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Good evening!

Dear friends,

I will begin my address this evening with a little story.

In 1841, David Edward became the permanent Ambassador of the Church of Scotland in the city of Iasi, Romania, where we come from. He worked there with three other missionaries, among which was, for a year, the well known Old Testament scholar, Alfred Edersheim, a Jew who came to faith in Christ through the ministry of a Scottish Presbyterian in Budapest.

This was preceded, two years earlier, by a field visit of the famous Presbyterian leader Robert Murray McCheyne, together with Andrew Bonar and two other Scotsmen, on behalf of the Edinburgh Society for Promoting Christianity among Jews.

The Scottish mission to the Jews in the province of Moldova lasted only a decade, because of the pressures coming from the Catholic, Orthodox and Jewish communities, who felt threatened by these missionary efforts. This was before the ecumenical era. Yet, at the end of these ten years, the Scots left behind a small group of 29 proselytes.

One hundred years later, as a direct result of this missionary endeavour, a thriving Messianic congregation existed in Iasi, Romania, under the leadership of Rev. Isaak Feinstein, who was a mentor to the most famous Romanian Protestant leader, Rev. Richard Wurmbrand, himself a convert from Judaism, who spent subsequently 14 years in Romanian communist prisons, and, after he was literally bought into freedom by the Christians in your country, established in the west what is called today The Voice of the Martyrs, an organisation dedicated to supporting persecuted Christians all over the world.

Unfortunately, Feinstein, and most of his congregation, were killed in 1941, during an awful pogrom that claimed the life of thousands of Romanian Jews. Daniel’s great grandfather, on the maternal line, might have been one of those touched by the ministry of these Messianic Christians.

We are here today a small group of Romanians, willing to express our gratitude for what Scotland has given to Romania. And, as a token of our thankfulness, we are giving to you tonight the best of what we have, our first born. We are honoured by the call he has received to serve the Lord and his people in this parish of Bishopton, Scotland. We pray that he will be a man of prayer, a man of the Word, a man of justice and compassion, to the glory of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen!

* * *

I have read this at the ordination of my son, Daniel Manastireanu, for the ministry of Word and Sacrament, at the Bishopton Parish of the Church of Scotland.

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