HEBREW CHRISTIANS

 

By J. STUART CONNING, D.D.

 

It has been my privilege through a long lifetime to become acquainted with many Jews who have become Christians.  With some of these Christian Jews I have been closely associated, and they have become cherished and highly esteemed friends.  With hundreds of others I have had those occasional contacts which enable one to share some of their experiences and form a just estimate of their character and worth.  Most of them live in the United States and Canada, but a number of them also in Europe and other lands.  The faces of many of these fellow followers of Christ rise before me as I write.  Some of them have entered upon the Christian pilgrim path within recent years, but some have grown old along with me, and some have passed on before to the homeland of souls where the ills of this mortal life are for ever past, where faith is changed to sight, and where the limitations of this earthly sphere no longer hamper.  These Jews occupy various positions socially, but not one is the venal or unworthy individual that their unconverted brethren so often claim all Christian Jews to be.  They are business men of all sorts and of different degrees of prosperity.  Some are professional men - lawyers, doctors, teachers, professors in colleges and universities and seminaries, or busy in other spheres.  Some are missionaries at home or abroad, church officers and executives, and pastors of churches.

 

It is in my heart to say a few things about these friends of mine that may be of general interest, and about the things we may learn from them as we journey together through the years.

 

Every Jew I have known has had to make a real sacrifice in becoming a follower of Christ.  The adherent of no other faith has to encounter greater difficulties in becoming a Christian.  Expulsion from the synagogue, ostracism by the community, loss of employment, scorn and abuse from one’s own family and friends, the charge of being renegades from their faith and traitors to their people are often the price a Jew must pay in taking upon himself the name of Christ, the greatest Jew of history.  Yet for love of Christ they have sincerely accepted all the hardships, and gladly confess Jesus Christ to be their Messiah and Lord.  And never have I found one who has counted the cost too great to pay for the blessings that have come to him from his new-found faith.

 

It is interesting to note that those Jews who respond to the appeal of the Gospel are, as far as my knowledge goes, those who have been loyal to the faith of their fathers.  In these days many Jews have become thoroughly secularized.  They have given up most of the ritual observances of Judaism, and rarely set foot in a synagogue. The only worship they render is to the gods of pleasure and gain.  They belong to the godless multitude of our time who must be won, just as other pagans, to a belief in God, and as sinners to repentance and pardon through the Divine Redeemer.  But Jews who are sincerely religious, who believe in the God of Israel, and in the scriptures of the Old Testament as the Word of God, are open to the appeal of Christ as the promised Messiah, when wisely and sympathetically approached.  They find that He fulfils the ancient prophecies, and answers the cry of their hearts for pardon and peace and fellowship with God.  He provides the key that fits every ward of the Old Testament’s complicated lock.

 

I have been greatly impressed with the fact that Jews almost universally testify that the main factor which led to their acceptance of the Christian faith was the friendly interest of some sincere and warm-hearted Christian. Other impressions may have been received from Christian literature, occasional contacts with individual Christians, or messages through radio or press, but the winning factor has been the friendship of some earnest Christian whose love for Christ has led him to share with his Jewish friend the treasures he had found in Christ.  Friendship is the alembic that can dissolve suspicion and prejudice and open the way for the Divine Spirit to work His miracle of grace.  It is here that Christians have so miserably failed to take advantage of their contacts with Jews, and it is here that churches having Jewish neighbours, can render a service of incalculable worth by establishing with them friendly relations and exhibiting to them the spirit of Christ.

 

It is a striking fact that it is Christ Himself who makes the mightiest appeal to Jews.  To the average Jew He is entirely unknown.  Knowing the special attraction that Jesus has always had for His own people, Jewish leaders have diligently sought by every means to immunize their people from His influence.  Any reference to Him was deprecated.  The very use of His name was banned.  The New Testament was a forbidden book. Attendance at any place of Christian worship was condemned as a sin.  When any reference was made to Jesus, it was as “the hanged one” or as “the troubler of Israel.”  He was set forth as one wholly unworthy of consideration by Jews.  But when He is known as He really is, as portrayed in the New Testament, His appeal is overwhelming.  He is seen to be not only the Messiah foretold by the prophets of Israel, but the fulfilment of all their highest and holiest aspirations, and yearnings.  The testimony of Jewish Christians as to what they have found in Christ that they could not find in the faith of Moses is an experience one can never forget.

 

What is also characteristic of Jewish Christians is the ardour and intensity which the new faith inspires.  Jews are a warm-hearted, demonstrative, and active people.  What they believe they believe intensely, and what they do they do intensely.  And when they become followers of Christ they display an ardour and zeal that distinguishes them from their more formal and less enthusiastic Aryan brethren.  They become active church members and are zealous in their efforts to advance the cause of Christ.  Out of all proportion to their numbers they furnish the Church with officers, teachers, pastors, and missionaries.  The names of Neander, Pascal, Cassel, Herschall, Edersheim, Schereschewsky, and a hundred more in the last century, remind us how greatly the Church has been enriched by Jewish Christians, and should quicken the zeal of the Church to seek more earnestly to fulfil its God-given mission to the race of Jews

 

.‑The Hebrew Christian Quarterly.

