On the Mount of Olives
539
another.” All this the Christians suffered. Fathers and mothers betrayed
their children. Children betrayed their parents. Friends delivered their
friends up to the Sanhedrin. The persecutors wrought out their purpose
by killing Stephen, James, and other Christians.
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Through His servants, God gave the Jewish people a last oppor-
tunity to repent. He manifested Himself through His witnesses in
their arrest, in their trial, and in their imprisonment. Yet their judges
pronounced on them the death sentence. They were men of whom the
world was not worthy, and by killing them the Jews crucified afresh
the Son of God. So it will be again. The authorities will make laws
to restrict religious liberty. They will assume the right that is God’s
alone. They will think they can force the conscience, which God alone
should control. Even now they are making a beginning; this work
they will continue to carry forward till they reach a boundary over
which they cannot step. God will interpose in behalf of His loyal,
commandment-keeping people.
On every occasion when persecution takes place, those who wit-
ness it make decisions either for Christ or against Him. Those who
manifest sympathy for the ones wrongly condemned show their attach-
ment for Christ. Others are offended because the principles of truth
cut directly across their practice. Many stumble and fall, apostatizing
from the faith they once advocated. Those who apostatize in time of
trial will, to secure their own safety, bear false witness, and betray their
brethren. Christ has warned us of this, that we may not be surprised at
the unnatural, cruel course of those who reject the light.
Christ gave His disciples a sign of the ruin to come on Jerusalem,
and He told them how to escape: “When ye shall see Jerusalem com-
passed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh.
Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains; and let them
which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the
countries enter thereinto. For these be the days of vengeance, that all
things which are written may be fulfilled.” This warning was given
to be heeded forty years after, at the destruction of Jerusalem. The
Christians obeyed the warning, and not a Christian perished in the fall
of the city.
“Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter; neither on the Sabbath
day,” Christ said. He who made the Sabbath did not abolish it, nailing
it to His cross. The Sabbath was not rendered null and void by His