The
Truman Legacy: The Rebirth of Israel
“Now
learn a lesson from the fig tree. When its buds become tender and its leaves
begin to sprout, you know without being told that summer is near. Just so, when
you see the events I’ve described beginning to happen, you can know his return
is very near, right at the door. I assure you, this generation will not pass
from the scene before all these things take place. Heaven and earth will
disappear, but my words will remain forever.” (Matthew
24:32-35)
In His Olivet Discourse Jesus gave his disciples
some signs whereby they could know when the time was at hand. He gave the sign
of the fig tree, a symbol of the nation Israel. He said when the fig tree
buds and puts forth leaves, you know summer time is nearing. Likewise when you
see all these things begin to come to pass, know that it is near, even at the
doors. Then Jesus stated, the generation which sees these things begin to come
to pass will not pass away until all is fulfilled that He prophesied in that
discourse. Israel became a nation again in 1948.
It is now 2010, over 62 years since this beginning sign came to pass. Surely the
return of Jesus must be very, very near.
As a student in end time prophecy, I am blessed
to be a witness of this generation that saw Israel being
reborn and looking forward to seeing Jesus appearing before the tribulation
hour. I was a five-year old kid living in Van Nuys, CA when President
Truman announced the news of Israel’s existence. Back then, I
hardly remembered any news event other than playing with my neighborhood
buddies. The significant of this important news hasn’t aroused my interest until
I became a born-again Christian and studied the Bible and its prophetic events.
I remembered having seen Harry Truman as a very serious and respectable
president who does not shirked responsibility when TV was at its infancy. He
always appears in a neat double-breasted suit and too clean cut. There was a
sign on his desk that reads “The Buck Stops Here”, I think that Obama needs to find a
copy of the sign for his desk and to start to take responsibility for his
actions, the economy and his foreign relations. I love how Truman describes the
reason for the sign.
I
believe one of the most important event in American history was Harry Truman’s
recognition of Israel on May 14, 1948. This sets the prophetic clock toward the
2nd advent of Jesus Christ within a
generation.
Truman was a Baptist and had strong moral convictions
compared to some recent presidents. It was said he read the Bible through three
times before age 14. He was honest, blunt and a no-nonsense type of guy who
stood up for what he believes and took responsibilities for his failures, hence
“The Buck Stops Here.” He was courageous in the face of tremendous opposition.
Then
God decided it was time for Truman to act and he was thrusted into the pressure
cooker immediately. He had been Vice President for only 82 days when a
weakened President Roosevelt suddenly died. He had very little meaningful
communication with Roosevelt about world affairs or domestic politics once he
was sworn in as Vice President, and was completely unbriefed about major
initiatives relating to the successful prosecution of the war — notably the top
secret Manhattan Project, which was, at the time of FDR's passing, on the cusp
of testing the world's first atomic bomb.
After he was sworned in as president and was briefed, he asked the
reporters "Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don't know if you
fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me what happened
yesterday, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on
me."
In a period of 6 eventful months, Truman ended
the war with Germany and Japan, thus his
decision to use the atomic bombs was necessary to save a million American lives
and end the war quickly. He was God’s guiding light.
When the Jewish remnants trickled to Palestine after the
Holocaust, the land was under a British Mandate based upon the Balfour
Declaration of 1917 to provide a home for Jews. At that time, they were living
in internment camps and were living with the Arabs. When the UN was at its
infancy, Britian told the UN to deal with the Palestine issue.
“What I’m trying to do is to make the whole
world safe for the Jews” Truman wrote as he tried to wrestle over the decision
to recognize the Jewish state in Palestine. Deeply affected by the Holocaust,
Truman sympathized with the Jewish aspirations for a homeland. In late 1947,
Truman lobbied for the UN resolution to divide into Jewish and Arab states.
Britian announced it would hand authority over Palestine to the UN by May 14, 1948.
Truman’s decision to recognize Israel was hard fought. He was strongly
opposed by the U.S. State Department, which favored a United Nations trusteeship
over Palestine. The State Department took a pragmatic view, seeing the need for
the free flow of oil from Muslim nations in the face of the very real
possibility of war with Russia. They did not want to offend the Muslims for the
sake of a “few Jews.”
Truman was opposed by many powerful figures in
government, including George C. Marshall, a former Chief of Staff under FDR and
then Secretary of State, who was called by the president “the greatest living
American.” Marshall’s opposition was shared by almost every member of the
brilliant and now-legendary group of men, later referred to as “the Wise Men,”
who were then in the process of creating a postwar foreign policy that would
endure for more than forty years. Marshall told the president bluntly, “If you
recognize the state of Israel and if I were to vote in the election, I would
vote against you.” Secretary of the Navy Forrestal warned that recognition of
Israel would be in vain because the Arabs would “push the Jews into the
sea.”
Truman withstood this pressure because of his biblical
convictions. His Special Counsel, Clark Clifford said that Truman “was a student
and believer in the Bible since his youth” and that “from his reading of the Old
Testament, he felt the Jews derived a legitimate historical right to Palestine,
and he sometimes cited such biblical lines as Deuteronomy 1:8: ‘Behold, I have given up the land before
you; go in and take possession of the land which the Lord hath sworn unto your
fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob’”
Another factor in his decision is a letter his Pastor
wrote to Truman his opinion on the Israel situation at the President’s
request:
Hon.
Harry S. Truman President United States Washington, D. C.
Dear Mr.
President:
Mr. Matthew J. Connelly wired me New York October 1st and
suggested that I write you certain matters of my trip to
Palestine.
