14.04 No Forgiveness to the Age

14 - The Unpardonable Sin; Section 4 NO FORGIVENESS TO THE AGE

"But whoever may blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, has no forgiveness to the age, but is exposed to Aionian Judgment" (Mark 3:29, Emphatic Diaglott). When our Lord Jesus ministered here on earth, He addressed a great many of His sayings and sermons and parables to the Pharisees and scribes and rulers of the Jewish nation. The Pharisees were by far the most numerous and influential of the religious sects of Jesus’ day. They were strict legalists. They stood for the rigid observance of the letter, and forms of the Law, and also for the Traditions. They pledged themselves to obey all facets of the Traditions to the minutest detail and were sticklers for ceremonial purity. They would not touch the carcass of a dead animal or those who had come into contact with such things. They had no association with people who had been defiled through sickness. In truth, they made life difficult for themselves and bitter for others. They despised those whom they did not consider their equals and were haughty and arrogant because they believed they were the only interpreters of God and His Word. They were devoid of the graces of forgiveness, mercy, charitableness and love. When the Pharisee went to meet God he had his appointment at the corner of the street. Passers-by saw his bold, erect figure. His attitude betokened pride, self-esteem, a superiority of life that gave him unbounded satisfaction. He was no suppliant for mercy, nor recipient of grace returned to give thanks to God, but a self-sufficient soul airing his merit before angels and men. "God, I thank You, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers; I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess" (Luke 18:11-12). The Pharisee was presumptuous enough to assume that his self-satisfied, meritorious life placed him on good terms with God. His soul was guilty of a most irreverent conceit. It is only natural that ultimately such a religion became only a matter of externals and not of the heart, and that God’s grace was thought to come only from doing the Law. Jesus constantly clashed with them over their covetousness, self-righteousness and hypocrisy. He denounced them as irreligious professional religionists, parading themselves in holy garments, pompous fellows, self-important, strutting around like lords, preaching religion, yet having none. How His pure soul loathed their wretched pretense! The words of Jesus to the Pharisees constitute the most bitter denunciations that ever fell from His holy lips. Jesus never talked that way to sinners, publicans or the common people. Mercy flowed like a river to the poor and needy, but rebuke and scathing condemnation were heaped upon the haughty and unrepentant. The Pharisees, like their ancestors, were not merely sinners, but deliberate and persistent rebels against God. Contemning every word of God sent to them, abusing every privilege granted to them, and despising every blessing bestowed. From the day of their beginning as a nation, before they had time to receive, in its written form, the law which had been orally delivered to them, the children of Israel had violated the first and fundamental command, "You shall have no other gods before Me," and all their subsequent career was in harmony with this beginning.

They sinned, and committed iniquity, they understood not God’s wonders nor remembered His mercies, they provoked Him and forgot His works, they waited not for His counsel but lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tempted God in the desert; they envied Moses and Aaron; they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eats grass; they forgot God their Saviour and despised the pleasant land; they murmured in their tents and hearkened not to the voice of the Lord; they joined themselves to Baal Peor, and ate the sacrifices of the dead; they provoked God to anger with their inventions; they did not destroy, as commanded, the idolatrous nations of Canaan, but were mingled among the heathen and learned their works; they served their idols and sacrificed their sons and daughters unto devils; they shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and daughters whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; they were defiled with their own works, and went a whoring with their own inventions, till the wrath of the Lord was kindled against His people, and He abhorred His inheritance. Many times did He deliver them, but they provoked Him with their counsel and were brought low for their iniquity. They persecuted every prophet that was sent to them, and after every deliverance, fell lower than before, into all manner of sin and evil.

Prophet after prophet had announced to them the advent of Messiah the Prince. In due time HE came. God was manifest in the flesh. He came unto His own, to this people who for over two thousand years He had been preparing to receive Him; but "His own received Him not." They despised and rejected Him, they hated Him because He testified of them that their deeds were evil; they blasphemed the Holy Spirit of God, accusing the Son of God of deriving His power from the prince of devils; they took counsel together to slay the Holy and the Just; they bore false witness against Him to put Him to death; they became His betrayers and murderers; they cried, "Crucify Him, crucify Him," and by their wicked hands He was crucified and slain.

