The prophetic prospects of the Jews; or, Fairbairn vs. Fairbairn.

Introduction

N the year 1840, there was published at

Glasgow, Scotland, a book entitled: “A Course of Lectures on the Jews.’ It was the result of action taken by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, in appointing a large committee to promote missionary work among the Jews. To assist in arousing public interest, this course of lectures was given by the ministers of the city of Glasgow.

Among the names of the lecturers appears that of the Rev. Patrick Fairbairn, pastor of Bridgeton Parish, then less than _ thirty-five years of age. The title of his lecture is: “The Future Prospects of the Jews,’ and in it he takes very strong ground in favor of a literal | interpretation of the prophecies that relate to their return to the land of Canaan. He sustains this position by numerous citations from the Holy Scriptures, and by very clear and powerful reasoning, so that the ordinary reader is apt to find him exceedingly convincing.

6 INTRODUCTION

About twenty-five years later, this same | Patrick Fairbairn published a book on prophecy, usually referred to as “Fairbairn on Prophecy,’ in which he also has a chapter discussing this very subject, under the title: “The Prophetical Future of the Jewish People.” It will be found on pages 241-286 of that work. In this chapter he takes precisely the contrary position, showing that the prophecies are not to be literally understood, but that everything promised to the people of Israel was promised to the people of God, and that believers in Christ being now that people, the entire Old Testament, with all its prophecies and promises, must be understood as typical of spiritual blessings to be realized in Christ. He looks forward, indeed, to the conversion of Israel, but not to its national restoration. This argument, also, is remarkably clear and convincing.

Since this important subject is so well discussed by this famous and learned Bible student, and since it ts one of the essential elements in the millenial problem, that is arousing no little interest among our churches in these days, it is

INTRODUCTION 7 hoped that it will be found interesting and profitable to hear the arguments of FAIRBAIRN VS. FarrBaiRN, and therefore the two papers are here published side by side. The controversy is thus lifted above all local and personal considerations. If the reader is not satisfied with the views of the young pastor of Bridgeton Parish, he may find them conclusively answered by the professor of the Free Church College. If, on the other hand, he thinks that much learning has driven Professor Fairbairn mad, in his interpretation of Scripture, he may take comfort in the reasoning of the same Fairbairn before age and learning had corrupted the simplicity of his vision in the mysteries of the word of God. Here are both views before you; you can take your choice. Here, also, the words of the apostle are applicable: “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.”

The reader is earnestly counselled to read both lectures twice. The first will be altogether too convincing unless the second is also understood: if it is read after that second lecture has been mastered, the citations will appear in an

8 INTRODUCTION altogether different light. On the other hand, if one accepts the reasoning of the second lecture, he should at least do tt with all the weighty considerations of the first clearly in mind. After reading both twice, let him make his own decision, and give himself a clear reason for doing so. It may be that he will find himself in the position of Dr. Hepp, of Amsterdam, who, during his recent trip in America, was asked whether, in his judgment, the prophecies required the national restoration of the Jews in Palestine, and replied, “Ik weet het niet, ik weet het niet.” (I do not know, indeed, I do not know.)

The Dr. Patrick Fairbairn whose discussions are presented here was one of the most famous theologians of Scotland, and of the Protestant world, during the nineteenth century. He was born in 1805 and died in 1874, having served the church as preacher and theological professor for forty-eight years. He was a great student of German, and translated more than one great German theological work into English. He edited the “Imperial Bible Dictionary,” published in

INTRODUCTION 9

1867. Among his most famous works are “Fairbairn on Prophecy,” “The Typology of Scripture,’ “Hermeneutical Manual,’ “Ezekiel and the Book of His Prophecy,” “Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles,’ and “Pastoral Theology.” Scarcely any other writer of the nineteenth century ts his equal for fulness of knowledge and depth of insight with respect to the prophetical scriptures.

DOSKER-—HULSWIT Professor of English Bible and Missions, Western Theological Seminary, Reformed Church in America.

Holland, Michigan.

June 27th, 1930.

