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Overland Monthly / OV067 - God's Chosen People (II. Hope Long Deferred Now Reviving)
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OV67 II.—Hope Long Deferred Now Reviving
BY C. T. RUSSELL Pastor Brooklyn Tabernacle
ONE OF THE MOST remarkable things in
history is the perseverance of Jewish hopes; and this confirms the
inspiration of the Bible, which sets forth that hope, tells of its
long-delayed fruition and assures us that IsraelÂ’s hope will persist
until its realization. In subsequent articles we will consider the
Jewish prophecies and types, which show that the Israelitish dreams of
world-wide influence as GodÂ’s peculiar people are speedily to be
realized. We will also show from the Hebrew Scriptures why the
fulfillment of the glorious promises made to Abraham and his posterity
have been so long delayed—the necessity for the delay and the
advantages accruing therefrom. For the present we content ourselves
with the bare statement that, according to the Bible, Palestine will be
flourishing with a large population of Jews at the close of the year
1914. The Scriptures indicate that the gathering will be "out of all
nations," and with considerable wealth and general prosperity. We are
not to understand that this means that all the Jews of the world will
go to Palestine, but that some of the most pious and zealous from every
quarter will gather there. At that time will occur what the Bible terms
"JacobÂ’s Trouble," in conjunction with a world-wide trouble, financial,
religious, political, social, eventuating in anarchy, and, later on, in
IsraelÂ’s exaltation as the earthly exponent of MessiahÂ’s spiritual
Kingdom. Let none think of us as prophesying, but merely as announcing
our interpretations of prophecy, which we have been presenting to the
public for the past thirty-four years.
In 1874, Socialism had scarcely been
born, and Zionism was not dreamed of until twenty years later. Now
Socialism is the great menace of all the Governments of the civilized
world, including Japan, and Zionism is forging ahead with great
strides. In GodÂ’s province the doors to Palestine as a home have been
barred against the Jews for the past sixteen years. And it is during
this period that the Jews have begun to specially long for their home
land. The Zionist movement is their cry to Heaven, and to each other
and to the world. The barring of the doors to Palestine undoubtedly
made the Jews more anxious to re-enter it. The embargo was not lifted
until TurkeyÂ’s peaceful revolution put into power men of more modern
thought, who have canceled the prohibition and made the Jews welcome to
Palestine on the same terms as other peoples. Six months passed under
the new privileges with apparently small results, causing.
OV68 astonishment to those who had
expected a speedy influx of the exiled people to the Land of Promise.
The Zionist Congress, which closed its session in Hamburg, Germany, on
the last day of 1909, disclosed the secret of the delay of the Jews to
avail themselves of the opened door. It appears that Dr. Max Nordau,
the great leader of the Zionists and President of the Association, has
been exerting all of his great influence to hold back the Israelites
from entering Palestine, until he could bring pressure to bear upon the
new Turkish Government to secure from it Charter rights making of
Palestine a Jewish State. Dr. Nordau reasoned that the Turkish
Government would be greatly advantaged by the establishment in
Palestine of a Jewish Government tributary to Turkey—autonomous, but
under the Turkish suzerainty. Such a charter the Turkish Government has
continued to refuse, reiterating, however, its Welcome to the Jews, to
all parts of the empire including Palestine, with the general
privileges of Turkish citizenship. Moreover, they reminded the Jews
that Turkey is one of the few nations which had never persecuted the
children of Abraham.
The Pent-Up Hopes Irresistible.
At one time it was feared that the
Zionist Congress just closed in Hamburg would mark a breach in the
society, because Dr. Nordau, its President, with many of its
influential members, insisted that the Zionist movement must halt until
its demands of an autonomous Government for Palestine should be
granted, and because the masses of the Zionists were restive and
insisted that the opened door should be promptly entered, leaving the
results to GodÂ’s providence. They reasoned that God, who had promised
the regathering of Israel, and who had opened the way, is abundantly
able in his own time to fulfill all the other provisions of the great
promise made to Abraham—that his seed, his posterity, should yet bless
all the nations of the earth. Sentiment ran high at the Congress, and,
notwithstanding the love and esteem in which the SocietyÂ’s President
was held and the weighty influence of other leaders under him, the
Congress with kind preambles and resolutions of respect for its
leaders, passed over their heads a resolution ordering the gradual
transfer of all the interests of the Zionists to Palestine. Thus the
future center of Zionism is decreed to be the Holy Land. The funds
which have been in process of collection for banking purposes, etc.,
are to be centered there—the words "gradually transferred" are
understood to signify as prompt a transfer as wisdom could sanction in
dealing with the various interests and assets of the institution.