It should be clear to every thinking mind that when Jesus warned the Pharisees and scribes about the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit the primary thrust of His words was directed like an arrow straight into their hearts. On no occasion did Jesus warn the sinners about blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Jesus never cautioned the publicans about a sin against the Holy Spirit. Never once did He utter a word to the poor and oppressed about a sin that they might commit which would not be forgiven. Jesus never admonished His disciples and followers about such a sin! But to the religious leaders and rulers of the house of Judah the Lord said, "Verily I say to YOU, all the sins shall be forgiven to the sons of men, and evil speaking with which they might speak evil, but whoever may speak evil in regard to the Holy Spirit has not forgiveness - to the age, but is in danger of age-during judgment; BECAUSE THEY SAID, HE HAS AN UNCLEAN SPIRIT" (Mark 3:28-30, Young’s Literal). The one and only warning given in the pages of God’s blessed Book respecting the sin against the Holy Spirit was delivered to the scribes and Pharisees! That it was meant for them, and for them alone, is evident from the time frame of the judgment imposed - "shall not be forgiven in this age, nor in the age to come." "This age" plainly indicates the age of Law. Jesus came under the age of the Law. "But when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, MADE UNDER THE LAW, to redeem them that were under the law ..." (Galatians 4:4-5). The age that was to come, the age then imminent and impending was this present age of the church. The two ages of unforgiveness are thus clearly defined as the law age and the grace age. These words could not in any manner apply to any except people then living prior to Calvary and the birth of the church age on the day of Pentecost. You will never in a million years understand the deep mystery and meaning of Jesus’ teaching on this subject until you grasp the significant fact that He was not talking to New Testament saints - He was not talking to YOU, precious friend of mine - His words were sent directly to those first-century rulers of the kingdom of Judah!

There is recorded in the twenty-third chapter of Matthew what is evidently the last public address given by Jesus to the Jewish nation. Here are those striking denunciations of the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy. At the close of this address, Christ, as He was turning to leave the temple for the last time, said: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You will be witnesses unto yourselves, that you are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill up then the measure of your fathers. You serpents, generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them you shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall you scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom you slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that kills the prophets, and stones them which are sent unto you, how often would I have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, You shall not see me henceforth, till you shall say, Blessed is HE that comes in the name of the Lord." And again, "When you shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter there into. For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days! for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Verily I say unto you, THIS GENERATION SHALL NOT PASS AWAY, TILL ALL BE FULFILLED" (Luke 21:20-24; Luke 21:32).

Some thirty-five years elapsed, after those words were spoken, and then the wrath was poured out. Jerusalem fell, and great was the fall thereof! Signal, terrible and unparalleled was the Jewish war, ending with the siege and capture of Jerusalem by the Roman general Titus. It needs a pen dipped in fire and in blood to write the story in its true colors! The sufferings and miseries that overtook the Jewish nation in that age, are all but indescribable, the very record of them is appalling. We are indebted to the Jewish historian, Josephus, for many of the details. One million one hundred thousand Jewish lives were sacrificed in the siege and capture of Jerusalem alone; streams of human blood extinguished the blazing fires that destroyed the houses of the city, and heaps of the unburied corpses of those who had died of starvation during the siege, hid from the Roman soldiers the immense treasures of the temple. From April 14th, when the siege began, to July 1st, 115,880 bodies were buried at the public expense, or thrown from the walls, not including those interred by their friends. Some said that 600,000 of the poorer people had perished of want; women cooked and ate their own children, the maimed and defenseless people were slain in thousands; when the temple at last fell, they lay heaped like sacrifices around the altar, and the steps of the temple ran with streams of blood, which washed down the bodies that lay about. The slaughter within was even more dreadful than the spectacle from without, it was indiscriminate carnage. The number of the slain exceeded that of the slayers. The treasuries, with their wealth of money, jewels, and costly robes, were totally destroyed. The value of the plunder obtained was so great, that gold fell in Syria to half its former value.