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JEW HATRED

 

The population of the world (says The Prophetic News) is said to have doubled in the last century, but the number of Jews has been multiplied by five.  Think of the influence of this little nation.  Only, those who do not know, “act as if the Jew stopped thinking 2,000 years ago.”  The list of world names is long, but take these well known to us: in art, Mendelssohn for music, Heine for poetry, Sarah Bernhardt for the stage; in philosophy, Spinoza, whom Renan called “the greatest Jew of modern times,” and Bergson; in psychology, Freud, the psychoanalyst; in science, Albert Einstein, the incomprehensible; in politics, Disraeli, Queen Victoria’s favourite minister, Earl Rufus Daniel Isaacs Reading, Chief justice of Britain during World War I, Viceroy of India from 1921-26, and Henry Morgenthau, the efficient U.S. ambassador at Constantinople during the last war; in Christian scholarship, Neander and Edersheim.

 

Fairly recent figures gave more than seventy per cent. of the Jewish people as engaged in trade and industry, almost seven per cent. in professional and governmental occupations, and about five per cent. in agriculture. Had Jews no special ability in finance, they would have learned nothing from history, yet their control of money makes them all Shylocks to the Gentiles.  It was foretold.  As Isaiah says :‑“Ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves” (Is. 61: 6).  Zephaniah adds his testimony:‑“I will get them praise and fame in every land where they have been put to shame” (Zeph. 3: 19).

 

But with all their influence Israel is still hated.  One observer quoted in The International Review of Missions says :‑“Probably not since the Crusades has anti-Semitism been so universal.”  In the last decade its intensity has increased.  Surely the words of Moses have been fulfilled again:‑“Among these nations you shall have no ease, nor shall there be a resting-place for the sole of your foot, but the Lord shall give you there an anxious mind, spent eyes, and a despondent spirit: your life shall be lived in suspense; you shall live in fear day and night, and never be certain about your life; in the morning you shall say ‘O that it were evening!’ and in the evening you shall say: ‘O that it were morning!’ - because of the terror of mind which frightens you and the sights that you see.” Deut. 28: 65‑68, Dr. T. J. Meek’s translation.

 

The Jewish Missionary Magazine says:‑“According to the Survey Graphic, there are about eight hundred organizations in the United States engaged in aggressive anti-Jewish propaganda.  Some of these are nation-wide in their operation, others regional, but all are vociferous in their denunciation of Jews, and all issue publications, which seem to have considerable circulation.  Collectively these organizations claim to have six million followers and assert that through literature and public addresses they reach one-third of the population of the United States.  Even though we may regard these figures as exaggerated, they indicate an amount of virulent anti-Jewish agitation that is a grave threat to the peace and happiness of five, millions of our fellow-citizens.  And what is even more serious, they reveal an immense amount of latent prejudice.”

 

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A CONCENTRATION CAMP

 

[This testimony of a Jewish Christian, Otto Samuel, is of deep value to us all, standing, as we are,

on the threshold of coming tribulation. – D. M. Panton.]

 

After the first week we had to join those who worked daily at hard labour.  The day began and ended with a tiresome roll call, and woe to anyone who failed to respond!  The whole camp had to stand at the same spot until he had been found.  You can read about what they did with the runaway in the book, I Was in Hell with Niemoeller, by Leo Stein, where he tells about the “Dead Box.”  Some work was so exhausting that men fell down and died; other work was useless and ridiculous.  For some time a group of us had to sit in the cold straightening nails.  In winter they gave us summer suits, and in summer, winter suits.

 

We were allowed to read only the Nazi newspapers, but they could not take away from us the Word of God stored in our memory and written in our hearts.  I found unspeakable comfort in the Word, and I prayed unceasingly day and night, calling on the name of the Lord.  His name was a strong tower.  Never were my prayers so effective, never had I felt the nearness of the Lord so strongly as in that camp.  Through His Word God spoke to me; and through prayer I spoke to Him.  I had training in loving faith, and the wall between the Lord and me became quite transparent.

 

I had one precious experience.  I found that while the Lord did not keep me from shivering and suffering torture in the cold, yet He did work by His mighty power in the midst of my sufferings, keeping my fingers, hands, and limbs from becoming gangrenous.  Realizing this, my heart was overflowing with joy and happiness.

 

All these depressing material conditions affected us emotionally.  Being the pastor in whom these unhappy people confided, I witnessed moving experiences.  My greatest danger was a temptation to doubt God and His wisdom, and this was the source of all the other mental troubles.  The worst hour was dawn, lying on our straw mattresses after a torturing, sleepless night.

 

Thus I found how dangerous are these poisoning emotions: Fear, despair, depression, and melancholy.  There was only one panacea against them,‑I want to emphasize it,.only one, - and that was trust in Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Redeemer.  As we trusted in Him our fears were quieted, and life in the camp became a school of inspiration.  We felt as though the veil that separates us from Him became thin and transparent.  He gave us His peace and strengthened our tormented hearts.  So, as the Lord had helped in the German concentration camp amidst the cruelties of the Storm Troopers and the danger of frostbite, by His mighty resurrection power, so again I experienced the same power in the camps of southern France.  Again and again He delivered me from fear, depression, hopelessness, and melancholy.  There was no fear of the present or future, no fear of death or sickness, no fear of the Gestapo (which certainly had its men in the camps of so-called unoccupied France).  I was more free from fear than a man without Christ outside the camp.  I am not ashamed to confess that I was tempted to fear, but again and again He delivered me.

 

‑The Hebrew Christian.