Centuries
ago an agnostic king of France was discussing philosophy and religion with his
royal court counselor. After numerous arguments were presented by the Christian
advisor in favor of the position that God had revealed Himself in the Holy
Scriptures, the king finally demanded that his counselor prove to him that God
existed in an argument using only two words. The counselor replied, "The
Jews!" In those two words the counselor summed up one of the most
miraculous demonstrations of God's supernatural intervention in human history.
The survival and prospering of the Jewish people during thousands of years of
brutal persecution, pogroms, and the tragedy of six million Jews massacred in
Hitler's Holocaust is a mysterious miracle unparalleled in history.
Each
of the mighty empires of the past - Assyria,
Egypt, Babylon, Media-Persia, Greece, and Rome - who conquered Israel and
carried her Jewish citizens into slavery have
themselves turned to dust.
Yet
the Jewish people, the least among the ancient nations of the Middle East, have
survived throughout centuries, despite the overwhelming persecution and
opposition against them. No other people in history have ever lost their national homeland for thousands
of years, survived dispersion in more than 70 different nations for 20
centuries, and then returned to their ancient homeland and rebuilt it.
What other
nation lost its national language for 20 centuries, only to recover it and
teach its ancient language to millions of its returning exiles? The Bible's
declaration that God made an eternal, unbreakable covenant with the Jews,
through their father Abraham, has remained the guiding principle and focus of
the Jewish people's survival against overwhelming odds for the last 3,500
years.
God's covenant with Israel was the
motivating force behind the Jews remarkable survival as a distinct people, even
when surrounded by Gentile cultures.
In
addition to the miracle of Israel's survival in a cruel world, we must add the
remarkable history of the astonishing Jewish
contribution to the arts, philosophy, writing, science, and medicine. According
to the writer Max I. Dimont, although
less than one half of one per cent of the world's population are classified as
Jews, "no less than 12 per cent of all the Nobel Prizes in physics,
chemistry, and medicine have gone to Jews. The Jewish contribution to the
world's list of great names in religion, science, literature, music, finance,
and philosophy is staggering" (Max I. Dimont, Jews, God and History , New
American Library, 1962. ).
However,
the greatest Jewish influences on the
history of mankind came from the lives, teachings, and actions of two Jews -
Moses and Yeshua of Nazareth.
The
Scriptures are a special revelation given to a distinct people, the Jews, who
were chosen by God to be both the guardians of this precious treasure and the
sharers of this divine revelation with the rest of humanity.
However,
the Jewish people, by and large, chose to hold this revelation as their
national possession. With very few exceptions, such as the prophet Jonah's
reluctant mission of prophetic warning to the Assyrian capital of Nineveh, the
Jews generally didn't preach the revealed message of God to the Gentile
nations.
The
Scriptures contain a written revelation of God's plan to redeem all who repent
that was ultimately consummated in the unique person, life, and message of
Yeshua the Messiah.
Despite the fact that the Jewish race has never constituted
more than a small fraction of 1 per cent of the world's population, the
profound religious influence of the Jewish people upon the rest of mankind over
the last 4,000 years is incalculable.
Today,
almost one third of the six billion
humans throughout the planet acknowledge that God revealed Himself in an astonishing and unique way to the
prophets and patriarchs of the ancient Jews.
Almost two
billion people, including Jews, Muslims, and Christians, have accepted that
portions of the Jewish Bible are a sure guide through time to eternity.
And
today the Lord is raising up thousands upon thousands of Jewish people who
acknowledge that Jesus/Yeshua is the promised Messiah.