THE JEW IN HISTORY
J. Frank Norris
The following address in substance was delivered to the Jews in their Synagogue in Fort Worth, and by request was delivered over Star-Telegram Radio WBAP.
Because of the discussion of Zionism, pro and con, which now fills the daily papers and magazines, Jewish friends have requested that this address be published in the Searchlight. It has been published in Jewish periodicals like the Jewish Monitor and Jewish Weekly.
The very minute a Christian minister ventures to speak on the Jewish question, there is at once a certain amount of ignorance and prejudice aroused. I read a circular the other day. I don’t know who sent this out and to be perfectly frank with you, I don’t care. There is one thing I am very jealous of and that is the First Baptist Church – that there are two things about this church and pulpit – first that this church is absolutely independent of every machine, political and religious on top side of earth, and knows only its great Head and Master and that carries with it the second proposition that this pulpit is an unbridled and independent pulpit. Now that goes without saying – if anybody doubts it that is because you are a stranger in these parts of the earth.
Here is the statement – I don’t know who sent it out – I received it in the mail – I don’t know how far it is going – it is signed “Protestant.” Now in the first place let me say this – if you or anybody that you know is going to send out any propaganda of any kind – in common everyday American fairness have common everyday American courage and put your John Hancock down to what you write. Whenever anybody or any set of men send out anything over an anonymous signature it brands itself as downright, white-livered cowardice, I don’t care who it is.
Some man says, well, you ought to be careful – careful nothing! – trot me the gang out and I will tell them so, and you may be one of them, 1 don’t know and I don’t care – there isn’t any use to be afraid of a crowd like that.
The un-American circular denounced the Jew, and said he should be driven from this country; that every Jewish business concern should be boycotted.
As a business proposition my answer to the false sentiment of that cireular is, that Fort Worth needs more and bigger Jewish concerns.
I have no sympathy whatever with the anti-Semitic propaganda. In the first place it is a very dangerous thing to do for divine judgment came upon all who lifted their hand against the Jew. Second, it is the un-Christian thing to do, and third, it is the un-American thing to do.
I was glad to notice in the papers a few days ago where two of the largest Jewish mercantile establishments in Dallas are moving to Fort Worth. I heard the story of a man who was riding on a train, and there was siting beside him a Jew, and he turned and said to the Jew:
“Aren’t you a Jew?”
The Jew replied, “Yes, I’m a Chew.”
The man said, “They won’t allow Jews to live in the village where I live.”
The Jew replied, “Exactly; that’s why it’s a village.”
I want to read you in three verses of scripture an event that has affected human history more than anything that has occurred in ancient, medieval or modern time; affected human history more than anything that ever occurred in the history of any nation on this earth – any Gentile nation.
“Now the Lord had said unto Abraham, get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father’s house into a land that I will show thee – mark that expression – “into a land” – and I will make thee a great nation and I will bless thee and make thy name great and thou shalt be a blessing, and I will bless them that bless thee and curse him that curseth thee and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.”
When Jehovah called this man and he obeyed the call, in that act of obedience was wrapped up more meaning for all coming time than took place that night June 18, 1815, at the battle of Waterloo – meant more to the history of the world than July 4, 1776, and what can mean more to every American and to the world than that? The biggest question of this hour is not the issue between the French and Germans – whatever that might be – the biggest issue of this hour is not the League of Nations – whatever that may be – nobody seems to know; the biggest question of this hour is not the disarmament, which will never take place until the Prince of Peace comes, but the biggest question of this hour is the Jewish question. I want to say something if I can that will strengthen your faith in this book, the Bible, and what I shall say will be upon this proposition:
How that the history of the Jew proves without question the inspiration – the divine character – of the word of God. Suppose that you deny God-that there is a God – a personal, intelligent God that has to do with the affairs of men and nations – suppose you deny that he gave this. His revealed word, the expressed will of Himself. to men-then what a greater miracle to account for namely, tell me whence came this strange people, with their more than 5,000 years of tragic and glorious and unequalled history? As Napoleon said when seated around his camp fire with his generals, they were debating the question of religion, and those marshals were infidels, and they asked him, was there a God, and did he believe in God, and he pointed to Marshal Messena, who was a Jew, and said, “Gentlemen, there is the unanswerable argument that there is a God.”
That little country, Palestine, bordered by sea, rivers and deserts – that little country that has about one-quarter the area of the State of Alabama or about one-thirtieth the size of Texas – in a remote part of the globe – that country has affected the rest of the world and every country in the world in turn – every country has had something to do with that little land. It is spoken of again and again as “The Land.” Joshua – the conqueror – the one who possessed it, surveyed and allotted it to the tribes of Israel, his field notes remain to this day. What other provinces of Babylon, Media-Persia, Egypt or Rome, the field notes of which remain on record?
Did you not know, my friends, at this very day – a short time ago another Jew resurveyed that land? You can go there now and find the rocks – the cornerstones, the landmarks, to this place and no further goes the land – and those same field notes that Joshua 1laid out and followed have been re-established. An old sheik – an Arab beyond Jordan, three years ago came over and asked Sir Herbert Samuel, the high commissioner, the absolute ruler and the first to have power of life and death in his hands over all united Palestine since Solomon’s reign – how deeply significant that after a long period of nearly thirty centuries the miracle of the ages takes place before our very eyes – the restoration of the land to its rightful owners-this old sheik said: “Can we come under your rule for protection against enemies around us?” Sir Herbert Samuel replied, “No.” He was beyond the border line.
The Jew the Key that Unlocks Four Mysteries
1. If you want to understand the Bible, you study God’s dealing with the Jews. He is the key that unlocks four things – first, the mysteries of divine revelation in both the Old and the New Testament. This book was written by the Jew, inspired of God. You cannot understand his purpose in this world unless you under. stand His purpose in dealing with and through the Jew.
2. If you want to understand the strange things in human history, he is the key that unlocks human history. If you want to understand how that God raises up and how He put down rulers, kings, emperors and empires and nations, you study His dealings with the Jews. If you want to understand the destiny and fate of ancient Egypt and Babylon and all ancient nations, you study God’s dealings with the Jew.
3. If you want to understand the strange happenings of this present hour, I say to you he is the key that unlocks the mystery of things that are going on now. If you want to understand Turkey, the Near East – if you want to understand the policies of all Europe – you understand God’s dealings with the Jew.
The only outstanding result of the great war and the only clear-cut result was what? Not indemnity, not reparations, for that is’nt settled – they are fighting over it still – the world is trembling in the balance, wondering whether we will be plunged into another war, but one thing was clearly settled and that is that Turkish and Mohammedan rule ended in Palestine and that country was given back to its rightful owners – the ones that God gave it to in the beginning.
4. If you want to understand the future, he is the key that unlocks the unknown future. Great as his history has been in the past – as related as it has been to the nations of the earth – the greatest purpose that God has yet for the Jew is yet in the future. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem – every orthodox Jew has it in his blood – that his right hand would lose its cunning and his tongue would cleave to the roof of his mouth before he would forget Jerusalem – that city – the most important city in all the past and of the present and of the future – from that city in the future the law shall go forth to the end of the earth-the religious capital of the world in the past and will be the religious capital in the day of millennial glory.
The Bible says, Isa. 2: “The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
“And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.
“And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
“And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
“O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.”
The History of Jerusalem
The first event that took place at Jerusalem is recorded in the twenty-second chapter of Genesis, second verse, and God said, “Take now thy son, thine only son, Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.”
That rock, the place of offering Isaac, now covered by the Mosque of Omar, when I looked upon it, I thought: “What history! What scenes! What glories! What conflicts in the past! But its future – has in it the destiny of every boy of the Anglo-Saxon and Jewish races and Mohammedan, too.” It is a religious issue.
The next event that we find is when David comes and takes the stronghold of Zion and it becomes the city of David. What a tragic history has been the history of the wars and the conquests of that city throughout the ages!