After the fall, the markets of the Roman Empire were glutted with Jewish slaves; the amphitheatres were crowded with these miserable people, who were forced to slay each other, not singly but in troops, or else fall in rapid succession, glad to escape the tyranny of their masters by the expeditious cruelty of the wild beasts. And in the unwholesome mines hundreds were doomed to toil for wealth not to be their own. The political existence of the Jewish nation was annihilated; it was not again for nineteen centuries to be recognized as one of the States or kingdoms of the world. Judea was sentenced to be portioned out to strangers, the capital was destroyed, the temple demolished, the high priesthood buried in its ruins, and the royal tribe almost extinct.

Terrible as these judgments were, this was not to be the end. Jesus had affirmed that the Jewish nation would not be forgiven in "this age" nor in the "age to come." As we have pointed out, "this age" was the age of Law, and the "age to come" is the age that followed the age of Law, this present age, the age of grace. I would direct your reverent attention to two expressions found in both of the judgments proclaimed by Jesus against the Jews, which we have quoted earlier, namely, "these things" and "this generation." In Matthew 23:35-36 we find, "That upon YOU may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth ... all these things shall come upon this generation." In Luke 21:24; Luke 21:32 we read, "and they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled ... this generation shall not pass away, till all (these things) be fulfilled."

If the word "generation" be understood to mean the people then alive upon the earth, plainly all these things were not fulfilled. "All these things" stretch from the desolation of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 to the scattering of the Jews throughout the nations, to the fulfilling of the "times of the Gentiles," onward to the restoration of Jerusalem at the end of this age. "This generation" cannot mean the men then alive merely, for if so the Jewish people would long ago have owned Jesus of Nazareth. "As the lightning that lightens out of the one part under heaven shines unto the other part under heaven, so shall also the Son of man be in His day; but first must He suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation" (Luke 17:24-25). Unconverted Jews have said from this passage that, if Jesus had been a true prophet, the next generation of Jews would have believed on Him, for it was by that generation He was to be rejected. The argument is legitimate; the only fallacy is that of imagining that "generation" means the men then living, and that the next generation would receive Him. The Greek word for "generation" is GENEA. GENEA is derived from the root GENOS meaning race, kin, family, countryman, generation, kindred, nation, offspring, stock, breed. According to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance GENEA may mean either the time period in which a people live or the persons (race) themselves. In Psalms 14:5 generation is used of moral character or nature. "God is in the generation of the righteous," and in Psalms 24:6, with the same meaning, "This is the generation of them that seek after God." In Proverbs 30:11-14, the generation of the righteous and the generation of the wicked, are clearly distinguished. In Php 2:15, Paul speaks of "a crooked and perverse generation." One distinguished Greek scholar says, "There is high authority for making the term this generation refer to the Jews as a people or race; in this case the meaning would be that the Jews would not cease to be a distinct people until all the predictions of Jesus were fulfilled." This meaning suits the words of Jesus very well and is amply confirmed by the history of the past two thousand years. When the words read, "This race shall not pass away, till all these things be fulfilled," the allusion is clearly to the Jewish people, and is seen to be a prophecy of the remarkable preservation of the Jew, distinct from all nationalities during these long centuries, upon whom the prophecies would continue to have fulfillment. This is without doubt one of the most remarkable truths in the whole New Testament, for it clearly shows the sovereignty, power and faithfulness of an immutable and almighty God throughout the past two millenniums in a way that is completely unique and apart from all divine evidence. It means just two things - first, that the Jew would be preserved throughout the church age and, secondly, that the judgment for blaspheming the Holy Spirit would abide continually and constantly upon him right down to the end of this age. It cannot be changed. Its purpose is sure, and the Lord has and will perform it exactly as He said. Whether our traditions receive it or whether they refuse it, the incontrovertible fact is that God has preserved the Jewish race; furthermore, He HAS N-O-T FORGIVEN the Jewish people their sin, neither in that age, nor in this age, and the wrath of God to this day abides upon them.

It is an interesting fact that the Jewish people are indestructible. They have been a people without a country. They have wandered through the earth. They have been driven from one place to another. They have been robbed and taxed beyond all reason, and again and again they have been slain by thousands, yea, millions. But they have not and shall not be destroyed. They have preserved their identity, their culture, their religion. They are a separate and distinct people. There are approximately five billion people on this earth, of whom eighteen million - less than four tenths of one percent - are classified as Jews. Statistically, they should hardly be heard of, like the Ainu tucked away in a corner of Asia, bystanders of history. But the Jews are heard of totally out of proportion to their small numbers. The Jewish contribution to the world’s list of great names in religion, science, literature, music, finance, and philosophy is staggering. And they capture the headlines of the world’s newspapers and newscasts more frequently than any but the super-powers. Great nations of the pagan era have totally disappeared. The Babylonians, the Persians, the Phoenicians, the Hittites, the Philistines, even the mighty Romans of Jesus’ day - all have vanished from the face of the earth, after once having been great and mighty powers. Of all the physical proofs of the inspiration and infallible accuracy of the prophecies of the Bible there is positively no proof that can compare to that great sign of signs which is the NATION OF ISRAEL, and especially that segment of Israel universally known as THE JEW, consisting primarily of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Levi. It is not my purpose to try and identify the other ten tribes which mistakenly for centuries have been called the lost tribes, but that part of Israel, the Jew, has never been lost but scattered among the nations of the earth. Clearly identified and definitely separated, despised and hated he has been a proverb and a by word among the nations of earth exactly as Jehovah God declared, "And it shall come to pass, that as the Lord rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you; so the Lord will rejoice over you to destroy you, and to bring you to nought; and you shall be plucked from off the land whither you go to possess it. And the Lord shall scatter you among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other ... and among these nations shall you find no ease, neither shall the sole of your foot have rest: but the Lord shall give you there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind: and your life shall hang in doubt before you; and you shall fear day and night, and shall have none assurance of your life: in the morning you shall say, Would God it were even! and at even you shall say, Would God it were morning! for the fear of your heart wherewith you shall fear, and for the sight of your eyes which you shall see" (Deuteronomy 28:63-67). How terribly has all this come to pass! In all the history of mankind, there is no nation which has been the object of such unremitting, general and relentless persecutions as the Jews. Surely there is not a man in all the world who would be so foolhardy that he would deny that all the things written above and far more have come to pass upon the Jew. Yet for all that the Jew has been preserved by God unto this day and is, indeed, the eighth wonder of the world! Have you ever heard a Jew called a "sheeny"? Did you realize that, whenever you hear this expression of contempt, it is a startling and literal fulfillment of the prophecy in Jeremiah 24:9? For the word translated "a taunt" is the Hebrew SHENINAH, and there is reason to believe that the vulgar slang "sheeny" is a corruption of the Hebrew word for "taunt" as applied to the Jew. Every time a joke is made against the Jew, prophecy is being fulfilled as the Jew is made "a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in all places." Unfortunate Jews! They have sinned grievously. They have been punished fearfully. They have suffered greatly. When Pilate sought to release Jesus and declared Him innocent of any crime, and himself innocent of any desire to have Him crucified, they cried out, "Let His blood be on us and on our children." In other words, "If it is a sin to crucify this Christ we are willing to bear the responsibility of the sin. If there is any guilt, we invite the punishment for that guilt." And while the Lord forgave them their sin, yet the sin of blaspheming the Holy Ghost was the cause for this sin, and their prayer has been answered, and while through the centuries they have continued to reject Jesus they have suffered beyond human language to describe the agonies through which they have passed. How else can you explain Russia’s extermination of some six million Jews, and Hitler’s heinous annihilation of at least a like number in his gas chambers, while the rest were driven from nearly every country on earth? As we have pointed out earlier, it is impossible to correctly understand the implications of the so-called "unpardonable sin" until one sees clear that its pronouncement was attached only to the Jewish nation, and to the Pharisees specifically. A strong familiarity with the Jewish scene in Palestine during the first century after Christ is essential to any real understanding of how the words of Jesus began to and continued to be fulfilled. Four major sects or denominations predominated at the time of Jesus, including the Sadducees and Pharisees (the two largest) as well as the Essenes and the Zealots. The Sadducees constituted the dominant Jewish group, and derived their authority from their control of the temple, the principal institution of Jewish life during the first century. This group comprised the vast majority of the priests who administered the temple sacrificial worship, the primary source of religious devotion and expression at that time. The Sadducees also served as the political liaisons with Rome and tended to be wealthier and socially more elitist and aristocratic than the other groups. The Pharisees were the second major sect in first-century Palestine. The Pharisees were the "fundamentalists" or strict legalists, contending for and enforcing upon the people the letter of the Word. One prominent feature of Pharisaic life was the development of the synagogue which, in contrast to the temple, could be erected anywhere and was accessible even to those Jews living far away from Jerusalem. The Pharisees were also the ones who created the concept of the rabbi, who emerges as the central authority figure in Jewish life. They insisted that unlike the priesthood that could be entered only by biological lineage, the rabbinate could be entered by any male who assumed the position of leadership by virtue of his piety and scholarship in the scriptures and oral traditions. The third Jewish group, the Zealots, were more a political than a religious sect. They called for the violent overthrow of Rome and, in A.D. 73, committed mass suicide at Masada rather than surrender to the Roman forces. The fourth group, the Essenes, were an ascetic and apocalyptically oriented group that believed that the end of the world was imminent and that God would soon establish His kingdom on earth. The Essenes lived in the Qumran desert area and were the authors of the now famous Dead Sea Scrolls. The destruction of the Jerusalem temple and exile in A.D. 70 brought extreme havoc to Jewish life in Palestine. The Zealots, who had called for a military rebellion against Rome died at Masada. Also, the Essenes apparently died out and were no longer heard from after the first century. The Sadducees, who had derived so much of their authority from their links with Rome, nevertheless, suffered the same fate as everyone else. Moreover, the temple, which had served as their principal power base, now lay in ruins. And the Sadducean priests, whose main responsibility was to administer the sacrificial worship that also came to an end at this time, were left without any religious function or authority. In short, the destruction of the temple made the entire system of Sadducean religious exercise obsolete. The group did not survive the first century. The PHARISEES, on the other hand, were able to survive the cataclysmic events of the exile and the destruction of the temple, because their religious ideas and institutions were able to be carried with the people wherever they went, adapted to every new condition of the dispersion and to the loss of the temple and its sacrificial worship. Of the various Jewish groups in existence at the time of Jesus, only the Pharisees collectively survived. It is an interesting fact of history that PHARISAIC JUDAISM became the normative Judaism with its principal features - the synagogue, the rabbi, prayer, Torah study and the oral traditions. Thus, modern Judaism is the direct and sole successor to THE PHARISEES! When Jesus warned the Pharisees that their sin against the Holy Spirit would not be forgiven in the age of law nor during the long course of the church age, He spoke not only to the sect of the Pharisees of His day but to the whole of Judaism through its extended history since that time. Only by the spirit of wisdom and revelation from God could He have seen and correctly predicted this exceptional development!

