say that I, the Son of man, am?' Peter's wonderful confession is immediately followed by an attack of Satan,

where the cause of the opposition is the revelation of the fact that the Lord Jesus must suffer, die and rise again.

Peter's words, `Be propitious to Thyself' (verse 22) savoured of men, and were instigated by Satan (verse 23).

The Lord had said, further, that the leaven of the Pharisees was hypocrisy. This leaven is exposed in

Matthew 23:13, `Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of the heavens

against men'. This is why the King was rejected and the kingdom shut up. In Mark 7 the Lord again unveils

their corrupting influence:

`Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth Me with their lips,

but their heart is far from Me. Howbeit in vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the

commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men ... Full

well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition' (Mark 7:6-9).

Space will not allow us to multiply examples, those given are sufficient to show the working of the leaven.

The leaven was everywhere making its corrupting way. Distorted views obtained concerning (1) the Messiah,

(2) the Kingdom and (3) the Scriptures. The Lord Jesus, standing in the midst of a people thus already

corrupted, prophesied that this leavening would go on its evil course until the whole was leavened. `When the

Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?' The apostle Paul, writing in 2 Thessalonians 2 of the rise

of Antichrist says:

`For the mystery of lawlessness already is inwardly working itself, only until He that restraineth become out

of the midst, and then shall be revealed the lawless one ... because the love of the truth they did not welcome

... they believe the lie' (verses 7-11 Author's translation).

This brings us to the end, `the whole was leavened'. This is the state of things as given in the book of the

Revelation. The last parable of the external history of the course of the kingdom is sad indeed. The state of

Israel at the `time of the end' is deplorable, and may be summed up under the three heads, Pharisaic, Sadducean,

and Herodian. Hypocrisy, infidelity and worldliness `like unto Sodom and Gomorrah'.

We are thankful that this is not the end of these parables. There is another side of the question, there is the

divine standpoint, there is the purpose of Him Who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will. This

divine aspect is the common link between the next four parables spoken `inside the house' to the disciples.

These we must now consider. Before concluding this section shall we set out the history of the kingdom of the

heavens so far as we have seen it at present?

The ministries of John the Baptist, the Lord Jesus, and the apostles during the `Acts' were to a large extent,

externally, failures, but there is yet to be a gloriously fruitful sowing when the time comes for the New

Covenant to be put into operation.

The reason for the delay in the setting up of the kingdom is discovered in the fact that an enemy is at work,

and side by side with the true children of the kingdom are the children of the wicked one, but these are not

removed until the end of the age.

The next reason for the delay is that whereas the small seed of Israel should have flourished and filled the

earth with fruit, the sovereignty changed hands, and was deposited with the Gentiles, beginning with

Nebuchadnezzar, `until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in'. This stage is marked by the words, `it becometh

a tree, and the fowls lodged in its branches'. That which should have been pre-eminently the kingdom of

righteousness, becomes the habitation of Satan and his angels.

The third reason for delay is that the leaven of evil has been put into the meal of God's truth. This will work

its course until the rise of Antichrist, and the complete corruption of the visible witness for God.