TBC Extra - Epilogue from "Understanding Christian Zionism" by Paul Wilkinson

EPILOGUE

[As J. C. Ryle notes]: “God has many witnesses to the truth of the Bible, if men would only examine them and listen to their evidence. But you may depend on it, there is no witness so unanswerable as one who always keeps standing up, and living, and moving before the eyes of mankind. That witness is the Jew. . . . The inspired volume which you have in your hands supplies a full and complete explanation. Search it with an honest determination to put a literal meaning on its prophetical portions, and to reject traditional interpretation, and the difficulty will vanish away. . . . Cultivate the habit of reading prophecy with a single eye to the literal meaning of its proper names. Cast aside the traditional idea that Jacob, and Israel, and Judah, and Jerusalem, and Zion must always mean the Gentile Church, and that predictions about the second Advent are to be taken spiritually, and first Advent predictions literally. Be just, and honest, and fair. If you expect the Jews to take the 53rd of Isaiah literally, be sure you take the 54th and 60th and 62nd literally also.”

(J.C. Ryle, “And So All Israel Shall Be Saved,” in Are You Ready for the End of Time? [Fearn: 2001], pp. 150-57)