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Why Does Mike Evans Have a Museum in Jerusalem?

Answer No. 4

That’s a good question. It’s not only a good question, it is a question that deserves an answer. Because the question is so important, it follows that the answer must be also. But, if the question is simple, the answer is not. Rather, it is multifaceted. There is no single answer. But, when all of the facets that comprise the answer are presented, there is no longer a need for the question to be asked.

This, then, is the fourth facet of the answer. Please continue to follow this series of articles from beginning to end. Somewhere along the journey you may find the answer for yourself, even before we finish.

 

Facet #4 – To Continue the Legacy of Love of True Christians for the Jews

The Apostle Paul, himself a Jew and a Christian, explained that “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29). Immediately prior to that statement, he clearly indicated that he was speaking of the children of Israel, saying that “they are beloved for the sake of the fathers.”

The LORD made certain great and precious promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Those promises are in the form of covenants, which means that they are irrevocable. That is the matter to which Paul was speaking.

Bible-believing Christians – not those in name only, who, whether for personal, ecclesiastical or political gain, claim themselves to be – have always harbored a special love in their hearts for the Chosen People. Sometimes this is difficult to understand because of the highly-visible, anti-Semitic doings of those who, by using the name “Christian,” do so in vain. One simply cannot believe the Bible to be true and, at the same time, not love the Jews.

The minds of millions of the centuries were corrupted by the darkness that ensued when the rulers of the early centuries A.D. kept the Scriptures from the common man. However, once the written Word of God became available, and men began to read it in earnest, those who have loved the LORD have had a compassion for all mankind and, in particular, for the Jews. Gradually, out of the masses of those who had been misled and who, therefore, persecuted the Jews, grew a remnant of believed and loved the LORD God with all their hearts and minds and strength. These are the true believers.

These are the people represented by the Casper ten Boom family, Rev. William Henry Hechler, Jan Karska, Major Orde Wingate, Miep and Jan Gies, Irena Sendler and Oskar Schindler. They are people of the Bible, people of compassion. The Mike Evans Museum is in Jerusalem to tell their story, but it is also here to remind Jerusalem, Israel and the entire world that these people did not simply leave a legacy behind. The legacy continues, and we are proud to be a part of it.

We honor those who are Righteous among the Gentiles as a reminder that their righteousness is the righteousness of God and that their love is the love of God shining through them. We may call them Christian Heroes, but they are not really heroes at all. They are simply servants of the Living God who cannot help but love the Jewish people and seek their good.

Mike Evans has a museum in Jerusalem because we must keep the legacy alive.

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The Ten Boom Family

Ten Boom Family - Mike Evans Museum“It would be an honor to give my life for God’s ancient people.” ~ Casper Ten Boom

Casper ten Boom was a man of deep and precious faith in God. He raised his family in the Calvinist tradition of the Dutch Reformed church. He made his living as a jeweler and watchmaker in Haarlem, the Netherlands. But it was not what happened in his shop that defined his life, so much as it was his dedication to the LORD and his commitment to raise a godly family. Although he was surely proud to carry on the business he inherited from his father, it was far more important to him that he carried on the weekly prayer meeting that his father began in 1844.

One must work to support a family, but the desire to continue a prayer meeting must come from something else deep within. The reason for the ten Boom prayer meeting was specifically to pray for the Jewish people and the peace of Jerusalem, a directive from Scripture (Psalm 122:6) that all true Christians willingly follow.

It was that commitment to Scripture, to God and to the Jews that started the prayer meetings, and it was that same commitment that resulted in its temporary end in 1944.

When the Nazis invaded Holland, the ten Boom family’s love for the Jewish people compelled them to work with the Dutch underground to hide and rescue as many Jews as possible from the clutches of persecution and death. Casper built a hiding place behind a fake wall in his daughter Corrie’s bedroom in the small family home about his shop. That tiny space could hold up to six people at a time, but they had to remain standing and absolutely quiet in the event that the Nazis searched the ten Boom home, which, in fact they did from time to time.

The Nazi’s suspicion that the ten Booms were assisting Jews to be moved to safety was confirmed by a Dutch informant. The Nazis managed to arrest a total of 35 people, including the ten Booms, on February 28, 1944. However, despite their best efforts, they missed the six Jews who were in the hiding place behind the wall. The ten Boom family was split up and sent to different prisons and concentration camps. That is the only reason the organized prayer meetings stopped. Casper, who had said that “It would be an honor to give my life for God’s ancient people,” died at the age of 84, only 10 days following his imprisonment. Three other members of Casper ten Boom’s family died, either in prison or as a result of being imprisoned. His daughter, Corrie, survived and lived until her 91st birthday in April of 1983.

Through their efforts, it is estimated that the ten Boom family helped to rescue some 800 Jews from the Nazi reign of terror, now known as the Holocaust. There is a tree in the Garden of Righteousness at the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, planted in 1968 by Corrie at the behest of the museum.

But, what of the prayer meetings that appeared to come to such a tragic end in 1944? The Corrie ten Boom Fellowship was established by Dr. Mike Evans as a ministry of the Jerusalem Prayer Team, as part of his and its commitment to continue praying for the Jews and for the peace of Jerusalem. Small groups no longer gather at the ten Boom residence every week, but rather, people all over the world pray daily for the requests shared through the online presence of the ten Boom Museum.

The faith that motivated the ten Booms to pray for the peace of Jerusalem still moves Christians to do the same today. The family’s legacy lives on as an example of how true Christians should, and do, love Israel and the Jewish people. We are pleased to be a part of preserving the story of the ten Boom family in the Mike Evans Museum and the Friends of Zion Heritage Center.

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Why Does Journalist Mike Evans Have a Museum in Jerusalem?

Answer Facet No. 3

That’s a good question. It’s not only a good question, it is a question that deserves an answer. Because the question is so important, it follows that the answer must be also. But, if the question is simple, the answer is not. Rather, it is multifaceted. There is no single answer. But, when all of the facets that comprise the answer are presented, there is no longer a need for the question to be asked.

This, then, is the third facet of the answer. Please continue to follow this series of articles from beginning to end. Somewhere along the journey you may find the answer for yourself, even before we finish.

Facet #3 – Because God Always Keeps All His Promises

Jehovah God has given many great and precious promises to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their descendants. Israel has, over the centuries, seen many of those promises come to pass. But the LORD is not finished. There are other promises that are being kept and others that are waiting to be fulfilled. As so many TV infomercials have proclaimed, “But wait! There’s more!” To that, we would add the colloquialism, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

As Journalist Mike Evans noted in his book Why Christians Should Support Israel, “The fact that the Jewish people exist is a miracle. The rebirth of the Nation of Israel is a miracle. The restoration of the Hebrew language is a miracle, as are the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the reunification of Jerusalem.” He put it succinctly when he added, “You either support Israel or you oppose Israel. It is that simple.”

We know that, while Israel has been established and continues to prosper, its greatest glory is yet to come when Messiah defeats the enemies of Israel, ushers in His kingdom here on Earth and rules from Jerusalem. One thing that unites every God-fearing Jew and every God-fearing Christian is that we believe the Jehovah is God and there is no other God besides Him. We also share the knowledge that, “God is not a man that he should lie; neither the son of man that he should repent: Hath he said, and shall he not do it? Or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good (Numbers 23:19)?” But it is more than just knowing. It is believing.

The author of the New Testament book of Hebrews describes faith as the “substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1).” He is specifically addressing the Biblical truth that “without faith, it is impossible to please Him,” in verse 4. To further substantiate that, he includes a very important phrase – “this is what the ancients were commended for.” In other words, men like Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Joshua fully expected that God would keep all of His promises.

We believe that too.

The psalmist reminds us that, “He remembers His covenant forever, the word He commanded, for a thousand generations, the covenant which He made with Abraham, and His oath to Isaac, and confirmed it to Jacob for a statute, to Israel an everlasting covenant, saying, “To you I will give the land of Canaan as the allotment of your inheritance (Psalm 105:8-11 NKJV).””

Jehovah continues to keep all of His promises. We believe that there has never been, nor will there ever be, a promise that He will not keep. Since His promises to Israel are clear, therefore, we embrace those promises and stand with Israel in the expectation and certainty that God will do what He has promised to do.

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Josiah Wedgwood IV
British Visionary – Friend of Zion

Josiah Wedgwood IV - British Visionary“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” ~ Psalm 29:18

When we speak of the heroes who were actively engaged in rescuing the Jewish people from persecution, and who were directly instrumental in helping to establish the modern State of Israel, it is easy to forget those who were the visionaries who prepared the way. Josiah Wedgwood IV was one of those visionaries.

Named after his grandfather, the founder of the world-renowned Wedgwood china business, it is also noteworthy that he was equally proud to bear the name of one of the most righteous kings of Israel.

Josiah Wedgwood was passionate about helping oppressed people everywhere, believing it was the God-ordained duty of every Englishman. He continually decried Great Britain’s turning a blind eye to the reality of Jewish persecution in Europe. Surprisingly, or not, his view was not necessarily shared by his peers in Parliament, especially when the oppressed were Jews. Joshua B. Stein wrote that, “It was his contention that wherever in the world Britain had a claim to influence events, it was her right and obligation to make sure that she did so.”

To that end, he campaigned tirelessly to change the status of the British Mandate of Palestine into a Crown Colony. But that was only the first part of his plan. His ultimate goal was to have Parliament create an independent Jewish dominion that would be a part of the British Empire. He published his proposal in 1928 in his book, The Seventh Dominion. In that book, he proposed that this course of action would result in the Jewish people bringing great prosperity to that long barren and forsaken region. In another of his books, Memoirs of a Fighting Life, he pleaded, “See to it that in Palestine you set up a land of idealism and altruism, a land of liberalism and freedom, not merely a land of the Jews.”

While promoting that, he also vigorously challenged restrictions limiting the immigration of Jews into Great Britain where, he hoped, that there, too, they would be free from persecution and be able to contribute to British society.

When he became frustrated with the resistance to his vision during World War I, he made a radio broadcast in which he implored the United States to take over the responsibility for the Mandate, because he believed that the British had lost the will and lacked the moral fortitude to administer it. Ultimately, the British withdrawal proved to the world that Wedgwood was right.

Wedgwood died in 1943 at the age of 70, so he never saw the realization of his vision.

Although most of what Wedgwood did to promote a Jewish state is lost in the pages of history, there are streets in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa, as well as an Israeli Naval destroyer, that bear his name – an appropriate tribute to a Visionary of Zionism.

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The Machal

The Machal“You came to us when we needed you the most, during those dark and uncertain days in our War of Independence. The people of Israel, the State of Israel, will never forget it.  We will ever cherish this unique contribution made by you, the volunteers of the MACHAL.” ~ The Honorable Yitzhak Rabin

MACHAL is an acronym for “mitnadvei hutz laAretz.” It is rendered in English as “volunteers from abroad.” The volunteer force was a rag-tag assemblage of 3,500 men and women from more than 40 countries, many of whom were already war weary from fighting in Europe and the Pacific just a few years earlier. They came to Israel as friends of Zion and lovers of freedom, with a passion for reestablishing a home for the Jewish people in the place that had always been their home.

They came to Israel because they were needed. They came because they believed G-d. They came because of their love for the Jewish people. They came because they knew there might be no Israel if they did not.

What was a land of milk and honey in the days of Moses and Joshua, was now a barren wilderness where only a few, scattered settlements eked out an existence. This, now deserted and forsaken land, was what the world had to offer the Jewish people who had managed to survive the single, most outrageous massacre in human history. All that was left of the Jews had begun to return to all that was left of their homeland.

Yet, the peoples who were soon to be their neighbors had vowed to drive the Jewish people into the sea. They began their attempt on the day that Israel was declared a nation. It was, in effect, an Arab attempt to finish what Hitler had started.

The untold story is that those young warriors actually risked losing their American and Canadian citizenship as well as their lives to defend other people’s families and a land they had never seen. They served as an eternal link between the Jews of Israel and the Jews of the United States and Canada. In the words of one Israeli colonel, the intrinsic value of the MACHAL was that “we Israelis knew we were not alone.” Forty of those Americans and Canadians heroically gave their lives for Israeli independence.

Every Jewish leader since 1948 has recognized the contribution of the men and women who were willing to risk everything so that the Jewish people could once again have something to call their own. Whether or not the MACHAL made all the difference in the Israeli War for Independence, we may never know. But we do know that they made a difference.