Probably quite a number of you
thought about the question pertaining to the destruction of Jerusalem, even
though you did not write about it. The matter being fresh in your minds, the
following remarks will be of particular interest. They carry us back in spirit
to those awful days, about three years after Paul’s martyrdom, when favored Jerusalem was destroyed after the longsuffering of God proved to be of no avail. Although
this terrible and epochal event does not form a part of Church history, being
distinctly Jewish, yet it does greatly interest us on that very account, and
also because it did most definitely and immediately affect those in that city
who were Christians. Now to quote:

The disciples, before the death
and resurrection of Christ, were strongly Jewish in all their thoughts and
associations. They connected the Messiah and the temple together. Their thought
was that He should deliver them from the power of the Romans and that all the
prophecies about the land, the tribes, the city, and temple would be
accomplished. But Israel rejected the Messiah Himself and, consequently, all
their own hopes and promises in Him. Most significant and weighty are the
opening words of Matthew 24:"And Jesus went out, and departed from the
temple." It was now empty indeed, in the sight of God. All that gave it
value to Him was gone. "Behold, your house is left unto you
desolate." It was now ripe for destruction.

"And His disciples came to
Him for to show Him the buildings of the temple." They were still occupied
with the outward greatness and glory of these things. "And Jesus said unto
them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be
left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." These
words were literally accomplished by the Romans about forty years after they
were spoken and in the very way that the Lord predicted. "For the days
shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and
compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even
with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee
one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy
visitation" (Luke 19:43, 44).

After the Romans had experienced
many disappointments and defeats in attempting to make a breach in the walls,
through the desperate resistance of the insurgent Jews, even until little hope
was left of taking the city, Titus summoned a council of war. Three plans were
discussed:to storm the city immediately; to repair the works and rebuild the
engines of war; or to blockade and starve the city to surrender. The last was
preferred, and the whole army was set to work "to cast a trench"
around the city. But the siege was long and difficult. It lasted from the
spring till September, and during all that time, the most unexampled miseries
of every kind were experienced by the besieged. But at last the end came, when
both the city and the temple were in the hands of the Romans. Titus was anxious
to save the magnificent temple and its treasures. But, contrary to his orders,
a soldier, mounting on the shoulders of one of his comrades, threw a blazing
brand into a small gilded door in the outer building or porch. The flames
sprang up at once. Titus, observing this, rushed to the spot with the utmost
speed; he shouted and made signs to his soldiers to quench the fire; but his
voice was drowned, and his signs unnoticed in the fearful confusion. The
splendor of the interior filled him with wonder. As the flames had not yet
reached the most holy place, he made a last effort to save it, and exhorted the
soldiers to stay the conflagration; but it was too late. Blazing brands were
flying in all directions, and the fierce excitement of battle, with the
insatiable hope of plunder, had reached its highest pitch. Titus little knew
that a greater than he had said, "There shall not be left here one stone
upon another, that shall not be thrown down." The word of the Lord, not
the commands of Titus, must be obeyed. The whole was thoroughly leveled and
razed to the foundations, according to the word of the Lord.

For nearly every particular of
this terrible siege, we are indebted to Josephus, who was in the Roman camp and
near the person of Titus at the time. He acted as interpreter when terms were
talked of between Titus and the insurgents. The walls and bulwarks of Zion seemed impregnable to the Roman, and he felt most anxious to come to terms of peace;
but the Jews rejected every proposal, and the Romans at length triumphed. On
entering the city, Josephus tells us, Titus was struck with wonder at its
strength; indeed when he contemplated the solid altitude of the towers, the
magnitude of the stones and the accuracy of their joinings, and saw how great
was their breadth, how vast their height, "Surely," he exclaimed,
"we fought with God on our side; and God it was who brought the Jews down
from these bulwarks; for what could human hands or engines avail against these
towers?" Such were the confessions of the heathen general. It certainly
was the most terrible siege that the whole history of the world records.

