Amen dgrimm

God will restrain His anger but little longer. His wrath burns against this nation and especially against the religious bodies that have sanctioned this terrible traffic and have themselves engaged in it. {EW 275}


Then I realized, as never before, the importance of searching the Word of God carefully, to know how to escape the plagues which that Word declares shall come on all the ungodly who shall worship the beast and his image and receive his mark in their foreheads or in their hands. {EW 64}

In the Jewish nation we behold a chosen nation divorced from God because of unbelief. Jesus, the lover of humanity, was called upon to pronounce sentence against the people for whom he had lived and labored, but from whom he had borne insult, mockery, and rejection. He had borne everything from them,

he had done all that was possible that he might save them from ruin.

He knew the history of sin. He had watched its unfoldings from the beginning. He had seen the heavenly angels bewitched by its evil power until they were led to sympathize and to join with Satan in his rebellion against God. He had passed through the terrible scenes when there was war in heaven, when Satan had been expelled from the abode of bliss, and before his vision were all the consequences of sin.

O if he could but do one act of mercy by which they might be led to abandon their rebellion, and come to him that he might save;

but he had exhausted the resources of infinite love.

The last arrow had been drawn from his quiver;

he could do no more.

The salvation of the Jews would have been the joy of Christ, the rejoicing of the angels, but they would not. No man will be saved against his will. {RH, April 18, 1893 par. 4}

The tears of Jesus were not in anticipation of His own suffering. Just before Him was Gethsemane, where soon the horror of a great darkness would overshadow Him. The sheepgate also was in sight, through which for centuries the beasts for sacrificial offerings had been led. This gate was soon to open for Him, the great Antitype, toward whose sacrifice for the sins of the world all these offerings had pointed. Near by was Calvary, the scene of His approaching agony. Yet it was not because of these reminders of His cruel death that the Redeemer wept and groaned in anguish of spirit. His was no selfish sorrow. The thought of His own agony did not intimidate that noble, self-sacrificing soul. It was the sight of Jerusalem that pierced the heart of Jesus--Jerusalem that had rejected the Son of God and scorned His love, that refused to be convinced by His mighty miracles, and was about to take His life. He saw what she was in her guilt of rejecting her Redeemer, and what she might have been had she accepted Him who alone could heal her wound. He had come to save her; how could He give her up? {DA 576.1}

His tears were not for Himself, though He well knew whither His feet were tending. Before Him lay Gethsemane, the scene of His approaching agony. The sheepgate also was in sight, through which for centuries the victims for sacrifice had been led, and which was to open for Him when He should be "brought as a lamb to the slaughter." Isaiah 53:7. Not far distant was Calvary, the place of crucifixion. Upon the path which Christ was soon to tread must fall the horror of great darkness as He should make His soul an offering for sin. Yet it was not the contemplation of these scenes that cast the shadow upon Him in this hour of gladness. No foreboding of His own superhuman anguish clouded that unselfish spirit. He wept for the doomed thousands of Jerusalem--because of the blindness and impenitence of those whom He came to bless and to save. {GC 18.1}

TERESAQ

THIS sadness must have been very great knowing
that the people were rejecting GOD'S salvation

dgrimm60