The prophet continues: “The Lord hath cast off His Altar; He hath abhorred His sanctuary; He hath given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces. The elders of the daughters of Zion sit on the ground and keep silence. They have cast dust upon their heads. For the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests, that have shed the blood of the Just One in the midst of her, they have polluted themselves with blood, so that men could not touch their garments.”
We should remember that these prophecies of Jeremiah, and others just as striking from Isaiah, were uttered hundreds of years before Christ was born. And yet, as we read this Scripture to-day, it sounds like history written yesterday. It is literally fulfilled. The Hebrews did “slay the Just One.” They did “pollute themselves with blood.” Because of this, God has “poured out His wrath upon them,” their city, and their country. Jerusalem has been “removed,” and its “foundations” have been “consumed with fire.” Her “filthiness” is “in her skirts.” God has “cast off His altar, and abhorred His sanctuary.” He has “given into the hand of the enemy the walls of the palaces,” and to-day the children of Solomon have to petition the rulers of a heathen government for permission to approach the remaining wall of their father’s Temple. To-day the people actually “sit on the ground” with “tears on their cheeks.” They do actually “sigh and seek for bread.”
Now I submit the question. Can any man, who has a mind to think and a heart to feel, read this Scripture, in the light of the present condition of Jerusalem and of the Jews, without seeing in it an unanswerable argument in favor of the inspiration of the Bible? If the Old Testament writers were not inspired, if they wrote as men, and only as men, how was it that they could write of future events, of events thousands of years in the future, as though they were present or past? There is only one rational conclusion to be reached, and that is, that these men of old wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit—that they climbed high upon the Mt. of Inspiration, and from there they, with the field-glass of prophecy, scanned the whole horizon of knowledge.
CHAPTER XL.
JERUSALEM CONTINUED—MOSQUE OF OMAR.
Haram Area—Its Past and Present—Wall—Gates—Stopped at the Point of Daggers—Legal Papers and Special Escort—Mosque of Omar—Its Exterior and Interior—A Great Rock Within—History and Legends Connected with the Rock—Mohammed’s Ascent to Heaven—Place of Departed Spirits—Their Rescue—Ark of the Covenant—Golden Key.