To the Jew First | 29
WAITING FOR THE CONSOLATION
And now the little boy was born in Bethlehem. Weary, sick,
hopeless enslaved under insufferable bondage to Rome, Israel
had now lost all hope of a Messiah. The Scepter had gone, and
no Messiah had come. True it was that a few, a very few, still
held on, with a hope born of sheer indomitable faith in the God
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. These were the faithful remnant,
only a handful it is true; among them, as typifying the character
of these faithful few, was a man, “just and devout, waiting for
the consolation of Israel.” That man’s name was Simeon. To him
it had been revealed by the Holy Ghost that he was not to see
death before he had seen the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we
may imagine how the tears flowed down his cheeks, as the joy
burst out of his hears, when he said, “Lord, now lettest thou thy
servant depart in peace according to thy word; for mine eyes
have seen thy salvation which thou has prepared before the
face of all people.”
Others there were who likewise were looking forward day by day
to the long hoped for coming of the Messiah, Luke tells us, “The
people were in expectation, and all men mused in their hearts of
John whether he were the Christ or not.” In their eagerness and
great anxiety of soul, they grasped at every faintest possibility of
finding the Messiah, must as a drowning man will grasp at a straw;
and here was John the Baptist, and perhaps he might be the One!
LEAPING THE CHASM OF TWO MELLENNIUMS
But now we take a far jump, swiftly and rather abruptly. We are
in the twentieth century, in the year 1939. What consternation
strikes our souls as we gaze upon the world today! What havoc,
what confusion, what perplexity, and what pitiful hopelessness.
Once more Satan’s hand is raised in the most desperate effort
of fully a thousand years to destroy the Jews from the face of
the earth. Disenfranchisement and savage cruelties in Germany,
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