It was an event in October 1942 that deeply affected him. In the family of Rev. W.C. Lamain (1904-1984), a sixth child had been born. At the Mijnsherenplein, the square in Rotterdam where the family resided, another child was born. It was a child of Jewish parents. This child was hardly nine days old when a police van stopped in front of the house. The little family was arrested and led away. The minister and his wife were hardly able to sleep during the night that followed. Together they sighed and groaned while one question in particular occupied their minds: Have the Jews sinned more grievously than we? When the minister recounted this event later, he wrote, “We have also prayed for ourselves and our family that these matters might bring us to the right place before God”.
Rev. Lamain never saw the Jewish family again. However, something else happened. The following day, the minister was scheduled to preach in the village of Ouddorp. Before the church service, a lunch was provided for him in the house of one of the deacons. When this man asked him what he should read at the table, Rev. Lamain dared not answer this question. Then the deacon himself chose a chapter. It was Romans 11. “Never, no, never in my life have I heard that chapter as at that time” the minister once said. “It was as if God Himself read it.” Like a sharp sword God’s Word wounded his soul. But the fifteenth verse of Romans 11 also gave hope to his heart: “For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?”
After that memorable visit to Ouddorp, never a Sunday passed on which Rev. Lamain neglected to remember the Jews in his public prayer. Afterwards he was greatly delighted to read that Theodore Vander Groe was granted to believe that the Jewish people would be readopted by the Lord.
Years later, when Rev. Lamain had meanwhile moved to the United States, he had another unforgettable encounter. This time he met a Jewish woman who had been converted to God. “Oh, it was such a wonder to her that Christ had died for Jews, for the very people who had nailed Him to the cross. She said, ‘It is great when a heathen is converted, but it is much greater that the Lord is still pleased to receive Jews!'” Not only did it touch the minister that this Jewish lady wept because of the hardening of her people, but he was also impressed that she received much liberty in her prayers for God’s Church and its future.
The congregations perceived that the heart of Rev. Lamain had begun to throb with love for the Jewish people. A year after the liberation from the Germans, he led a commemoration service in the congregation of Rijssen. While looking back on the anxious years of the Second World War, he remarked, “A persecution broke loose against the Jews. The Netherlands had to be cleansed from the descendants of Abraham. Their fate had been sealed. There were still unfulfilled promises for them in stock (see Romans 9-11), but no, nothing would come of that. There would be no chance that those promises would ever be verified. Hitler had daringly taken upon himself to prevent this. By the thousands and ten thousands, yea, by the millions they were exterminated and gassed to death. It cannot be described how much this people has suffered.” In that light, the liberation from the German yoke was a double wonder to Rev. Lamain.
Years later, in 1973, the old minister preached a Prayer Day sermon on Zechariah 12:10 in Grand Rapids. The state of the church and the world weighed heavily upon his heart. He dreaded God’s judgments. After asking the congregation why the world was still existing at this present time, he himself gave the answer: “Because there are still people who must be converted. Because Jewry still has to be brought back to the Lord. There are yet promises that await their fulfilment. And so long as the last of the elect has not yet been gathered in, Christ cannot return on the clouds of heaven.”
