Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/522



506 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH

healing, life-giving efficacy of the living waters wonderful. The very desert shall be transformed by them, and the stagnant waters of the Dead Sea healed. " Everything" says Ezekiel, " and every living creature which swarmeth in every place whither the river shall come, shall live ; . . . and by the river upon the bank thereof on this side, and on that side, shall grow every tree for meat, whose leaf shall not ivither, neither shall the fruit thereof fail ; it shall bring forth new fruit every month, because the waters thereof issue out of the sanctuary ; and the fruit shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for healing" Yes, "for the healing of the nations" x as the beloved Apostle adds in the last chapter of the Apocalypse, where Ezekiel s imagery of the earthly but glorified Jerusalem during the millennial period is trans ferred also to the heavenly Jerusalem.

A foretaste of the great spiritual realities, which in the age to come will be symbolised also by literal and visible objects, we have indeed in the present dispensation, for those are not wholly wrong who point to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ as embodying the very qualities ascribed to these " living waters," and many there be who can testify from experience to its life-giving, healing, sanctifying power, and to the great and glorious transformations which it has effected in the world since Christ s first Advent. But, whereas its course now and all through the present period is an intermittent, chequered one, and its quickening power has been experienced only by individuals, by-and-by, when Israel as a nation is first quickened and transformed by it, and the national Saul of Tarsus is turned into a nation of Pauls, with the same burning love and self- consuming zeal for their Redeemer-King, which characterised the great Apostle to the Gentiles the blessings of Messiah s Gospel, and the beneficent effects of His reign will flow from Jerusalem as mighty rivers and streams into all parts of the world, so that it will not be long before " the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Jehovah as the waters cover the sea." 2

1 Rev. xxii. 2. - Hah. ii.1.