God of a Small Nation
Part 2
Suresh Manoharan – Hyderabad, India
Fulfilling the Promise
About 300 years ago, the King of Sweden was having personal doubts about God’s existence and the Bible divine nature. He call for Count Von Zinzendorf, who was the bishop of the Moravian Church, to provide evidence about God’s existence and Divine authorship of the Bible. The King told him he had set aside 10 hours to be enlightened on these matters. Zinsendorf said, that much time would not be necessary because all he needed to do was to say two words. The King, skeptical asked, “What words might those be?” Count Von Zinzendorf replied, “The Jews.”
How true! One look at the history of the nation of Israel would convince even a hard core atheist/agnostic about the existence of the Almighty and authenticity of the Bible. Is not the entire history of this Chosen Nation an outworking of (Deut. 28)? Have not all the blessings so graphically described “chased” the people of Israel whenever they have sincerely obeyed their Master. By the same token have not the curses sent by the chastening God “chased” them whenever, they have gone astray?
Not only the Book of Judges where the cyclical “boom” and “doom” periods of Israel’s faith is portrayed, but in fact the entire Old Testament history stands witness to the solemn fact the Jews’ success or failure in any sphere has been directly proportional to their obedience or lack of it to their Good Shepherd. History of one Nation in public domain can be checked and cross-checked umpteen times and the unanimous verdict would be “God of Abraham exists and His words enshrined in scripture are true! Think of it, a normal story teller would gloss over a hero’s sins of commission or omission all with the aim of making the main character appear as a paragon of all virtues’ in the public eye, but the Divine-inspired writers’ of Scriptures – themselves Jews – have never shied away from neither laying bare the serious shortcomings of all Jewish heroes’ of faith nor that of their Nation as a whole. If this is not truthfulness with a capital “T” - then what is it?
Scripture: By no stretch of imagination, would it be an understatement to say that the Christian world owes most of its Cannon to the Jews, barring the good doctor Luke, all other 38 authors of the Bible are of the Jewish origin. For apart from tracing the root cause of ALL the problems’ of this world to the fall of man into sin (Gen. 3:1-7), it also foretells the advent of the Savior right from that very chapter (Gen. 3:15). From one man Adam came sin, from one man Jesus comes salvation (Rom. 5:12-15).
Scripture is God-inspired (2 Tim. 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:21) to tell us what to believe (Doctrine), also what not to believe in (Correction). How to behave (instruction in righteousness) and not to behave (reproof) (Rom. 6). It’s quite scary right, to think of the Scripture minus all the writings’ of the inspired Jewish authors’. Talk of an average Joe trekking through the Amazon rain forest without a map and a guide in tow…
Part 3 next issue – The Savior
