. . . Jerusalem in Jewish hands. This was the first time in 1,897 years and we are reminded of Scripture. Luke 21.24 says "They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled." Could this be the end of the Times of the Gentiles, that began when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in AD70? Perhaps it was the beginning of the end of the Times of the Gentiles. However you look at it, God was on the move.

We move on to 1973. So you want miracles? Then read on. The following extracts have been taken from the book, Battle for Israel, by Lance Lambert, an English Jew who was living in Israel at the time of this war.

"The Yom Kippur War should have been the annihilation of the State of Israel. People think of the 1967 Six Day War as a miracle, but it was nothing compared with the Yom Kippur War and in the years that lie ahead, when the whole truth comes out, we shall see that it was beyond all reason that Israel was not annihilated".

He goes on to remark that at one point in the war only ninety battered Israeli tanks stood between the powerful Egyptian army and Tel Aviv and that both Egypt and Syria could have beaten Israel but were inexplicably prevented. Two episodes stand out. The first Egyptian tank division that crossed over the Canal had nothing to stop it, and the ones that followed behind, from advancing into central Israel. Yet it stopped ... inexplicably. To the north of Israel the Syrians poured out of the Golan Heights, yet when they got within sight of the Israeli HQ and the Sea of Galilee they also mysteriously halted. What made this story incredible was that the HQ was manned by just ten men and two tanks! Another story that you can choose to believe or not to believe concerns an Israeli captain, a man without any religious beliefs. As he was fighting in the Golan he looked up into the sky and saw a great grey hand pressing downwards as if it were holding something back. Lance Lambert's conclusion a s to what was behind all of these incredible events was that "without the intervention of God, Israel would have been doomed".

The Yom Kippur war was an all-out attack on Israel by Egypt and Syria that took the country completely by surprise, not only because it happened on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, but because, for the first time, the military and the defence establishment were totally unprepared. Unlike in the Six Day war, this time Israel started out at a complete and utter disadvantage, with the element of surprise (helped by Soviet spy satellites) used against them. But, just like the other war, and all other preceding conflicts, the outcome was totally in her favour.

At the start of the war the onlooking world looked on, seemingly indifferent, preparing their best suits and mourning dresses for Israel's funeral. The United Nations held back for reasons that were all about politics, rather than intervening out of compassion for a fledgling country barely 25 years old.

But, wait, another miracle! Israel didn't read the script because very soon Israel began to throw back the invading forces, against all the odds. She was near to the gates of Damascus, the capital of Syria and had surrounded the Egyptian third army in the south, with Cairo in their sights. The United Nations were unprepared for this, she had already prepared the eulogy for the death of a brave nation, she wasn't expecting for such territorial aggression by the Zionist imperialists! She was incensed and immediately voted for a cease-fire before Israel completely re-wrote the map of the Middle East!

It was a great victory but a costly one - $7 billion in money and 2,552 in lives, with over 3,000 wounded. Although the Arab losses were far greater in numbers, proportionally to the size of the nations these figures were a disaster for Israel. Very few families were left unmourning in Israel at this time.

Then there was the Gulf War. Operation Desert Storm was a war fought between the oil-hungry West and a fanatical dictator called Saddam Hussein who'd just invaded the nursery and pinched a few toys. Put it this way, if Kuwait produced fruit and not oil, we wouldn't have given a fig! When political and economic interests are concerned, moral issues can go out of the window! Forget that Britain and other western nations had just profitably re-armed Saddam and the Iraqis and that the Iranians who had recently been excommunicated were now our friends, along with the Syrians. Let's play silly word games - whoever's an enemy of our enemy is now our friend! Let's forget the Rushdie fatwa, we're all friends now, at least until we get our toys back! If you think that's crazy and mixed up, spare a thought for King Hussein of Jordan at this time, on the one hand English educated and a friend of the British Royal Family , but on the other suddenly now Saddam's biggest (and only) chum!

So where does Israel fit into all this? While the might of the coalition forces were pounding the stuffing out of Iraq's infrastructure (whatever that is) and playing war games with computers and thinking missiles, Iraq was lobbing over 40 or so Scud missiles at the Zionist Entity, hoping to lure Israel into the conflict. A miracle of this indiscriminate and unprovoked attack was that only 2 people died as a direct result of the missiles, although many more died of heart attacks brought on by stress. One interesting statistic that came out of this was that, during this time, less Israelis died than they would have done if life had been normal - less road accidents for example. After forty days (a 'biblical' number if there ever was one) of missiles attacks on Israeli cities the War came to an end. And the biggest miracle of it all was that of all the days that the War could have ended, it had to end just before the most poignant day of all - Purim. Purim is the day of Jewish delivera nce. A festival day of national rejoicing now had a special ring to it. The evil Haman, who tried to annihilate the Jews at the time of Queen Esther, now became the evil Saddam, who tried to knock out the Jews with the Scud missiles. Saddam joined the long line of 'Hamans', symbols of anti-Semitic hate and a natural successor to Hitler, the previous 'Haman of this age'.

The intervening years up until modern times were just more of the same. Israel with its back to the wall, increasingly isolated, Arab nations plotting its downfall and the Western powers formulating whatever selfish strategy they could that would keep the oil pumping. Then we approach the Jewish New Year of 2000 and a new phase of the 50+ year crisis is entered. The subsequent days have become the most nervous and uncertain days in Israel's brief history, with each day adding a new twist. There must be barely a moment when an Israeli, whether held siege in a settlement, in the comparative safety of Tel Aviv, or in the uncertain streets of Jerusalem, is not thinking, 'what's going on, what's it all about?' To find an answer they must look upwards and backwards towards the God who, to the most part, they have deserted but Who will never, according to His promises, desert them.