Date
of message: 29 February 2004 Issue
129
Subject: The Amazing Book Of The Psalms
Shalom, Boker-tov (good morning),
The Book of Psalms is the 19th book in the Bible (take a quick tour of
the table of contents and one can verify its position) and because of
its placing in the Bible many scholars believe that this book has prophetic
significance besides its rich poetic renditions. Therefore if we were
to look at Psalm 48, for example, we would come across verse upon verse
of joyous celebration and when we add the number 19 in front of the number
48, we will notice that this particular psalm was actually referring to
events that took place in Israel in the year 1948; Israel became a nation
on May 15, 1948 on a UN charter.
Other interesting parallels between the year and the chapter (number)
of the psalms can be drawn simply by combining the 19th to the chapter
number.
? Psalm 17: 12 – “As a lion is eager to tear his prey and
like a young lion lurking in secret places” – In November
1917, the young British General Allenby walked into Jerusalem City and
liberated it from the Turks at the end of WW1.
? Psalm 37 to Psalm 44 – In these eight chapters, we can read, in
many places, of many people in pain and they cried out for deliverance.
These eight psalms coincide with the Holocaust years when Hitler literally
sent six million Jews to the gas chambers to be exterminated.
? Psalm 45 – The tone in this psalm changes and there is jubilation
and hope is in the air. In 1945, World War 2 began to wind down and the
tide of extermination of the Jews was slowing. The Allied Forces marched
in Austria and parts of Poland and they found the Death Camps (as they
were later called) and liberated those Jews who managed to stay alive
but were too weak to escape from the empty camps.
o Verse 5 – Your arrows are sharp in the heart of the King’s
enemies; the peoples fall under You – USA sent two long-range bombers
with two atom bombs to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, right in the heart of Imperial
Japan and these bombs were shaped like arrows.
? Psalm 48 – In the month of May 1948, a spectacular event took
place. Overnight the state of Israel became an independent state.
o On 14 May, all the nations of the world gathered in the UN headquarters
in New York and they voted unanimously for the creation of a state of
Israel. Verse 4 tells us, “For behold, the kings assembled, they
passed by together.” The next day, Israel became a nation.
o But later, when they realized what they had done and that the Arab nations
around the new state of Israel were unhappy and started to attack Israel,
they backed away and left the tiny infant nation to fend for themselves.
Verse 5 went further to describe the agony of their action, “They
saw it, and so they marveled; they were troubled, they hastened away”.
? Psalm 67 – The whole psalm speaks with thanksgiving and jubilation.
In June 1967, four nations attacked Israel simultaneously on all fronts
– Lebanon to the north, Syria in the north-east, Jordan to its east
and Egypt to its south and south-west – and in six days, the tiny
nation of Israel was able to drive all the enemies out of its territory
and Israel managed to capture more land in the process than they had before
the enemies attacked them. The Lord gave Israel the East Jerusalem (they
had West Jerusalem earlier) after the Six-Day War of 1967.
? Psalm 73 – In verses 1 -3, we read of the praises of the people
for what the Lord did for them. In October 1973, on the most holy day
of the Jewish calendar, the Day of Atonement, the Syrian Army came over
the Golan Heights and attacked Israel and would have succeeded in over-running
the territory had it not been for the divine intervention from the Almighty
Lord. The Israeli soldiers were all in the synagogue on that day because
it was a high feast day and the borders were not manned except for a skeletal
force.
Were those events mere coincidences? No, it is all part of God’s
plan to warn His own people what they could expect to happen to them and
their nation; the only problem is that one can only be sure what is being
said about Israel after the events had taken place. Many had tried to
read in advance what is being foretold in particular psalms and had been
grossly disappointed when the events did not turn out to be whatever they
had expected to see.
In recent years, of particular interest is Psalm 91.
? In 1991, during the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein fired a total of 39 Scud
missiles into Israel but none of the missiles hit their targets as they
were either intercepted by the Israeli Patriot missiles or the missiles
landed in some buildings but did not explode; it was as if the Lord made
those missiles to misfire.
Verse 5 declares, “You shall not be afraid of the terror by night,
nor of the arrow that flies by day”. Some of the missiles were indeed
fired over Israel at night but no danger overcame the nation for the hand
of the Lord was over them.
? Again in 2001, during the September 11 crisis in USA, many Believers
found new meaning in Psalm 91:1 as they had now come to associate that
number with 911 (Sept 11). Indeed they began to realize what it really
meant when they dwell in the shadow of the Almighty God.
