Practice English Speaking&Listening with: What Was It Like To Witness The Birth Of Israel As A Nation? | Pastor Chuck Smith | The Joshua Fund

(upbeat music)

- You were born on June 25th?

- 19...27? - June 25th.

- 1927, you got that one.

- So, you had a few years there,

you had about 21 years before

Israel was prophetically reborn.

- That is correct - What were you taught?

What did your parents think, what did your pastor think,

what were your views and the views of the around you

about Israel pre '48?

- Well I grew up in a church that did believe

that god had a purpose for the nation of Israel

and they did teach that,

that God was yet going to work through the nation of Israel

and bring them back into the land.

And so it was of course

to us an exciting fulfillment of Bible prophecy

that we had already believed in,

but now seeing it happen right before our eyes

was truly an exciting experience.

- I'll say. Do you remember the events around May 14th, '48?

Do you have personal recollections of that moment

as Israel was literally being declared a state?

- Oh yes, in fact I heard the

broadcast of Ben-Gurion on the radio,

though I couldn't understand the Hebrew.

But when he declared that Israel

was now again among the nations of the world,

it was just an exciting experience because,

to me it was just the fulfillment of prophecy.

- Let's go into that a little bit further because,

for almost 19 centuries,

even many of our church fathers were saying,

"well, we're misreading those scriptures about

a literal rebirth of Israel and Jews

coming back to the land."

For those 21 years of your life when it hadn't yet happened,

and then that moment of '48,

what did that teach you about God's word,

and how did you perceive those things?

- Well of course the idea that God was through with Israel

and the replacement theology was something

that I'd always been taught against.

And that God was not through and of course,

reading the Bible you would have to realize that

God still has a purpose for Israel.

And, let a man forget it's cunning k'know,

or, let his right hand forget it's cunning,

if God would forget the old Israel.

I think that it was something that we were anticipating,

something that we believed was gonna happen,

but yet always the reality of it,

was just overwhelming.

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