Promises Of God Come Alive

This is a picture that was taken in Palestine in the early 1900's. Totally not the Israel we visited 110 years later. Below is the account of Mark Twain after visiting Palestine in 1867.

"Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists -- over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead -- about whose borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch. Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed, lies a moldering ruin, to-day, even as Joshua's miracle left it more than three thousand years ago; Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and their humiliation, have nothing about them now to remind one that they once knew the high honor of the leader's presence; the hallowed spot where the shepherds watched their flocks by night, and where the angels sang Peace on earth, good will to men, is untenanted by any living creature, and unblessed by any feature that is pleasant to the eye. Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village; the riches of Solomon are no longer there to compel the admiration of visiting Oriental queens; the wonderful temple which was the pride and the glory of Israel, is gone, and the Ottoman crescent is lifted above the spot where, on that most memorable day in the annals of the world, they reared the holy cross. The noted Sea of Galilee, where Roman fleets once rode at anchor and the disciples of the leader sailed in their ships, was long ago deserted by the devotees of war and commerce, and its borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum is a shapeless ruin; Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazin have vanished from the earth, and the "desert places" round about them where thousands of men once listened to the leader's voice and ate the miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude that is inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes. Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land? "

"Can the curse of the Diety beautify a land?"  Indeed He can reverse the curse and bring blessings. That started happening 62 years ago when in 1948 Israel was once again as was promised by their/our God. Isaiah 41:19  I will plant in the wilderness the cedar,the shittah tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree; I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree together:   Isaiah 43:19 Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth ; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.

If we get discouraged we have only to look at Israel and know that what the Lord promises, He will do. He is not a man that He should lie and His arm is not short.  If He said it, then it is done in Heaven.

Trees have returned.

This is the Galilee Mark Twain described as a wilderness.

This is the area around the dead sea that Mark Twain said "nothing grows but weeds".

Jerusalem is moving toward being the City of Our King. The Lord God Almighty wrote His name there and it is in His hands.

Isaiah 35:5 As birds flying , so will the LORD of hosts defend Jerusalem; defending also he will deliver it; and passing over he will preserve it.