16
The Great Controversy 1888
His tears were not for himself, though he well knew whither his
feet were tending. Before him lay Gethsemane, the scene of his
approaching agony. The sheep gate also was in sight, through which
for centuries the victims for sacrifice had been led, and which was to
open for him when he should be “brought as a lamb to the slaughter.”
[
Isaiah 53:7
.] Not far distant was Calvary, the place of crucifixion.
Upon the path which Christ was soon to tread must fall the horror of
great darkness as he should make his soul an offering for sin. Yet it was
not the contemplation of these scenes that cast the shadow upon him in
this hour of gladness. No foreboding of his own superhuman anguish
clouded that unselfish spirit. He wept for the doomed thousands of
Jerusalem—because of the blindness and impenitence of those whom
he came to bless and to save.
The history of more than a thousand years of God’s special favor
and guardian care, manifested to the chosen people, was open to the
eye of Jesus. There was Mount Moriah, where the son of promise,
an unresisting victim, had been bound to the altar,—emblem of the
offering of the Son of God. [
Genesis 22:9
.] There, the covenant of
blessing, the glorious Messianic promise, had been confirmed to the
[19]
father of the faithful. [
Genesis 22:16-18
.] There the flames of the
sacrifice ascending to heaven from the threshing-floor of Ornan had
turned aside the sword of the destroying angel [
1 Chronicles 21
.]—
fitting symbol of the Saviour’s sacrifice and mediation for guilty men.
Jerusalem had been honored of God above all the earth. The Lord had
“chosen Zion,” he had “desired it for his habitation.” [
Psalm 132:13
.]
There, for ages, holy prophets had uttered their messages of warning.
There, priests had waved their censers, and the cloud of incense, with
the prayers of the worshipers, had ascended before God. There daily
the blood of slain lambs had been offered, pointing forward to the
Lamb of God. There, Jehovah had revealed his presence in the cloud
of glory above the mercy-seat. There rested the base of that mystic
ladder connecting earth with Heaven, [
Genesis 28:12
;
John 1:51
.]—
that ladder upon which angels of God descended and ascended, and
which opened to the world the way into the holiest of all. Had Israel
as a nation preserved her allegiance to Heaven, Jerusalem would have
stood forever, the elect of God. [
Jeremiah 17:21-25
.] But the history
of that favored people was a record of backsliding and rebellion. They