Why I Preach the Second Coming Part 9

Yonder in Bashan within the range of your eyes you may count sixty cities of stone, walls and roofs and windows of stone, great swinging doors of stone. The centuries have beaten the wind, the rain, the storms and flying sand upon them. They remain. They have outworn the centuries. They are silent. No footfall is heard upon the threshold. The houses are empty save for a fox, a swiftly gliding viper, or a belated Bedaween who may stable his horse in a deserted room where once a happy family dwelt in the long ago.

The stone cities are waiting and every stone in door and window seems to be crying out:

"We are waiting till they return whose right alone it is to live and dwell here."

But what of the nations that scattered them and made them to suffer?

Where is Babylon the proud empire that took them captive; where is Babylon the golden city that saw them hang their harps upon the willows, sit down upon the banks of the strange river and give way to weeping as they yearned for their own land again?

Where is Greece whose phalanxes swept through their fields and spoiled their vineyards?

Where is Rome whose iron legions took their city, put thousand on thousands to the sword, destroyed the beautiful temple once hallowed by a Saviour's feet and then drew a ploughshare over Zion that it might become a ploughed field as foretold? The Rome that sculptured on its triumphal arches the figures of the captive Jews it had led in boastful mockery at the chariot wheels of returning conquerors?

These nations in their ancient glory have disappeared, the Lord as He promised has made a full end of them.

But what of Israel?

The Jews have answered for them.

There are fifteen millions of Jews to-day.

They are the most vital and vigorous race on the earth. They are five times the number of all Israel who left Egypt; and they are but a sixth part of them--two tribes, Judah and Benjamin.

They are the money makers and money loaners of the world. They are the merchants, the bankers, the musicians, the professors in school, in college and university. They are the philosophers, the scientists, the electricians and chemists. They have furnished prime ministers, statesmen, judges and generals. Such a statesman as Disraeli who glorified England, such a general as Ma.s.sena whom Napoleon characterized as the "child of victory."

If to-day you should seek a representative in every department of human genius and endeavour you would find that representative to be either a Jew or a Jewess.

Fifteen millions of Jews!

What are these fifteen millions of Jews but fifteen millions of proofs that the book we call the Bible is true, is inerrant, infallible?

Fifteen millions of demonstrations and fifteen millions of indubitable proofs.

By so much as they prove that G.o.d keeps faith with His warnings of woe and judgment, by so much will He keep faith with the promise of good He has made; by so much is it sure He will yet plant them as He has said in their own land and will do so with His whole heart and His whole soul.

Already the sound of their footsteps may be heard on the homeward march.

Zionism is now an immense fact.

The spirit of nationalism has come back to Judah.

The blue and white flag of David has been unfurled.

Diplomats in the nations' counsels agree there can be no settled peace between Europe and the East till the Jew is back in his own land and Judah once more a recognized political state; that the Jews are the only people all the nations will agree should have Palestine, and the words, "Jewish State" are words repeated in common speech round the globe.

England has driven the Turk out of Jerusalem.

The corner-stone of a five million dollar university has been laid upon that Mount of Olives where once the Son of G.o.d amid its lonely shades prayed and agonized, a begun fulfillment of the prophecy of Zephaniah that in the latter days the Lord would execute judgment on the Gentile nations that should be gathered there and to His restored and delivered people turn again a pure speech, no longer the stuttering and smattering phrase of Yiddish, but the old Hebraic tongue of their fathers.

Already there are papers in Jerusalem published in Hebrew, schools are taught and many speak in the ancient language.

Many Jews are going back to Palestine.

Many more are there now than returned from Babylon.

They are going back as the Word of G.o.d foretold, in utter and absolute unbelief and bitter repudiation of the idea that Jesus of Nazareth was their foretold and foreordained Messiah.

They are going back with the vail upon their eyes and as blind as in the day when their fathers caused Him to be crucified by Roman hands.

They are going back to a time of anguish of which Jeremiah solemnly warns as "the day of Jacob's trouble," and our Lord describes as the tribulation, "the great one," the like of which the world has never seen and will never see again.

They are going back to be set up by a league of ten nations and to enter into an alliance and covenant with its G.o.dless head as their political and false Messiah.

They will suffer until there shall come upon that generation all the righteous blood shed upon the earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zacharias, the son of Bacharias who was slain between the temple and the altar, and the blood of the Son of G.o.d which they invoked in judgment on themselves and their children in that fatal hour when Pilate convinced of the innocence of Jesus and wishing to let Him go had washed His hands in water, putting the responsibility of the crucifixion upon them as a people. Then it was they cried that terrible cry:

"His blood be on us, and on our children."

But then as now, and always since the days of Elijah, there was and is an elect remnant in Israel.

For their sakes the Lord will come.

He will descend with His host to Mount Sinai, the place of the law; the spot where Israel rejected grace and sought that covenant which neither they nor their children have ever been able to keep.

He will sweep with His mighty army to Jerusalem.

He will overthrow the Gentile nations gathered there under the Devil-incarnate Antichrist.

He will stand upon the Mount of Olives.

The elect remnant will behold Him come.

They will look upon Him whom their fathers pierced.

They will fall down in anguish before Him.

They will mourn for Him as one mourneth for his only son.

They will take up the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah and make it their confession of faith and bitter, self-accusing lamentation.

They will say:

"We did esteem him stricken, smitten of G.o.d, and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastis.e.m.e.nt of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."

And in that hour, in that day of days shall there be a fountain opened to the house of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and uncleanness.