​
​“I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling. Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem. On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her... 

​ 
​I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves.” 

​(Zechariah 12:2-3)

Tomorrow, May 14th, is the 69th Anniversary of the rebirth of the Nation State of Israel. Against all odds of probability and yet in perfect keeping with God's promise as recorded in Ezekiel Chapter 37, God has raised a "Valley of Dry Bones" up out of their graves among the nations and brought them back into their own land.

Listen to David Reagan tell the story of how this happened, including the amazing role President Harry S. Truman in making the U.S.A. the first nation to recognize the Jewish State of Israel, just eleven minutes after David Ben-Gurion's declaration.

This element reminds us that God "is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of men" (Dan.4:17). Amidst the nation's raging today, Israel's existence is both a timely reminder of this truth and an even more timely testimony to the assurance we can have in the prophetic promises still to be fulfilled.

Look up! Your redemption draws near. (Luke 21:28)

​“Dear children, keep yourselves from idols”. (1 John 5:21)

These are the last words of the Apostle John in his first epistle. In a letter which he begins with a high Trinitarian and Christological declaration, he ends with a warning against idols.

Idols are not simply carved images of wood or stone. Rather, for most people today they represent the notions and ideas of God that are simply unworthy of God as He has revealed Himself through His Son, Jesus Christ. John Calvin, writing in the opening chapter of his “Institutes”, went so far as to say “…the human mind is so to speak a perpetual factory of idols” (Ch.1.XI.8). Sadly, this idol making factory finds its home in the minds of many Christians today. For far too long and for far too many, we have allowed notions and ideas unworthy of God to collect on the theological shelves of our minds. These idols over time become “sacred cows” that are defended to the death as orthodoxy. Yet, deep in our hearts, we know that they have not brought us Life. In fact, they have stared back at us with the same blank look they produce in us when we try and examine them or reconcile them to the Triune God of Grace.