Since the Israeli-Arab war there has been a story circulating about a lone Israeli soldier on a hill waving to the Arab army below. The Arab commander first sends up 50 soldiers to take the hill only to have them all destroyed. Next he orders 100 men to storm it and again they are defeated. Just as he is about to send 200 men up the hill one lone Arab, all tattered and torn, comes running down screaming ”Don’t send any more men up there, it’s a trap. There are two Israeli soldiers up there.”

Upon hearing this story our minds went back to the incident when Elijah sat upon the top of the hill and twice the captain and his fifty men were consumed with fire as they came to take the prophet.

Certainly it is true that when we have God on our side, we need not fear the armies around us. The Lord has certainly helped Israel in ages past when they were hopelessly outnumbered by their enemies. When Hezekiah was sur- rounded by Sennacherib’s army he turned to the Lord for help and in the morning there were 185,000 dead Assyrians killed by the angel of the Lord. When Gideon faced the Midianites, God reduced the Israeli army to 300 men ”lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me.”

Already the modern day Israeli army is beginning to vaunt themselves by saying just what God knew they would. In a recent Life Magazine article, Theodore H. White says, ”Some might see it as a miracle... but Baruch Fisher did not see it as a miracle. ’There was no place for us to go,’ he said.”

The Jews in Israel now are not very religious. One Israeli captain who fought in their war of independence personally told us that the Jews in Israel do not need God because they are now in their own land. He explained that a belief in God helped give the Jews hope when they were scattered but now that they are in their own land, they need no one, not even God. Life magazine reports that in Israel today ”there is a glowing pride and sense of muscle.”

God has a plan and purpose and He will bring it to pass but not for the righteousness of the Jews for God has said, ”I do not this for your sakes, 0 House of Israel, but for mine holy name’s sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen whither ye went... For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.”

History is repeating itself. As God told the children of Israel once before when they conquered their enemies, ”Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land: but for the wickedness of these nations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and that he may perform the word which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

If God does all this because of His promise to others, think what He will do for us if we are faithful to His word. He has promised that ”the angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.” He has promised ”(For the Lord thy God is a merciful God;) he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee.” He has promised that ”all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” He has promised that ”God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”

We are never alone or outnumbered if God is on our side, for ”if God be for us, who can be against us?” Let us then ”taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man who trusteth in Him.”

As we then watch God working out His purpose with the nations of the earth, let us remember that He is doing all this to bring to pass the Kingdom for ”the saints of the most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever.” While we are watching and waiting, let us be sure that we do not allow anything to separate us from the love of Christ. ”For we are persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”