Basic HTML Version
Secret of Success in God’s Work
263
Human Ways Contrasted With God’s Way
The way of the world is to begin with pomp and boasting. God’s
way is to start the glorious triumph of truth with the day of small
things. Sometimes God trains His workers by disappointment and
apparent failure. He wants them to learn to master difficulties.
[210]
Often we are tempted to become discouraged when we meet
perplexities and obstacles. But if we will hold our confidence unbro-
ken, God will make the way clear. Success will come. Mountains
of difficulty will become a plain; and he whose hands have laid the
foundation, even “his hands shall also finish it.”
Zechariah 4:9
.
Human power did not establish the church of God. The church
was not founded on the rock of human strength, but on Christ Jesus,
the Rock of Ages, “and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
Matthew 16:18
. God’s glorious work will never come to nothing. It
will go on, “‘not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the
Lord of hosts.”
Zechariah 4:6
.
The promise to Zerubbabel was fulfilled literally. See verse 9.
“The elders of the Jews ... built and finished it, according to the
commandment of the God of Israel, and according to the command
of Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia. Now the temple
was finished on the third day of the month of Adar.”
Ezra 6:14, 15
.
The second temple did not equal the first in magnificence, nor
was it made holy by those visible signs of the divine presence that the
first temple had. No supernatural power marked its dedication—no
cloud of glory filled the newly built sanctuary, no fire from heaven
consumed the sacrifice on its altar. The Shekinah no longer rested in
the Most Holy Place. The ark, the mercy seat, and the tablets of the
law were not found there.
The True Glory of the Second Temple
And yet this was the building of which the Lord had declared,
“The glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former.”
“The Desire of All Nations” would come.
Haggai 2:9, 7
. Jesus,
the Desire of All Nations, made the temple holy by His personal
presence. Yet many have refused to see any special significance