OUR BELIEFS

The Holy Scriptures as taught by the Protestant churches, and delineated in the historic confessions of the Reformation, namely:

• The Belgic Confession (1561)

• The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England (1562)

• The Heidelberg Catechism (1562)

• The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647)

• The Savoy Declaration (1658)

• The Baptist Confession of Faith (1689)
  

The above may be said to be briefly summarised as follows…

BY GRACE ALONE

The sole exercise of the grace of the triune God in salvation through faith.

BY FAITH ALONE

The sole sufficiency of faith in our union with Christ and for participation in all the benefits of redemption.

BY SCRIPTURE ALONE

The sole authority of the Word of God being the only rule of faith and life.

• We believe and teach that the Creator is one God in three Persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, who is the covenant God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

• We believe and teach that God created all people in his own image. By wilful disobedience against God human beings fell into the sin and misery in which we all have been born. Therefore Jews and Gentiles alike are under the condemnation of God, prone to evil and liable to eternal death; from which we cannot be delivered except through the unmerited grace of God our Saviour.

• We believe and teach that God has not left the world to perish in its sin but, out of his great love, decided to deliver an innumerable multitude of Jews and Gentiles out of their sin and misery and of them to build again his covenant kingdom of righteousness.

• We believe and teach that God has redeemed his people through the promised Messiah, Jesus our Lord who, though he was and ever continues to be the eternal Son of God, was born of the lineage of David, born under the law, that he might redeem them that are under the law. He bore the penalty due to our sins and fulfilled the obedience owed to God, fulfilling the way of salvation revealed to Israel in the law of Moses and the prophets, and now presents believers to his Father, to the praise of the glory of his grace.

• We believe and teach that Jesus the Messiah our Redeemer died, rose again, and ascended into the heavens, where he sits at the right hand of the Father Almighty, ruling the kingdom of God as God’s anointed king, and all things in heaven and earth.

• We believe and teach that the redemption accomplished by our Lord Jesus the Messiah is applied to all his people by the Holy Spirit and received by faith. The Spirit is granted to us so that we may do the good works which God has prepared for us to do. Life in Messiah Jesus does not entail the loss of national identity or those cultural distinctives not in conflict with the gospel.

• We believe and teach that God has one redeemed people in the world, his Church, his people of the New Covenant, made up of believing Jews and Gentiles. He has endowed it with the ministry of the Word and his holy ordinances, in order that the Gospel may be made known to the world.

• We believe and teach that because of the promises made to Abraham, Israel remains a covenant people, despite their disobedience and the obsolescence of the Mosaic covenant. The gifts and the calling of God are not withdrawn, having the hope of the salvation of both a remnant and a fullness of Israel.

• We believe and teach that Jesus the Messiah will come a second time in glory, to judge the world. All who die in Messiah shall be made perfect in holiness and go home to the Lord; all who do not die in Messiah shall consciously abide under the just and eternal wrath of God.

In the early nineteenth century, meetings were held in London and Scotland to discuss what should be done to reach the Jewish people with the gospel. As those assembled took the Word of God seriously, they acknowledged that Jewish people needed to hear the gospel and be saved.

As a result, a meeting was held in the National Scotch Church, Regent Square, London on 7th November 1842 to form the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews. Those present included the famous Scottish preacher Robert Murray M'Cheyne and co-operation with the Church of Scotland's Mission to the Jews was agreed. The society later became the International Society for the Evangelisation of the Jews.

In 1879 an agency for gospel work among the Jews conducted by Hebrew Christians’ began work in the Barbican district of London which, in 1891, became the Barbican Mission to the Jews.

Both societies expanded rapidly on the European continent, particularly in Eastern Poland where many Jewish people responded to the gospel.

Work was also pioneered in the Middle East, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Within fifty years William Wingate, a pioneer missionary to the Jewish people of Budapest, could say,:

‘Hebrew Christians are everywhere. Every class of Jewish society contributes ... professors in universities, lawyers, medical men, literary men, musicians, artists, merchants, mechanics, poor and rich are quickened by the Spirit of all grace, convinced of their sin and guilt. They are at the feet of Jesus, and enabled to say with every believer, “We have redemption through the atoning blood of Jesus, even the forgiveness of our sins”.’

World War II with its horrific extermination of six million Jews under the Nazi regime, brought the work in Europe to a standstill. However, through the efforts of Rev. I.E. Davidson, many Jewish children were rescued from certain death to be brought up, with parental permission, in England (pictured above). Many came to know the Saviour and some went on to serve him as ministers and full-time mission workers. Jewish mission work, closed in Europe by the war, now began to be developed in other countries.

Despite massive Jewish displacement and the murder of millions of Jewish people in the Holocaust, the work of the two societies continued post-war. The conviction that Jewish people need to hear the Good News of Jesus was the driving force behind the onging work and it is the same thing which motivates us to this very day.