Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

The Christian’s immediate hope is the coming of the Lord to catch away from this world His church, so that his first and most fervent prayer should be, “Even so, Come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22). But He has also taught us another prayer, “Thy kingdom come”; and as this concerns His glory as well as peace for the earth, we must not forget it. That kingdom cannot come until He has Jerusalem in full possession.

Those who are praying “Thy kingdom come” not with their lips only, but from their hearts, have a better and fuller desire than mere victory for the Allied arms. They are not looking for the triumph of right as that is understood by the great democracies of the world, but they are awaiting the time for which all God’s saints have hoped when His good and righteous will shall be done on earth; they have a better outlook than that all nations should be ruled according to their own “self-determination,” namely, that all shall be according to God’s determination, and His kingdom shall be established in His own way, for only so can permanent peace shed its blessings upon mankind.

Everybody wants peace, but Germany will not seek it because her leaders know that their depredatory ambitions will receive no consideration from the Allied powers unless they are enforced by the sword, and the Allied powers want peace, but they know that their aims can only be reached across the prostrate carcase of the hated and hateful military force. So the struggle continues, each battling for these opposing aims. But has God no purposes and aims? He surely has. And His children should be concerned as to what His aims are, so that they may pray earnestly, intelligently and prevailing, “Father, Thy name be hallowed, Thy kingdom come” (Luke 11:2, New Translation).

We may be sure that He who is “the God of peace,” and “the preserver of all men,” will not permit this awful conflict to continue one moment longer than is necessary for the attainment of His aims in allowing it at all. British statesmen have assured us that if they could righteously and for the general good call a halt they would do so at once, and we do not doubt them. But is God less righteous or compassionate than they? “The Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy.” His children who know that His purpose is final and universal blessing will not grow impatient at the continued strife, but their spirits will be kept in quietness, and they will maintain constant watchfulness with their earnest praying for the moving of God’s hand in the affairs of men.

The withdrawal of Russia from the Allied cause is probably looked upon as the worst set-back that the Allies have sustained since the war began, and by it no doubt victory has been long delayed. But let us look at it from the standpoint of our prayer, “Thy kingdom come,” and see if we may not learn something from it in the light of that.

The Bolsheviks have published a memorandum in which is summarised the secret agreement entered into by Great Britain, France, and Russia in 1916. In this agreement Palestine occupies a considerable place, but the hopes of the Jewish nation in regard to it do not seem to have been considered. Great Britain was to secure the two most important and strategical points of Haifa on the Red Sea and Acre on the Mediterranean, but for the rest it was agreed, according to the report of the British Palestine Committee, that, “with a view of securing the religious interests of the Entente powers, Palestine, with the Holy places, is separated from Turkish territory, and subjected to a special regime to be determined by an agreement between Russia, France and England.” “The religious interests” of an avowed atheistic government such as France is reads strangely! But had victory come to the Entente with Russia in it, and this agreement had been put into force, Jewish hopes in regard to Jerusalem and Palestine would certainly have been thwarted. Meanwhile, however, Czardom has fallen, anarchy has taken the place of autocracy in Russia, and those who claim power in that distressed country have repudiated this agreement, so that it drops out of the Allied aims, and in its place there springs up the British declaration — one of the wisest it has ever made — that, as soon as they are able they will establish in Palestine an autonomous Jewish state. And the sooner the better, for universal peace can only flow from Jerusalem, with the chosen people in possession under the glorious and righteous administration of the Prince of Peace, the Messiah of Israel, our Lord Jesus Christ. So that the fall of Czardom and the withdrawal of Russia from the conflict has brought upon the horizon the fulfilment of God’s word in regard to these people and their land, without which His kingdom cannot come. In this we ought to discern the hand of God.

At a great meeting of Jews in America, it was said by one of their chief rabbis that they had full cause for joy, for though this declaration was only “a scrap of paper” it was written in English. And that was certainly a tribute to British loyalty to her pledged word. But the declaration that the Jews shall have that land has been written in a more ancient and glorious language, and pledged to them by a greater and more faithful power; it has been written in Hebrew by the Holy Spirit and pledged to them by God, the Almighty, who cannot lie. “For when God made promise to Abraham, because He could sware by no greater, He sware by Himself, saying, Blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. For verily men swear by a greater … but God, willing more abundantly to show to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath; that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation” (Hebrews 6:13-18).

It may help us to briefly trace out God’s ways with this people since the time when He pledged His word to their father Abraham, when He called Him out from Ur and separated him from the idolatry of the Chaldees. The twelfth and twenty-second chapters of Genesis give us the covenant that God made with him and the oath wherewith He confirmed it. But before God’s promises and purposes could be fulfilled in regard to Abraham’s seed, there were four things necessary: a COUNTRY in which they could develop, not under a culture “of their” self-determination, but under God’s own culture; a CITY whose firm foundation shall be righteousness and from which shall be administered the peace-giving laws of God; a TEMPLE in which they could approach their God and Blesser in responsive worship; and a KING who shall give them protection from every outward foe, and who shall lead them as a shepherd in the paths of righteousness, and harmonize every phase of their national and domestic life into one glorious whole for a pattern to the nations and for the glory of God. The country is Canaan, the city is Zion, the plans and specifications of the temple have been issued, AND THE KING IS JESUS. And to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever, Amen.

