Hope for the Jews: One 19th Century American Presbyterian Perspective on the Future State of the Jews

In 1853, the distinguished American Presbyterian Jacob Jones Janeway (1774-1858) wrote Hope for the Jews: or, The Jews Will Be Converted to the Christian Faith; and Settled and Reorganized as a Nation in the Land of Palestine. In this treatise, he argues that the prophecies of the New and Old Testament foretell a general conversion of the Jews to Christianity in the latter days, as well as a restoration of the Jewish people to the land of Palestine. 

This topic has been a source of much intramural debate among Reformed theologians over the centuries. Yet in holding his view, not derived from Dispensationalism, Janeway followed a long tradition of American congregationalists such as John Cotton, Increase Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and Ezra Stiles; American Presbyterians such as Asa McFarland, Charles Hodge (who preached Janeway's funeral sermon), A.A. Hodge, B.B. Warfield; and Presbyterians and Baptists from across the pond, such as R.M. M'Cheyne, Horatius and Andrew Bonar, David Brown, Charles Spurgeon and others; all of whom held to a future mass conversion of the Jews, and most of whom held to a future national restoration of the Jewish people. 

Janeway's treatise encourages prayer for the Jewish people and, particularly, for the conversion and restoration. He says: "Christians, true believers, are now, by adoption, Israelites; and doubtless, it is binding on them, as well as on Abraham's natural descendants, to offer continual and earnest, and importunate prayer to God, to hasten the accomplishment of His gracious purposes in favor of Israel, and to turn their hearts to Himself, that they may all become the spiritual seed of Abraham, and Israelites indeed." To study further how Janeway understood the apostolic expression "Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved" (Rom. 10:1), read more here.