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There is in the history of the nations, a vast and long-enduring incredulity towards the most manifest of things, such as the majestic might of the merciful Messiah.

Despite the predictions fulfilled in detail in the very face of some of the most belligerent, educated, pugnacious and determined groups of all time, eventually after vehement and obstructive opposition, casting Him overboard from the surface of this globe by the easiest of modes for popular abhorrence, but one of the most difficult for endurance of anguish: they yet continued in unbelief, as a nation.

They, Israel, have duly continued to the holocaust, foreshadowed in Jeremiah 30:7-9 as a prelude to the Reign of Christ, after which God as He promised in Ezekiel 36ff., brought them back (cf. SMR Appendix A), to their place. Here, they have regained Jerusalem as Christ indicated would occur (Luke 21:24), despite its intervening destruction (Matthew 24:1ff., 23:37ff., Luke 21:42ff.). Soon many will return to the Lord, just as Zechariah 12 predicted, after these triumphant wars. That will result from a divine action, just as did their return to their land, yes and to Jerusalem; but this one will not be martial but spiritual, a turning back of hearts to Jesus Christ, the righteous, the Prince of Life, alienation from whom is separation from God.

In Ezekiel, God made it clear that their return to their land, which precedes the change of heart, would not at all be a congratulatory phenomenon, but DESPITE their shame, since He has pity on His word: HE PERFORMED IT (indeed, hastens to perform it, in the sense of Jeremiah 1:12, “I will hasten My word to perform it!”), for when the time comes, as it did for the death of the Messiah, God does not delay!

Much of the immediate foreground to the prophecies of the reign of Christ, was performed in the very life-span of Jeremiah, with appalling horrors, reflected in the book of Lamentations. Much more, as in Jeremiah 30 (cf. The Biblical Workman Ch. 1), remained for the most distant future parts of the realms of human history. Indeed, we who are a little older, have had the privilege of seeing it in our own generation, the horror of the assault on Israel in the time of “Jacob’s trouble”, the wonder of their restoration to their land, the vast and triumphant war interludes, huge in significance, one of them a classic of only 6 days, making a spectacle of wonder. That triumphant and glorious victory against "unnumbered foes" as God foretold would be the case in Zechariah 12, is the pre-evangelism prelude.

Far more important, though the return is testimony to the faithfulness, over the millenia and indeed for all time, of the God of revelation, the Lord of life, the Creator exhibited in the Bible, is THEIR return to Him. These wars figure not least, in their victories, because they are the predicted and necessary prelud to the repentance of many in Israel, who are to look “on Me whom they pierced” (Zech. 12:10). It is this which the prophet then narrates of coming events with that specialised precision which is to be expected from the One who made the human body so magnificent in ingenuity, that man has not yet even managed fully to understand it, after centuries of research; but he USES it!

Great is the wonder of the Messiah,

	who was to come,
	came at the date specified by Daniel (Highway of Holiness Ch. 4),
	performed the miracles prescribed, and
	fulfilled all the rest of the identikit specified in the predictive prophets of the Old Testament,
	was crucified as indicated,
	rose as required on the third day,
	and then set on track the rest of the historical thrust,

while the Gospel pervaded this earth (Matthew 24:12), till the thing now ripe, His return after specified preliminaries, should occur (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5).

Great also is His mercy (John 3:16-19), and vast the confusion and participation in the crime of His dismissal now on the part of the Gentiles, who in heart and constitution, in word and deed, now turn internationally, as did Israel earlier nationally, more and more from the word of truth, from the Gospel of the mercy of the majestic Messiah.

In all this, they seek wrath very much as did Israel of old. It inherited it; there is no respect of persons with God, He does not bend truth; and so the Gentile world is now inheriting wrath. It turns here, it turns there, but on all sides, there is as it were, a bath of alligators, snakes slither and terror is not merely that of the terrorist, while people blaspheme God because He is making them drink of the soup of bitterness, sup on their 'chance' production of intelligence, law and truth, until they find by experience what it would be like if God did NOT rule, and had NOT made them, and some will wish they had never been born. In all this, the Ruler however does precisely as He foretold (Revelation 6, Matthew 24, Luke 21, Micah 7, Isaiah 66, I Thessalonians 1).

The Gentile world, this too has had such a proliferation of mercies, such a testimony of truth, such a realisation of wonder from the Gospel, that it has been inundated with it, as with showers from above; and which nations more than Britain and the USA which it helped to such prominence before they compromised and fell more and more away. Now it turns as the man from his beloved, so that the current declivity, as seen for example in the words of Romanism through the words of its British bishops (Ch. 1 below), is merely one exhibit. There are many more examples (cf. News 121, 122, Divine Drama … Ch. 4, It Bubbles… Ch. 11, News 296). Indeed, as the waves roar as predicted by Luke in Ch. 21 for this period, so does unbelief bellow.

This is a time for the realisation of His mercy, always profound, always impelling, never dictatorial; for never a dictator who died for His subjects, and what creator is like the Creator of man and of all things (John 1:3), Jesus the Christ as incarnate God, who as the eternal Word of the living God, saw fit to sally forth from celestial blessedness to provide salvation for man (as foretold in Psalm 40), though He was in the very form of God (Philippians 2), thinking it nothing of robbery to be equal with God, with Him in the beginning (John 1:1). And this ? It was in part in order to be slapped, ridiculed, despised, betrayed, all as foreseen and prophetically attested (cf. Joyful Jottings 22-25).

But why this ? Love has its own ways; and this is the way of divine justice being met through the cost to divine mercy (Romans 3:25ff.), expressed as man for man (Hebrews 2), in Jesus Christ. It is He whose will, word and way rules, but whose heart has provided an escape without parallel, through a cost to Him without equal, being infinite for the infinite God.

In one sense it is as if the Lord had mobilised His resources, not just to set man free from the wall of Hitler’s Europe, or Stalin’s Iron Curtain, or prospectively from the horrors of Christian persecution behind the bamboo curtain, but from the shame and sequestration from blessedness achieved by sin in co-operation with the devil, a folly worldwide in scope, and with the prospect of a just judgment. How then shall we escape, asks the scriptures of God, if we neglect so great a salvation! (Hebrews 2:1-3).

In this volume, therefore, as the time draws yet closer for the return of Christ as Judge (John 5:19ff.), it is needful for each person to contemplate, attest and reckon with His justice, His mercy, His Gospel, His historical control, His victorious provisions, triumphant truth and majestic oversight, with His wonderful kindness to the human race, when it reaches out for His creation in mankind.

This, as in Titus 3, finding Him where He is (Isaiah 55), may thus close in contract with the Gospel, and then live in and for Him. It is He who is to be found, who as Lord then lives by His Spirit according to His word, in the lives of those who so find Him, who has lived on earth to do His amazing work, and will return, the time being near. There is no other way, God or salvation, procedure or program, life, witness or way; for all falls but He, and nothing rises again, but He.

It is not some procedure to avoid hardship; it is one to find God, and with Him, the beauty of His holiness, the wonder of His new creation of life within, as He by His Spirit lives in and with His children, the privilege of serving Him, and the meaning of His manufacture of man, not for some questionable or querulous purpose, but for the glorious opportunity to become children of the living God.

With such a Father, who would dally with this world; but with such a Merciful Messiah, who could fail to witness to what is being missed, encourage members of this race to find Him while there is yet time, as the oven heats and the burning grows near; for He is very near. Who, knowing Him, would not exhort to find the Lord of life in truth, in the Messiah, the prince of life, who is the truth, yes, that same Jesus Christ who has done all, has finished redemption, even eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12), and offers freely the gift of eternal life, His own (I John 1:1-4, John 3:16, Titus 3:4-7). Only God is Saviour (Isaiah 43:10-11), and it is in Jesus the Christ, that this has been wrought, and by His Spirit that this same God applies it, always according to His word.