JEWS, CONVERSION OF

Some years ago, a clergyman of the Church of England attended an early-morning prayer meeting in behalf of Israel in an East London Jewish mission. Coming out on the street, he met another clergyman, who had attended a special service at St. Paul’s Cathedral on the anniversary of the conversion of the apostle Paul. After greeting each other, the second minister asked the other where he had been. He told him he had attended a Jewish mission meeting, upon which the second minister showed some surprise that his friend should believe in the possibility of Jews coming to faith. The minister who had attended the mission service asked the other where he had been and was told that he had attended a special service in honor of St. Paul at the cathedral bearing his name.

The clergyman who had attended the Jewish service asked, “Who exactly was Paul?”

The hesitating reply was, “I suppose you would consider him a believing Jew.”

“What music did they have at the service?”

“Why, Mendelssohn’s St. Paul, of course.”

“Who was Mendelssohn?”

“Why, a German.”

“No, he was not, he was a believing Jew,” was the reply.

The clergyman who did not seem to believe in the possibility of Jews coming to faith had been in a church dedicated to the memory of a Jewish believer, attending a service in honor of this Jew’s acceptance of the Messiah, had been listening to music composed by a Jewish believer, and was talking to a fellow clergyman—who was the Rev. Aaron Bernstein, a believing Jew.720

At a meeting of the Hebrew Christian Alliance of America, over 90 percent attending said they were aroused to consider the claims of Christ because some Gentile Christian had showed them love.721

In discussing the conversion of Jews, C. S. Lewis once said, “In a sense, the converted Jew is the only normal human being in the world.” He continued, “Everyone else is, from one point of view, a special case dealt with under emergency conditions.”

That is a way of stating the truth about Gentile conversion. God opened a “back door” and let us in as emergency cases. There are a lot of us, but we remain “grafted-in branches.”722