07-The Flame That Never Flickers
The Flame That Never Flickers
CHAPTER SEVEN IN THE minds of some the question arises: Is Zionism the real fulfillment of the Scripture prophecies, or is it a mushroom growth that will shortly pass away? To this, we believe the reader will find his answer in the first two chapters.
The hand of God has been so clearly manifested in these developments of recent years, that it becomes difficult to doubt that we are witnessing the beginnings of that great movement which is to gather the Jews from the four quarters of the earth.
It is interesting in this connection to know that, while the majority of the Jews who have returned to the land have gone there in unbelief, yet the Zionist leaders in contending before the British Royal Commission, based their rights to the land squarely on the Old Testament prophecies.
The Bible is the “Mandate” upon which the Jewish people rest their claim to Palestine and the Mandate of the League of Nations merely gave recognition to that right, David Ben Gurion, chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared at one of the final hearings.
- “I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all countries whither I have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds: and they shall be fruitful and increase” (Jeremiah 23:3).
- “I will cause them to return to the land which I gave to their fathers and they shall possess it” (Jeremiah 30:3).
While insisting that Zionism was its own justification, irrespective of the benefits conferred by Jews, the witness emphasizes the beneficial character of the Jewish work for Palestine which, he said, was inherent in its nature and could not be otherwise.
Ben Gurion cited two reasons why the Jewish National Home could be established only in Palestine, both being historically unprecedented.
- The first was that Palestine was the only country which Jews regarded as their own.
- The second was that no other race as a whole considers Palestine its homeland. A DOOR NO MAN CAN SHUT
Referring to this series of events, Dr. Roland V. Bingham has said: “When God has opened a door, no man or set of men can close it.” We believe that the door has been definitely opened.
There is no end of evidence of the tireless determination of the Jewish leaders to see this dream realized. A statement from the Zionist headquarters recently said:
“Numerous are our victims and heavy are our losses, but our spirit remains unbroken. In the midst of war, we do not forget that our aim is peace, and in the midst of destruction we will not cease building. Facing cruel attacks and malevolent designs, we remain confident of the justice of our cause, knowing that our creative power and eternal Israel will overcome all obstacles in the way of his redemption.”
Says New Palestine:
“There is nothing that forges the spirit of a people so much as the fortitude that must come out of red-hot suffering: out of seeing loved ones fall in the fray, or their plans frustrated by the cruel buffets of circumstances, or their toil going for naught under the pincer grip of strife.
“Today, in the Land of Israel, the Jews are being subjected to a deeply harrowing experience. They are being asked to stand by, to raise no finger, and to suffer the burning and pillage of their groves and orchards, the destruction of their produce, the uprooting of the precious trees which have been made to flower in the soil of a deforested land, the rape and unlicensed lust of the vandal.
Yet the Jews of Palestine have remained patient, if embittered, too, under these onslaughts.” The comment of Dr. A. H. Carter in Bible Witness is most significant:
“Whatever Satan and his instruments may attempt to do, they can never succeed in frustrating God’s purposes regarding the children of Israel. The Arabs’ present efforts to force the Government to stop Jewish emigration into Palestine will never be successful, for we know from God’s Word that a tenth of scattered Israel shall return to Palestine in unbelief. See Isaiah 6:13 :
‘In it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.’
“In the book of the Prophet Zechariah we are told that out of that tenth of Israel who come back to Palestine a third will finally be saved:
‘I will turn mine hand upon the little ones. And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my Name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people, and they shall say, the Lord is my God.’ (Chap. 13:7-9).”
“A young Jewish lecturer in bio-chemistry,” says a recent visitor in Palestine (quoted in Pentecostal Evangel) “took me round the Jewish University on the top of Mount Zion. He had sacrificed a good post at Berlin University to dig foundations for Jewish colonies, and carry mortar, and, later, to lecture here. We came out to the terrace behind the University. The sun was setting. It was as though all was lit in a blaze of memory. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘that little break in the hills right opposite! That was where we first came in under Moses.’ His face was transfigured, and his eyes lit with that fierce flame of love which all the winds of the ages have never been able to blow out.”
Before many years the Jews in ecstasy will be saying: “This land that was desolate is become like the Garden of Eden, and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are becoming fenced and are inhabited” (Ezekiel 36:35).
ALL ROADS LEAD TO PALESTINE Mr. Louis Lipsky, leader of the American Zionist forces, in a National Palestine conference, said:
“For a number of years the Promised Land was the goal only of those who could not be restrained from pursuing an ideal or a vision; but it had no substantial influence upon the large body of harassed Jews in other lands. It served to satisfy an inner need for self-expression and self-realization. That was all.
