Letter#41   The Messiah Weeps

 
My dear Mr. Isaacs:
   This is Lent, the Christian season of sorrow. It causes an emotion to well up in the hearts of sincere converts from the Synagogue to the Church. It brings to mind the tears that the Messiah wept, and the words that he spoke to His kith and kin, to which Jewish hearts remain adamant.
   Resist it all you will, the fact, never to be budged, is that Jesus is your Messiah, as He is mine, even if you continue to refuse to give ear to His words; even if His tears fail to soften your "obstinate heart," with which the prophet Ezechiel said Jews were afflicted (3:7), as they still are.
   During this penitential season, converts from Judaism prayerfully visualize the Messiah bemoaning the suffering of the children of Israel while in Jerusalem, as he does today, for every one of His acts is an eternal act. The rejection of "the things that are to thy peace," said He, will be to you an affliction. The truth of this declaration is seen in the trying persecution Jews suffer today, and have suffered during all the centuries since these words of compassion and warning were uttered.
   I am pleased to say that religious Jews, like Christians, are one in the realization of their sinfulness, which is the necessary first step to obtaining God's pardon. Fortunately it still abides among Orthodox Jews, which is a sign that their moral relationship with their forebears of old is not entirely broken. It is to sin that they attribute the destruction of their cherished Temple, and the ending of their priesthood with its sacrificial cult. They attribute this affliction to "the malevolence and enmity that existed in Israel; to the bloodshed, immorality and idolatry," said Rabbi Simon Gad Kramer of the Hebrew University, University Heights, New York City. But, and I say it with deep sorrow, they list not the sin of sins among their confessed transgressions; the sin to which the religious calamity of Israel can be traced, the denial of their Messiah, who, in the words of St. John, "came unto His own and His own received Him not" (1:11).
   This lack of consciousness of sinning against their own, brought tears to the eyes of Jesus as he overlooked Jerusalem, foreseeing that it decreed the city's doom. The Jerusalem of that mournful day must have been one of the beautiful wonders of the world. It was a city of regal palaces of the Machabees, of Herod, of the High Priest, and others. Its gardens, hills and scenic coloring, and shepherds with their flocks must have been magnificent to look upon. The Temple was a work of art and holiness of construction, which is mocked today by the Mosque, the Dome of the Rock of Islam, that occupies its land.
   The Messiah wept not silent tears, such as came from His eyes at the death of Lazarus, the only other occasion when He is known to have wept. On the contrary, "He wept aloud," as the translated Greek text says. These loud tears penetrate deep into the hearts of those Jews today, who, by God's grace, got to know Jesus as the apex of all that was great in the faith of their fathers of old in Israel. Jesus "wept aloud" as He foresaw that denial of Him as their Messiah would be followed by the destruction of His beloved Jerusalem, and the suffering of Israel, which has not yet ended. Read and ponder the words of your Messiah:

"If thou hadst known, in this thy day, even thou the things that are of thy peace! But now they are hidden from thy eyes. For days will come upon thee when thy enemies will throw up a rampart about thee, and surround thee and shut thee in on every side, and will dash thee to the ground and thy children within thee, and will not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou has not known the time of thy visitation" (St. Luke 19:41-47).

Let us take an analytic glance at these prophetic words.

   "If thou hadst known this day," as did the disciples, and the thousands of Jewish converts who were the first members of the Church the Messiah established, you would have been blest instead of punished.

   "The things that are for thy peace." The first and foremost of these "things" are the truths the Messiah uttered in Jerusalem, the City of Peace. Very likely Jesus had in mind the warning uttered by Isaiah to the hard-hearted Jews of his time, viz. -

"O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments: thy peace had been like a river, and thy justice as the waves of the sea" (48:18).

  "But now they are hidden from thy eyes." The spiritual blindness of Israel is here referred to, that made it almost useless then, as now, to reason regarding Jesus being the Messiah, for Jewish hearts are hardened, and their mental vision, which is otherwise keen, is darkened, as was the heart of Pharaoh, which kept him from appreciating the truths of the God of Israel.
   "For the days will come upon thee when thy enemies will throw up a rampart (trench) about thee, and surround thee and shut thee in on every side, and will dash thee to the ground and thy children within thee." This prophetic declaration, loudly expressed in tears that the Messiah wept and words that He spoke, came to pass. On a Passover feast of the unleavened bread, forty years after the Passover time when Jesus was condemned to death by the High Priest and the Sanhedrin, for claiming to be the Messiah, and crucified by Pilate, the soldiers of Titus besieged the Jews in Jerusalem, when about three millions of them had gathered for their religious festival. A "rampart" made of wood was thrown around the city, which the Jews destroyed. Then came one of stone that surrounded Jerusalem, within which enclosure the Jews were imprisoned. Nearly a million and a half of them died through starvation, disease, or were slaughtered. The heartrending and dramatic story of this calamity is graphically presented in Book VI of the "Wars of the Jews," written by Flavius Josephus, an eye witness and participant in the debacle.
   "And (thy enemies) will not leave a stone upon a stone," referring to the Temple. The soldiers burned it to the ground, the whole of Jerusalem being destroyed some years later. From the days of Titus until our day nothing of the Temple remained. The attempt of Julian the Apostate to rebuild it was frustrated by God through "subterranean fires," as Gibbons and other historians say. Thus the foundation of a new temple, which the enemy of Christ built to disprove the prophecy of the Galilean, was demolished. The weather-beaten "Wailing Wall" stands out prominently today as proof of the fulfillment of this prophecy.
   Visitors in Jerusalem are reminded of it by the pathetic sight of pious Jews uttering prayers tearfully at the "Wailing Wall," such as this, which touches the hearts of all true Christians:

"We sit in solitude to mourn--
For the palace that lies desolate;
For the walls that are overthrown;
For our majesty that is departed;

We pray Thee have mercy on Zion,
Gather the children of Jerusalem,
May the kingdom soon return to Zion!
Comfort those who mourn over Jerusalem."

   This prophecy alone proves that Jesus is your Messiah; that He is something more than man; that He is the "Emmanuel, God with us," foretold by Isaiah. The Wailing Wall is not the Temple, aye, not even part of it. It is one of the outer walls, some say the third wall of the old city of Jerusalem.
   Lent is indeed a sorrowful occasion, not merely on account of the suffering that our Messiah endured due to sin, but on account of the affliction Jewry suffered, and continues to suffer, "because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation," the day when the Messiah came to save Israel, to lead it to salvation. But, fortunately, Lent is followed by the resurrection of the Messiah from the dead. He is a living and not a dead Messiah, Who stands with outstretched arms to welcome you into His embrace. May Jewish hearts be mellowed and their minds illumined with the light that comes from the Risen Messiah. Then will you and your fellow-Jews realize that Israel still lives, not in synagogues, but in the Church of the Messianic King of Israel.


Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G........

 

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