Goodbye To Glory - Ichabod # 2

Goodbye To Glory - Ichabod # 2

Ancient Jerusalem. And let us ask you to think of Jerusalem - "beautiful for situation" - as representative of the nation Israel. Triumphant were her temples. Her past shines glorious as doth the moon on midnight seas. For favored Jerusalem, kings kneeled down and prayed. For glorious Jerusalem, prophets, in tears and love, served. For beautiful Jerusalem, martyrs shriveled into flame. In Jerusalem's virgin face were eyes in which, deep-folded, lay prophecies of the Son of God.

But because within her sacred courts evil was girt with diadem, Jerusalem hardened her heart. Jerusalem bloodied her hands. Jerusalem deafened her ears. Jerusalem play the harlot. And Jesus described her then departing and afterward utterly departed glory in these words, "Thy house is left unto thee desolate."

Covered this blood-soaked earth with the wreck of once-glorious cities. Scarred the face of this war-blighted earth with the ruin of once-glorious nations. Marred the fair face of this world with the wreck of once-glorious civilizations - civilizations which have left behind them nothing but the smoke of the brilliant torch, nothing more than an empty name, nothing more than the shadow of a shadow.

What the Bible says about some nations and some cities - representatives in large measure of once-proud, once-strong-influential civilizations - is true of other nations and cities of the past and the present.

"For I have sworn by myself, saith the Lord, that Bozrah shall become a desolation, a reproach, a waste, and a curse; and all the cities thereof shall be perpetual wastes...

"Also Edom shall be a desolation, every one that goeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss at all the plagues thereof...

"And Hazor shall be a dwelling for dragons, and a desolation for ever; there shall no man abide there, nor any son of man dwell in it" (Jeremiah 49:13, 17, 33).

"This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none beside me: how is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in! every one that passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his hand" (Zephaniah 2:15).

In America we must remember that the glory of a nation is righteousness and faith in God - and going the way God points - and in such is our security against all foes, our immunity against the ravages of time.

"For the nation and kingdom that will not serve Thee shall perish, yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted." (Isaiah 60:12.) This sober truth that only righteousness exalteth a nation - that if ever America loses her faith in God she will have to come off her pedestal, that pallbearers that carried other nations to their graves will do work for us if we forsake God and refuse to go the way He points - was put upon our hearts once by the editor of the Watchman Examiner in these words:

"We should remember that one hundred years ago Germany was regarded as the most Christian nation in Europe. Germany's evangelicalism was once so pronounced that Martin Luther gave us the marvelous translation of the Scriptures and directed the world to the Bible. The Scriptures so influenced the home, the school, and the Church in Germany that the national life saw a phenomenal progress. Germany was not making terrific strides in science, art, and culture. Then came a day when innate conceit got to work. Christianity was emasculated. Christ was rationalized to be nothing more than a good man. The Holy Scriptures were reduced to a crazy guilt. Religion came to be built on negatives. God was dwarfed and man was deified. 'Let the strong survive,' became the new religion. Germany was decivilized and Hitler had no trouble getting his followers to arm to the hilt to conquer the world."

Let us ask the help of Almighty God in these days when men "loose wild tongues that hold not God in awe," when there are evils that would lead our greatest graces to the grave and leave the world no copy. When the atheistic deformities of our times would coerce us into substituting for Christianity's vital bread a chunk of froth scattered by miasmatic winds - lest our country becomes a despised Ichabod among the nations on earth.

A Church May Lose Her Glory

"Thy glory hath departed "too bad and too sad when that is spoken of a church about which glorious things once were spoken. "Tis tragic, "tis true that some of the churches such is the epitaphic description of their decay, their inverted torch, their oil-less lamps, their turning back in the day of battle - though armed and carrying bows. That is grief for angels. That is laughter for devils. That is gloating for satan. That is groaning for Christ's followers!

A church can "leave its first love." The church at Ephesus did - and needed to "repent and do the first works" (Rev. 2:4, 5). A church can change from an army into an ecclesiastical nursery wherein the preacher is looked upon as a head nurse who has more to do with milk bottles for sickly saints than with mighty battles against seductive satan. Then does its glory depart.

~Robert G. Lee~

(continued with # 3)