David Baron

“ During that blessed millennial period the knowledge of the glory of Jehovah shall indeed cover the earth, and all nations shall walk in His light. Sin and iniquity will no longer be allowed to lift up their head, and apostasy and rebellion will be visited with instant punishment whenever they manifest themselves. Yet we know from prophetic Scripture that the hearts of multitudes among the Gentile nations will not be fully subdued to God and His truth, even in the Millennium, and that many of them will render only a feigned submission to the Divine King, whose throne shall be on Mount Sion. ”

“ And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from Jehovah shall be among them ; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour. And Judah also shall fight at Jerusalem ; and the wealth of all the nations round about shall be gathered together, gold, and silver, and apparel in great abundance. And so shall be the plague of the horse, of the mule, of the camel, and of the ass, and of all the beasts that shall be in those camps, as that plague. ”

“ And when they shall at last be comforted, and the Spirit be poured out upon them from on high, when the knowledge of their own past history and of the Church s history will all be opened to them in the light of God, then, like so many Pauls, monuments of Sovereign grace, they shall go forth to the dark places of the earth, rich in experience and in the knowledge of God, and from them shall flow rivers of living waters. ”

“ Now the eighth day in Scripture is the Resurrection Day, and points, I believe, to the Eternal Day, after the cycle of time in which the history of the earth, as set forth in the Sacred Calendar of the History of Redemption, shall have been finished, when the consummation of earthly rest shall synchronise with the commencement of heavenly glory "when a great voice out of the throne shall go forth, saying : Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He shall dwell with them, and they shall be His people. ”

“ Blessed be God, " creation," which has become involved in the sin and consequent suffering and death of man, is to participate also in the benefits of the great redemption which has been accomplished by our Lord Jesus Christ, and shall yet be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. ”

“ When the final judgments of God are abroad in the earth, and when the anti-Christian rage and persecution will be everywhere directed not only against the confessors of Christ, but against those in Israel who are faithful to the God of their fathers, there will be weeping, and mourning, and heart-searching among the scattered tribes of Israel in all the lands of their dispersion. ”

“ To this end Israel was separated from the nations of the earth ; and in order to train it up as a holy nation, and to secure the object described, a law was given to it, in which the distinction between holy and profane ran through all the relations of life. And this goal will be eventually reached by the people of God, and sin with all its consequences be cleansed away by the judgment. In the perfected Kingdom of God there will be no more sinners, but only such as are righteous and holy."!
Finally, " there shall be no more a Canaanite in the House of Jehovah of Hosts in that day! ”

“ There is a Messianic Kingdom a literal reign of peace and righteousness on the earth, with Israel as its centre ; but where Jewish Chiliasm erred was that it overlooked, or explained away, the sufferings of the Messiah which precede the glory. The question is if these allegorising commentators are not as much in the dark in relation to the Second Coming and the glory that should follow, as the Jews were in relation to His First Advent and His atoning suffering and death. ”

“ Already Jerusalem before the war was almost a Jewish city, while the thirty and more Jewish colonies which dotted the land were described by a prominent English Jew as " so many milestones marking the advance which Israel is making towards national rehabilitation." And in no other country in the world do the Jews, to the same extent, represent the nation. In Jerusalem and in the other Jewish settlements in Palestine I have personally, in the course of my seven different visits to the land since 1890, met Jews from all parts from the east and the west ”

“ Jerusalem is the centre of the world ; the land of Israel is restored to wonderful fertility and blessedness. We may not be able clearly to conceive the fulfilment of the predictions con cerning this earth during the Christocracy, but our danger does not lie in believing too implicitly or too literally what is written." 1 And this kingship over the " earth " is due to our Lord Jesus as an answer to His humiliation. " It is not sufficient that He is glorified in heaven it is a perfect delight to His own that He is to be glorified and adored in the very scene of His rejection and shame. ”

“ And when at last, in the hour of their deepest need, their long-rejected, crucified Messiah appears for their deliverance when His blessed feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives they will almost simultaneously be made aware of it ; for, though they may not all at once behold Him with their eyes, the whole world, and nature generally, will be conscious of, and respond to, the visible appearing and presence of the Son of God. ”

“ But first the passage in Isaiah instances what are probably two hypothetical cases illus trative of the general longevity and the very rare occurrence of sin in renewed Jerusalem. He that should happen to die "a hundred years old" will be regarded but as a mere "child," compared with the average length of days to hich man shall then attain ; and "the sinner" who is visited with God s curse and overwhelmed with the punishment, will not be swept away before the hundredth year of his life. ”

“ The word stands also sometimes for " sin-offering," which reminds us of the intimate relation that exists in God s moral government of the world between sin and its punishment, and helps us to understand such a statement as that Christ, who knew no sin, was made sin for us namely, a sin-offering, enduring and bearing the conse quence of sin on our behalf.
In the last two verses we reach the glorious goal and climax of vision and prophecy. God s original purpose in the calling and election of Israel " Ye shall be unto Me a Kingdom of priests, an holy nation " shall at last be realised ”

“ And this shall be the plague wherewith Jehovah will smite all the peoples that have warred against Jerusalem : their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their sockets, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth. ”

“ Now, since for beauty and fertility, and as the earthly centre of God s dwelling and worship, Jerusalem and Palestine will, in the millennial period, answer, as it were, to the garden of Eden there is again the River, the streams whereof make glad the city of God, and flowing thence fertilise other parts of the earth. ”

“ The withholding of rain was one of the ways by which God was wont to punish the apostasy of His own people in the days of the theocracy, 1 and He now threatens to inflict it on the Gentile nations in case of disobedience. At the same time, there is also here a blending of the literal and the piritual, and the punishment threatened includes also the withholding from the disobedient nations, or " families," of the showers of God s grace and blessing, of which the literal rain is often used in Scripture as an emblem. ”

“ All that is implied in the blessed announcement that Jehovah Himself shall at last be King over this earth, and in the person of His own Son, who is at the same time the man after His own heart, visibly rule among the nations, we cannot yet fully conceive. " Our ideas of kingship," to quote the words of a master in Israel, " are limited, and do not come up to the Divine conception." * Man has had experience of rule, or kingship on earth, but " the true or
1 Adolph Saphir.
508 VISIONS AND PROPHECIES OF ZECHARIAH
real king among men has not appeared yet." ”

“ We read in many parts of the Scripture that the land of Israel will in that day teem with evidences of the miraculous power of God in dispensing blessings. On the sides of Zion, for example, the wolf and the lamb, the leopard and the kid, shall be seen together, and a little child shall lead them. Nothing shall hurt or destroy throughout God s holy mountain. ”

“ Three weapons will be used by God for the destruction of the enemies of His Kingdom: (i) The fearful plague described in verse 1 2 ; (2) mutual destruction in conse quence of a great panic of terror " from Jehovah " ; and (3) the superhuman strength of the saved remnant of Judah, who shall suddenly become like " a pan of fire " among wood, and like " a flaming torch among sheaves " l and shall devour their enemies round about, on their right hand and on their left. ”

“ But while this is so, Israel, as a nation, still walks in darkness, and the other peoples of the
THE GLORIOUS CONSUMMATION 527
earth are still covered by the shadow of death until the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings, and the word shall go forth : " Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of Jehovah is risen upon thee." Then " nations" as nations, " shall come to thy light ”

“ Then, too, shall be the great Hosanna, when that great multitude, which no man could number, out of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, shall stand before the throne of God, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands, and shall cry with a loud voice, saying : Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb (Rev. vii. 9, 10) . ”

“ The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining" x or, in the words of Isaiah : " The moon shall be confounded and the sun ashamed when the Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and before His ancients gloriously " ”

“ And so "all flesh " in that renewed earth, in which shall dwell righteousness, shall come together (in their own lands) to worship Jehovah on these frequent regular occasions. Zechariah, however, speaks distinctly of their going up to Jerusalem at the annual Feast of Taber nacles not at all an impossible thing. An argument has been based on the opinion that the more distant nations could not obey this command because of the time required for the journey, but we do not yet know what the facilities of travel will be in the Millennium. ”

“ The physical nature of the whole land will be changed through the convulsions of nature, which are described here and in other scriptures, and which will be brought about by the Almighty power of God, with whom nothing is impossible. ”

“ Some modern writers understand this as referring to a valley somewhere in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem ("a valley in connection with the Kidron Valley" Von Orelli) , but I am inclined to think that the reference is to the Shittim of Num. xxv. I, the last encampment of the Israelites on the steppes of Moab before their entrance into Canaan the barren valley of the Jordan above the Dead Sea. Shittim means acacias, which grow only in arid regions, and the words of the prophecy imply that even the arid desert shall be fertilised by the waters issuing from this fountain. ”

“ After a brief interval of prosperity there comes a night of anguish. What occasions the darkest hour in the night of Israel s sad history since their rejection of Christ is the gathering of the nations and the siege predicted in this chapter. ”

“ If any man thirst let him come unto Me and drink," at this same feast, and in reference to this illumination, again spake unto them, saying, " I am the Light of the world ; he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the Light of Life " ”

“ The actions of nations and all corporate bodies is always spoken of in Scripture with reference to those who are officially appointed to express or carry out their will. Thus in the great gathering against Jerusalem the nations concerned therein are represented by their armies. ”

“ Then the extended ranks of infantry shall be visited with the plague described in chap. xiv. 12, and a great tumult from the Lord shall ensue among the confederated hosts, as happened in the past, when Jehovah fought for Israel ; so that each man s hand shall be against his neighbour. ”

“ Yes, "for the healing of the nations" x as the beloved Apostle adds in the last chapter of the Apocalypse, where Ezekiel s imagery of the earthly but glorified Jerusalem during the millennial period is trans ferred also to the heavenly Jerusalem. ”

“ Jerusalem" It indicates the third weapon which (in addition to the " plague " and the " tumult ") will be used by God for the destruction ol
1 Judg. vii. 22 ; I Sam. xiii. 16-20.
2 The Targum has the mistranslation "against," and so also the Vulgate ; but the Septuagint and the Syriac render properly "at" or "in." Luther, Calvin, Ewald, etc., follow the Vulgate ; but Koehler, Hengstenberg, Keil, Von Orelli, Pusey, Dr. Wright, and almost all competent modern Hebrew scholars, translate "in "or "at Jerusalem." ”

“ Now, to repeat, we believe, in a literal fulfilment of this prophecy in Zechariah, and when we are told by a scholarly English writer that a literal fulfilment is out of the question because " the physical nature of the whole land would have to be changed to permit literal rivers to flow forth from Jerusalem," x our answer is, " Certainly ”