Seven times destroyed. Even to this day, the Orthodox Jews gather in the Tyropean valley (read the Lamentations of Jeremiah) and wash the ancient foundations of the Temple with their tears, weeping over the departed glory of the Temple.
We find in the year 607 B. C. that the city was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and the inhabitants carried into captivity, here for 70 years they hung their harps on the willow trees by the rivers of Babylon and where they opened their windows three times a day and prayed with their face turned toward the city of God. We find that in 536 B. C. Cyrus the Great issued a decree that they should return and all the wealth and resources of the Babylonian empire were at their command for the rebuilding of their city. We find those walls were rebuilt by Nehemiah 445 years before Christ, and a hundred years that city and land enjoyed unusual prosperity. It was then captured by Alexander the Great and then 100 years later it passed under Egyptian rule and then in 197 B. C. it passed under the rule and control of the Syrian kingdom of the north and 170 B. C. the Maccabean revolt – the only time between Solomon’s time and now when the Jews had their independence – but it lasted for only a time, for in the year 63 B. C. Pompey the Great captured Jerusalem and Palestine passed under Roman rule.
In the years 37 B. C. to 4 A. D. Herod the Great was king. He rebuilt the temple of Solomon in the most magnificent way and larger than the first temple. In the year 70 A. D. the Roman armies under Titus came and captured and destroyed Jerusalem and the temple. In the year 130 A. D. Hadrian rebuilt the city. In 330 A. D. Constantine becoming a convert to Christianity, and his mother built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and that stands to this day and invading and contending armies have never molested that church. In 637 A. D. Jerusalem and Palestine were captured by Caliph Omar and he built on the site of the temple the Mosque of Omar, and it stands to this day. It is one of the four principal mosques of the Mohammedan world, which are, in the order of their importance, Mecca, Jerusalem, Constantinople, Cairo, and every Mohammedan throughout the 300,000,000 of their population would spill his last drop of blood for the defense of these mosques that are built for their worship. No woman is allowed in a single one of them, you understand.
In the year 1099 A. D. the Crusaders at the cost of 10,000,000 lives following one crusade after another, gained conquest of the Holy Land and held it until 1187 A. D. when by the powerful armies of Saladin they were cut to pieces on the plains of Megiddo, the battle ground of the nations.
That country remained under Moslem and Turkish rule until December, 1917, when General Allenby unfurled the Union Jack at the Joffe gate. In 1898 the kaiser of Germany built the most costly building that has ever been constructed in that land there on Mount Olivet – a short distance from the Greek Catholic church. This building he wanted to use as a capitol so that he might dominate and control all of that land. In this building he had three master paintings. First, Raphael’s picture of the Christ – above that the kaiserin, and above that that painting of the kaiser. Today that building is the capitol of restored Palestine and the governor – the ruler of that land – uses that building as his capitol. Little did the kaiser of Germany dream that he was building for the first Jewish ruler of restored Palestine, and that took place even in his own time.
Isn’t it wonderful how that God uses the wrath and ambitions of worldly men to His own purposes and His own glory? He moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.
And we cry with Paul: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!
“For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been His counsellor?”
When General Allenby captured Jerusalem, Sir Arthur J. Balfour – the secretary of the British Empire – issued a decree as follows: “That the British government looks with favor upon the restoration of Palestine to the Jews, conditioned that religious liberty be guaranteed.”
There are two decrees that stand side by side in history – one is the decree of Cyrus the Great of Babylon, 536 B. C., and the other is the decree of Balfour of Britain in 1917 A. D., and of the two events I would not at all be surprised when time has written its history forever, that the decree of Balfour the Briton will not stand even above the decree of Cyrus the Babylonian.
General Allenby marched across the Arabian desert from Egypt to Palestine, following the ancient road, the one traversed by the Ishmaelites when they carried Joseph down to Egypt. He built a railroad from Kantarah to Jerusalem, as he marched with his conquering army against the Turks and Germans.
I will tell you a little piece of interesting history. It took 600,000 native Egyptians to furnish the labor to build that railroad and bring up the water supply from the Nile river and provide the supplies of an army of 100,000 British soldiers.
