John Tweedie - The Shadow of Death

January 8, 2026 | 28:41

Dr. John Tweedie hosts from outdoor scenes in Israel, as he shares God’s Word, chapter by chapter. Other experts provide insight throughout.

#Israel #Suffering #Trials-HardTimes #Grief #Bible #Prophecy #JewishHistory #TrustGod #PromisesofGod #JohnTweedie

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Israel: The Prophetic Connection | John Tweedie - The Shadow of Death | January 8, 2026

Why is
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Suffering a reality of life?
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All of us have gone through our valley experiences
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The grief of the loss of a loved one.
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In many cases, divorce and the heartache that that brings.
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The world is so full of suffering
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And it seems that no one gets a pass.
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And of course, in the context of what we're doing
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With the prophetic connection series,
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We're looking at jewish suffering.
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So while suffering is hard to understand,
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The other side of that coin is that there is a god
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Who makes promises to us.
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He doesn't promise us that we will stay suffering,
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That we won't pass under the waters or through the fires.
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But he does offer us hope
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That he will bring us through these things and be on them.
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And i think
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When we speak about human suffering,
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We must always do it in the context of a broader eternity,
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That this life is a rehearsal for the life that is to come,
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And that life is for eternity, not for 75
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Or 85 or even 100 years, but for eternity.
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And i like to think that we are being shaped,
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And certainly suffering can shape us positively,
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Because it can make our hearts more tender
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To the needs and the suffering of other people.
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So while none of us likes to go through suffering,
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There is a benefit if we hand it over to god.
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And if we pray and ask god to help us make sense of it all.
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I find encouragement in psalm 23, which is the psalm
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That's familiar to most, if not all, christians,
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And it's a helpful psalm
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In the context of speaking of suffering,
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Because the psalmist writes in verse four of psalm 23.
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Yea, though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
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I fear no evil.
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For you're with me.
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Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
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Now this is the
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Jewish psalm written by a jewish psalmist.
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And he doesn't deny that there are.
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There is the valley of the shadow of death.
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But he says at the same time that speaking of god,
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That you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
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If i just try to understand what that really means.
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It's almost like the shepherd watching over his flock,
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And he has the rod, and perhaps it stops as he moves along.
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But the psalmist is saying that even i go
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Must walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
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I fear no evil, for you are with me.
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We understand that beyond every valley is a mountain,
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Because that's how valleys are formed,
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And it seems to be part of god's grand scheme of things,
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That we must go through these
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Dark valley places
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In order to get to the mountains that are on the other side.
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And what's crucial in all of this is how
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We react when we're in the valley.
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Do we blame god?
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Do we question god, or do we trust god
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To bring us out through to the other side?
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Soft music
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The immensity of what the jewish people have suffered
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Down through the centuries, but especially during
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The second world war with the european holocaust,
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Was driven home to me on my first visit to yad vashem,
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The holocaust memorial in the city of jerusalem.
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There they have the images of the holocaust,
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The people that were lost.
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Consider the 6 million men,
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Women and children 1.5 million children.
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And you know, the theme for this latest series of the
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Prophetic connection is israel a blessing to all nations.
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And i find myself wondering, what did we lose?
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What which blessings did we lose when 1.5 million european
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Jewish children were killed in the european holocaust?
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I mean, among them, there had to be geniuses, scientists,
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Children with incredible potential
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Because we can see how the jewish race
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Has blessed the world
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Through their innovations and their research.
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So imagine what the world lost
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When we lost 1.5 million.
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My wife had cancer some years ago
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And she lost a kidney to cancer.
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She recovered from it.
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But i think of cancer and the devastation that causes
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Was there among those, 1.5 million jewish children,
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A boy or a girl with the ability,
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The brainpower
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And the research ability to find a cure for all cancers
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Or any of the other major diseases that plague humankind.
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What did we lose?
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I'm being there.
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It's driven home to me.
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What the world lost
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When i looked
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At the images of the men, the women and the children.
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I realize what we lost
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When the holocaust occurred
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In so-called christian europe.
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In a conversation
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With the croatian foreign minister on july 21st, 1941.
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Hitler reportedly said, if only one country,
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For whatever reason, tolerates a jewish family in it,
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That family will become the germ center for fresh sedition.
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If one little jewish
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Boy survives without any jewish education, with no synagogue
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And no hebrew school, it judaism is in his soul.
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Even if there had never been a synagogue or a jewish school
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Or an old testament,
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The jewish spirit would still exist and exert its influence.
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It has been there from the beginning,
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And there is no jew.
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Not a single one who does not personify it.
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Hitler did not need to be convinced
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About the jewish influence in the world.
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He believed that the jews had power within them
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To change the world around them.
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This is also why he was just as determined
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To extinguish the light of jewish influence
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That had burned from abraham's time onward.
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Hitler looked at himself as a savior.
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He said, i'm
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Saving the works at providence, decrees
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That i will be the greatest liberator of humanity.
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So i'm freeing humanity from a burden
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That has taken over a false and degrading vision
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Of conscience and morality, which very few can bear.
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That's exact quote from hitler
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Says the world is crushed by an artificial system of morality,
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Which is too great.
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I will liberate you from that.
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And how do i do it?
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I get the jews out of the world.
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This was hitler's final solution to end once and for all.
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This jewish problem that had plagued humanity for centuries.
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And he was determined to succeed where others before
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Him had failed.
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Us. before i got to the concentration camp.
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We were sowing fertilizer over the grain and they fertilize.
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There were black like ashes.
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And the farmer told me.
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Says, you know what?
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That's the human body.
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See? they burn the body and bag them
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And ship them to to be used as a, fertilizer.
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Reverend walter sancho grew up in the ukraine,
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But moved to germany to work for a german farmer
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Just before the outbreak of world war two.
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This particular farmer was also a patriotic german
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Who tried to convince sancho to join the german army.
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And he was bugging me and talk.
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Try to talk me to join the german
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Army, willing to hear.
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And i told him i cannot go to the army
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Because i had six brothers there
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In ukraine in russia, and they were on the front.
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They were fighting against germany.
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And i said,
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Germany is gonna send me there to fight my own brother.
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Brother.
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I says, i cannot do it, i cannot.
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And he was showing me,
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The soldiers said, look at how nice he dressed.
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And you are going to be like this.
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And even if the war going to be
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Finished, you can marry a german girl.
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You know, i let it be like german.
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I never accepted and he just hate me.
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He didn't like me when i told him i cannot.
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He was very mad at me.
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And i believe because i didn't do nothing.
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And one day, two policemen came and arrest me.
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Sancho was placed initially in a local jail.
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Shortly after that, he was transported in a vehicle
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Full of other prisoners. they were
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All taken to a concentration camp called buchenwald.
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It was the summer of 1944.
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In buchenwald, walter sankoh seemed to have an identity
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And even a name.
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Instead, he became a number one among millions of jews
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And gentiles
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Who were forced into hard labor with barely enough to eat.
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Senko has vivid memories of the short
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Nights and longer days he spent there,
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Nine months that would leave physical and emotional scars
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That have lasted a lifetime.
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52,250 die.
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And they didn't call me by the name the ss.
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First we had to really learn because they were pure.
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I kind of had a few demands.
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So he says,
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Fine, folks says i own that online for sale.
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And i say, yes.
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That's my number.
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I saw a lot of jewish people too.
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And they were there, and we knew they or jewish,
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We couldn't talk with them, but we saw them.
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We walked beside them.
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We knew they are jewish because they everyone had
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They would star on the chairs and on the back.
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So you don't have to ask who is here.
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We knew they were jewish.
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And every camp concentration camp has a lot of jews.
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Walter sancho was bewildered by what he saw.
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Why were so many jews being hunted down by the nazis
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And targeted for extermination?
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Did hitler view the jews as a threat to his own
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Aspirations of a germany reserved only for germans,
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Or was he motivated by something more sinister,
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More evil that lurked within his subconscious?
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He didn't like the jews.
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He wanted to be himself boss.
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And that's why he was killing the jew.
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There is not really,
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There is nothing to explain why.
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Because they didn't have no country.
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They didn't fight for their country.
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The jewish people didn't fight.
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They raised them to kill them.
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They did everything.
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They put them in ghetto and store them to death.
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Children and women and men.
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I was one of the children of this world who.
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Who didn't have a childhood in the sense of everybody.
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I mean, to be a child did the holocaust.
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It's not easy.
00:13:05.519 --> 00:13:06.854
Not in terms of, what is being described
00:13:06.854 --> 00:13:09.890
In literature and, some films and some videos.
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It is not easy.
00:13:13.794 --> 00:13:15.829
And it can't be.
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It can't be.
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It can't be explained.
00:13:17.931 --> 00:13:20.300
It is not easy because you are part,
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Of a process
00:13:25.706 --> 00:13:26.540
Of the humanizing jews all together.
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Yitzhak maier is one of the few jewish europeans to narrowly
00:13:29.843 --> 00:13:33.914
Escaped death at the hands of hitler and his brutal regime.
00:13:33.914 --> 00:13:37.851
How is it possible that people got up every morning,
00:13:38.886 --> 00:13:42.923
Every morning and started eight hours of holocaust?
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And some of them excel, and some of them were decorated
00:13:47.594 --> 00:13:50.998
And that they were just, killing flies.
00:13:50.998 --> 00:13:53.734
And then. and then to, as i say, the very minute.
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And they came home later on and they sat
00:13:56.303 --> 00:13:58.972
In their, armchairs
00:13:58.972 --> 00:14:03.977
And there would have been tv at the time watching tv.
00:14:03.977 --> 00:14:07.047
There wasn't.
00:14:07.047 --> 00:14:07.981
They were listening to mozart in to there.
00:14:07.981 --> 00:14:09.850
And they were, they were, they were
00:14:09.850 --> 00:14:12.786
The abnormality of holocaust.
00:14:12.786 --> 00:14:15.255
Is that it was very, very normal.
00:14:15.255 --> 00:14:19.860
The jewish people were either
00:14:20.494 --> 00:14:22.529
Hiding in the,
00:14:22.529 --> 00:14:26.533
Source pipes, you know,
00:14:27.034 --> 00:14:30.504
They tried to escape.
00:14:31.004 --> 00:14:34.207
So they were not. and but they it's.
00:14:34.207 --> 00:14:36.443
So i have them, they find them, pull them out like animals.
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They really didn't even call the jewish people people.
00:14:42.516 --> 00:14:46.753
You the hugh, the jew. jew.
00:14:47.354 --> 00:14:50.490
And it was terrible.
00:14:50.490 --> 00:14:52.159
And, you know, children and everybody did the same thing.
00:14:52.159 --> 00:14:56.697
There is no difference.
00:14:57.197 --> 00:15:00.233
My father was sent to
00:15:00.233 --> 00:15:03.036
To a camp in france, and from there to auschwitz.
00:15:03.036 --> 00:15:07.307
And my mother was left alone with two children, pregnant.
00:15:07.307 --> 00:15:10.844
Now, it's a long story how we got to areas force and so on.
00:15:10.844 --> 00:15:13.580
But we succeeded.
00:15:13.580 --> 00:15:14.681
She succeeded without speaking a word of french.
00:15:14.681 --> 00:15:17.684
And i was the one being arrested.
00:15:17.684 --> 00:15:20.420
We were committed to a convent, and then she fled there
00:15:20.420 --> 00:15:24.024
With the help of, of a, of a doctor
00:15:24.024 --> 00:15:29.296
Who was also a clergyman.
00:15:29.863 --> 00:15:34.768
And, we crossed on foot,
00:15:35.302 --> 00:15:41.575
In the winter
00:15:41.942 --> 00:15:42.776
Of 43 to border to switzerland
00:15:42.776 --> 00:15:45.979
As a child mayor, his younger brother and pregnant mother
00:15:45.979 --> 00:15:49.716
Managed to escape to what was then known as british palestine.
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Others were less fortunate.
00:15:54.354 --> 00:15:56.790
In buchenwald alone, over 50,000 people died from hunger,
00:15:56.790 --> 00:16:01.294
Disease and sickness.
00:16:01.294 --> 00:16:13.306
The people of israel
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Resources are often redirected to the military
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Instead of helping the most
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Vulnerable children at risk and the elderly.
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Many children go to bed
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Hungry each night and 1 in 3 lives in poverty.
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But you can make a difference.
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Struggle for survival,
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Future against all odds.
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Join us in making a positive difference.
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So they will know they are not completely isolated
00:17:08.462 --> 00:17:10.831
And alone in these trying times.
00:17:10.831 --> 00:17:25.045
Concentration camp
00:17:25.479 --> 00:17:27.147
Or three days before the americans came,
00:17:27.147 --> 00:17:31.485
The germans didn't have time to pick up dead
00:17:31.485 --> 00:17:34.754
People and shipped the what they did
00:17:34.754 --> 00:17:38.959
To dorian, or put in a pet,
00:17:39.559 --> 00:17:42.796
You know, and,
00:17:43.130 --> 00:17:46.366
So germany came and says, anybody die in the back?
00:17:46.366 --> 00:17:50.470
Just throw him out the window and say, by every barrack
00:17:50.470 --> 00:17:55.008
There was 50, 70 body dead, body lay,
00:17:55.008 --> 00:18:00.013
I guess, eyes way
00:18:00.447 --> 00:18:03.049
Deep in it for an mo double box
00:18:03.049 --> 00:18:09.923
Kneel like apple i potatoes.
00:18:10.524 --> 00:18:13.727
Walter sancho survived his nine months
00:18:14.494 --> 00:18:16.563
In the buchenwald concentration camp.
00:18:16.563 --> 00:18:19.366
Had his imprisonment been longer,
00:18:19.366 --> 00:18:21.201
He too may have become a statistic.
00:18:21.201 --> 00:18:23.737
But even then
00:18:23.737 --> 00:18:24.938
He would only have been one of a minority gentile population
00:18:24.938 --> 00:18:28.575
To die at the hands of the nazis in the death camps of europe.
00:18:28.575 --> 00:18:33.180
The jews, on the other hand, lost one third of their race,
00:18:33.180 --> 00:18:37.117
Almost the entire jewish population of europe
00:18:37.117 --> 00:18:40.854
For sancho and thousands like him,
00:18:40.854 --> 00:18:43.456
Liberation day could not have come soon enough.
00:18:43.456 --> 00:18:46.893
On april 11th, 1945, at precisely 3:15 p.m.,
00:18:46.893 --> 00:18:52.065
The buchenwald camp was liberated by american soldiers
00:18:52.065 --> 00:18:55.835
A day.
00:18:56.036 --> 00:18:57.103
Walter senko remembers with gladness and appreciation
00:18:57.103 --> 00:18:59.906
When they came in and one day
00:19:00.540 --> 00:19:03.443
We didn't hear nothing, shooting nothing.
00:19:03.443 --> 00:19:06.646
Second day we got up.
00:19:06.646 --> 00:19:09.382
In the morning we could hear a heavy
00:19:09.382 --> 00:19:12.552
Helicopter
00:19:12.852 --> 00:19:14.521
Flying and we could hear machine guns.
00:19:14.521 --> 00:19:19.059
Papa, papa, papa, papa! they were shooting.
00:19:19.059 --> 00:19:21.861
Doesn't matter.
00:19:21.861 --> 00:19:22.562
They saw anything or not.
00:19:22.562 --> 00:19:24.631
They were shooting all the time.
00:19:24.631 --> 00:19:26.466
Let everybody know that they are coming.
00:19:26.466 --> 00:19:31.204
Yeah.
00:19:31.438 --> 00:19:32.339
And they were just went on, you know,
00:19:32.339 --> 00:19:35.542
To different cities, different german parts.
00:19:35.542 --> 00:19:38.979
And we were loose.
00:19:39.412 --> 00:19:40.981
Open out the door, go wherever you want.
00:19:40.981 --> 00:19:44.217
And you want to go somewhere to somebody. go
00:19:44.217 --> 00:19:48.088
The allied soldiers who liberated
00:19:48.855 --> 00:19:50.724
The nazi death camps could not believe what they saw.
00:19:50.724 --> 00:19:54.661
The guards had quickly abandoned their posts,
00:19:54.661 --> 00:19:57.330
But it left behind ample evidence of their atrocities.
00:19:57.330 --> 00:20:00.634
There were bodies everywhere
00:20:00.634 --> 00:20:02.469
In the extermination ditches and in the crematoria.
00:20:02.469 --> 00:20:06.172
Those who were not, in fact, dead appeared as dead
00:20:06.172 --> 00:20:08.975
Men walking
00:20:08.975 --> 00:20:10.277
Barely more than skeletons that were still breathing.
00:20:10.277 --> 00:20:13.813
And then there was the stench, the awful smell
00:20:13.813 --> 00:20:16.850
That lingered over
00:20:16.850 --> 00:20:17.984
The camps caused by the constant burning of human flesh.
00:20:17.984 --> 00:20:21.655
This was hitler's final solution
00:20:21.655 --> 00:20:24.157
The attempt to exterminate an entire race of people,
00:20:24.157 --> 00:20:27.661
The liberating soldiers who had witnessed war up close
00:20:27.661 --> 00:20:30.230
And personal,
00:20:30.230 --> 00:20:31.931
Had not seen anything quite like the scenes that greeted them
00:20:31.931 --> 00:20:35.201
From within the concentration camp perimeters.
00:20:35.201 --> 00:20:38.405
How could people be capable of such acts of cruelty
00:20:38.405 --> 00:20:41.474
And mass extermination?
00:20:41.474 --> 00:20:43.576
And how could they possibly convince the world at large
00:20:43.576 --> 00:20:47.213
That such things had occurred in the first place,
00:20:47.213 --> 00:20:50.717
Especially those living on distant continents
00:20:50.717 --> 00:20:53.653
Far from the battlegrounds of europe?
00:20:53.653 --> 00:20:56.456
Supreme allied commander dwight d eisenhower was among
00:20:56.456 --> 00:20:59.826
The first
00:20:59.826 --> 00:21:00.360
To realize the horrors
00:21:00.360 --> 00:21:01.494
Of the holocaust should be captured on film.
00:21:01.494 --> 00:21:04.564
He understood that in time,
00:21:04.564 --> 00:21:06.933
There would be those who would denied ever took place.
00:21:06.933 --> 00:21:09.803
A pictorial record
00:21:09.803 --> 00:21:10.970
Would prevent these detractors from rewriting history.
00:21:10.970 --> 00:21:14.674
It would also serve as a reminder to future generations
00:21:14.674 --> 00:21:17.844
That no society, however civil it claimed to be,
00:21:17.844 --> 00:21:21.815
Was totally immune to the influences of unspeakable evil.
00:21:21.815 --> 00:21:25.885
Somehow, the realities of the holocaust had to be preserved
00:21:25.885 --> 00:21:29.556
And illustrated by photographs for the benefit of generations.
00:21:29.556 --> 00:21:33.393
Yet on board,
00:21:33.393 --> 00:21:34.627
The world needed to know and to ask the hard
00:21:34.627 --> 00:21:37.030
Questions of why and how the holocaust occurred.
00:21:37.030 --> 00:21:40.767
What did the jewish people do
00:21:40.767 --> 00:21:42.369
To warn such widespread persecution?
00:21:42.369 --> 00:21:45.071
These questions demanded answers
00:21:45.705 --> 00:21:47.507
Because by the end of the second world war,
00:21:47.507 --> 00:21:50.610
Approximately 6 million jewish men, women and children
00:21:50.610 --> 00:21:55.215
Had been exterminated as a consequence
00:21:55.215 --> 00:21:57.384
Of hitler's plan to destroy the jewish race.
00:21:57.384 --> 00:22:02.255
This tremendous cost in
00:22:02.756 --> 00:22:04.090
Human lives was something the world should never forget,
00:22:04.090 --> 00:22:07.627
But it was at the same time a jewish tragedy of such
00:22:07.627 --> 00:22:11.097
Immense proportions that jewish people themselves
00:22:11.097 --> 00:22:14.267
Dare not forget, much less allow the world to forget.
00:22:14.267 --> 00:22:17.337
Abraham's children had walked through the darkest of valleys
00:22:18.505 --> 00:22:21.474
And survived, but then only barely.
00:22:21.474 --> 00:22:34.020
The other thing i noticed at yad vashem was they had one
00:22:35.088 --> 00:22:38.458
Cattle car, representing thousands of cattle cars
00:22:38.458 --> 00:22:42.362
That were used by the nazis to transport the jewish people
00:22:42.362 --> 00:22:45.899
To the death camps.
00:22:45.899 --> 00:22:47.934
And those cattle cars were crammed with people.
00:22:47.934 --> 00:22:52.038
I mean, it was standing room only, sometimes for days
00:22:52.038 --> 00:22:56.843
At a time or other times for hours.
00:22:56.843 --> 00:22:59.979
But imagine the cramped situation
00:22:59.979 --> 00:23:02.816
With very little ventilation and lack of sanitary means.
00:23:02.816 --> 00:23:08.054
I mean, think of the cruelty of all of that.
00:23:08.054 --> 00:23:10.723
And then if they survived that and got to the death camp,
00:23:10.723 --> 00:23:14.160
Then what?
00:23:14.461 --> 00:23:15.695
Waited for them there, you know, there is at the other sherman,
00:23:15.695 --> 00:23:20.266
Jerusalem, a place they called the valley of lost humidities.
00:23:20.266 --> 00:23:24.804
It's at the lower level of the museum itself,
00:23:24.804 --> 00:23:27.841
And you can walk through what seemed to be concrete canyons.
00:23:27.841 --> 00:23:31.845
But on the pillars that are
00:23:31.845 --> 00:23:33.246
There are the names of the communities of europe
00:23:33.246 --> 00:23:37.584
That were systematically ethnically
00:23:37.584 --> 00:23:39.986
Cleansed of jews during the holocaust.
00:23:39.986 --> 00:23:44.057
And there are something like 5000 names of communities.
00:23:44.057 --> 00:23:48.761
So that means 5000 lost communities
00:23:48.761 --> 00:23:52.999
In the valley of lost communities, right?
00:23:52.999 --> 00:23:55.668
Yeah.
00:23:55.668 --> 00:23:56.569
For shem, that's 5000 villages and towns
00:23:56.569 --> 00:24:01.007
Systematically cleansed of jewish people
00:24:01.007 --> 00:24:04.677
Just because they were
00:24:05.144 --> 00:24:07.580
Jewish people.
00:24:07.580 --> 00:24:16.523
Too, it is perhaps appropriate
00:24:17.123 --> 00:24:24.564
That it was a jewish author who once asked
00:24:24.564 --> 00:24:27.166
Why do bad things happen to good people?
00:24:27.166 --> 00:24:30.436
He asked this question against the backdrop of human
00:24:30.436 --> 00:24:32.972
Suffering that is caused by sickness and disease,
00:24:32.972 --> 00:24:36.009
And by natural disasters
00:24:36.009 --> 00:24:37.544
Such as famines, tornadoes, tsunamis and earthquakes.
00:24:37.544 --> 00:24:41.481
Why, he wondered,
00:24:41.915 --> 00:24:43.216
Did an all powerful god allow sickness and natural
00:24:43.216 --> 00:24:46.085
Disasters to exact such heavy tolls on human existence?
00:24:46.085 --> 00:24:49.856
And how did god fit into the realm of suffering?
00:24:49.856 --> 00:24:53.526
Some have argued that suffering proves that either god
00:24:54.594 --> 00:24:57.196
Does not care for humankind or that he must not exist.
00:24:57.196 --> 00:25:02.068
But there were others who still believed in god's goodness,
00:25:02.068 --> 00:25:05.271
But who saw suffering as the inevitable
00:25:05.271 --> 00:25:07.340
Outcome of free choice that god has bestowed upon humankind.
00:25:07.340 --> 00:25:12.378
Yet those who believed in god's inherent goodness
00:25:12.378 --> 00:25:15.014
Also believed that
00:25:15.014 --> 00:25:16.149
In the end, god and his goodness will triumph over evil.
00:25:16.149 --> 00:25:20.720
Not surprisingly,
00:25:21.154 --> 00:25:22.522
This is the view the bible itself
00:25:22.522 --> 00:25:24.557
Seems to support, as it offers an explanation
00:25:24.557 --> 00:25:27.727
To those who cry out to god in response to their suffering.
00:25:27.727 --> 00:25:31.264
O lord god of hosts, how long will you be angry
00:25:31.264 --> 00:25:34.434
Against the prayer of your people?
00:25:34.434 --> 00:25:36.002
You have fed them with the bread of tears
00:25:36.002 --> 00:25:38.237
And given them tears to drink in great measure.
00:25:38.237 --> 00:25:40.673
You have made us a strife to our neighbors, and our enemies.
00:25:40.673 --> 00:25:43.610
Laugh among themselves.
00:25:43.610 --> 00:25:45.345
Restore us, o god of hosts, cause
00:25:45.345 --> 00:25:47.914
Your face to shine and we shall be saved.
00:25:47.914 --> 00:25:51.651
It's important to remember that when god called abraham,
00:25:51.651 --> 00:25:54.654
Isaac, and jacob, he did not promise them
00:25:54.654 --> 00:25:58.358
Or their descendants a painless journey through time.
00:25:58.358 --> 00:26:01.728
For one thing,
00:26:02.061 --> 00:26:03.262
He warned them in advance that they would be slaves in egypt.
00:26:03.262 --> 00:26:06.466
Nor did god promised them
00:26:07.033 --> 00:26:08.501
That a life as his light bearers to
00:26:08.501 --> 00:26:10.036
The nations would be without challenge.
00:26:10.036 --> 00:26:12.305
He had summoned them to bring in heaven's light into a world
00:26:12.305 --> 00:26:15.408
Caught in the grip of paganism and evil influences.
00:26:15.408 --> 00:26:19.278
They were to be his champions in a cosmic battle of good
00:26:19.278 --> 00:26:22.281
Versus evil.
00:26:22.281 --> 00:26:23.783
This would
00:26:23.783 --> 00:26:24.951
Inevitably place at odds with the purveyors of darkness.
00:26:24.951 --> 00:26:28.121
Remaining faithful to that mandate
00:26:28.121 --> 00:26:29.956
Would prove costly for them,
00:26:29.956 --> 00:26:32.125
Especially so in a world that did not know him.
00:26:32.125 --> 00:26:36.162
But perhaps this is precisely why they were chosen in the
00:26:36.162 --> 00:26:39.032
First place.
00:26:39.032 --> 00:26:40.266
God knew from the beginning that they would cling to him,
00:26:40.266 --> 00:26:42.935
And that they would somehow rise above the despicable horrors
00:26:42.935 --> 00:26:46.172
Of human existence and the inevitable suffering it brings.
00:26:46.172 --> 00:26:50.510
They would face the darkest evils imaginable,
00:26:50.510 --> 00:26:52.945
But they would do
00:26:52.945 --> 00:26:53.980
So with heaven's light reflected on their faces.
00:26:53.980 --> 00:26:56.816
And whatever the future held in store,
00:26:56.816 --> 00:26:59.352
They would always know
00:26:59.352 --> 00:27:00.620
That god had it within his power to restore them, and whenever
00:27:00.620 --> 00:27:04.724
Necessary, to rekindle their flame of passion.
00:27:04.724 --> 00:27:07.794
That's why, down through the generations,
00:27:08.661 --> 00:27:10.630
They could so readily declare next year in jerusalem,
00:27:10.630 --> 00:27:14.434
With god's help,
00:27:14.434 --> 00:27:15.802
They would always rise
00:27:15.802 --> 00:27:17.070
Above the darkness of cruel circumstances
00:27:17.070 --> 00:27:19.672
Because they were, after all, his chosen nation.
00:27:19.672 --> 00:27:19.672

John Tweedie - The Shadow of Death

January 8, 2026 | 28:41

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