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Messiah’s Sharp Arrows
"Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the
King’s enemies; whereby the people fall under thee."—Ps 45:5.
With a strange and unaccountable perversity we
often find that the very people most given to figurative and symbolical
language are the very ones who when they come to the Bible are disposed to take
it literally, to ignore the beautiful figures of speech with which it abounds!
So persistent is this habit that even when considering that book of symbols,
the Apocalypse, they are disposed to take its statements literally—although in
its very introduction the declaration is made that our Lord sent and
signified—made signs or symbols to illustrate the things which would shortly
come to pass. We are not urging such an interpretation of the Scriptures as
would ignore their true significance and make them say the reverse of what they
mean, as some are disposed to do; we merely urge that symbolical, metaphorical
and hyperbolical language be given true and proper recognition, as we would be
disposed to do were the same figures and symbols used in connection with the
affairs of our daily life. Surely none can claim that this is an unreasonable
position.
When friends tell us that certain words cut
them to the heart or that certain experiences broke their hearts they are
merely using metaphors in the same manner in which the Scriptures use them. (Ac
2:37; Isa 61:1; Lu 4:18.) And similarly, when considering our text, we are not
to think of literal arrows being shot forth by Messiah and that these will
cause the world of mankind to fall wounded literally before Him with these
arrows in their hearts. In another Scripture we read, "The wicked shoot
out arrows, even bitter words," that they may
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injure the righteous. (Ps 64:3,4.) So here
also the arrows of Messiah would represent the words of His mouth; but as a
bitter fountain sends forth bitter water and a pure fountain sends forth sweet
water, so the arrows of Messiah, instead of being bitter words such as the
wicked shoot forth, will be forceful words of truth and grace. The symbolism is
analogous to that of Revelation, where Messiah, in His coming glory of the
Millennial Age, is pictured as having a sword going forth from His mouth with
which He smites the nations.—Re 19:15.
The Sword of the Spirit is the Word of God.
(Eph 6:17.) The Sword of Messiah’s mouth will be the message which He will
send: "My Word that goeth forth out of My mouth shall not return unto Me
void, but shall accomplish that which I please, and shall prosper in the thing
whereto I sent it." (Isa 55:11.) Our Lord Jesus, as the Mouthpiece of
Jehovah, was commissioned not only to redeem the world but to uplift it out of
sin, degradation and death conditions and to restore the willing and the
obedient to all that was lost in Adam and redeemed by Christ, by His obedience
and sacrifice at Calvary. As the "Lamb of God" our Redeemer has
already "tasted death for every man," dying "the just for the
unjust, that He might bring us to God." (Joh 1:29; Heb 2:9; 1Pe 3:18.) But
it is not enough that He thus prepares the way by bringing mankind back to God;
it is not enough that God’s Justice has been appeased now on our behalf. It is
necessary further that the Redeemer should grant the required assistance to the
redeemed for their deliverance from the chains of ignorance, superstition, sin
and death into the liberty of the sons of God.
"NOW ARE WE THE SONS OF GOD"
This deliverance of humanity according to the
Divine purpose is divided into two parts: First, a special class who hunger and
thirst after righteousness and are out of harmony with sin, are being blessed
during this Gospel Age through the appreciation of the good tidings of
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God’s love and favor in Christ. These are
dealt with by faith, and include only such members of the race as have the hearing
ear of faith—"He that hath an ear, let him hear"; for "without
faith it is impossible to please God."
This small company of the race, willing and
able by the Redeemer’s assistance to walk by faith and not by sight, now
receive special truth in the School of Christ and a special testing as respects
their loyalty to righteousness, in advance of the world’s blessing and trial.
The faithful of these, at the close of this Gospel Age, by a share in the First
Resurrection will be "changed" from human nature to Divine nature and
be made sharers with the Redeemer as His "Bride," His
"Body," in the great Millennial Age work of blessing, uplifting the
world from sin to righteousness, of bringing them out of degradation and wrath
up, up, up to human perfection and eternal life in an earthly paradise
restored.
Our text does not refer to our Lord’s dealings
with the Church; for we are not His enemies. The enemy class will be dealt with
after the Second Coming of our Lord.
This He showed in one of His parables, saying,
A young nobleman went into a far country to receive for Himself a Kingdom and
returned and took possession of it. Before starting He called His own servants
and delivered to them pounds and talents, saying, Occupy until I return. On His
return, invested with the majesty, authority and power of a Kingdom, He first
called His own servants (the Church class) and reckoned with them, rewarding
the faithful saying, "Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been
faithful over a few things. I will make thee ruler over many things; enter thou
into the joy of thy Lord"—have dominion over five cities.
