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BOOK EXCERPT

God's Tsunami: Understanding Israel and End-time Prophecy

By Peter Tsukahira
Guest Columnist

CBN.com – Introduction

When the Gulf War began in January 1991, my family and I had been living in Israel for three years. In the months leading up to the war, Saddam Hussein had promised to "burn half of Israel" with missiles possibly loaded with weapons of mass destruction. After the first day of allied bombing in Baghdad, Iraqi missiles began landing in Israeli cities. In the following weeks, missile strikes within Israel became an almost regular occurrence. I remember one evening's attack with clarity. The urgent moan of the air raid sirens seemed to echo all over our port city of Haifa. It was early evening, but already the streets were strangely empty and silent. Almost everyone was indoors in expectation of an attack. It felt like a scene from a movie that could have been titled "The End of the World." We made our way into the "sealed room" - one of our bedrooms where the window was sealed with plastic sheets, and cracks around the door were covered with packing tape. I helped my wife, Rita, put our one-year-old son into his tent-like breathing apparatus, and then I checked on our five and one-half-year-old daughter to see that her gas mask was on securely. She smiled at me through the eyepieces of the almost comically grotesque, black rubber mask. We put on our own masks and checked to see that the boxes still contained the spring-loaded, nerve gas antidote syringes.

From the time of the siren, we knew that we had two minutes to get into our sealed room and put on our gas masks before the Iraqi SCUD missiles could be expected to hit. If the missiles were targeted for our city, we would hear soon after the roar of the Patriot anti-missile missiles taking off to try to intercept the incoming SCUDs. This particular evening, we heard the Patriot missiles, and then, BOOM, the house shook. The entire building seemed to shift around us, and the windows rattled. It felt and sounded like a missile had exploded right in our neighborhood.

"Get down on the floor!" I yelled, and we crouched on the floor tiles. Rita was frantically trying to move our son's "tent" onto the floor. In an instant, everything was silent. We asked ourselves, "Was it a nerve gas warhead?" We wouldn't know if we were safe until an "all clear" was broadcast by radio or television. We had to stay in the room with our gas masks on and wait.

During the 1991 Gulf War, we lived in an apartment on Mount Carmel in Haifa. Nine of the thirty-nine missiles launched at Israel came into our city. The one that shook our home detonated in the air less than one kilometer from our neighborhood. Dozens of houses lost their windows. The twisted, smoking wreckage of the missile landed in a nearby valley where it burned away the underbrush and lay smoldering for hours. Miraculously, no one in Haifa was hurt, and none of the missiles carried nerve gas warheads. The war ended on the Jewish holiday of Purim when the Book of Esther is read in the synagogues. The nation had literally been shaken, but we joyfully gave thanks to God for extending His hand of protection once more over the house of Israel.

I am an Asian-American Israeli, and I have lived my life between three unique nations. The first nation is the United States, the world's dominant economy and culture. The second is Japan, a nation that is rich in its blending of ancient and modern Asian traditions. The third nation is Israel, a newborn, modern society with a unique heritage of centuries-old biblical culture. The principles that I have learned and now teach have come from serving God while living between these three divergent and dynamic worlds.

My grandparents immigrated to the United States from Japan almost one hundred years ago. My mother and father were born in America. They were part of the generation of Japanese Americans that were sent from their homes on the west coast of the United States and "relocated" in camps by the U. S. government for the duration of World War II. After the war, my father completed his doctoral studies at Harvard University in Asian History. I was born in Boston during those post-war "baby boom" years.

When I was eleven, my father was working for the U.S. Department of State, and he received an assignment as a diplomat to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. I spent my teenage years attending an international school in Japan, and then I returned to the Boston area for university. America was still struggling with the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and a youth-oriented cultural revolution that was sweeping the nation. I became caught up in this turbulent vortex, and I didn't emerge until my best friend committed suicide. His death triggered in me a search for truth. That search led me and my Jewish girlfriend, Rita, into the mountains of the American West. Several months after my friend's death, Rita visited a coffeehouse ministry called "Shalom" in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There she heard another young Jewish "hippie" tell about his encounter with Jesus as his Messiah and the change that had come to his life. That same night a deep change took place in Rita's heart, and she also believed in Jesus as the Messiah. I could not deny the obvious, immediate, and radical transformation that had happened in her life. My own questioning ended soon after that when I prayed to become God's servant, and discovered that Jesus is God's Son and the Savior of the world.

Following our complete change of heart, Rita and I were married. My desire to be involved in ministry led me to enroll in a Bible school and then in seminary. I also began to work in the computer industry. These dual streams took us to Japan in the 1980's where I served as associate pastor of a growing international fellowship in Tokyo for over five years. I also worked in the Japanese computer industry, and Rita taught in a university. We knew even then that one day we would live and work in the land of Israel. In 1987, doors opened for us, and we moved to Israel with our two-year-old daughter. Because Rita is from a Jewish family, we were invited to come as new immigrants and to become citizens of this newly re-created nation. We joined the more than three million immigrants who have come from over 120 other countries to populate this land since the founding of the modern state in 1948. We settled in the city of Haifa which is built on Mount Carmel, the location of the prophet Elijah's confrontation with the false prophets of Baal. Our son was born in Haifa in 1990.

We came to Haifa with a vision to see a congregation established that would be a benefit to both Jews and Gentiles. We began to gather for fellowship and prayer with a handful of other believers living near our home. In 1990, we met David and Karen Davis, also new immigrants. They were moving from Jerusalem to Haifa to start a rehabilitation center for drug addicts called Beit Nitzachon (House of Victory). After the Gulf War in 1991, the Davises invited us to join them in pastoring a fledgling congregation that had begun at the rehabilitation center where they lived. The congregation became known as Kehilat HaCarmel (Carmel Assembly). One of the foundational visions of this congregation is the "one new man" of Jews, Arabs, and other Gentiles worshipping together in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

Over the years we have been privileged to participate in the return of the Jewish people to the land of their inheritance and the re-emergence of an indigenous Israeli Messianic body. In the last few years we have seen dozens of Israeli Jews come to faith in their Messiah. For the first time in nearly 2000 years, voices proclaiming, "Yeshua hu Adon," (Jesus is Lord) can be heard in congregations throughout the country. Since we have been living in Israel, over one million new immigrants have arrived from the former Soviet Union. In a country of just six million Jewish and Arab citizens, absorption of over a million newcomers in such a short time has been quite a challenge. Today, more than twenty percent of the Jewish population is new immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and every major city has Russian-language newspapers, television channels, and radio broadcasts. In addition, there is a remarkable openness to the gospel among these Russian-speaking immigrants.

Soon after our congregation was begun, our friends Eitan and Connie came to live in Haifa. Eitan was the young man that Rita heard in Santa Fe as he testified of his faith in Jesus. Eitan and his family joined our congregation and he served on the leadership team. Later, with our blessing, he and several other immigrant families began their own congregation named "Tents of Mercy" in a suburb of Haifa. Almost from the beginning, their congregation faced a series of intense challenges including various forms of harassment and the fire bombing of their sanctuary. They continued conducting their services in both Hebrew and Russian, and now they have built a strong and vibrant community. Recently, "Tents of Mercy" launched their own daughter congregation in another part of the city. God is doing a new thing in our region, and the largest numbers of new believers are among Jews who are immigrants and have come from the former Soviet Union.

Looking back over the years, I can see that we as a family have been riding a powerful wave of God's purposes from our starting point in North America, moving westward to Japan, and then even further west to the land of Israel, the furthest edge of Asia. We have made a life-long commitment to this nation and its people, both Jews and Arabs. We have learned that Jesus, the Prince of Peace, is the only Ruler who can bring lasting peace to the Middle East. Jesus said that His kingdom is "not of this world," but this kingdom has the power to change lives. In our journey, we have discovered a spiritual home in the culture of God's kingdom. This home is a "city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God." (Hebrews 11:10)

Part Two: The Principle of Prophetic Alignment

Order your copy of God's Tsunami

More at Peter Tsukahira's Web site

Peter Tsukahira was born in the United States and is now a citizen of Israel. He lives with his family on Mt. Carmel in the city of Haifa. Peter is Director of the Or HaCarmel Ministry Center and one of the pastors of Kehilat HaCarmel, and Israeli Messianic congregation. He is ordained by World Challenge International Minister's Fellowship, founded by Rev. David Wilkerson. He also serves on the Board of Directors for Church Growth International, founded by Dr. David Yonggi Cho.

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