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No! One is not about to seek commiseration from les misérables of the 21st century.

It is not that.

Rather one reminds of the real source when it comes to sorrow. What father does not have a keen edge to sorrow when his son is killed, maimed, mutilated, grievously mistreated! What mother when her daughter is battered and left strewn on the pavement by witless thugs! What patriot when his city of birth, his country of childhood, lies downtrodden by the steel-capped heel of military maniacs, whose whole purpose is dominion, before the Lord institutes His own, which will of course be shortly (as in Answers to Questions Ch. 5).

When it comes to sorrow read four things.
1) Lamentations^{*1
(1:12 of which relates rather closely to our title)}
2) Luke 19:42ff.^*2
3) Psalm 69^*3 with
4) Luke 24^*4.

THEN you may come to understand the intense sorrow of Jerusalem. It is not primarily in the city itself; it is not first of all in its people, mixed as they now are not least through successive Israeli concessions. Where then does its mystery lie, and what is its source ? How does it come so to dominate so much, and never to leave the mighty in peace ?

The Crusades were a torment, the Islam invasions were a writhing, the Mosque was an idolatry with a smiling assurance which had its houris and its scimitars, the Roman ruin, going further back, this was a judgment and what a visitation when the city was salted and the temple dismantled as if by Wheeler's the wreckers for some other construction! This, the site of trillions, on one estimate, in merchandise and architecture alone, but the symbol of greater things, the common butt of plebian feet, kicking it about like the name of some opponent for the US Presidency!

Before that, there was Babylon, which incorporated the site amongst its spoils of triumphant paganism, syncretism and religious multiplicity; and sited there one of its many ruins.

Before that ? Some of the kings of Judah, like Manasseh and the not so brilliant Ahaz managed to spoil the site, invade its sanctity, place foreign emblems in its midst, idolatrise the faith and bring on the wrath which would not cease till its majestic symbolism was divorced from the substance which it signified, and the hypocrisy of formalised religion was exposed in simple desecration of site to match the desecration of the faith which preceded it.

Meanwhile ? "I shot an Israeli" comes the blatant, Koran citing blood cry of a PLO man, as recorded in Time Magazine, October 23, 2000, p. 53. How remarkable! What an achievement ? Well, says he, "before I start shooting, I start to concentrate on reading verses of the Koran because the Koran gives me the courage to fight the Israelis. The Koranic verses make me less afraid of death, and when I finish my job, I feel comfort and strength... I don't think in terms of happiness when I kill an Israeli or wound him. I think in terms of carrying out my religious obligations. I am asked by my God to fight the enemies until the last spot of blood."

This not terribly exciting recitation of a religious 'faith' as it is called, is indeed not contrary as we have seen, to some of the incitations of the Koran (cf. SMR pp. 50ff., 986ff., 1080ff.). Second class citizens to be subdued and dealt with summarily if they should seek to escape the degradations of civil subjugation are a speciality of Islam from the Koran. Till the last spot of blood is not contrary to various unappealing directions found in the references above, from the Koran.

This is not news. The lust for the land is however interesting: "This land does not belong to Arafat or any Palestinian leader. It belongs to the Muslims." The ground is the delusion of the Koran, amplified into the violence it portrays in the service of an Allah who assuredly has NOTHING
to do with the Lord of the Old Testament, has no son, and whose religion is as far from the gracious covenantal mercies of the Jewish Law and Prophets as it is possible to be, from the salvation by grace through faith as imaginable, from the Messianic precision of miracle and substitutionary atonement predicted so liberally there, in date and data, as heaven from the earth
(cf. That Magnificent Rock Ch. 3, SMR Ch. 9, and pp. 830ff., 1080ff., Barbs, Arrows and Balms 17). Isaiah 53 (and 54-55, 12, 40, 22, 32, 42, 49 for that matter) is as alike to Muslim doctrine as light to darkness, plus to minus, grace to works.

GOD HAS SPOKEN and is attested these nearly 3500 years in one book, one place, amplified and condensed into the cross of Christ. Amplified ? in its intense exposure of suffering and redemption. Condensed ? it is performed in its essence, IN ONE PLACE.

That PLACE ? Jerusalem.

As Christ put it, "It cannot be that a prophet should perish outside of Jerusalem" - Luke 13:33.
 
 

JERUSALEM itself has perished often enough. Lamentations with a quotation from which we began, has signalised that grief to the uttermost.

• "Is it nothing," Jeremiah asks in 1:12, "all you who pass by ? Behold and see if there be any sorrow like my sorrow,

Which the Lord has brought on me,
Which the Lord has inflicted
In the day of His fierce anger."

• "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"

In Lamentations you even see Josiah, that great and merciful king of Judah and Jerusalem whose reformist zeal and godly sorrow at evil, which he sought with all vigour to extirpate from the land, returning it to the Lord, referred to as "the breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the Lord", someone who having power, had piety, and having piety had kindness and sincerity (Lamentations 4:20). He, says Jeremiah, "was caught in their pits". True, of course, as that is, and it occurred when he sought to limit the implications or possible regional dominance from Pharaoh Necho, nevertheless it was a deliverance for Josiah, for his very zeal had led to the prophetic blessing which also announced that HE WOULD NOT BE PERMITTED TO SEE the ruin and desolations to come. He was mercifully removed BECAUSE of his faithfulness
(cf. II Kings 22:19-20; and Isaiah 57:1 -

• "Merciful men are taken away, while no one considers, that the righteous is taken away from evil. He shall enter into peace,
• They shall rest in their beds, Each one walking in his uprightness."

• "You sons of the sorceress,
• You offspring of the adulterer and the harlot!"

It is not THE JEWS who have hegemony. It is the ONE TRUE GOD duly transcribed in His words for thousands of years, whose gospel has NEVER changed (That Magnificent Rock Ch. 3, Barbs, Arrows and Balms Ch. 17),  fixed complete in Galatians 1. It is He whose Son is ultimate to the last because ultimate from the first, indeed, the first and the last (Ephesians 1:10, Revelation 2:8, Isaiah 44:6), like His Father who begot Him into flesh in Mary's womb (Luke 1:35) so that He was to be called the Son of God, whose I AM rocked Jerusalem then, as it rocks it today, which crucified Him then, and has not accepted Him today, as He is, in any of the three major religions which meet like vortices in contending ocean perimeters, at that city (cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 30).

It is not these in their various contortions and assertions, authorities and rebellions which meet the matchless claims of the Creator, Christ, the Redeemer, sole Master and the only true and living God (Matthew 23:8-10, 7:21-29, Col 1:15ff., Luke 6:46, John 8:58). It not Romanism, with its self-investiture of interloping papacy (cf. The Frantic Millenium and the Peace of Faith  Ch. 6).
It is not the Jews who are exalted, but the Son begotten of one of them, wrought by the Holy Spirit, who is "therefore" the Son of God (Luke 1), who gave Him for love that the world might be saved, coming not to condemn but for that far better reason.

It is not the Arabs who are exalted, for they merely add to the play of the Jews in former times, when THEY for their part, as the above references from Isaiah make all too clear, did just that. The Islam movement is merely a continuation of what the Jews were so good at that God made this terrible statement of judgment:
 

• "Now go, write it before them on a tablet,

And note it on a scroll,
That it may be for time to come,
Forever and ever;
That this is a rebellious people,
Lying children,
Children who will not hear the law of the LORD,
Who say to the seers, 'Do not see!',
And to the prophets,
'Do not prophesy to us right things;
Speak to us smooth things, prophesy deceits' " - 30:8-10

• "Their governor will be from their midst,

Then will I cause Him to draw near,
And He shall approach Me;
'For who is this who pledged His heart to approach Me?' says the LORD.
'You shall be My people,
And I will be your God.'

"Behold the whirlwind of the LORD
Goes forth with fury,
A continuing whirlwind;
It will fall violently on the head of the wicked.
The fierce anger of the LORD will not return until He has done it.
And until He has performed the intents of His heart.

"In the latter days you will consider it" (from Jeremiah 30:21ff.).

"I will raise to David a Branch in righteousness,
A King shall reign and prosper,
And execute judgment and righteousness in the earth.
In His days Judah will be saved,
And Israel will dwell safety;
Now this is His name by which He will be called:
THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS."

