Why I Preach the Second Coming

Neither postulate is possible.

God’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.

God 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 passages, 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) assuredly 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 God 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 God will fulfill this postscript promise and plan?

What evidence have we from the bare statement of God 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 assurance of life. In the morning they should say, Would God it were even, and at even they should say, Would God it were morning.

Their land should be made desolate and be an astonishment to the passer-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 godless 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 illustration of this fulfillment finds its most tragic emphasis in the history of the Jews since that day when their king, the Son of God 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 shores 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 clusters 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 brass from out of its rugged hills.

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 Massena 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?