A tale of two cities
As chronicled in God’s Word
Is far different from Dicken’s novel
Of which many have heard.
Dickens begins:
“It was the best of times
It was the worst of times
It was the age of wisdom
It was the age of foolishness.
It was the epoch of belief
It was the epoch of incredulity
It was the season of light
It was the season of darkness.
It was the spring of hope
It was the winter of despair
We had everything before us
We had nothing before us.
We were all going directly to heaven
We were all going directly the other way.”
One was about London and Paris
Before and during the French revolution,
The other paints the picture
Of man’s glorious redemption.
One is a fictional narrative
Of a historical past,
The other is a Divine chronicling-
Future, present and past.
London and Paris:
Two cities in a United Kingdom,
The Old Jerusalem and the New:
And the footprint of God’s Son.
One is a tale
That basically came to an end,
The other is still unfolding
As the New Jerusalem.
England and France
Israel and the Church:
The latter to be continued,
The former we will skirt.
That Israel was God’s wife
Is clear in God’s Holy Word
But that He gave her a bill of divorcement
We have also heard.
Israel went a-whoring
That is, trusting in other gods,
Her history is replete in idolatry
As this sin is called.
On numerous occasions
God passed judgment on them
And on each occasion
Idolatry was the problem.
The first commandment is clear
Concerning who we must worship
But Israel worshipped idols
Making harlotry her habit.
Israel became a harlot
As well as did her sister Judah
This is clearly chronicled
In the book of Jeremiah.
Jeremiah 3:8
And I saw, when for all the causes
whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery
I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce;
yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not,
but went and played the harlot also.
Do note Idolatry and harlotry
Are one and the same
And in this case of a marriage
Adultery is another name.
Prostitution is fornication
While Israel’s harlotry is Idolatry,
The former is the oldest profession
While the latter is adultery.
Eve, aware of God’s directive,
Still yielded to the serpent’s temptation,
Her act of spiritual prostitution
Was her acceptance of Satan.
When she saw
That the fruit was to be desired
She ate and gave to her husband also
And their Edenic stay suddenly expired.
The United Kingdom of Israel
Was under Saul, David and Solomon
But after the reign of Solomon
It became a dual region.
God divided the kingdom
Into the North and South’
Yes, this was at God’s insistence
Straight out of His mouth.
The North comprised ten tribes
While the South was made of two
But even then, as the Bible shows,
Israel’s adultery grew.
Of their twenty kings
Not one followed the Lord
Until eventually came further judgment
When by the Assyrians conquered.
Judah was just as treacherous
For she also went a-whoring
Though a few of her nineteen kings
Stuck to God’s instructing.
Consistently they forsook God
And followed counter to His ways
And though many were his rescue acts
Their obedience was still delayed.
Throughout the Old Testament
Israel was often judged
But they had become so hard-hearted
That they never seriously budged.
Seventy years captive in Babylon
To the rebuilding of the temple
And this is indicative of that time
Highlighting Nehemiah and Ezra.
It appears also commensurate
With the time of fair Queen Esther
That foiled the plan of wicked Haman
Who was hanged on his own gallows.
Imagine the outcome
Had wicked Haman succeeded,
The ancestry of the Saviour, Jesus,
Would surely have been deleted.
The Philistines had also tried
But God used a shepherd king
To defeat the Philistine champion
With a single stone and a sling.
God was especially longsuffering
But Israel was continually unrepentant
And they murdered the prophets
That God had sent.
Upon them lay the righteous blood
Shed upon the earth from righteous Abel
Unto the blood of Zacharias
Whom at their hands also fell.
Thus, the lament of Jesus,
As expressed Matthew 23 verse 7:
O Jerusalem that killest the prophets…
And the judgment on that generation.
Her house was left unto her
Desolate!
And thus, was Israel’s judgment
And soon coming fate.
Exiled in 586 BC
And judged again in the 1st Century
As prophesied by Jesus himself
Regarding their oncoming misery.
From Mount Sinai to Pentecost
From the Old covenant to the New
From a harlot to a chaste bride-
A better covenant in Hebrews.
From the Old Jerusalem
To the one John saw coming down,
The new Jerusalem where one day
We shall wear a shining crown.
From the earthly Jerusalem
To that of a heavenly kingdom
Evidenced on the day of Pentecost
As promised by Father and Son.
John 14:26 & 15:26
The Holy Spirit sent by the Father
But in the name of His Son
While simultaneously sent by the Son
But of the Father therefrom.
A tale of two cities
With one having done away
To a New and glorious Jerusalem
And an infinitely brighter day.
Isaiah 9:2
The people that walked in darkness
Have seen a great light:
They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death,
Upon them hath the shined.
Seventy years in Exile to Babylon
And the rebuilding of the first temple
Seventy years of weeks to Pentecost
And the spreading of the Gospel.
No parenthesis in between
Daniel’s seventy weeks,
A straight-up count of seventy
With no modified tweak.
Midway in the seventieth week
Messiah was cruelly cut off,
When he was offered a pardon by Pilate
The Jewish leaders scoffed.
Crucify him! Crucify Him!
We have no king but Caesar!
His blood be on us and our children
And they the Saviour marred.
The marred body of Jesus
Displayed on Golgotha’s cross
Just thirty pieces of silver
Was all to them he cost.
But from the grave He rose
As the champion of the elect
Now heirs and joint-heirs with Christ
With no outstanding debt.
The generic body of Jesus Christ
As represented by the born-again,
The heavenly Jerusalem John saw
Over which the Saviour reigns.
1 Corinthians 15:25-26
For he must reign
Till he hath put all enemies under his feet
The last enemy that shall be destroyed
Is death.
No separation of Jew and Gentile
No middle wall of partition
But altogether one in Christ Jesus
In the glorious plan of redemption.
A tale of two cities:
The Old Jerusalem and the New
The Old was established at Mount Sinai,
But the New is a Mount Sion view.
Hebrews 12:22
But ye are come unto Mount Sion,
And unto the city of the living God,
The heavenly Jerusalem
And to an innumerable company of angels.
Stewart Russell © March 31, 2023
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