Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
Select a thought to read by choosing a collection, the month, and then the day:
“For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will set them in their own land.”
Isaiah 14:1
There has never been an event in human history quite like what happened in May, 1948. After almost two thousand years of being scattered among the nations of the earth, the people of Israel were gathered together and re-established as a nation on earth. But then, that is what God had promised He would do.
When God makes a promise, nothing can prevent Him from fulfilling it, and He promised thousands of years ago that he would gather the dispersed Israelites back into their “promised land” and make them a nation once more.
The scattering of the Jews, commonly referred to as “the Diaspora” began during Old Testament times, when the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and carried many thousands of the defeated Israelites into foreign lands to resettle them. This scattering, or Diaspora, of the Jews continued to increase after later military defeats at the hands of other nations, the Babylonians and Romans among them, until almost no Jews remained in Palestine (the Roman name for Canaan). From the early second century A.D., the vast majority of Jews lived in foreign countries, and it remained that way until the late 1800’s when God began to stir up a desire in the hearts of a few Jews to return to their ancient homeland.
As time passed, the desire spread into the hearts of more Jews, and in the twentieth century, more and more Jews began to feel the urge to move to Palestine (the Roman name for Canaan’s land). Usually, the language of a defeated and dispersed people was lost, especially since the defeated and dispersed people did not have a homeland. Jews everywhere had to learn to speak the languages of the nations into which they were scattered. But the Jewish language, Hebrew, was preserved by the Rabbis, and in 1948, when Israel once again became a nation, Hebrew was declared to be the national language of the nation of Israel. Nothing like that had ever happened before. No language has ever been restored to its people once a nation was destroyed. But God specializes in doing things that have never been done. Long ago, He promised His chosen people Israel that He would destroy their nation because of their stubbornness and sin, but He also promised that someday, he would gather them again to the land He had promised Abraham. That “someday” was May 15, 1948.
Whatever God promises, He will perform it, no matter how unlikely it seems to us lowly mortals.