"Israel, My Glory"

No doubt many of our readers have on their bookshelves works of the great Puritan expositors. The amazing industry of these men and their intense veneration of the Scriptures are a rebuke to the easygoing complacency of so many of us today. Their work had a profound influence on Bible exposition in the succeeding centuries. Among the great Commentaries produced in this golden age of Scripture research was that of Matthew Henry. Written 260 years ago, this monumental work has been described as "the greatest devotional Commentary ever written". A recent one-volume abridged edition has enjoyed a wide circulation.

Matthew Henry, and most of his school of expositors, supported the thesis, almost universally accepted at that time, that the prophecies of future blessing for Israel were to be spiritualized and applied exclusively to 'the Church'. This view of prophetic interpretation still has widespread acceptance. It has been strongly combated in Needed Truth during the past 85 years.

In my youth there was a vogue for the writings of Philip Mauro, a converted American barrister at Law, who devoted his natural gifts and training to a vigorous defence of the fundamentals of the Christian Faith. In his later years he discarded his former views on the literal fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies of a national restoration of Israel and accepted the thesis that these prophecies must be spiritualized and applied to 'the Church'. He argued his case with characteristic invective, dubbing those of the contrary view as "giving heed to Jewish fables" I History has put a big question mark over his basic premises. One wonders what would have been his reaction to the developments of the past 30 years.

Recently I have been perusing John Wilkinson's Israel, My Glory. In contrast to Philip Mauro, John Wilkinson was led, by an exhaustive study of the prophetic Scriptures, to discard the Puritan method of interpreting the promises of future national blessing for Israel. Applying to Scripture his own dictum, "if the plain and obvious sense make good sense seek no other sense", he concluded that the principle of spiritualizing all promises made to Israel and literalizing all curses denounced on the same people was "unjust, unscriptural and misleading".

In 1889, John Wilkinson, founder of The Mildmay Mission to the Jews, wrote Israel, My Glory, undoubtedly a classic on the Jewish question. His treatment of his theme is severely scriptural and the conclusions he reaches have been confirmed by recent events. The book is to be commended for its clarity and vision as well as for its graceful style. Its message is most relevant to the present situation in the Middle East but unhappily it has been long out of print. A shortened form of the work was published in 1944 by The Paternoster Press. Readers interested in this subject who are not acquainted with John Wilkinson's work will find here a balanced scriptural outline of Israel's future glory.

It was strongly contended, in support of the principle of spiritualizing, that to restore the Jews to Palestine in unbelief would tend to confirm them in their sin. The rejection of their Messiah was one of the causes of their national rejection, why then, it was asked, should they be restored to their national home before they repented of their sin of rejecting Him, and before they acknowledged Him as Messiah and Lord? In reply Wilkinson said this (and remember that he wrote in 1889 when such a possibility seemed remote):

"Our first reply to this difficulty is a reply that, for the Christian, should solve all difficulties where God has plainly spoken; and that is, God says it, and that is enough. But the difficulty is lessened, if not entirely obviated, by the consideration that the Jews are not to be restored for immediate 'blessing, for between national restoration to Palestine and national blessing we are to have the 'time of Jacob's trouble'. God's heaviest chastisement on the nation of Israel will be administered in Palestine itself, in the very place where the national sins were committed which caused the national rejection. It is fitting that the chastisement due to the nation should be inflicted on the nation, after the scattered people have been reconstituted a nation by restoration to their land."

This interpretation of the plain scriptural testimony that the Jews would be restored to their land in unbelief has been completely vindicated. At this moment the nation of Israel is firmly established at the very hub of world politics. There she will remain until her chastisement is complete. Then the Son of Man will come in fulfilment of His own prophetic utterance in the day of His rejection, "Ye shall not see Me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord" (Matt. 23:39).

"My counsel shall stand, and I will do

all My pleasure:... My salvation shall

not tarry; and I will place salvation in

Zion for Israel My glory" (Isa. 46:10,13).

unknown | Feb 1974
Comment By Torchlight