Jewish Church

“ They shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels. When God utterly cuts off the Jewish church and nation for their infidelity, the remnant among them, that believed his word, and, having waited for the consolation of Israel, welcome him when he comes, shall be admitted into the Christian church, and shall become a peculiar people to God; God will take care of them, that they perish not with those that believe not; but that they be hidden in the day of the Lord's anger against that nation. ”

“ I would have it most distinctly understood that God's dealings with individual Jews and Gentiles are precisely one and the same. Without repentance, faith in Christ, and holiness of heart, no individual Jew or Gentile shall ever be saved. What I protest against is, the habit of allegorizing plain sayings of the Word of God concerning the future history of the nation Israel, and explaining away the fulness of their contents in order to accommodate them to the Gentile Church. I believe the habit to be unwarranted by anything in Scripture, and to draw after it a long train of evil consequences. ”

“ The Roman soldiers will hunt the Jews out of all their recesses and fastnesses, and none shall escape. (2.) Wherever the godly are, who are marked for preservation, they shall be found happy in the enjoyment of Christ. As the dissolution of the Jewish church shall be extended to all parts, so shall the constitution of the Christian church. ”

“ As we look ahead into the century which is now opening and cast our eye over the forces which the Jews will bring into its life, we can easily see that these forces tend in various directions.
We have first the Orthodox wing of the Jewish Church, which stands upon the broad basis of what the past has evolved. It holds firmly to the inspiration of the biblical word and the divine character of its interpretation as handed down in the oral law ”

“ And this seems a plausible explanation, as these troubles of the Jewish Church followed the birth or promulgation of Christianity forty years.
But the solution is only plausible; for the growth is not the birth; or if it be taken as the birth, then it no longer precedes but follows the labour-pains, for whatever effect the destruction of Judaism had in promoting Christianity, this effect was subsequent and not prior to that event; and thus the solution fails in the main point. ”

“ Because their political existence and their social system was founded on truth, and controlled by religion. The Hebrew nation was the one holy and only true church of those days. And for the same reasons which gave the Jews that supernatural vitality, Christianity is at this day in the van of civilization. Everything we have said of the one applies to the other; the signs which we noticed as such prominent features of Jewish polity—division of orders, fixed occupations, care for agriculture, good faith, property and family laws, individual and federal government—whence have they come to us? ”

“ The literary activity of this period was almost exclusively directed towards combating the intrusiveness of the church, repelling its attacks on Judaism, and withstanding its proselytizing zeal. Faithful and strong-minded Jewish thinkers held it a duty to proclaim their convictions aloud, and to admonish waverers and strengthen them. ”

“ I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. ”

“ Another way of dealing with these prophecies of a Restoration is to make them refer to the gathering of the Jews into the Church. But this position also is untenable. The Jews will not be nationally gathered into the Church; for even in the New Testament we have the Jews, as well as the Gentiles, as nations, running parallel with, and continuing separate from, the Church throughout all the period of its history on earth; [5] and in Rom. xi. 25, the inspired apostle is commissioned to announce to the Gentile believers the fact that all Israel will not be saved ”

“ This was again opposed to the ritual and legal exactitude of Judaism. The General course, therefore, of the argument is directed against Jewish thoughts and Jewish prejudices, and to maintain the admissibility of the Gentiles to the Christian church. He has then to make good two propositions:—namely, “that God is impartially and equally the God of all men; and that fidelity of heart is the essence of all true religion.” We might sum up the whole system of the Apostle in two simple sentences of his letter: “Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also the God of the Gentiles? ”

“ Not that we have the old law with its wearisome and burdensome ritual perpetuated in the Christian Church. That law was a yoke too heavy for man to bear. But, then, the highest and best elements of the old Jewish system have been perpetuated in the Church. There was in Judaism by God's own appointment a public ministry, a threefold public ministry too, exercised by the high priest, the priests, and the Levites. There is in Christianity a threefold ministry exercised by bishops, presbyters or elders, and deacons. ”

“ Although God specially proclaims the fact of Israel's restoration to the Gentile nations, and in the isles afar off, [5] showing that it is most important for them to know it, yet He nowhere commands them to bring it about.
Again, the work of conversion&mdashwhether of individuals or of nations, whether of Jews or of Gentiles—is always a work which only the power of God can accomplish; but that does not mean that the Church of Christ is to fold her hands as she has done for many centuries, and do next to nothing. What your attitude to Israel should be, is plainly shown in the Word of God. ”

“ It has been well said that, from that date to this, one cannot accurately speak of the ‘Jews of France,’ but only of French citizens professing the Jewish religion.69 Rabbis of the Jewish Synagogue, since 1830, have been considered to hold the same relation towards the state as curés of the Catholic church, receiving, like them, their salaries from the Government. Not only in the army and in the learned professions, but also in every class of society, the Jews of France march, nowadays, shoulder to shoulder with their fellow-countrymen. ”

“ If there is any place where a straight study of the Jewish Question should be made, with the Bible always in hand as the authoritative textbook, it is in the modern church which is unconsciously giving allegiance to a mass of Jewish propaganda. ”

“ In the former the Roman Church displayed great zeal, though not according to knowledge, in her energetic missionary enterprise among the Jews. There was a missionary seminary in Spain in which men studied Hebrew literature and qualified themselves for carrying on the controversy with the Jews. Hence we read of frequent disputations which were held by the Jewish and Gentile missionaries with the most learned rabbis, often in the presence of bishops, noblemen, and princes. ”

“ They must be instructed as to the oneness of Christ's body, the church, and the equal membership of all true disciples. If a church be formed of Jewish converts alone, it should be in full communion with all other Christian churches. ”

“ Among the reformatory Protestant sects there is one with Jewish tendencies, recruited chiefly among the lower population, whose history, is obscure, whose doctrines are but little known, but which merits notice from the singular fact of its existence amid a people obstinately and universally hostile to the Israelitish race. ”

“ The Jewish churches, and the masters of their synagogues, some take to be meant by the virgins and the young men; these shall lose the word of the Lord, and the benefit of divine revelation, and shall faint away for want of it, shall lose all their strength and beauty. ”

“ At such a time one desires to swim over to the other side—over to where the green flags grow, their yellow and white stalks shimmering in the sun. A green, fresh fern looks up at you, and you go after it, plash-plash into the water, hands down, and feet up, so that people might think you were swimming. I ask you again, what pleasure is it to sit in a little room on a summer's evening, when the great dome of the sky is dropping over the other side of the town, lighting up the spire of the church, the shingle roofs of the baths, and the big windows of the synagogue. ”

“ Less than fifty years ago a band of energetic, loyal Jews, on the other side of the Atlantic, founded our beloved Order. Now it has established itself in every part of the world, from the extreme western coast of America to the blessed meadows of the Jordan; yea, even the Holy Land, unfurling everywhere the banner of charity, brotherly love, and unity, and seeking to spread education and culture, the forerunners of humanity. Judaism, mark you, is the religion of humanity. ”

“ Further, they do not call themselves Jews, but Israelites. They are strict observers of the Sabbath, never kindling fires or preparing food on that day. They practise circumcision, and intermarry only with their own people. They keep the Passover, the feasts of Weeks and Tabernacles, and the great Day of Atonement. They believe in a resurrection, in Purgatory and Hell, in Paradise and heaven, in angels and spirits, and in a final judgment.
Their place of worship more nearly resembles the ancient Jewish Temple than the synagogue of later times. ”

“ It was the openly expressed policy of the reactionaries who ruled Russia to solve the Jewish question by ridding the country of its Jews. “One-third will accept the Greek Church; one-third will emigrate to America; and one-third will die of starvation in Russia”—so ran the cynical saying. Some did abjure their faith, tens of thousands did starve in Russia and hundreds of thousands did emigrate to America. ”

“ The woman with the issue of blood, who received health and the salvation of her soul before the daughter of the chief of the synagogue, or the Jews, is the people of the Gentiles; for after the fulness of the Gentiles has entered into the Church, the Jews shall be converted, and saved at the end of the world. ”

“ Such, then, was the mission of the Jews; they constitute the true church before Christ for the preaching of God’s future kingdom that shall have no end. We see them dispersed throughout the world; we meet them on all the highroads of humanity, confessing the only Lord of heaven and earth, and holding in their hands their sacred writings, showing to all that a peaceful Ruler would rise from the land of Juda and would restore all things. And when the times were accomplished, and the earth was to behold its Saviour, all nations were held in expectation of the mighty event. ”

“ His life is a revelation of the way of God in the discipline of our spirits; how power gets educated and purified, and made meet at last for the work and the joy of eternity. So Judaism, as it struggled on and suffered, lost some of its baser elements, and came forth, developed, into a higher region of experience and power, in the life of the Christian Church. ”

“ The missionary must be acquainted with the religion of the Jews. Without this knowledge he will find it impossible to set forth our holy religion to Jews in such a way as to commend it to them, or even to be understood by them, much less to bring it home to heart and conscience. Those who are not cognizant of the world of Jewish religious thought, cannot conceive how unintelligible the terminology of our holy faith is to the Jew. ”

“ Brethren of my faith live there as here; our ancient watchword, "Sh'ma Yisrael," resounds in their synagogues as in ours; the old blood-stained flag, with its sublime inscription, "The Lord is my banner!" floats over them; and Jewish hearts in America are loyal like ours, and sustained by steadfast faith in the Messianic time when our hopes and ideals, our aims and dreams, will be realized. There is but one Judaism the world over, by the Jordan and the Tagus as by the Vistula and the Mississippi. God bless and protect it, and lead it to the goal of its glorious future! ”

“ Thus the Jews tell their brethren that except they be of their church, and come into their communion, and conform to the ceremonies of their worship, though otherwise good men and believers in Christ, yet they cannot be saved; salvation itself cannot save them. ”

“ Do you realize the present helplessness of poor Israel? We sometimes hear the Jews spoken of by Christians of a certain stamp, after this manner: "After all, they are not so badly off as the heathen. They are a moral, God-fearing people; they have the Old Testament Scriptures in their possession. They are intelligent, clever, influential, and certainly not so low and degraded as the heathen." ”

“ For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith Jehovah; because they called thee an outcast, saying, This is Zion, whom no man seeketh after" (Jeremiah xxx. 16, 17) .
What a picture of Israel! Some people are fond of drawing gloomy outlines of the present state of the Jews; and this may suit their tastes, for surely they could not present a darker one than what is here portrayed by God's own hand. The Jew is represented here as in a helpless and hopeless condition. He is helpless. ”