‘We Are Naming the Periodical Israel My Glory’

Celebrating 80 Years of Israel My Glory
This year we celebrate the 80th anniversary of this award-winning magazine. It was launched at a time when all the world was at war and Adolf Hitler was trying to exterminate every Jewish man, woman, and child in Europe. No one but God knew how World War II would end.

We can’t help but look back with awe at how He moved in the hearts of Christian businessmen in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who loved the Jewish people. They had already established The Friends of Israel Refugee Relief Committee and in 1942 founded Israel My Glory magazine. Here is a brief excerpt from the article that introduced Israel My Glory to the world during one of the darkest periods in Jewish history. It was written by Dr. Joseph Taylor Britan, a well-known Presbyterian minister and secretary of the 4-year-old organization that would later be renamed The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry.

‘We Are Naming the Periodical Israel My Glory’
The Friends of Israel Refugee Relief Committee, Inc., greets you with this first issue of a pamphlet or magazine, which we are naming Israel My Glory. We have found that by printing a pamphlet issued quarterly, we can reach our membership and friends more economically than in any other way. Letters to individuals are more direct and more personal but more expensive also, and your committee desires to reduce operating expenses. We ask our friends, to whom this quarterly comes, to accept it as a personal message from your committee.

We are naming the periodical Israel My Glory to call attention to the fact that God is not through with the Jewish people. He has promised that one day He will endow Israel with spiritual power and zeal and use this nation as powerful preachers when Christ comes to Earth to establish His Kingdom.

For 1,900 years the Jews have, as a nation, rejected Christ as their Messiah. One day they will accept Him. It is difficult, therefore, for us remembering their past history, to believe that God should ever call them His “glory.” But this He has done, and in naming our quarterly Israel My Glory, we desire to remind ourselves of God’s irrevocable promises to Israel and of His benevolent purpose in choosing them to be the human channel through which Christ should come and the channel also of future blessing to the world.

—Dr. Joseph Taylor Britan, secretary, Vol. 1, No. 1, December 1942