- 40th International Bible Conference, July 29, 2008 “Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.”  Romans 3:20     Israel, the Nation over which God Is Watching Last night I lay a-sleepingThere came a dream so fair,I stood in old JerusalemBeside the temple there.I heard the children singing,And ever as they sangMethought the voice of angelsFrom heaven in answer rang,Methought the voice of angelsFrom heaven in answer rang.Jerusalem! Jerusalem!Lift up your gates and sing,Hosanna in the highest!Hosanna to your King! And then methought my dream was changed,The streets no longer rang.Hushed were the glad HosannasThe little children sang.The sun grew dark with mystery,The morn was cold and chill,As the shadow of a cross aroseUpon a lonely hill,As the shadow of a cross aroseUpon a lonely hill.Jerusalem! Jerusalem!Hark! How the angels sing,Hosanna in the highest!Hosanna to your King! And once again the scene was changed,New earth there seemed to be.I saw the Holy CityBeside the tideless sea.The light of God was on its streets,The gates were open wide,And all who would might enter,And no one was denied.No need of moon or stars by night,Or sun to shine by day;It was the new JerusalemThat would not pass away,It was the new JerusalemThat would not pass away.Jerusalem! Jerusalem!Sing for the night is o’er!Hosanna in the highest!Hosanna forevermore! Even just from looking at the words of this one hymn, we can see that the city by the name of Jerusalem is a place where many events have occurred and a place that has much to tell us. This goes beyond the historical facts that are known to man?such as the various wars that took place in a certain city of a certain country?and beyond the situation in a certain city at specific times?its beauty, for example. When the life of the flesh comes to an end and the new era has begun, there is a city that will be waiting for us. That is the purpose of Jerusalem, and it is why God has appointed this city. Let’s think about the words of this hymn. “The sun grew dark with mystery, the morn was cold and chill, as the shadow of a cross arose upon a lonely hill.” Then it says, “Once again the scene was changed, new earth there seemed to be. I saw the Holy City beside the tideless sea. The light of God was on its streets, the gates were open wide, and all who would might enter, and no one was denied.” This is talking about the Jerusalem where Jesus died on the cross, and the New Jerusalem that God will send down from heaven when this world has come to an end. We live our lives in this world with our blood flowing through our bodies, but some day my life will be upheld by something much greater than the power that upholds the blood flowing through my body right now; it is with the life that has been implanted within me directly from God through His word that I will experience the joy of the New Jerusalem. This is what this hymn is talking about, and the very thought of it leaves my heart too full for words. If you examine the long course of the history of the Jews, you will find that the Israelites always set their focus on Jerusalem. This is why the Jews, even when scattered across the face of the earth and living as wanderers, always longed for Jerusalem. This is a thought that occurs to me whenever I think about Jerusalem and the history of Israel. God created the heavens and the earth and He made man according to certain principles, but then man sinned and a different set of principles was established. The law of hereditary transmission holds sway in the body of man which is governed by sin in the course of his life, and our flesh bears witness to this fact. The life of an individual begins in the womb of the mother where all the internal organs and the rest of the body are formed by the blood. Some ignorant people say this just came about by chance. They say that some single cell just happened to evolveinto a higher form of life, but this is not the way it was. Life came about according to a thoroughly ordered system, a carefully planned program. It is impossible for it to have all come about “by chance.”God caused the nation of Israel to grow through the seed of one man, Abraham. Through the incident referred to as the Passover, God led the Israelites out of Egypt and into the land of Canaan, as it says in the Bible: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son” (Hosea 11:1). When you look at the history of Israel, you can see that this nation was born like a living organism and developed like a body with its own personality. It is clear that the history of this nation did not unfold by chance. Just as the laws that govern the life of man are inherited through the human body, through the blood, and through the seed of the parents, when it comes to the history of Israel, this nation also came into being in accordance with the laws of life that God had established. God is also managing the history of Israelin accordance with these laws. History is bearing witness to this. In AD 69, Israel was destroyed. After that the Jews were scattered across the face of the earth, but in 1948 they came together once more in the place where Abraham had journeyed with his small family. Israel is the only nation in the world that come together again in one place after having been scattered all over for a period of 1,900 years. There have been instances when a nation has established itself in a fixed area of land, amassing a certain amount of power, only to become weakened later through war, but when it comes to a nation being scattered across the face of the earth as though its seed had been dried up, taking on a new appearance, using different languages and becoming assimilated into different cultures, only to return to its original land and establish itself as a nation there once more, this has only ever happened Israel. Will this have happened by chance? These events were possible because the power of God was alive within this nation, the power of the God who was the life-force that guided the history of Israel. God’s word is alive over the nation of Israel. In Isaiah, it says, “So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11). These events actually happened to the Israelites. Such great miraculous events happened to this nation, and even now such events are still occurring amongst them. This is because God’s will and purpose has been entrusted to this people.   