Part I

FUTURE PROSPECTS OF THE JEWS—RES- TORATION TO THEIR OWN LAND— UNIVERSAL CONVERSION TO THE FAITH OF CHRIST

Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate; but thou shalt be called Hephzi-bah, and thy land Beulah; for the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married.—Isaiah Ixii. 4.

ing and important—if I should say the most interesting and important subject of inquiry connected with the present series of lectures, I should not certainly exceed my own apprehension of its nature, though I do but the more deeply feel my own inadequacy to do it justice. If, however, a sincere and solemn conviction of the soundness of the views, which

Note.—Delivered as one of a course of twelve lectures, at Glasgow, Scotland, under the auspices of a Committee of the General Assembly, in the winter of 1838-39, by the Rev. Patrick Fairbairn, Minister of Bridgeton Parish, Glasgow. The entire course was published under the title: “Lectures on the Jews,” by the Presbyterian Board of Publication, Philadelphia, U.S. A., in 1840.

are now about to be unfolded, as fully authorized by the word of prophecy—if the frequent and not inattentive perusal of this word of prophecy itself, aided by the researches of those, who have brought the most of learning and sobriety of judgment to bear upon the subject, and guided by a simple desire to ascertain the outlines of coming events, as these have been traced by the Spirit of prophecy, who moved the holy men of old to speak the things, which were to be fulfilled in the latter days—if these qualifications may bespeak a favourable audience, I may not hesitate to claim from you, in behalf of what is now to be advanced, a patient and attentive hearing. And may the Spirit himself grant, that our inquiry shall be so conducted, as neither to add to, nor detract from the meaning, which he designed that portion of the prophetic volume, which is to pass under our present review, to convey to the church of Christ.

The subject on which we enter, embraces the future prospects of the Jews, and consequently leads us into that department of prophecy, which remains yet to be fulfilled. The very name of unfulfilled prophecy, we are aware, suggests to many persons the idea of a vague and shadowy region, where all is dim and uncertain, and nothing to be ascertained beyond the general character of certain events likely to befall the church or the world at large. We hold very different views, however, of the prophetic record, and hope to make it plain to you before we close, that there is at least one class of events yet to be fulfilled, which we may as certainly gather from the word of prophecy, as we can assure ourselves of any events which have already taken place, that they were the accomplishment of predictions, which at some former period stood in the rank of unfulfilled prophecy. In proceeding to make this out to your conviction, there is just one postulate, or principle of interpretation, which we need to lay down for our direction, while endeavouring to read out of the word of prophecy the future history of God’s ancient people, and that so very reasonable, so readily commending itself to every intelligent mind, that no one, we think, can hesitate for a moment to assent to it. The principle we allude to is, that those portions of prophecy, which have already been fulfilled in the history of the Jewish people, are to be taken as our surest guide for determining the meaning of those other portions, which remain yet to be fulfilled—so that if in the one part the fulfilment that has taken place be unquestionably a literal one, we must look for a literal fulfilment in the other also; or if, through means of a figure, an event of a certain description was in the earlier part of it clearly predicted concerning them, by a change afterwards introduced into that figure, we are to look only for a corresponding change in their condition, in process of time to be developed, not for an event, in which they have no peculiar or special interest at all.

It were surely to confound all language, and to render the word of God the most inexplicable of writings, to say that one part of a prediction is to be taken in the literal acceptation of its words, and the other converted into allegory; or that the first portion of a figurative description is to be understood of one subject, and the second to be held as referring to another substantially different. If, then, in reading the prophecies, which have been put on record concerning God’s ancient people, I find it predicted in terms the most express, that they were to be cast off from being the people of God, torn from their native land, dispersed among all nations, though still preserved separate, treated with the greatest contumely and reproach—and if on searching into history, I also find, that the whole to the very letter has been verified; that they have lost the standing they so long held as the church of the living God; that unwilling banishment from the land of their fathers has for ages been their portion, and that they have not only been doomed to wander as outcasts over the broad surface of the earth, but everywhere in their wanderings have been made to bear the mark of ignominy, and been exceedingly filled with contempt;—shall I doubt, when, on reading further in the same line of prophecy, I find it written in terms equally express, that they are to be re-united to the church of God, re-instated in their ancient heritage, invested with an honour and a glory, which had no parallel even in their days of bygone magnificence—shall I doubt, that these intimations of coming events shall also meet with their exact and proper fulfilment? When I see that God has magnified his faithfulness in giving to the dark side of the prospective history the most literal and complete verification, shall I think so harshly of his character, or so meanly of the consistency of his prophetic word, as to suppose that he will not also verify to the letter the other and brighter side, but allow it to pass away into some vague generality? The Jew has found it to be no over-drawn or chimerical picture, but a most certain and appalling reality, that judgment was written against him in the oracles of God; and with this history of the prophetic past to direct our judgments concerning the prophetic future, we conclude, by whatever truth, by whatever consistency there is in these oracles of God, that the same Jew must be destined to know it as an equally certain and faithful reality, that he is written there also the subject of distinguished favour, blessing, and glory.

Taking, then, this safe and consistent principle for our guide—namely, that the fulfilment of what is already past, affords the best rule for determining the sense of what is yet to be fulfilled in the prophecies, which concern the Jews as a people—let us go to the word of prophecy, and endeavour to learn, from some of its clearest predictions, whether what we have now intimated is to befall this singular people in the latter days—what, in short, we may warrantably infer to be the most prominent features of their future history. To ‘divide these into separate heads, is to a certain extent to break the chain of evidence, by which they are collectively substantiated; for the prophets seldom speak of the future history of the Jews with reference to its single points, but rather as a combined whole, embracing all or the greater part at one view; yet, for the sake of greater perspicuity and distinctness we shall consider the things predicted | under separate heads, and these as nearly as possible in the order which they appear to hold in the word of prophecy itself.

I. Our first proposition, then, is, that the Jews as a people, shall again become the people of God; which of course implies, that they shall be converted to the faith of Christ, becoming in one vast body members of the Christian church.

In the scriptural proof of this point we shall not need to be minute, as the fact, at least of the ultimate conversion of the Jews, is universally admitted by those, who own the authority of the word of God. Yet, not to leave it without some portion of the evidence, which might be brought in great profusion to support it, look first of all, to what is written in our text. That the Jewish people, as one whole, are the subject spoken of and addressed, is manifest both from the words themselves, and from the distinction put between them and the gentiles in the second verse. Of them, therefore, it is declared, that “they shall no more be termed Forsaken, but shall be called Hephzi-bah, (my delight is in her,) for the Lord shall delight in them.” Their past history tells but too plainly, that they have been forsaken, and why—even for rejecting the promised Messiah, the true hope of Israel; and their future history, we are here assured, shall not less distinctly prove that they shall again become the object of peculiar favour and delight, which every believer in the gospel knows can only be verified by their receiving Him, whom their fathers disowned and crucified. Turn from this to the first chapter of Hosea, and in the two last verses you will find the same thing predicted in terms the most clear and explicit. “The number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured: and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, ‘Ye are not my people,’ there it shall be said unto them, ‘Ye are the sons of the living God.’ Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together and appoint themselves one head, and they shall come up out of the land.” There is no possible room here for mistaking, who are the proper objects of the prophecy, as they are spoken of under the names of “the children of Judah and the children of Israel,” the two distinctive branches of the Jewish nation, comprehending the whole natural seed of Israel—and of them, of whom it had been said, in the verse immediately preceding, (we know how truly,) that for a time they were not to be the people of God, it is now most plainly testified, that they shall again become the sons of the living God, and after being gathered together from their dispersions, shall appoint themselves one head—and this head, who but the Son of David, the true Shepherd of the sheep, for rejecting whom they have been so long scattered as sheep having no shepherd ?*

* It is not, and indeed could not, be denied by any Christian divines, that this passage in Hosea intimates the future conversion of the Jews; but it has been very often interpreted, and by some of our most approved commentators, as if it had no special reference to them, but only included them along with the gentiles, as having equally been at one period of their history ‘not God’s people,” and equally also destined to be at a future period, ‘“‘the sons of the living God.” And in proof of this, the application made of the prophecy by the apostles Peter (I Pet. ii. 10,) and Paul, (Rom. ix. 24-26,) is adduced as conclusive. Peter, however, does not cite the prediction as one, which had received its full or proper accomplishment in the calling of the gentiles to the knowledge of the truth, but simply adopts the expressions of the prophet as aptly describing the change which had passed over their condition, running, according to his custom,

