18
The Great Controversy 1888
the woes of men, to plead with them to accept the gift of life. The
waves of mercy, beaten back by those stubborn hearts, returned in a
stronger tide of pitying, inexpressible love. But Israel had turned from
her best friend and only helper. The pleadings of his love had been
despised, his counsels spurned, his warnings ridiculed.
[21]
The hour of hope and pardon was fast passing; the cup of God’s
long-deferred wrath was almost full. The cloud that had been gathering
through ages of apostasy and rebellion, now black with woe, was about
to burst upon a guilty people, and He who alone could save them from
their impending fate had been slighted, abused, rejected, and was soon
to be crucified. When Christ should hang upon the cross of Calvary,
Israel’s day as a nation favored and blessed of God would be ended.
The loss of even one soul is a calamity, infinitely outweighing the
gains and treasures of a world; but as Christ looked upon Jerusalem,
the doom of a whole city, a whole nation, was before him; that city,
that nation which had once been the chosen of God,—his peculiar
treasure.
Prophets had wept over the apostasy of Israel, and the terrible
desolations by which their sins were visited. Jeremiah wished that his
eyes were a fountain of tears, that he might weep day and night for
the slain of the daughter of his people, for the Lord’s flock that was
carried away captive. [
Jeremiah 9:1
;
13:17
.] What, then, was the grief
of Him whose prophetic glance took in, not years, but ages! He beheld
the destroying angel with sword uplifted against the city which had
so long been Jehovah’s dwelling-place. From the ridge of Olivet, the
very spot afterward occupied by Titus and his army, he looked across
the valley upon the sacred courts and porticoes, and with tear-dimmed
eyes he saw, in awful perspective, the walls surrounded by alien hosts.
He heard the tread of armies marshaling for war. He heard the voice of
mothers and children crying for bread in the besieged city. He saw her
holy and beautiful house, her palaces and towers, given to the flames,
and where once they stood, only a heap of smouldering ruins.
Looking down the ages, he saw the covenant people scattered in
every land, “like wrecks on a desert shore.” In the temporal retribution
about to fall upon her children, he saw but the first draught from that
[22]
cup of wrath which at the final Judgment she must drain to its dregs.
Divine pity, yearning love, found utterance in the mournful words: “‘O
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them