THERE is but one sun in the solar system, one center in the universe, and one God who is Lord of all. Disloyalty to that One, and the attempt to be greater than He, threw a covering cherub under chains of darkness, made demons of angels, and evolved sin. Death, the salary for sin, was the guerdon of disloyalty, not for Satan only, but for all who have followed in his ways. Israel united or Israel scattered over the earth furnishes a striking example of this truth.
JERUSALEM, TOWER OF ANTONIA.
DISSATISFIED with dependence upon God as their ruler and leader, they cried for a king, and looked to him instead of to God for protection and guidance. God yielded to their cries and gave them a king; and with their king came oppression and long and bloody wars. They did not like to be a peculiar people—God’s example to the world—forsook Him as their king, and patterned after the nations that had long since lost the memory of God.
THE Word is filled with promises that God will not forsake nor forget His children. It is also filled with the record of continual heart wanderings, forsaking and forgetting of Him, on the part of His people. Tho God has, on account of their sins, sometimes turned His face away from Israel, it has only been that He might by that means win them back to Him. “For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid My face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer.” Isa. 54:7, 8.
THE Lord uses the strongest possible illustrations to show His unfailing care for His faithful children. “Can a woman forget her sucking child? . . . yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of My hands.” Isa. 49:15, 16. “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let My right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let My tongue cleave to the roof of My mouth.” Ps. 137:5, 6.
IN the face of God’s repeated declaration of His purpose toward His chosen people, Israel continued to stumble and slip and slide down, down into the slough of worldliness, taking up the customs of the sinful nations around her; or, with the spirit of her worship dead, she piled upon the people the burdens of an endless ritualism. But in spite of the general backsliding, there came from time to time, thru the dark record of her unfaithfulness, flashes of genuine loyalty to God. Now it is Elijah standing for God in the face of the denunciations of Ahab and Jezebel and the revilings of their heathen priests. Now it is a few Hebrew youth refusing the defiled meat which the king of Babylon had ordered for their food. Again we see it in a Daniel praying, in spite of the king’s decree; or in the refusal of the three “Hebrew children” to kneel when all around were worshiping the image of gold set up in the plain of Dura.2
BUT Israel herself “forgot God,” and flung imploring arms to the kings of the earth. A corrupt high-priesthood prostituted its holy office to the vilest purposes, even going so far as to bribe heathen kings that they might be secured in the office of high priest, stripping the temple of its golden vessels to pay the bribe, changing their own names to the names of noted heathen, establishing heathen games within the holy city, encouraging laxity in the temple service, and influencing the youth of the nation to emulate the customs of the idolatrous world around them. Then, in zeal for the forsaken religion which had made and kept them a united people, the Maccabees arose to stem the tide of heathenism, and wrought a powerful reformation for a time. But from the time that Judas Maccabee sought an alliance with Rome dates the final decline of Israel’s national cause. Simon, his brother, thinking to strengthen the position of his country, and make its independence secure, sent an embassy to Rome with a shield of gold weighing 1,000 pounds. The Romans at once declared a protectorate over Palestine, recognized Simon Maccabee as prince of Judah, and notified the world that Israel was her charge.
ISRAEL, in appealing to the rulers of the world, had taken herself out from under the protection of God—had left the King of heaven for the king of earth—and the ultimate result of that act was the capture of her city and her sacred temple by Pompey at the head of the cohorts of Rome. And Rome has left in Jerusalem the mark of her sway over the people whom God led out of Egypt. That monument of her presence was the Tower of Antonia, built by Herod, and named in honor of Mark Antony. It was an enlargement of the palace of Baris erected by John Hyrcanus, and its turrets, filled with the armed minions of Rome, rose high above the temple which Israel had dedicated to the service of Jehovah. To add to Israel’s humiliation, Herod placed over the very gate of the temple itself the golden eagle, the emblem of Rome. With a heathen soldiery looking down upon their worship, and the emblem of a heathen ruler spreading its wings over their devotions, Israel must have repented that she had proved disloyal to her God, and had fled for succor to the rulers of Rome. They had become vassals of a heathen people when they might have been kings and priests of the Most High God; slaves when they might have been God’s freemen. Whenever the Jew turned his face toward the temple of his God, he must look into the very portholes of the gaping, mocking Tower of Antonia. This was her guerdon for her disloyalty to God.
OUT of the centuries of the past comes the lesson for the present. When the wise ones of the present day are clamoring for a closer relation between religion and the State, let us remember the lesson taught by the monument of Rome in the capital of Judah. When the temptation comes to trust in the arm of flesh, let us remember the heartaches of Israel when bleeding under the heel of her kings or the kings that triumphed over them. When tempted to usher in the kingdom of Christ thru the gateway of politics, let us remember the fate of Israel thru Simon’s embassy to Rome. The church of Christ can not be loyal to God while trusting in the arm of flesh. If we have not the mind of Christ, we are none of His; and the mind of Christ never led Him to look to the powers of earth for help during any portion of His ministry. We can have no better example than His, and following that we can never fail or be disloyal to our Creator and Redeemer.
