the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; and shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the latter days." Here is a glorious promise. "In the latter days" the "children of Israel shall return and seek their God." This implies they have rejected Him. If these are the "latter days," as I have already proven to you, then we ought to begin now to see this work in its incipiency. They will seek their God in the person of His Son, whom they have refused to acknowledge. This text makes this explicit. They are to "seek their God and David their king." David their king is our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Son of David. He is to sit on the throne of His father forever. And His people are to return to Him in the last days and fear the Lord and His goodness. This is the glorious restoration foretold of His people.

LECTURE IX

RESTORATION OF THE JEWS

Query: What interest have we in the Jews? The Jew blinded in part. Figurative interpretation of many prophecies erroneous. Promises of restoration to their own land. (a) Out of all countries. b) Bring them into Palestine. (c) An everlasting covenant with them. (d) Plant them in this land, even Jerusalem. Bring them from the West. Made one nation. David shall be their King forever. Gathered from the four corners of the earth.

HOSEA 3:5: "Afterward shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; and shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the latter days."

The query may arise, why should a lecture be delivered in regard to the Jews? Why are we interested in them? What advantage are they to us? The apostle Paul would have answered, "Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God." Romans 3:2 and 9:4: "to whom pertaineth the adoption and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen." Thus we see all our religious knowledge has come through the Jew. When we quote a passage of Scripture, it is the word of a Jew. The precious oracles of God were sent us through his mediation. All the glorious doctrines of truth, the adoption as children

of God into the family of God, and the glory to be revealed, and the covenants on which our salvation is founded, and the law, and the service, or worship of God, and all the glorious promises, have come to us through the Jews. All the fathers or patriarchs were Jews. And then above all, the most glorious thing mentioned is, that our Lord Jesus Christ Himself was a Jew. It is strikingly marvelous that people professing to love our Lord should hold the Hebrew in derision as many of them do. Is not the Jew according to the flesh dear to our Savior? Does He not love His own race? Is He not holding this people separate from the rest of the human family for some grand purpose in the future? Are they not beloved even now for the sake of their fathers, with whom covenants were made to continue to all time? God has not forgotten them, though they have forgotten Him. They are under a cloud now, because they are ignorant of their Messiah and have rejected Him as their king. But notwithstanding this, they are still held by some invisible power from utter destruction and kept distinct from other nations for some great end. God has a grand scheme for the redemption of His ancient people. In Romans 11:15, Paul, arguing with regard to his own race, says: "For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?" In the rejection of the Jew through unbelief the wrath of God did not burn against all the rest of the world; but His mercy was great enough to gather in the Gentile nations. Now when God receives back His

ancient people, what shall result therefrom? Paul says, "life from the dead." Yes, when they are restored to the favor of God I verily believe it will be the salvation of the whole world. For Paul continues: "If they abide not still in unbelief," they "shall be graffed in: for God is able to graff them in again,” II:23. Then when they give up their unbelief they will return to the Lord; and this will be an earnest of "life from the dead" to all nations. The interest which all God's people should take in His ancient Israel is shown by the fact that our Master Himself told the woman of Samaria, “Salvation is of the Jews." I wish here to enter my dissent to the figurative interpretation of many of the prophecies. Some inen give a significance to passages of Scripture which utterly changes their meaning. I do not intend to say that there are no figures of speech in the Bible; on the contrary, there are many. But it is the province of the wise interpreter to discriminate and point out what is figurative and what is literal. I cannot do better in this connection than quote from Mr. David Barron, a converted Jew, in his excellent work, "The Jewish Problem."

"There are several methods of interpretation which seem alike unsatisfactory, and are perhaps responsible for a great deal of Jewish and Gentile unbelief. There is, first of all, the old-fashioned way of so-called spiritualizing the prophecies, making Israel and Zion to mean the church, and the land to signify heaven; but I confess this system of interpretation has no consistency about it, and makes the Word of God the

most meaningless and unintelligible book in the world. For instance, it says here, Jeremiah 31:38-40: 'I will bring again the captivity of My people Israel and Judah and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers.' If Israelbe the church, who is Judah? If Judah be the church, who is Israel? and which the captivity the church has endured? and where is the land from which the church has been driven out, and to which it will return? At the end of the prophecy we read: 'Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that the city shall be built to the Lord from the tower of Hananeel unto the gate of the corner. And the measuring line shall yet go forth over against it upon the hill Gareb, and shall compass about to Goath. And the whole valley of the dead bodies, and of the ashes, and all the fields unto the brook Kidron, unto the corner of the horse gate toward the east, shall be holy unto the Lord; it shall not be plucked up, nor thrown down any more forever.'

"Now, in what particular locality in heaven are the tower of Hananeel, and the corner gate? And what will our allegorical interpretation make of the hill Gareb, and Goath, and the brook Kidron?

"Now all these are known to me in the environs of the literal Jerusalem in Canaan, but I confess some difficulty in locating them in heavenly places. If Israel does not mean Israel, and 'the land God gave to the fathers' does not mean Palestine, then I do not know what it means. The announcement is: 'He that scattereth Israel will gather him.'