The Acts of the Apostles (1911) — PDF Scan 385

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I^ALYATION TO THE JEW^ 379 who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counselor? or wlio hath first given to Him, and it sliall be recompensed unto him again! For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things : to whom be glory forever." Thus Paul shows that God is abundantly able to transform the hearts of Jew and Gentile alike, and to grant to every believer in Christ the blessings promised to Israel. He repeats Isaiah's declaration concerning God's people: "Though the num- ber of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved: for He will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth. And as Esaias said before. Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been as Sodoma and been made like unto Gomorrha." At the time when Jerusalem was destroyed and the temple laid in ruins, many thousands of the Jews were sold, to serve as bondmen in heathen lands. Like wrecks on a desert shore, they were scattered among the nations. For eighteen hundred years the Jews have wandered from land to land throughout the world, and in no place have they been given the privilege of regaining their ancient prestige as a nation. Maligned, hated, persecuted, from century to century theirs has been a heritage of suffering. Notwithstanding the awful doom pronounced upon the Jews as a nation at the time of their rejection of Jesus of Nazareth, there have lived from age to age many noble. God-fearing Jewish men and women who have suffered in silence. God has comforted their hearts in affliction, and has beheld with pity