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The Desire of Ages
with you,” He said, “and then I go unto Him that sent Me. Ye shall
seek Me, and shall not find Me: and where I am, thither ye cannot
come.” Soon He would find a refuge beyond the reach of their scorn
and hate. He would ascend to the Father, to be again the Adored of the
angels; and thither His murderers could never come.
Sneeringly the rabbis said, “Whither will He go, that we shall not
find Him? will He go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles, and teach
the Gentiles?” Little did these cavilers dream that in their mocking
words they were picturing the mission of the Christ! All day long
He had stretched forth His hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying
people; yet He would be found of them that sought Him not; among
a people that had not called upon His name He would be manifest.
Romans 10:20, 21
.
Many who were convinced that Jesus was the Son of God were
misled by the false reasoning of the priests and rabbis. These teachers
had repeated with great effect the prophecies concerning the Messiah,
that He would “reign in Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before His
ancients gloriously;” that He would “have dominion also from sea to
sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.”
Isaiah 24:23
;
Psalm
72:8
. Then they made contemptuous comparisons between the glory
here pictured and the humble appearance of Jesus. The very words
of prophecy were so perverted as to sanction error. Had the people in
sincerity studied the word for themselves, they would not have been
misled. The sixty-first chapter of Isaiah testifies that Christ was to do
the very work He did. Chapter fifty-three sets forth His rejection and
sufferings in the world, and chapter fifty-nine describes the character
of the priests and rabbis.
God does not compel men to give up their unbelief. Before them
are light and darkness, truth and error. It is for them to decide which
they will accept. The human mind is endowed with power to discrimi-
nate between right and wrong. God designs that men shall not decide
from impulse, but from weight of evidence, carefully comparing scrip-
ture with scripture. Had the Jews laid by their prejudice and compared
written prophecy with the facts characterizing the life of Jesus, they
would have perceived a beautiful harmony between the prophecies and
their fulfillment in the life and ministry of the lowly Galilean.
[459]
Many are deceived today in the same way as were the Jews. Reli-
gious teachers read the Bible in the light of their own understanding