How many believers of our day are hoping for a crown of righteousness? Of righteousness! The believers of today are hoping for an escape from tribulation, not, ordinarily, for the power to observe God's eternal moral laws, the laws of the Kingdom of God. Their misguided hope is the result of the spirit of error that is in Christian teaching.

Paul was an Orthodox Jew. His one desire in life was to be righteous. He found he was not able to keep the Torah, the Law of Moses. Paul realized that through Christ would come the righteousness of heart and body that he sought.

O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? (Romans 7:24)

Paul groaned for the breaking of the chains of mortality so he no longer would be driven to sin. Paul was pursuing righteousness.

We are to lift up our heads because our redemption is drawing near: redemption that will bring to us the Presence of God; redemption that will produce a personality and behavior that are free from sin; redemption that will change our corruptible body to an incorruptible body. All this will come to us with the appearing of the Lord if we are abiding in Him.

Redemption as the exaltation of Jerusalem and all Israel. In some respects the Kingdom of Solomon may have been the most exalted, the wealthiest, of all the kingdoms of history. Because of the righteousness of David in God's sight, the Israelis gained dominion over all their enemies. Solomon, David's son, inherited a magnificent, powerful throne.

The most important aspect of Jerusalem (after the Presence of the Lord) was the Temple of God. The moral law of God as expressed in the Law of Moses was the standard for moral behavior for all the peoples of the earth. No other nation possessed the Words of God. Their religions were given by demons.

The Jews continued to sin and rebel against the holy Law. The punishment of God came upon them, as Moses had warned. They had known the goodness of God. Now they came to know the severity of the Father of spirits (Leviticus 26:16).

For 2,500 years the Jews have been slandered and persecuted. The Holocaust was a climax of such torment but the attacks continue to the present hour.

The Jews look for their national redemption to come with the appearing of Christ. They do not look in vain. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament promise that God shall bring Jacob home and that the Redeemer shall come from Zion and save the physical land and nation of Israel from sin and the consequences of sin.

And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. (Luke 21:24)

Fear not: for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west; I will say to the north, give up; and to the south, keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth; (Isaiah 43:5,6)

But fear not thou, O my servant Jacob, and be not dismayed, O Israel: for, behold, I will save thee from afar off, and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and be in rest and at ease, and none shall make him afraid. (Jeremiah 46:27)

To be continued.