Much of the Christian world doesn’t know that in the Jewish world there is a great faith movement. Many of these rabbis may have never heard of a Smith Wigglesworth or a Kenneth Hagin or other Faith-Word giants, but nevertheless much of their faith message comes from the same divine source.
If you feed only on the news, you will not imbibe of Biblical faith. To understand the faith talk of rabbis such as Lazer Brody and many others, you must learn at least two Hebrew words: “emuna,” meaning faith and total trust in God, and “Hashem,” literally “The Name,” a reverent Jewish Orthodox code word for God.
Redemption of the modern state of Israel is an ongoing process. It takes, for example, only about 45 minutes to read the scroll of Esther and how the Jewish nation was saved from destruction, but the process of those events involved approximately 12 years.
The Six Day War of June 1967 and its great military victories, including the destruction of Egypt’s aircraft, brought much attention to the military might of Israel so God had to allow the devastating Yom Kippur War in 1973. After that Jews began to repent and to return to God. Since then there have been many movements of the Holy Spirit as Jews who were disconnected from God began to return to him. In our generation there are more baalei teshuvah (returnees to Jewish tradition and observance) than at any other time in Jewish history.
If the current Gaza war were a boxing match, it would be a split decision. There’s been no knock-out on either side but God has allowed this war, Rabbi Brody says, to “wake us up” and to use Hamas as God’s stick to bring the nation to repentance. We must see the scenario through the “eyes of emuna,” that a clear military victory at this point might result in men attributing the victory to the power of the IDF or to the Iron Dome. Rather, God has used this war, from its beginning with the kidnap and murder of the three yeshiva students, to bring about that “rarest commodity– Jewish unity.”
The murder of the three young martyrs providentially triggered a war that revealed Hamas had a doomsday scenario that would have been the worst and most coordinated terror attack in history.
Israeli intelligence had no idea of the severity of the threat of the Hamas attack tunnels, and Hamas did not plan this current war, because they were building up to a colossal assault at the Jewish New Year in September. They had wanted to make a surprise attack out of tunnels at each settlement, dressed in Israeli army uniforms with assault weapons, to kill as many men, women and children, and to take many hostages—up to 2000 terrorists infiltrating Israel all at once. A true catastrophe was averted. God foiled their devious plan.
Let’s go back to June 12, the whole Jewish world after 18 days of unified prayer– and 18 adds up in Hebrew letters to life–the people of Israel came together in unity at the news of the murders. Bible-believing Christians also prayed and embraced these boys as our own. It was a spiritual phenomon, and God is still outworking this growing family connection.
There wasn’t a single home in Israel that didn’t embrace those three boys as their own; people prayed who had never prayed, because they knew it could have been “my son,” but these three young martyrs saved the Jewish people. Their murders by members of a Hamas cell in Hebron actually spoiled Hamas’ big plans; war broke out and the tunnels were discovered. So now we look back and say that these young men died kidush l’Hashem, in sanctification of his name.
From the eyes of emuna, this is a great victory; Hashem foiled Hamas’ plot. Nobody can claim “it was done by the might of my own hand.” Anybody who attributes anything to his own might is in total apostasy, heresy, the opposite of emuna. Everything comes from Hashem.
Hashem’s revelation is that everything is for the best. We don’t have enough historic perspective about the Holocaust, but according to the law of emuna, there are no exceptions to that rule, even the Holocaust.
The rule of emuna, says Rabbi Brody and his mentor, is that HaShem does everything for the best. While we don’t fully know in our hearts the “whys” of the Holocaust, yet after only a month and a half, we already know that the boys were martyred to save the people of Israel: if it had not been for their kidnapping, the war would not have broken out and then nobody would known the severity of tunnels. But as a result of this war, every single Jewish person must say, “Thank you Hashem, we found out the plot from captured Hamas terrorists.”
Depite the considerable powers of the interrogations of Shin Bet, information about the planned super assault was readily gained from captured terrorists. How? Hamas had been giving these terrorists stimulants, euphoric drugs, to make them feel invincible, but the same drugs stimulated them to talk! The drug backfired, and so, Rabbi Brody commented, “they sang like songbirds.” The Jewish press printed this information. Hashem’s fingerprint is all over the place.
Don’t just thank the Iron Dome. Thank Hashem. Ashdod caught a lot of fire. One rocket landed in Ashdod’s most crowded gas station on a Friday morning; 18 cars were being serviced. A tanker with 35,000 liters of gasoline could have blown up like 165,000 molotov cocktails; next to that tanker was another tanker with propane gas, more volatile than gasoline. There were no fatalities; a disabled war veteran was helped out of his car. To watch the 45-minute teaching click here.
Hebrews 11:6 is a fitting commentary: “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”
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