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Israel’s day as a nation favored and blessed of God would be ended.
The loss of even one soul is a calamity in comparison with which the
gain of a world sinks into insignificance; but as Christ looked upon
Jerusalem, the doom of a whole city, a whole nation, was before him;
that city, that nation which had once been the chosen of God,—his
peculiar treasure.
Prophets had wept over the apostasy of Israel. Jeremiah wished
that his eyes were a fountain of tears, that he might “weep day and
night for the slain of the daughter of his people.” What, then, was the
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grief of Him whose prophetic glance took in, not years, but ages? He
beholds the destroying angel hovering over the ancient metropolis
of patriarchs and prophets. From the ridge of Olivet, the very spot
afterward occupied by Titus and his army, he looks across the valley
upon the sacred courts and porticoes, and with tear-blinded eyes he
sees, in awful perspective, the walls surrounded by alien armies. He
hears the tread of the hosts mustering for battle. He hears the voice
of mothers and children crying for bread in the besieged city. He
sees her holy and beautiful house, her palaces and towers, given to
the flames, and where once they stood, only a heap of smoldering
ruins.
He looks down the ages, and sees the covenant people scattered
in every land, like wrecks on a desert shore. He sees in the temporal
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retribution about to fall upon her children, but the first draught from
that cup of wrath which at the final Judgment she must drain to its
dregs. Divine pity, yearning love, finds utterance in the mournful
words: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and
stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have
gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens
under her wings, and ye would not!” [Matthew 23:37.] Oh that thou, a nation favored above every other, hadst known the time of thy
visitation, and the things that belong unto thy peace! I have stayed
the angel of justice, I have called thee to repentance, but all in vain.
It is not merely servants, delegates, and prophets, whom thou hast
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refused and rejected, but the Holy One of Israel, thy Redeemer. If
thou art destroyed, thou art alone responsible. “Ye will not come to
me that ye might have life.”
Christ saw in Jerusalem a symbol of a world hardened in unbelief
and rebellion, and rushing on to meet the retributive judgments of
God. The woes of a fallen race, pressing upon his soul, forced from
his lips that exceeding bitter cry. He saw the record of sin traced in
human misery, in tears and blood; his heart was moved with infinite
pity for the afflicted and suffering ones of earth; he yearned to relieve
all. But he knew that even his hand might not turn back the incoming
tide of human woe; few would seek their only source of help. He
was willing to suffer and to die to bring salvation within their reach;
but few would come to him that they might have life.
The Majesty of Heaven in tears! the Son of the infinite God trou-
bled in spirit, bowed down with anguish! The scene filled all Heaven
with wonder. That scene reveals to us the exceeding sinfulness of
sin; it shows how hard a task it is, even for infinite power, to save the
guilty from the consequences of transgressing the law of God. Jesus,
looking down to the last generation, saw the world inclosed in a
deception similar to that which caused the destruction of Jerusalem.
The great sin of the Jews was their rejection of Christ; the great sin
of the Christian world would be their rejection of the law of God, the
foundation of his government in Heaven and earth. The precepts of
Jehovah would be despised and set at naught. Millions in bondage to
sin, slaves of Satan, doomed to suffer the second death, would refuse
to listen to the words of truth in their day of visitation. Terrible
blindness! strange infatuation!
Destruction of Jerusalem
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Two days before the passover, when Christ had for the last time
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departed from the temple, after denouncing the hypocrisy of the
Jewish rulers, he again went out with his disciples to the Mount
of Olives, and seated himself with them upon a grassy slope over-
looking the city. Once more he gazed upon its walls, its towers and
palaces. Once more he beheld the temple in its dazzling splendor, a
diadem of beauty crowning the sacred mount.
A thousand years before had the psalmist magnified God’s favor
to Israel in making her holy house his dwelling-place: “In Salem is
his tabernacle, and his dwelling-place in Zion.” [Psalm 76:2.] “He chose the tribe of Judah, the Mount Zion which he loved. And he
built his sanctuary like high palaces.” [Psalm 78:68, 69.] The first temple had been erected during the most prosperous period of Israel’s
history. Vast stores of treasure for this purpose had been collected
by King David, and the plans for its construction were made by
divine inspiration. Solomon, the wisest of Israel’s monarchs, had
completed the work. This temple was the most magnificent building
which the world ever saw. Yet the Lord had declared by the prophet
Haggai, concerning the second temple, “The glory of this latter
house shall be greater than of the former.” “I will shake all nations,
and the Desire of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house
with glory, saith the Lord of hosts.” [Haggai 2:9, 7.]
After the destruction of the temple by Nebuchadnezzar, it was
rebuilt about five hundred years before the birth of Christ, by a people
who from a lifelong captivity had returned to a wasted and almost
deserted country. There were then among them aged men who had
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seen the glory of Solomon’s temple, and who wept at the foundation
of the new building, that it must be so inferior to the former. The
feeling that prevailed is forcibly described by the prophet: “Who is
left among you that saw this house in her first glory? and how do ye
see it now? is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing?”
[Haggai 2:3.] Then was given the promise that the glory of this latter house should be greater than of the former.
But the second temple had not equaled the first in magnificence;
nor was it hallowed by those visible tokens of the divine presence
which pertained to the first temple. There was no manifestation
of supernatural power to mark its dedication. No cloud of glory
was seen to fill the newly erected sanctuary. No fire from Heaven
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descended to consume the sacrifice upon its altar. The shekinah
no longer abode between the cherubim in the most holy place; the
ark, the mercy-seat, and the tables of the testimony were not to be