Witnesses present at that last Zionist Congress tell of the earnestness
and intensity of manner manifested by the delegates representing
Israelites in all parts of the world. America, by virtue of donations,
membership in Zionist Societies, etc., would have been entitled to a
sufficiency of representatives in the Congress to have constituted a
majority. But the representation was comparatively small, the cost of
travel, no doubt interfering—perhaps, also, a desire to save the
expense in favor of further donations to the work.
It is remarkable that so few wealthy Jews
have contributed either their influence or money to further the
patriotic efforts of their poorer brethren, some of whom so greatly
need just such a homing place. However, since the Scriptures indicate
the accumulation there of wealth, we have no doubt that during the next
few years circumstances will be so shaped providentially that wealthy
Jews, as well as poor ones, will congregate there. Meantime, in full
accord with prophecies, the climate of Palestine is greatly improving,
by reason of greater rainfalls. And a Hebrew named Aaronson has
discovered a new kind of wheat, similar to our own, but specially
adapted to the soil and climate of Palestine. Coincidentally, Turkish
despatches inform the world that the Turkish Government has
commissioned Sir William Wilcox, of the Royal Geographical Society of
Great Britain, Chief Engineer of the Survey of the Tigris-Euphrates
Delta, to proceed with the reclaiming of Mesopotamia, the valleys of
the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, presumably the site of the Garden of
Eden, the cradle of the race, and the home land of Abraham before he
removed to Canaan. This considerable work, it is estimated, can be
accomplished in about
OV69 three years. It will tend to bring
modern civilization and wealth to that quarter, and will doubtless
co-operate in the rejuvenation of Palestine. Thus, gradually, the
geographical center of the earth, the Jerusalem vicinity, is resuming
importance in the eyes of the world. Those who view the matter through
the prophetic telescope foresee the time when "the Law shall go forth
from Mt. Zion (spiritual Israel on the heavenly plane) and the Word
from Jerusalem, the To-Be Capital of the world under the Millennial
Kingdom arrangements. Thither all the nations of earth will send their
ambassadors and from thence take their laws. Upon such as will conform
to these arrangements the Divine blessing will rest, uplifting them
gradually from sin, ignorance and superstition to mental, moral and
physical perfection. Thus, according to the Scriptures the whole earth
will gradually become the Garden of the Lord—Paradise.
And those times or years of restitution
will bring the willing and obedient of mankind back again to the full
perfection of being, mental, moral and physical, which God intended and
exemplified in Father Adam. Thus eventually all the terrible results of
AdamÂ’s disobedience and fall will be blotted out through the
long-promised Kingdom of Israel, the Kingdom of God under Messiah the
Mediator of IsraelÂ’s New Law Covenant, whose gracious provisions will
be open to all the nations of the earth.—#Ac 3:19-23; #Jer 31:31  ; #Zec 14:1-6,14-20.
World Empire Ambitions.
Everybody knows that since the days of
Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, many of the nations of earth have
cherished the ambition that the fates had decreed their superiority
above other nations, and that all other nations should submit to their
rule for their own advantage. This conceit prompted Nebuchadnezzar to
be the first conqueror of the world. Cyrus the Mede concluded that he
was still more fit to be the worldÂ’s emperor and established the
dominion of the world-wide Empire of the Medes and Persians. A little
later the conceit was grasped by a young man scarcely out of his teens,
and Alexander the Great conquered the world and gave its scepter to
Greece. Later on the Caesars wrested the power and made Rome Empress of
the world. Still later, the Popes became the virtual rulers of earth,
under a claim of spiritual authority. Napoleon ended the papal empire
of earth and sought to appropriate the honors of world domination to
himself and France. History shows us that he almost accomplished his
designs. The Bible explains that he failed, not because of incapacity,
but because of the Divine foreordination that the fifth universal
Empire of earth will be that of Messiah—a spiritual and invisible reign
of Christ and the saintly elect members of the church, his Bride,
operating through fleshly Israel, then to be restored to Divine favor
and made chief of the nations of earth and the channel of Divine
blessing. It is not so generally known, even to Christian Bible
students, that the Jews entertained this idea of world empire long
centuries before Nebuchadnezzar grasped earthÂ’s scepter. Fourteen
hundred years before Nebuchadnezzar became the worldÂ’s Emperor, God
promised this honorable station to Abraham and his seed—to a nation
from his loins. For AbrahamÂ’s assurance and for the assurance of all
afterward interested in that promise, God made oath to him, so that by
two immutable things, His Word and His Oath, we and all in accord with
the Divine Purpose might know of a surety that the promise or Covenant
is not a conditional one—that it could not fail, that the fulfillment,
though long deferred, would be sure.—#Heb 6:18 .
