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Newsletter of the District of Asia July - December 2004 The
Jews have no Sacrifice Today
The Jews represent an amazing manifestation. They remind one of the Church itself in many respects. Like the Church, Judaism is persevering, indestructible, apparently destined to last till the end of the world. If we might venture to parody very sacred words," the gates of heaven have not prevailed against it". That is a doubly astonishing manifestation, because, Judaism, unlike so many of the great causes of the world, seems to have so little to recommend it. It is like something in the air, with no idea or purpose in it. It is leading to nothing. It really possesses no programme. It does not propose conquest. It does not try to convert. It is not a religious force in the world. It has got nothing to teach. It possesses no real spiritual life. In modern times it has been at best a mere ritual, and at worst it has not been even a deism. Much of it does not believe in God. The foregoing represents a sorrowful generalization. It does not upset it to point to the innumerable Jews who have signally distinguished themselves in every walk of life. An English paper has been running a series of articles on religion. Into the series of course has entered Judaism. But the article contains nothing whatever about beliefs or observances. It is nothing but an account of the prominence and the wealth of the Jews in England. To read it one would hardly believe that a religion was being discussed. So what is the meaning of it all, and can we do anything?
The central circumstance in Judaism is its non-acceptance of the fact that the due time of the Messiah has long passed, that is altogether apart from their rejection of Christ. Because the time declared in the prophecies, as acknowledged by themselves, coincided with the birth of Jesus. That was the time indicated in the prophecy of Daniel. You will remember that most picturesque episode of the journeying of the three Magi to Jerusalem in search of Him whom they said was the new-born King. They had come there led by a star. When they drew near Jerusalem, the star extinguished itself and so they expected that they had reached their journey's end. They went to the King's Palace, but they found no new-born king there. They found in possession of that edifice a very sinister old ruffian, Herod. Herod heard their story with apprehension. Then he sent for the Sanhedrim, or Council of the Priests and the learned men, and he put to them the question: “When was the Christ expected according to prophecy?" The answer came pat to him that the time was about now. And where is the place? The place is Bethlehem. Those were the circumstances portrayed by the prophecies. That knowledge was current among the Jews. It was their experts, not persons belonging to another religion, who had worked out that time. Another significant prophecy had just been fulfilled. It was the one, which declared that the Messiah would come when the scepter had departed from Judah. This event had accomplished itself: Rome had conquered Israel. Another great prophecy—Our Lord's this time and as such not accepted by the Jews — was soon to be justified. It was His prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem. You will remember His words of sorrow as He looked down over the city. That calamity took place in the year 70 of Our Lord's era, that is not very long after His own death. One item of the capture of Jerusalem was the destruction of the Temple.
We must discuss the Temple because it is vital to our consideration
of the whole question of the Jews. After the promulgation of the
Old Law at Mount Sinai, Moses erected what was called the Tabernacle.
As the name indicates, it was a tent-like structure, which could
be dismantled and moved, and actually it accompanied the Israelites
in their amazing wanderings in the desert. They continued to use
that particular structure until David took Jerusalem. Then his last
act was to erect an altar in the threshing hall of Araunah and there
the sacrifice was celebrated and the holy rites gone through
The Jews had always been an emigrating people. Moreover they had
gone through several great captivities such as those of Egypt and
Babylon. Those had left settlements of the Jews abroad. Many of
the Jews, too, left home for business reasons. Thus the position
at the time of the sacking of Jerusalem was that all the foreign
cities, and in fact almost every place, had its little community
of Jews. So that when this dreadful event of the year 70 took place,
in which one million Jews were massacred, the survivors flying abroad
found it not so difficult to establish new homes. For everywhere
their co-religionists stretched out welcoming, hospitable hands
to them and helped them to settle in Eventually it was realized that the restoration was afar. But hope died hard. We read that up to mediaeval times the Jew at the stroke of midnight arose, seated himself on the floor, put ashes on his head, bewailed the Temple which had been destroyed fifteen hundred years before, and prayed for the speedy coming of the Messiah.