What about the recent events in Israel? Were they being prophesied in
the corresponding psalms too? Certainly! In April 2002, the Israeli Defence
Force (IDF) went in hot pursuit of some ringleaders of the Hamas group
in the Palestinian camp of Jenin on the West Bank. These were terrorists
who were involved in the suicide bombings in Israel and the IDF decided
to go on that daring mission to ‘flush out’ the terrorists.
As a result of that raid, many of the Palestinians were killed including
some members of the families of the terrorists. Of course, this led to
some hue and cry and Israel was condemned by all nations including the
EU countries and USA. Psalm 102: 3-7describe the feelings of the person
who went through all those periods of loneliness (of not having anyone
to mourn alongside) and grief at the rejection from friends near and dear.
Of course the most pertinent question on most of our minds today would
be the developments in the Middle-East and its place in scriptures especially
from Psalm 104 (to represent the year 2004), The whole psalm relates the
creation story once again and seem to remind the readers that the Lord
is about to do a new thing in Israel. In recent days, there had been so
much rainfall in the Golan Height area that the Sea of Galilee (once considered
as drying up due to severe droughts) had been filling up by no less than
6 centimeters of rain per day. The lake was almost 2 metres below the
highest water-mark at the end of year 2003 but due to the bountiful rains,
the lake stood at only 85 centimeters below the highest point. Verses
10 – 14 talk about the Lord sending springs into the valleys (v10)
and also that He will cause the grass to grow for the cattle (v14). The
rest of Psalm 104 gives praise to the Lord for He is the One who would
be renewing Israel and therefore His Name will be praised.
The Lord is indeed returning soon to fetch His children home to heaven.
Will you be among those who will rise up at the trumpet call of the archangel
when Jesus calls? By believing on Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you too
will come under that category of the privilege and will rise to meet Him
in the air in an instant when He calls.
I encourage you to do so without further delay - invite Him into your
heart and He will immediately come into your life and make it His throne.
It is not a difficult thing to do; all that is needed is that you believe
and receive Him and immediately you will join the ranks of being children
of God the Father. Jesus died for us so that we can have His eternal life
as an exchange. Because He died and took away our punishment, we need
not go through that again; otherwise that would tantamount to a double
jeopardy. Our Father is a Righteous God and He will honor His Covenant
with His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
My friends, one day, after all the Christians have been taken home to
be with the Lord, and should you by any chance be reading this article,
be assured that Jesus loves you so much that He already demonstrated His
love for you on the cross. He died that we may have life in abundance.
Pray this simple prayer to invite Jesus into your heart and immediately
you will experience His peace coming your way.
Our Heavenly Father, thank you for loving us so much that You sent Your
only Beloved Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, two thousand years ago to die
for all our sin and to be raised from the dead so that we can be forgiven
of all our sin and now we are set free.
Lord Jesus, thank you for coming into my heart and for giving me the Holy
Spirit to be my Friend and my Guide. Thank you that the Holy Spirit is
with me constantly reminding me of my very special position as a child
of God the Father. Thank you that as Your child, I can now start enjoying
all Your blessings for my life - Divine Healing, Divine Health and Divine
Life in You. Thank you also for the wonderful gifts that the Holy Spirit
brings along with Him and for imparting those gifts into my life.
Thank you Lord Jesus for what You had accomplished for us on the cross
thus satisfying the judicial righteousness of the Father. Because You
were raised from the dead, I am now eternally forgiven of all my sin,
greatly blessed among all men, a highly favored child of God, deeply loved
by the Father and completely protected in the Lord and in the most precious
name of Jesus Christ, Yeshua Ha’ Mashiah, I pray. Amen.
If you have prayed this prayer for the first time, welcome to the Family
of the Father (and it is a very large universal family). It is important
that you are not alone facing your personal challenges but that you can
obtain good help wherever you are. Why not take the time to find your
own local Christian family (local church) and worship the Father together?
You will be greatly encouraged when you meet together to worship the Father,
for fellowship and for the study of the Word of Christ.
Start receiving the blessings of the Father as you walk with Him in faith.
It is your inheritance in Christ and He wants you to start enjoying these
blessings right now; you do not need to wait until you reach heaven and
there is more from where they come from.
And, my friend, continue to exercise the gift of praying in tongues and
with the usage, more gifts of the Holy Spirit will be imparted to you.
The Lord blesses you and keeps you,
The Lord makes His face shine upon you and be gracious to you and all
your loved ones,
The Lord lifts up His countenance upon you and gives you His shalom peace.
Numbers 6: 24–26
Have a blessed week ahead, Shavrou-tov
Shalom,
Andrew L W Lee
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