When did we lose the battle?

The Books and the Bagels is a blog series from CWI (N America) that reviews some helpful books and records some conversational stories from the world of Jewish mission, with or without the Bagels!

In this blog post I want to draw attention to a book I read as a young 26 year old just out of seminary: The Puritan Hope, by Iain Murray. I commend it as essential, even primary, reading, concerning our subject of Jewish mission. (As an aside, when I was 26, I had no idea of the providence of God that would see me installed 6 years later as pastor of Cambridge Presbyterian Church, England, when the same Iain Murray would preach my installation sermon!)

But first I raise a question. Where and when did we lose the battle? I’ve read the end of the book: Christ wins. But is it all doom and gloom until then? Is it just a matter of ‘One bright morning, when the sun is shining, I’ll fly away’? Is it just a matter of waiting on the proverbial ‘rapture’? Iain Murray’s book shows otherwise; indeed it traces the origins of the theology of hopelessness, and it’s not biblical, and it’s not good!

A Theology of Hope

Puritan theology, among many things, is a theology of hope. The world is not so much a place to escape from, but land under the lordship of Christ to be experientially conquered by the gospel of Christ. And in many respects it was this ‘hope’ that brought puritans and puritan theology to the New World. The colonists, far from invaders, were bringing divinity to darkness. (While I accept this is an oversimplification, the narrative is often spun entirely differently without any spiritual aspect at all). We need to see the theology of hope all through the colonial period. Indeed the seal of the colonists of Massachusetts Bay had the words of an American Indian, ‘Come over and help us’.

Murray very ably traces the history of world missions (and specifically Jewish missions, which we’ll come to in a moment), and shows that the Puritans ‘taught men to expect; it prepared the way to the new age of world missions’, viewing the world as ‘the property of Christ’. Williams Carey’s ‘Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God’, was the outworking of puritan theology. He writes of his expectations in India, ‘The work, to which God has set his hands, will infallibly prosper. Christ has begun to besiege this ancient and strong fortress, and will assuredly carry it out’.

Murray also writes of the 18th century outburst of praise in missionary hymnody: ‘All hail the power of Jesus’ Name’ ‘Arm of the Lord awake, awake’, ‘Hail to the Lord’s Anointed’. Sadly much of today’s praise items are sentimental mush focused on me and my feelings rather than the Lordship of Christ and his advancing Kingdom.

The Hope Fades

In chapter 9, Murray writes of the ‘Eclipse of the Hope’ and notes the funeral of C H Spurgeon a key marker as the last of the puritans. In contrast, Edward Irving and JN Darby developed a theology that saw the progress of evil as the only future, and that ‘the hope of the earth being filled with the knowledge of the Lord before the exercise of his judgement and the consummation of this judgement on the earth, is delusive’. (JN Darby)

Add to this the influence of CI Scofield (greatly impacted by Darby), and the Reference Bible first published in 1909, soon became the theological norm for evangelicals in the early (and not so early) 20th century. Iain Murray writes, ‘Perhaps of all the tendencies of the new teaching none was worse that the effect which it had in belittling the importance of the visible church’. Instead of a militant Church, with a world conquering gospel, that hope had faded.

When the optimism of the late 19th century faced the German liberal onslaught the reaction was to retreat into bunkers and wait for the soon expected End. In the US evangelical scene today, I fear, with an impoverished eschatology (often learned from fiction books and movies!) we have a similar strategy. A ‘fading hope’ that Murray references, will either have us hunkered down with our reformed monastic learning centers, or just desiring to escape. Neither are an acceptable response to a society gone insanely woke and overtly wicked. While we must incessantly pray, Maranatha and live in daily watchful expectancy, we also pray and labor for Christ’s kingdom advance on earth.

So Murray writes, ‘Today the Church no longer appears before men as a world-transforming power; gone are the anticipations. Gone too, at home, is that sacrificial enthusiasm for the conversion of the world’. So also that same hope has faded concerning the ancient people and the possibilities for a restoration of the people Israel to their Messiah. Either a radical dispensationalism has declared they have no need of Christ, as Dual Covenant theology permits them entry by Moses. Or, a radical reformed theology has considered ethnic Israel as fully ‘replaced’. Neither are correct, and Murray’s book is a compelling reminder to lovers of reformed theology that their historic theology and ‘heroes of history’ believed in a puritan hope for the conversion of the Jewish people. To that we briefly turn in conclusion.

Burdened for Israel

Murray points out that while neither Calvin nor Luther openly expressed this ‘hope for Israel’ (though I would dispute that), their contemporaries did. ‘As early as 1560, four years before Calvin’s death, the English and Scots refugee Protestant leaders who produced the Geneva Bible, express this belief in their marginal notes on Romans chapter 11, verses 15 and 26’.

Iain Murray then goes on to quote many known worthies in the reformed world such as Perkins, Sibbes and Goodwin. There is much content that Murray would have us consider, but this paragraph epitomizes this aspect of the puritan hope: ‘In 1682 eighteen of the most eminent puritan divines, including William Gouge, Edmund Calamy, John Owen and Thomas Goodwin, wrote in support of missionary labours then being undertaken in New England and affirmed their belief that: “the Scripture speaks of a double conversion of the Gentiles, the first before the conversion of the Jewes… and till then blindness hath happened unto Israel Romans 11:25… The second, after the conversion of the Jewes…”’

But it was Scotland’s burden, which I would add was driven by Westminster Catechism theology (and the puritan hope), that developed into actual missionary labor, first by a ‘Mission of Inquiry’ (1839) into the condition of the Jews in Europe and Palestine, followed up by intentional mission station in Budapest, and also the financial funding in 1842 of an interdenominational ministry in London called ‘The British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews’ (later called Christian Witness to Israel). We in Christian Witness to Israel (N America) seek that restored ‘Scottish burden’!

At the close of the book Iain Murray helpfully includes an Appendix on Spurgeon’s views on prophecy, with which I conclude.

‘I think we do not attach sufficient importance to the restoration of the Jews. We do not think enough of it. But certainly, if there is anything promised in the Bible it is this… Matchless benefits to the world are bound up with the restoration of Israel.

‘The more I read the Scriptures as to the future, the less I am able to dogmatize. I see the conversion of the world, and the personal pre-millennial reign, and the sudden coming, and the judgment, and several other grand points; but I cannot put them into order’.

So Murray comments, ‘Spurgeon was prepared to allow major ambiguities, and indeed inconsistencies, to co-exist in his thinking on prophecy.’

Would we call Spurgeon a pan-millennialist? (- in that it will all ‘pan’ out in the end!) If so, then I find myself in good company for I believe in the puritan hope, and the major redemption and spiritual awakening of ethnic Israel, and a ton of other things in Scripture, but like Spurgeon, ‘I cannot put them in order’!

One thing I know, with Charles Hodge, ‘I am fully persuaded that the vast majority of the human race will share in the beatitudes and glories of our Lord’s redemption’. So I return to our opening question: When did we lose the battle?

 STEPHEN ATKINSON

Director, Christian Witness to Israel – N America.