Commenting on the verse, "Blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in, and so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob" (Rom. 11:25, 26), Mr. Mauro says: "There is in the Word of God the clear promise that 'all Israel shall be saved' (Rom. 11:26); and that those words refer to the natural, not to the spiritual Israel, appears from the context, where reference is made to the power of God to graff them in again into their own olive tree' (vers. 23, 24)" (The Patmos Visions, p. 308).
Now in this statement we are in complete agreement with Mr. Mauro, and glad to say so. Why then does Mr. Mauro contradict himself flatly in his book, The Gospel of the Kingdom? He writes in that book: "My experience has been that, whenever Romans 11: 26 is cited by dispensationalists, it is presented as proof that the entire Jewish race, reconstituted into an earthly nation, is to be saved in a future 'dispensation.' In fact, however, the passage teaches the very opposite; namely: that the phrase 'all Israel' means, not the entire Jewish race of a future age, but the entire body of the redeemed of this gospel age" (p. 242).
Here we have a glaring contradiction. In the first extract he says distinctly that "all Israel" refers to the Jews as such, and not to the Church. In the second extract, he as plainly says, it does NOT refer to the Jews at all, but to the Church of God on earth. One or other of these statements must be wrong.
Further, as to Zionism Mr. Mauro writes in The Gospel of the Kingdom: "But the sober facts are that Zionism has been a pitiable failure almost from the beginning; and that in the period of its greatest success the volume of migrants constituted but a trickling stream, and they were of the most undesirable sort. The movement reached its peak in 1926; and from that time to the present Zionism has been palpably a dying enterprise" (p. 239).
Yet in his book, The Patmos Visions, we read: "The vitality of Zionism, and the progress made in a very brief time toward converting Palestine into a national home for the Jews, are among the most significant happenings of these days" (pp. 307, 308).
In the one extract Zionism is a dying enterprise; in the other it is a movement marked by vitality. Which is correct? We have here another plain contradiction. Doubtless the latter extract gives us the truth.
Referring to the symbols connected with the fifth trumpet, Mr. Mauro says: "Briefly then, the various symbols here presented to our view all point, and in no uncertain way, to that marvel of history, the empire founded by the false prophet Mohammed" (The Patmos Visions, p. 313). And yet later in the same book, and referring to the same trumpet, he says of Rev. 9:12, "One woe is past; and behold, there come two more woes hereafter:" "This puts a definite end to the spread of this plague [referring to Mohammedanism], corresponding with which is the fact that Mohammedanism in its Saracenic form was definitely arrested at the Battle of Tours, and turned back; and this abatement lasted for a period of centuries" (The Patmos Visions, p. 318).
But we would like to ask, Is not Mahommedanism still one of the great plagues of the world? It is not "past" yet. Does it not still hold its sway over millions of the human race and over whole countries?
Mr. Mauro makes another palpable mistake in connection with the symbolical locusts of Rev. 9:3, in connection with the fifth trumpet. He says: "That they wore crowns marks them as a sovereign people" (The Patmos Visions, p. 317).
There are two words for"crown"in the Greek-diadema and stephanos. Diadema is the monarch's crown, the crown of the sovereign. Stephanos is the crown that the athletes won in the Isthmian, etc., games, and has no relation to reigning, or to being a sovereign. The twenty-four elders had not the diadema but the stephanos on their heads; symbolical of the way they had striven for the mastery in the race of faith on earth, and the rewards that had been given for their faithfulness. Here these symbolical locusts have been diligent in the service of their evil master and have received the reward of the victor's crown.
In another book of Mr. Mauro's, "The Hope of Israel: What Is It?" we find yet another palpable blunder: "Rev. 19:11-21. This passage describes a vision of the things that are to happen at the second coming of Christ. [That is evidently STILL future].... The vision shows what Christ will do from the moment He issues forth from the opened heaven down to the complete overthrow of all His enemies, the casting of the beast and the false prophet into the lake of fire, the binding of Satan in the bottomless pit, and the setting up of the thrones of His everlasting kingdom" (p. 174). Yet on page 259 of the same book he writes: "There is a suggestive correspondence between the action of opening the door of the tomb of the Lord Jesus, rolling away the great stone by means of which His body had been sealed therein, and the action of shutting Satan up in the abyss and setting a seal upon him. It suggests that both actions were performed by the same mighty angel and at the same time."
In the former extract the binding of Satan in the bottomless pit is still future; in the second it is past these nigh two thousand years. What a glaring contradiction! And where and how is there the slightest suggestion that the same angel at the same time rolled away the stone from the tomb of Jesus and shut up Satan in the bottomless pit? What kind of exegesis is this?