Hi Friend,

If your closest friend made a significant and solemn promise to you, and reneged on it, would it affect your relationship?  What about God?  Could God forget a solemn promise to a faithful servant?

Since no living person has ever seen God, it’s hard for us to conceive of a time when God was so close to one man that this man became a “friend” of God.  His name was Abram and God loved him so much that the Apostle James said, “he was called the friend of God.” (James 2:23)  Abram was a friend of God.  That’s astounding!

In the course of time God made a promise to His friend.  The promise was so valuable that God further promised that it would be passed on down to his descendants.  God solemnly promised His friend Abram, “I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great.”  That’s a big vow, so big that only God could bring it about.  But there was more.  God made a pledge that, “you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” ” (Gen. 12:2-3)

Now that last part, that all families of the earth will be blessed by the descendants of Abram is a fascinating statement.  In other words, the nation that would come from Abram would be a blessing to the rest of the world.

The book “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life” by Charles Murray is an examination of IQ levels of various ethnic groups. The facts he discovered are astounding. For example, “the proportion of Jews with IQs of 140 or higher is somewhere around six times the proportion of everyone else….”  This proportion rises at still higher IQs.  Murray reports a study taken in 1954 of IQs in the New York public school system that showed Jews with some 85 percent of IQs over 170 (twenty-four out of twenty-eight).

These findings are supported in the real world.  Since the 1880’s nearly half of all the world chess champions have been of Jewish heritage.  Murray reports that Jews have only three-tenths of 1 percent of the world’s population yet have contributed some 25 percent of recent notable intellectual accomplishments. They have won over 30 percent of Nobel prizes in literature, chemistry, physics, and medicine.  They have won 51 percent of the Wolf Foundation prizes in Physics. In math, physics, quantum physics, nuclear science and computer technology, no other ethnic group equals their contributions.

To a thinking person the promises made to Abram are real. Now, here’s the irony.  The Jews are the most persecuted people the world has ever known.  They have made these incredible contributions in spite of legal restrictions, persecution and a holocaust.

From the time that Egypt’s Pharaoh imposed a death sentence on every male child of the Israelites, through Hitler’s attempt to commit total genocide, the Jews have suffered persecution.  No one knows how many children died at the hands of Pharaoh, but it was 80 years after the decree that Moses led them across the Red Sea.

How many Jews died before Queen Esther was able to save the rest from evil Haman? How many of Rachel’s children died when Herod decreed that all Jewish children under the age of two should be killed in an attempt to kill the infant Jesus?

It should come as no surprise then, that the return of Jesus Christ will be preceded by another attempt to exterminate the Jews. Nor should it be surprising that such an attempt will lead to catastrophic problems for the entire world.

In his book, “The Israel Test”, author George Gilder makes a compelling argument that the existence of the civilized world depends on the continued contributions made by the descendants of Abraham.  Destroy the Jews and the world itself faces destruction.  Bless the Jews and the world will be blessed.  Or have I just repeated the promise God made to Abram?

Until next time,

Jim O’Brien