from Israel My Glory, Vol. 60, No.3
The Preservation
of the Jewish People,part 1
by Will Varner
The visiting preacher opened
his message with the following
statement: “Today I want
to tell you how to destroy the
Jewish people. The title of his sermon,
in fact, stood out boldly
in the church bulletin: “How to
Destroy the Jewish People.”
It even
had appeared in the local newspaper
that week in an advertisement
for the special meetings the church
was conducting with the guest
evangelist—and it had generated
no little commotion in town. So
significant was the brouhaha that
the local rabbi was sitting in the
church, prepared to hear an anti-
Semitic diatribe. Needless to say,
the atmosphere was electric.
The preacher continued his
opening remarks, announcing the
text for the sermon and asking
everyone to listen to the words of
the prophet Jeremiah:
Behold, the days come, saith the
LORD, that I will make a new
covenant with the house of Israel,
and with the house of Judah, Not
according to the covenant that I
made with their fathers in the
day that I took them by the hand
to bring them out of the land of
Egypt, which, my covenant, they
broke, although I was an husband
unto them, saith the LORD;
But this shall be the covenant
that I will make with the house of
Israel: After those days, saith the
LORD, I will put my law in their
inward parts, and write it in
their hearts, and will be their
God, and they shall be my people.
And they shall teach no more
every man his neighbor, and
every man his brother, saying,
Know the LORD; for they shall all
know me, from the least of them
unto the greatest of them, saith
the LORD; for I will forgive their
iniquity, and I will remember
their sin no more (31:31–34).
Nothing thus far was inflammatory.
The passage prophesied a
new covenant that the Lord
would establish someday with the
descendants of Israel. The preacher
continued reading:
Thus saith the LORD, who giveth
the sun for a light by day, and
the ordinances of the moon and
of the stars for a light by night,
who divideth the sea when its
waves roar; The LORD of hosts is
his name: If those ordinances
depart from before me, saith the
LORD, then the seed of Israel also
shall cease from being a nation
before me forever. Thus saith the
LORD, If heaven above can be
measured, and the foundations of
the earth searched out beneath, I
will also cast off all the seed of
Israel for all that they have done,
saith the LORD (31:35–37).
After reading the text, the preacher
called the congregation’s attention
to the last three verses, which
emphasize the everlasting nature of
God’s covenant with Israel. The
covenant was permanent. It was
immutable, irrevocable, and
unchangeable. Israel’s perpetuity
was inexorably linked to the perpetuity
of the physical ordinances of
the sun, moon, stars, and Earth. If
these ordinances disappear, then
Israel will disappear. But as long as
they remain, Israel will remain.
“So, you want to know how to
destroy the Jewish people?” the
preacher asked with a flourish. “I
will tell you. But first, you must be
able to pluck the sun, moon, and
stars from their celestial positions
and make them disappear forever;
measure the distance from one end
of the heavens to the other [something
modern scientists can’t even
do]; burrow into the very core of the
earth and measure the distance you
have bored. And if you can accomplish
these three tasks, only then
will you be able to eliminate forever
the children of Israel from their long
existence on planet Earth.”
A collective sigh of relief arose
from the congregants, including
the rabbi. The key truth was obvious
to all: It is impossible to destroy
the Jewish people.
Their Suffering
Considering the tragic history
of Jacob’s children over the last two
thousand years, that simple affirmation
stands out boldly amid their
sufferings, exiles, and narrow
escapes from annihilation. Deuteronomy 28, spoken and written by
Moses more than a thousand years
before Israel’s first exile, describes
the nation’s yet future sufferings in
these anguished words:
And it shall come to pass, that as
the LORD rejoiced over you to do
you good, and to multiply you, so
the LORD will rejoice over you to
destroy you, and to bring you to
nothing; and ye shall be plucked
from off the land to which thou
goest to possess it. And the LORD
shall scatter thee among all people,
from the one end of the earth even
unto the other; . . . And among
these nations shalt thou find no
ease, neither shall the sole of thy
foot have rest; but the LORD shall
give thee there a trembling heart,
and failing of eyes, and sorrow of
mind. And thy life shall hang in
doubt before thee; and thou shalt
fear day and night, and shalt have
no assurance of thy life (vv. 63–66).
Jewish history from the destruction
of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 through
the twentieth century is not a pretty
story. Although a small remnant of
Jewish people continued to live in
the land of their forefathers, the
vast majority ended up in the
diaspora (literally, the “scattering”),
a popular Jewish term to describe
everywhere outside the land of
Israel. These diaspora Jews lived in
foreign countries where the terms
aliens and exiles more appropriately
described their plight. Their “host”
countries usually were far from
hospitable. Wherever they wandered
in the medieval world, they
never were accorded citizenship.
Not only were they hated, they
often were caught between warring
factions and suffered the
consequences. When the European
Crusaders launched their expeditions
in the eleventh through the
thirteenth centuries to free the
Holy Land from the Moslems,
they slaughtered the Jewish
people and annihilated dozens of
Jewish communities along the
way. When the Black Death spread
through Europe from 1348
through 1350, many people
blamed the Jews, claiming they
had poisoned wells. Thousands of
Jewish people were burned to
death, especially in Germany.
Even the pope, not always a friend
to the Jewish people, opposed
such baseless accusations. But the
mobs, infected with blind hatred,
could not be dissuaded.
The infamous Spanish Inquisition, launched by King Ferdinand
and Queen Isabella, finally led to
the Jewish people’s complete
expulsion from Spain in 1492 and
then from neighboring Portugal
in 1496. This forced exile of nearly
200,000 people for no other reason
than the fact that they were Jewish
indelibly marked both the Jewish
psyche and Jewish history.
The little-known Chmielnicki
Wars in 1648 led to the slaughter
of nearly 100,000 Polish Jews by
Cossack warriors. The czars of
nineteenth-century Russia often
blamed the Jewish people for
whatever economic ills beset the
serfs in their empire.
In 1881 the infamous pogroms
broke out and continued sporadically
until World War I. Local mobs,
often urged on by their Orthodox
priests, attacked Jewish communities, murdering thousands of
innocent men, women, and children
for being so-called Christ-killers.
Hundreds of thousands of Jewish
people fled to the New World.
Those who somehow survived
the pogroms and remained in
Eastern Europe eventually faced the
worst of all Jewish tragedies—the
Holocaust. From 1933 to 1945,
through a series of repressive
laws; labor camps; and, finally,
gas chambers, the Nazis obliterated
approximately six million Jewish
people—simply because they
were Jewish.
Continued next week...
 Will Varner is professor of Bible and Greek at The Master's College in Santa Clarita, California.
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