The Chosen People | MAY 2019 5
The Shepherd of Israel—July/August 1939
(The following is an excerpt from a radio broadcast by Reverend
Coulson Shepherd, pastor of First Baptist Church, Atlantic City,
New Jersey):
And now I come to the message, which I hope will be helpful
to all listening, especially to you Jewish people. We are living
in an age when giving offense seems to be the order of the day.
The Bible says: “Give none offense, neither to the Jews, nor to the
Gentiles, nor to the church of God” (1 Corinthians 10:32).
God’s Word says, “Give NONE offense,” and yet offense is being
hurled at ALL these days, especially at the Jews.
We pity the ungodly Gentiles and the professing Christians
who are giving offense to the Jews. They are disobeying God,
and all who think and act contrary to God’s Word and will are
bound to suffer great loss. The Word of God cannot be broken.
Therefore, all offenders of Israel will be cursed. Sayeth the God
of Abraham, “I will curse him that curseth thee” (Genesis 12:3).
We have been showing all along in these talks that there is a
vast difference between Gentiles and Christians. One thing
that characterizes a Gentile is a hatred toward the Jewish
people. The opposite characterizes a Christian. So whenever
you meet or hear of a person who displays hatred toward the
covenant people of God, you can know that he is a Gentile and
not a true Christian, no matter what his religious profession is.
A true Christian is a believer and follower of the Christ of God
and, like his Savior, who was a Jew, has love in his heart for
those that Christ referred to as “My brethren after the flesh.”
I want to impress upon you this morning that even though
persecution against you on the part of Gentiles the world
over is on the increase, God is working it together for the
good of your nation. God is going to bring eternal good out
of the world-wave of anti-Semitism that is forming into an
international pogrom with the alleged purpose of driving the
Jew into racial suicide. But the Gentile of Jewish hate does not
know the Jew. He does not know that the Jew is an old veteran
in the business of surviving persecution. From Haman’s day
to Hitler’s, the Jew has been persecuted, but he is still here
and in far greater numbers and strength than ever before. The
persecution, which is now going on throughout the world, is
helping to solidify Jewish hopes and aspirations, to bring to
your minds the great heritage of Jewry, and, to a certain degree,
to remind you Jewish people of your place in the program of
God and of your place among the nations of the world.
The Chosen People—April 1943
INCIDENTS IN THE WORK
“What can we do?” Over and over again our friends are
asking us frantically the above question. Many of them have
been horror-struck and sickened at heart beyond their own
power to describe when they have been reading of the almost
unbelievable savageries to which the Jews in the Nazi-occupied
lands are being subjected. “It makes my heart sick to the very
core,” wrote one of our friends, “and I find myself driven to my
knees as I implore God to have mercy. But what else can
I do? It does seem that something can be done and something
should be done to stop this orgy of massacre and torture. Tell
me what to do and I will do it.”
And from the saddest depths of our heart we can only answer
the dear child of God, this is the most important thing you
can do—pray! And keep on praying, for God wants us to be
importunate in our prayer to Him on Israel’s behalf.
For the moment nothing material can be done; there is no
possible way to get money into the hands of these miserable
victims of demon hate; there is no way whereby we can rescue
even one family from the clutches of Hitler’s maw. But we can
leave Hitler and his horde to the hands of a just God. There
must be a day of reckoning for this unspeakable fury of hate
and brutality.
WHEN HITLER COLLAPSES
But, there is coming a day, and it may be sooner than now
looks possible, that Hitler will collapse, the Nazi regime will
come to its day of reckoning, the hordes of Satanic hate will
be driven into the rat holes from where they came; and in that
day literally millions of pitifully helpless Jews, men, women
and children, many of them perhaps stark mad with the insanity
of what they have been through, these will need such an
outpouring of Christian ministry and binding of wounds, that
the need can hardly be measured in dollars and cents. For that
day you can help us to store up the reserves we will be needing.
For the sake of crystalizing the matter, let us call a new fund
“Post-War Refugee Relief.”
This is the answer to the question, “What can we do?” What
prompted the writing of these lines was the receipt of a letter
telling us that the writer was enclosing a draft for $2,000 to
be used for just such a purpose as this, to help some Jewish
family who has been the victim of Nazi outrages, to bring such
a family to America, if possible, to reestablish them and give
them a chance to be human beings once more. This friend tells
us, “If you cannot do this job immediately, at least the time will
come when you can; so here is the money.”
We pass this on now to our devoted and faithful friends, who
are weeping with us on behalf of Israel, and who see eye-to-eye
with us as we face these staggering problems. We are here to
serve you and shall do all in our power to make every dollar
produce one hundred cents of results for the Lord.