Throughout their long exile, Jews have suffered inquisitions, ghettos, pogroms, blood libels, and wholesale slaughter. They were expelled at one time or another from virtually every country in "Christian Europe." During the Dark Ages Mystery Babylon the Great not only persecuted and killed the faithful followers of Jesus, but the harlot church system also became the persecutors and murderers of the Jews. Their very presence was a source of discomfort to the organized church which considered itself the representative of God on earth. Jews suffered terrible persecution from the Crusades, the Inquisitions (in which they were forced to either convert to Christianity or be killed), expulsions, and blood libels (the charge that Jews killed Christian children and used their blood for the Passover Seder). When the water was contaminated, it was the Jews who were blamed for poisoning the well. When there was an epidemic of typhoid or black plague, it was the Jews’ fault. Jews seemed to be the scapegoats for all the ills of society.

Even the great Martin Luther was not exempt from becoming a vessel of wrath against the Jews. In his earlier years Luther was kind and loving to Jews, believing the reason they had not accepted Christianity was that it was presented to them through the eyes of the Catholic tradition. Toward the end of his life, when he realized that despite his kind and loving approach the Jews nevertheless refused to convert, he asked, "What then shall we Christians do with this damned, rejected race of Jews? Since they live among us and we know about their lying and blasphemy and cursing," he wrote, "we cannot tolerate them ... Let me give you my honest advice. First, their synagogues should be set on fire, secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed, thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayerbooks and Talmuds, fourthly, their rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death to teach anymore ... fifthly, you ought not, you cannot, protect them, unless in the eyes of God you want to share all their abomination ... sixthly, they ought to be stopped from usury ... seventhly, we ought to drive the rascally lazybones out of our system. To sum up, dear princes and nobles who have Jews in your domains, if this advice of mine does not suit you, then find a better one so that you and we may all be free of this insufferable devilish burden - the Jew." Indeed, just a few centuries later in Luther’s birthplace, Germany, another solution to "the Jewish problem" was found.

