May 2

H.A. Ironside tells of addressing a “Mission to Israel” in San Francisco in 1898. At the end, an elderly Jew said: “This is Passover week among you, my Jewish brethren; and I was thinking how you will be observing it. You will attend the synagogue services, and carry out the directions of the Talmud; but you forget that you have everything but that which Jehovah required first of all. He did not say, ‘When I see the leaven put away, or when I see you eat the motsah, or the lamb, or go to the synagogue;’ but, ‘When I see the blood I will pass over you.’ You can substitute nothing for this. You must have blood, blood, BLOOD!” He told how he was born in Palestine, studied with the rabbis, but grew increasingly unhappy because he saw no blood for his atonement. At last, on a narrow back street in Istanbul, he heard a man cry out, “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 Jn 1:7). “Ah, my brethren,” he said, “I have found the blood of atonement at last.”