Then the King will say, "As for those
Mine enemies, who would not have Me to reign over them, bring them hither and
slay them before Me." (Lu 19:12-27.) The slaying of the enemies in the
parable corresponds perfectly with the Revelation picture of the Sword of
Messiah’s
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mouth, which will smite the nations; and it
corresponds also with the expression in our text respecting the sharp arrows of
Messiah which shall be in the hearts of His enemies and cause the people to
fall before Him.
Not literal arrows, not a literal sword, not
literal carnage are here represented, but a great triumph of the Word of the
Lord over all during the reign of the Millennial Kingdom,
following our Lord’s Second Coming.
Those who are now invited to become of the
Lord’s "Little Flock," the "Very Elect," the "Bride,
the Lamb’s Wife," the "Royal Priesthood," the "Body of
Christ," are not smitten down with the Sword of His mouth. Instead, they
are those who through various experiences in life are already become heart
weary, heavy laden, looking to the Lord in faith and desiring His assistance.
The message of the Lord’s lips at the present
time is not arrows; not the sword to those who are invited to be His followers.
On the contrary, inviting them, He says, "Come unto Me, all ye that labor
and are heavy laden; and I will give you rest!" Again He tells us that His
Message is intended to bind up the broken-hearted, to give the oil of joy in
exchange for the spirit of heaviness. —Isa 61:3; Mt 11:28-30.
The Apostle, speaking of the matter, declares
that it has pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save those who now
believe. (1Co 1:21.) Not that the Message is a foolish one; for on the contrary
the Message of God’s grace is the noblest, the grandest, the most wonderful one
that could come to the ears of mankind. But from the worldly standpoint it
seems foolish on God’s part to address the world when He Himself declares that
the vast majority are deaf, and that only here and there can any be found who
have the hearing ear. Again, the Gospel Message of reward to the obedient seems
foolish to the world; for it would say, "If God had all power why does He
not enforce His commands and send forth judgments to compel obedience rather
than send forth a message
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of love and an invitation to obedience?"
Our answer is that God is now seeking a peculiar people; and that after He
shall have gathered this specially called, specially chosen, specially blessed,
specially tried class, after He shall have glorified these, blessing them with
the great reward of glory, honor and immortality, then will be His time for using
force, compulsion.
MESSIAH SHALL BE CONQUEROR
The Apostle Paul, discussing the work of
Christ during His Millennial reign following His Second Advent, declares,
"He must reign until He hath put all enemies under His feet. The last
enemy to be destroyed is death." Again, ..."Then cometh the end, when
He shall deliver up the Kingdom to God, even the Father, when He shall have put
down all [antagonistic] rule and all authority and all power....And when all
things shall be subject unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject to
Him that put all things under Him that God may be all in all." (1Co
15:24-28.) The Apostle introduces this statement in his argument on the
resurrection of the dead. He is proving that the resurrection is for all mankind,
that as "all in Adam die, even all in Christ shall be made
alive"—every man in his own order, "The Christ [Head and Body, Jesus
and the Church] the first-fruits; afterward [during His presence at His Second
Advent in the Millennium] they that are Christ’s at His coming."
It will be during that Millennial period of
Messiah’s Reign that force will be used instead of preaching; that His rebuke
will smite into the hearts of His enemies, and that all shall fall under Him.
Every knee must bow, every tongue must confess. Happy will it be for the world
when Messiah shall take unto Himself His great power and reigns. Blessed will
it be for the people when His sharp arrows shall smite them and when His
judgment as a hammer shall break the hard, stony hearts; for, as
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the Scriptures declare, He wounds to heal. (Ho
6:1.) The healing process will be coincidental to the wounding and breaking;
for the great Messiah, Christ and the Church, will be not only the King, the
Ruler, but also the Priest of that Millennial time to heal, to console, to
forgive, and the great Prophet to instruct the thousands of millions of Adam’s
race who have gone into death during the reign of Sin and Death and under the
blinding influences of the Adversary. No wonder the Scriptures speak in glowing
terms of that glorious Millennial Day, when the knowledge of the Lord shall
fill the whole earth! No wonder they picture this symbolically as the rising of
the Sun of Righteousness with healing in its beams.—Mal 4:2.