Those who have wondered at the
indomitable spirit of the Jew which has preserved his nationality for
more than thirty centuries, while other nations in many lands have
bloomed and faded and died. The Chinese, indeed, do show a great
persistency, yet they have no acceptable history connecting them
definitely with the remote past and with creation, as have the Jews
alone. The secret of this history and national persistency is found in
the relationship between Israel and God. And the beginning of that
relationship and dominating hope is marked by GodÂ’s promise and oath to
Abraham, "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed."
The thought of blessing the
OV70 world was not with Israel, as with
other nations, merely a dream of imperial power, dignity and rich
revenue. Their ambition based upon this promise made to Abraham was
that they as a nation consecrated to God and accepted by God as his
peculiar people would be used by the promised Messiah as his agency or
channel for bringing the whole world into subjection to the Divine
Law—for their moral as well as their physical blessing and uplifting
out of sin and death conditions. And this hope is soon to be realized.
This hope, this ambition to be GodÂ’s people, to be GodÂ’s servants, to
be GodÂ’s channels of blessing to the remainder of mankind, attached
itself to the Hebrew mind in its every contact with the promises of
God, the Law and the prophecies, and with all their experiences under
Divine provisions, which were accepted as necessary instructions of God
to qualify them for their foreordained service to mankind. Thus their
early experience in reaching Canaan through the wilderness were
accepted as lessons necessary for their development. Their experiences
under the Judges were disheartening, but accepted as necessary
instructions and preparations. Then came the Kingdom Epoch in their
history, when the reign of Saul, David and Solomon marked periods of
progress in the direction of their long-cherished hopes. Especially in
SolomonÂ’s day they felt that the promises to Abraham was about to be
fulfilled. Notwithstanding the fact that Solomon conscripted the labor
of the people for the construction of his great temple, and
notwithstanding the fact that he taxed them heavily for internal
improvements, etc., they submitted in a measure of cheerfulness,
because the wisdom, the riches and the greatness of that king attracted
world-wide notice and seemed to be leading on to the grand climax of
their hopes—the establishment of the seed of Abraham as the chief
nation of earth, from whose capital, Jerusalem, the Law would go forth
to every nation, people, kindred and tongue. Indeed, it is quite
probable that IsraelÂ’s boast of Divine promise of the rulership of the
world spread abroad amongst the other nations and awakened in them a
rival ambition. It should be noticed, however, that Israel sought its
dominion of the world under Divine supervision and not through
conquering armies and ambitious generals. Solomon extended the
boundaries of his kingdom merely to the limitations which had been
outlined in the Divine assurances and, instead of seeking to conquer
the world, his was known as the "kingdom of peace." From the time of
SolomonÂ’s death, IsraelÂ’s history is a record of disappointments as
respects their great hopes of world domination. The division of the
nation into two parts, Judah and Israel, and subsequently their
overthrow by Syria and Babylonia shook the conceit of many in respect
to the Divine Promise, so that when in the days of Cyrus, in harmony
with Divine Providence, the millions of Israelites who had gone into
captivity as settlers in other lands, preferred to remain where they
were, when given the opportunity of returning to the promised land.
Less than fifty-five thousand out of the many millions had so great a
love for God and so strong a hope in the Abrahamic promise as to brave
a return to the desolated land from which their fathers had been
forcibly removed. And just so, we believe, it is to-day.
The Jews who would regather to Jerusalem
now, according to Hebrew prophecy, will be the devout, the faithful,
who still trust in that Abrahamic promise.
The masses now will prefer to remain in
symbolical Babylon, as the masses in the day of Cyrus preferred to
remain in literal Babylon. During the 536 years from the time of the
return of the faithful fifty thousand under the decree of Cyrus, down
to the time of the building of HerodÂ’s Temple, more gorgeous than that
of Solomon, the Israelites had a variety of trying experiences, all of
which should have tended to keep them very humble and near to the Lord.
As a matter of fact those trying experiences did make of the Jews a
peculiar people, a religious people, more advanced along moral and
religious lines than any other nation on the earth. But, naturally
enough, the religious nation was not composed of the pure in heart
only.
Their priests became to a considerable
degree Higher Critics and politicians of the sect known as "Sadducees"
or Reform Jews who believed merely in the present life and doubted the
fulfillment of the Abrahamic
OV71 promise—hoping vaguely that possibly
Israel might some day attain an influential position, not by Divine
interposition, but by human wisdom and politics. On the other hand,
there was a strong holiness party at that time amongst the Jews known
as the Pharisees, who went to the opposite extreme and magnified the
letter of the Law to such a degree that they entirely lost sight of its
real spirit or intent. Nevertheless as between these two great extremes
there was then, as we should expect, a minority in heart-harmony with
the Lord and his Promise, and still "waiting for the consolation of
Israel," —"Israelites indeed" in whom was no guile.
Natural Israel—Spiritual Israel.
