Do not weep for Jesus!
When Jesus was carrying His Cross to Golgotha, a great company of people followed Him weeping and lamenting. But Jesus turning unto them said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children, For behold the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us, For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?" (Luke 23:27 to 31). The message of the Cross is not to weep for Jesus Christ, or to show our emotional love for Jesus Christ but to weep for the Body of Christ, the Church, which is undergoing tremendous persecution in diverse places of this world. There are many believers and pastors languishing in Communist prisons and in the prisons of Islamic nations for the sake of the gospel. Have we ever wept for them? We always speak about our love for Jesus Christ. We always worship Him. But have we ever wept for the daughters of Jerusalem who are undergoing great tribulations in nations which are closing their doors to the gospel, and in nations which have already closed their doors to the gospel?
Jesus knew that the great company that followed Him would undergo great tribulations during the reigns of Nero and other Roman rulers.
The first documented case of imperially-supervised persecution of the Christians in the Roman Empire begins with Nero (37-68). In 64 A.D., a great fire broke out in Rome which destroyed vast portions of the city and economically devastated the Roman population. Nero, whose sanity had long been in question, was widely suspected of having intentionally set the fire himself. To get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on Christians. By implicating the Christians for this massive act of arson, Nero successfully capitalized on the already-existing public suspicion of this religious sect and, it could be argued, exacerbated the hostilities held toward them throughout the Roman Empire. Forms of execution used by the Romans included systematic murder, crucifixion, and the feeding of Christians to lions and other wild beasts. A vast multitude, were convicted, not so much of the crime of incendiarism as of hatred of the human race. And in their deaths they were made the subjects of sport; for they were wrapped in the hides of wild beasts and torn to pieces by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set on fire, and when day declined, were burned to serve for nocturnal lights."
Further persecution of Christians by Roman rulers followed in the 2nd century also. The world history is full of records of persecutions of the Christians by the powers that be.
Jesus asked the daughters of Jerusalem to weep for themselves and for their children. It is a prophetic message of Jesus Christ for the Church, the daughters of Jerusalem. We, in our comforts, forget our brethren and sisters in nations which are hostile to the gospel of Christ. But we show our emotional love to Christ during our worship services. On good Friday, we may meditate on His sufferings. It is good. Do we ever meditate on the sufferings of His Body? Do we feel the agonies of our Christian brethren and sisters in the Body of Christ? If you are a member of the Body of Christ, you will feel their agonies. If you do not feel their agonies, there is something wrong with your salvation experience. You still do not know the One Who has redeemed you from the sin. You may claim to have experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But you do not feel agonies of the other members of the same Body of Christ who have all been baptized into the one Body through the same Spirit? If you do not feel their agonies, there is something wrong with your spiritual experience of baptism of the Holy Spirit.
When persecution knocks at your very door, you will then feel the agonies of the other members of the same Body in other nations. Then you will begin to say to the mountains, "Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us….." At that time, the mountains and the hills cannot give you protection. You will have to undergo the rod of judgment by God through alien powers. I exhort my brethren and sisters in the Christian nations to weep for their brethren and sisters in non-Christian nations lest they should face the same ordeal. The days are not far off when you will be arrested from your houses for preaching the gospel. Daughters of Jerusalem, weep for yourselves and for your children. Many children in Christian families, especially, in the Christian nations are turning immoral day by day by living with boy and girl friends without the sanction of marriage and their parents look the other way. "Dating" is common in these nations. Weep for your children today lest they should be a castaway tomorrow!
- Job Anbalagan