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June 1931
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
The Mystery and Romance of Israel An Address Delivered in Baltimore and Published in The Mediator B y M ax I saac R eich
came out unscathed. Darius threw him to the lions, but the lions refused to devour him. Haman tried the gal lows, but he was hung thereon himself., Neither annihila tion nor assimilation nor medieval segregation have suc ceeded in ending the Jewish question. Nor, I am per suaded, will the modern attempt to repatriate him be successful. The only solution—the divine solution—is regeneration. For let it be said, Israel is unique in this particular. God has declared: “This people have I formed for my self, they shall shew forth my praise.” God will never drop this ideal for Israel. The Jew was meant for some thing else than a dealer in second-hand clothes. He was not intended to be the world’s financier, or to shine as a comedian on the vaudeville stage. The Jew today is like Jonah, a runaway prophet. And the sea of the Gentiles is in uproar, because the Jew is not in his right place. You will never get the affairs of the nations settled till God has His first-born nation, as He called Israel to the king of Egypt, in harmony with His will. As long as Israel is at odds with God, he is like Jonah in the belly of the sea-monster, swallowed up among the Gentiles, an in digestible morsel, a source of continual distress. T he C hange W rought by R egeneration When a Jew becomes a believer in Him of whom Moses wrote in the law and the prophets, he becomes a true child of his father, Abraham, who, while still in un circumcision, believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. He then represents the natural branches which were never cut off their olive tree of privilege. The Gentile church represents the wild branches which have been detached from their pagan stock and grafted into the Israel of God, while the natural branches are broken off through unbelief. Though the cutting off from their olive tree happened nearly two thousand years ago, and the cut-off branches are very dry indeed, “God is able to graft them in again.” There have always been some who have been looking in faith for the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham that the Messianic seed of this one man should be a bless ing to all nations. This has already had an initial fulfill ment in the Messiah, who is par excellence the seed of Abraham. It will have a yet richer fulfillment when the Messiah will be restored to His brethren according to the flesh. They will make a new start, in Him and under His leadership. Apart from Christ, the Jew cannot ful fill his destiny in the world. Till the Jews see in Him, as the sacrificial Lamb, the highest glory, they will con tinue to dwell in a desolate house. The Shekinah has departed from them, as the Spirit departed from King Saul. But the glory is waiting to return. The One whom they have pierced is exalted to God’s right hand to giye repentance to Israel and remission of sins (Acts 5:31). (Continued on page 258)
HE story of Israel is the most fascinating story that has ever been told. From whatever angle you approach the subject, you are face to face with the mystery of divine providence and re deeming activity. The story of Israel is like the vision that came to Moses in the desert —the phenomenon of a bush that burned and yet remain ed unconsumed. When Moses drew near to study this great sight, he heard the voice of Jehovah speaking to him. The natural mind has busied itself with the “Jewish question” since the days of the ancient Pharaohs. The question is with us still. Unless we see the divine purpose in the calling and education and destiny of this people, we will never get to the end of the mystery. What a mess the Gentile governments have made of the Jewish ques tion! Israel is, in her wonderful past, and no less in her strange present, as she will be in her predicted future— a witness to the reality of prophecy and miracle, a demon stration of what we usually call the supernatural. God has linked together three divine facts: the miraculous peo ple, the miraculous Book, and the miraculous Person. Of each of these miracles, three miraculous facts may be predicated: a miraculous origin, a miraculous preserva tion (resurrection after death), and a miraculous future. Israel, as the miraculously begotten, preserved, and guided people, was made the custodian of the Book which came by the breath of God. A F ull H istory Is it not strange that the Jewish people should have preserved a Book which is so unlike every other book? No history of any nation reads like the history which God inspired Israel to write. Their sins and backslidings, their disasters and defeats, and their shame and rebellion from century to century are all recorded there. Did any other nation ever write such an account of itself? God made no mistake when He selected the Jewish people as the custodians of His living oracles. They were faith ful custodians, and have handed on to the world that which the Book contains, unaltered and undiminished, with its marvelous witness to the One who is the light to lighten the Gentiles, and who will yet be the glory of His people, Israel. A U n ique N ation How remarkable also is the continued preservation of this people! The Jew is still with us—not as a mummy under glass, to be exhibited as a curiosity; but as a living factor, youthful and virile; with a race-consciousness which has persisted in defiance of all the laws governing the perpetuity of nations. The secret is that God has not yet done with the Jew. He used, mighty nations as His rod to chastise His chosen people, and then threw the rod away. I t has been said that every’effort to get rid of the Jew has failed. Pharaoh tried in vain to drown him. . Nebuchadnezzar tried to burn him, but the Jew
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