The Christ Has Come

So the Jews are talking nonsense, and the time in question, which they put off into the future, has actually come. For when did prophet and vision cease from Israel, except when Christ came, the Holy of Holies? It is a sign, and an important proof, of the coming of the Word of God that Jerusalem no longer stands, and no prophet is raised up and no vision revealed to them. And that is only natural. For when the one who was being pointed to had come, what further need was there of anyone to point to him? When the truth was there, what further need was there of the shadow? This was the reason they prophesied at all: until the true Righteousness should come, the one who was to ransom the sins of all. And this was why Jerusalem stood until then: so that there they might be trained in the foreshadowings as a preparation for the reality. So when the Holy of Holies had come, it was natural that vision and prophecy were sealed and the kingdom of Jerusalem came to an end. For kings were to be anointed among them only until the Holy of Holies had been anointed. And Jacob prophesies that the kingdom of the Jews would be established until he came, as follows: “A ruler will not fail from Judah, nor a prince from his loins, until what is laid up for him comes; and he is the expectation of the nations.” That is why the Savior himself also cried aloud and said: “The law and the prophets prophesied until John.” [a]

If, then, there is now a king or prophet or vision among the Jews, they do well to deny the Christ who has come. But if there is neither king nor vision, and from that time on all prophecy has been sealed and the city and temple taken, why are they so impious and so perverse as to see what has happened and yet deny Christ, who has brought it all about? Or why, when they see even pagans deserting their idols and placing their hope, through Christ, in the God of Israel, do they deny Christ, who was born of the root of Jesse according to the flesh and from then on is King? If the nations were worshiping some other God, and not confessing the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses, then once more they would be right to claim that God had not come. But if the Gentiles are honoring the same God who gave the law to Moses and made the promise to Abraham, the God whose word the Jews dishonored, why are they ignorant, or rather why do they choose to ignore, that the Lord foretold by the Scriptures has shone out upon the world and appeared to it in bodily form? As the Scripture said: “The Lord God has shone upon us”; and again: “He sent his Word and healed them”; and again: “Not a messenger, not an angel, but the Lord himself saved them.”

Their state may be compared to that of a man out of his right mind, who sees the earth lit up by the sun but denies the sun that lights it. For what more is there for the one they are expecting to do, when he comes? To call the pagans? But they are called already. To make prophecy and king and vision cease? This too has already come to pass. To expose the godlessness of idolatry? It is already exposed and condemned. Or to destroy death? Death is already destroyed. What, then, has not come to pass that the Christ must do? What is left unfulfilled, that the Jews should now disbelieve without paying for it? For if, I say, there is no longer king or prophet or Jerusalem or sacrifice or vision among them, which is just what we actually see, but the whole earth is filled with the knowledge of God, and Gentiles, leaving their godlessness, are now taking refuge with the God of Abraham through the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, then it must be plain even to the most obstinate that the Christ has come. It must be plain that he has lit up absolutely everyone with his light, and given them the true and divine teaching about his Father. So one can fairly refute the Jews by these and by other arguments from the divine Scriptures.