Israel has been under fire lately, but God has been with us at every moment. Following the enemy’s attempts to rob us of our joy on the 77th anniversary of our Independence, stories of miracles have been coming up from the ashes. God has been with us the entire time.

Fires raged throughout the country, seemly the work of arsonists bent on destroying Israel, but even though we’ve lost 500 acres of forest land, not one life was lost. Similarly, when fire coming from Yemen in the form of a serious missile which hit very close to our airport the following Sunday, no one was killed.

The Independence Day that went up in smoke

It’s traditional in Israel to have a barbecue on Independence Day, and the air is usually thick with the smell of grilled meat and sounds of people enjoying themselves. The Hebrew for grilling is “al ha-esh” which means “on the fire”. But this was an Independence Day al ha-esh that no one wanted.

Part of the tragedy was that because the fire trucks had to all rush to the Jerusalem area, there were none available to be on hand for many other events, meaning they also had to be cancelled all around the country. However, Israelis are resilient, and more than that, God was at work. There has been much evidence of God’s handiwork in the midst of the fire.

“We’ve lost 10,000 dunams,” said Fire and Rescue Commissioner Eyal Caspi in YNet news, “but not a single home burned, and no civilians were harmed.”

ONE FOR ISRAEL had been planning a big Independence Day event for young adults and some 600 had signed up to come — possibly the biggest gathering of believing young adults since the first century! Even though the event was cancelled and many people had to be evacuated, no one was hurt and the few young people who had gathered had fun anyway, celebrating with Israeli dancing.

A community miraculously saved from fire

Just outside Jerusalem, Grace Alon had been praying protection over her village of Mesilat Tsion in the weeks before the fire, and was astonished to see that the fire stopped right where she had been standing. She had been declaring Psalm 91 over the village, and asking God to “turn the enemy back at the gates.”

“I walked up through the blackened forest that was still smoking up to the point where I’d prayed. I stood there and looked backwards. Everything behind me was black and burned but everything in front of me, which was the village, had been spared,” she recounted.¹

There were many more prayers that had been sowed in the land before the fire as well. Another couple of believers who had felt called to live there in the forest of Jerusalem had also been praying for protection against fires for 15 years. And of course, as soon as the word got out about the fires, many other believers started praying in earnest.

On the day of the first fire, at the critical moment the strong hot wind suddenly dropped, enabling firefighters to bring the fire under control. The head of the village committee, Or Eliyahu just happened to be working at home that day, and had undergone fire training. It was due to his quick thinking when he saw the speed the fire was spreading that a far worse disaster was prevented. Grace explained,

“As soon as he heard in the morning that there was a fire in Tarom, he jumped in his car and drove over there to assess the situation. He looked at how fast the fire was spreading and drove back to give the order to evacuate, and it wasn’t a moment too soon because we really did have just minutes to spare. He saw the fire, he made the decision, he gave the order to evacuate. He came back and he drove straight to my son’s gan [kindergarten] and physically loaded all the kids into the back of his truck.”

Eliyahu only works from home on Wednesdays. “If it hadn’t been a Wednesday, we don’t want to think about what would have happened,” said Grace. “Several hours later we heard that the fire was under control and miraculously only one house had a tiny bit of damage to its roof,” she added. “Other than that, nothing else has been touched apart from the view to the forest.”

Additionally, much of the land surrounding the Latrun monastery just outside Jerusalem was torched but remarkably, there was a woodland area that remained miraculously untouched. That area is the “Gardens of Life,” where women who have aborted babies have been able to plant trees in memory of the little ones who have now gone, as part of their journey of repentance and healing.

Not one of those trees were burned at all.

A miraculous message

Another miracle was the message we received from people praying for us in Gaza. A Muslim background believer, Muhammed, asked how we are doing with the fires and assured us of his prayers. It’s nothing short of a mighty work of God that there are Gazans praying for us here in Israel.

Despite his difficult circumstances, constantly having to move with his family with no safe place to shelter, Muhammad is now a mature believer. He is rejoicing in the Lord putting all his hope in God. He is truly confident in the Lord and in His protection. He shared that he recently had the joy of exploring the subject of the resurrection together with another believer, reveling in the glory of Yeshua’s victory over the grave. More than that, God had opened doors for him to share the gospel with ten people who had prayed with him and sought the Lord!

Please continue to pray with us for true peace in our region – which only the Prince of Peace will bring. Pray for God’s protection for all our brothers and sisters everywhere, and salvation for our people in Yeshua’s mighty name.

1. https://allisrael.com/miracle-in-mesilat-zion-first-hand-account-how-an-israeli-village-was-spared-from-record-breaking-wildfire

Main photo by Matt Howard on Unsplash