From the Editor May/Jun 2022
Last summer my husband, Tom, and I went to Las Vegas, Nevada, for the funeral of a dear friend. To say Las Vegas is hot in July is an understatement. While we were there, the temperature registered 111 degrees! We stayed with Friends of Israel (FOI) colleagues Jon and Linda Craft, who warned us to drink plenty of water or we would dehydrate without realizing it and to refrain from touching anything outdoors made of metal.
When we borrowed the Crafts’ car, Tom had to wait for the air conditioner to kick in before he could touch the steering wheel. Yet beautiful flowers burst through the dry and rocky desert soil at the Warsaw Ghetto Remembrance Garden that Jon maintains for Temple Beth Sholom as a memorial to victims of the Holocaust. “How did you get anything to grow here?” I asked him.
“I bought the Israeli drip-irrigation system,” he said. Linda told us many of the gorgeous flowers thriving in Las Vegas are watered by Israeli-invented drip irrigation.
Instant-messaging technology, popular apps like Waze and WhatsApp, and medical advancements too numerous to mention all came to us through Israel. Israel has made a difference in the lives of people around the world, even though most don’t realize it.
And Israel makes all the difference when it comes to God, theology, salvation, and the Bible. Without the Jewish people we would have no knowledge of God because we would have no Bible, and we would have no hope of heaven or means of redemption because we would have no Savior. Eventually, redemptive history will be completed through Israel, which will play a key role in the future of the world.
In 1942, while Adolf Hitler was helping Satan by trying to annihilate European Jewry, the idea of a Jewish state was barely a dream. Yet FOI’s founders decided to publish a magazine and call it Israel My Glory from Isaiah 46:13 because they knew God would keep His promise to reestablish His people in their own land.
It is with deep humility and gratitude to the Lord that we celebrate 80 years of Israel My Glory with a couple of special articles in this issue. We also asked former FOI Executive Director Elwood McQuaid to write an article about touring the Jewish state.
We hope it encourages you to join us on one of our tours. Once you’ve been there, you’ll see how Israel can make a difference in your life too.
Waiting for His Appearing,
Lorna Simcox
Editor-in-Chief
