Mark Twain a self-avowed skeptic and agnostic, a great American writer, was struggling with this issue when he summed up (now) 3,500 years history of a people who have survived odds no other people in history have had to survive, when he wrote in 1899 a famous essay printed by Harper’s Magazine Concerning the Jews, concluding with the following passage:
The Egyptian, the Babylonian and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality? (Writer’s emphasis)
Where Mark Twain was agnostic, Leo N. Tolstoy was a very religious, Russian Orthodox Christian, a very famous Russian author from the last century, doubtless best known for his War and Peace wrote in 1908:
The Jew is the emblem of eternity. He who neither slaughter nor torture of thousands of years could destroy, he who neither fire, nor sword, nor inquisition was able to wipe off the face of the earth. He who was the first to produce the Oracles of God. He who has been for so long the Guardian of Prophecy and has transmitted it to the rest of the world. Such a nation cannot be destroyed. The Jew is as everlasting as Eternity itself.
Yes, there are those reasons for Israel’s overcoming perseverance: The Torah, The Talmud, Observance of the Sabbath, the Sovereign Promises of Almighty God and not a little bit of stubbornness.
With Israel’s re-establishment as a nation May 14,1948, ought that not be something of a “banner” to every nation in the world? In this “banner” could it not be that Israel’s God is saying: “The Bible, My Word, is a true, relevant, up-to-date Book. Its predictions are still being fulfilled today with absolute accuracy?”
In the past 2,000 years Israel’s adversaries have not had to deal with a nation backed up by a God Who has brought the Jews back to the land. Ironically, most Jews would not view their return to “the land” as a sovereign move of God, else they would be invincible.
One would think that present-day enemies of Israel would avail themselves of a little history and not be so swift at attempts of annihilation.
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