“By his knowledge shall my right eous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.” Here was the only mention of that phrase, “My righteous servant,” I could find. It is found nowhere else in the Word of God in either Testament. We have ' “David, my servant,” “Isaiah my serv ant,” Daniel, my servant,” but here it is “My righteous servant.” I said to myself: “Who is that righteous servant? To whom does the prophet refer?” I argued: “Whoever that ‘righteous servant’ of Jehovah is, of one thing I am sure: he is not Israel, because the prophet declares Israel to be a sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a leprous nation. The righteous servant of Jehovah must be one who is holy. If it isn’t Israel, who can it be?” I decided it must be Isaiah. But in Isaiah 6, I found it could never be thè prophet for he confessed himself to be a guilty sinner and a man of unclean lips in God’s sight. “My righteous serv ant.” Who could it be? Then I began to study the context of the fifty- third chapter and in Isaiah 50:6 I found, “I gave my back to the smiters.” I pondered that: Who gave his back to the smiters? In the be ginning of the chapter it says “Thus' saith Jehovah.” Jehovah is the only speaker in the chapter. Jehovah gave His back to the smiters. Had God a back? When and why was it smit ten? Who smote it? Further I read: “And my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair.” And still fur ther: “I hid not my face from shame and spitting.” What did all this mean? Who had been so abused? When? Why? Did Jehovah have all these human characteristics? I stud ied more and more various pro phetic utterances. In Psalm 110:1 it is written: “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand un til I make thine enemies thy foot stool.” Here was David himself, speaking of his own seed and calling Him “Lord.” How did He get up there? Why didn’t God specify? Why didn’t He speak so plainly to Israel that every Jew could understand? In confusion, I decided to begin at the first chapter of Isaiah and read the book through. I was stopped at 9:6 “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the gov ernment shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Won derful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Here was a most incom prehensible thing! I was faced with the doctrine of the Trinity. We Jews have a popular monotheistic slogan: “ Sh’ma Israel, Adonai, Elohynu, Adonai, Echod.” The word Echod means one. Upon that word the doctrine of the unity of Jehovah is rooted and grounded, the SEPTEMBER, 1947
entire philosophy of Judaism is based. Taught by the rabbis for ages, that word Echod means absolute unity. Now I could not believe it; my teaching was wrong! I began to study the word, and I discovered it meant, not absolute unity, but com posite unity. Let me illustrate: Adam and Eve became one flesh; the He brew for one flesh is bosor Echod, a composite unity. Moses sent twelve spies into Canaan, and they returned bearing a gigantic bunch of grapes. That cluster of grapes is called in Hebrew Eschol-Echod. With hun dreds of grapes on the stem, it could not have been an absolute unity; they are called in Hebrew “one clus ter” : composite unity. There was wickedness committed in Gibeah of A SONG FOR THE LEAST OF ALL SAINTS Love is the key of life and death Of hidden heavenly mystery; Of all Christ is, of all He saith, Love is the key. As three times to His saint He saith, He saith to me, He saith to thee, Breathing His grace-conferring breath: "Lovest thou Me?” Ah, Lord, I have such feeble faith, Such feeble hope to comfort me: But love it is, as strong as death, And I love Thee. —CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI Benjamin which disgraced Jehovah and His name and character. The other tribes were indignant and “all the people arose as one man.” That is what I want you to see: at that time the men of Israel, beside Ben jamin, were 400,000 men of war, yet they were “knit together as one man.” (In Hebrew: Ish Echod). Here again composite unity: thousands acted as one! These and other Scrip tures showed conclusively that Echod cannot be an absolute unity. God revealed Himself to Abraham as Almighty (El Shaddai). The first letter of this word is Schin: it has three strokes joined as one. This let ter is on the top of the phylacteries and on the casing of the door posts. Jews have always taken this letter as symbolical of the Godhead be cause it had three strokes (one for each Person in the Trinity), joined together as one, to show unity. But another question troubled me: if He who was on the cross was truly an incarnation of Jehovah, then who was in heaven? I turned to Genesis, chapter eighteen. Abraham had three
visitors; two were angels and the third he addressed fourteen times as Jehovah. Later two went away, but the third said to Abraham: “Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I d o . . . I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which has come unto me; and if not, I will know.” Abraham inter ceded for them, the Lord went His way, and Abraham went home. Now here is the point: We find Jehovah inspecting the moral condition of Sodom and Gomorrah and refusing to spare them because not even ten righteous citi 2 ens could be found within their borders. But in this same chapter we have this state ment: “Then Jehovah rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven.” How and why could there be two Jehovahs, one walking the streets of Sodom and another in heavenly places? It must be one omnipresent Jehovah! Then if that were true, He could be simultaneously both in heaven and with and in Jesus on the cross. Another problem succeeded it: “Why is the nalne Jesus never men tioned in the Hebrew Scriptures?” I studied this question. Imagine my surprise when I found that 275 years before Christ, King Ptolemy Phila- delphus summoned men from Pales tine, and bade them translate the Hebrew Scriptures into the Greek ver nacular! They took the Pentateuch first and when they came to the name Joshua, they translated it the book of Yesous, written with a circumflex over it to show there had been a suppression of Hebrew that could not be expressed in Greek. When Joshua went into Canaan with the other eleven spies, he was called Yehoshua (Jehovah is the Saviour). That is exactly what the word Jesus means. I could hold out in unbelief no longer; I was convinced of the truth of God as it is in Christ Jesus. I cried: “Lord, I believe that Thou as Jehovah Yesous hast made the atonement for me. I believe that Jehovah Yesous died for me! I believe Thou hast made provision for me! I believe Thou hast the ability and power! From henceforth I will publicly con fess Yeshua as my Saviour and Lord!” Thus after months of search ing, I was convinced that Jesus was the righteous servant of Jehovah (Jehovah-tsidkenu), “the Lord our righteousness!” On March 30th, 1904,1publicly con fessed Christ in the Central Baptist Church, and having been licensed to preach, doors readily opened to me. Iwas persuaded to enter the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Ky., from which I graduated after a year. PAGE FIFTEEN
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