The accounts given by Josephus
of the sufferings of the Jews during the siege are too awful to be detailed
here. The numbers that perished under Vespasian in the country and under Titus
in the city, from a.d. 67-70, by
famine, internal factions, and the Roman sword, were 1,350,460 besides 100,000
sold into slavery. Such, alas! alas! were the awful consequences of the Jews’
disbelieving and disregarding the solemn, earnest, and affectionate entreaties
of their own Messiah. Need we wonder at the Redeemer’s tears, shed over the
infatuated city? And need we wonder at the preacher’s tears now, as he appeals
to infatuated sinners, in view of coming and eternal judgments? Surely the
wonder is that so few tears are shed over thoughtless, careless, perishing
sinners. Oh, for hearts to feel as the Saviour felt, and eyes to weep like His!

The Christians, with whom we
have more especially to do, remembering the Lord’s warning, left Jerusalem in a body before the siege was formed. They journeyed to Pella, a village beyond
the Jordan, where they remained till Hadrian permitted them to return to the
ruins of their ancient city.

(I Tim. 3:14-16)

The Apostle Paul closes this
portion of his epistle by definitely stating that his reason for writing
"these things" is that Timothy might know how one ought to behave
oneself in the House of God.

We are told that the House of
God is "the Church (or Assembly) of the living God." It is no longer
a building of material stones, as in the Old Testament days, but a company of
"living stones" — believers. It is formed of all believers living on
earth at any given moment. No local assembly is ever called the House of God.

Further, it is the Assembly of
the living God. The God who dwells in the midst of His people is not
like the dead idols that men worship, that can neither see nor hear. That our
God is living is a truth of blessed but solemn importance, but one we can
easily forget. Later, the Apostle tells us that we can "both labor and
suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God" (in the tenth verse
of the fourth chapter).

The living God is a God that
delights to support and bless His people. Nevertheless, if the holiness that
becomes His House is not maintained, God may make manifest that He is the
living God in solemn governmental dealings as he did with Ananias and Sapphira,
who experienced the truth of the words that "it is a fearful thing to fall
into the hands of the living God" (Heb. 10:31).

Moreover, we learn that the
House of God is "the pillar and ground (lit. "base") of the
truth" (I Tim. 3:15). The "pillar" presents the thought of
witness; the "base," that which supports. The House of God is not said
to be the truth, but the "pillar," or witness of the truth. Christ on
earth was "the truth" (John 14:6). Again, we read that "Thy Word
is truth" (John 17:17). However much the Assembly may have failed in its
responsibilities, the fact remains that as established of God upon earth, it is
the witness and support of the truth. God has no other witness on the earth.

It is important to remember that
the Assembly is not said to teach the truth, but to witness to the truth that
is already found in the Word of God. Nor can the Assembly claim authority to
decide what is truth. The Word is the truth, and carries its own authority.

Seeing then that the Assembly is
the House of God—the living God—and the witness and support of the truth, how
important that we should know how to behave ourselves in the House of God. With
a view to godly behavior the Apostle speaks of "the mystery of
godliness" or, the secret of right behavior.

One has written of this passage:
"This is often quoted and interpreted as if it spoke of the mystery of the
Godhead, or the mystery of Christ’s Person. But it is the mystery of godliness,
or the secret by which all real godliness is produced; the divine spring of all
that can be called piety in man" (J.N.D.). The secret of godliness lies in
the knowledge of God manifested in and through the Person of Christ. Thus
in this beautiful passage we have Christ presented as making God known to men
and angels. In Christ, God was manifest in the flesh. The absolute holiness of
Christ was seen in that He was justified in the Spirit. We are justified in the
death of Christ; He was sealed and anointed altogether apart from death—the
proof of His intrinsic holiness. Then, in Christ, as Man, God was seen of
angels. In Christ He was made known to, and believed on in the world. Finally,
the heart of God is made known by the present position of Christ in the glory.

All this is spoken of as
"the mystery of godliness" because these things are not known to the
unbeliever. Such indeed can appreciate the outward conduct that flows from
godliness, or piety, but the unbeliever cannot know the secret spring of
godliness. That secret is known only to the godly, and the secret lies in the
knowledge of God; and the knowledge of God has been revealed in Christ to the
believer.

