Authors:  Steve Schlissel and David Brown

Book Review by Ed Stevens

Steve Schlissel is the pastor of Messiah’s Christian Reformed Church in Brooklyn, New York. He is also editor of Messiah’s Mandate, a Reformed/reconstructionist publication. Schlissel felt that it was important to reprint the work of Dr. David Brown, entitled The Restoration of the Jews (1861), especially since the attack on Christian Reconstruction (C.R. for short) by Hal Lindsey in The Road to Holocaust (1989). If anyone could substantiate Lindsey’s claims of anti-Semitism being inherent in C.R., it is Schlissel, who is a Jewish believer as well as a reconstructionist!

Dr. Brown is probably best known for his contribution to the Jamieson, Faussett and Brown Commentary on the Bible. He also wrote: The Four Gospels (1864), and Christ’s Second Coming: Will it be Premillennial? (1882).

Schlissel opens the book with an examination and refutation of Lindsey’s arguments in Road to Holocaust, showing three major areas of “befuddlement”: law and grace, interpretation, and what a- and post-mills have in common. Lindsey has stated that C. R.’s interpretation of the N.T. makes the Church replace Israel. Schlissel points out that the O.T. Israel was the Church, and this same body was also the Church in the N.T. (with the exclusion of those Jews who rejected their Messiah, and the inclusion of believing Gentiles). “The major difference now is that Israel is no longer confined geographically or racially” (p. 23). He still maintains, however, that “there remains reserved for the future a certain fulfillment of the national elective promise. Israel in its racial capacity will again in the future be visited by the saving grace of God” (p. 23). quoted from Vos’ Biblical Theology).

Regarding the premillennial dispensational assertion of an “imminent, any moment” rapture, Schlissel shows that this was only a possibility (according to other premill/dispensational doctrines) beginning in 1948. Since it is required by their system that Israel be in “their” land prior to the tribulation, and the rapture would immediately precede the tribulation, a “state of Israel” had to be established before Christ could return!

Schlissel also demonstrates that Hal Lindsey’s attack on Christian Reconstruction was actually an attack on Reformed (Covenant) theology, since C. R. is merely the Reformed faith taken to its logical conclusion.

Interesting is Schlissel’s inclusion of a statement from Rabbi E. Schwartz of the Friends of Jerusalem (p. 28). In it, he says “only through complete repentance will the Almighty alone, without any human effort or intervention, redeem us from exile” (emphasis his). It may be thought that this statement was written prior to 1948, but it was published by the Rabbi in May 1988. “The true Jews,” he says, “remain faithful to Jewish belief and are untainted by Zionism” (emphasis his). Even if all claims to Palestine were surrendered, “we would be forbidden to accept it.” As Schlissel points out, if these statements were made by a reconstructionist, he would immediately be branded “anti-Semitic.” Although Schlissel maintains that repentance and turning to Christ are prerequisites to returning to the land, he attributes the fact that there are currently three and one-half million Jews in Palestine to the “Providence of God” (p. 29).

In examining Lindsey’s connection of Reconstruction with Hitler, Schlissel shows that Lindsey’s failure to distinguish between Lutheranism and Calvinism led to this “sensational (and irresponsible) image” (p. 31). This was perhaps, as Schlissel suggests, due to the fact that Lutheranism and dispensationalism have a similar dislike for Biblical Law. He demonstrates from history that it was the Reformed (Calvinist) countries that helped protect and further the rights of Jews. It was the Puritan Oliver Cromwell who allowed Jews to be readmitted to England in 1656 after they were expelled in 1290 during England’s Romanist period. The very doctrines that Lindsey claims will lead to another holocaust are those that were used to argue for the restoration of the Jews! Schlissel is rightly concerned that as dispensationalist’s hopes of an imminent coming of Christ and a speedy conversion of the Jews are found to be errant, anti-Semitism may arise from among their ranks, just as it did in the case of Martin Luther. It was Luther’s disappointed eschatological hopes that led to his anti-Semitic teachings in his latter years. “Thus, Dispensational Antinomian theology may actually be the single largest evangelical obstacle to fruitful Jewish missions today, and Reconstructionism its brightest hope” (p. 34).

One of Schlissel and Brown’s main contentions is that “the Jewish people, as a people, will turn in true faith to their Messiah, before His return...” and that the Jews “are unique covenantally, apologetically and eschatologically” (p. 38). While Schlissel is careful to say, “It is possible, as I have said, that the State of Israel, as it exists today, is, in fact, not the fulfillment of prophecy,” he affirms, “Those who (sometimes militantly) reject a blessed future for Israel, today see a political reality which should give their pens a pause and put their minds to work” (p. 41). He argues that the Jews have what he calls “preservational grace,” being sustained by God “as a people with a distinct identity,” in spite of their unbelief. They will, he says, be preserved until the day when they confess Jesus as Lord (a time, he says, which will immediately precede the Second Coming). Although we do not concur with his opinion regarding the timing of the parousia, we can certainly agree when he says our attitude toward the Jews should be “1) a sense of obligation, 2) sincere compassion, 3) the banishment of all ill feelings of contempt toward them, and 4) an earnest desire for their [spiritual] restoration” (p. 57, note).