This is He of Psalm 72, 110, 45 , of Isaiah 2, Micah 5, and of Psalm 2 whose reign is to be executed in the very midst of an overweening presumption of kings and kingdoms against Him.
(Cf. Joyful Jottings Chs. 3,  7,  9.)

POWER, as Psalm 62:11 tells us, belongs to God! HE also performs all things for His people (Psalm 57).
 
 

It is QUITE useless to play the murderer and spill the last drop of someone's blood. It will not help. Power belongs to God and HE has humbled the Jews, without destroying them, as He said He would do, and is soon to deliver them, despite their sin, when the faith comes, and this BECAUSE of His faithfulness who said He would do so (as in Ezekiel 36-37, Genesis 17 - see SMR Appendix A), and because at that time, they will be calling on His name, on Him who IS THERE so that HE CAN HEAR, and not on the name of a Messiah-free deity of the imagination, whether that of Islam, which will not work for it is idolatry, not in having many gods, but in having the wrong one without the historical authority of His work, and actions, and Christ.

If Jerusalem lay waste after  the Babylonians and Jeremiah memorialised the horror of the abasement in Lamentations, yet it is BECAUSE God is a SPIRIT and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth (John 4, Jeremiah 4, 6, 16) that He would NOT CONSENT to being worshipped ALONG WITH other gods, whether Moslem as now, or Jewish idols as then, but will destroy even the symbolism which is true, when the substance is denied, when the time comes, and in order to display that greater mess, that far worse massacre of truth itself, in the crucifixion of Christ.

But where is this then ? It is in Jerusalem. They killed Him there, and He dismanlted it, the city, with grief and with sorrow, as long foretold from Daniel 9 (cf. Luke 19:41ff.). .

To what city then does HE STATE HE will return in regality (Zechariah 14) ? To Jerusalem. What peoples will He humble then when He comes this time ? The nations who will and revile and seek to eliminate the people who have returned to Him (Deuteronomy 32). And when will that be ? It is, He says, "when He sees that their strength is gone", and it will be in the context of their return not merely to their LAND, but to their LORD! THAT is what is coming to be.

It is true that the Jews forsook the substance of their faith, and kept the letter, but illiterately, for they forsook its referent, the Redeemer; but for all that, the word of God in the Old Testament is as true today as ever, is fulfilled today, and will be fulfilled as Christ indicated, to the last jot and tittle, and this, it is a book given to the Jews. THIS, not Jerusalem, is their most sacred heritage, apart from one...

And that ? It is the Lord Himself to whom they must return, and who will Himself return - to Jerusalem, where He ws sacrificed, suffered it, and founded the faith on it in fulfilment of His word, as He bodily arose, its living verification (cf. SMR Ch. 6, Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium Chs.5,  6, The Magnificence of the Messiah, End-note 1, Biblical Blessings 15, End-note 2).
 
 

HE, He died to the last drop had dripped from the broken heart, the last necessary drop, leaving only the residual relicts of death. HE, He was fired on and shot at (Isaiah 53:6) not by bullets, but by iniquities which HE WILLINGLY RECEIVED, ACCEPTED AND ENVELOPED that not merely Jews, not only Arabs, but ANYONE who calls on Him by faith (as in Acts 2:36ff., Romans 10:9, 3:23ff.) should be saved: WITHOUT WORKS.

What an insult to add one's own works, even 1% to such works of HIS as were NECESSARY in order to raise the level of the bar to the celestial height. If any mere man thinks that he can even add a jot to that righteous performance of Christ, then the delusion is apt to be fatal (Romans 3:23ff., Ephesians 2:1-10, Titus 3:5ff.), and is unless realisation returns.  It is ONLY by HIS WORKS, and these are pure as heaven, that one can be redeemed. Add the dust of one's own efforts and the very soil of heaven would be contaminated.

Only God is as good as God and hence only Christ is the Saviour. There is NO OTHER NAME, no, not even yours, or Islam, or the UN. It is all folly. They can talk till their vocal cords relax, relapse into crustiness, but they will achieve nothing. It is NOT TALK BUT WALK, walk in the Messiah which is necessary. Salvation is of the Jews, as Christ said (John 4:12), because HE became a Jew; but it is not Jewish, for they have forsaken Him as a nation. It is for one, it is for all; but it is NOT for those who make a new god and a new earth and make their own demands and mandates in the name of their own gods, whether New Age or Old Age, Moslem or Romanist, on God.
 
