The Big 60

Family gathering to celebrate my 60th birthday - Steve Martin

(Birthday was Nov. 23, 2014)

Laurie and Hannah - wife and daughter

Cake by Mary Ann Blade

Jonathan Avalos - son-in-law

Ben Martin - son

Lila Parker (Mom), Mary Ann & Michael Blade

Jack Blade - grandson

Mom, Bill Parker & Ben

Steve & Michael Blade

 

Steve & daughter Christen

Daughters Hannah and Christen

Payton Avalos - grandson

Family gathering to celebrate my 60th birthday - Steve Martin

(Birthday was Nov. 23, 2014)

Spielberg Film Honors U.S. Pilot Defenders of Israel

Film Honors U.S. Pilot Defenders of Israel

By John Waage

CBN News Sr. Editor

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

During Israel's 1948 War for Independence, a small band of American pilots quickly left everything they had in the States and risked their lives to take to the skies in defense of the brand new nation.

They were part of the Machal, or the Volunteers. In effect, they founded the Israeli Air Force. David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, would later say they saved the nation.

Their remarkable story is the subject of a new Spielberg documentary--not Steven Spielberg, but his sister, Nancy.

She produced the film, called "Above and Beyond," which includes recollections by several of the pilots.

The film was screened at the Jerusalem Film Festival this summer, with the audience giving one Machal pilot, 94-year-old Lou Lenart, a standing ovation. "Above and Beyond" also opened the Calgary Jewish Film Festival earlier this month.

The production will come to theater screens in 2015, and Spielberg told The Jerusalem Post she plans to turn the documentary into a feature film.

"One of the hardest parts of making the movie was deciding what I had to leave out. There were so many capers, so many stories, you can't include them all," she said.

In 1966, Hollywood told the story of one of the heroic pilots, Mickey Marcus, in the film, "Cast a Giant Shadow," starring Kirk Douglas. Marcus was killed by friendly fire in battle.

Tinseltown hasn't paid much attention since then.

The American Machal pilots not only risked their lives, they also risked their citizenship. With urging from the State Department and the Pentagon, the United States had placed an arms embargo on Israel, fearing reprisals and backlash from Arab leaders that could endanger oil supplies.

The State Department made every effort to stop President Harry Truman from recognizing Israel in May, 1948. Having failed that, the leadership succeeded in an official embargo.

Israel had tremendous difficulty cobbling together the planes, military equipment, and personnel needed to stave off attacks from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq.

Thanks in large measure to the pilots from places like Brooklyn, New York, and St. Paul, Minnesota, the new nation survived, then thrived.

Source: CBN News

Israel to Remember 850,000 Jews Driven From Arab Lands

Friday, November 28, 2014 |  Israel Today Staff

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Israel

On Sunday, November 30, Israel will commemorate the 850,000 Jews driven from their homes in neighboring Arab countries on the occasion of the Jewish state’s rebirth.

While the international community has numerous days and events marking the flight of hundreds of thousands of Arabs from the land during Israel’s War of Independence (there is even an official UN commemoration), the Jewish side of the equation is all but ignored.

For thousands of years Jews had been living in what are today Arab countries, with many of their communities dating back much earlier than the Arab Muslim conquest of the region.

Some 70 years ago, with the rise of Arab nationalism and a growing struggle for control of what the British called “Palestine,” the newly-created Arab regimes began a campaign of intimidation and oppression against their own Jewish citizens.

Local Jews in Arab countries had their property expropriated, their citizenship stripped, and a great many were imprisoned, tortured and murdered.

One regional Jewish community in particular, that centered in and around Baghdad, was over 2,500-years-old. Originally based in Babylon, this community had given birth to the Babylonian Talmud and had long been a leading Jewish cultural center.

But with the rebirth of Israel as a nation-state, the Iraqi government at the time attacked and dispossessed the local Jews, driving nearly the entire community to emigrate to the new Jewish state and elsewhere.

PHOTO: Aharon Aboudi grew up in Iraq, before his family was evicted and forced to build a new life in Israel.

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How the Pilgrims and Reformation Formed America

How the Pilgrims and Reformation 

Formed America

By Paul Strand

CBN News Washington Sr. Correspondent

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

PLYMOUTH, Mass. -- We know the Pilgrims became some of America's first English settlers. And because of Thanksgiving Day, we certainly know they were thankful.

But what else was it about these devout Christians that helped them shape what became the most free, most powerful nation on earth?

It had much to do with the religious beliefs that were so precious to them; they were willing to face death and uncertainty in a strange New World to live those beliefs out.

World-Changing Reformation

The Pilgrims' Protestant faith was forged in the Europe of 500 years ago, ripe for a revolution -- or what would become a world-changing Reformation.