It was at the climax of IsraelÂ’s second
attainment of national importance and dignity as a subordinate kingdom,
under the Roman Empire in the days of Herod, that a great transaction
occurred, which few of the Jews then understood and which few since
understand, and which few even of Christians understand Scripturally.
The Divine Purpose contemplated a greater Kingdom and a greater
blessing of all the nations of the earth than the most hopeful of the
Jews had even dreamed of—a blessing and uplifting to perfection and
harmony with God and eternal life. They did not see that their
sin-offerings were merely typical, and that, according to the Law, An
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, signified that a manÂ’s life
would be necessary to redeem a man’s life—to redeem Adam and his race
from the sentence of death. They did not see that before Messiah could
legally bless the world and emancipate them from sin and death and
secure to them eternal life, he must first redeem them through the
sacrifice of himself—typified in various of the typical sacrifices of
their law. Hence they expected MessiahÂ’s manifestation in power and
great glory (now soon to be revealed), and this hindered them from
accepting as him the lowly One who submitted himself to a death and
crucifixion—although he was holy, harmless and undefiled, separate from
sinners, the anti-typical Passover Lamb.
The intervening period of nearly nineteen centuries has greatly perplexed the Jews.
They perceive their cast-off
condition—that they have been without prophet or priest or other mark
of Divine favor all these centuries, subject to persecution. Had they
seen what we are now about to relate the situation would have been
clear and easily understood; but God did not wish to have it understood
until his "due time." The Jews perceived nominal Christendom confused
in doctrines and practices, "a cage for every unclean and hateful
bird." (#Re 18:2.)
They could not believe that God had cast
off their nation and had accepted instead as his peculiar people the
nations styled Christendom. They reasoned that much of the theology and
many of the practices of nominal Christendom were heathenish, pure and
simple. They did not see that in that great mass of nominal Christians
there were here and there saints of God, and that these alone from the
Divine standpoint composed the spiritual Israelites—a little flock,
containing not many rich, not many great, not many wise, not many
learned, not many noble, according to worldly estimation. The
explanation of this matter, which the Scriptures term the "mystery
hidden from past ages and dispensations," is this: It is the Divine
Purpose to have two Israels—both of them specified in the promise to
Abraham. First, a spiritual Israel whose destiny is to share in the
"first resurrection," and be like unto the angels, spirit beings
invisible to men. As Messiah was typified by Isaac, AbrahamÂ’s son, this
spiritual class, intended to be his joint-heirs on the spirit plane,
were typified by Rebecca, IsaacÂ’s wife. This spiritual Messiah, Jesus
and his Church exalted through suffering and as a reward for faith and
obedience and self-sacrifice, must first be completed and exalted to
the.heavenly condition before the earthly blessing can come to natural
Israel, fulfilling to her all the gracious promises which have
encouraged the hearts of her children these many centuries. And the
fulfillment, when realized, will far exceed all anticipation. Thus the
promise to Abraham was divided into two portions; for God said to him:
"Thy seed shall be (1) as the stars of heaven (spiritual Israel),
Messiah and his elect Bride," and (2) "Thy seed shall
OV72 be as the sand of the sea
shore"—natural Israel and the multitudes of mankind who shall receive
the Divine blessing through both spiritual and natural Israel. For the
Scriptures indicate that as all nations are privileged to come to the
United States and become citizens, so during the reign of Messiah all
nations will be privileged to become Israelites and thus to share in
the blessings of IsraelÂ’s New Covenant. (#Jer 31:31 ; #Ro 11:27.)
Thus ultimately all the willing and obedient of the human family will
be adopted into AbrahamÂ’s family. At the conclusion of MessiahÂ’s reign
of a thousand years, the whole earth will be filled with AbrahamÂ’s seed
or posterity, and lifted up to full perfection and harmony with God;
because all the unwilling and disobedient will ere then have been
utterly destroyed by Immanuel in the Second Death.
ONLY A LITTLE WHILE
ONLY a little while to walk with weary
feet, Only a little while the storms of life to meet, Only a little
while to tread the thorny way, Only a little while, then comes the
perfect day.
Only a little while to spread the
truth abroad, Only a little while to testify for God, Only a little
while, the time is fleeting fast, Only a little while, earthÂ’s sorrows
all are past.
Only a little while, then let us do our best, Only a little while, then comes the promised rest.
Only a little while, oh, what a word is this!
Only a little while, then comes the perfect bliss.
Only a little while, then death shall
be withdrawn, Only a little while, then pain and tears are gone; Only a
little while, then by the Crystal Sea, Only a little while, then we
shall dwell with Thee.
Only a little while, Lord, let Thy Kingdom come!
Only a little while, Thy people sigh
for home; Only a little while, the City bring to sight, Only a little
while, come end earthÂ’s dreary night!
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