EDITORIAL: Holy Land reflections

EDITOR’S NOTE: This Jan. 31 editorial, reflecting on a January tour of Israel by Witness executive editor James A. Smith Sr., is being re-posted today in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the modern State of Israel.

Photo by Yossi Ben David/Courtesy Yad Vashem.

The Children's Memorial at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel, remembering the young victims of Nazi Germany’s Holocaust of the Jews.

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We weren't 12 spies sent in to evaluate the prospects of conquering the Promise Land. Instead, thousands of years after only two spies, Joshua and Caleb, brought back a good report—which was rejected by the ancient Children of Israel—I was among nine Baptist newspaper editors who recently toured Israel as guests of the Ministry of Tourism.

The Ministry of Tourism logo depicts two men carrying a large cluster of grapes, representing the good report of Joshua and Caleb, suggesting Israel today is like the biblical description of a land flowing with milk and honey, worthy of the visits of millions of tourists the modern Jewish state hopes will come to the Holy Land.

My report is somewhat similar to the two faithful spies—Israel is a good land, one in which evangelical Christians from around the world are welcomed and appreciated as tourists. But that positive report is colored by the reality that evangelical Christians—most of whom are Arab—and Messianic Jews who live in the land, are sometimes not as welcomed.

Joshua and Caleb confirmed that there were indeed giants in the land, although they were confident those inhabitants were no obstacle to God's promises to the Children of Israel.

My report is that today's enemies of the tiny state of Israel are found within Palestine in the form of radical Palestinians intent on annihilating the Jewish state. Those enemies are also found in neighboring states who share some of Israel's borders, as well as a few others in very close, strategic proximity who are no less intent on Israel's destruction.

Into this extraordinarily complex place I joined eight of my editor colleagues for a six-day tour of the Holy Land this month. The week was a combination of spiritual exhilaration at seeing with my own eyes sites of extraordinary biblical significance and mental exhaustion as I attempted to process in my feeble mind the importance of these places, sometimes with thousands of years of history piled on layer upon layer of ruins.

Photo by James A. Smith Sr.

Items from the Holy Land, like Jordan River water, oil, soil and other items, are often bought by tourists as souvenirs. Yardenit is the location just south of the Sea of Galilee on the Jordan River where some pilgrims are baptized. The likely location of Jesus’ baptism, however, is much further south at Bethany beyond the Jordan, on the eastern side of the Jordan River, north of the Dead Sea.

I've heard it said of others that traveling to the Holy Land was a "life-changing" experience. I couldn't say that.

For me, walking (sometimes running, we often joked) where Jesus walked, was instead a glorious opportunity to see the historical locations I've read about in the Bible for so many years. I bristle at the idea that the Bible "comes alive" through such an experience. The Word of God, after all, is alive and powerful enough to change the lives of millions upon millions throughout the world who have never come close to setting foot in the Holy Land.

Still, I now see the Bible differently after having actually seen

• Mt. Carmel where Elijah won the battle with the prophets of Baal;

• Joppa where Jonah fled from God's call to preach repentance to Nineveh;

• Nazareth where Jesus lived most of his life as an obscure carpenter;

• the Sea of Galilee where Jesus walked on the water, calmed the storm, performed many of his miracles in nearby villages; and

• Jerusalem where Abraham was stayed by the angel of the Lord from sacrificing Isaac because God provided a ram; kings David and Solomon ruled Israel; and Jesus was received initially jubilantly, but later prayed in sorrow in the Garden of Gethsemane and was ultimately unjustly tried, convicted, crucified and arose from the grave for my sins!

On the other hand, I also saw what bordered on, if not succumbed to, superstition and idol worship in which pilgrims seemed to make certain "holy" places themselves the object of veneration, rather than God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—Himself whose mighty acts are remembered there.

I don't hold the terra firma of Israel as sacred, in spite of the plethora of "holy" water, oil, soil, incense, etc., available for sale at virtually every pilgrimage site, complete with certificates of authenticity. Such items are only slightly less offensive than television hucksters who offer prayer cloths and holy water for a donation.

Photo by James A. Smith Sr.

While these trinkets are annoying and embarrassing, Israel's Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem, disturbed my soul in a much different way - in a manner that all of us should be made to feel now and then.

Located in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem tells the horrifying story of Nazi Germany's attempt to exterminate the Jewish race. Any person who questions the reality of evil in this world need spend only a few minutes at Yad Vashem to understand the disturbing truth of humanity's endless wickedness. And, don't kid yourself; such evil persists today.

The Children's Memorial, commemorating the young lives snuffed out by the Nazis, is incredibly moving—and a reminder of America's own Holocaust in which unborn children are being exterminated with too few voices speaking against this modern-day atrocity.

We visited the Garden Tomb—a disputed possible location of Jesus' burial site—on the same day as Yad Vashem. As I stood inside the cramped cave some believe may have—temporarily, praise God!—held Jesus' body, I couldn't help but reflect on the story of evil told at Yad Vashem earlier that day.

God has provided His answer to such evil in the person of his son, Jesus Christ. I was reminded of how wicked I am in the face of God's righteousness—and how blessed I am that God's grace in Jesus Christ's work on the cross and in His resurrection covers my sin!

This brings me back to the fact that many evangelical Christians who rightly affirm Israel and strongly advocate our government's support of Israel sometimes forget, or don't know, that we have brothers and sisters in Christ in Israel, many of whom are Palestinians, who are preaching the Gospel in the very land where Jesus walked this earth. We don't have to choose between Israel and evangelical Palestinians.

Visiting Israel—and particularly the region around the Sea of Galilee and the Golan Heights bordering Syria on the north—vividly illustrated to me just how precarious is Israel's security situation in the region. Our government, in my view, should not be party to any pressuring of Israel to make itself vulnerable to her avowed enemies who wish to annihilate the Jewish state any less than the Nazis sought to exterminate the Jewish race.

Neither, however, should evangelicals in America fail to speak on behalf of the faithful remnant of evangelicals in the Holy Land and especially Jewish and Muslim converts to Christ who are sometimes pressured and persecuted by governments—both Israeli and Palestinian—as well as family and society. These brothers and sisters in Christ offer the only eternal hope Israelis and Palestinians can ever know and they merit the encouragement and support of American evangelicals certainly no less than the security needs of the State of Israel.

Having visited Jordan in 2006, I have been blessed now to see the Holy Land from both sides of the Jordan River. It is a good land, one I hope to return to at least once more.

"Peace is too big a word for the Middle East," an Israeli told us one day, reflecting the opinion of many of her fellow citizens. Politically, it seems she may be correct. But spiritually, the peace offered by God can be attained by all—Jews and Gentiles (of all nationalities), alike—who will but confess Jesus Christ as Lord.