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The Acts of the Apostles
mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in
part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.
“And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come
out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:
for this is My covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.
As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as
touching the election, they are beloved for the father’s sakes. For the
gifts and calling of God are without repentance. For as ye in times past
have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their
unbelief: even so have these also now not believed, that through your
mercy they also may obtain mercy. For God had concluded them all in
unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all.
“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of
God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding
out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His
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counselor? or who hath first given to Him, and it shall 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 number 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 Gomorrah.”
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