Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 26, 2025
These had shaped prophetic utterances, and hence there was yet another form of the 'must, namely, the necessity for the Messiah's fulfilling these predictions. No doubt our Lord led His saddened listeners to many a prophetic saying which current expositions had smoothed over, but which had for many years set before Him His destiny.
The controlling idea with them, and consequently with the people, was the sanctity of God's law. They were conscious of the sinfulness of the people, and their demand for repentance was constant. It is a rabbinic commonplace that the delay of the Messiah's coming is due to lack of repentance in Israel.
Valorously did they maintain that Christ ought to "bear the glory of ruling His own kingdom, the Church," and fearlessly they defied the monarchs in their invasions of Messiah's rights. Besides, they were not satisfied with the attainment of a united Church in their own kingdom alone. They were filled with the spirit of the Saviour's prayer, "That they all may be one."
The doctrine of the Messiah's second coming was also received without opposition, and for about a century men lived in continual anticipation of that event, until hope long deferred produced its usual results; the writings in which that event was predicted were gradually explained away, ignored, or stigmatized as uncanonical; and the Church ended by condemning as a heresy the very doctrine which Paul and the Judaizing apostles, who agreed in little else, had alike made the basis of their speculative teachings.
"He forgives those who despised, slandered, scorned, beat, crucified Him? When dying He thinks of His enemies and pardons them? Then it is as He said, He is indeed the Christ! I always thought He was the Christ. I said so only last Sabbath!" The voices grew louder. Schobal, the old clothes dealer, pushed about in the crowd and offered the Messiah's coat for twenty pence.
Better the abodes of the anthropophagi, the "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders," than no place to get away to at all; for to every vigorous soul there one day comes a longing, by the light of which magnificent distances appear beautiful, and the possibilities of infinite far-offness delicious; to the Christian traveller, who exults in the faith that "each remotest nation shall learn Messiah's name," how dear is that remoteness which renders the promise sublime!
Our hopes are vain! We dreamed that we were going to be princes in the Messiah's Kingdom, we have woke up to find that we are only fishermen. Let us go back to our nets and our boats! No! all these men had seen the risen Lord, and had received from His breath the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Again, the effect of the Messiah's coming, supposing Jesus to have been he, upon Jews, upon Gentiles, upon their relation to each other, upon their acceptance with God, upon their duties and their expectations; his nature, authority, office, and agency; were likely to become subjects of much consideration with the early votaries of the religion, and to occupy their attention and writings.
'He has sent Him to bless you in turning away every one of you from his iniquities. I have already spoken about the gross, narrow, carnal apprehensions of Messiah's work which cleaved to the disciples during all our Lord's life here, and which disturbed even the sanctity of the upper chamber at that last meal, with squabbles about precedence which had an eye to places in the court of the Messiah when He assumed His throne.
Fire turns what it touches into kindred flame. The refiner's fire melts metal, and the scum carries away impurities. Water washes the surface, fire pierces to the centre. But while that cleansing by the Spirit's fire was to be Messiah's primary office, man's freedom to accept or reject such blessing necessarily made His work selective, even while its destination was universal.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking