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The Spirit of Prophecy Volume 4
impregnable. He who would at this time have foretold publicly its
destruction, would, like Noah in his day, have been called a crazed
alarmist. But Christ had said, “Heaven and earth shall pass away,
but my words shall not pass away.” [
Matthew 24:35
.] Because of her
sins, wrath had been denounced against Jerusalem, and her stubborn
unbelief rendered her doom certain.
The Lord had declared by the prophet Micah: “Hear this, I pray
you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of
Israel, that abhor judgment, and pervert all equity. They build up
Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity. The heads thereof
judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the
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prophets thereof divine for money; yet will they lean upon the Lord,
and say, Is not the Lord among us? none evil can come upon us.”
[
Micah 3:9-11
.]
How exactly did these words describe the corrupt and self-
righteous inhabitants of Jerusalem! While claiming to rigidly ob-
serve the law of God, they were transgressing all its principles. They
hated Christ because his purity and holiness revealed their iniquity;
and they accused him of being the cause of all the troubles which had
come upon them in consequence of their sins. Though they knew
him to be sinless, they had declared that his death was necessary to
their safety as a nation. “If we let him thus alone,” said the Jewish
leaders, “all men will believe on him; and the Romans shall come
and take away both our place and nation.” [
John 11:48
.] If Christ
were sacrificed, they might once more become a strong, united peo-
ple. Thus they reasoned, and they concurred in the decision of their
high priest, that it would be better for one man to die than for the
whole nation to perish.
Thus had the Jewish leaders “built up Zion with blood, and
Jerusalem with iniquity.” And yet, while they slew their Saviour
because he reproved their sins, such was their self-righteousness that
they regarded themselves as God’s favored people, and expected the
Lord to deliver them from their enemies. “Therefore,” continued
the prophet, “shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and
Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the
high places of the forest.” [
Micah 3:12
.]
For forty years after the doom of Jerusalem had been pronounced
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by Christ himself, the Lord delayed his judgments upon the city and