The last three-quarters of the book is the reprint of Dr. Brown’s Restoration of the Jews. In order to demonstrate that the idea of the restoration of the Jews to Palestine was one of the historically held doctrines of the Christian church, Brown quotes from authorities from each period of church history: patristic, post-reformation, and the present (1860’s). One rather startling revelation is that, in the patristic era, both the pre- and anti-millennialists agreed that there would be no future territorial restoration of the Jews, but strictly a spiritual one! Certainly, every Christian should hope and pray for this. The premill fetish with the State of Israel today is Biblically unwarranted, demanding the acceptance of a Christ-rejecting nation as not only the fulfillment of prophecy, but one with a special blessing upon it! Another aspect of the millennialism of this period (often cited as “proof” that dispensationalism was a traditionally held position) is that the millennium with its restored Jerusalem was not to be inhabited by Israelites “after the flesh,” but by “all who should partake of the resurrection of the flesh” (i.e. the saints). “While differing widely in their conceptions of the future glory of the Church upon earth, they were at one in excluding the literal Israel from any distinctive standing or special promises under the Gospel” (p. 82). Similar to this position is that which was held in the post-Reformation period: “not one of the Reformers held, so far as known, the literal Restoration of the Jews [to the land]’’ (p. 83, emphasis his). Again, “in the first century of the Reformation, not one orthodox theologian appears to have held the Restoration of the Jews [to the land of Palestine], and some not to have looked even for a general Conversion of them (to Christ)....” During the later period following the Reformation, however (c. 1700’s), “it began to attract attention, and as the century advanced, divided the soundest and most accomplished divines” (p. 92). According to Brown, the change was due to the systematization of theology in the second century after the Reformation. In what Brown calls “the present period” (late 1700’s to 1800’s), the highlight seems to have been “investigation of prophecy, and more particularly the expectations which have been awakened respecting the Jews.” Many thought the events predicted in Revelation were coming to pass in the French revolution. Others saw the establishment of missionary societies as “the angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting Gospel to preach to them that dwell on the earth,” etc. and were indicative of preparations for the “last day.” The result was that “the multitude of treatises on prophetic subjects soon exceeded all precedent; and almost every such treatise... proceeded on the supposition that the time of their [the Jews’] general conversion was approaching, and that either before or after that event they would be restored to their father-land” (p. 93)

Brown advocated a restoration of the Jews to the land of Palestine, but clarified this position by disavowing that even “a shred of Judaism” would be restored (temple, sacrifices, priesthood, etc.). “I hold [that these things] have been all done away in Christ, never to be revived” (p. 97).

Dr. Brown includes two chapters of “concessions to those who deny the restoration of the Jews,” and follows these with “positive evidences.” The “concessions” he makes are: 1) “Wherever Jewish peculiarities occur in the prophetic pictures of Messiah’s kingdom, they are to be understood of the corresponding realities under the Gospel,” and 2) “The Gospel Church is not a different Church from that which existed before, but the same Church of God – formerly confined to the Jews, and now, under a new form, embracing all nations” (p. 113).

As for the “positive evidences for the territorial restoration” of the Jews to Palestine, Dr. Brown makes these assertions: 1) “The national conversion of the Israelitish people is explicitly predicted in the New Testament,” 2) “The New Testament sends us back to the Old, and specially to the terms of the Abrahamic covenant, as our primary warrant for expecting the recovery of ‘all Israel,’” 3) “The people and the land of Israel are so connected in numerous prophecies of the Old Testament, that whatever literality and perpetuity are ascribed to the one must, on all strict principles of interpretation, be attributed to the other also,” and 4) “The connection uniformly held forth in Scripture, in the case of the Jews, between defection and dispersion, and between reconciliation and restoration, constitutes strong ground for expecting that their final conversion will be accompanied by a final restoration to their fatherland” (emphasis his). He also argues at length that the “seed of Abraham” refers not only to Christ (as Paul asserts), but also to the physical descendants of Abraham.

In conclusion, both Schlissel and Brown contend for a future conversion and restoration to Palestine (based on that conversion). This contention, however, is based on the assumption that Jesus did not return during the generation in which He promised, so that there is prophecy yet unfulfilled. A failure to recognize that in the return from captivity in Babylon prophecy was fulfilled has led them to conclude (along with the dispensationalist) that there must be a still future “return to Israel” (which may include the 1948 founding of the present-day State of Israel). Dr. Brown seemed unable to make up his mind as to whether the Jews would be converted to Christ before or after they were to regain Palestine. His arguments in favor of a restoration to the literal land of Canaan do no justice to Paul’s statement in Rom. 4:13, that Abraham was not merely heir to Palestine, but to the world, which promise we are heirs of in Christ. This book would be helpful to those wondering what the postmillennial position is, and Schlissel’s comments on and refutations of the errors of Lindsey are worth noting.