# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1861_S384
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

384 Church and Contemporary Notices.

...spur them to emulation, so that they too will now convert to Christ. This is not meant to say, however, that no Jew can be converted before the time when all the Gentiles are converted. No, individuals have been converted to Christ, and individuals will also always, at every time, be converted to Christ; these are the ones called in the Bible "the remnant," or also "the election." So it is written, Romans 9:27: though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant shall be saved; and Romans 11:7: Israel seeks that which it does not obtain, but the election obtains it, and the rest are hardened. These are the individuals who at every time will be converted out of the Jews and enter into the Christian Church. But once the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, Israel as a whole will also still be converted. We accordingly also find that the holy apostle Paul, though Israel lay so intimately close to his heart, nevertheless everywhere he preached the Gospel always turned first to the Jews present in the place of preaching, in order to tell them that the Savior promised in the Old Testament had now come, and to invite them to enter the Christian Church through faith in him. But whenever they then rejected Christ, he would say every time: I now turn purely to the Gentiles — and thereafter never again addressed his preaching to them, but always found in them his bitterest enemies; for he knew that all his preaching would be of no help to them anyway. And it is exactly the same still today. Preaching to the Jewish people helps nothing; they are hardened, until the fullness of the Gentiles shall have come in. The individuals who come in before then do so of their own accord, since opportunity for it is offered to them everywhere as well. They live in the midst of Christendom, and the churches stand open to them. As a rule, however, they do not want to come; even where they live in a spiritually awakened and stirred congregation, all of it passes by them so entirely without a trace that not even their curiosity is aroused to ask what this might be! In this dreadful indifference toward Christianity, or in the bitterest enmity against Christianity, it becomes plainly clear that they are hardened. It is moreover well known that among a hundred individual conversions scarcely one is sincere. Whoever, then, is truly concerned for the conversion of Israel should turn with all his might to the conversion of the Gentiles. When the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, then Israel too will still come in, and then the end is at hand. The dreams, finally, of a return of the Jews to the promised land, of a rebuilding of Jerusalem, of a Jewish-Christian kingdom in Canaan as the center and head of all Christendom, are nothing more than dreams and are downright contrary to Holy Scripture. God preserve us from dreams and give us a sober and level-headed heart; may he give us that wholesome pride which knows, as its highest glory, as its highest honor and splendor, only this word: I am a Christian. Amen."

From the Bavarian Palatinate it is written to the Evangelical Church Gazette: "The ecclesiastical opponents sought to set a political trap for the believing pastors who zealously kept the new (believing) hymnal in use in their congregations, by, at the restoration of the old hymnal (permitted by the government), hanging up the portraits of the king and queen in the church on their own authority. When the local pastors then demanded the removal of these portraits again as unsuitable for Protestant worship, they were immediately charged with lese-majeste before the state authorities."

A Jewish Alliance has also been founded in July of last year by French Jews. Its purpose is to unite the Jews, to free them from the political yoke, to raise them up and place them on an equal footing with the Christian peoples, and, where possible, to lead them back into the land of Canaan as well. On May 30 of this year the Alliance held its first general assembly in Paris, at which Professor Petavel of Neuchâtel also appeared and presented a letter from Sir Culling Eardley, president of the Evangelical Alliance in England, inviting the members of the Jewish Alliance to take part in the great Evangelical Alliance at Geneva in September of this year, among other things with the words: "Why should we not join hands... we who have in the Old Testament a common foundation of faith?" The chairman of the Jewish Alliance gave thanks "for the sincere feelings of brotherly unity and love" and declared, in the name of the committee, that he accepted the invitation. This resolution was sealed with a veritable storm of applause.