A Light to the Nations 3

My friend Richard Gibson has written this review of a biography of Ridley Hershell, one of the figures mentioned in my first LttN post.

All Love: A Biography of Ridley Herschell
By Geoffrey Henderson
Publisher: HTS Media, 2006
Available from CWI Bookroom, 166 Main Road, Sundridge, Sevenoaks, Kent, TN14 6EL, 01959 565955 ,here
£8.50 (including post & packaging within the UK)
199 Pages

All Love takes us to an almost forgotten yesteryear and to the story of an almost forgotten Jewish Christian giant, Ridley Haim Herschell, who was born to Orthodox Jewish parents in Strzelno, Poland in 1807. By the age of eleven, when he left home to study at a Yeshiva for two years, Haim was already fluent in Hebrew, German and Polish. At the age of fourteen, he studied Kabbalah for two years with his Hasidic relative Rabbi Aaron in Piotrkow Trybunalski. A year later, wanting to feed his mind even more, Haim went to study German literature in Berlin where, amongst other young doubters, who were losing their Protestant and Catholic faiths, Haim lost his faith in Judaism. In the years that followed, he dramatically strayed from the ways of his ancestors but, while living in Paris, through circumstances that are explained fully in the book, he was drawn back to his Judaic faith. In London he found to his astonishment that the Messiah promised to his people was none other than Jesus of Nazareth.

Ridley, as he was known by then, became involved with the charismatic son of Rabbi, Erasmus Haim Simon, and a number of other Jewish Christians in establishing the short-lived National Hebrew Church in London. Lacking the ability to understand the aspirations of these Jewish Christians, the Bishop of London withdrew his support from the Friends of the Hebrew Nation, which was the group seeking to establish a National Hebrew Church, thus almost extinguishing the dreams of a National Hebrew Church, the first gasping breath of a nascent Messianic Jewish movement.

Young Ridley Haim certainly travelled a bit and his wanderings didn't stop after his marriage to Helen Mowbray. However, the engagement of a Jewish man to an aristocratic English lady caused quite a stir. Attempts were made to blacken Herschell's character to the point that serious doubt was cast on whether he was truly a Christian. All this happened with the undercurrent of anti-Semitism in a Britain where Jews did not yet have full rights as citizens.

In forty one short chapters, Geoffrey Henderson manages to capture a staggering amount of detail about Herschell's colourful and varied life. Henderson's insights into nineteenth century Jewish life and culture and Jewish attitudes to Christianity are invaluable. His style is absorbing and easy to read, transporting us back in time and enabling us to enter into the pain of Herschell's family, who thought he had apostatized and become an idolater. We rejoice to hear how his brothers, too, came to faith and that three of them also became ministers of the gospel. In spite of the obstacles he had to overcome, Ridley became a well-known, respected non-conformist minister and was amongst the founders of The Evangelical Alliance and The British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel amongst the Jews, now Christian Witness to Israel.

All Love is written with imagination that will inspire the reader and excite the believer at what God can and will do with a life lived for Him.

Reviewed by Richard Gibson

A Light to the Nations 2

The sentiments in my previous post would probably not come as a surprise to Sydney evangelical Don Robinson. He is a rare breed: a conservative evangelical theologian (a Moore College lecturer, no less) who has a high view of God's continuing purposes for ethnic Israel, whilst steering clear of dispensationalism. His chapter on "Jew & Gentile in the New Testament" in his book "Faith's Framework" (available here ) was very influential in my thinking.
It is a well-written, coherent and convincing argument AGAINST the prevailing view of "supersessionism", most popularly expressed in terms that the church is the "New Israel" - a view which seems most widely propagated in Bible overview books and courses. I am convinced that this view is potentially damaging to the cause of Jewish mission, will (at least in its more extreme forms) be perceived as antisemitic by non-believing Jewish people (see here and here; I am NOT implying that all those who hold to a "New Israel" view are anti-Semites, nor that they do not support Jewish mission); and, most importantly, lacks clear Biblical support. Robinson's refreshing view to the contrary deserves a wide readership.

A Light to the Nations 1

I love this list of Messianic Jews and Hebrew Christians. It's a moving and impressive list of names. Of particular interest are those who have made an impact on the wider church and who have fulfilled their God-given calling to be a light to the nations: including Ridley Herschell, the founder of the UK evangelical alliance; Samuel Schereschewsky, who translated the OT into Mandarin for the first time; Bernard Bettelheim, first person to translate parts of the Bible into Chinese & Japanese; Martin Goldsmith, modern missions leader; and Mark Greene, author of Thank God it's Monday. These people are living proof that God has not rejected his people, and that his gifts and calling to them are irrevocable.

I can't help wondering though, with a touch of sadness, where their descendants are. Have they lost all Jewish distinctives and melted into the wider church, thus losing any effective testimony to their own people? Or, worse, have they fallen away from the faith altogether, thus being lost both to the Jewish people and to the church? And would they have been helped if, in their day, their had been a vibrant, authentically Biblical and authentically Jewish expression of the gospel? (All of those adverbs and adjectives are important!) I'll try to answer that question, and discuss what that might look like, in future posts.