0239. Swallowed but Undigested

Swallowed but Undigested

"And Jonah was in the belly of the fish, three days and three nights" (Jon_1:17).

"To restore the preserved of Israel" (Isa_49:6).

There are those who choose to deny the possibility of Jonah’s remaining alive and conscious in the "God-prepared fish." But the preservation of Jonah in a fish’s belly, is easier to believe, by far, than is the preservation of Israel, scattered among all the nations.

Jonah was swallowed and undigested during three days and nights. Israel has been swallowed and undigested during nigh twenty-three centuries.

The greatest miracle of the Bible, a miracle that has been enacted before our very eyes during twenty-three centuries, in this preservation of Israel.

Without a country, without a government, without a flag, the Jews have wandered throughout the nations. They have had nothing but God to hold them together, and nothing but God could have held them.

Where is the race that can be nationally dissolved, disintegrated, and sown among every nation, and still preserve its identity?

Individuals from every other nationality, may leave their fatherland and take home in another nationality of the same color, and soon their racial distinction is lost. Their sons, or at best, their sons’ sons will be known racially, as the children of the land of their migration.

A German, an Italian, a Russian, a Belgian, an Irishman, a Swede, or any other Caucasian may land in the United States and after some years become naturalized. In one or two generations all their former national recognition is lost. They are not even classed as Americanized Italians, or Frenchmen, etc., they are simply Americans. Yet these people all had a fatherland, and a king, or government, and a flag.

The Jews have none of these: no country, no king, no flag–yet they refuse to be digested. Jews in Russia are Russian Jews; Jews in America are American Jews, and their sons, throughout succeeding generations are Jews–always Jews.

The Jews conform to the laws and the patriotic national glory of every flag under which they may sojourn. They are the best of citizens; they are a people always faithful to the flag–but they are Jews, always Jews. Swallowed, but undigested. Why?

Earth can produce no philosophy that will account for this strange fact. There is but one rea-son–God. It is possible, just as Jonah kept alive in the belly of the great fish was possible: possible because God decreed it so; possible because what God decrees, He is able to bring to pass. What Israel could never have obtained, the election of God hath obtained.

Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR