Every week brings new reports of violence in Palestine. The Jewish underground are continually committing acts of violence in an effort to embarrass the British government, and so force it to change its policy toward the Jews in the Holy Land. It is hard to tell just what the outcome will be; it may flare into a large-scale civil war, or it may attain a very limited measure of results. There is one thing certain, however, and that is, the Jews will never by their own power or any other method secure the city of Jerusalem. They have long sought that city, and if it were not for the knowledge of God’s Word we might well wonder why they never attained their goal. They have had plenty of money so that they could have purchased the land outright; some of them have been in highly influential places of government, with great financial backing, where they might have gained military support for their cause; and yet the “city of their fathers’ sepulchres” is in the hands of “aliens.”
The words of the Lord Jesus— “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.” (Luke 21:2424And 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. (Luke 21:24).)—have been and are being fulfilled. The King sent forth His armies and destroyed those murderers and burned up their city (Matt. 22:77But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. (Matthew 22:7)) because of their guilt in casting the Son out of His inheritance, and then rejecting the testimony of His grace through the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven.
“The times of the Gentiles” —the period of Jewish subjugation to the Gentiles—will run on until the Lord Jesus returns from heaven with His saints to execute judgment on His enemies; until then, Jerusalem is doomed to remain under Gentile control. Through all the years since the city was destroyed by the Romans it has been pawn of Gentile powers, passing from the hands of one to another. Britain may give up her control of Palestine, but the Jews will not get Jerusalem until they say, “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.” The Irgun Zvai Leumi terrorists cannot bring about what God has decreed shall not be.