By A. J. Gordon, D. D.

PERHAPS there is no man living whom the writer had more earnestly desired to meet face to face than this Israelite of the New Covenant. Professor Delitzsch wrote several pamphlets and documents concerning him, evidently regarding him as possibly the most remarkable Jewish conversion to Christ since that of Saul of Tarsus. We have followed with the profoundest interest the reports of his work in Russia since his confession of Jesus Christ as the Messiah; and we have read with no less interest his sermons and addresses which have appeared from time to time in print.

Going to Chicago for a month's service in connection with Mr. Moody's World's Fair Evangelistic Campaign, we found ourselves at our lodgings placed in the next room to a Russian guest, whose name was not yet told us. Hearing in the evening the strains of subdued and fervent Hebrew chanting, we inquired who our neighbor might be, and learned that it was one Joseph Rabinowitz, of Russia; and thus, to our surprise, we found ourselves next neighbor to one whom we would have crossed the ocean to see, with only a sliding door between us Introduction followed, and then three weeks of study and communion together concerning the things of the kingdom, the memory of which will not soon depart.

Before we detail the story of our summer Hebrew school at the feet of this Christian Gamaliel, let us repeat the story of his conversion as we have read it, and now heard it verified by himself.

Joseph Rabinowitz was a lawyer residing in Kischineff, Southern Russia, a man of very wide and commanding influence among his Hebrew brethren, as a scholar, a philanthropist and a lover of his nation. From a young man he had been a most diligent and painstaking student of the Hebrew Scriptures, of the Talmud, and of all related Jewish literature, so that at the age of forty, he says, "I was like a man living in a house furnished with every article of furniture which money could buy, and yet the shutters of that house closed and curtains all drawn, so that I was in the dark, and knew not the meaning of my own learning till Jesus, the Light of the World, came in and illuminated all as in a flash."

About ten years ago, Mr. Rabinowitz was selected, in connection with certain colonization efforts, to go to Palestine to secure land for Jewish emigrants who desired to flee from Russian persecution. When fitting himself out with guide-books for his contemplated journey, he was given a copy of the New Testament with him, as furnishing an admirable directory to the sacred places of Jerusalem and the vicinity. While walking about Zion and gazing upon its historic sites he carried in his pocket this yet unopened treasure. Going one day to the brow of the Mount of Olives, he sat down on that sacred hill and began contemplating the city as it lay at his feet. Then came a train of reflection and questioning: "Why this long desolation of the City of David? Why this scattering of my people to the ends of the earth ? Why these fresh persecutions breaking forth against us in almost every country of Europe?" While he pondered these sad questions he gazed toward the reputed Calvary, where that holy prophet of his nation had been crucified. As he did so, his eyes were opened; he looked upon Him whom his nation had pierced. In a flash the truth entered his heart: "We have rejected our Messiah! hence our long casting off and dispersion by Jehovah! He believed; he cried out to Jesus, " My Lord and my God," and almost as suddenly as Saul of Tarsus, Joseph Rabinowitz, from being a Hebrew of the Hebrews, has become an Israelite of the New Covenant, a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth. He took out his New Testament, a guide-book in a sense undreamed of, and read the first passage that fell under his eye: " I am the vine, ye are the branches. . . . Without Me ye can do nothing." "I saw it in the twinkling of an eye," said he. "Our Jewish bankers, with their millions of gold, can do nothing for us: our scholars and statesmen, with all their wisdom, can do nothing for us; our colonization societies, with all their influence and capital, can do nothing for us: our only hope is in our brother, Jesus, whom we crucified, and whom God raised up and at His own right hand. 'Without Him we can do nothing.'"

We imagine the sensation which was caused in Russia when this emigrant Hebrew returned home and boldly announced far and wide, publicly in the synagogue and openly in the columns of the press, his acceptance of Jesus Christ as his Saviour and Lord. Persecution and obloquy were poured upon him from every quarter, and they of his own household became his foes, but he had counted the cost. He joyfully and boldly maintained his testimony, till little by little the enmity was softened. Now he rejoices that one after another of his own family have joined him in confessing Christ, and preaching Him to their neighbors.

