The faithfulness of God

At the end of World War II in a bombed out German seminary, Karl Barth gave a series of lectures, expositing the Apostles Creed, later published as Dogmatics in Outline.

With the holocaust fresh in his mind, Barth asked:

Do you know the story in which the significance of the Jewish nation is best summarised? Frederick the Great [a Prussian emperor in the 18th century] asked his personal physician, Zimmermann: ‘“Zimmermann, can you name me a single proof of the existence of God?” And Zimmermann replied, “Your majesty, the Jews!”’ ..... Hundreds of little nations in the Near East have disappeared, ....., and this one tiny nation has maintained itself. For in the person of the Jew there stands a witness before our eyes, the witness of God's covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and in that way with us all.....