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/