Birth announcements are exciting. Parents share the news first with family, then with close friends, and later with the community. In the first century, however, it was unthinkable to send birth announcements to the poor and to those who held lower-class occupations, like shepherds…
I have some Christian friends who do not celebrate Christmas. They object to the many pagan traditions that have crept into the holiday and argue that Jesus was not even born on December 25. I don’t disagree. They are quite correct…
For more than 50 years, Charles M. Schulz’s animated classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas, has touched millions of television viewers. In it, Charlie complains, “I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy…
King Herod was a complex man. He was a brilliant builder and politician, yet a ruthless and brutal tyrant. He makes a brief appearance in Scripture as the cold-blooded killer of baby boys in Bethlehem and surrounding areas…
Why are so many people willing to believe a lie? They would rather believe they evolved from monkeys than that they were created by almighty God, who loves them. They would rather believe there’s no such thing as absolute truth and that the Bible is nothing more than fables and myths….
If you hold an American passport and were born in Jerusalem, this might be the time to get your document updated. Perhaps now, 70 years after Israel gained its independence, the U.S. State Department will finally print “Jerusalem, Israel” on your passport…
Many people want to know about leaders on the world scene—the men and women whose faces they see regularly online and on television. What are these people really like? Are they kind, caring, and patriotic? Or are they cold, calculating, and self-serving?
If you had visited “Dr.” Malachi Love-Robinson in his medical offices in Florida a few years ago, you would have met a nice-looking young man sporting a white lab coat, stethoscope draped around his neck, who would have examined you with…
Horrifying pictures of the Holocaust of World War II continue to shock people even today. After 75 years, film footage still reminds us of Satan’s relentless and barbaric attempts to eradicate world Jewry. Throughout history, demonically inspired, hate-filled fanatics…
Years ago, my boss at the office where I worked asked me about the Antichrist: “Does the Bible teach that the Antichrist will be destroyed? Or does he win in the end?” His question came following the release of The Omen in 1976, a movie that revolves around…
Some things seem almost too absurd to be true. But life is filled with absurdities when it comes to Israel. Do you see the ladder in the photo below? It has leaned against the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem for at least 150 years…
Among the many things God cares about, three stand out: Israel, Jerusalem, and the Temple. During my Hebrew-school days, I learned about these things in multiple ways. From the Jewish Scriptures, I learned God set Jerusalem in the midst of the…
The prophet Ezekiel burst onto the scene during Jerusalem’s darkest days at the end of the sixth century BC. Then, as now, the Middle East was in crisis. In fact, the Middle East had been in crisis for most of the eighth and seventh centuries BC due to the…
When God confirmed a covenant with Abraham (Gen. 12:1), He issued a divine proclamation: He vowed to give all the land He was promising Abraham to both Abraham and his descendants forever (13:15). God bequeathed the land through…
Leon Uris’s novel Exodus, about the founding of the State of Israel, captivated the world when it came out in 1958. It became an international sensation, rising quickly to number one on The New York Times best-seller list and staying there for eight months…
Today much of the world despises Israel. All it takes to substantiate this truth is a look at the UN’s overwhelming number of anti-Israel resolutions, the countries that have waged war against Israel in hopes of annihilating it, and the news media’s endless caricature of…
As I sat in church a few weeks ago, a friend I hadn’t seen in a long time turned around to tell me how cute my grandchildren are. My first thought was, How would you know what my grandchildren look like? They live 600 miles away. And then it dawned on me: Facebook!
For years I had a dream. I wanted my hometown baseball team (the Cleveland Indians) to play the Chicago Cubs in the World Series. I had adopted the Cubs when I lived in Chicago. Both teams excelled at losing…
It rarely snows in Washington, DC. So when the big North American blizzard known as Snowmageddon dumped more than two feet of snow in the U.S. capital in February 2010, shutting down the federal government for an unprecedented four days…
Pastor David Lemming logs onto social media almost every day. He stays in touch with his people by encouraging them with a Bible verse, linking last week’s sermon so they can watch it online, and sometimes giving them a glimpse into the sermon he’s preparing for the following Sunday….