First, I want to thank you for your very kind personal letter
of August 5th, which was of invaluable assistance in all my travels.
I
have given extensive study to the Jewish Palestinian question. The issue is
whether we will take the authority of the Bible of our mothers or the Koran with
the sword and flame.
In that whole controversy the big issue is who owns
the land, who has the title to that land? If that question is settled there is
no other question.
The Lord God Almighty in Genesis the 17th chapter,
specifically states that the title to Palestine is given not to Ishmael, the
ancestor of the Arabs, but to Isaac and his seed for ever.
“And God said,
Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac:
and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with
his seed after him.” (Gen. 17:19)
This covenant was confirmed to Isaac,
Genesis 26:3:
“Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will
bless thee; for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries,
and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father;
This
covenant was also confirmed to Jacob, Genesis 28:13:
“And, behold, the
LORD stood above it, and said, I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father, and the
God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy
seed;
The covenant was likewise confirmed to Moses in Deuteronomy
30:3-5:
“That then the LORD thy God will turn thy captivity, and have
compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations,
whither the LORD thy God hath scattered thee. If any of thine be driven out unto
the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will the LORD thy God gather thee, and
from thence will he fetch thee: And the LORD thy God will bring thee into the
land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and he will do thee
good, and multiply thee above thy fathers.
David specifically states the
title to that land is to the Jews and the descendants of Jacob: Psalm
105:9-12:
“Which covenant he made with Abraham, and his oath unto Isaac;
And confirmed the same unto Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting
covenant: Saying, Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your
inheritance: When they were but a few men in number; yea, very few, and
strangers in it.
Thirteen hundred years ago the Arabs were usurpers,
Mohammed with fire and sword, and they were robbers of property that belongs to
the Jews.
A second and very important authority in addition to Scriptural
authority, Great Britain was given mandate over Palestine for the purpose of
Jewish immigration into that land and for making it a national home.
This
mandate was confirmed by the United States Government and by the 57 Nations of
the League of Nations.
The tragedy and the cause of all the present
trouble is that Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister, put on a two-fold
appeasement in 1939:
First, with Hitler, and that brought on World War
II.
Second, with the Arabs, who were the allies of
Hitler.
Chamberlain violated the international law giving that land as a
national home for Jews in 1939, and said only 70,000 Jews would be permitted to
go for the next five years, and after that none except by the consent of the
Arabs. But the mandate made no such restrictions.
Therefore the present
Jewish immigration into Palestine is not “illegal”; it’s legal.
Based on
the mandate given to Great Britain over Palestine, and confirmed by the United
States Government and confirmed by the League of Nations, the Jews invested six
hundred and fifty million dollars in Palestine, built cities, public works, and
the curse of God Almighty is on every hand that violates this most solemn
agreement-the mandate three times over confirmed.
Now, Mr.
President, it certainly is a matter that should cause us to stop and think that
the Arab leaders from the Grand Mufti on down were allies of Hitler, and it ill
becomes them to come now into court with their hands dripping with the blood of
the Jews, six million of them murdered by Hitler.
I interviewed many Arab
leaders, and without question I found that the whole crowd are for Stalin, just
like they formerly were for Hitler.
While this country was fighting
Hitler, thirty thousand young Jews from Palestine volunteered and went to the
battle front and not a single Arab regiment.
If the Arabs and Jews in
Palestine were left alone they would get along and settle their
troubles.
Russia is doing everything at her command to foment the
trouble.
The time has come, and long past, when the United States should
keep its promise and take a firm stand for law and order in that land that has
given the world its Bible and Saviour.
Yours very
sincerely,
(Signed by J. Frank Norris)
So
Truman’s mind was made up. By applying his “The Buck Stops Here” approach with
tough responsible decisions, Truman instucted Clifford to send the message to
the UN:
“This Government has been informed that a Jewish state
has been proclaimed in Palestine, and recognition has been requested by the
provisional Government thereof.
The
United States recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of
the new State of Israel.”
(Signed by
Harry S.Truman)
Then
11 minutes after David Ben-Gurion’s declaration of the new state, Truman’s
message came through as the first nation to recognized Israel as a
nation.
Truman felt
great satisfaction in what he had been able to do for the Jewish people, and was
deeply moved by their expressions of gratitude, then and for years to come. When
the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Isaac Halevi Herzog, called at the White House, he
told Truman, “God put you in your mother’s womb so you would be the instrument
to bring the rebirth of Israel after two thousand years.” I thought he was
overdoing things, remembered David Niles, “but when I looked over at the
President, tears were running down his cheeks.”
After his presidency, longtime Jewish
friend Eddie Jacobson introduced
Truman to a group of professors by saying “This is the man who help create the
state of Israel.” But Truman corrected him:
“What do you mean ‘help create’? I am Cyrus. I am Cyrus.”
This is that main reason why God’s providence
placed him into the presidency when he did. Many who have sifted through the
data are confident that had FDR remained President, he would not have made the
same decision that was handed down by Truman. It appears that God put him in the
White House for the purpose of providing an agent He used, as He did Cyrus 2500
years ago, to restore Israel to her land after the
Babylonian captivity.
So on the long forgotten shelf, alone…stood a
clock. For nearly 2000 years, the clock lay silent. In years before, it ran,
chimed, tick and tocked, but for many, many years it lay dormant….frozen in time
the clock sat quietly until it happened…On May 14, 1948, God’s prophetic clock
started ticking again…LOUDLY.
YBIC,
Little
David