Some Surprising Results of the Tragic Break



The Surprised Jew.


God proposes. Man disposes. God proposed a king, and a world-wide kingdom
with great prosperity and peace. Man disposed of that plan for the bit of
time and space controlled by his will, and in its place interposed for the
king, a cross. Out of such a radical clashing of two great wills have come
some most surprising results.

The first surprise was for the Jew. Within a few weeks after Jesus' final
departure, Jerusalem, and afterward Palestine, was filled with thousands
of people believing in Him. A remarkable campaign of preaching starts up
and sweeps everything before it. Jesus' name was on every tongue as never
before. But there were earnest Jews who could not understand how Jesus
could be the promised Messiah. He had not set up a kingdom. Their
Scriptures were full of a kingdom.

The Jew, whether in their largest colony in Babylon, or in Jerusalem, or
in Rome, or Alexandria, or the smaller colonies everywhere, was full of
the idea, the hope, of a kingdom. He was absorbed with more or less
confused and materialized, unspiritual ideas of a coming glory for his
nation through a coming king. But among the followers of this Jesus there