FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128  
129   130   131   132   >>  
e is to be no present fulfilment of these visions of millennial glory. That day and that hour are to be wrapt in unrevealed and impenetrable secrecy. The Church may not attempt rashly and inquisitively to lift the veil. She is not to know the _time_ of the Saviour's appearing, that she may live every day in the frame she would wish to be found in when the cry shall be heard, "Behold the Bridegroom cometh." The apostolic band are, in the first instance, to be cross-bearers, as He their Master was,--witnesses to His sufferings, earthen vessels, defamed, persecuted, reviled,--before they become partakers of His purchased happiness and bliss! Nevertheless, it was a grand and glorious mission He sketched out for them. How worthy of HIMSELF--of his loving, forgiving, unselfish Spirit--was the opening clause in that wondrous Missionary Charter He then put into their hands. Even at the moment when all the memory of Jewish ingratitude was fresh on His heart, He inserts a wondrous provision of mercy and grace. They were to proclaim His name through the wide world; but was JERUSALEM (the scene of His ignominy) to form an exception? Nay, rather they were to _begin there_! The Gospel-Trumpet was to be sounded in its streets. The assassins of Gethsemane, the murderers of Calvary were to listen to the first offers of pardon and reconciliation--"And He said unto them ... that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, _beginning_ at _Jerusalem_!" Precious warrant, surely, are these words to "the chief of sinners" to repair to this gracious Saviour. If even for "_the Jerusalem sinner_" there is mercy, can there be ground for one human being to despair? But "_beginning_" at Jerusalem, the Gospel Commission did not _end_ there? It was to embrace, first, "Judea," then "Samaria," then "the uttermost parts of the earth."[44] The ascending Redeemer's expansive heart took in with a vast sweep the wide circle of humanity. From the elevated ridge of Olivet, on which He now stood with the arrested group around Him, He might tell them to gaze, in thought at least, far north beyond the Cedar Heights of Lebanon and Hermon;--Southward to the desert and the Isles of the Ocean;--Westward to the fair lands washed by the Great Sea;--Eastward across the palm-trees of Bethany and the chain of Moabite mountains on unexplored continents, where heathenism still revelled in its rites and orgies of impurity and blood.
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128  
129   130   131   132   >>  



Top keywords:
Jerusalem
 

beginning

 

Gospel

 
wondrous
 
Saviour
 
embrace
 

Commission

 

despair

 

ground

 

uttermost


expansive
 
Redeemer
 

ascending

 

Samaria

 

preached

 

nations

 

remission

 

repentance

 

reconciliation

 

pardon


present
 

repair

 

gracious

 
circle
 

sinners

 
Precious
 
warrant
 

surely

 

sinner

 

Eastward


Bethany

 

Westward

 
washed
 
Moabite
 

revelled

 
orgies
 

impurity

 

heathenism

 

mountains

 

unexplored


continents

 

arrested

 
elevated
 

offers

 
Olivet
 
Lebanon
 

Heights

 

Hermon

 
Southward
 

desert