“But bleak winter has now set in. Other roads are now frozen and have become impassable. Invitations elsewhere are no longer issued and when extended as a gesture of chivalry, they have a doubtful value. Opportunities to be absorbed in alien lands-even on the basis of an agreed inequality-no longer exist. The doors that were once open have been clamped down. And now one new world of hope, in which all the treasures that were lost are to be recovered, looms up at the end of the voyage.
“In view of the fact that thousands of Jews must take that voyage, and that the door leading into Palestine will be opened wider only if an adequate economic base is prepared for their absorption and settlement, the question is: Shall the return be a disorganized flight, or shall there be a planned building of the new home through the united efforts of all the members of the family?” Can any discerning reader of the prophetic Scriptures fail to see the plan of God in all this? Little do these Jews know what lies ahead of them. They only know there is no other way out. There is some mysterious and powerful urge that tells them they must begin to assemble in the Land. As Mr. Lipsky says:
“All Jews, whatever their previous impression may have been, observe what happens to Jewish life when it places its feet upon soil that it claims as its own; what happens to Jewish life when it seeks to recover its own powers, explore its own talents and resources; when it waits for no invitations; and when it regards the land in which it is making its home, as its own as a matter of right; and not as a matter of sufferance. And when Jews see this, it is like seeing the world of truth for the first time. Palestine becomes the mirror in which Jews see the truth of themselves” (Read Ezekiel 11:17-21; Ezekiel 28:25-26; Ezekiel 34:11-31).
We believe those were most significant words of Dr. Chaim Weizmann, President of the World Zionist Movement, spoken in one of the gatherings for the United Palestine Appeal. Said this most influential leader of Jewry:
“Wherever we look upon the Jewish map of the world, we find that all roads lead to Palestine. There have arisen some mirages in the desert, but these have only served to confuse the issue, and still further to disillusion the Jewish people. Contemporary history has impressed upon us the fact (which many of us have long been unwilling to acknowledge) that the salvation of Jewry and the rescue of individual Jews are alike inextricably bound up with the accelerated upbuilding of the Jewish National Home in Palestine. What has been done already is only a small part of what yet remains to be done if the lives, no less than the spiritual values, of great masses of Jews are to be saved. What has been done is, however, a sure sign of how much more may be done through determination, devotion, and sacrifice.
“Rebuilding Palestine is not a philanthropic enterprise. It is Jewry’s one means of self-preservation. During the past two years-a period of stress and sorrow such as no one could have predicted-Palestine has had no need of theorists to explain its importance in Jewish life. Small as it is in area, Palestine has yet, in these two years, succeeded in offering safety, security, a permanent home, and the opportunity of leading a free Jewish life, to more exiled Jews than all other countries put together.”
Jewry is shut up to the one land to which, according to prophecy, God said He would gather them at the end of this age. How blind are those who do not see that these events point to the consummation! A ROD IN A SEA OF TEARS
It behooves the Jews not to plan anything before considering Palestine, declared Abraham Goldberg to the members of his race at the National Conference for Palestine. According to legend, Rome was built around a rod on the shores of the Tiber. Around this rod sandbanks formed, and on them the City of Seven Hills was reared. The Jews have driven a rod into the sea of tears which is gathering around it the sandbanks that form as strong foundations for their National home. These significant words are taken from Palestine Review:
“Across the eighteen centuries, lamentation for the past tragedy of the loss of the Jewish Center mingles with mourning for fresh victims of today.
“But the Jews are linked also by hope with that ancient epoch. Then amid the ruins of Jerusalem the hope was born of a return and a rebuilding which has never been extinguished. It is this confidence which animates the Zionists, determined to change a dream into reality, whatever the obstacles may be.”
They will, of course, discover that only through divine intervention, will this dream be realized. The same paper says on another page:
“Come what may in the days or weeks that lie ahead, Jewish immigration to Palestine will continue as it continued after the bloody events of 1921 and 1929; not because the Jews wish to demonstrate to their opponents that they have failed, but because for the Jewish people there is no other solution, because for the Jewish people this is a question of life and death, while for the Arab people this is only a question of illusory supremacy in one more territory.”
Writing from Jerusalem, Julian L. Meltzer, a Jewish news correspondent, said recently:
“Few people at a distance can realize to the full, though the picture be painted often and vividly, the human side of the return of the Jew to his ancestral land; nor can they envisage the scenes of pathos and joy, of enthusiasm fraught with almost tearful delight, of well-nigh hysterical relief, that are enacted at the ports as each boat moves to dock with its newcomers.
“There is a sentiment in migration to whatever country it is borne; but in the migration to Palestine there is a deeper sentiment still, that of an age-long yearning that has become a heritage from generation to generation, and that has influenced the unconscious, perhaps subconscious thought of the people since the historic exile.
