"Hallelujah" The Shout Of Many Marines Leaving North Korea ... Dec. 1951

It was 66 years ago, this week, in December 1951, that the survivors of the 1st Marine Division, after defeating the combined Chinese and North Korean armies, at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, came out of the frozen Taebaek mountains of North Korea, near China. We were still surrounded by tens of thousands of them, but they couldn't penetrate our defenses. Ninety-eight thousand North Korean civilians came out with us, having been expelled from their homes and robbed of their food stores, by the Communist armies, in 20-35 below zero weather. Many of those refugees were long time Christians with nothing left to survive on. Many a Marine and Korean refugee shouted hallelujah as we boarded US ships bound for South Korea. Those refugees were all on the open decks of our ships, shoulder to shoulder, barely living.
The N.K. parents of the new President of South Korea were on one of those ships escaping Communism.

There are very few veterans, of Combat experience, who did not pray during the heat of battle. It was usually silent prayer, but I have heard Marines talking to God loudly, in extreme combat conditions, or following it. And most thanked Him for their deliverance... as I did.  


Hallelujah is an English interjection. It is a transliteration of the Hebrew word הַלְּלוּיָהּ, which is composed of two elements: הַלְּלוּ and יָהּ.  (Those two elements mean, "Praise ye" and "the LORD") as seen twice in  Psalms 150...

1 Praise ye the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his power.

2  Praise him for his mighty acts: praise him according to his excellent greatness.

3  Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp.

4  Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs.

5 Praise him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon the high sounding cymbals.

6 Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. 

Praise ye the Lord.

David, the Psalmist, had some harrowing experiences both on the battlefield and at the hands of King Saul and other wicked kings. He learned early to give God the glory and thanksgiving for his divine deliverance from imminent danger and death.

Many of you have had the compelling motivation to shout hallelujah. Especially those times when you or a loved one were in dire trouble, danger, pain, or sickness, but survived. I can imagine a woman, after hours of birth pains, fearing she was about to die, but then, finally delivering a baby and singing out, "Hallelujah!" Or, that time you were about to lose your job or house but were suddenly and miraculously spared the loss, and crying out ... "Hallelujah" and thank you, Lord. 

When you have one of those mountaintop, hallelujah experiences, you don't care who hears you or what they might think. It is only God, who delivered you ... and what He thinks is all that matters. Now, that is where you and I, as Christians, should live ... all the time.
Think of all the things that could have happened or almost did, but didn't, because God intervened for you, and you survived. So again, Hallelujah!