The people themselves were not only to be a chosen people, but a redeemed people, and the paschal lamb in Egypt, signified this: it was a type of the Lamb of God, by whose blood alone can men be redeemed. These people had to owe their position to God’s sovereign choice, their life to the blood of the lamb, and their deliverance from their oppressors to the power of God. And so He brought them out of bondage and sent them into the land to possess it and to destroy the inhabitants of it. And here the critic of God’s Word, and the caviller at His ways, steps up and charges Him with cruelty and injustice. But they are superficial thinkers and dishonest judges; they jump to conclusions without examining the evidence. God kept the people to whom He had apportioned that land in the fiery furnace of Egypt, in His patience with the wicked inhabitants of Canaan, for four hundred years, and did not proceed to execute His judgment upon their horrible transgression of all His laws until the cup of their iniquity was full. In Leviticus 18:25 the condition of the land is described and the reason for God’s way given. “The land is defiled: therefore do I visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomitteth out her inhabitants.” Thus was God’s judgment of them justified.

He gave Israel the country, and then a King when He raised up David from amongst the people, to be their shepherd, and David subdued the Jebusite and captured the CITY and there made preparation for the building of the TEMPLE that was reared resplendent by Solomon his son.

Here, then, were the four things necessary for the development of these people according to God, but these were only temporary, until the time for the true King to appear, and by them the people were to be tested in order to see how far they would, of their own volition, live in accordance to God’s will for them. The conditions could not have been more favourable: all their enemies were subdued; the land flowed with milk and honey; the wealth of Jerusalem was so vast that silver was of no more account than the stones of the street; the fear of them fell upon all nations, and the kings of the whole earth sent or came up to Jerusalem to hear the wisdom of their king, “for his wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt, for he was wiser than all men.” “So King Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth for riches and for wisdom, and all the earth sought to Solomon to hear his wisdom, which God had put in his heart.” We learn, too, how far he had advanced in the knowledge of God by his address to the people and his prayer to God at the dedication of the temple, and greater and better than all “THE GLORY OF THE LORD FILLED THE HOUSE OF THE LORD.”

Here Jerusalem reached her ancient zenith, but the glory soon began to wane, and that splendid king led the people down a steep road, gathering into his kingdom apes, and peacocks, strange women and idols, indicating the folly, vanity, corruption and heathen abominations into which they descended. How discouraging this would be if we had no hope save in man’s “self-determination,” but the Scriptures help us, and from them we learn that the blessing that God has purposed shall flow out to all nations from Zion can only come through the One who is greater than Solomon, and that one CHRIST. “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He says not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, to thy seed, which is Christ” (Galatians 3:16).

Israel and Jerusalem travelled fast on the downward road upon which Solomon started them. “They mingled with the heathen and learned their works. And they served their idols: which were a snare to them. Yea, they sacrificed their sons and daughters to devils, and shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood” (Psalm 106:35-38). Each of those nations of Canaan, that they ought to have driven out, had its own special god — a demon (Deuteronomy 32:17; 1 Corinthians 10:20), in connection with which was some special abomination, for these powers of darkness which inspired this awful idolatry worked upon the basest passions of men. But when Israel and Jerusalem departed from God, they did not choose one idol and one abomination only, they took in all and every one. And these evil powers behind the idols, demons, that seem to have been satisfied hitherto each of them to hold one nation in thrall, now were all eager to exercise their malign influence over God’s people, and to establish their authority in His metropolis; and the people, alas, were willing, and so every nameless abomination found a home amongst them, until their transgressions became more horrible than those of the nations that occupied the land before them. How vividly the prophet Ezekiel brings all this out.

The consequence was that “the wrath of the Lord was kindled against His people, insomuch that He abhorred His inheritance. And He gave them into the hands of the heathen, and they that hated them ruled over them. Their enemies also oppressed them; and they were brought into subjection under their hand” (Psalm 106). Less than five hundred years after the crown of all Israel had been placed upon David’s brow, the sovereignty passed from his house and was given to Nebuchadnezzar the King of Babylon, and the “Times of the Gentiles” began, and the Jews became of subject race. But did God forsake them? No.

“He caring for the vineyard of His choosing,
Sent them His prophets till the day was done;
Bore with their churls, their wrath, and their refusing,
Gave them at last the glory of His Son.”

