"The air was so still that not a single leaf trembled. Dark gray clouds hovered overhead. Animals ducked for doorways as if by some mysterious instinct they knew that this would be a long dreadful night."

That was how one man described the longest night of his life--a night when several tornados struck his small community leaving a path of unbelievable destruction.

Wartime London must have been something like that. People huddling in fall-out shelters--never knowing when German bombers would strike--wondering whose home would be the next target--worrying about family and friends on the other side of the city--would they be all right? Would this be the night when unmitigated tragedy would strike their household?

Go back with me now some 3,000 years. The children of Israel were slaves in …