The same prospective facts in Jewish history are disclosed in terms equally clear and decisive, in the last two verses of the third chapter of this prophet. “For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim: Afterward shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and shall fear the Lord into natural and appropriate use of Old Testament scripture, and not, like Paul expressly citing it. The application made of the prophecy by the latter apostle certainly implies, that it might be extended so as to embrace the gentiles, since the apostle couples it with ch. ii. 23, to show that it was the intention of God to have a church formed indiscriminately of Jews and gentiles. But this does not militate against its primary and proper application to the Jews, and should rather be regarded as an extension of its meaning beyond the literal and primary import—a fulfilment of it in the spiritual sense; that is to say, an exemplification is produced of the general principle contained in it (not my people—my people) in regard to objects different from those chiefly and originally contemplated in the prophecy. That the apostle did not consider it fulfilled, in the proper sense of the term, by the events which took place at the commencement of the Gospel, we may certainly and his goodness in the latter days.” This is one of the most remarkable predictions in all Scripture, considering at once the extraordinary nature of the events which it foretells, and the length of time it foretold them, before they began to be accomplished. Contrary, not only to the state of things which existed in the time of Hosea, but to all probability, and to what has ever been realized in the history of any other nation upon the face of the earth, the prophet foretold, and that eight centuries before it began to take effect, that the Jewish people should infer from the use he makes of another prophecy in ch. xi. 26; where, to prove the future conversion of the Jews as a people, he brings forward the single text, Isa. lix. 20, “There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.” Compared with the words of Hosea, in the last two verses of the first chapter, this is a very general prediction, and admits of being much more easily accommodated to the gentiles. Yet the apostle thought it so conclusive a proof for the ultimate conversion of the Jews, that he was not careful to bring forward another; how much more, then, may we regard the prediction in Hosea, in which both the words themselves, and the whole context speak so determinately of the Jewish people, as pointing in their exact and proper application to that people alone!

continue for a long period in the anomalous state of being neither worshippers of the true God, nor yet idolaters—destitute alike of the implements of a false, and the services of a true worship—possessed of no earthly head, to whom they might yield allegiance in the relations of civil government, and of no real or imaginary God, to whom they might give the homage of their religious adoration. You all know how literally and how long this strange anomaly has been _ verified—verified in their case alone of all the _ people, who ever have possessed a national existence in the earth. But the prophet, who has proved himself so worthy of confidence in announcing with divine foresight, this remarkable fact, must surely be not less entitled to credit, when he goes on to intimate, in the last verse, that the same people, who were to be found for a long period in such a state of singular deprivation, are yet to find an escape from it, by returning to seek the Lord their God, and David, that is, Christ, their king, and that they shall one day become true worshippers of the living God, and partakers of his distinguishing goodness.

It is needless to multiply testimonies where the fact to be established appears so clearly incontrovertible, and I shall therefore only remind you further of the testimony, which the Spirit has given to the same fact in New Testament Scripture, by the hand of the apostle Paul, when in one place, (2 Cor. iii. 16,) he affirmed, that the veil of spiritual blindness, which has so long been upon the hearts of the children of Israel, shall be taken away, when they turn to the Lord; and in another, (Rom. viii. 26,) that all Israel shall be saved.

There is, indeed, no denying it—all are obliged to admit, that Israel, as a people, shall be saved—the only question may be when? The time when this return of the natural Israel into the bosom of the church of God shall take place, is by many postponed to such a late period as deprives them of all practical benefit which would grow out of the hopes we are thus permitted to cherish concerning them. They are looked upon as so peculiarly depraved, so deeply sunk in intellectual and moral degradation, and especially as so riveted in alienation from the blessed truths of the Gospel, that no rational hope, it is supposed, can be entertained of their being meanwhile or by any ordinary means converted to the faith of Christ, and so, the era of their restitution to the state and privileges of God’s people is thrown back to the very close of time, mingled up with the throes of the world’s dissolution, and reckoned among the physical and moral wonders, with which the present constitution of things is to be wound up.

It is not my intention to enter into any minute inquiry regarding the precise period of the complete conversion of the Jews, either absolutely or in relation to the other important events predicted to take place in the latter days; but, to show the utter groundlessness of the supposition just referred to, I shall so far anticipate what I trust afterwards to make out to your satisfaction, as to state, that there are purposes to be served by the Jewish people after their conversion, which both presuppose the existence of a state of things substantially the same as at present, and will require to be prosecuted through a considerable lapse of time;—among which purposes I shall only at present particularize this as one—that the Jews when converted , shall be the main instruments of God in carrying forward and completing the conversion of the gentiles. This alone would justify us in placing the conversion of the Jews, if not the very first, at least among the first, of that long series of events, the evolution of which is to make up the glory of the latter days. And in regard to the supposed hopelessness on moral grounds of any immediate efforts to reclaim them from their apostasy, however commonly entertained, it is I venture to affirm not warranted, but rather discountenanced, by a proper consideration of the circumstances of the case. In the Old Testament Scriptures there are so many clear and explicit testimonies to the truth of Christ’s Messiahship, that we should have thought the rejection of him by a people holding these Scriptures to be the word of God, almost incredible, had not the palpable existence of the fact proved it to be otherwise; and their continued infidelity, in the face of such overwhelming evidences to the truth of Christ, in their own books and history, is one of the most extraordinary things of a religious nature to be found in the past history and present condition of the world. Possessing testimonies of such a nature and so peculiarly their own to the truth as it is in Christ, they manifestly stand on a vantage-ground, in regard to their prospective entrance into the church of Christ, which is held by no other people, who like them are “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel’’;—and if, notwithstanding, the probabilities of their conversion to the faith should appear much smaller than in the case of any other people, it can only have arisen, we fear, from their having been placed in circumstances and subjected to a treatment, which have tended to blind their eyes the more to the testimonies, which their own Scriptures contain to Christian doctrine, and confirm their dislike to the religion of the cross. How much this has been the case no one can be ignorant, who is aware how exclusively till of late their attention was directed

