Salvation to the Jews
251
women who have suffered in silence. God has comforted their hearts
in affliction and has beheld with pity their terrible situation. He has
[380]
heard the agonizing prayers of those who have sought Him with all
the heart for a right understanding of His word. Some have learned
to see in the lowly Nazarene whom their forefathers rejected and
crucified, the true Messiah of Israel. As their minds have grasped the
significance of the familiar prophecies so long obscured by tradition
and misinterpretation, their hearts have been filled with gratitude to
God for the unspeakable gift He bestows upon every human being who
chooses to accept Christ as a personal Saviour.
It is to this class that Isaiah referred in his prophecy, “A remnant
shall be saved.” From Paul’s day to the present time, God by His
Holy Spirit has been calling after the Jew as well as the Gentile.
“There is no respect of persons with God,” declared Paul. The apostle
regarded himself as “debtor both to the Greeks, and to the barbarians,”
as well as to the Jews; but he never lost sight of the decided advantages
possessed by the Jews over others, “chiefly, because that unto them
were committed the oracles of God.” “The gospel,” he declared, “is
the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth; to the Jew
first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God
revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.”
It is of this gospel of Christ, equally efficacious for Jew and Gentile,
that Paul in his epistle to the Romans declared he was not ashamed.
When this gospel shall be presented in its fullness to the Jews,
many will accept Christ as the Messiah. Among Christian ministers
[381]
there are only a few who feel called upon to labor for the Jewish
people; but to those who have been often passed by, as well as to all
others, the message of mercy and hope in Christ is to come.
In the closing proclamation of the gospel, when special work is to
be done for classes of people hitherto neglected, God expects His mes-
sengers to take particular interest in the Jewish people whom they find
in all parts of the earth. As the Old Testament Scriptures are blended
with the New in an explanation of Jehovah’s eternal purpose, this will
be to many of the Jews as the dawn of a new creation, the resurrection
of the soul. As they see the Christ of the gospel dispensation portrayed
in the pages of the Old Testament Scriptures, and perceive how clearly
the New Testament explains the Old, their slumbering faculties will be
aroused, and they will recognize Christ as the Saviour of the world.