From the Editor May/Jun 2015

Dear Friends,

Many years ago I had a wonderful friend who truly loved Jewish people. She was a devout Christian who had come to Christ later in life from a Greek Orthodox background and loved the Lord so much she cried when telling people how He had saved her—and she told them regularly.

She always handed out tracts and shared her faith, particularly with Jewish people because she cared so much about them.

I think she believed most Christians loved Jews the way she did. After all, she was going to heaven because she had placed her faith in the Jewish Messiah. That fact alone gave her tremendous love for God’s Chosen People.

So whenever she would meet someone Jewish, she would explain how blessed he or she was to be Jewish—which I agreed with. Then she would say she was a “spiritual Jew” through Abraham because she had placed her faith in Jesus. Oy vey!

“Theresa,” I told her, “you can’t say that. Being a Christian does not make you Jewish, spiritual or otherwise. The only people who are Jewish are the physical descendants of Jacob.”

But she was having none of it. She knew she was like a wild olive branch grafted into a Jewish tree because of faith (Rom. 11:16–17), and she wanted to be Jewish badly because she loved the Jewish people deeply.

Theresa is with the Lord now, and I miss her. I wish God would give this evil, anti-Semitic world millions more like her.

And I can understand her mistake. Abraham is considered the father of those who have placed their faith in God alone. If you trust in your good deeds to expunge your sins, you are trusting in yourself, not in God. The prophet Isaiah called good deeds “Filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6).

It’s not that God doesn’t want us to do good; He just doesn’t want us to think doing good deeds will make us righteous. They didn’t make Abraham righteous, and they won’t make us righteous either.

You could spend every day of your life for 100 years serving in a religious capacity and still end up in the Lake of Fire. Salvation is divinely bestowed and involves a personal relationship with God as a result of faith. If you have that relationship, you are a spiritual child of Abraham—whether you’re Jewish or Gentile.

This issue of Israel My Glory is devoted to Abraham, the patriarch of Jews and Christians alike because of his great faith in Almighty God. Enjoy!

Waiting for His Appearing,
Lorna Simcox
Editor-in-Chief