Dear Friends,
Do you want proof that the world is an utter mess? Just ask yourself who the world hates and all will become clear. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Psalm 2:2 (ESV)

  The kings of the earth set themselves,
  and the rulers take counsel together,
  against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,

“The Enmity of the human heart rises higher against Christ, his authority, and his salvation than against anything else. The old controversy between Cain and Abel respected the Savior. The strife was continued throughout the patriarchal dispensation. Abraham saw Christ’s day and rejoiced in it, but the great mass of his contemporaries despised and wondered and perished. Before the exodus from Egypt the ‘great cause of the contempt which covered the Israelites was “the reproach of Christ.” {Heb. 11:26).’ They were despised for looking for a Deliverer. And when his birth was announced ‘Herod was troubled and all Jerusalem with him.’ The greatest test of character to which men were ever subjected, is Jesus Christ himself. Nothing so manifests their real dispositions towards God, Well did Simeon say, ‘This child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against…that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed’ Luke 2:34, 35.

“Soon and strangely did the Pharisees and Herodians take counsel, how they might destroy him. Mark 3:5. In less than three years after the public ministry of our Lord commences, his enemies compassed his death. How dreadful were the persecutions of the followers of Christ by Nero, who put Paul and many Christians to death; by Domitian, who banished John to Patmos, and practiced many refined cruel ties; by Trajan, who threw Ignatius to the wild beasts; by Commodus, Serverus, Maximin, Decius, and Diocletian, and by the apostate Julian, who forbade the Christians to give their children the advantages of a liberal education, and by many others down even to our own times… So it always has been, and so it always shall be till ‘the kingdoms of the world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.’ Rev. 2:15.” [William S. Plumer, “Psalms,” The Geneva Series of Commentaries, (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1867), p. 40-41]