So said our Lord Jesus of His own prophecies concerning the destruction of Jerusalem. It was but one example—a most awful one—of the laws of His kingdom. Not in Judæa only, but wherever the carcase was, there would the eagles be gathered together. In the moral, as in the physical word, there were beasts of prey—the scavengers of God—ready to devour out of His kingdom nations, institutions, opinions, which had become dead, and decayed, and ready to infect the air. Many a time since the Roman eagles flocked to Jerusalem has that
prophecy been fulfilled; and many a time will it be fulfilled once more, and yet once more.
And what else, if we look at them carefully and reverently, is the meaning of the words in this my text, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away”?
Shall we translate this,—Heaven and earth shall not come true: but My words shall come true? By so doing we may put some little meaning into the latter half of the verse; but none into the former. Surely there is a deeper meaning in the words than that of merely coming true. Surely they mean that His words are eternal, perpetual; for ever present, possible, imminent; for ever coming true. So, indeed, they would not pass away. So they would be like the heavens and the earth, and the laws thereof; like heat, gravitation, electricity, what not—always here, always working, always asserting themselves—with this difference, that when the physical laws of the heavens and the earth, which began in time, in time have perished, the spiritual laws of God’s kingdom, of Christ’s moral government of moral beings, shall endure for ever and for ever, eternal as that God whose essence they reflect.
Therefore I mean nothing less than that the great and final day of Judgment is past; or that we are not to look for that second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ which, as our forefathers taught us to hope, shall set right all the wrong of this diseased world.
God forbid! For most miserable were the world, most miserable were mankind, if all that our Lord prophesied
had happened, once and for all, at the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies. But most miserable, also, would this world be, and most miserable would be mankind, if these words were not to be fulfilled till some future Last Day, and day of Judgment, for which the Church has now been waiting for more than eighteen centuries—and, as far as we can judge, may wait for as many centuries more. Most miserable, if the Son of Man has never come since He ascended into heaven from Olivet. Most miserable, if the kingdom of God has never been at hand, since He gave that one short gleam of hope to men in Judæa long ago. Most miserable, if there be no kingdom of God among us even now: in one word, if God and Christ be not our King; but the devil, as some fancy; or Man himself, as others fancy, be the only king of this world and of its destinies; if there be no order in this mad world, save what man invents; no justice, save what he executes; no law, save what he finds convenient to lay upon himself for the protection of his person and property. Most miserable, if the human race have no guide, save its own instincts and tendencies; no history, save that of its own greed, ignorance and crime, varied only by fruitless struggles after a happiness to which it never attains. Most miserable world, and miserable man, if that be true after all which to the old Hebrew prophet seemed incredible and horrible—if God does look on while men deal treacherously, and does hold His peace when the wicked devours the man who is more righteous than he; and has made men as the fishes of the sea, as the creeping things that have no ruler over them.
I said—Most miserable, in that case, was the world and man. I did not say that they would consider themselves miserable. I did not say that they would think it a Gospel, and good news, that Christ was their King, and that His Kingdom was always at hand. They never thought that good news. When the prophets told them of it, they stoned them. When the Lord Himself told them, they crucified Him. Worldly men dislike the message now, probably, as much as they ever did. But they escape from it, either by treating it as a self-evident commonplace which no Christian denies, and therefore no Christian need think of; or by smiling at it as an exploded superstition, at least as a “Semitic” form of thought, with which we have nothing to do. They confound it, often I fear purposely, with those fancied miraculous interpositions, those paltry special providences, which fanatics in all ages have believed to be worked for their own special behoof. Altogether they dislike, and express very openly their dislike, of the least allusion to a Divine Providence “interfering,” as they strangely term it, with them and their affairs.
And they are wise, doubtless, in their generation. The news that Christ is the King of men and of the world must be unpleasant, even offensive, to too many, both of those who fancy that they are managing this world, and of those who fancy that they could manage the world still better, if they only had their rights. It must be unpleasant to be told that they are not managing the world, and cannot manage it: that it is being managed and ruled
by an unseen King, whose ways are far above their ways, and His thoughts above their thoughts.