Modern Israel

Disclaimers:

1. I'm sorry about what I'm sure will be a long loading time...lots of pictures.

2. This is a slightly modified PowerPoint presentation that I gave to a small number of Montanans in a certain church.  Thus, the information is specifically aimed at that group.  If you live in America and know relatively little about Israel, you may gain some information from this.  If you live in Israel, you might as well skip it now, as you are sure to be disappointed. 

There are several difficulties involved in giving a presentation on Modern Israel in a short time to people who have never been there (or have only been there for a couple weeks).  To illustrate this, let me give an example:

Or maybe they think of the Old West:

Perhaps they've been there on vacation and know of the National Parks:

 Or they might think:

 Summer vacationers who love it here have no idea what it's like to get up at 6am every day in the winter to go out and shovel the snow off your driveway so you can get your car out, for example.  They won't know which grocery stores have the best deals or what produce is in season.  Of all the little details that make up daily life - so important, yet so difficult to explain - they will have no understanding.  The same is true of Israel.

Like any modern state, Israel has a number of issues that affect it today: thing like  history, social justice, ethnicity, and religion.  The details may vary, but the general idea is that same.

Except for in one area.  As Christians, when we think of Israel, we tend to get our ideas from the Bible.  No other country in the world is associated quite as much with the Bible as Israel is.  The problem is, different Christians understand the Bible in different ways, leading to wildly differing opinions on the modern state of Israel.

Here are some examples of books written about the Bible, Bible Prophecy, and/or Israel.  All of them draw different conclusions.

Basically, any discussion of modern Israel has the possibility of bringing up controversial issues.  I'm going to try to avoid most of those as I go on to talk about the land today.

This slide has pictures from Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Christmas, Purim, and Independence Day.

A place where peace is broken, but hope can still be found.  

Any questions?