(Luke 7:47)

To explain the expression,
"Her sins are forgiven, for she loved much," we must distinguish
between grace revealed in the person of Jesus and the pardon He announced to
those whom the grace had reached. The Lord is able to make this pardon known.
He reveals it to the poor woman. But it was that which she had seen in Jesus
Himself, which, by grace, melted her heart and produced the love she had to
Him—the seeing what He has for sinners like herself. She thinks only of Him:He
has taken possession of her heart so as to shut out other influences. Hearing
that He is there, she goes into the house of this proud Pharisee without
thinking of anything but the fact that Jesus is there. His presence answered,
or prevented, every question. She saw what He was to a sinner and that the most
wretched and disgraced found a resource in Him; she felt her sins in the way
that this perfect grace, which opens the heart and wins confidence, causes them
to be felt; and she loved much. Grace in Christ had produced its effect. She
loved because of His love. This is the reason that the Lord says, "Her
sins are forgiven … for she loved much." It was not that her love was
meritorious for this, but that God revealed the glorious fact that the sins—be
they ever so numerous and abominable—of one whose heart was turned to God were
fully pardoned.

If God manifests Himself in this
world, and with such love, He must needs set aside in the heart every other
consideration. And thus, without being aware of it, this poor woman was the
only one who acted suitably in those circumstances, for she appreciated the
all-importance of the One who was there. A Saviour-God being present, of what
importance was Simon and his house? Jesus caused all else to be forgotten. Let
us remember this.

The beginning of man’s fall was
lack of confidence in God, originating in the seducing suggestion of Satan that
God had kept back what would make man like God. Confidence in God lost, man
seeks, in the exercise of his own will, to make himself happy:lusts, sin,
transgression follow. Christ is God in infinite love, winning back the
confidence of man’s heart to God. Removal of guilt and power to live to God are
another thing and are found in their own place through Christ, as pardon comes
into its place here. But the poor woman, through grace, had felt that there was
one heart she could trust, if none else; and that was God’s.

God is light and God is love.
Revealing Himself, He must be both; so Christ was love in the world and also
the light of it; so also in the heart. The love through grace gives confidence,
and thus the light is gladly let in; and with confidence in the love and seeing
self in the light, the heart has wholly met God’s heart:so with this poor
woman. This is where the heart of man and God always and alone meet. The
Pharisee had neither—pitch dark, neither love nor light were there. He had God
manifest in the flesh in his house and saw nothing — being sure only that He
was not a prophet! It is a wondrous scene to see these three hearts:man’s, as
such, resting on false human righteousness; God’s; and the poor sinner’s fully
meeting God’s heart as God did hers. Who was the child of wisdom? for it is a
commentary on that expression. (Luke 7:35).

And note, though Christ had said
nothing of it but bowed to the slight, yet He was not insensible to the neglect
which had failed to provide Him with the common courtesies of life. To Simon He
was a poor preacher, whose pretensions he could judge, certainly not a prophet;
to the poor woman, God in love, and bringing her heart into unison with His as
to her sins and as to herself; for love was trusted in. Note, too, this
clinging to Jesus is where true light is found:here the fruitful revelation of
the gospel, to Mary Magdalene, as to the highest privilege of saints.

Reading Genesis recently, we
were impressed with the way Joseph gives God His rightful place.

In 39:9:"How then can I do
this great wickedness, and sin against God?"

To the butler and the baker
Joseph says, "Do not interpretations belong to God?" (40:8) "God
shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace," Joseph assures the king in
chapter 41:16. In interpreting Pharoah’s dream, Joseph explains to the King
that "it is because the thing is established by God, and God will
shortly bring it to pass" (41:32). Under Joseph’s influence even Pharaoh
talks about God. "Can we find such a one as this is, a man in whom the
Spirit of God is?" (41:38. See also v. 39.)

His sons are named with God
before his heart. "And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh:
For God, saith he, hath made me forget all my toil …. And the name of
the second called he Ephraim:For God hath caused me to be fruitful in
the land of my affliction" (41:51, 52).

In 42:18 he says to his
brethren, "I fear God"; perhaps this had some effect on them,
for in verse 28 they questioned among themselves, "What is this that God
hath done unto us?"

Seeing his brother Benjamin
after an absence of over twenty years, Joseph’s first words to him were:"God
be gracious unto thee" (43:29).

Pouring out his heart to his
brethren, after making himself known to them, Joseph says to them:"And God
sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save
your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me hither,
but God …. Go up to my father, and say unto him . . . God hath
made me lord of all Egypt" (45:7-9).

"[These] are my sons,"
Joseph tells his father at their reunion, "whom God hath given me
in this place" (48:9).

