We are indebted to our friend Mr. H. Entwistle of Ealing for drawing our attention to a little work bearing the above title, which, though ten years old in its present form (and sixty-five in substance), will never be out of date until the accomplishment of the Plan to which it draws attention.’
In his preface to this revised edition, M. C. Fisher, Acting Director of the Mildmay Mission to the Jews, says the book is not dealing with something new, for it claims only to interpret what the Holy Scriptures reveal and foretell. But it may be new to many who have never studied the prophetic Scriptures carefully, and specially to those who have been taught to spiritualize the plain statements of the prophets and apply their teaching exclusively to the Christian church. How right he is when he remarks,
“A right understanding of prophecy concerning Israel is absolutely necessary if we are to know the Divine purposes for this world.”
Neither can we second too strongly his commendation of the author’s telling phrase,
“If the plain and obvious sense makes good sense, seek no other sense.”
The book is a shortened form of Israel, My Glory, first published in 1889, the author of which was moved by the many Scripture declarations concerning God’s ancient people, to a great vision of the present spiritual needs of the Jews as well as an appreciation of their future glorious heritage; and the present work was launched in face of the rising tide of antisemitism (the frightful terrors of which are still painfully fresh in our memory) in the hope that the Lord may find his people ” willing in the day of his power.”
The author, Mr. John Wilkinson, takes to task those Christians who forget that Israel are still “beloved for the fathers’ sake,” and that Jesus was not only to be ” A light to lighten the Gentiles ” but also “the glory of his people Israel”; the true relation of Gentile to Jew in the matter of blessing being found in the words which occur in both Testaments, ” Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with His people.”
He gives a list of passages, typical of a host of others, which have been shamelessly and exclusively appropriated by a Christian church which obviously did not believe there was any hope or national future for Israel. He sees clearly the purpose of God as being to fill the earth with His glory, and the channel and instrumentality for the diffusion of universal blessing to be the unconditional election of Abraham and his seed, in their millennial occupation of Palestine, and this not at all on account of Israel’s numbers or righteousness. Their past occupation of Palestine he sees to have been conditional on the (broken) covenant of Sinai, which in no way affects their unconditional inheritance.
Their present position as a nation “is represented rather by interrupted communion than by severed union.” The prior and reiterated covenant of faith still stands. God’s oath confirmed the promises which “are still theirs, and the blessing of the whole Gentile world awaits the fulfilment of these promises to the natural and national Israel.”
Nationally they are fallen, but not finally; for idolatry, the rejection of Christ and forbidding the gospel to the Gentiles, they are cast away but not for ever—and even now, not individually as to their spiritual and eternal interests. The present is an elective, not a final, dispensation. It will not gradually develop into the millennium. It is as distinct from the millennial era as it is from the Mosaic which preceded it. This period in which a ” church ” would be gathered from Jews and Gentiles was hidden or kept secret in the ages which preceded it The author recalls hearing Dr. Hugh McNeil saying (in Exeter Hall, about 1852),
“There are four steps in the conversion of the world: some Jews, some Gentiles; the nation of Israel, and the nations of the Gentiles. Some Jews, called a people according to the election of grace ‘; some Gentiles, called a people taken out for His name ‘these are both one in Christ, and form the Church. Then the nation of Israel, on the return of the Lord; then the Gentile nations.”
The partial blessing of the Gentiles in the centuries since Christ has been occasioned by the national rejection of Israel.
In the chapter on Restoration Mr. Wiikinson makes the point that in questioning the risen Jesus respecting the restoration of the kingdom to Israel, the disciples were on the right line, for Jesus showed them by his answer that such was only a question of time. Against the clergy who suggest that the restoration from Babylon satisfies the prophecies along this line he builds an unanswerable case. He shows that a second restoration is foreshown; that it was to be from a wider field; that it would be a final one; that it would be to an inheritance ten times as large; and that the land would he differently distributed. In face of consternation and protest from many Christians he contends the Jews wou’d go back to Palestine in unbelief, before Christ’s return. Just before the Advent he sees the forces of Atheism confederate in one supreme effort to wipe out the Jewish nation from the face of the earth. He sees Christ return to Olivet to deliver his people whom he then converts, proceeding to occupy the restored throne of „David, to abolish war, commence his millennial reign and so bless through Israel the whole Gentile world.
Further sections deal with The Jew and the Gospel, Popular Misconceptions, Millennial. Glory, and The King on His Throne. The writer speculates (1889) that by the time the Lord reigns in Jerusalem, possibly “the telegraph wires, which will then belt the globe,” may be used in telling all the nations what has happened. How incredible, to such earlier students, would have seemed the later marvels of radio and television, which God has caused men to prepare in readiness for the conveyance of the word of the Lord from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth much more swiftly than natural daybreak spreads across the sky !
For centuries the so-called Church has been chanting,
“That Thy way may be known upon earth, Thy saving health among all nations . . . God shall bless us, and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him,”
but, as the author says, on p. 95,
“the mischief is, that the Jew is so frequently lost sight of altogether, and the purpose of God in Israel entirely missed.”
As a final broadside against the apostasy around him on this matter, he adds an excellent fifteen-page exposition of Romans 11. There is a further ten-page excursus on the present condition of the Jews (1944) by the present editor. Leaving aside one or two doctrinal deviations, it will be seen that the hope and expectation held by the writer runs in close parallel with that of readers of The Testimony, and which has characterised Christadelphian belief as printed and preached for over a hundred years. Yet it would appear to be a position independently developed from Scripture, for the author, writing in 1889, says,” ” I know of no other book dealing with the same topics and occupying the same ground.” This is truly remarkable, yet perhaps not when one considers that unbiased and independent Scripture study must lead to one true interpretation of the sure word of prophecy. He says, ” It has been my life-work during the past thirty-eight years to study the Word of God with a special desire to understand His purpose concerning Israel . . .”
This means he began his studies in 1851. One cannot help wondering whether there is any connection between this and the fact that in 1849 Dr. Thomas, preaching exactly these same views, toured England and Scotland twice, and in 1850 published his monumental work Elpis Israel, that is : Israel’s Hope, in the preface to which he fearlessly declares, “The State clergy and the Dissenting ministry are ignorant of the Gospel.”
“Elpis Israel’s subject matter is national, not sectarian. It treats of a nation, and of its civil and ecclesiastical institutions in a past and future age. It is designed to enlighten both Jews and Gentiles in Israel’s Hope, that by conforming to the proclamation of their king they may be prepared for the administration of its affairs in concert with him, when all nations shall be politically subject to his dominion . . . It is designed to show men how they may attain to eternal life in this theocracy, and obtain a crown which shall never fade away.”
Review of “The Early Earth” by John Whitcomb (1972)