Only at the Second Coming Will the Solemn and Covenant Promises of G.o.d to Israel be Fulfilled
G.o.d sware to Abraham that he and his posterity should have the land of Palestine for an everlasting possession.
Abraham never got a foot of the land under covenant promise.
The only bit of ground he was able to call his was the burial plot he purchased with his own money.
The children of Israel never entered the promised land under the Abrahamic covenant.
The Lord redeemed them from Egypt, brought them through the divided waters of the Red Sea, led them by His presence, bore them up as on eagle"s wings and dealt with them in pure, unconditional grace till they came to Sinai.
There in all the pride and self-sufficiency of the flesh they took themselves off the ground of grace and unconditional covenant and put themselves under the covenant of the law.
This covenant was a covenant of good behaviour.
They were to possess the land as long as they fulfilled the terms of the covenant under the seal of its blessing and cursing.
After the first generation had perished in the wilderness because of their unbelief, the second generation crossed the Jordan dry shod as their fathers had crossed the Red Sea and entered the land under pledge and bond of good behaviour.
They were not able to keep the covenant of their own suggestion. Ten tribes went into an abomination of organized and politically inspired idolatry.
In judgment and according to His warning He caused them to be carried away captives and buried nationally among the people whither they were led and for twenty-five hundred years have been nationally lost to view.
For two thousand years because of similar and aggravated offenses and finally, because as a nation guilty of manslaughter in slaying the Lord their covenant king, the Jews have been the wanderers of the earth, the people of the restless foot, finding a home in every land but their own.
Has G.o.d failed to keep His promise?
Has He been unable or unwilling to keep His promise?
Neither postulate is possible.
G.o.d"s counsel is immutable.
He confirmed it by an oath. And since He could swear by nothing greater He sware by Himself.
In the nature of the case then scattered Israel and wandering Judah must be gathered. They must return to their own land.
G.o.d has so promised.
These promises are to be found upon the pages of Holy Writ like the leaves of autumn--so many, so thickly strewn, now in single phrase, in connected pa.s.sages, in whole chapters that should I attempt to read them slowly and distinctly, giving the sense, it would take me till the morning light.
The Lord declares He has written their names upon the palms of His hand.
They are as near and sensitively dear to Him, He says, as the apple of His eye. He is so interested, so determined concerning their restoration that He uses the most intensive language to express it, language that almost thunders aloud from the page as you read it.
He uses language no less intense than this:
"Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land (the land of Palestine) a.s.suredly with my whole heart and with my whole soul."
Try and think of that! Let it penetrate your mind. The Lord who made heaven and earth, whose very name is omnipotence, says He will put the whole of His omnipotent heart and the whole of His omnipotent soul into the execution and the accomplishment of His determination and purpose to plant the children of Israel once more and forever in their own land.
In the face of that registered will and purpose what power is there of man or Devil; what force is there in all the sweep of the universe that can hinder the chosen and covenant people of G.o.d from going back to Palestine and possessing that land as theirs and theirs alone, forever?
But what evidence have we, what demonstration and proof that G.o.d will fulfill this postscript promise and plan?
What evidence have we from the bare statement of G.o.d that He will keep this promise?
The evidence is manifold and overwhelming.
Before even the children of Israel crossed the Jordan the Lord warned them in language which burns and blisters that if they did not keep the law covenant and walk in the ways of righteousness and truth He would cause them to fall before their enemies. They should go out one way before them and flee seven ways. Their cities should be taken and their wives ravished. They should be led captives into every land. They should become a proverb, a byword, a hissing and a scorn. Every hand should be against them to do them ill. They should find no ease whither they went, nor should the soles of their feet have rest. Amidst those nations the Lord should give them a trembling heart, failing eyes and sorrow of mind. Their life should hang in doubt. They should fear night and day, and have no a.s.surance of life. In the morning they should say, Would G.o.d it were even, and at even they should say, Would G.o.d it were morning.
Their land should be made desolate and be an astonishment to the pa.s.ser-by. In its desolation it should keep the sabbaths they should fail to give it. If they would not allow the land to rest in its sabbatic years, the Lord would cause it to have its ordained and natural rest by driving them out of it and allowing wind and rain and sun to take care of it and keep it fruitful.
Later on all this warning of woe and terror of judgments was emphasized by the prophets against the Jews.
They should become a nation of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
But while the Lord should use the nations to correct them He would not make a full end of His own people.
He would use the nations as the rods of His anger, as the instruments of discipline. He would use them by taking advantage of their own aggressive desires and ambitions, then after using them He would turn upon them, punish them for their pride and G.o.dless enmity to His people and make a full end of them.
Then as the hour should draw nigh for the restoration to the land He would cause the Jews as the national representatives of all Israel to bud, to blossom and fill the face of the whole world with fruit.
They should be the first to be restored to the land.
They would go back in unbelief.
And mark how the prophecies have been fulfilled!
The ill.u.s.tration of this fulfillment finds its most tragic emphasis in the history of the Jews since that day when their king, the Son of G.o.d and the Holy One of Israel was hung as a malefactor on a Roman cross.
They have not only been wanderers in every land, but they have suffered an agony no tongue can fittingly tell.
The men have been robbed. They have been broken on the wheel. They have been stretched on the rack. They have been flayed alive. They have been burned alive. They have been sent to sea by thousands as herded cattle; and they have been sent thither in rotting and sinking ships. Their wives and daughters have suffered worse than torture or death. Their children have been mutilated; and when they failed to bring a full and satisfactory price in the public market, men, women and children have been given away as worthless slaves, not worth even the price of a kennel dog.
They have been hunted like wild beasts of the mountain. Like frightened beasts they have trembled at the sound of approaching footsteps and the sound of a shaken leaf has caused them to flee.
If their Lord was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, truly may it be said of them that they have been through the centuries a nation of sorrows and acquainted with grief; but the sorrows were unlike those of their Lord. He carried the sorrows, the griefs and woes of others that He might relieve them; they carried their own sorrows put upon them by the wickedness and cruelty of others until tears were their meat and drink night and day.
Behold how the prophecies have been fulfilled in respect to their land.
For centuries it has kept a sabbath of rest.
It has rested from the toil of man; harvests have neither been sown nor reaped, nor the vintage gathered save here and there as with the sword in one hand and the sickle in the other.
The land is there as a land just as it was in the days when the man of Nazareth walked by the sh.o.r.es of blue Galilee or trod the hills of Judah. The mountains of Moab draw their lines of beauty against the measureless deeps of an orient sky. The valleys lie between like fruitful bosoms where wheat and barley may grow. The olive trees stand dusky in the deepening shade. Pomegranate and apricot stretch forth their weighted boughs and the grapes in Eschol cl.u.s.ters hang purple in the slant of westering suns. It is even yet a land of brooks and fountains of waters and men may still dig iron and bra.s.s from out of its rugged hills.