After their father Jacob’s
death, Joseph’s brethren are afraid of what he might do to them. Joseph,
however, assures them that they need not fear, telling them, "As for you,
ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to
pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive" (50:20).

Finally, Joseph, at the end of
his life, "said unto his brethren, I die:and God will surely visit
you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which He sware to Abraham, to
Isaac, and to Jacob" (50:24).

How interesting and refreshing
to see this constant reference to God and recognition of God in a life so shut
away from human fellowship and subjected to so many and such great trials. That
we are sadly remiss in this we will all readily agree. How much brighter,
however, our lives would be, and how much more to His glory, if we acknowledged
God more openly, readily, and fully in the broad plan of and in the small
details of our lives. (Prov. 3:6 and Romans 8:28) May God our Father give us
grace to do so.

FRAGMENT "Wherefore also
let them who suffer according to the will of God commit their souls in
well-doing to a faithful Creator" (I Peter 4:19, J.N.D. Trans.).

With such need and opportunity
as presents itself to us on every hand, the following account is given to stir
up and encourage our hands and feet in the gospel. We may not see results at
any given time, but let us be sure that it is life-giving seed (which is the
Word of God), that we sow and some of it will fall on good ground.

An aged woman had come quite a
distance to attend a gospel meeting, the subject of which was the Lord’s
coming. She was nearly blind, but God was pleased to open her spiritual
eyesight, and two things were made known to her in the power of the Holy
Spirit. God gave her the certainty of eternal salvation, and also made
known to her the blessed hope of the coming again of the Lord to take His
saints to heaven to be with Him where He is.

These two things were entirely
new to her; she had never heard them before. She returned home filled with
"the peace of God which passeth all understanding." She told her
husband the blessed news that she had learned. The Lord opened his heart also
to receive the glad tidings, and much of their time was spent in thanksgiving
and worship.

They had an elderly neighbor
about the same age as themselves. One day when they had knelt down, giving
thanks together that they were both cleansed in the blood of the Lamb from all
their sins, and were waiting and longing for the coming of the Lord in the air
to take them to Himself, this neighbor came in to see them, as he was
accustomed to doing. As both of them were rather deaf, and so entirely absorbed
in thanksgiving, they did not hear him come in.

He listened with amazement; such
joy he had never witnessed; such words he had never heard. It was not prayer,
but thanksgiving to Him who had saved them with an everlasting salvation—who
had made them fit for His holy presence in holiness and love. They were in
heaven in spirit, and they were talking to One they knew well, and they never
seemed tired of talking to Him. They talked to Him about His coming to take
them to Himself. Their friend was fairly lost in amazement. At last the dear
aged couple rose from their knees. Their visitor said, "Whatever does all
this mean? I have been going to church these seventy years and saying my
prayers, but I cannot say that I am even saved, let alone saved forever, and
saved perfectly. No, I surely cannot. And you are speaking to God as if you
knew Him. And what can you mean about the coming of Christ to take you?"

Then the woman told the gospel
she had heard:how God loved; how He had sent His Son; how the Lord Jesus had
offered Himself the perfect sacrifice for sins; how God declared that all who
believed were justified from all things, and their sins and iniquities God
would remember no more; yes, and how that by one offering all who believed were
perfected for ever; and that Jesus assured all who heard His words and believed
God who sent Him, that they had eternal life and would never come into
judgment but were passed from death unto life; and that Jesus told them not to
be afraid; He was gone to prepare a place for them, and would come again to
receive them to Himself.

She spoke from the deep
enjoyment of Christ in her own soul. God blessed her words to their neighbor
friend. Though over eighty years of age, he, too, was brought into the
enjoyment of peace with God. As a little child did he receive the truth from
this couple. Heavenly indeed was the communion of these three aged pilgrims.
Much of their time was spent together in worship and communion, waiting for the
Lord Jesus from heaven. When the neighbor saw the smoke going up from the
chimney of their home, he was soon over there with them in thanksgiving and
praise.

It became necessary, after
awhile, that the old couple be taken care of. A son took them to his home, not
far away; so this happy little band was separated. The plan had not been told
them, but the parents were taken as on a visit first, and then told that they
would remain. Morning after morning their former neighbor looked for the smoke
from the chimney. It never rose again, and after a few mornings, the Lord said
to that man, "Come up hither"; and, sweet as is fellowship here
below, it was now with him "far better."

So, dear brethren, let us be
stirred up. Little enough time is left us. What are we doing with it? Let us
balance our concern to hold fast to the truth with diligence in the gospel. In
the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand:for thou
knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both
shall be alike good (Eccles. 11:6).

"See, the shadows lengthen
round us,

Soon the day-dawn will begin;

Can you leave them, lost and
lonely?

Christ
is coming — ‘Call them in’."

Has someone seen CHRIST in you
today?

CHRISTIAN, look to your heart I
pray,

The little things you have done
or said—

Did they accord with the way you
prayed?

Have your thoughts been pure and
your words been kind?

Have you sought to have the
Saviour’s mind?

The world with a criticizing
view

Has watched—but did it see
CHRIST in YOU?

Has someone seen CHRIST in you
today?

Christian, look to your life I
pray:

There are aching hearts and
blighted souls

Being lost on sin’s destructive
shoals,

And perhaps of CHRIST their only
view

May be what of HIM they see in
you.

Will they see enough to bring
hope and cheer?

Look to your light! DOES IT
SHINE OUT CLEAR?

While working on the extract
from Miller’s Church History on Jerusalem, we were impressed with his comments
at the end of it:"Need we wonder at the Redeemer’s tears, shed over the
infatuated city?"

It made us thoughtful. Do we
wonder at them? We quote that verse:"And when He was come near, He beheld
the city, and wept over it" (Luke 19:41). "Wept over it!" Oh,
those tears! How they tell us what was in His heart — the heart of God
His Father. We would be prone rather to think—if not say — what fools they
were, how wilful and stubborn and blind!

Thy foes did hate, despise,
revile,

Thy friends unfaithful prove;

Unwearied in forgiveness still,

Thy heart could only love!

We think of those tears; we try
to see them. Do we reflect those feelings? They reflect the new nature reacting
to self-will and the rejection of God’s grace and love. Those tears make us
ashamed. Don’t they affect you that way too? We know so little of such
feelings. How many tears have we shed in this respect? When did we last weep
over the stubbornness and self-will that we saw within us or around us? Oh, for
the capacity to feel things!

Scripture draws our attention,
many times, to those who wept. Consider Joseph. "He wept." "He
wept aloud" (Gen. 45:2) for his hard-hearted brothers who hated him and
had "conspired against him to slay him." So far from harboring
feelings of resentment and malice toward them, he entreats them, when in the
position to do so, "Come near to me … I will nourish thee" (Gen.
45:4, II.) This, surely, is the spirit of Christ.

Let us go further back in
thought to Job, a man "that feared God." "Did I not weep for
him that was in trouble?" (Job 30:25) Do we? Ever? Here, too, is
the spirit of Christ.

Turning over the pages of our
Bibles, we may view, as it was reported to Nehemiah, the state of God’s people,
and the broken condition of Jerusalem where God had put His Name. Greatly
affected by it, that earnest devoted man writes that "when I heard these
words … I sat down and wept" (Neh. 1:4). Feeling that condition
as his very own led him, then, to pray about it, and to pray for his
brethren — far away from him though they were. (It led him to do something
about it too; Neh. 2:5). How all this breathes of that lowly and compassionate
spirit seen in our Lord Jesus when here among men.

Now Christ is in the Glory:Head
of the church, which is His body. These feelings should properly flow through
the members of that body. We hear the Apostle Paul, in Acts 20, pouring out his
heart to the Ephesian elders; he knows they will not see his face again. He
reminds them of how he had served the Lord with all humility of mind, and with
many tears; "of how he had warned every one night and day with tears"
(Acts 20:19, 31).

We could draw other and similar
instances to your attention, but that is not our purpose. This is enough.

May we drink in deeply of that
lowly and loving spirit that feels things as the Lord Jesus would have us feel
them. Such godly emotion as tears express is not queer, nor feminine, nor rare
either — as we have been noticing. Let it not be lost on us that it is our God
Himself who draws our attention to this spirit, this distinctive trait of the
new nature, in the Scriptures at which we have been looking.

"They that sow in tears
shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed,
shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him"
(Psalm 126:5, 6).

FRAGMENT "And He shall wipe
away every tear from their eyes" (Rev. 4:21, J.N.D. Trans.). Won’t you be
a little disappointed if you have none to be wiped away?