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What is Israel's role in the world?
You shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation. - Exodus 19:6
The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate have ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. — John Adams (February 16, 1809)
God incarnated His Law in a whole people - an eternal nation, as the Bible says, unlike other nations. (See Numbers 23:9; Leviticus 20:26; Deuteronomy 12:28.) The people of Israel — the Hebrews, the Jews — were "chosen" (Isaiah 41:8; Psalms 33:12) for a vocation. Sinai's Law isn't meant to guarantee the Jews instant peace and tranquility. Rather, it guarantees the Jews' service. It's designed to free the Jews from the sickness, the inertia, and the barbaric wickedness of paganism. It released the Jews' energies. By living the Law, Moses' people serve God and humanity as "a light unto the nations" (Isaiah 49:6).*
They were created a nation so that other nations could learn from the laws that Moses put into their custody. "'You are My witnesses,' says the Lord, 'and My servant, whom I have chosen.'" — Isaiah 43:10. The Jews challenge others to be more than they are. Through the Torah and their lives, the Jews are meant to reintroduce the human race to the First Covenant - to God's Rainbow Covenant with humanity's legendary common ancestors.
[More to come]
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*Of course God created Israel to advance His cause in the world
- what The Rainbow Covenant calls the Hebrew Revolution,
an ongoing historical process leading to the Millennial Age (the
next stage in human history). They're part of the vanguard or central
cadre. So it's interesting that the people of Israel serve in this
enlightening capacity, to some extent, even when they want nothing
to do with it - even when they don't believe in God and reject what
they consider Torah. As the article that asks Can
an atheist keep the First Covenant? notes, one can disbelieve
in God and still be a good person; one may refuse to accept the
Torah as law but remain an upright, highly moral being. Indeed,
many thousands of Jews are like that: they don't purport to represent
anybody but themselves. Yet, despite everything, they remain the
heirs or inheritors of a unique tradition - an extremely old tradition
- which is all about Torah, which they transmit, to some
extent, just by living their lives. One thinks of non-religious
Jews like Einstein, Marx, Kafka, Freud, many of the great physicists,
the movie-makers, authors, playwrights, songwriters, research scientists,
etc. However, God requires
Israel's allegiance, and He curses Israel as a nation
when it's not forthcoming (See Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28).
Even at the level of the individual, Jews who don't accept the Law
or believe in God tend not to have descendants who can still be
counted as Jews - as members of the people of Israel. Israel is
a nation only by virtue of the Torah; without Torah, Jews assimilate;
without Torah, Jews experience horrible difficulties both in the
land of Israel and out of it; without Torah, Jews die out.
Also see: A Nation of Priests
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