Why I Believe: The Persistence of Israel

I am a believer in God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and in His son, Jesus Christ. This is the fourth of a six part series about Why I Believe.
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In the middle of the second millennium BC, the nation of Israel was born. God made a covenant with the people and gave them the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. But they have not always lived in their land.

Twice they were driven from their home country, first by the Assyrians and Babylonians in the sixth and eighth centuries BC, and then by the Romans in the first century AD. Since then there have been concerted efforts to get rid of them: Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, Russian pogroms, and the German Holocaust, to name a few. Yet for nearly 1900 years, from AD 70 to 1948, the nation persisted without a home country. Even though they were scattered throughout the world, they maintained their religion, culture, language, alphabet, and ancient history books. Against all odds, they maintained their identity as a single people, a single nation, hoping to return to their homeland. That is miraculous. No other nation come close to this experience.

In the eighth century BC, the prophet Isaiah prophesied that God would bring back the scattered nation to their homeland from “the four corners of the earth.” During the 19th and 20th centuries, Jews returned to Israel from 77 different countries.

When Israel declared its independence in 1948, this tiny country was immediately invaded by armies from five neighboring countries, whose goal was to eradicate its people. They survived. Twice more they were attacked by an alliance of neighboring countries, and again they survived.

The Old Testament prophets declared that the land of Israel would become an arid wasteland, and then it would become fruitful again. When Mark Twain visited the land in the 1860’s, he reported that it was “desolate” and also “rocky and bare, repulsive and dreary.” Today it is extremely fruitful. Not only that, it is the most prosperous and stable country in the Middle East, defying all odds against it. This is a miracle.