The army that Moses led out of Egypt through the wilderness to the Land of Promise, had 600,000 men. It took 4,000 years for Egypt to pay the debt back to the Jews, but notwithstanding those 4,000 years, God – to whom a thousand years is as a day, and who does not repent concerning promises to Israel – took the native Egyptian and did the work of a British army that rescued and restored “The land.”
Now, I want to address myself briefly on this word – why then should there be any enmity or prejudice between the Jews and the English-speaking people? There should be the closest sympathetic relation between these two mighty races. After all, the Jew may not be so different himself and we may not be so different from him. Shakespeare says: “Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons. subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as the Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die, and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we shall resemble you in that.”
Then I want to ask you this question: “Why should there be enmity between the Jews and other people?” That there is prejudice there is no denying. Why? Why that prejudice?
Now I am going to help strengthen your faith in the word of God, for it is foretold that it should be so – that it would be so I am not talking about the oughtness of it, I am talking about what God’s book says about it in the beginning. Listen – Deuteronomy 28:37:
“And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations whither the Lord shall lead thee.”
Listen again: “And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from one end of the earth even unto the other; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone.
“And among these nations shall 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 thce; and thou shalt fear day and night, and have none assurance of thy life:
“In the morning thou shalt say, would God it were even! And at the even say, would God it were morning! For the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see.
“And the Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships, by the way whereof I spake unto thee, and thou shalt see it no more again: And there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondsmen and bondswomen, and no man shall buy you.”
And in Deuteronomy 30:7: “And the Lord thy God will put all these curses upon thine enemies, and on them that hate thee, which persecuted thee.”
It is prophesied in the word of God that he would be hated and that he would be persecuted and it is not strange that we have it now.
Now about the Jew, I will tell you what you do – you go to persecuting him and you are digging your own grave. He isn’t going to bother you, no – he isn’t going to fight you back. No – he won’t burn your house down; he won’t shoot you in the back – no – no danger of that; he isn’t going to do that – but you lay your hand on him and God will put His curse upon you – that is what He says – “I will bless them that bless thee and curse him that curses thee.” Is the Bible inspired? Let’s take that first promise – the Abrahamic covenant – God says I will bless him that blesses thee. Everywhere you find a people blessing and helping the Jew in ancient times – take for example – what happened to Jericho – the city was destroyed but the scarlet woman with her household was saved, and why? Because she gave protection and succor to the spies of Israel.
Yonder in the land of Egypt for 400 years they were ground down by cruel, heartless, conscienceless taskmasters. Go and look upon those splendid rows of Pyramids and the Sphinx. They are now excavating tombs with their millions of wealth buried through the centuries.
Go yonder in Central Park, New York, and look at the obelisk that was taken from the ancient city of Memphis, a few miles out of present Cairo – look at it with those hieroglyphics on the four sides. That obelisk tells America that the people that persecuted the Jew, that their glory is buried in the sands on the banks of the Nile, and Jew lives on.
Come with me to the ruins of Babylon where they have dug up the cuneiform records, where they have excavated the history of old Nebuchadnezzar – what does it mean – that this people this government – this empire – that took these people into captivity and stole their golden and silver vessels from the temple and drank out of them in a blasphemous way unto the midnight hour – that people went down in destruction and their city was so utterly destroyed that it is a place for bats and owls and for satyrs to dance.
Go yonder some moonlight night and look through the open windows of the old Coliseum at Rome and listen to those strange voices from the dead past-what does it mean-Rome, that mighty power that oppressed and persecuted the Jews, is gone.
Spain, away down the list of inferior powers of the earth today issued a decree a few years ago expelling the Jews from Spain. It is rather a significant fact, my friends, that among those expelled from Spain by that imperial decree there were some families that moved to Constantinople and to one of those Jewish families that suffered expulsion was born a boy and his name is Mustapha Kemal Pasha – the leader of the new national government of the Turks. The man that is making all Europe tremble is a Jew, at the head of a new Turkey. O, I would not go further, yet yonder in Russia, the land of night, the land of blood, the land of conflict, the land of death, the land of famine, the land of persecution and oppression – 300 years they persecuted the Jew as perhaps he never as been in all history. You take, my friends, this proposition, and I rejoice in this hour – in this fact – in this hour of trouble, this hour of conflict, this hour of darkness, this hour when men’s hearts are failing them, governments overturning – revolution following revolution – I rejoice in this hour to know the flag under which I live never did persecute the Jew – I rejoice to know that is true. I will tell you God has a great purpose for the Anglo-Saxon race, and O how it ought to humble our hearts and how we ought to study to know God’s purpose concerning this people and the fulfillment of prophecy.
Call in mind the conquerors that have invaded the Land of Palestine – where are they? Thotmes, Nebuchadnezzar, Sennacherib, Cambyses, Alexander, Pompey, Caesar, Augustus, Titus, Hadrian, Omar, Saladin, Tamberlane, Napoleon – all gone – governments and empires – but the Jew remains the same unchangeable race that he was when God gave the covenant to Abraham.
I am going to give you another proof – what I am trying to do is to demonstrate to you the inspiration of the Bible. Take the Palestinian covenant. God says “And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, which I set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations, whither the Lord thy God hath driven thee.
“And shalt return unto the Lord thy God, and shalt obey his voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thine heart and with all thy soul;
“That then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee and will return and gather from all the nations, whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee.”
I will ask this question – were they scattered abroad. You will find the Jew in every country in the world. He is under every flag and disloyal to none, and has no flag of his own. There are some countries he does better in than in others. He doesn’t stay in Scotland very long if he can get out – you can’t make anything of the Scotch. “Scattered abroad” – listen – is there anything going on now, this hour, in this world – by decrees, by government – by war – by peace – by commerce – by rail, by ship – is anything going on now that shows the Jews looking back to “the land?” Here is a prophecy that was uttered 4,000 years ago-two things: First the Jew would be scattered throughout the earth, and second, he would be gathered back. The first has taken place and the second is now taking place.
Not that all the Jews will be gathered back, but like it was at the return from Babylonian captivity. Only about fifty thousand returned, and the larger number remained. The question is not so much the restoration of the Jews to Palestine as it is the restoration of Palestine to the Jews.
Tell me how can any sane man read that book and deny that the God of the earth is its author!
I have had a few things to say about the professors – I am for all the professors, living or dead. I don’t mean any disrespect to any of them you know, when I say that. You know when I as a young fellow going to college, I saw the modern professor, with his Henry Van Dyke and sideburns and his long-tail coat and I just thought he was a walking encyclopedia and that he drew on the unsearchable, immeasurable riches of wisdom of the heavenly world. Talk about the sciences – that’s all right – that isn’t a bad word, science – it isn’t a scary word – it just means to know something – but don’t substitute science for guessing and for hypothesis – if you know it say so, and if you don’t know it, say so; but here is something we do know: We know that man’s color changes according to climatic conditions; we know that men’s bodies change according to social condition – we know that men are lean or fat according to diet – that is why so many fat women are trying to starve themselves to death. I never have been able to understand why any woman didn’t want to be fat and why any man didn’t want to be baldheaded – that’s two things I never found out about people. We know that people live in cold climates tend to be more corpulent, because they eat meat – take the Eskimo races – stout, chubby, thick-chested, while down in the equatorial regions where they don’t eat meat but live on a vegetable diet, they are slender, Cassius-like men. We know that governmental conditions affect men; that according to liberty that the people have they develop and therefore their bodies dwarf if they are under the yoke of tyranny – we know that under the curse of tyranny and oppression and ignorance their bodies will be affected by it; and we know another thing – we know you can bring different races together – all different breeds and colors and ancestry and you have the polyglot of nations – you have the melting pot out of a dozen different ancestral tribes, and you will have a different race from either one of the preceding dozen or more fathers. Now that is true in every case in all human history except in the case of the Jew – and that was prophesied that it would not be true. Why, you bring, my friends, the impulsive and volatile dark tinted Italian over here, put him in an American school, teach him English and he will soon wear tailor made clothes and look and act like anybody else, and some of our society women will go crazy about him if he is a duke or a prince with a title that can’t pay a board bill. You bring that nervous, high-keyed Frenchman over here, let him go to a baseball game a few times and he becomes like any ordinary American. Why, you can even take that thick-jawed, big-cheeked, sturdy, hard-working, plodding, home-loving German and bring him over here and he will in time become like everyone else. You can take that pug-nosed, fighting Irishman and bring him over here and he will soon be going to church and Sunday school and have a job on the police force. All races lose their identity in the melting pot except the Jew.
My friends, you can’t lose the Jew, I don’t care where you put him – I don’t care what you do to him – I don’t care what happens to him. The word of God is very clear on that point and I want you to notice it.
Is. 3:9: “The shew of their countenance shall be a witness against them” – the word countenance means features – it means nose and eyes and chin and mouth – your faces – you talk about a two-faced man-a man has a dozen faces – he has a face for joy and one for sorrow and one for hate and one for love and you let a man get mad and he has got a different face. Let your wife get mad and you know what kind of a face she has got. Character writes itself on the face. That Jew – the word of God says that his face would be his witness wherever he went. I had a Jew friend of mine tell me that is why a Jew never commits crime – if he does he would get caught up with anywhere he sticks his nose in. These are simple things that are prophesied in the word of God. Matthew 24-34 – the Lord Himself said:
“Verily I say unto you this generation” – this race – “shall not pass, till all these things are fulfilled.”
The Jew will be here until the end of time. Did He know what He was talking about. There is a miracle for you. Now come on, you professors of science, of ethnology and tell me how that happens! Here is a people that is defying climatic conditions, social conditions, political conditions and every condition of the earth. If you should go and call up old father Jacob back yonder as he sleeps with Isaac and Abraham in the cave of Machpelah, and bring him to the First Baptist Church-bring him here tonight – I could go set him beside my honored Jewish friend and very worthy citizen, Mr. Shamblum – put Jacob of old side by side with him and you couldn’t tell one Jacob from the other – they would be alike as two peas – derby hat, whiskers, nose and all. But my friends, if I should go back there and want to know who my great, great, great, great granddaddy was that lived contemporary with Jacob and bring him to the First Baptist Church next Sunday night, I would say excuse me, I will be somewhere else. I don’t know what my ancestors were doing back there. I suppose they were eating each other for dinner or supper – I don’t know – all I do know is that they were not monkeys swinging by the tail from the limb of a tree.
The Pharaohs issued a decree to kill every male child of the Jews. The Jews were a mighty people and Pharaoh’s fear was that they would soon control the government and he called his chief men about him and said what shall we do with them, and it was decided to exterminate the male population. He planned well but he did not recognize the God of Moses. The decree went forth from Babylon, with what result? The same spirit of persecution has gone on throughout the earth down through the ages but the Jew lived on just the same. O, my friends, God has a wonderful future for Him and in His own good time and according to his own dispensation they will all be gathered together again.