Facebook. YouTube. Instagram. Twitter. For most of us, these sites serve as entertaining outlets where we post pictures, share opinions, and watch videos of cats (so I’m told) or of a deer eating a snowman. (That one was viewed several hundred thousand times.) But for Israel, social-media platforms have become…
Every 83 seconds, someone uploads an anti-Semitic post to social media. In 2016 alone, more than 382,000 anti-Semitic posts appeared on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram1—many of which were never removed—denying the Holocaust; portraying the Jewish people as genetically inferior…
A minister once told me about a church that was having difficulty finding a pastor. Its doctrine was identical to that of The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry. The church used…
My wife enjoys watching Antiques Roadshow, a popular television program where appraisers provide the monetary value of something you may have had in your attic…
For centuries conservative biblical scholars have believed in the inerrancy of Scripture. Such theologians as Augustine (354–430), Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), Martin Luther (1483–1546)…
A student recently came to my office and told me he had been to a conference with pastors from mainline churches. When he mentioned he was taking a course on Dispensationalism…
When our children were young, my wife and I would take them every October 31 to the storage shed behind our house. They each brought a sheet of paper on which they had written…
As a child, I loved to play with silly putty. I would make putty pancakes and press them onto newspapers so the words would appear on the putty. Then I’d remove the putty…
When I was a brand new believer many years ago, a wonderful woman in my church invited me to her home for lunch. I knew nothing about Christian doctrine. All I knew was that I was a sinner, Jesus had died for me…
Surveying the current geopolitical landscape can give me a headache. The world is embroiled in a spiritual battle. Right is made to look wrong; wrong is made to look right; security threats loom large; and if we don’t keep our eyes on the Lord…
When the word Rapture is mentioned, responses differ. Some people know it refers to Christ coming to take the church to heaven. Others incorrectly associate the rapture with Christ’s Second Coming. Still others have no idea…
Rapture, Antichrist, and Tribulation are words Josiah Hesse associates with his apocalyptic upbringing—an upbringing he says was built on “the urgency of avoiding hell.” In his article “Apocalyptic upbringing: how I recovered from…
Christ’s premillennial Second Coming to Earth is evident even from a casual reading of the Scriptures. The Bible, taken at face value, clearly states the Messiah will return to establish His worldwide, earthly Kingdom, headquartered in Jerusalem .
Think of the worst disasters in history. They’re nothing compared to what lies ahead—but not for the bride of Christ. “Husband Charged With Domestic Violence.” It’s an all-too-familiar headline. Sometimes the offender is a celebrity…
Every December, my husband and I try to go to Disney World for a few days to attend the Candlelight Processional at the America Gardens Theater in Epcot. Tom likes Disney World because he says it’s the only place where he…
The beat goes on as the Arabs pick up where the Ammonites left off. Have you ever read a Scripture verse you had read many times before, but suddenly it seemed brand new to you? I have. I call it a Wow! moment. My most recent Wow! moment came after reading Judges 11: “And the…
Even the most unlikely situation can become a vehicle for God’s grace, as it did with Tamar. The story of Tamar as recorded in Genesis 38 is both sordid and tragic. Many readers consider the narrative indecent, and some even suggest it should never…
How the great faith of a Canaanite woman saved both her and her entire family. Few people hang skeletons on their front doors. But that’s exactly what the New Testament does. The book of Matthew opens with the genealogy of Jesus, which includes…
Sometimes we make one decision that changes our lives forever. That’s what Ruth did, and God blessed her. I’d like to tell you about a girl who grew up 30 centuries ago and made a decision so momentous it not only secured her place in history but…
My wife made a casual remark last Christmas that has stuck with me. We were thinking about all of the family members we were expecting on Christmas day and all of the presents we needed…
There has always been a generation gap. Growing up, I never felt my parents understood me, my taste in music (Dad said if it wasn’t classical, it wasn’t “real” music), or my desire to…
Few people probably associate Australia and New Zealand with the Balfour Declaration. But here is a look at a little-known miracle that helped to shape that segment of history.
They’ve had more unflattering epithets thrown at them than any previous generation. Who are these young people, and what makes them tick?
They may have been children 20 years ago, But today they are posed to take over the church. What is the best way to impart sound doctrine to the generation that is coming of age?
Millennials are a highly justice-oriented generation. They empathize with the downtrodden, embrace social-justice causes, and have massive potential to do good. But what is their motivation, and is it enough?
A quarter of the millennials in the United States sympathize more with the Palestinians than with the Israelis. This signifies a big shift. How did it happen, and what can be done about it?
Every Wednesday, we have chapel at The Friends of Israel headquarters. It’s a wonderful time when we pray together, hear a brief message, and sometimes connect via Skype with one of our workers overseas who…
A look at the first-ever FOI Canada Up to Jerusalem trip to Israel and some of the wonderful experiences God provided. It is eleven days’ journey from Horeb by way of Mount Seir to Kadesh Barnea. Sounds simple enough. Forty years later…
Camped at Sinai for 12 months, the fledgling nation of Israel received God’s Law, constructed His Tabernacle, and established the Levitical priesthood. It had great dreams and high expectations of entering a land that flowed “with milk and honey” as it set out from…
It didn’t go well for Korah and crew when they complained against God. In fact, the ended up in what people today might call a giant sinkhole. Anyone who knows a little Yiddish probably knows the word kvetch. It means complain and whine habitually.
Many things happen behind the scenes that affect our lives and the history of nations. The Israelites fell prey to the enemy’s devices, and it cost them dearly. If you think you know everything going on around you, think again. Life is not always what it seems. Sometimes circumstances are orchestrated…
The biblical doctrine of propitiation is under attack in our culture. Adherents of postmodernism and even some people within the church have rejected biblical teachings they perceive to be too harsh—such as judgment, hell, and the doctrine of propitiation.
June 1967 was a good time to be Jewish. At least it seemed that way to me. I was a teenager during the Six-Day War, and I was so proud of the Israeli soldiers. Not only were they fighting for their country, but they were fighting…
Before we arrived in the spring of 2000, I asked the 16 members of our Friends of Israel Youth Adventure team (now called ORIGINS) to describe what they thought a settlement would look like.
When the 1967 Six-Day War erupted, the Jewish state had just celebrated 19 years of independence. Levi Eshkol, 71, was both prime minister and defense minister. Eshkol had replaced the legendary David Ben-Gurion in June 1963. Filling Ben-Gurion’s shoes…
How important is Jerusalem to the Jewish people? Their souls have been intertwined with it for more than 3,000 years. Unfortunately, their heartache is not over. This article was written shortly after Six-Day War and ran in the…
A city’s significance is often measured by its commercial importance, the height of its skyscrapers, or the grandeur of its architecture. But Jerusalem is not like any other city. Jerusalem’s significance comes from the One who chose to dwell…
It is probably the best known and most fought over city in the world. The Jewish people cherish it. The Muslims want to take it. The United Nations wants to divide it. Nations are willing to go to war over it. But the Jerusalem of today is not the…
My husband is a huge Bing Crosby fan. I think he has every song Bing ever sang, including multiple versions of “White Christmas.” He’s also seen a few Road to films, strictly because they star Bing. One is called…
“Next year in Jerusalem!” As they have since the Jewish people were scattered around the world in AD 70, these words will ring out on the evening of April 10 at the close of Passover seders everywhere. Yet, if the United Nations…
Famous 20th-century preacher and theologian Harry Ironside long ago noted that the book of Isaiah evokes glad anticipation in the hearts of believers who cherish “the coming day when Immanuel, of whom this prophet speaks, will take…
Good news comes in all shapes and sizes, and when it arrives—particularly in the midst of trying times—it is usually like the soothing balm of Gilead. The words of Isaiah 61 may have affected the Israelites of the prophet Isaiah’s day…
For centuries the Jewish people have waited for their Messiah to come and set up His Kingdom in Israel. At that time, Israel will receive the Land God promised them in perpetuity. That is when redeemed Israel will experience the fulfillment of…
In an age when Jesus is marginalized and the Bible grows more despised each day, it’s remarkable that anyone would know the Lord’s Prayer. But know it they do. It’s recited frequently at funerals—even at
This year marks the 75th anniversary of Israel My Glory, and we plan to run vintage articles by Victor Buksbazen, the first editor of the magazine and first executive director of The Friends of Israel.
To some, it may have seemed like an odd pairing. But not to Natan Sharansky. As he sat with Martin Luther King III on a Sunday morning in Jerusalem, he felt like they were colleagues sharing the same goals Being with King in Israel…
Struggle defined Jacob and Esau’s relationship. It began in the womb, continued when Esau sold his birthright to Jacob, and culminated when Jacob stole Esau’s blessing. Though they were twins, the men were…
God uses all types of circumstances to shape people. Sometimes they are favorable; other times they involve trouble, heartache, and grief. In the case of the patriarch Jacob, the Lord used 20 difficult years in Padan Aram, when Jacob worked for…
Many people struggle through life. Every day brings them something new to worry about. Some have illnesses. Others have grief. The list of troubles that shape a person is endless. The patriarch Jacob knew all about trouble…
People often approach their so-called golden years with an unrealistic view of the future. They envision themselves healthy and enjoying carefree living and financial security. Often, however, the opposite is true. And they are unprepared for…
I started working for Elwood McQuaid in 1999. He was executive director of The Friends of Israel and always led our Up to Jerusalem tours. My mother-in-law, Vera Bowker, then FOI’s publications manager…
The wonderful Christmas season will soon be here. It’s a time to celebrate the divinely supernatural, when God did something for humanity that is so spectacular it has to be experienced personally to be understood.
