The Third Angel’s Message to the Jews by F. C. GILBERT

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 22, 1915

The Third Angel’s Message to the Jews

By F. C. GILBERT

The Third Angel’s Message Must Be Given to the Jews — No. 2

IN laboring for the Jews we must remember that they are different from other people, and we must use discretion in our efforts for them; then we shall find that the message which God has given us for the present generation is suited to them as well as to all others.

In the previous article we quoted from the servant of the Lord the following statement: “The Lord wants us to encourage and sustain men who shall labor in right lines among this people.” We who are laboring for the Jewish people know what that means. We cannot deal with them in the same way that we deal with the Gentiles. As surely as we do, we are repulsed by the Jews, instead of drawing them to us. As an illustration:—

In the Harvest Ingathering campaign a year ago last fall, one of our brethren who was soliciting means for missions went into the business house of a Jew, and represented himself as soliciting money for missionary work being conducted by our people. To most persons of Gentile birth the word missionary and the words missionary work mean something altogether different from what they mean to a Jew. Instantly the Jew seemed displeased, and ready to tell our brother to go about his business. And why?—Because to the Jew the idea of missionary work is repulsive. To him it means massacre, brutality, or else it means one of his own countrymen becoming a turncoat and apostatizing from the faith.

It dawned upon the mind of the brother who was soliciting, to tell the Jewish merchant that he is associated with a class of people who are doing the very work that the Jews ought to do,—a people who are keeping the seventh-day Sabbath, believe in the law of Moses, and do not eat swine flesh; and that while they are believers in Christ as the Messiah, they are endeavoring to tell all people everywhere that every class of persons ought to observe the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath of the Lord. This at once interested the Jew, and he wanted to know more. After further conversation, he gave our brother a donation, and bade him Godspeed in his good work.

But this was not enough. He had this minister brother go with him to his next-door neighbor, a brother Jew, and this first Jew became the solicitor. He told the neighbor about the good work this brother was doing, and of the work being done all over the world by this people. He told him that he should help this man of God, and the man was glad to help such a work. This is working in right lines among the Jews.

The Lord is able to do great things among the Jews, but it is absolutely necessary that the Jew learn what Christianity is. He does not know anything of the gospel, only as he has seen it misrepresented in Rome, Spain, Portugal, and Russia.

It is hard for the Jew to understand that Christianity is anything better than what he has seen during the last fifteen hundred years in those who professed to have it. He has seen its followers hating Jews and slaughtering them. Only the other day one of our Jewish brethren who recently accepted the truth and is at present attending the South Lancaster Academy, received a letter from his father in Russian Poland. He had written to his father, telling him of his faith in Christ, and of the godly Christian people he had found, and how kind they are. The reply of his father I here insert in part as I translated it:—

“To my dear, respected son, Ben Zion: Your letter, dear son, I have received, and I would have been pleased with it if you had been what I hoped you would be. I would be inclined to thank God that you are in America; but since you have left the faith of your fathers, it is immaterial to me whether you are there or in a real fire.

“You write to me about your Christians, how good they are. Well, I will write to you about the same kind of Christians who believe the same as you do, the good kind that they are.”

He then relates a terrible persecution which some of the Jews had suffered from the hands of professed Christians, and concludes:—

“If, my dear son, you believe in the same God that these do, then you should have been killed before you had grown to young manhood. O that your mother had suffocated you before she gave you birth, rather than that you should belong to such people who hate your own Jews.

“I do not care to write you further. My heart bleeds when I think that I am obliged to write in this manner to my only son. YOUR FATHER.”

Now, dear brethren and sisters, this is cruel, is it not? It certainly is dreadful to think of a parent’s writing such a letter to an only son. Yet from the parent’s viewpoint it is not to be wondered at; for to him the Christian religion is a terrible thing. But, thank God, when the Jew sees the beauty and harmony and loveliness of the third angel’s message, what a different aspect it presents to him! This dear father had not yet learned much of the kind of Christianity his son believes in, as this brother thought he would unfold to his father the truth gently.

It is not surprising that Jews will not come to Christian services. They think they have no reason to go to hear the gospel. But when the children of Abraham learn of a people who keep the Sabbath, who believe in the law of Moses, and who live up to the teachings of the prophets, then their interest is aroused, and there arises in the hearts of many of them a desire to learn more about this people and their religion.

It is interesting to us, as we visit some of the large cities, to note one or more Jews in nearly every congregation. These have heard of Seventh-day Adventists; and when the Jews hear about this people and their teachings and beliefs, they want to come to our places of worship to learn more.

We must work in right lines for this people. To work for them as we work for others is to throw away our time, our money, and our energy. If we can present to them the peculiar features of our message from their own standpoint, namely, from Moses and the prophets, and then show them that all these things have a definite application in the Messiah, as taught and believed by these Sabbath-keeping Christians, it will create a desire in their hearts to know about their own Messiah and the truths of the Bible they have been brought up to believe.

F. C. GILBERT.