A Jubilee of Witness
For many years in our witnessing, Israel believers have been asked the famous “cui bono” question: “what is the benefit of it?” The answer should be apparent. We all find our identity in our roots. Where we come from tells us who we are! Even more importantly, it gives us our divinely-appointed mission as God’s Israel. Yet the fear of offending has caused ministers to weaken their message and stay away from anything that is controversial or not in keeping with the latest, often declining, moral trends. Several years ago the local minister of a large 1,500 member Pentecostal Church visited me, saying that he believes our teaching but can’t teach it “because it might offend some people.” This is not how it should be. Christians must be change agents!
I have seen a lot of change in our world over many years in pastoral ministry. In January, 2026, I will be marking my Jubilee: fifty years of ministry at the oldest Anglo-Israel church in the Americas, Restoration Bible Church, founded through the organizing efforts of Dr. Howard B. Rand in March, 1933. Many years of ministry later, on Saturday evening, January 10, 1976 our then Bible teacher and lay pastor, Bruce Daines, had an accident in his home woodworking shop and broke several ribs. I received a phone call from a church board member on Sunday morning as I was leaving for church, asking me to take the service since Daines was in the hospital. So I took a notebook containing some of my studies and hurried to church. Never having spoken before an audience before, I nervously went through an hour of notes in twenty minutes! Everyone was very supportive and I was appointed lay pastor of the church after Daines passed away a few short weeks later.
In August, 1979, I was invited to attend and teach at an America’s Promise summer Bible camp in New Mexico. Soon after arriving, without prior notice, I was asked to step into a conference room where four ministers waited with a series of biblical questions for me to answer. After an extended session, they said that they were satisfied with my answers, and wanted to ordain me to ministry, giving the ability to perform sacraments, weddings, and funerals. These men, who I highly respected, included the late Pastors Sheldon Emry, Robert Record, George Southwick, and John Hilker. Each of these men had many decades of faithful service in the Lord’s work.
It has not been easy going against popular traditions of men. Our standing firm for biblical truth offends people steeped in the world and its ways. Many church pastors just “go along to get along” with the world around them. So many today teach shallow therapeutic messages, while people sit like dead weights in the pews, waiting to be entertained. This lack of biblical instruction and avoidance of conflict imperils the Church’s mission to be change agents and overcome the world. “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Rom. 12:21)
Christians should not be intimidated, but be like the disciples who boldly proclaimed the Gospel. “Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word.” (Acts 8:4) As I write, our family just returned from a short couple days away for the Thanksgiving holiday. Last evening, at the hotel pool, a fellow chatted with me and, entirely unexpectedly, proudly told me that he was of Scottish descent and was excited to have recently heard that the “Stone of Scone,” the famous Scottish coronation stone, was Jacob’s pillow. He wanted to learn more, so I had an extended conversation with him about the Irish legendary history of a prophet and his scribe, Simon Brugg, who arrived from the east with the sacred stone. The similarity with the Prophet Jeremiah and his scribe, Baruch, is difficult to ignore. The fulfillment of the latter part of Jeremiah’s mission, “to build and to plant” (Jer. 1:10) was certainly not fulfilled in Palestine!
One long-time friend has a habit he calls, “salting,” noting that we are called to be salt and light here on this earth. He carries small tracts in his pocket to leave behind wherever he goes. Meeting him for lunch at a restaurant, he left a tract under the dish for the waitress to find, another by the mirror in the men’s room. The Gospel of Matthew 5:13-16 encourages us, “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” Do not hide your light! Share it with those you meet.
It was due to the efforts of another ardent “salter,” Dorothy Ogburn, that I first learned the Israel message. Dorothy, born in China of missionary parents, was affectionately known as “the bag lady” because in addition to her purse, she carried a sturdy plastic bag stuffed with a variety of tracts. When she met people, she would offer them “a Bible tract” and her sweet personality encouraged people to accept. One evening late in 1969, my mother and I attended a seminar and sat in the second row. By “coincidence,” the guest speaker then chose the seat directly in front of me before the meeting began. By still yet another divinely-ordained “coincidence,” Dorothy felt led to attend that event and gave the man a tract, which he laid in his briefcase in front of me when he went up for his presentation. The Holy Spirit led me to pick up the tract and begin reading right through the lecturer’s talk. The tract was “An Open Letter To Any Minister Who Teaches The Jews Are Israel,” by Pastor Sheldon Emry. I wrote down the address to send for a copy of my own to finish reading, and to look up every Scripture reference to verify the author’s statements. It all checked out. Then I sent for the rest of the items on Emry’s church literature list, and studied everything carefully over the next six months.
I had learned the Israel message without even being handed a tract. Due to the circumstances of my enlightenment I did not know another soul who knew this truth in my entire metropolitan area. So I prayed that the Lord would use me to reach others. The following early summer I was hired to do office work at a Baptist Church in Warren, Michigan, pastored by Rev. David Rushton, a conservative Christian patriot who, despite my witnessing, was noncommittal about the Israel truth. Yet he felt led to ask me to write a Bible tract on this subject and offered to print 300 copies gratis on the church press. By necessity, and the need to share this truth, I became a tract writer just six months into our teaching.
Praying for the Lord’s guidance on where to distribute these tracts, I decided to leaflet the cars at a giant shopping mall in Dearborn, Michigan south of Detroit. But on the way, the Holy Spirit led me to stop instead at a different shopping center nearby, whereupon I left tracts under the windshield wipers of hundreds of cars. I received seven letters in response, including one from a lady who told me she attended a church north of Detroit in Royal Oak that teaches this. She lived many miles away in northern Detroit, but this one time only had driven all the way to a shop in Dearborn for a brand of shoes available nowhere else. She was only there less than an hour at the exact time I leafleted the lot. In such a large metropolitan area, and each of us miles from our homes, what was the chance of finding her like that?! Without a series of improbable events—humanly speaking—I would never have learned this message, found our church, or began my ministry.
There have been a number of other truly wonderful events in my fifty years of ministry life, as well as our over ninety years of church history, that can similarly only be described as Divine intercession. I am convinced that the Lord is working beside us as a silent partner, and look forward to further faithful service as we stand steadfast for truth in the dark days ahead as the age rapidly comes to a close.
