Gods Sabbath

T HE J EWISH T RAGEDY

495

It was the religionist Jews, thinking they were serving God by making plans for building up His kingdom, who instigated Christ’s crucifixion, not the Romans or the heathen. The Jews thought to rid themselves of the One who troubled them because they imagined He was depriving them of the peace they sought, but they only compounded their problems and shut themselves away from God’s peace forever. The reason they did not enter in to God’s rest was because they refused to learn God’s ways. Christ came to teach them to accept the Almighty as their Plan Maker, but they refused to relinquish their self-appointed role of making plans for God to execute. What a night of woe the Jews ushered in upon themselves. Hunted, hated, and persecuted since then, they have died by the millions at the hands of those who have gained power over them. Over a million Jews perished in the fall of Jerusalem alone. Var ious persecutions in England and Europe have taken millions more, to say nothing of those who perished at Hitler’s hands during World War II. The on-going strife with the Arabs con firms that they still have not experienced God’s rest, for the sim ple reason that they have refused to learn God’s ways. There is no greater tragedy than that of the Jewish nation. The Messiah’s advent promised total emancipation from the for ces of sin within them, as well as from the Romans over them. It offered complete liberation from all disease, and promised them the certainty of eternal life. There was nothing more they could have desired. All this would certainly have been theirs if they had met two vital conditions. Firstly, they needed implicit faith in God’s pow er to fulfill His promises, and secondly, they had to leave the plan making entirely to Him. Had they met these two require ments, they could have received the fullness of His promises. But by failing to meet the conditions, they lost everything. Never in history, has the outworking of human plan making shown more clearly the awesome cost to be paid by those who insist on following it. The magnitude of the Jewish loss can be The Ultimate Price for What?