Out of Babylon to Zion by Prof. Lucas A. Reed

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 5, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 26.

"Out of Babylon to Zion"

By Prof. Lucas A. Reed

XIII. The Philosophy of the Captivity

THE first prophecy of Zechariah was given in the eighth month of the second year of Darius. This was about one month before the last prophecy of Haggai. We thus see that the two prophecies overlap, and that they all refer to the same time and conditions.

The opening words of the prophecy of Zechariah are an explanation of the past history of the Jewish people as exampled in the captivity. The Lord had been sore displeased with the children of Israel. Because of their sins, their rebellion, their continued lapses into idolatry, He was at length compelled to leave them to their fate. Unprotected by the Lord, they became the sport of the king of Babylon just as fully as the other nations about them; all were subjected to the Babylonian power.

But there was hope.

"The Lord hath been sore displeased with your fathers. Therefore say thou unto them, Thus saith the Lord of Hosts; Turn ye unto Me, saith the Lord of Hosts, and I will turn unto you, saith the Lord of Hosts." Zech. 1: 2, 3.

What God had done was not arbitrary; it was simply the working out of the law of cause and effect. Disobedience and sin had brought the disfavor of God and calamity; and now, just as truly, repentance and obedience would bring the favor of God and prosperity.

The Lesson of the Captivity

The captivity with all its terrible experiences, was not to discourage them; it was to teach them a great lesson. From it they were to learn not to do as their fathers had done.

"Be ye not as your fathers, unto whom the former prophets have cried, saying, Thus saith the Lord of Hosts; Turn ye now from your evil ways, and from your evil doings: but they did not hear, nor harken unto Me, saith the Lord. Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live forever? But My words and My statutes, which I commanded My servants the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers? and they returned and said, Like as the Lord of Hosts thought to do unto us, according to our ways, and according to our doings, so hath He dealt with us." Zech. 1: 4-6.

The Lord had given His Word; He had predicted calamity; He had assured them of captivity as a result of their disobedience and sinfulness. But they refused to follow His instruction. They would not turn from their evil ways and their evil doings; and so they perished. In this was verified the fact that "all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away; but the Word of the Lord endureth forever."

That enduring Word overtook the rebellious. As the servant of the Lord had said in olden time, If you sin, "be sure your sin will find you out," so God's Word had overtaken His children. They could not escape from the penalty of the transgressed Word. They could not escape from the punishment which that Word had predicted, and in this way they fulfilled one of the warnings of the New Testament:

"For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward; how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard HIM?" Heb. 2: 2, 3.

No matter in what age of the world a man may live, it is impossible for him to avoid the penalty of transgressed law.

Missing Their Mission

God's people had been placed in the midst of the nations to be a light. They were to manifest the truth; and that manifestation could only be by a godly life. When they ceased to obey the Lord, when they sank into sin, and became like the idolatrous nations around them, they ceased to witness for Jehovah and His truth; they ceased to be a light in the earth. And by just as much as they possessed more light than the nations around them, by just so much were they more guilty and amenable to punishment.

God had done much for His people, and they were thereby debtors to Him; and the moment that they refused to make a proper return of gratitude and well-ordered lives, they passed under the displeasure of God, and were threatened with His chastising rod. Not only did the prosperity of God's people depend upon their faithfulness; but more, their salvation, and the salvation of the nations, depended upon their faithfulness to God.

It is therefore nothing strange that God worked so earnestly, so faithfully, and yet so kindly, to make them a power and a glory in the earth.

Let us remember, therefore, that as God's Word overtook those who sinned then, so it will overtake those who sin now. The sinner can not move fast enough to get away from the judgments of God.

What an overwhelming thought is this which is here so graphically thrust upon us by Zechariah — the transiency of the things of earth, the permanency of the Word of God!

Did you ever stand within some old church building that had done service for generations? Did you note the worn-down threshold where the feet of the vanished generations had worn away even the hard rock at the entrance door? If so, there came, with an almost disheartening consciousness, a realization of the fleeting march of your fellow men, here but a little time, taking their animated part in the things of life as you are doing, and then they pass out of sight.

Moses, who had seen a whole generation of his fellow men fade away in the wilderness, and who realized therefore the terrible transiency of the transient, could utter in tragic poetic measures his stupendous Ninetieth Psalm:

"Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men." "Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep." "They are like grass. . . . In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth." The picture alone is disheartening. It appalls the heart to gaze upon it. We need with the view a glimpse of the abiding. And so we turn to the Word, to the enduring, the permanent.

"Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God." Altho all flesh is grass, and the grass withers, yet the Word of our God abides. And he who does the will revealed in that Word, endures forever. The plants of God's planting shall never be rooted up.

Moses endured the great trials of his time, and the disheartening failure of things earthly, because "he endured as seeing Him who is invisible." He looked "not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal: but the things which are not seen are eternal."

"In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne" — the passing away of the mortal shadow of kingly power revealed the immortal and real King, Him who abides and rules forever. Amidst the ever-changing, we need a heavenly vision to behold the never-changing. Just as the leaves, dropping from the trees in autumn, reveal the enduring rock cliff where the trees root, so the passing of the temporal and human should cause to stand out for us all the more clearly the rock background of the enduring God and His unchangeable Word.

A Lesson from the Past

Zechariah pointed back to the past history of the Jewish people. He appealed to God's providence as revealed in His dealings. He exclaimed, "Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live forever?" There could be but one answer. All must acknowledge the frailty of man and the stupendous sovereignty of God.

Since then, more than twenty centuries have added their weight to the unimpeachable testimony. Since then, the mighty Christ has appeared, and the lessons of the ages have stood forth whiter than before. Transcendently transfigured by His glorious life, God's Word of all ages, of which He is the personalization, still endures unchanged, and ever shines with untarnished luster.

If the Jews were inexcusable for rejecting the Word, we shall be more so. If they could be confident, we may be doubly certain. If they escaped not who refused then, much more shall we not escape who refuse now.

Turning away from the disheartening transiency of things here, we may behold the permanency of the things of God.

"Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into His rest, any of you should seem to come short of it." Heb. 4: 1.

Out of Babylon to Zion. By Prof. Lucas A. Reed.