What a moment that was when the star stood over Bethlehem, pointing the spot where the young child lay, and guiding the Eastern princes with their gifts to EMMANUEL! But all Jerusalem was troubled when they heard of it. The city had thrown off the abominations of the heathen, but so proud were its leaders that they would not recognize in that lowly Babe their great Messiah. And when He presented Himself to them, fulfilling the words of the prophet Zechariah, “Tell the daughter of Zion, Behold thy king comes to thee meek and sitting on an ass,” they asked contemptuously, “Who is this?” He gave them the opportunity of facing and answering that all-important question, when He said to them, “What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He?” Readily they answered, “The Son of David.” Then came the final question, for which they had no answer, and which exposed their blindness. “He says to them, How then doth David in spirit call Him Lord, saying, The Lord said to my Lord, sit down at my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then called Him Lord, how is He his Son?” This surely was the test question, for them and for us, and for all mankind. He was David’s Lord — the eternal God; He was David’s Son — a man. Unfathomed and unfathomable mystery! The revelation of God for the salvation of Israel and the blessing of the world! But that salvation and blessing were postponed because they would neither own nor have Him. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, but it knew Him not, He came to His own but His own received Him not. When they saw Him they hated Him, and said. “This is the heir, come let us kill him.” And, “We will not have this man to reign over us.”

Jerusalem the beloved city, over which He had wept, cried, “Away with Him,” and held high festival when her blood-stained hands had nailed her suffering Messiah to a cursed cross. Yes, that generation, more privileged than any that have gone before, crowned the centuries of Jerusalem’s lawlessness by this foulest of all deeds, in the presence of which the sun shrank into darkness and the earth trembled.

But that deed, which showed man’s utter and awful hatred against God, was taken by God to be the manifestation of the fullness of His love to men, and there upon that cross on that “green hill far away” love — divine, all-conquering, eternal — celebrated its triumph. The glory of that cross shall fill the whole of that land and the universe also, for only through it can the promised blessing come to Israel and the world.

The last time Zion saw Him was when He hung dead, amid all those circumstances of deepest shame, with a crown of thorns bound upon His sacred brow, and over His head this superscription written: THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS.

The chief priests and the Pharisees took counsel to put Jesus to death because said they, “If we let Him thus alone … the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation.” To get rid of Him they pretended loyalty to the Roman Caesar, but their hypocrisy recoiled upon their guilty heads and the very thing that they feared happened to them thirty-six years after they had expressed that fear. Titus reduced the city and its temple to ashes and the foundations of the sacred edifice were ploughed up by the Roman soldiers. Thus, without knowing what they did, literally fulfilling the Lord’s own words, that “not one stone should be left upon another that should not be thrown down.” The aged and infirm of those left alive in the city were killed, the children under seventeen were sold as slaves, and the rest were sent, some to the mines in Egypt, some to grace the triumph of Titus at Rome, and others scattered to various parts of the Empire. But it was not until the reign of Hadrian A.D. 135 that the people who had regathered in the ruined city were finally dispersed. For two years the insurgent Jews held out against the Romans, fighting with the courage of despair. But worn out by famine and disease they were compelled to yield. Their historians say that the Romans “waded to their horses’ bridles in blood, which flowed with the fury of a mountain torrent”; 580,000 are said to have fallen by the sword, while the number of victims from other causes was countless. Hadrian determined to obliterate Jerusalem as a city, the ruins that Titus had left were razed to the ground, and again was the ploughshare passed over “as a sign of perpetual desolation,” according to the desolator, but fulfilling the prophecy of Micah uttered nine centuries before, “Therefore shall Zion for your sake be a ploughed field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest (Micah 3:12).

Several attempts were made to rebuild the temple, which all failed, the last by the apostle Julian; when an earthquake, a whirlwind and a fiery eruption compelled the workmen to abandon their labour.

Since then Jerusalem has been, according to the Lord’s own words, “trodden under foot of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled” (Luke 21:24). Thus Zion and her people fell, and

“The crown of glory
Was struck from her rebel brow,
And with feet all wounded and gory
She wanders an exile now.”

What a confirmation of the Word of God has the subsequent history of that nation been. More than 3000 years ago Moses warned them that if they rebelled against God’s will they would “become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all the nations whither the Lord shall lead thee” (Deuteronomy 28:7). And the closing words of his warning are so descriptive of their long travail and so moving that they can scarce be read without tears. We quote them to show how true is the prophetic word. “And it shall come to pass, that as the Lord rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you; so the Lord will rejoice over you to destroy you, and to bring you to nought; and ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest to possess it. And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even to the other; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone. And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind: and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shall have none assurance of thy life: in the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see” (Deuteronomy 28:63-67).

There is no need for us to recount the awful persecutions through which these people have passed in every country of Europe, but mostly in Russia. Like the bush that Moses saw in the desert they have been continually burnt with fire but are not consumed, and though scattered for all these centuries in all countries they are absorbed by none. They are the miracle of the ages, one of the greatest concrete proofs of the infallibility of the Word of God and of the justice of His governmental ways. “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

And has God forgotten them? And are His promises made to their father’s to fail? Never.

But the road that they have yet to travel, and how they will reach at last their final goal of blessing must be reserved for another paper, if the Lord will.