SE ET A A SE I SS TREN EAE SY FSA TS AEST SEER SETS TSE and their deference yielded to the puerile, superstitious, and often impious dogmas of Rabbinical learning—how much they have been left to imbibe their views of gospel truth among the corruptest forms of Christianity, as it exists in the Greek and Roman churches, overrun both of them with the grossest idolatry, the object of inextinguishable hatred to the Jew—how little they have been “sought after’ for good, yea, how much they have been pursued with bitter and relentless malice, with cruel persecutions, with all manner of insults, mockeries and deaths, enough to have made them recoil with trembling from the very name of Christian. Placed in such circumstances, and subjected to such a treatment, what nation under heaven would have been disposed to enter the fold of Christianity? But let the frowning aspect of things toward them be changed ;—especially let them be plied by the melting power of Christian kindness, and be induced by a well-directed system of pious efforts to peruse their own Scriptures, and to hear the truth concerning Jesus “reasoned out of these,” after the example of the apostles, and we doubt not there shall soon be found no insurmountable barrier between the faith of the Gospel and the heart of a Jew. Blessed be God! the change is not now to be commenced—the work is already in progress—and in the results which have been accomplished, we discern the harbinger of what still remains to be achieved. The dawn of a happier day for much injured Israel has begun to streak the mountains; the Spirit has returned to breathe upon the dry bones, and is here and there inspiring them with life; converts from the ranks of Judaism to the truth of the Gospel, lately so rare, are now to be seen in almost every city of christendom, many of them also teaching with enlightened zeal the faith, which they once sought to destroy; the felt insufficiency of a Jewish worship and a Rabbinical learning, is leading them in thousands to the pure oracles of the word of God; a general cry is rising amongst them for the bread of life; and we seem to hear on every side the chariot-wheels of providence advancing toward us with the joyful tidings—that the veil is now rending, which so long has overspread the hearts of the seed of Abraham, and that the time is not distant when they shall again be called “the sons of the living God.’’*

II. Our next proposition is, that according to the word of prophecy, the Jewish people shall be restored to their ancient territory—the land of Canaan. It shall again become theirs, and theirs in perpetual possession.

In entering on the Scriptural proof of this proposition, we begin with again pointing to the plain and unequivocal testimony of our text. “Thy land,” it is testified, “shall no more be

* That the facts of the case are amply sufficient to justify the train of thought pursued toward the close of the first head, will appear from the following extract, taken from the last report of the London Jewish Society. “They (the Committee) have received information of at least three thousand Jews added to the church of Christ; and they hope to obtain more correct and general statements of this kind from the consistorial authorities on the continent as well as other sources. Though such statements contain a mere register of baptisms, without reference to the individuals; yet the fact in itself is most important. In numberless instances, the individuals are known to your missionaries and friends as adorning the termed Desolate; but it shall be called Beulah, (married,) for thy land shall be married.” It is impossible, by any fair construction, to explain these words without understanding them to affirm the truth of our proposition. It admits of no controversy, that their land has been, and still is, a land which may emphatically be termed Desolate: being stripped of its ancient and proper occupants; and by this word of prophecy, it as little admits of controversy, that they shall be restored to possess it, and shall have their future fortunes so closely and perma-

Christian profession.—Our elder missionaries can look back to the time, when a believing Israelite was a curiosity: they can now behold companies of converts, some more and some less numerous, dotted over the whole continent of Europe: they can point to professors at universities—pastors of Reformed and Lutheran congregations—physicians, jurists, mechanics, tradesmen, eminent in the path of life to which God has called them, and adorning the doctrine of their Saviour in all things— and can thank God for this exhibition of his grace and power in the midst of Israel.” The report also states, that there are not less than forty converts from the Jewish faith at present employed in making known the gospel of Christ, and that of the forty-seven missionaries or agents employed by the London Society, twenty-three are of the house of Israel.