THE HOPE OF ISRAEL - The Preterist Archive

56 The Hope of Israel: What Is It?
until He had cast them out of His sight" (2 K. 17:18-
20).
Nor was this national rebellion and apostasy ever
repented of. For Christ declared concerning the generation
of His day that they would fill up the measure of
their fathers, and would bring upon them the wrath
of God to the uttermost (Mat. 23:29-36). And this
was repeated by Paul a short time before the final
storm of judgment burst upon them (I Th. 2:14-16).
Close attention should be given to the last prophecy
of Moses (Deut. xxviii-xxxii) because of the clear light
it throws upon the subject of our present inquiry. It
foretells the history of the children of Israel, down
to the very end thereof, showing that it would be
a history of continued apostasy and rebellion, and of
stubborn refusal to hear the voice of Jehovah by His
servants the prophets ; and it declares with marvellous
exactitude and fulness of detail what the end of that
nation was to be (Deut. 28:49-68). This has ever
been accounted, by all who have given attention to it,
one of the greatest wonders of prophecy. For example,
Keith on the Prophecies contains an instructive comment
upon this passage, from which I quote the following
:
"The commonwealth of Israel from its establishment to its
dissolution subsisted for more than fifteen hundred years. In
delivering their law, Moses assumed more (much more) than
the authority of a human legislator; for he asserted that he
was invested with a divine commission ;
and he who founded their
government foretold, notwithstanding the intervening of so
many centuries, the precise manner of its overthrow.
"While they were yet wanderers in the wilderness, without
a city and without a home, Moses threatened them with the destruction
of their cities and the desolation of their country.
Even while they were viewing for the first time the land of
Palestine, and victorious and triumphant, they were about to
possess it, he represented the scene of desolation that it would