The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 22

and He who alone could save them from their impending fate had been
slighted, abused, rejected, and was soon to be crucified. When Christ
should hang upon the cross of Calvary, Israel’s day as a nation favored
and blessed of God would be ended. The loss of even one soul is a
calamity infinitely outweighing the gains and treasures of a world; but
as Christ looked upon Jerusalem, the doom of a whole city, a whole
nation, was before Him—that city, that nation, which had once been the
chosen of God, His peculiar treasure.
Prophets had wept over the apostasy of Israel and the terrible
desolations by which their sins were visited. Jeremiah wished that his
eyes were a fountain of tears, that he might weep day and night for the
slain of the daughter of his people, for the Lord’s flock that was carried
away captive. Jeremiah 9:1; 13:17. What, then, was the grief of Him
whose prophetic glance took in, not years, but ages! He beheld the
destroying angel with sword uplifted against the city which had so long
been Jehovah’s dwelling place. From the ridge of Olivet, the very spot
afterward occupied by Titus and his army, He looked across the valley
upon the sacred courts and porticoes, and with tear-dimmed eyes He
saw, in awful perspective, the walls surrounded by alien hosts. He heard
the tread of armies marshaling for war. He heard the voice of mothers
and children crying for bread in the besieged city. He saw her holy and
beautiful house, her palaces and towers, given to the flames, and where
once they stood, only a heap of smoldering ruins.
Looking down the ages, He saw the covenant people scattered in
every land, “like wrecks on a desert shore.” In the temporal retribution
about to fall upon her children, He saw but the first draft from that cup of
wrath which at the final judgment she must drain to its dregs. Divine pity,
yearning love, found utterance in the mournful words: “O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are
sent unto thee, how often would I

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