“Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard:
I cry for help, but there is no judgment....
He hath stripped me of my glory,
And taken the crown from my head....
My kinsfolk have failed,
And my familiar friends have forgotten me....
They whom I loved are turned against me....
Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends;
For the hand of God hath touched me.”Job 19:7, 9, 14, 19, 21. “Oh that I knew where I might find Him,
That I might come even to His seat!...
Behold, I go forward, but He is not there;
And backward, but I cannot perceive Him:
On the left hand, where He doth work, but I cannot behold Him:
He hideth Himself on the right hand, that I cannot see Him.
But He knoweth the way that I take;
When He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”Job 23:3, 8~10. “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”Job 13:15 “I know that my Redeemer liveth,
And that He shall stand up at the last upon the earth:
And after my skin hath been destroyed, this shall be,
Even from my flesh shall I see God:
Whom I shall see for myself,
And mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.”Job 19:25~27 R.V., margin.
(Ed 156.1)
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According to his faith, so was it unto Job. “When He hath tried me,” he said, “I shall come forth as gold.”Job 23:10. So it came to pass. By his patient endurance he vindicated his own character, and thus the character of Him whose representative he was. And “the Lord turned the captivity of Job: ... also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.... So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning.”Job 42:10-12.
(Ed 156.2)
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On the record of those who through self-abnegation have entered into the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings, stand—one in the Old Testament and one in the New—the names of Jonathan and of John the Baptist.
(Ed 156.3)
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Jonathan, by birth heir to the throne, yet knowing himself set aside by the divine decree; to his rival the most tender and faithful of friends, shielding David’s life at the peril of his own; steadfast at his father’s side through the dark days of his declining power, and at his side falling at the last—the name of Jonathan is treasured in heaven, and it stands on earth a witness to the existence and the power of unselfish love.
(Ed 157.1)
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John the Baptist, at his appearance as the Messiah’s herald, stirred the nation. From place to place his steps were followed by vast throngs of people of every rank and station. But when the One came to whom he had borne witness, all was changed. The crowds followed Jesus, and John’s work seemed fast closing. Yet there was no wavering of his faith. “He must increase,” he said, “but I must decrease.”John 3:30.
(Ed 157.2)
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Time passed, and the kingdom which John had confidently expected was not established. In Herod’s dungeon, cut off from the life-giving air and the desert freedom, he waited and watched.
(Ed 157.3)
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There was no display of arms, no rending of prison doors; but the healing of the sick, the preaching of the gospel, the uplifting of men’s souls, testified to Christ’s mission.
(Ed 157.4)
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Alone in the dungeon, seeing whither his path, like his Master’s, tended, John accepted the trust—fellowship with Christ in sacrifice. Heaven’s messengers attended him to the grave. The intelligences of the universe, fallen and unfallen, witnessed his vindication of unselfish service.
(Ed 157.5)
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And in all the generations that have passed since then, suffering souls have been sustained by the testimony of John’s life. In the dungeon, on the scaffold, in the flames, men and women through centuries of darkness have been strengthened by the memory of him of whom Christ declared, “Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater.”Matthew 11:11.
(Ed 157.6)
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