Our part in the Crucifying of Christ is now revealed. “In the day that thou stoodest on the other side, in the day that the strangers carried away captive his forces, and foreigners entered into his gates, and cast lots upon Jerusalem, even thou wast as one of them.” Remember how once we allied ourselves with all that is spiritual, how we were on the Lord’s side, how we upheld the Cross, and how we acknowledged the Saviour of the world? To-day we are on the other side, we have put ourselves apart from Christ, we have disassociated ourselves from the Cross. God sees us now as Edom, His blood on our hands. We are no longer the people holy by the blood of Christ, but alas we are the bloody nation. We stand aside. We see Christ on the Cross of Calvary, strangers carrying away His forces, and breaking into His side, and casting lots upon His garments outside Jerusalem, and instead of allying ourselves with Him we stand on the other side. We are not merely mute witnesses of the wickedness, we are part of it. God points His finger at the Cross, and then He points His finger at us and He says, “Even thou wast as one of them.” If we were merely mute witnesses, yet refusing in our hearts to side with them, we might be excused, but we have gone farther than the heathen – they indeed refused the gospel, refused the offer of salvation, but we have gone one step further and sided with those who crucified the Lord of Glory. “For thy violence against thy brother Jacob shame shall cover thee, and thou shalt be cut off for ever.” Who says so? “Thus saith the Lord God concerning Edom.”
We have gone too far. But we have gone further yet. “But thou shouldest not have looked on the day of thy brother in the day that he became a stranger, neither shouldest thou have rejoiced over the children of Judah in the day of their destruction; neither shouldest thou have spoken proudly in the day of distress.” Christ was at one time acknowledged among us as King of Kings and Lord of Lords because He rose from the dead. The Gospel was openly proclaimed in our lands and the Church flourished. Now Christ is a stranger in the so-called Christian nations, the ‘children of Judah’ are destroyed, and the Church is in distress, and we have “looked on” and seen it happen and called it a good thing. The One who suffered for us, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, and rose again from the dead for our justification, is a stranger to most of our peoples. The great glad tidings of the gospel of pardon and salvation and peace with God through the blood of Christ has been now effectively silenced and we have not wept rejoiced. The Church that once afforded our people a spiritual life-style has come to a day of distress in our very sight, and we have spoken proudly of the superiority of materialism and natural thought, instead of mourning the loss of our great spiritual heritage. But thus saith the Lord God – “For thy violence against thy brother Jacob shame shall cover thee, and thou shalt be cut off for ever.” We have rejoiced too soon, for the day of reckoning is upon us and we have yet to learn “How great Thou art!”
