What else but Divine foreknowledge and Divine inspiration

Before such a fulfilment of prophecy as Jewish history exhibits, what can all the fiery darts of infidelity do? Their story, extending back as it does through 4,000 years of history, forms an impregnable fortress for believers in the inspiration of Scripture. What else but Divine foreknowledge and Divine inspiration can account for the facts of this strange case?

There exists this day in all nations a scattered people, a people without land or government, without metropolis or temple, speaking all the principal languages of the world, yet regarding the ancient Hebrew as their sacred tongue; one in race, one in faith, one in religious observances; a people who for antiquity of descent are the very aristocracy of the earth, able to trace back their genealogy through 4,000 years to one great and good father, as no other people on earth can do; a people who have exerted more influence over subsequent ages than even Greece and Rome, who have been the source of all the monotheism of the world, and but for whom we might this day be polytheistic idolaters like the ancients; a people who have handed down through the ages the sacred books which denounce their own sins, and foretell their own punishment, as well as predicting their ultimate national restoration and salvation. Let unbelievers account for these facts as they may, candour must surely confess that they evidence the hand of God in history, and the mind of God in Scripture.

Every principal phase of Jewish history was foretold before it came to pass, and has come to pass exactly as it was foretold,-every one except the last; and in this wide analogy of the past we find ground for confident expectation as to the future of Israel.

Every event, whether great or small, from the birth of an infant to the fall of a nation, from the events of a day to those of ages,-everything in Jewish history was predicted in advance, and our chronological position enables us to compare the predictions with the events.

--H. Grattan Guinness, Light For the Last Days: A Study in Chronological Prophecy, written in 1888.