“Yet to observe the demeanor of the children is to be taught a lesson in courage and fortitude. They come wide-eyed, alert and trustful; to them it is an adventure rather than an attainment; they revel in their new surroundings and lose themselves in the new atmosphere as completely as though no previous life had existed.
“This romance of resettlement is nowhere so pronounced as among the many hundreds of German children who are being transferred from Nazi land, from the mockery of a persecuted existence, into the freedom and frankness of the Jewish homeland. It is a thrilling experience to even the most hardened to watch their mien as they come tramping down the gangways on to shore, their knapsacks on their sturdy backs, their whole life before them. Strangely does their swiftly-spoken Teutonic tongue sound in these Hebrew climes, but it will soon be replaced-in six months they can prattle as quickly in Hebrew as on arrival they did in German.” Is it not concerning these very days that we read in Jeremiah 23:7-8 :
“Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that they shall no more say, The Lord liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; but, the Lord liveth which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven them; and they shall dwell in their own land”? THE ONLY ANSWER: “ERETZ ISRAEL”
There is a touching note in a recent address of Dr. Chaim Weizmann, made before a gathering of Jews interested in the United Palestine Appeal.
Here are some of his words:
“I know what is happening in the Jewish world as few men in the world. I tell you there hasn’t been as grave an hour in Jewish history in centuries as is the hour today. I remember the day-I think it was 1903 or 1904-when Chief Rabbi Adler of London said, ‘The cry of the Jewish world is ‘wohin?’ And that cry is the more necessary and inevitable upon our lips today in the light of the tragedy of the Jews in Poland and the hell of Nazi Germany. If we Jews who know there is an answer to ‘wohin’ if we are unable or unwilling to back our answer with our possessions and our passion and our sacrifice and our life, then we do not deserve that the people of Jewry shall be safe.’ We have an answer to ‘wohin’! Our answer to ‘wohin’ of thirty years ago and twenty years ago, and Hertzl forty years ago, is: Eretz Israel.
“I have tried to do something for the United Palestine Appeal and I will go on as long as I live; my heart, my voice, however shattered, my strength, such as it is, belong to Eretz Israel. I pray that for some years more I may be able to give, together with you, of our strength, of our active support to Eretz Israel, remembering that we are the only great Jewry on earth that can do much-we have nearly one-third of the Jews of the world in America.” A later statement of the same leader reads:
“We Jews are supposed to be practical-minded people who do not like sentimentality. Yet we have seen in these last twenty years that the dream which was slumbering in the soul of the people has been transformed into a creative force, which has rebuilt the homeland for thousands of human beings.
“I have said that the reasons which in 1917-18 caused the world to give us our rights in Palestine have more weight today than at that time. If any attempt is made today to revise those reasons, whether by a Royal Commission or by any other tribunal, this is what we will say: If in 1917 you understood the reasons for which you gave us the Balfour Declaration you should certainly understand them even better now.
“At that time we were told: ‘Yes, you may begin your work in Palestine, but only on condition that the population already living there is not injured by it.’ There is no need for me to say that our work in Palestine has not injured the non-Jewish population; on the contrary, it has been beneficial to them. It has been proven that the Arab population has increased forty per cent in the course of the last eighteen years; that it has been strengthened and enriched. We have carefully observed the condition which was imposed upon us.
“This struggle will be a long one, and I cannot guarantee that we will have no fresh misfortunes in the course of the next ten years. But we are leading this battle to victory. I mean that the gates of Palestine will remain open to the Jews!” THE CONCERN OF ALL HUMANITY
Palestine is the concern of civilization. Somehow the return of the Jews to Palestine is bound up in the thought of mankind with the ideas of universal peace between the nations and of the attainment of social justice. There is a Rabbinical saying that God will not come to the heavenly Jerusalem till Israel is restored to the earthly Jerusalem; and even in this age of diminishing faith, the belief remains strong in the Bible-reading peoples that the revival of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel is an event fraught with importance for all humanity.
“The rebuilding of the Jewish National Home in Palestine is still a vital necessity to the destiny of the human race,” it was declared by General Jan Christian Smuts, Deputy Premier and Minister of Justice of South Africa, who is generally credited with authorship of the Palestine Mandate whereby the League of Nations entrusted to Great Britain the task of assisting in the reestablishment of the Jewish Homeland in Palestine.
Writing from Johannesburg, South Africa, General Smuts said:
“The rebuilding of the Jewish National Home in Palestine represents perhaps the most romantic cause in the world today. It carries us back over more than three thousand years, to the original establishment of Israel in that little corner of the world. It brings to mind one of the most wonderful chapters in human history; tales of heroic deeds against overwhelming odds, and of final disaster and age-long exile; voices of bards and prophets which have given matchless expression to the deepest emotions of the human soul, and have resounded throughout the ages; finally the emergence of a supreme Personality, with a world message which still remains the highest light that has dawned on our human horizon.”