"IN THY MAJESTY RIDE ON"
Note our context: The first verse declares
that the Message relates to the King, not to the Lord, not to Messiah waiting
to be invested with the authority of the Kingdom, but to Him after He shall
have been thus invested, after He shall have taken to Himself His great power
and begun His Reign of Righteousness. Hearken to the prophetic description of
the King in His beauty, "Thou are fairer than the children of men: grace
is poured into Thy lips." This well pictures our dear Master’s condition
of humiliation when the Man Christ Jesus was demonstrated to be pure in heart,
absolutely loyal to the Father and in this respect fairer than all the children
of men, all of whom were sinners and out of the way.
The grace of our Lord’s lips is manifest to us
in the message which He left. "Never man spake like this man."
"They all bare Him witness and wondered at the gracious words that
proceeded out of His mouth."—Joh 7:46; Lu 4:22.
It is because of the faithfulness, the
loyalty, the grace which our Lord demonstrated as the Man Christ Jesus that the
Father glorified Him, raising Him from the dead to far more than the human
nature and glory—to the highest
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plane, the Divine nature and its glory, honor
and immortality.
As the Prophet declares, God blessed Him forever.
(Ps 45:2.) His exaltation is perpetual; far above angels, principalities and
powers and every name that is named. Our Lord’s trial and exaltation have been
followed by the call and testing of the "Little Flock," invited to be
His joint-heirs in the Kingdom; and soon these will be changed in the First
Resurrection, that they may participate in His glorious work of the Millennial Kingdom.
Then the time having come for the
establishment of the Kingdom, Messiah, Head and Body, will take to Himself His
great power and His Millennial Reign will begin. This is represented in Verses
3 and 4, "Gird thy sword upon Thy thigh, O Mighty One, with Thy glory and
Thy majesty. And in Thy majesty ride prosperously, because of truth and meekness
and righteousness."
What a noble, inspiring picture of Divine
knowledge as it shall go forth in due time for the binding of Satan and the
liberating of all the slaves of sin and death—not only those who have not gone
down into the tomb, but the liberation of those who are in the great
prison-house of death, the grave! Messiah shall not reign for the oppression of
the world nor for the enslavement of the people.
On the contrary the power of the Kingdom will
be exercised on behalf of truth, meekness and righteousness.
This however, will necessarily mean a reign of
force, a reign very different from the present dispensation and its Gospel
invitation to righteousness.
We read elsewhere that the "judgments of
the Lord will be abroad in the earth"—His righteous dealings. In other
words, His power exercised on behalf of the cause of truth, meekness and
righteousness, will mean His forceful opposition to error, to pride and all
inequity, all unrighteousness. No longer will men be invited to abandon sin. The
judgments, the punishments for wrong doing will be promptly and vigorously
applied. The world, deaf to the Lord’s Message, blind to His goodness,
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out of the way,
degraded through sin, will learn righteousness in another way—by being made to
feel a judgment, a punishment for every wrong deed and wrong word.
And by the end of the Millennial Age the
testing will have become so crucial that even the favorable entertainment of a
disloyal thought as respects the Almighty and His rule of righteousness will
lead to the Second Death.
We have no thought of suggesting that the
Millennium will be entirely a time of peace, joy and blessing.
It will be all of this all the time to all
those who love righteousness and hate iniquity and are in accord with the Lord;
but the Lord’s indignation, even His fierce anger, will from the very beginning
of the Millennial Age burn hotly against all unrighteousness, against all
iniquity, all falsehood, to the intent that these may be thoroughly removed,
completely eradicated, and that thus mankind may be most truly and most
absolutely blessed.
It is in harmony with this that the fourth
verse of our context declares, "Thy right hand [Thy Power] shall teach
terrible lessons," lessons for eternity to many, lessons which will be
most salutary to the race as a whole, lessons which would be awful to humanity
in some respects at the beginning of the reign. For be it remembered that the
Scriptures everywhere declare that the Millennial Kingdom, although a reign of
peace, righteousness and love, will be introduced by a Time of Trouble such as
was not since there was a nation, by which trouble present institutions will be
overthrown because they are all unrighteous, imperfect and built upon lines of
selfishness contrary to the law of love, which shall be made to prevail in the
interest of all. This is the same thought that is brought to our attention in
connection with the symbolical picture of Revelation. The Sword of Messiah’s
mouth is there declared to smite the nations; and we are told that He will rule
the nations with a rod of iron, and that as potters’ vessels they shall be
broken to shivers.—Re 2:26-28.
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We are to differentiate, however, between the
nations which are to be broken—the great systems of selfishness which are to
fall and rise no more—and the people, into whose hearts the words of the Lord
will enter and who will be smitten down before Him. They will acknowledge that
they are sinners, and that His reproofs are just and His judgments upon systems
of error and iniquity are true and righteous altogether. They will fall before
Him; they will acknowledge the Divine power and its rightful control of human
affairs; every knee must bow and every tongue must confess. As the Apostle
Peter, referring to this time, declares, "It shall come to pass that the
soul that will not hear [obey] that Prophet, shall be destroyed from amongst
the people."—Ac 3:23.
The picture of the coming Time of Trouble and
of the glorious epoch of blessing which will follow it is graphically depicted
by the Prophet Zephaniah (3:8), through whom the Lord says, "Wait ye upon
Me, saith the Lord, until that day when I rise up to the prey: for My
determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, that
I may pour upon them Mine indignation, even all My fierce anger: for the whole
earth [social structure] shall be devoured with the fire of My jealousy."
So terrible will be the Time of Trouble, so
sweeping the overthrow of present institutions, that the Lord here symbolically
pictures it as a fire consuming everything of the present social order.
But that it is not a literal fire, and that it
will not consume or destroy mankind but prepare for their greater blessing, is
shown by the next statement of the Prophet: "Then will I turn unto the
people a pure Message [in contrast with the confused message that is now being
promulgated by all the various sects of Christendom—Babylon] that they may all
call upon the name of the Lord to serve Him with one consent." They will
no longer call upon themselves the names of sects and parties, heathen or
Christian. All will call upon the Lord, all will
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recognize Him as the great Teacher; for the
Lord shall be King over all the earth in that day. (Zec 14:9.) And the Kingdom
under the whole heavens shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most
High.—Da 7:27.
"HIS MOUTH IS MOST SWEET"
In contrast with the sharp words of rebuke
which will be administered to the world and which they will need and which will
be most favorable to them, we have the gracious words of the Master in the
present time speaking to all who have ears to hear. His Message is represented
as one that binds up the broken hearts and administers the oil and wine of
refreshment and joy and peace and consolation. What wonder, then, that we
appreciate the statement, "Blessed are your ears, for they hear." Not
only have we heard the Message of our Lord Jesus, of His love for us, and that
He gave Himself a Ransom for our redemption, but we have heard the Father
saying that He has spoken peace to us through Jesus Christ our Lord.
He tells us also, "The Father Himself
loveth you."
Hearkening we not only have heard the Message
of God’s love and favor for our race, and how a Ransom has been provided, and
that in consequence a preparation is being made for the blessing of all the
world, but we learn that we may appropriate this blessing to ourselves now by
faith in advance of this general application, and that being justified by faith
we may have peace with God.
And, furthermore, after we had thus been
accepted, we heard the voice of the Master inviting us to become His disciples,
to walk in His steps, to share now in the cross and sacrifice with Him and by
and by in the crown.
Ah, yes! He brought life and immortality to light
through the Gospel—life everlasting, life which we now see is possible of
attainment by all the families of the earth, and immortality is attainable by
those who now have the hearing ear of faith and the heart desire to follow in
the footsteps of their Redeemer.
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"WONDERFUL WORDS OF LIFE!"
The character of Him who is to ride
prosperously as the conqueror of the world assures us respecting His treatment
of those who shall fall down before Him and accept His righteous Reign and Law.
He who loved them so that He gave His life as their Redemption-price
establishes His Reign, not for their injury, but for their blessing, for their
uplifting, for the destruction of their real enemies. All the weaknesses and
depravity of the fallen conditions are our enemies, if we love righteousness;
and we are glad to have our Lord’s co-operation in fighting a good fight
against these. And so will all the right-minded of the Millennial Age be glad
to have all the assistance He can render them. And the Church of this Gospel
Age, now gaining experience through trials and disciplines, will also be fitted
and prepared to co-operate with her Redeemer and King in the work of blessing
our race, instructing them in the ways of the Lord and teaching them to go up
on the Highway of Holiness, at whose further end, by perseverance, they may
have eternal life.
Let us continue to pray, dear friends, for
this Kingdom of Messiah, when His sharp arrows shall
pierce many hearts and cause the masses to fall under Him and to confess Him
and to adore Him. Let us continue to pray, "Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be
done on earth as it is done in Heaven." Yes, let us be glad that in the
consummation of the Plan of God all who rejoice to learn righteousness and to
love it, and to hate iniquity, shall be utterly destroyed, so that God
eventually will have a clean Universe.
He’s come! Let all the earth adore Him!
The path His
human nature trod Spreads to a royal realm before Him, The Life of life, the
Word of God!
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