CHAPTER 7

EVERY JEW A MIRACLE  

I APPROACH THIS SUBJECT with a feeling of profound awe,” said David Dare, after the crowd had been called to order by Dr. Morely.  “Nowhere in all the world is there anything so strange, so wonderful, so sad, as the Jew.  He is the most pathetic, the most unique being on earth.

“Vast ruins, mouldering palaces,  broken sculptures, shattered and marred by the violence and vengeance of barbarians, are all that remain of Rome, mightiest of kingdoms.

“The palaces of the Caesars lie desolate.  The kingdom of Rome has sunk into oblivion, the names of its rulers are forgotten, or remembered only for their merited infamy.  The iron kingdom, as foretold by Daniel, has been shattered and divided, and has no successor.

“But the Jewish nation, whose downfall Rome in the heyday of her power accomplished, whose Temple was annihilated, whose children Rome sold as slaves — that nation still lives and thrives and multiplies on earth.

“Rome has long since passed away, but the Jewish people remain.  Centuries before Rome was founded the Jews were a powerful nation.  The history of Rome — the mightiest of kingdoms — was only a parenthesis in that of the Jews.

“Strange to observe, every nation that was an enemy of the Jews has perished.  But the Jews, oppressed, banished, enslaved, and spoiled wherever they were driven, have survived them all and have overspread the earth.  Of all the nations around Judaea, Persia alone remains a kingdom.  And it furnishes food for thought to observe that it was the Persians who restored the Jews from the Babylonian captivity.

“In Leviticus and Deuteronomy, Moses clearly outlines the political and religious history of the Jews for 3,400 years — from 1500 B. C. to this present  moment.”

“But you cannot prove Moses wrote these predictions,” interrupted Mr. Emerson.  “In fact, it is generally conceded that the Pentateuch was not written until 800-600 B. C., a difference of 700 to 900 years.”

“For our purpose,” smiled Mr. Dare, “it is immaterial whether the books credited to Moses were written in 1500 B. C. or 100 B. C.  So I’ll cheerfully accept your latest date.  But that will not solve your difficulty.  I will ask you, Mr. Emerson, to read Leviticus 26:33, 36, 37, and 44; also Deuteronomy 28:25.”

“Certainly,” he replied.  He opened his Bible as indicated, and read in a strong, clear voice: “ ‘I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste.’  ‘And upon them that are left alive of you I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies.’  ‘And ye shall have no power to stand before your enemies.’  ‘And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly.’  ‘the Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth.’ “

“Thank you, Mr. Emerson.  The scriptures just read are a very few that bear on the subject.  Please read the following in addition, for they are important and illuminating:  Jeremiah 15:4;  16:13; 9:15, 16; 24:9, 10; 15:7;  Ezekiel 5:10; 7:19; 12:15;  Amos 9:4, 9;  Jeremiah 8:3;  Hosea 9:17;  Isaiah 6:10-12;  Jeremiah 31:10; 46:27, 28;  Hosea 3:4, 5;  and above all, the whole of Deuteronomy 28.

“Now, here is another instance where time, instead of making the problem more simple, makes it more difficult, for we can understand how a people might for a hundred years mingle with other nations and remain distinct, but when this mingling extends to twenty-five hundred years, how shall we account for that nation’s remaining distinct all that time?  The history of the world presents nothing else like it.  Scores of other nations have meanwhile risen up, remained distinct for a while, and then become entirely lost in the great mass of humankind.

:Look at our own country.  Millions from other nations pour in.  For two or three generations they preserve their nationality, but after that it is lost.

“But not so the Jews.  They are in every nation, as predicted, and everywhere a distinct people.  They are indeed an astonishment.  The Jew preserves all the characteristics that he had many centuries ago.  He has done what no other people on earth has ever done — he has successfully resisted all the customs of society, all the powers of persecution, all the powerful influences that tend to drive him toward amalgamation with other nations.  the children of Abraham are as distinct in religion, customs, and physiognomy as they were three thousand years ago.  How do you account for this?

“The blood stream of this particular people,” said Mr. Emerson, “was absolutely pure, kept pure because they were forbidden by religious principle to intermarry.  Hence racial peculiarities have persisted.”

“True, they were forbidden to intermarry,” replied Mr. Dare.  “Your explanation, instead of explaining, adds another difficulty — that of explaining how Moses knew the Jews would obey that mandate thousands of years later.

“Here is a case where every nation in the world has had a part in fulfilling the prophecies of the Bible, for there is not a nation in all the world where the Jew has not gone, and not one where he has not been oppressed in accordance with the prediction.

“Can you point out a solitary nation that has received the Jews with open arms?  If you could find half a dozen such, what a case against the Bible the sceptic would have!  But how amazing it is that the Jews have been thus oppressed in every nation and are the only nation in all history to be thus oppressed.

“Another remarkable thing about it all is the fact that the records telling of their shame are handed down to us by the very people we would naturally expect would want them destroyed.  No, there is no other instance of such remarkable fidelity to truth in all history.

“As foretold by Moses, the Jews have literally been ‘rooted’ out of their land.  Deuteronomy 29:25, 28.  Not only that, but God says, “I will bring the land into desolation; and your enemies that dwell therein shall be astonished at it.’  Leviticus 26:32.

“Please observe that while the Jews were to be deprived of their land, scattered to every part of the world, and Palestine laid in ruins, still their enemies were to ‘dwell’ in it.  Could any prediction seem more improbable?

“Dean Stanley, in his ‘Syria and Palestine,’ page 117, says that ‘Palestine above all other countries in the world is a land of ruins.’  Is it not a strange fact that a land so filled with ruins should be inhabited?  Or being inhabited, that the ruins should not have been utilized or removed?  But the inspired writer foresaw this fact, and you and I are compelled to admit the marvellous correspondence of fact to prediction.

“Though ruined, desolate, bereft of her own people, Palestine was nevertheless to be pre-eminently a land of pilgrimages, for Moses tells of ‘the foreigner that shall come from a far land.’  Deuteronomy 29:22.  And is this not true today?  Is there any other spot on earth to which so many pilgrims journey?  Not one?  More than half a hundred languages are spoken in their city of Jerusalem alone.

“ ‘I will . . . draw out a sword after you,’ declares Jehovah, speaking to the Jews.  (See Leviticus 26:33).  The history of this people has been one long, bloody commentary on the uncanny accuracy of this prediction.

“Two million of them were killed, starved to death, or sold into a slavery worse than death in A.D. 70.  More than half a million more were slaughtered by the Romans sixty years later.  The history of the Israelites has been but the slaughter of a nation, continuing for nineteen centuries — the sword drawn out after them.

“But let the words of the historian Milman tell the story: ‘No fanatic monk set the populace in commotion, no public calamity took place, no atrocious or extravagant report was propagated, but it fell upon the heads of this unhappy caste.  In Germany the black plague raged in all its fury; and wild superstition charged the Jews, as elsewhere, with causing and aggravating the misery, and themselves enjoying a guilty comparative security amid the universal desolation. . . .

“ ‘The same dark stories were industriously propagated, readily believed, and ferociously avenged, of fountains poisoned, children crucified. . . . Still, persecuted in one city, they fled to another, and thus spread over the whole [country].  Oppressed by nobles, anathematized by the clergy, hated as rivals in trade by burghers in commercial cities, despised and abhorred by the populace, their existence is known by the chronicle . . .of their massacres.’ — ‘History of the Jews,’  Volume 3, pages 222, 223.”