Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/83

 they would have seen in Him a glory greater than that which dwelt in the symbolic cloud which led our fathers in the wilderness and which dwelt between the cherubim, and the promises of the return of the Personal Presence of Jehovah, no more to depart from their midst, might have been fulfilled; but Israel's eyes were holden then, and only a few Jewish disciples there were who saw the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ and could joyfully exclaim:

"We beheld His Glory, the Glory of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." The nation as a whole saw " no form nor comeliness " to desire Him, so they " despised and esteemed Him not." In the end, after He had for three and a half years with outstretched arms continued to call Israel to Himself, but without response that which was symbolised by the departure of the Glory from the Mount of Olives, depicted by Ezekiel, received a second personal and more striking fulfilment, when Jesus also, slowly and reluctantly, after shedding tears of sorrow for Jerusalem, and from the same spot whence the prophet saw the Glory depart, finally ("after His atoning death and glorious resurrection) ascended out of sight.

But has the purpose of God been frustrated by Israel's unbelief, and will the exceeding great and precious promises in reference to the establishment of the Messianic Kingdom on this earth, with Jerusalem as its centre, fail for evermore because (as the writer quoted above asserts) the Jewish people has not " kept the covenant committed to them "? Oh no; man's unbelief and disobedience may, in accord with the foreknowledge and infinite wisdom of God, cause the delay and postponement of God's predetermined counsel, which in this particular instance has been the occasion of salvation and blessing to untold millions of Gentiles (Rom. xi. 11 15), but it can never frustrate it.

Jesus Christ came as a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God (not to annul or transfer), but to confirm the promises made unto the fathers (Rom. xv. 8); and since their ratification in His own precious blood, all the promises of God in relation to the people and the land of