'Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls.... For I,
saith the Lord, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and
will be the glory in the midst of her.'--ZECHARIAH ii. 4, 5.
Zechariah was the Prophet of the returning exiles, and his great work
was to hearten them for their difficult task, with their small resources
and their many foes, and to insist that the prime condition to success,
on the part of that portion of the nation that had returned, was
holiness. So his visions, of which there is a whole series, are very
largely concerned with the building of the Temple and of the city. In
this one, he sees a man with a measuring-rod in his hand coming forth to
take the dimensions of the still un-existing city of God. The words that
I have read are the centre portion of that vision. You notice that there
are three clauses, and that the first in order is the consequence of the
other two. 'Jerusalem shall be builded as a city without walls ... for I
will be a wall of fire round about her, and the glory in the midst of
her.'
And that exuberant promise was spoken about the Jerusalem over which
Christ wept when he foresaw its inevitable destruction. When the Romans
had cast a torch into the Temple, and the streets of the city were
running with blood, what had become of Zechariah's dream of a wall of
fire round about her? Then can the divine fire be quenched? Yes. And
who quenched it? Not the Romans, but the people that lived within that
flaming rampart. The apparent failure of the promise carries the lesson
for churches and individuals to-day, that in spite of such glowing
predictions, there may again sound the voice that the legend says was
heard within the Temple, on the night before Jerusalem fell. 'Let us
depart,' and there was a rustling of unseen wings, and on the morrow the
legionaries were in the shrine. 'If God spared not the natural branches,
take heed lest He also spare not thee.'
Now let us look, in the simplest possible way, at these three clauses,
and the promises that are in them; keeping in mind that, like all the
divine promises, they are conditional.