MARK TWAIN THINKS ABOUT THE JEWS

Mark Twain was perplexed and bedeviled to no end when he came to look at the Jews. He wrote eloquently of his bafflement, asking a question at the end which he couldn't answer, but if you have a Bible at the ready, you can.

It's an extended two-paragraph quote, but well worth your time and thought, so . . . read on:

"If statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky way. properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and had done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it.

"The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed; and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”

Hitler who tried to end their immortality would add a hearty "Amen" to Twain's quote, as would other depots and devils from Pharaoh to Haman. One nation after another, one ruler after another, has tried to crush the Jew, but found him uncrushable, impervious to all attacks, propaganda, persecutions, and Ultimate Solutions. Many have tried; all have failed. As Twain said, as only he can do, "The Jew saw them all, beat them all . . ." But was it the Jews alone who saw them all and beat them all?

Twain isn't the only one to look at the Jews and wonder. Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948) was a Russian Marxist who broke with the movement after the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. He became a Christian — he had been charged with blasphemy for criticizing the Russian Orthodox Church in 1913 — and went into exile, eventually living in Paris. In The Meaning of History, he explains his departure from Marxism:

"I remember how the materialist interpretation of history, when I attempted in my youth to verify it by applying it to the destinies of peoples, broke down in the case of the Jews, where destiny seemed absolutely inexplicable from the materialistic standpoint… Its survival is a mysterious and wonderful phenomenon demonstrating that the life of this people is governed by a special predetermination, transcending the processes of adaptation expounded by the materialistic interpretation of history. The survival of the Jews, their resistance to destruction, their endurance under absolutely peculiar conditions and the fateful role played by them in history: all these point to the particular and mysterious foundations of their destiny."

Twain can't answer his own question because of his ingrained bent toward naturalism. He, like all materialists wound up at a dead end, wondering, "How?" "Why?"

There's only one Book, just one and only one,  that can answer Twain's query and, on the other hand, there's only one Book that can tell him the one way the Jews can be destroyed. First things first: the answer to, "What is the secret of his immortality?"

The answer? The coming fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant (Gen. 12:1-3). There must be an Israel to receive the fulfillment of God's promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their descendants; God's Word stands sure--this guarantees their immortality.

The further answer is in the the last of the writing prophets in the Old Testament: "For I, Jehovah, change not; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed." (Malachi 3:6)

But wait. What about the despot's question: "How can I destroy the Jews?" That answer is also in the Bible. Jeremiah 31:35-37:

Thus says the Lord,
Who gives the sun for light by day
And the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night,
Who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar;
The Lord of hosts is His name: “If this fixed order departs
From before Me,” declares the Lord,
“Then the offspring of Israel also will cease
From being a nation before Me forever.”

Thus says the Lord,

“If the heavens above can be measured
And the foundations of the earth searched out below,
Then I will also cast off all the offspring of Israel
For all that they have done,” declares the Lord.

So there it is--God's Word to the anti-Semite is, "If you want to destroy the Jews, then you must first destroy the sun, the moon, and the stars, and only then, according to the promise of God, can the Jews be destroyed." (Arnold Fruchtenbaum) 

The anti-Semite is on the losing side.