h, was not that kind of a war. In
the course of these four years different factions among the Jews
fought each other almost as fiercely as they fought the Romans. The
Jews themselves were selfish in their hopes. They were not inspired
and strengthened by Jesus' vision of brotherhood. In A.D. 70 the
Romans captured the city of Jerusalem and burned the temple. It was
never rebuilt. From that day to this the Jews have been a people
without a native land.

CARRYING OUT THE IDEAS OF JESUS

There was, however, after Jesus' death and resurrection, a splendid
company of disciples whose lives had been transformed by their
acceptance of Jesus as Saviour and Lord, and who were eager to go on
carrying out Jesus' plans. None of them thoroughly understood these
plans. Indeed, we are only beginning to understand them to-day. But
very soon, within a few years after Jesus' death, the wisest of the
early apostles, such men as Peter, Barnabas, and Paul, came to see
that to carry out Jesus' wishes there needed to be a universal church
in which Jews and Gentiles, men of all races, would be included.
Within a half century branches of this new world-church had been
started in every important city in the Roman empire. At first their
meetings were held in synagogues of the Jews of the Dispersion; and it
is a pity that all the Jews could not have perceived that these
disciples of Jesus were carrying out the hopes of their own prophets,
that this Christianity was simply Judaism fulfilled. But many, of
course, wanted to keep their religion and their God to themselves as
Jews. So there sprang up other buildings everywhere which came to be
known as Christian churches rather than Jewish synagogues.

=Our task to-day.=--In these modern times we are still trying to
understand what Jesus wanted and to bring it to pass in reality. We
are beginning to see that if all men are indeed sacred to our heavenly
Father, then under the leadership of our everliving Christ, a fight is
in store for us on behalf of all the millions of our brothers who are
blinded by selfishness, haggard from want, embittered by injustice,
stunted in soul and mind by ignorance, or tortured by all the agonies
of war. If there is to be a better world for any of us, it must be a
better world for all of us. It must be "everybody's world."

STUDY TOPICS

1. Look up in the Bible dictionary, for further light on the
background of Jesus' life, Galilee, Nazareth, Capernaum.

2. Read