 

God, you see, simply rules.
He has given much liberty to man, and it is entirely possible for man, as is common,
to make up new gods,
and then to denigrate all gods in acts of marvellous wisdom and conceit.

But the God who made man knows these things. "You thought I am altogether such as yourself," He exclaims, to those "who forget God".
 

"Now consider this," He admonishes, "you who forget God,
Lest I tear you in pieces,
And there is none to deliver:
Whoever offers praise glorifies Me:
And to him who orders his way aright,
I will show the salvation of God" - Psalm 50:22-23.

And how DO you order your way aright ? COME, He says to ME. I, He declares, AM THE DOOR, He who enters by ME shall be saved (Matthew 11:27ff., John 10:9). THAT is where it is. It is nowhere else. It is not in trying to grab Jerusalem. It is not in trying to make religions which give you 'right' to kill to grab it or anything else. It is not in blood of man, but in the blood of the Son of God that the answer is to be found. As Paul says in Acts 20:28:

• "Therefore take heed to ourselves and to all the flock , among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood."

• Having laid down His incarnated life as Christ for salvation,
• He is not about to relay Jerusalem the site to the ungodly of this or that kind,
• to this or that idol or force or power of presumption.
• It is HIS.
• He died there.
• He has it ordered as He said.
• He will come and deliver His own people whose blindness is to go as a whole

(Romans 11, Zech. 12:10).

His rule is over all. All Christians, from whatever race, are His (Galatians 3:28ff.). THIS is the spiritual reality of the Covenant, whatever the scenes, scenario and strategy of the release! (Romans 11).

The real conflict is with God. Blood is unnecessary, for it is His own which counts. Until this is counted, countless griefs await, irrelevant to the task in hand, but desolatory for many whose mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters mourn, or whose dying bodies are tormented.

There is no peace for the wicked; but turn, turn, says the Lord:

"Seek the Lord while He may be found,
Call upon Him while He is near ..." (Isaiah 55:6),
"Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel", the Lord cries.

Nor is it different to those who needlessly throw away life as though mesmerised, who are not from Israel,

"for God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world through Him might be saved.

"He who believes in Him is not condemned,
but he who does not believe is condemned already,
because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

"And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world,
and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil" - John 3:17-19.

And Christ ? It is He who said, "I am the light of the world!" (John 8:12). You cannot see without light. HE, as it is written, is THE LIGHT. "He who follows Me," He declared, "shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life."

SO He said and so it is.
 
 

*1 The book of Lamentations, the mouth of grief.

This has been cited, but read it all! THERE is grief, reason for it, and from this comes the One whose griefs make ours to be supplanted by joy, who are His and have come to Him. (Cf. John 16:20-22.) Read all of it if you would investigate grief, and being grieved, avoid its talons in the truth.
 

*2 Luke 19:41ff. shows even in the light and sight of His own coming desecration on the Cross, Christ was yet mainly concerned for the city which WOULD not come to Him that it might have life, and which has suffered so much from so many since, while it is astray to this day (Matthew 23:37, SMR Appendix B).

We shall cite a few words, but please read on:

"Now as he drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying,
‘If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.
'For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation' ."

Here you see the trauma of truth as it regards the folly of pride and delusion, that rejects the truth (cf. Repent or Perish Chs.  2, and  7).
 

*3 Psalm 69 has this Messianic prelude (cf. Joyful Jottings Ch. 11).

"You know My reproach, my shame, and my dishonour;
My adversaries are all before You.
Reproach has broken My heart,
And I am full of heaviness;
I looked for someone to take pity, but there was none;
And for comforters, but I found none.
They also gave Me gall for My food,
And for My thirst, they gave Me vinegar to drink".

*4

Luke 24:44 -

Here we see Christ in the agonies of giving in spirit His blood, which was soon to come, since in reality it was to be cut off temporarily from His everlasting Father which was the price of sin, and the body its payment site, the city its location….

"And being in an agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground." To the disciples: "Why do you sleep ? Rise and pray, lest you enter into temptation."

*5
See Deuteronomy 32:17-18, Jeremiah 23:21 and 23:18-20 with Matthew 24:24, Psalm 96 and SMR pp. 305ff..