Chaim begins by saying there’s a lot of things he could talk about in this video, and lists some of the highlights from the headlines in the last 48 hours, including developments here in Israel and around the world.
Then he says he doesn’t want to talk about those things, he wants to talk about a very old book, Hadriani Relandi Palaestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrata, a Latin textbook published in 1695 by a scholar of history named Adriaan Reelant.
This book includes a survey of the geographic area known as “Palestine” and a description of the political, cultural, demographic and physical landscape of this area around the time the book was published. Reelant records in his book that the country was mostly empty, with a handful of ancient cities having small populations. Those cities included Jerusalem, Safed, Akko, Jaffa and Tiberius. Nazareth was a small town of around 700 residents, all of them Christian, with sizeable Jewish populations in the other large towns. There were also, according to this text, around 500 people living in Gaza, half Jewish and half Christian.
There were also roaming tribes of Moslem Beduins, but they made up a small portion of the population, and the entire region was simply a part of the larger Ottoman Empire, it was not then and never before or after an autonomous nation-state.
Chaim mentions several other people who visited the region in subsequent decades and centuries, including thre famous American author Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) who wrote books about their observations of the country which sounded very similar to what Reelant recorded in his book.
Chaim says that the reason he’s bringing all this up is that the truth is important, it matters, and it WILL set us free. Many people don’t know about this history and sadly they don’t care, but Chaim says believers MUST care about the truth.
He then quotes Isaiah 41:10-14; Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’
“Behold, all those who were incensed against you shall be ashamed and disgraced; They shall be as nothing, and those who strive with you shall perish. You shall seek them and not find them—those who contended with you. Those who war against you shall be as nothing, as a nonexistent thing.
For I, the Lord your God, will hold your right hand, saying to you, ‘Fear not, I will help you.’ “Fear not, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel! I will help you,” says the Lord and your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.