"The story of America is literally the story of the Reformation," says narrator Peter Lillback, Westminster Theological Seminary president, in a new 11-part DVD and on-line series called "The Protestant Revolt: A Study of the Protestant Reformation."

***"The Protestant Revolt" can be viewed here for free.

This series visits all the historical birthplaces of the Reformation and follows its growth in both the Old and New World.

The Reformation began in Germany where Martin Luther preached that salvation comes through faith alone in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Man didn't need priests or bishops to assure him that salvation. That came from God Himself.

David Hall, pastor of Midway Presbyterian Church in Powder Springs, Georgia, came up with the idea for the DVD series.

"Justification by faith proclaims that the human soul is not trapped and enslaved by any particular bureaucracy or denomination, but God by His Holy Spirit can save and justify based on the work of Christ," Pastor Hall told CBN News.

Pilgrim re-enactors in Plymouth, Massachusetts, 

give insight into this new Reformation way of thinking.

"We don't need the king or priest or bishop to talk to God for us. We can do it ourselves," said Leo Martin, a re-enactor clothed in the simple outfit of a 17th century Pilgrim.

Democratizing the Faith

Martin Luther then translated the Bible into common language, and because of the brand-new Gutenberg press, people could soon search out the truths of the Bible themselves.

"The Scriptures were translated out of the Latin into the language of the people," Hall explained. "And so this was a huge democratizing of faith by the Reformation. It took God's Word, which was always intended to be spread to the masses, and it opened that up."

And in its pages, believers like the Pilgrims found God wants man to be free, to live unshackled and in liberty.

Lillback speaks of that key truth in the DVD series, saying, "Now this story of religious liberty is one of the great fruits of the Reformation: the right of the conscience to go directly to the Scriptures to study."

Westminster Theological Seminary professor Carl Trueman points out in the same series that this was much bigger than the Pilgrims.

"The ambition of all of the Reformers was to place the Scripture in the vernacular in the hands of every man," Trueman says.

And narrator Lillback adds, "Of course it was true that once a person starts reading the Bible, different interpretations happen. And those different interpretations create different movements."

As these new doctrines and churches sprang up, so too did religious wars that tore through Europe. After much bloodshed, the kings and leaders came up with a solution.

In "The Protestant Revolt" series, Trueman offers up that solution in the Latin, "'Cuius regio, eius religio' - which translates roughly as 'Whoever is in charge of this region, his religion determines the religion.'"

In England, that meant those outside the monarch's Anglican religion were seen as dangerous dissidents. This included the Pilgrims, whose fierce belief in their God-given right to liberty caused them to flee England and form a new society in the New World.

Pastor Eddie Hyatt writes about this in his book America's Revival Heritage.

"They did flee persecution in the Old World," Hyatt admitted. "But they also came to America with a vision for seeing a renewal and a reformation of Christianity and seeing it implemented in this New World."

Unfettered and Free

That New World gave them a place to live out their faith unfettered and free of persecution.

Dr. Paul Jehle is another Pilgrim re-enactor and head of the Plymouth Rock Foundation.

He said to CBN News, "Think about it: in human history, nobody has the freedom to form a society directly from the Bible in a wilderness where they didn't have a king looking over their shoulder to say, 'No, do it this way or that way.'"

"One of the motivations coming to the New World and one of things they loved and they wanted to implement was this religious freedom and this freedom to worship God and to walk with Him according to the dictates of one's own personal conscience," Hyatt added.

Religious freedom was important to them, but after what they'd suffered under the English king, so was forming a free civil society.

"They were fearful, loathsome of anything that resembled someone having an unchecked, undue amount of power over the citizens," Hall explained.

For an alternative, they turned to the Bible.

"They studied scripture for what God's opinion was on governmental structure, both in the state and the church," Hall explained. "And as such, they found that God didn't always confer power to just one individual shaped in a hierarchy. But instead He gave it to representatives who were elected."

So they enshrined that in their Mayflower Compact, and they began to form a free society also built around free markets and rugged individualism.

"We're all equal in the eyes of God; we're all made in His image," re-enactor Martin said, speaking as a Pilgrim might have. "And if that is true, nobody has a right to be over anybody else."

They changed the order of government so it was no longer from the top down, but from the bottom up. They expected their leaders not to be lords over the people, but to be their servants.

Revolutionary Principles

"Now the Pilgrims figure this: if God thinks we're valuable and we all have worth, we certainly should think the same thing," Martin said. "And that's where self-rule came from. The king shouldn't be in charge. The people should be in charge." 

 

"What this meant was they were not going to be ruled by a monarch or a dictator," Hyatt said. "They were going to be ruled by laws on which they all agreed."