The History of Sacrifice as Recorded in the BibleWith in the history of the nation of Israel, many people were born and died, many battles were fought and the people faced many calamities and received tremendous blessings, yet in the midst of all this, as is the case for the reason for the very existence of the nation of Israel, there was one incident that linked all of this together like a lifeline, and that was the Passover. Blood is hidden away within the book of Genesis. Through the content of Genesis, we can glean a vague notion about this blood, but there is hardly anywhere in this book where blood is referred to with any distinct clarity. It does say that meat may be eaten but not “with its life, that is, its blood” (see Genesis 9:4), but that is about it. Yet, when the seed of life of the Israelites that passed through the history of the three generations of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, grew to form a nation, and that nation went down to Egypt and then returned to the land of Canaan, through the incident of the Passover, God spread out the blood in their sight, and then when they had escaped from Egypt through that blood, God gave them the law. This is a shadow of how we, who are born into this world in the flesh, become born again. This is the true life sought by every man.It is true that the account of Abraham entering the land of Canaan to establish a nation there presents us with an image of how we are first born from our mother’s womb. Also, the account of the escape from Egypt through the power of the blood, which God demonstrates so clearly, shows us that it is for us to escape from the fate of sin which has been ours since the time of Adam, and that there is a method by which we can escape from this sin. When the Israelites came out of Egypt, they crossed the Red Sea and then came to Mount Sinai. We have an account of this in Exodus chapters 18 and 19. Then their stay at Mount Sinai is expanded upon up until Numbers chapter 10. The Israelites went through many experiences at Mount Sinai. These people had avoided the death of the firstborns by putting the blood on the doorposts and lintels of their houses, and now, at Mount Sinai, God gave them the law. This was directly related to the passages in the book of Leviticus regarding sacrifices. In the wilderness, the Israelites observed the sacrificial laws, and even now they offer sacrifices in accordance with the law every year in Jerusalem, the capital city of Israel. So in order for us to understand the bloodproperly, we need to have a good knowledge, not only of the history of Israel, but more specifically the history of the sacrifices that the Israelites have carried out. We also need to be able to understand the destiny of the Jews. It is the might of the words of the Bible that has enabled them to maintainsuch powerful life force. Our ultimate goal in studying the Bible is to receive this powerful life force from God in our spirits. Let’s consider, through the Bible, the patience of God. During the long period of time from Adam to the birth of Moses, God secretly concealed the “blood” as He managed the history of mankind, calling one particular family and watching over the rest of mankind. He expressed His heart to us through this one nation by the name of Israel, and proceeded to govern their history with desire that we would discover something. Then when the time came within the history of Israel, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to this world and, through His life and death, He provided the answer once for all to the tremendous flow of history that has unfolded until now.The way in which we come to know God is just the same. When we acknowledge the God who created the heavens and the earth and understand the nation by the name of Israel to which God the Creator entrusted His word, and when we understand the things that happened within the history of this nation and in which direction they have been proceeding, we come to see that our spiritsare also related to all this. When that is the case, we come to find what it is that we need in order to solve our problem. When the Israelites set out into the wilderness and arrived at Mount Sinai, God commanded Moses to come up to Him on the mountain. There Moses stood before God and, for forty days, he received the law directly from God in substantial detail. When we talk of the law, the first thing that comes to mind is the Ten Commandments. God wrote the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone. When Moses carried these stone tablets down the mountain, he found that the Israelites had made a golden calf and were dancing and jumping around it. Moses was furious and broke the stone tablets as he threw them to the ground. You can probably imagine this scene from movies you may have seen such as “The Ten Commandments.” We may imagine this scene from what we have seen in movies or read in books, but God goes beyond exterior images?the things we we can see with our eyes?and deals with the matters that are directly related to our spirits. At that time, the Israelites were probably not aware of this, either, since it was still being kept secret. When Moses received the first set of stone tablets from God on Mount Sinai, the first thing he was given was the Ten Commandments. Also, when God gave the command to build the tabernacle, He explained in great detail exactly how they were to go about it. He explained the position and duties of the priests whose responsibility it was to maintain the tabernacle and carry out the sacrifices, and He described the clothes they were to wear and the work they were to do. So, having received the commandments from God, Moses was coming down the mountain carrying the stone tablets, but the Israelites thought thathe was not going to come down at all, since he had not appeared for such a long time, so they had made a golden calf and were worshipping it as their god. All the people, including Moses’ older brother, Aaron, had set up the golden calf together and were eating, drinking, revelingand offering sacrifices before it. In a word, it was chaotic. So when Moses came down from Mount Sinai, he became very angry and broke the stone tablets.Let’s think about this from a common-sense standpoint. Suppose God were to call you, not to Mount Sinai, but to a nearby mountain, and carve out some stone tablets for you. Would you be able to bring yourself to throw them down and break them? Human nature would not allow you to be so careless even with a gift received from a friend. Yet Moses brok

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