Nowadays, due of course to many circumstances including the awful tribulations through which that race has gone, a gaping void divides the ancient from the modern Jew. Some Jewish writers say that the Jew is forced to remind himself that the present Jews are the same as those he reads of in the Old Testament. That void was never destined to be bridged. The Temple was never destined to be re-built; the sacrifice never to be restored. In
other words the Christian contention worked out in practice. That
is, when the Messiah came He fulfilled all the prophecies. He completed
the Old Law and abrogated it, ushering in the New Law and the new
doctrine. In spite of themselves the Jews were forced by circumstances
to conform to this new Order.
Three hundred years after, an attempt was made to rebuild the Temple. Strange to say, this did not proceed primarily from the Jews themselves but from the Emperor Julian, successor to the Emperor Constantine who had transformed the Roman Empire into being Christian. Julian is sadly known as Julian the apostate. He deserted Christianity and attempted to restore the old pagan forms of worship in the Empire. As one of his counterblasts to the Christianity he hated, he ordered the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem. But a most extraordinary set of phenomena began to operate there. Explosions and other portents made the work impossible. When it finally became evident that these were going to continue as long as the attempt continued, the enterprise abandoned and was never renewed. Not even in Israel to-day! Now they can do it if they want, but apparently have no idea of it. The Temple is ended. The sacrifice is gone for good. The supreme importance of this does not seem to be generally realized, not even by the Jews themselves. Yet it is the dominant and decisive fact. For it is a silent, solemn admission that Christianity has superseded the Old Law; that it has terminated the old Jewish religion. Without understanding those things, without accepting Christ, the Jews are nevertheless submitting to the logical consequences. They are not attempting to renew their old religion. The Temple and its sacrifice represented the primary idea in the Old Law. Everything tended to it as to a junction and depended on it. It represented the casting forward of their minds through the weary ages of waiting for that coming Messiah who was to operate salvation. Their faith in that atonement meant the setting of it at work in their own days. Through the sacrifice of the Temple their faith thus ministered salvation to them. In other words the Sacrifice applied the merits of Christ to their souls as the Mass applies them to ours. But of course the sacrifice was only a shadow or substitute for the Sacrifice of the Cross whereas the Mass is one with Calvary, representing the substantial planting of that Sacrifice in our days. As the Messiah was the future hope of their race, so the daily sacrifice was the fixing of that hope in their hearts and the gaining of the benefit of it in advance of the actual Redemption. It was the pivot of the Faith of the Jews. Taken away, everything else would fall asunder and lose its meaning. To judge as to the effect, perhaps the nearest example would be the case of our own Eucharist and Mass. Imagine these totally abolished. The Catholic system would be radically altered into being a different thing altogether from what it is — in fact into Protestantism.
Perhaps an objection may occur to minds: Has not the Mass been suspended at times in many countries? Yes, but only suspended. Like the sun that sets only to rise again! And even when the Mass was stopped by force in one place, it was going on in other places. These circumstances do not apply in the case of the Jews. There was no question of a mere local or temporary abolition. The sacrifice was gone! But for long years the Jews hoped that it was only a case of suspension. Some of the Old Testament prophecies which seem to us to apply so plainly to the past, they kept applying to the future, deriving false hope from them. A point which comes to one's mind is: Why did they not make do in some other centre? We know that we would. Some of you went off to Rome on a pilgrimage a while ago and on the way Mass was celebrated in a huge railway station. The conditions were primitive, but nonetheless it was the Mass. Why, we might think, should the Jews confine the idea of the sacrifice to Jerusalem, and why to the Temple? The Bible prescribed (Deuteronomy XI, 5) that the sacrifice be offered in the place which God would choose. Could not this be held to designate any place which would be the existing headquarters of Judaism? As we have seen, the sacrifice was offered for a very long time outside Jerusalem, that is in the traveling Tabernacle constructed by Moses. Could not the sacrifice be offered without any building or in a stadium — just as we are told that David offered it in that threshing hall? In the wide movements of the dispersed Jewish people, various places have had great numbers of them. At one time Spain. At another Poland. To-day the United States of America is probably the greatest abode of the Jewish people. Why is it that they do not offer the sacrifice in Madison Park Gardens, the scene of the triumphs of Billy Graham and Ronald Delany? No, they never took any such obvious step although absolutely every consideration would seem to call for it. For nearly two thousand years they have had their eyes riveted on the mirage! They were waiting for the great return to Jerusalem when they would rebuild the Temple and reconstitute their ritual in all its pomp and detail.
