that Israel will become the world’s example of beauty, said the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) Thursday, October 16.
The spokesman of a delegation of Russian Orthodox priests reportedly made the "historic" remarks late Wednesday, Oct. 15 in the Jerusalem convention centre for 2000 invited Israelis and thousands of Christian pilgrims at the ICEJ’s Feast of Tabernacles.
"[We] came to Israel for the first time by invitation of the Christian Embassy in Jerusalem in order to express our love and solidarity with the people of Israel," the ICEJ News Service quoted Father Joseph as saying at the Feast’s annual ‘Israeli night’.
He also spoke of their desire to break with the anti-Semitism that has overshadowed the post-Communist era in Russia and "answer the call of God which comes to us from the prophet Isaiah," to "comfort My people," the ICEJ News Service claimed.
PROMISES
"It is now the turn of members of the Orthodox church," to follow other Christians who have recognized the "fulfillment of the great promises of Almighty God to His people and through them to all nations of the earth," he added.
"We have come to listen to the heartbeat of Israel," Father Joseph said, believing "in hope that the heart of Israel will become free again and will shine with a beauty not yet known to the world," just as the prophet predicted, the ICEJ News Service reported.
His apparent appeal to embrace Israel came amid concern about rising anti-Semitism around the world and fears that the Holocaust may be forgotten by the next generations.
LESSONS
"The world has only partially learned the lessons of the Holocaust," Avner Shalev, director of the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, reportedly told ICEJ Feast of Tabernacles delegates from Finland.
ICEJ Finland raised 260,000 Shekels ($60,000) for Yad Vashem’s newly opened International School of Holocaust Studies, in the midst of the museum’s 50th Jubilee.
Although most people in Finland welcome Holocaust education, some parents have objected to exposing their children to accounts from survivors visiting schools as the Holocaust is long over, the ICEJ News Service said.
BENEFICIAL
Yet supporting Israel and its Feast of Tabernacles may be beneficial for both Jews and non Jews, said a pilgrim from Botswana a landlocked country that lies far from the sea in the heart of southern Africa.
The pilgrim, who the ICEJ News Service identified as Pastor Edwell described that a drought and an AIDS epidemic had plagued the nation during the 1990s when one day he decided to make the journey to Israel and celebrate the Feast.
In Zechariah 14 of the Bible "it says that if we don’t celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles there won’t be rain and there will be disease," he said. "With those two ideas I decided I would keep the Feast of Tabernacles."
RAINS
Pastor Edwell attended his first Feast celebration in 1999 and when he returned to Botswana in October began and "it rained Like never before," he claimed.
His country also "started having a breakthrough with AIDS," he said, as it "received medicine from America … and from that moment the situation has been getting better."
Pastor Edwell said that when he didn’t come to Jerusalem one year, 2001, the rains again halted, causing a drought that year. So now his plans for Succot are set every year – he will be in Jerusalem.
"I’m going to mobilize many people to come every year," he told the ICEJ News Service.
