate with the young king Ahaz and show him the folly of his "short-sighted policies." Assyria, the prophet Isaiah insisted, would "first" help and "then" devour, which ole JAV sees the Saudis and whomever else our Muslim-Marxist holds hands with, will, too, do!
 
That occasion evoked one of Isaiah’s most famous prophecies.
 
Taking with him his son Shear-jashub, whose very name, "a remnant shall return," conveyed a prophecy, Isaiah approached the king and delivered his message: "Fear not. . . . because of these two tails of smoking firebrands" [Syria and the ten tribes of Israel] half-burnt off and wholly burnt-out, mere smoking fag-ends of wood-pokers; for withing 65 years Ephraim [i.e., Israel] shall be broken in pieces that it be not a people.”
 
And then, with a clever play upon words, he adds Isaiah 7:9, “And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah's son. If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established. {If....Judah does not hold fast [to his God], he will lose his fast hold [of country]!}
 
In vain, however, Isaiah attempted to dissuade the infatuated king from his suicidal policy of leaning "upon an arm of flesh." Ahaz was infatuated with himself just as the Muslim-Marxist is infatuated with himself and would not listen!
 
He refused even to ask a sign at the prophet’s solicitation, whereupon Isaiah delivered his famous "Immanuel - God with us," prophecy [7:14] which the Jewish Rabbis don’t believe to make reference to the Son of God, but as I see it, "the unpremeditated creation of his inspired imagination," pointing to "the MESSIANIC KING, whose portrait is here, in the Old Testament, the Bible of the Jews, sketched distinctly."

Tiglath-Pileser, of course, gladly consented to Ahaz’s invitation. He had long been looking for an opportunity to interfere there, and this was afforded to him by Judah’s king Ahaz.
 
He moved westward, besieged Damascus, and in 732 B.C., captured it; at the same time he also stripped the 10 tribes of Israel of all her possessions north of Mt. Carmel and east of the Jordan.
 
This brought the Syro-Ephraimite invasion to an end. Judah, herself, the two tribes, barely escaped ruin at that time.
 
Interestingly, folks who have the unfortunate advantage of having to grow up in a broken home, the "fear and dread" that Isaiah deals with in Isaiah 8:12 and 13, usually become present in their lives, and they have to deal with that, as I see it!

Isaiah 8:12 Say ye not, A confederacy, to all them to whom this people shall say, A confederacy; neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid.
 
13 Sanctify the LORD of hosts himself; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.
 
Everything definitively, in our lives, for good and for God, depends upon us seeing which side God is on, and getting on that side.
 
When I was a young married man, at Lifegate Baptist Church, Indianapolis, Indiana, Dr. Ford Porter asked me to start a bus ministry for them. Since God was on that side, I immediately resigned my job and took that position. God blessed and we were averaging over 500 on their buses when we left to go to Landmark Baptist Temple.
 
At Liberty Baptist Temple, I worked for Dr. John Rawlings. God was on that side, and we were able to get the Bus Ministry Average up to over 2,500 each Sunday. Mrs. Vineyard and I have so many precious memories from that church employment. Dr. B. R. Lakin, the great "former Pastor" of Cadle Tabernacle, where my wife, as a young girl, was taken, became friends with us there.
 
Then, I worked for at Thomas Road Baptist Church, Dr. Jerry Falwell. God was on that side, and we were able to get the Bus Ministry Average up to over 3,300 each Sunday. Again, we have "precious memories" from our time there (1970-1972).
 
Then, I was privileged to work at First Baptist Church, Hammond, Indiana, for Dr. Jack Hyles, for 4-1/2 years. God was on that side, and we were able to average 6,444 for all that period of time on the buses. Our youngest son recently had occasion to talk with the principal’s secretary, at Hyles Baptist School, one of the Lapina girls, whose father was one of our Bus Captains. One of the Lapina girls went with my wife and meI on that trip to Israel with First Baptist Church folks in 1973, right after Gadi Eshel becoming a hero in the Yom Kippur war!
 
Then, from 1977 to 2007, God allowed me the privilege of pastoring Windsor Hills Baptist Church, where HE was on that side, and many, many wonderful things were to happen through our ministry here.
 
In 2003, I found God was on the side of getting involved to keep the land of Israel for the Jews — with one of our members writing that song — “ISRAEL BELONGS TO THE JEWS” — and to see how GOD ALMIGHTY HAS LED — and allowed this ole hell-deserving sinner to be a blessing to the Jews. O MY SOUL, what things Dawga Jo and I have to rejoice about this morning.
 
WAR is just over the horizon for the Jews in Israel. I have been invited to come and be with an IDF unit during that fracas. It will be expensive to go there during WAR! I will need your help financially in order to pull that trip off.
 
God bless you as you consider these words of this preacher-warrior, as my IDF Officer friends call me!
 
JIM VINEYARD
YEDIDIM OF ISRAEL
www.yedidimofisrael.com