Fellow re-enactor Jehle explained, "This is what will produce the impetus, the principles by which the American Revolution is fought."

"And they passed it on from the Pilgrim forefathers to the founding fathers," Martin said of these beliefs. "And the founding fathers took those principles and wrote the Declaration (of Independence) and the Constitution based on those Christian principles."

So that's how a small, hardy band of Christians set the stage for what would become the most liberty-minded, most prosperous, and some would argue the most spiritual nation on earth, all based on biblical principles.

Narrator Lillback concluded "The Protestant Revolt" series speaking of this founding of America and that key principle of liberty.

"This story is a story we must cherish and continue to celebrate today. Liberty still matters. Liberty is the story of the Gospel," Lillback states.

He then quotes Scripture: "'If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. Stand fast therefore in the liberty with which Christ has made us free.'"

Watch CBN video here: Pilgrims and Reformation

Give thanks unto the Lord.

Blessings on ye heads as you thank the Lord!

Steve & Laurie Martin

Love For His People, Inc.

"The Poor Of His People Take Shelter" ✡ Returning to the Terror Site in Prayer

What will the messengers of the nation say? That God has established Zion and in it the poor of His people take shelter. ISAIAH (14:32)   וּמַה יַּעֲנֶה מַלְאֲכֵי גוֹי כִּי יְ-הֹוָה יִסַּד צִיּוֹן וּבָהּ יֶחֱסוּ עֲנִיֵּי עַמּוֹ ישעהו יד:לב u-ma ya-a-ne mal-a-khay goy kee a-do-nai yee-sad tzee-on u-va ye-khe-su a-ni-yay a-mo

Today's Israel Inspiration It is well known that 'charity begins at home'. Since the Jewish people began returning to their homeland in the modern State of Israel, the desire to embrace and care for the needs of the poor has been at the forefront of their minds. Karmey Chesed is an organization where the poor can “take shelter” in Zion. In Hebrew, Karmey Chesed means ‘Vineyards of Kindness’; and just as each vine produces its own unique type of grape, Karmey Chesed provides different services to meet various needs including clothing, food, medicines and support services.    Help Karmey Chesed care for Israel’s needy » Disproportionate Focus on Israel Does the media focus on Israel unfairly?  Is there a double standard towards Israel?  Find out more in this video.   Watch here » Still A Hero Twelve years after a vicious terror attack, one hero is still undergoing continuous medical treatments and surgeries for the injuries acquired while saving the lives of a bus full of people. One organization has not forgotten him, and helps with the astounding mediacl bills he faces.   Read more » Pewter Hanukkah Menorah Our Sages in the Talmud refer to Jerusalem as “the light of the world.”  The temple, and its menora inspired the world.  Spread the inspirational message of the Hanukkah festival by lighting your own Hanukkah menorah for eight nights. Get this Great Deal » Today's Israel Photo Today's picture, by Rebecca Kowalsky, shows beautiful grape vines growing in Israel.  Today, Israeli wine is produced by hundreds of wineries. Wine has been continuously produced in the Land of Israel since biblical times!   See more pictures by Rebecca Kowalsky » Yesterday's Photo Trivia The path is called Derech Ha'avot, or the Path of the Patriarchs. This north south route on top of the Hebron, the Judean, and Samaria mountain ridge would be the most logical route Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would have traveled when traveling between Be’er Sheva, Hebron, Har HaMoriah, Bet El, and Shechem.  And it makes sense that the Romans would also have used an existing road system. Thank You Please help us continue to spread the beauty and significance of the Land of Israel! Sponsor a day » “I Have Been Blessed and Encouraged By Israel365” It’s great to hear from so many of you - stay in touch and let us know where in the world you are enjoying Israel365!   Stay in Touch » Greetings! I have been blessed and encouraged by Israel365. My heart is in the Land of Israel and with the Jewish people. I long to visit Israel so much that I do not have the words to express it. The land is G-d's inheritance to the Jewish people and this will never change. He promised it to Ibrahim for generations to come. The world has been blessed because of Israel! I live through the videos, articles and news from Israel. Financially I am in not a position to come but it is in G-od's hands to provide the means. My family and I live by His grace and provision and I will leave it there. Still it does not change the burning desire and pull that my heart has to visit Israel. I had a night vision one night in which the Lord took my hand and for a moment in time it touched the Wailing Wall! I was in awe as I watched all the people at the Wall praying. The size of the stones amazed me and I could see the prayer notes put in the wall's crevices. Truly a blessed vision! Thank you for sharing and please don't stop. Deborah S. Shalom, Rabbi Tuly Weisz RabbiTuly@Israel365.com

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Giving thanks.

We do give thanks to the Lord Most High for all His goodness and provision. Daily.

Steve & Laurie Martin
Love For His People, Inc.