Israel: The People of God
Throughout centuries of persecution the Jewish race has survived the catastrophes which have so often destroyed the national identity of other peoples. Religious or secularised, a Jew remains a Jew - a voluntary or involuntary witness to the truth that is symbolised in the story of God's covenant with Abraham. This striking fact of the persistence of the Jewish race has long been recognised as important evidence of the truth of the biblical interpretation of history.’ Prof Richardson quotes Bishop Butler, an eighteenth century scholar, who wrote: ‘The Jews are dispersed through the most distant countries; in which state of dispersion they have remained fifteen hundred years; and ... they remain a numerous people, united amongst themselves, and distinguished from the rest of the world ... ; and everywhere looked upon in a manner, which one scarce knows how to express, but in the words of the prophetic account of it, given so many ages before it came to pass: "thou shalt become a proverb and a byword among all the nations whither the Lord shall lead thee" (Deuteronomy 28:37). Butler goes on to speak of ‘the appearance ... of a standing miracle in the Jews remaining a distinct people in their dispersion, and the confirmation which the event appears to give to the truth of revelation’. When Disraeli was asked what he thought was the most convincing proof of the existence of God, he replied, ‘The Jews’, It would seem that the Jewish people cannot escape their appointed mission of calling the attention of the rest of the world to the truth that God exists and has a purpose in history which must be carried out; they remain scattered through all the world as a question addressed to every nation concerning its responsibility before the Lord of history. ‘The uniqueness of the Jewish people is not something which has been invented by theologians ... : it is a startling fact of world history ... ‘ (Christian Apologetics, pp 141ff). Note Richardson's phrase that the Jews are 'a voluntary or involuntary witness’. The New Testament gives us a very good example of how a Jewish leader was, under God, an involuntary witness to the truth of Christ himself. This will help us to answer the question in many people's minds. How can the very people who rejected Christ still have a unique place in God's purposes in history and how can their history reveal anything of God's way of salvation in Christ? 9