During the long history of this evil age nation after nation has arisen on the world horizon announcing their sordid intention to destroy these people to whom God has made promise, but as Haman was hanged upon the high gallows he had prepared for Mordecai, so has God disposed of each of these hateful nations in their turn and brought them into the dust of desolation. We could do well to believe that the Jew is as indestructible as the purpose of God itself, for the God who has brought them into judgment is the same God that defends them from their enemies. Has there ever been a period in Judah’s history when her condition was more precarious than today? Instead of one Pharaoh in the land of Egypt there are forty million Arabs in every nation surrounding Palestine fanatically committed to their total destruction. And it is distressing to see the revival of the same old anti-Semitic madness which motivated Hitler, even among some who profess to be "end time sons of God"! They blame all the evils and misfortunes of the world on the Jews and propagate the hellish doctrine that the salvation of the world must come as a result of the annihilation of the Jews. It is the same old story with a new satanic vengeance.

One fact remains. Jesus warned the Pharisees that their sin against the Holy Spirit would not be forgiven under the age of law or during the entirety of the church age. Paul wrote of them, "According as it is written, God has given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear, unto this day. And David said, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumblingblock, and a recompense unto them: let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see, and bow down their back always. For ... blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in" (Romans 11:8-10; Romans 11:25). Certainly this explains the mystery of why the Jew is the hardest and most discouraging mission field in the world. Has it never amazed you that many heathen can hear the gospel once, see it clearly, accept it, and be born again by faith in Him?! Prostitutes, drug addicts, the poor, and the illiterate - all have gladly received the message of Christ and have been wondrously transformed thereby. They have been awakened! Their eyes see it - their ears hear it - their hearts understand and respond! Yet the Jew is under the grip of the spirit of slumber! A deep sleep from the Lord has fallen upon them, and they simply cannot understand anything that is said or preached about the Lord Jesus Christ. There are thousands of Jews dying right now in total spiritual darkness about the Christ going into the spirit world under the spell of a deep sleep. It is not that they will not hear, rather, it is that they CANNOT! What a tragedy - millions of spiritually hungry, searching, seeking Jews; and they cannot find what they are looking for. The Messiah came - He lives today - and they can’t see Him! They can’t hear Him! They are in the dark about Him! They are in a spiritual coma!

They see not, hear not, understand not. No people ever yet committed the sin against the Holy Spirit who is wanting to repent - for repentance is by the Holy Spirit. Until the judgment is complete the power to see, hear, understand, and repent is despised, refused, condemned, withheld. Individual Jews, of course, find the mercy of God, but the nation staggers on in unbelief. Numerous missionaries have labored among the Jews in many parts of the world, but the results have been most disheartening. Only a meagre handful have been saved anywhere throughout the ages and generations. Out of the millions of Jews living in the United States of America, the greatest land of religious freedom in the world, estimates suggest that there are probably fewer than 10,000 Jewish Christians in the entire country. In recent times various groups have located in Jerusalem motivated by the sincerest intentions to reach Jews for Jesus, but all to no avail. The unvarnished fact is that of the several millions of Jews in the State of Israel the vast majority are either agnostics or atheists, and there are LESS THAN 500 CHRISTIAN JEWS IN THE WHOLE NATION! There is no doubt in my mind whatever that any and all efforts to turn the Jewish people to Christ are, during the remainder of the closing days of this dispensation, an effort in futility and doomed to utter failure. Hear it! "Whosoever speaks against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this age, nor in the age to come." All who have throughout the centuries burdened themselves with the attempt to convert the Jew have found themselves defeated by the words of the great God: "... shall not be forgiven, neither in this age, neither in the age to come." Those who today zealously devote themselves to witnessing to the Jew come face to face with the words of our immutable God: "... shall not be forgiven, neither in this age, nor in the coming age." All who have established their base in Israel to work for the salvation of the Jew have found their efforts doomed to failure by the fateful words of our never-failing God: "... shall not be forgiven, neither in this eon, nor in that which is impending."