THE KING’S BUSINESS
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issue) of the opening of the “Home” for our Jewish workers : We are met in the name of the Lord, and for the sake of His “kinsmen according to the flesh.” We come to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem;” and trusting the prom ise, “They shall prosper that love thee/' though our beginnings are small we are confident of His blessing. Nothing done in His name is insignificant, much less that which is done “for the least of these” His “brethren.” We shall “in nowise lose our reward,” which will be ample ,if here, like Philip, some of “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” shall find “Him of whom Moses in the Law, and the prophets, did write.” The indifference of the Church to Jewish evangelization is amazing, and indicates that “blindness in part has' happened” also to the Gentile. I have no recollection of hav- ing«ever heard the cause of Israel pleaded from the pulpit. The average Christian is ignorant and reckless of his relations with arid obligations to the Jew. Not only Christendom but the Church itself has os- 'tfacised' the Jew and banned him to the , Ghetto -socially; and evangelistically. Save in rare instances she is doing nothing spe cifically for his evangelization, yet such t is his estrangement that apart from special ized effort there is no hope of bringing him to consider the claims of the Messiah of the Gospel; for, socially, he is more dis tant than pagans across the sea. So great and obvious are the obligations of the Church to the Jew; so intimately is her hope bound up with his, that we should naturally expect her evangelistic impulse and effort would be directed “to the Jew first,” to Him who bears the racial linea ments of her Lord; in whose veins flows the Israelitic, Judean (Davidic) and sacri ficial blood. But far from it. For 1600 years she has done what she could to make the name “Christian” a terror or a stumb ling block to him, and to give a new mean ing to “the offense of the cross.” That peerless man, that “Hebrew of He brews,” Paul, counted it God’s chiefest grace
and that He must come to the earth a sec ond time, to fulfill the other line of prophecy and reign upon the earth, Zechariah 14:4-9. She listened with great interest as I pointed out how wonderfully the Scriptures had been fulfilled in Jesus and then said, “Well, what can I do about it?” - For a moment I did not understand and then I saw that she believed and wanted to know what she, a Jewess, could do now that she saw these prophecies were really fulfilled in Jesus. I told her how the Jew received forgiveness of sin by bringing the lamb to the priest, laying his hand up it in token of personal appropriation and that when the lamb was killed and its blood, the evidence that a life had been given for his, was sprinkled on God’s altar and the sacrifice consumed, his sins were forgiven. So Jesus was the Lamb of God and when she, by faith, laid her hand upon Him, His blood, the evidence of His death as her substitute, cleansed her from all sin. And so quite simply and earnestly she accepted Jesus as her sacri fice, for she had found Him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the -Son of Joseph. I wondered not a little at sucfi ready ac ceptance of the claims of Jesus by one who was so evidently a pious Jewess, and at first doubted her sincerity. But as I came to know her better, I understood. Her father is a pious Rabbi, one of those earn est Jews who love God and read His Word, and he had taught her as a little girl to know the Scriptures. She had an intelli gent hope concerning Messiah based upon God’s Word, and in her heart a great long ing to know God. And so the’same taithfu! God, who sent Philip to the Ethiopian and Peter to Cornelius had sent the Bible wo man to this dear daughter of Abraham. Oh! that men would praise the Lord for His goodness and for His worderful works for the children of men! “For He satisfieth the longing soul and filleth the hungry soul with goodness.”
T he following qddress was made on- the occasion (reported on page 262 of our June
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