May 1999 Personal Letter

Dear Friends:

I have a uniquely personal experience to report in reference to the action in Yugoslavia. A member of my family was involved in similar goings-on in that area during World War II.

It is unclear at the time of this writing how this situation will work out over there, but you will recall that in the first week of the bombing, we rescued the pilot of one of our stealth fighters. His airplane had been brought down by a missile behind enemy lines, and we had to go in and get him. That is exactly the job that my brother-in-law did in WWII, and thereby hangs a very interesting and never-publicized tale. I refer to the heroic exploits of Jewish partisans behind German lines in that terrible conflict.

My brother-in-law, the son of American Jewish immigrants, grew up speaking fluent Yiddish, the language of the Jewish people in Europe and parts of Russia. (Hebrew was utilized in the synagogue for prayer and worship services, but Yiddish was the everyday language among the common folks. They subsequently brought that language to America, and some over here still speak it pretty well. It is a language of subtle humor. For example, The New York Times interviewed the publisher of a Yiddish newspaper in Brooklyn. Asked why he hadn’t gone bankrupt over the time when Yiddish was a dying language, he answered simply, “I fired my bookkeeper.”)

Milton’s mission in Yugoslavia was to rescue pilots in exactly the way we did it a few weeks ago, but he was teamed up with local Jewish partisans, and he was invaluable to our forces because he spoke Yiddish. After all, what other common language would we find among American soldiers to communicate with Yugoslavians? Perhaps some Serbian fellows from Chicago might have been of assistance, but they wouldn’t have had the fierce anti-German feelings of the Jewish partisans, many of whose families had been taken off to concentration camps. Milton’s soldiers were loyal, and they were very, very brave.

Their assignment was to send out two men in the dark of night to the pilots’ downed position, as learned by radio. Milton had 14 men in all-living literally in a hole in the ground within earshot of German voices. Through the entire time he was there, he lost only two men. Sometimes several teams were out at once, going to different locations and helping the pilot through unfamiliar terrain over to the coast of the Adriatic Sea, where they would be picked up by an American submarine.

We can well imagine the bewildered pilots being signaled to by Yiddish-speaking zealots with skullcaps, beards and curled sideburns, leading them through the night. But every pilot Milton learned about was saved except for the case where the two zealots did not return.

The problem back then was a dictator, and it is again now. And this is a universal problem in today’s world. Every single rogue nation, China, North Korea, Cuba, and all of the Arab countries are each controlled by a single dictator, however he may dress up his reign with a rubber-stamp Parliament, etc. As I pointed out in my recent obituary of King Hussein of Jordan, called “Death of a Salesman,” this man so controlled his people that, wasted away with cancer and barely able to lift his hand to point, he chose his own successor, his son. Such control of massive groups of people and their land is not a healthy situation.

I mentioned Cuba because we just played a baseball game there, and Castro had a chance for a lot of smiling pictures — la Clinton, Arafat, and other ineffective leaders who bring their people a lot of grief. Castro has so crushed the Cuban people that their baseball players—some of them fully qualified to play professional ball in the United States—are afraid to speak up about their situation. To a man, they all swore they would rather play in Cuba with its disorganization and poverty than be wealthy Americans with all that goes to fine athletes in this country. I understand they would risk jail if they said anything else.

And so it goes in the Arab countries. Populations totally crushed by incompetent dictators live a thousand years behind the rest of the world, despite all of their oil and other resources. The dictators, meanwhile, invent causes for which their leadership is supposedly needed-for example, getting Jerusalem for the Moslems, or the whole of Israel for a new Palestinian country. Such projects merely tend to keep the tyrant in office and the people believing in fantasies. In Yugoslavia today, the causes of Milosevic are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

My brother-in-law, Milton, is now in an assisted-living facility and barely can remember the exploits of his courageous military life, but I think he’ll enjoy seeing this letter. To my knowledge, this is the only public exposition of what he and perhaps hundreds or thousands of Yiddish-speaking partisans did on behalf of democracy in WWII.

Some of those partisans certainly ended up in Israel after the war. Come and see them for yourself! Our Kibbutz tour, June 2–11, is quite a bit less expensive than our high-season tours. This is the right time to go to Israel for those budget-minded travelers who have been waiting for the perfect opportunity to see the Holy Land. Our pilgrims will stay at kibbutz guesthouses in the Israeli countryside and also at Tiberias, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Our itinerary is the same as on our regularly priced tours, except for some extras added on such as camel rides and a visit to a Bedouin tent. We will see all the Biblical sites we always visit, such as the Garden Tomb, the Upper Room, Calvary, the Mount of Olives, and Masada. Please contact us for details at (214) 696-9760 or write to our office.

Our September Deluxe tour is from the 1–10. The Grand tour, with the extension to Petra, is September 1–18. If you don’t make it to Israel with our June tour, I hope you can join me in September. I will personally lead that tour. A visit to Petra is enlightening because it was home to the Edomites, the descendants of Esau. “Thus dwelt Esau in mount Seir: Esau is Edom” (Gen. 36:8). It was into Seir that Jacob came to reconcile with his brother, Esau. The Biblical names of Petra are Seir and Sela. The Edomites didn’t leave a literary record of their history, so archaeology is the only source of knowledge we have about them. Our journey to Petra includes a visit to an active archaeological site, a source of fascinating historical finds.

And don’t forget our Prophecy Conference upcoming May 29–30! Our special guest will be the leader of Jews for Jesus, Moishe Rosen. I will teach, along with our ministry’s senior theologian, Dr. Thomas McCall, and our staff theologian, Todd Baker. For details, see the enrollment form at the end of this letter, or you can call our office at (214) 696-8844 or e-mail us at . Please return the form to us in the enclosed envelope. I look forward to seeing you there.

We’ve been fortunate to be able to shoot our series about Armageddon on site, at the Valley of Armageddon. It went well, and we’ll have it ready for the fall television season. We should be able to run the programs twice before the year 2,000. This End Times series will cause quite a witness for the unbeliever. With so many believing the end of the world is shortly upcoming, End Times prophecy really hits home for those who have yet to come to Christ. They feel they’re running out of time, and who’s to say they’re wrong about that? And even if our Lord’s Second Coming is not “millennially correct,” our witnessing is still not lost. Every unbeliever who comes to live in Jesus Christ will have a richer, more meaningful life, no matter how long it may be. And then the best is yet to come!

So this series is of utmost importance to us and to the many it will reach. We covet your prayers and financial support for this project, which will undoubtedly be one of the most crucial we have ever undertaken. I don’t have to explain the expenses of going on location. If you can find a way to support our effort to reach out through the End Times series, we will be eternally grateful. Every bit of help you provide gets us closer to our goal of witnessing to the unbeliever and edifying you who have already devoted your life to our Lord. God bless you.

Remember to pray for the peace of Jerusalem!

Your messenger,