The Miracle of the Jew
Let me emphasize the miracle of the Jew. Let me summarize for a moment. The miracle of all time is the Jew. Can the world show anything like it? More than twice 1,900 years old, they saw the proud Egyptian perish in the waters of the Red Sea; they heard the fall of great Babylon’s power; they witnessed the ruins of the Macedonian conquests. And now they have outlived the Caesars, and outlived the dark ages. They have been through all civilizations, shared in all convulsions, and have kept pace with the entire progress of discovery and art. And here they stand today, as distinct, as ever, occupying no country of their own, scattered through all countries, identical in their immemorial physiognomy, earth’s men of destiny, before the venerableness of whose pedigree the proudest scutcheons of mankind are but as trifles of yesterday. But have they suffered severely? One convulsive groan of agony breathing through nineteen centuries, and heard in every land but our own. At the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, besides the tens of thousands led into captivity, it was as if in a single action of a great war the slain on one side should amount to 1,300,000; and when the remaining Jews having been expelled from their country, they attempted, sixty years afterward, to return, a half million more were slaughtered. For centuries they were forbidden, on pain of death, even to set foot in Jerusalem. Under King John of England, 1,500 were massacred at York in one day. Under Ferdinand and Isabella 800,000 by a single decree, were forced out to sea in boats, and the most of them perished in the waves. They have been fined and fleeced by almost every government known to history. They have been banished from place to place; banished and recalled, and banished again. By the Code of Justinian, they were incapable of executing wills, of testifying in courts of justice, of having social and public worship. The Koran of Mahomet stigmatized them as wild dogs; the Romish Church excommunicated any one who held intercourse with them; the Greek Church uttered anathemas still more severe. They have been forced to dissemble to save their lives, and in Spain and Portugal have even become bishops, and have governed in convents. In the prophetic words of the Old Testament, they have been “a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse?,” they have been “taken up in the lips of talkers,” and have been “an infamy of the people'” and the general estimate of them has ripened into the intense contempt of that dramatic conception – Shylock, the Jew of Venice. And now in this twentieth century they are a suffering people still, but still as indissoluble as ever.
Here they are holding fast to that one tell-tale face keeping up the sacred learnings of their traditions, self-conscious in their isolation, irrepressible in their love of Jerusalem, sublime in their singular patriotism, evermore looking and longing for their Messiah, the same intense individuality as when, lord of the soil, he plucked his olives from the trees of Judea. And, what is more, these world wanderers of the centuries, these tribes of the weary foot, have not only survived, but have now risen again as an element of power among mankind. He is the head of different nations. The Jew, the foremost, whether in science, or literature, or government. In witchery of song unsurpassed, he enchants the world with some of the sweetest music it eve heard. Surely he is the the standing miracle of the world’s current history; the bush of Moses, ever burning, yet never consumed; an ocular demonstration of how God may energize the secret springs of a people’s life, yet without disturbing individual freedom or social characteristics; and unanswerable refutation of that godless philosophy that would turn the Almighty out of his own universe. And for what have they thus been borne in the hands of God, all along the ages? Beyond a per-adventure, if so literally have been fulfilled the prophecies which foretold their sufferings and their preservation, equally sure are the predicted grandeurs of their future.
There are four things out of place now. When these four things get in place then we will have peace on earth and everything will be right and not until then. In the first place the devil is out of place – his place is in Hell, the bottomless pit-he ought not to be here on the earth at all. This would be a great world if we didn’t have the devil here. We would have no war in this world if it were not for the devil. Thank Heaven, the hour is coming when he is going to be chained in the bottomless pit.
Another thing out of place is the church – the body of members that make up all the believers on the Lord. Their place is with the Lord forevermore. The third thing that is out of place is the Jew. Jonah, a Jew, got on board a ship and he was out of place and he got the whole crew into trouble, so they thrust him overboard and the fish swallowed him. I believe that story. That fish couldn’t digest Jonah. He worked on him as hard as he could with gastric juices turned on him like a fire hose at work. The first thing when he moved into his new apartments was not to give a dance but start a prayer meeting and he stayed there three days and nights and he made the fish so sick that he had to go to shore and unload him, and nobody has ever been able to digest or keep down a Jew from that day until this.
The fourth thing out of place-when the Messiah comes and places himself as the ruler of this earth and re-establishes the throne of David.
The miracle that proves the inspiration of this Book is that “The land” is going to be restored.
“The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.” singing:
“It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and ‘The Glory of Lebanon Shall Be Given Unto it,’ the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, and the excellency of our God.”
“Strengthen ye, the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knee.”