Although we’ll never grasp God in His entirety, we can still learn about Him through three things in particular. When I was a PhD candidate, I had to endure a comprehensive oral examination before four professors…
During His incarnation, Christ was humiliated for our sake. Here are seven characteristics of Jesus that should make us love Him even more. You are about to read one of the most enlightening passages in all of Scripture…
Bobby was exactly my age—only 28. The cause of death was a horrific car crash. His extended family was unchurched, and I was asked to pray with them and later conduct the funeral. As a young pastor…
I am Charlie Perry’s great grandson. That fact may not mean much today, but in my small hometown many years ago, it meant plenty. Charles H. Perry was a man of impeccable integrity…
Have you ever heard of the Yazoo land scandal of 1795? Apparently, it is considered “the most corrupt deal in American history,” according to historynewsnetwork.org…
What do you do when the Bible says one thing and the government says another? Follow the principle the apostle Peter gave us. A significant parade of years has passed since my grammar school days…
The book of Micah is one of the 12 Minor Prophets in the Bible—minor not because of content but because of size. The Minor Prophets cover similar themes as the other Prophets, but they also…
What goes around comes around. That means you can’t get away with doing wrong because eventually, wrong will be done to you. Biblically, it is the law of sowing and reaping, something the Judean leaders…
The prophet Micah wrote during extremely difficult days in the history of the Jewish nation. Crime was rampant, greed was everywhere, Judah’s leaders were cruel, and righteousness was…
It’s election year in America, and again many are hoping for new leadership to restore the glory of our country. We think if only we get the right leaders into positions of influence, then perhaps we can…
I grew up in a Catholic town. Most of my friends attended either one of the many Roman Catholic churches in the area or the First Congregational Church downtown. Had you asked me…
Israel’s wise King Solomon, with years of world-watching behind him, concluded, “That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl. 1:9)…
Prophet, Priest, and King. That is how Jesus’ ministry roles are often portrayed. The Gospels emphasize His role as King of the Jews, though He has yet to occupy that position…
Contrary to what some people think, the concept of priesthood did not originate with Israel. In the patriarchal period, the male head of each household functioned as a…
Moses said, “You shall surely set a king over you whom the Lᴏʀᴅ your God chooses” (Dt. 17:15). Here is how God planned to administer His kingship authority over Israel…
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” So said Sir John Dalberg-Acton in the 19th century, and nothing happening in the world to date has contradicted him…
One thing I loved about being a newspaper reporter was going where the action was. Although I never went anywhere particularly exciting, it didn’t matter. I was involved with…
A growth-inspiring experience of a lifetime is to walk among the artifacts of empires, civilizations, and societies that have lived and died and, in many respects, shaped our world. For those of us living in the United States, a relatively young country…
For years scholars have argued about the precise location of the first and second Jewish Temples on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Nevertheless, almost all archaeologists agree they were…
I saw Israel for the first time when I moved my family to Jerusalem in 1979 to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Even though I had a master’s degree in biblical studies, I learned quickly I was not…
At the southeastern end of the old city of Jerusalem lies an impressive series of burial caves. Most date to the time of Jesus. Archaeologists recently have taken a closer look at them and have turned up…
Khirbet Qeiyafa is a provincial town located about 19 miles from Jerusalem in the Elah Valley, where a young David slayed the Philistine giant Goliath. Today, 30 centuries later, it is contributing the most to the…
Have you ever watched a TV show that asks simple questions to the so-called man on the street? Usually, it’s hilarious. Some of the answers are so ridiculous you can hardly believe people are…
When invited by the Embassy of Israel to Washington, DC, to attend a prerelease screening of Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List in 1993, I filed into a theater crowded with viewers…
The idea of a Zionist memorial to the victims of Hitler’s war against the Jews came to Mordechai Shenhavi (1900– 1983) before anyone even grasped the horrifying scale of the Holocaust. In August 1942…
People stood shoulder-to-shoulder under the Jerusalem morning sun—still, respectful, and mindful of the solemn communication for which they had assembled. The only sound was that of…
I recently attended the Christian Leadership Seminar at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. The Christian Friends of Yad Vashem (CFYV), which hosts…
Every year Christians pause to remember an event that changed history. Whether you call it Easter or Resurrection Sunday, it is a day of rejoicing, when we gather together in churches around the…