And that day did come: The return to the homeland. Israel was founded. The Jewish people once more had a locality which they could call their very own. They had taken their place among the free nations of the earth once again. Now is the opportunity! Now is the sacrifice to be renewed! But once again—No. For we are presented with the startling fact that quite a number of years of that nationhood have already elapsed and that they have not attempted to rebuild the Temple. Apparently they have not even thought of it, nor of continuing the sacrifice that formed the main ingredient," the pillar and the ground" of their faith. It seems to be accepted by them and by everybody else that the sacrifice is gone. It is important for all to remember that there is an utter difference between the Temple and a synagogue. There was only one Temple, but every little place in the Jewish world has its synagogue. There is likewise a complete difference between what took place in the Temple and what took place and takes place in the synagogues. The former was the place of the great sacrifice. The synagogue is a prayer meeting place. Why has Israel not restored the Temple and the dread rite of the sacrifice that it housed? It is because they have recognised in their hearts and in spite of themselves that something fatal for them took place in the moment when Jesus Christ died. Without realizing it, they are confessing that when He was immolated, the purpose of the blood sacrifices of the Old Law died with Him. They acknowledge this by their deeds, though they will not acknowledge it by their lips. The sacrifice is abandoned. The old Jewish religion is definitely voided. The Jews have something else in its place masquerading under its name.
But perhaps it will be argued that there is time enough? Israel is young! It has not fully organized itself yet! Give them a 'chance'. Perhaps they have plans for a Temple in some architect's office. Perhaps they will put into force at some future date those elaborate plans of the Rabbi Ishmael for the resumption of the sacrifice and the rest of the ritual! Is there anything to be said for that argument? No, because now it will not be possible to restore the sacrifice as it was. That sacrifice was the immolation of animals to God, the shedding of their blood in offering and the burning of their flesh. That is not possible to-day in Israel or in Madison Park Gardens or anywhere else. Why? Because public opinion would not allow such things today. It was appropriate to an age of different mentality, and God built on that. Nowadays He builds on a radically changed mentality, with the amazing consequence that the door has now been shut and locked on the old Temple and what took place in it. The real Jewish Religion is not restorable. That is the supreme fact which must be brought home to Jews, so that they cannot ignore it, so that they cannot escape from it by forgetting it.
Therefore we must propose it to the Jews with all the simple directness
of a slogan: The Jewish people have no sacrifice today, and they
are never again going to have one until they accept the truth that
the Old Law ended tragically but fruitfully on Calvary; and that
the New Law with its Sacrifice was the orderly and greater growth.
In Christianity lies the logical fulfillment of their old religion. If logic were to have its rights, the Jews would become Christian, because their present stand is not logically tenable. But in the way of that logic stands a force which is still greater. It is Prejudice. Prejudice is the unconditional surrender of the mind to peremptory ideas. The Jews believe that they have been and are the victims of injustice throughout the ages. Their own history books would have us believe that they have been treated with unvarying and insane savagery. Of course that is a gross exaggeration — apart from which the Jews themselves have shown a capacity for cruelty — but unhappily there is a basis for it. And we have not done so much to undermine that foundation of their prejudice. It is no matter of ancient history but of our own time that half the Jews of Central Europe were exterminated in circumstances of extreme horror. Anti-Semitism to-day is too common, so that there is no use in proposing that slogan of ours to the Jews except we put a twin-idea along with it. That twin-idea is Christian love. We must love them, because of their very need if there were no other reason, and we must prove that love beyond question. We must deal with them on that footing. We must repress those unworthy behaviors that fill so many Jewish hearts with fear. In all countries there are many Jews who live in a state of apprehension. They are always fearing that the turning over of the next page of history is going to show a repetition of what took place in past pages. Maria Legionis, Vol. 13. No. 3, Sept-Nov., 1960, pp. 1-5 |