difficult to express. The history of the earthly Kingdom was taking such a strange turn

that it needed great skill to express what was taking place.

The first thing stressed is the smallness of the mustard seed; the Kingdom purpose of

God commenced with the call of one man, Abram, and later on Moses declared that "the

Lord did not set His love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number

than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people" (Deut. 7: 7). So the words of

illustration were "less than all the seeds". But God's plan revealed to Abram was that his

posterity would be numberless like the stars of heaven and the sand of the sea.

But this was not realized without reverses. The curses of a broken law of God had this

This came to pass first by the removal of the ten northern tribes, and afterwards the

two which formed the southern kingdom were removed by Nebuchadnezzar. With him

and the world kingdom of Babylon the "times of the Gentiles" commence which then

degenerated through Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, and reached to the earthly time of

our Lord. The kingdom or dominion over the earth had taken an abnormal twist, as it

were, which certainly did not form part of God's original kingdom purpose.

The mustard, instead of becoming a normal herb, had now become a tree in which the

birds of the heaven could settle, and these are designated by the Lord Jesus as the agents

of Satan.

We can set it out in this way: