“One of the greatest beings alive in our time.” Winston Churchill
Thomas Edward Lawrence, born in Wales in 1888 was Britain’s “man of the hour” in 1917 when the Turks held Jerusalem.
The time had come in the history of mankind when God’s sentence on Jerusalem that it should be trodden down by the Gentiles, come to an end.
When Israel is in need of a hero, God provides one. Moses saved God’s people in his day. Gideon was likewise a Saviour. In later history Sir Francis Drake is credited as saving modern Israel from the enemy.’ Winston Churchill is considered by many to be the man appointed by God to rally the spirit of the nation in the perilous days of 1940 and onward.
Lawrence went to the Near East in 1911 as an archaeologist, digging at the site of Carchemish with Sir Leonard Woolley. His great capacity for leadership and his knowledge of the Arab peoples found him, at the outbreak of the World War, with an appointment to Egypt with Military Intelligence. His was the moving spirit in the negotiations which led the Arabs in revolt against the Turks. The war in the desert was grim and savage. Lawrence became known to the Turks as “El Orens destroyer of engines.” He is said to have destroyed 79 railroad bridges during his many sorties behind the Turkish lines. Lawrence was at the surrender of Jerusalem in 1917, with Allenby. The Arab’s final victory came several months later with Lawrence riding triumphantly into Damascus.
The job had been done, the desolator had been put out of Jerusalem. God’s promise was fulfilled. And Lawrence subsequently retired from international circles, quite disgusted at the Allies failure to fulfil adequately what he considered to be their moral obligations to the Arabs.
Lawrence refused high rank and decorations for himself – among them the Governorship of Egypt.
He died in 1935 in the reckless way he lived, victim of a motorcycle accident. It was at a time when officials were negotiating with him to talk turkey to Hitler seeing that no one else could. However, Lawrence of Arabia had done his job – the problem of Adolf Hitler was left to someone else. |
