PRAYER UPDATE FROM ISRAEL (July 18, 2006)
1. ISRAEL AND LEBANON AT WAR…THE SEVENTH DAY.
As we write, rockets from Lebanon are falling on the northern coastal city of Haifa and on the town of T'sfat (Safed) north of the Sea of Galilee; warning sirens are sounding in Tiberias. Last night over 50 katyushas rained down on towns and villages across northern Israel. Yesterday we lent our car to a Jerusalem couple whose aging mother, an immigrant from Argentina, was living alone in T'sfat…terrified and confused at the explosions. They drove up the Jordan Valley picked her up and brought her back to Jerusalem in the space of four and a half hours. Shortly after leaving, the town was hit again, in the middle of the night a hospital was hit and it is again under attack as we write. Yesterday a longer-ranged missile landed in the Jezreel valley. Israel estimates that the Iran-sponsored Hezbollah militants who control southern Lebanon began with as many of 12,000 rockets. A limited number of these are longer ranged "Zelzal" missiles, capable of traveling 200 kilometers and reaching the metropolis of Tel Aviv. It is presumed that their use will depend upon authorization from Iran, which supplied them and which obviously has a strong hand in the direction Hezbollah is taking in the current crisis. As Israel's military response intensifies, the time when Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah will receive and give that order to use these weapons may be drawing near. In the meanwhile, in Haifa there is great fear lest petrochemical Haifa industrial community should take a hit and poisoned gas be released into the air, or the tanks of petroleum be set ablaze in a major catastrophe.
It is now seven days since Hezbollah guerrillas, under diversionary bombardment, crossed our border, attacked two Israeli vehicles, murdering four soldiers and kidnapping two more. When an Israeli tank roared in pursuit, it hit a huge mine which destroyed it, burning the crew alive. Shortly thereafter the rockets began pouring into northern Israel and the Galilee. A ship was hit and seriously damaged, five crewmembers killed; a train depot in Haifa was hit, five killed; a number of Israeli civilians have died and hundreds have been wounded when their apartments have been hit by rockets. Around a million in the north are spending their days and nights near to or inside of sealed rooms or bomb shelters. Hundreds are fleeing southwards. Israel's air force, navy and ground artillery have been bombing targets around the clock; a large number of reserves have been called up, in case a massive ground operation is required…something Israel dearly hopes will not be necessary. Meanwhile the fighting continues in Gaza in the south, and rockets continue to fall on Sderot. Syria has mobilized huge numbers of troops. It would take very little for this war to spread to Syria and Iran-if it does, what is happening now will have seemed like games in comparison.
We asked you a little over a week ago to be praying for a group of 100 believing Israeli teenagers in a two-week camp with their young adult Israeli and American leaders. The group spent its first week in the north and their scheduled move to the Jerusalem area came just as the fighting began. They observed one rocket fly over as they were leaving. One of their young Israeli leaders had just gotten out of the army a few months ago. He had been in the unit with the soldiers who died in the tank and they were his close buddies…he took leave from the camp to attend the funerals. There were many summer youth camps operating in the north when the war broke out. Some of the youth from this camp of Messianic believers have been able to assist with the flood of secular youth who were relocated from their camps in the North.
PLEASE PRAY . . .
*For God's protection over Israel…Psalm 91, 121…that He would protect His people, and that they would seek their place of protection "under the Shadow of the Almighty" where they will be protected from "the arrow that flies by day, the pestilence that walks in darkness, the destruction that lays waste at noonday."
*For integrity, and wisdom for Israel's leaders, both in the war-rooms and in the field-for accurate intelligence, and effective decisions and timing.
*Yesterday Israeli jets are thought to have destroyed a supply of the long-range missiles mentioned above. Pray that the locations of all the stockpiles of missiles, and launchers will be revealed and that they will be destroyed. Pray that all supply-lines from Syria and Iran would be cut off…and that the communications of the Muslim terrorist infrastructure of this conflict will be thrown into confusion.
*Pray that missiles will not strike the refineries, the chemical plants and the shipyards in the Port of Haifa.
*For Lebanon, which is coming under much devastation, that she will come into her true identity, that evil alliances will be broken and that she will rise into God's redemptive purposes for her.
*For Believers in Lebanon, Syria and Iran…that they will be strengthened and positioned for the place in which they must stand during the difficult days ahead.
*That Israel will not be allow herself to be "forced" by the United Nations into a ceasefire which will leave her borders vulnerable and her enemies rearming themselves within striking distance again.
*FOR FAITHFULNESS AND PERSEVERANCE IN THE BODY OF MESSIAH IN ISRAEL TO WORSHIP IN SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH DURING THIS TIME. WE BELIEVE THAT GOD HAS SHOWN US THAT AS WORSHIP RISES TO THE KING OF KINGS, THE POWERS OVER THE NATIONS ATTACKING US ARE THROWN INTO CONFUSION.
