I’m minded to say this book ought to be compulsory reading for anyone with even half a serious interest in world mission. It charts the extraordinary story, with quite a few eccentric detours, of post-Reformation readers of Scripture rediscovering God’s burden that Jewish people might hear and believe the gospel.
These particular readers were in Scotland. Many of the names who intersect the story are more than familiar to us who appreciate evangelical church history: Simeon, Rutherford, Carey, Edwards, Brainard, all get name-checked, and many more, including Wilberforce, Whitefield, and Newton. A dazzling array of citations and research shows how Bible reading, moving to prayerful concern, and on to missionary endeavour produced, and no doubt still produces, extraordinary results. A quarter of a million Jewish people were baptised between 1838 and 1852.
This happened when Jews were not seen as beyond salvation, or consigned to the past, or as some exceptional people reserved for some future at the precipice of redemption history. Instead, they were seen as souls, locked in darkness and needing Christ’s light today. It’s the basic precept of any missionary burden, and it’s predicated on this initial impetus as written for us in Romans 1:16: the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to any who believe… to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
However, this book isn’t a tract or an attempt at a theology of mission to the Jews but rather a fascinating and stirring case study written for a PhD by John Ross. For many years, John was the General Secretary of Christian Witness to Israel (now the International Mission to Jewish People). It is academic, but in no way detached from extensive personal involvement. Joel Beeke agrees, if that sways you to buy it and not leave it as another great unread title on your impressively stocked shelves.
