As an
American-Israeli artist, I launched cyberangels from the Israel Museum in
Jerusalem to the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art to celebrate the
Nationwide Bible Marathon on July 14, 2021 that was founded in Iowa by Dianne
Bentley three years ago. It has since grown to an international event with participants
simultaneously reading from the Book of Isaiah in 72 countries.
Isaiah sees shouts for joy when the corona pandemic ends. “Go into your houses, my people, and lock your door behind you; hide for just a moment until the plague has passed, then awake and shout for joy!” (Isaiah 26: 20,19)
Responses to cyberangels conveying Isaiah's vision
Dear
Mel, I have been profoundly affected by your artwork. Just before receiving
your email, my husband and I were talking about how one can write volumes and
not really accomplish what he/she is saying, but a single image speaks volumes.
Your artwork has prophetically spoken volumes into my life, and as tired as I
am from the 7/14 @ 7:14 am Nationwide Bible Reading Marathon event, I can
truly say I feel vibrantly alive and ready to spiritually war through the next
year of work needed to join nations around the world in a 24 hour, 26 major
time zone Bible Reading Marathon. This will be our 3rd year of prayer every
Saturday at 7:14 am (CDT) which precedes each 7/14 event. Three other women
from around the USA join me as we pray, discuss, and strategize with our Heavenly
Father. Thank you for being an agent of release of God's love to us and our
love for Israel and may 2 Chronicles 7:14 bless your life as it has ours. God
bless, Dianne Bentley, State Leader, Iowa 99 County Bible Reading Marathon,
Servant Leader, Nationwide Bible Reading Marathon
Hi
Mel, Dianne Bentley forwarded your email to me and I've ordered your book.
Looking forward to reading it. I'm the state leader for the Bible Reading in Georgia, There were 13 other states besides Iowa and GA that were involved in the
7/14 Bible Reading. What a blessing. I write a little weekly column for our
local paper. I thought you would enjoy knowing how Dianne and I met and how
this worked out for me to join her. No accidents with our God! Shalom,
Jerri Tuck
Jerri’s “Connecting the Dots” article in a Georgia newspaper tells of how she connected to Dianne in Iowa through a Facebook friend in Nigeria. God’s plan is continuing to connect the dots by Dianne forwarding my email to Jerri in the state of Georgia where my cyberangels have been in the collection of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta since 1987. I launched a new generation of cyberangels from Jerusalem, Israel, to the High Museum in 2019 and to museums in eleven other states in USA that have places named “Jerusalem” to honor Rembrandt on the 350th anniversary of his passing. See them all at my blog JerUSAlem-USA,
Jonathan Feldstein arranged for Israel to take part in the Bible Reading Marathon through his Genesis 123 Foundation that works to build bridges between Christians and Jews through the Bible they share. He is an American born Orthodox Jew who immigrated to Israel in 2004 and has been blessed with a calling to serve to create a meaningful dialogue between Jews and Christians and to help connect Christians to Israel.
Abu Dhabi to Israel to Iowa and throughout the world
The cyberangels
had just returned from their virtual flights from Jerusalem to the United Arab
Emirates to celebrate the inauguration of the Israeli Embassy in Abu Dhabi and
the Consulate of Israel in Dubai. This historic event brought the Abraham
Accords to life by reuniting the descendants of brothers Ishmael and Isaac,
Moslem Arabs and Jewish Israelis.
To rejoice in this event of biblical proportions, I launched “Cyberangels of Peace” on flights from the Israel Museum to the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Crossroads of Civilizations Museum in Dubai. These cyberangels heralded the realization of Isiah’s vision:
“They
shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any
more” (Isaiah 2:
4)
Living
Isaiah’s vision in the Land of Israel
My book Through
a Bible Lens published by HarperCollins Christian Publishing offers biblical insights for our digital culture of
smartphones and social media to both Jews and Christians. It
documents life with my wife Miriam and our children and grandchildren in Israel, in the land where the biblical narrative
unfolds, in the land that the biblical prophecies of the ingathering of the
Jewish people is being realized today. Miriam and I sense the privilege of
living the visions of the prophets in all that we see and do.
"I will bring your descendants from the east, and gather you from the west; I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ And to the south, ‘Do not keep them back!’ Bring My sons from afar, and My daughters from the ends of the earth." (Isaiah 43:5-6)
The great
biblical miracle of liberating one nation of thousands from enslavement in the
one country of Egypt after two centuries of exile pales in comparison with the
Zionist miracle in our time of ingathering millions of Jews from a hundred
countries after two thousand years and bringing them home to Israel.
I was born
in New York of parents born in Boston and New Jersey. My wife Miriam was born
in Suriname where the Amazon Jungle reaches the Atlantic Ocean. Her parents were born in Amsterdam. We came on aliyah to Israel with our
three children Iyrit, Ari and Ron who were born in New York. Our fourth child Moshe was born in
Beersheva. Iyrit’s husband Dr. Yehiel
Lasry was born in Morocco and came to Israel with his family when he was six
years old. He is mayor of Ashdod,
Israel’s fifth largest city and its major port, former surgeon-general of the
Israeli navy, and member of Knesset. Ari’s wife Julie was born in Boston, descendent of the Jewish sheriff of
Tucson in the Wild West. Ron’s wife Miri
was born in Jerusalem. Her father, a
Holocaust survivor, is a rabbi born in Hungary. Moshe’s wife Dr. Carmit Eliassi Alexenberg is a chemistry professor born
in Israel of parents born in Iran.
"Who
are these who fly like a cloud, and like doves to their roosts … to bring your
sons from afar?" (Isaiah 60:8-9).
My daughter
Iyrit and her husband were on the tarmac at Ben-Gurion Airport welcoming the
arrival of the first El Al Dreamliner from the Boeing factory in Washington
State. Painted on the plane was Ashdod in honor of the city’s founding
60 years ago. Watching the plane touch down brought tears to Iyrit’s eyes as
she witnessed the miracle of the Jewish people returning home “on wings
of eagles” (Exodus 19:4). My
son-in-law told me that the citizens of his city Ashdod were born in 99
countries.
“When
God will return the exiles of Zion, we will have been as dreamers. Then our mouths shall be filled with laughter
and our tongues with songs of joy. Then shall they say among the nations, ‘God
has done great things for them!’” (Psalms
126:1-2)
Reading
the Bible in the language of digital culture
A number of
polls show a growing trend that younger Christians and Jews read the Bible less
than their parents and consequently have a diminishing support for Israel.
Reading in the rapidly evolving language of smartphones and social media makes
Bible study boring to them. However, I
have found that when I translate the Bible from the original Hebrew into the
language of digital culture in Through a Bible Lens, this
fresh viewpoint sparks interest in the minds of millennials.
Let’s start
with the first words of the Bible translated into English:
“In
the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)
In the
original Hebrew language of the Bible, the word et appears twice:
“In
the beginning God created et the heaven and et the earth.”
The Hebrew
word et is the first creations before heaven and before earth. In
translations, et drops out since it has no equivalent in English. It links
“created” to “heaven” and "created" to “earth.” et is spelled aleph-tav, the first and last letters of the Hebrew
alphabet. Spanning the full set of 22
Hebrew letters from aleph to tav, et represents a prototypic media
system used to create a spiritual system called “heaven” and a material system
called “earth.”
The ancient
Hebrew language is a prototype of media systems used to create spiritual systems
like the Bible itself. The Bible invites imaginative ways for exploring
interrelationships between media systems, spiritual systems, and material
systems.
The digital
media system is a binary system of on-off, 1-0, light-darkness.
“God separated between the light and
darkness.” (Genesis 1:4)
“In the beginning” in Hebrew is B’ReiSheet, spelled with the same consonants as the
word B’ReShet meaning “In the network.”
Read the beginning verses of the Bible in the language of digital
culture as:
“In the network of networks (the
cloud), God created media systems for creating heaven and earth. When the earth was absolutely empty and dark,
God created light and separated between light and darkness (1 and 0)”
The media system of heaven, the spiritual realm, is written in the
Torah with Hebrew letters that form words. The media system of earth, the
physical realm, is written with electrons and protons that form atoms and
molecules. The media system of the
digital realm returns us to the primeval binary creation of darkness and light,
0 and 1. It is written with the binary digits 0-1 called bits that form bytes. Every blog, website, video, song, and text
that you access from the Internet is written with the binary system of the beginning
of Creation.
Cyberangels are created in the binary system and fly from Israel to Abu
Dhabi and to Iowa and continue their flights around Planet Earth via the Internet.
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