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The Spirit of Prophecy Volume 3
their successors even unto the end of the world. Christ could not have
left his followers a more precious legacy than the assurance that his
presence would be with them through all the dark and trying hours of
life. When Satan seems ready to destroy the church of God, and bring
his people to confusion, they should remember that One has promised
to be with them who has said, “All power is given unto me in Heaven
and on earth.”
Persecution and reproach have ever been the lot of the true follow-
ers of Christ. The world hated the Master, and it has ever hated his
servants; but the Holy Spirit, the Comforter which Christ sent unto
his disciples, cheers and strengthens them to do his work with fidelity
during his personal absence. The Comforter, the Spirit of truth, was
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to abide with them forever, and Christ assured them that the union
existing between himself and the Father, now also embraced them.
The understanding of the disciples, which had been clouded by
misinterpretation of the prophecies, was now fully opened by Jesus,
who shed a clear light upon those scriptures referring to himself. He
showed them the true character of his kingdom; and they now began to
see that it was not the mission of Christ to establish a temporal power,
but that his kingdom of divine grace was to be manifested in the hearts
of his people, and that only through his humiliation, suffering, and
death, could the kingdom of his glory finally be established.
The power of death was held by the devil; but Jesus had removed
its stinging despair, by meeting the enemy upon his own territory and
there conquering him. Henceforth death would be robbed of its terror
for the Christian, since Christ himself had felt its pangs, and risen
from the grave to sit at the right hand of the Father in Heaven, having
all power in Heaven and on earth. The conflict between Christ and
Satan was determined when the Lord arose from the dead, shaking the
prison-house of his enemy to its foundations, and robbing him of his
spoils by bringing up a company of the sleeping dead, as a fresh trophy
of the victory achieved by the second Adam. This resurrection was
a sample, and an assurance, of the final resurrection of the righteous
dead at Christ’s second coming.
Jerusalem had been the scene of Christ’s amazing condescension
for the human race. There had he suffered, been rejected, and con-
demned. The land of Judea, of which Jerusalem was the metropolis,
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was his birthplace. There, clad in the garb of humanity, he had walked