the Jew and will still do so when this nation is convicted of sin and born anew at the

second Advent of Christ.

The second section of Matthew deals with the death and resurrection of the One Who

had come to be Israel's Messiah and King-Priest and was to be rejected. Up till 16: 21

the Lord Jesus had kept silent about His death. The words of 16: 21 are unambiguous

and Peter's attitude, when that death was announced, confirms the truth of this statement

(16: 22, 23). The Lord's lament over Jerusalem (23: 37-39) foretells its doom owing

to Israel's rejection of Him: "Your house is left unto you desolate" (38). In the mercy

and longsuffering of God yet another opportunity was going to be given to this people to

repent and turn to God (Acts 3: 19-26) and this covered the whole of the Acts with the

promise that, if they obeyed this command, Christ would be sent back to them and the

glory of God's kingdom on earth, so graphically portrayed by the O.T. prophets, would

then be realized. But again they rejected Him (Acts 28: 17, 23-28) and were left in the

spiritually blinded condition which has characterized them up to the present time and will

continue to do so until, at the Lord's Second Advent, "they look on Him Whom they have

pierced" (Zech. 12: 10-14), acknowledge their sin, repent and become saved and

spiritually made anew by God.

At that time they will be prepared and made ready to take the knowledge of the Lord

and His salvation to the ends of the earth, and will be the greatest missionaries the world

has ever known. The kingdom, so long postponed, at last will be gloriously realized, for

then `the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea', and He

will be "King over all the earth. In that day there shall be one Lord and His name one"

(Zech. 14: 9).

As with Matthew, this Gospel is divided into two parts:

The Gospel commences with the rejection by Israel. "He came unto His own, and His

own received Him not." This was written after Acts 28:  It could not have been

written before, because Israel was put to the test again during the Acts period and not laid

aside in unbelief till the last chapter (Acts 28: 17-28). John's Gospel was written for

neither Jew nor Gentile as such, but for all men. The "world" is one of its key words

occurring no less than 79 times. In his epistles the word is used another 21 times. Out of

188 occurrences of kosmos, world, in the N.T., John uses the word 100 times. Any

exposition of the Gospel of John that fails to take into account this key word will

certainly miss the mark. While the account of the Gospel deals with aspects of the Lord's

ministry in the flesh to Israel, it was certainly not written for Israel, but for mankind at

large, whether Jew or Gentile and deals with the basic doctrine of life unending, which is

given `through His Name' and received by faith in Christ (John 20: 30, 31).