In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

>> 35 2 The Evangelical Messianic Faith and the Jews Historical Background The evangelical messianic vision, in which the Jews play a central role, draws on a long Christian eschatological tradition.1 Christianity started as a messianic movement, its early texts speaking about apocalyptic times and the near coming of the kingdom of God on earth.2 After Jesus’s death, his disciples expected his imminent return and the beginning of a long-sought righteous divine reign. However, in the fourth and fifth centuries , when Christianity became the established religion of the Roman Empire, mainline Christianity became mostly amillennial in character. Christian thinkers such as Augustine, bishop of Hippo, postponed the materialization of the messianic era to a remote time.3 Their vision has become the prevalent outlook among the major branches of Christianity . However, like a subterranean river, messianic yearnings for an imminent return of Jesus persisted and found expression in the writings of a number of Christian thinkers and communities. Arising periodically within Western Christianity, messianic movements often demonstrated nonconformist attitudes toward the church hierarchies and teachings.4 The Reformation of the sixteenth century gave rise to groups and individuals who expected the messianic times to arrive imminently. These included thinkers within mainstream Protestant churches, such as Martin Luther, as well as within the more radical, “left-wing” groups of the Reformation. In the seventeenth century, Puritan and pietist groups within English and German Christianity adopted premillennialist messianic understandings of the course of human history. A resurgence of interest in eschatology and the prospect of the imminent arrival of the Messiah took place in England during the revolutionary era of the 1640s 36 > 37 missionaries to us who were afar off, shall be gathered in again. Until that time, the fullness of the church’s glory can never come. . . . Let not the chosen race be denied their peculiar share of whatever promise Holy Writ has recorded with a special view to them.11 Spurgeon was not devoid of anger toward the Jews and asserted that their condition of exile was God’s punishment for their sins. Like many evangelical thinkers holding to a premillennialist faith, Spurgeon was committed to evangelizing the Jews and served as one of the leaders of the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews. British members of “Dissenting” churches, as they were known at the time, including the Baptists, founded the society after concluding that they could not labor to evangelize the Jews with the representatives of the established Church of England. Like other evangelicals who have considered the Jews to be the chosen people, Spurgeon saw Jewish restoration as a prerequisite to the materialization of the kingdom of Christ on earth.12 “For when the Jews are restored, then the fullness of the Gentiles shall be gathered in; and as soon as they return, then Jesus will come upon Mount Zion to reign with his ancients [Jewish ancestors] gloriously.”13 The Rise of Dispensationalism Spurgeon subscribed to historicist premillennialism. However, in the early decades of the nineteenth century another school of messianic expectations, dispensationalism, developed that would become widely accepted in America, and consequently in other parts of the globe, strongly influencing evangelical attitudes toward the Jews.14 Eschatological Christian doctrines that divide human history into different ages or eras can be traced to Christian texts as early as the Epistle of Barnabas, a tract from the turn of the second century CE.15 One of the first proponents in post-Reformation Europe of this currently Protestant evangelical school of premillennialism was, ironically, a Jesuit priest, Francisco Ribera, who, attempting to defend the papacy from Protestant 38 > 39 believers, evangelical and pietist Protestants who underwent inner experiences of conversion and established personal relationships with Jesus of Nazareth, composed “the church,” the body of the true believers that would be saved and united with Christ. Consequently Darby advocated congregational devotional gatherings devoid of vestments, ornaments, choirs, and musical instruments, as well as ordained clergy. The former Anglican priest found in Dublin other persons who held views similar to his own. They began to meet regularly for prayer, Bible study, and discussions. Similar groups emerged in a few more cities in Britain, among them London, Bristol, and Plymouth. In 1831, the group in Plymouth invited Darby to join them. Darby was a man of great energy, and he embarked on successful campaigns of evangelism not only in the English-speaking world but in other countries as well. In Britain the Plymouth Brethren...

Share