Riding down though the South Country of Judea one day I saw a British officer in a Ford car. It is funny how Henry Ford has said so much about the Jew and yet the Jews of the world are using his cars and trucks. The Jew has got sense. He is no narrow minded fool. Anything you have he needs, he will get it. This officer seemed to be in trouble with his car and I said to him, “my friend, can I help you,” he could speak English and he says, “I would be glad if somebody would get this car started” I got out and saw the insignia of the British army of the rank of major. Now, there isn’t anything much to fix about a Ford – just adjust the carburetor or clean a spark plug, and after we had got the car to running, he said, “Will you ride with me and let your car go ahead? I might need you again.” So I got into the car with him and asked him who he was and where he was going, and he says, “I am the Governor of Beersheba.” Then he told me what they were doing in Palestine and unfolded the plans and blue prints and showed me how they were surveying that land. He had been up to Jerusalem and they were going to irrigate and redeem that land. He says, “you come back here in five year and you will see the most wonderful country, the most highly developed land, the most beautiful orchards and gardens that can be found in the world.” That is taking place now. Did the word of God know what it was talking about when it said that the waste places should be rehabilitated and restored.
The Anglo-Jewish Alliance
I have spoken to you long enough. There are one or two things I would like to mention in conclusion.
It is prophesied that there is in the last days to be an Anglo-Jewish alliance. That is clearly foretold in the Word of God. That becomes exceedingly interesting to us. Did you know that the alliance that holds this world from plunging headlong into the abyss of an anarchy is the Jewish race plus the Anglo-Saxon race. Bolshevism would sweep the earth-anarchy would lift its red flag but for these two people. The Bible says in Ezekiel 38:13-14:
“Sheba, and Dedan and the merchants of Tarshish, with all the lions thereof, shall say unto thee: “Hath Thou Come to Take a Spoil? Hath Thou Gathered Thy Company to Take Prey to Carry Away Cattle and Goods, to Take a Great Spoil?”
“Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say unto Gog, “Thus Saith the Lord God: In That Day When My People Israel Dwelleth Safely, Shalt Thou Not Know It?”
Who Are the “Young Lions?”
There are two confederacies the Anglo-Saxon people and the Jews on the one side.
On the other side the prophet saw the mighty armies of the great federation sweeping over the earth to take that people captive.
Things are shaping very rapidly – Jerusalem is being restored. It is politically already restored and in the hands of the owners. Nations are in commotion, alliances are breaking, new federations are forming, peace conferences going to pieces, treaties torn to smithereens, governments failing – alliances are forming the Anglo-Saxon people and the Jews on one side, and hosts of Gog and Magog on the other-mighty armies are marching. Nobody can say what will happen. Are we not in the period of iron and clay? What weakness of governments. Who knows tomorrow – who knows what moment – for in moment ye think not – in an hour ye think not-the Son of Man shall come and will take His people to be with Him.
One other word – the Jew will triumph through his elder brother the Messiah that shall be revealed from Heaven.
They took a Jew, Daniel, and in their hatred and envy they conspired against him. He was an old man 80 years old, white haired, they could find no occasion against him to put him to death except that he worshipped his God. He was no grafter; he didn’t put his hand on one dollar of the public treasury; no Teapot Dome investigation would have found any spot of graft or taint of oil in Daniel; he lived an open, clean, white life, above reproach – but they conspired against him and said, “we will find an occasion as he worships his God,” and so they had a decree signed by Darius – a decree that could not be changed, that if anybody worshiped for thirty days any other God than to bow down to the King of Babylon, he will be cast into the den of lions. Darius signed that decree and they watched Daniel. They knew what he would do, “and when Daniel knew that decree was signed he went into his house and opened the windows of his chamber toward Jerusalem; he kneeled upon his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, and they came and saw Daniel praying and went before the king and said, “We have found him praying to another God and the decree is death.” Daniel stood before the king, unafraid and unabashed, there wasn’t a tremble about him as he stood there before his accusers, and Daniel denied it not and was cast into the den of lions, and God sent his Angel and locked the jaws of the lions and delivered him and his enemies were fed to the lions the next day.
Thus, my friends, in the last days tribulation will come to the earth – the powers of darkness will undertake to overwhelm and destroy the Jew – God’s own elect – but in His own way and time he shall be delivered and judgment will come on the nations that persecute him.
“And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people; and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time; and at that same time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.”