By permission of the government, surprisingly granted, he has built a synagogue, where he assembles a good congregation to listen to the Word of God from his lips; and he says that his entire time is occupied from morning to night, week in and week out, in answering letters from Jews who are distressed in mind concerning this great question, and in meeting inquirers coming sometimes hundreds of miles to talk with him of Jesus of Nazareth. What wonder that such a conversion, attended with such results, should have led Professor Delitzsch to hail the event as the "first ripe fig" on the long barren tree of rejected Israel, and as a cheering sign that for that people " summer is nigh."

It seemed to us as we talked with this Israelite without guile day after day, and heard him pour out his soul in prayer, that we never witnessed such ardor of affection for Jesus, and such absorbing devotion to His person and glory. We shall not soon forget the radiance that would come into his face as he expounded the Messianic Psalms at our morning and evening worship, and how, as here and there he caught a glimpse of the suffering of the glorified Christ, he would suddenly lift his hands and his eyes to heaven, in a burst of admiration, exclaiming with Thomas, after he had seen the nailprints, "My Lord and my God!" So saturated is he with the letter as well as the spirit of the Hebrew Scriptures that, to hear him talk, one might imagine it was Isaiah or some other prophet of the old dispensation that was speaking.

"What is your view of inspiration?" we asked him, in order to draw him out on certain much-mooted questions of our time. "My view is," he said, holding up his Hebrew Bible, "that this is the Word of God; the Spirit of God dwells in it. When I read it I know that God is speaking to me; and when I preach it I say to the people, 'Be silent and hear what Jehovah will say to you.'" "As for comparing the inspiration of Scripture with that of Homer or Shakespeare," he continued , "it is not a question of degree but of kind. Electricity will pass through an iron bar, but it will not go through a rod of glass, however beautiful and transparent, because it has no affinity for it. So the Spirit of God dwells in the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures, because these are His proper mediums, but not in Homer or Shakespeare, because He has no affinity with these writings." This sentence gives an instance of his vividness of illustration, of which he is a natural master.

Some of Mr. Rabinowitz's expositions and explanations of Scripture were exceedingly interesting. "Show me a photograph of Kischineff," he said one day, "and I can tell instantly whether it is correct, for I have lived there all my life. So when I read the New Testament, how vivid are its pictures to one who has lived for years in Jewish history and traditions!" Opening to Revelation xvi., he read, "Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame." This admonition of the Lord affected me very deeply when I first read it," he said, " for I knew at a glance its meaning. All night long the watchmen in the temple kept on duty. The overseer of the temple was always likely to appear at unexpected hours to see if these were faithfully attending to their charges. If he came upon any watchman who had fallen asleep, he quietly drew his loose garments from him and bore them away as a witness against him when he should wake. My Lord is liable to come at any moment. He may come in the second watch or in the third watch, therefore I must be always ready, lest coming suddenly, he find me sleeping, and I be stripped of my garment."

"Do you know what questioning and controversies the Jews have kept up over Zech. xii: 10?" he asked one day. "'They shall look upon Me whom they have pierced.' They will not admit that it is Jehovah whom they have pierced. Hence the dispute about the whom. But do you notice that this word is simply the first and last letters of the Hebrew Alphabet, Alev Tav? Do you wonder then, that I was filled with awe and astonishment when I opened to Rev. i : 7, 8, and read these words of Zechariah, now quoted by John, 'Behold, He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him, and they also that pierced Him;' and then heard the glorified Lord saying, 'I am the ALPHA AND OMEGA!' Jesus seemed to say to me, 1 Do you doubt who it is whom you pierced? I am the Aleph and Tav, the Alpha and Omega, Jehovah the Almighty. '"

Rabinowitz is as clear as is Paul in the eleventh of Romans as to the divine order and plan for bringing the nations to God. After the present Gentile election and outgathering, he holds that the Jews are to be converted and restored to God's favor in connection with the second advent of our Lord, and that then will follow worldwide salvation and the universal ingathering of the Gentiles. He is very positive, therefore, as to the meaning of the passage in the fifteenth of Acts. "Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His name." "That is what is going on now," he 9ays. "During Israel'9 rejection the elect church is being gathered." "After this I will return and build again the tabernacle of David that is fallen down," etc. "This is very plainly the conversion and restoration of Israel," he says. And when I urged that many spiritualize the words and apply them to the Christian Church, he replied, "It will not be easy to make a Jew believe that, when the words in Amos, which are here quoted, plainly refer to the restoration of Israel; and especially since the Jews have been praying this prayer from time immemorial, always repeating it at the yearly Feast of Tabernacles: 'O Thou Redeemer, prosper those who seek Thee at all times; raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, that it may no longer be degraded.'"

"After the tabernacle of David shall be rebuilt, and national Israel saved, "he continues, 1' then, and then only, will come the times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord, in which all nations will be brought into obedience and subjection to Christ." Such is his strong conviction, and the reader may find that he agrees with Peter in Acts iii: 19, 20, and with Paul in Rom. xi.

Indeed, this Hebrew prophet is proclaiming most solemnly the impending advent of our Lord. He contends that without a clear proclamation of the second advent, Christians have no common ground on which to meet the Jews; that to spiritualize this doctrine, as many do, is fatal, since the predictions are so clear of a glorious and conquering Messiah as well as a suffering Messiah. If you spiritualize the second advent, you must allow the Jew to spiritualize the first, as he is always ready to do, and you have no basis on which to reason with him. Nothing could be more thrilling and pathetic than to hear this latter-day prophet of Israel dilate on the blessedness and glory of his nation when it shall at last be brought back into favor and fellowship with God. ''The Gentile nations cannot come to their highest blessing till then," he says, "nor can our rejected and crucified Messiah see the travail of His soul and be satisfied until His kinsmen according to the flesh shall own and accept Him." Then, with dramatic fervor and pathos impossible to describe, he said the following beautiful thing: "Jesus, the glorified Head of the Church, is making up His body now, my brother. Think you that my nation will have no place in that body? Yes, the last and most sacred place. When from India's and China's millions, and from the innumerable multitudes of Africa and the islands of the sea, the last Gentile shall have been brought in, and His body made complete, there will still be left a place for little Israel—she will fill up the hole in His side, that wound which can never be closed till the nation that made it is saved."

Many other sayings of this remarkable man might be quoted bad we space to insert them. He declares most confidently that the Spirit is moving on his people as has not been the case since the dispersion. He is full of joy at the prospect of their speedy turning to the Lord. Emphatically he preaches that there is no hope but in the crucified Messiah. He must be received; His blood must cleanse; His mercy must be gained before the Jewish nation can ever have rest. In one of his sermons he compares Israel to a little ship which has witnessed the wreck of many a proud craft—Assyria, Babylon, Greece and Rome—while this is the one nation that is never to perish, because of the unchanging covenant of Jehovah. He says:

"Centuries ago it was wrecked, and broken were its masts, but up to the present day it sails among modern nations—a strange, weird-like ship. Its mariners are often in despair when the waves seem to swallow up their fragile vessel; many from among Israel seem to join other ships, and find a home there, and try to partake of the treasures of culture and modern development that adorn them. But soon the men of other nations rise against the mysterious strangers from the old Oriental ship, and, not willing to tolerate them, fling them back into the waves, so that with difficulty and trepidation they return to the old wreck, on which the tears of their fathers have fallen abundantly. The storm rages, the clouds are dark, the hearts of the mariners fail them; they cry out, 'Lord, save us, we perish! But the hour is coming when He who long ago rose in the little ship on the Sea of Galilee shall rise in the midst of" them; He shall rebuke the winds and the waves—it will become perfectly still, and some shall sink down before His feet with the cry of Thomas, 'My Lord and my God!' and immediately Israel will be in the haven of rest, which remaineth for the chosen people of God."

It would not be possible to put on paper Rabinowitz's fervid and dramatic exposition of Christ's farewell to the temple: "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate; and verily I say unto you, Ye shall not see Me until the time comes when you shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord!" He pictured a Jew sitting in the door of his lonely house in the evening. Suddenly he catches a sight of a beloved and long separated friend approaching. He rises up and shouts out his salutation to him: "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." So shall Israel do when the spirit of grace and of supplication has been poured upon them; and they shall see Him whom they pierced coming to them. As they once cried, "Crucify Him! crucify Him!" now the cry, "Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord!"

So when, on parting, I asked for his autograph, he wrote this in Hebrew as his farewell word: " Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord."