Gods Sabbath

T HE J EWISH T RAGEDY

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er of the same kind and organization, the difference being that the Jews would now be the class in power. When earthly despot isms are overthrown, the incoming rulers are no different from the kings they have overthrown, for they operate by the same methods, are just as despotic, cruel, and unforgiving, and just as determined to establish the principle of humanity being the plan and policy maker in God’s place. The path to worldly power is al ways slippery with the blood of others. It was Christ’s determination to build a kingdom different from those of this world, that fired the hatred of the Jews and caused them to reject Him with such vehemence. They did not merely repudiate Him as a person. It was the system He repre sented and the procedures He advocated, that they were reject ing. They chose to turn their backs on the wonderful, soul-sav ing mystery of God, in favor of the mystery of iniquity. Christ was the tangible, visible representative of God’s ways, and Cae sar, on Rome’s glittering throne, was the living symbol of human ways. When the Jews utterly rejected God’s ways in favor of their own, they chose the system of which Caesar was the head. For once, they spoke the truth when they said, “We have no king but Caesar.” John 19:15. Having successfully solicited Roman power, the Jewish plan to crucify Christ was made possible. They were not content just to execute Jesus. He must be humiliated to the utmost degree by being crucified upon the cross, the specifically chosen symbol of the Babylonian system. His death would be their statement pro claimed for all future generations, that the system Christ repre sented could never withstand the superior way of the world. This demonstration should show that God’s procedures ended only in failure, while the Israelites’ way was the only one to glo ry and happiness. As their bleeding victim expired in agony, the Jews, in their madness and undisguised inconsistency, gleefully congratulated themselves on the seeming conclusiveness of their argument. It appeared forever confirmed that Christ’s ways were a failure and theirs a success. Otherwise, they reasoned, how could the seem ing victory over Christ have been so absolute that they had been able to extract the ultimate sacrifice from Him? Better still, from their point of view, they had exterminated the leading exponent