ISRAELIS ARE ONE OF THE HAPPIEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD DESPITE ORDEALS
An extraordinary title of the sermon: 'How to Destroy the Jewish People' attracted a great interestfrom a provincial nwspaper to a local rabbi...
This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: “Write in a book all the words I have spoken to you. The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will bring my people Israel and Judah back from captivity[a] and restore them to the land I gave to their ancestors to possess,” says the Lord.’ …
‘The days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,’ declares the LORD. ‘This is the covenant that I will make with the people of Israel after that time,’ declares the LORD. ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbour, or say to one another, “Know the LORD,” because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,’ declares the LORD. ‘For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.’
This is what the LORD says, he who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar –the LORD Almighty is his name: ‘Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,’ declares the LORD, ‘will Israel ever cease being a nation before me.’ This is what the LORD says: ‘Only if the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth below be searched out will I reject all the descendants of Israel because of all they have done,’ declares the LORD. JEREMIAH30:1-3, 31:31- 37.
I have recently come across a rather surprising title of a sermon:
‘How to Destroy the Jewish People’. According to a certain article, the guest evangelist started his message with the following statement: ‘Today I want to tell you how to destroy the Jewish people’. Sitting among the congregation of this special meeting was a local rabbi, who was prepared to hear an anti-Semitic message.
The preacher led the people to Jeremiah’s prophecies on the ultimate restoration of both Israel (the northern kingdom) and Judah (the southern kingdom) under the new covenant, as quoted at the beginning of this letter. After reading the text, the preacher called the congregation’s attention to the last three verses, vs.35-37, and emphasised the everlasting nature of God’s covenant with Israel.
He put it:
The covenant was permanent. It was immutable, irrevocable, and unchangeable. Israel’s perpetuity was inexorably linked to the perpetuity of the physical ordinances of the sun, moon, stars, and Earth. If these ordinances disappear, then Israel will disappear. But as long as they remain, Israel will remain. “So, you want to know how to destroy the Jewish people?” the preacher asked with a flourish. “I will tell you. But first, you must be able to pluck the sun, moon, and stars from their celestial positions and make them disappear forever; measure the distance from one end of the heavens to the other [something modern scientists can’t even do]; burrow into the very core of the earth and measure the distance you have bored. And if you can accomplish these three tasks, only then will you be able to eliminate forever the children of Israel from their long existence on planet Earth” (Emphasis added).
Jeremiah prophesied in a rhetorical way that Israel will never cease to exist as a nation before the LORD. The preacher’s point was that destroying the Jewish people is simply impossible.
Recently again, the tide of anti-Semitism is rising after the Holocaust and Jews living in Europe are said to be increasingly fearful. According to the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights in 2016, 48% of French Jews were considering emigrating because of anti-Semitism.
In September 2018, according to a survey for the Jewish Chronicle, 40% of British Jews said that they would seriously consider emigrating if Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn became Prime Minister, as he is associated with anti-Semites and was even criticised by a Labour MP for having referred to Hamas and Hezbollah as ‘friends’ back in 2009.
More and more Jewish people all over the world are now returning to Israel, leaving the nations where their forefathers lived for hundreds of years as their homes after the diaspora. However, God’s ultimate purpose is to regather and restore them to their own land, Israel, before the Messiah returns, as Jeremiah and many other Old Testament prophets predicted:
“For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God (Ezek.36:24- 28).
In this respect, what is currently happening to Israel is an act of God. At present, almost half of world’s Jews are said to be living in Israel.
According to international surveys, Israelis have been judged to be the 11th- most happy population, ahead of the US and many other advanced and richer countries, which sounds reasonable for a nation that is God’s chosen people and witness. As an explanation of this happiness, Dr. Eyal Doron concluded his findings as follows.
There is an interesting connection between Israelis’ sense of personal control over their lives and their level of happiness, and also a link between education and happiness. He puts it:
One of the means to improve our level of happiness is our ability to improve the sense of control over what is happening in our lives.
The very strong family unit in Israel surely contributes to the happiness, and those who volunteer and help others are happier. Many studies, including this one, have found that the elderly are happier than young people through life experience.