Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1888-02-04
WATCHING AND WAITING.
Chicagoans in Jerusalem Looking for the
Second Coming OF Christ.

ChicagOans in Jerusalem Looking Tor the
Second Coming of Christ.
The following letter was received by
Mrs. S. ]. Bishop, of Chicago, from lady
friend who left Chicago some years since
with several othors, and went to Jerusa-
lem, in Palestine, to await the second
coming Of Christ:
JERUSALEM, November %, 1887.
Ny Dear Friend: Your letter, which
was duly received week or two ago,
brought your face very clearly before me,
and remembered how you used to come
to see Mother Gould from time to time,
own mother. 1t is long time since / met
place since then. / was glad TO hear that
and this city. And / am very glad to tell
have been witnesses Of during the six
years We have been here. When we ar
rived here, six years ago the Goth of Sep
TENDER, We numbered fourteen adults and
five children. As we drove up from Jatfa
we were deeply impressed with the desc
| lation of the land. Not spear of green
could be seen anywhere; the olive trees
and vines were so covered with the gray
dust Of a hot, dry summer, that you never
could imagine there could be any green
underground, and the whole earth seemed
dried to its foundations. We realized to
the full that it was a land under the curse
of God still, for sim But we have never
seen it look like that since that time
Every year it looks greener and greener
and now, SO many of those barren hillsides
are covered with vineyards, and olive
yards, quite changing the appearance of
everything.
You will ask, what is the cause of this
great change? God has promised that
like as He brought all this evil upon this
land, so He will bring great blessings unto
it, and it has evidently begun by God
sending more rain than for many thousand
years He sends beautiful showers and
heavy dews where there used not to be
any, and He sends clouds in summer,
which were never known even twenty
years ago. This tempers the heat, so that
it does not dry up the ground so. Five
years ago He sent, in July and August
| (months in which it never used to RAIN,
three hours of rain in Jaffa and sixteen
hours in Damascus, and much all around
it, so that the American papers remarked
upon it as proof that the climate of Pal
estine was changing. Also, when we came
here there were very few Jews coming
back to this land, but the prosecutions in
Russia and Germany and other places be-
gan to drive them out, and, in spite of the
edicts of the Sultan, they began returning
to this land, buying land, planting and
| building, and getting possession of the
trade of the city; and so to-day there are
many thousands more than when we came
here.
Jerusalem is in reality now in the hands
Of the Jews, so far as trade is concerned,
| and the Jew is no longer under the heel of
I the Mohammedan as he once was They
are also rapidly building up new city,
exactly on the line of the description in
jeremiah XXI, $40, and jeremiah
xxi, 43 "A, so that even the Turks, who
are in power, are taking notice of it, and
are saying one to the other, " 1t is God,
and what can we do !" And, dear friend,
what can we say to all this but that God
is rapidly fulfilling His word and the COW
enant He made with Abraham in our day,
and we are witnesses of these things. God
told us to come to Jerusalem and sit down
and be instructed by Him, and also wit
ness what He was about to do in the earth
that we might tell it to the generations
following. Had we listened to our friends
and not obeyed God we could not have
seen the land just as it was, with the curse
on it, and so been able to contrast it with
what it would be when God began to re-
store. For no one has eyes for these things
in Jerusalem but ourselves; nevertheless
they are facts.
There is no mission work in this land
that is doing any real good. The lives of
the Christians are so contrary to the word
of God that they are only false witnesses
for Him, and we are not looking for any
good results to come from that of work for
Christ But we are looking for John xvii.
to be fulflled-where Christ says that
when He had a body made perfect in
one even as He and the Father are one"
then the world will believe that He was
sent of the Father. For this we are press
ing as great prize set before US. and we
are looking for such mighty things as the
world never saw before. These are glori-
Gus days, and our hearts are full Of JOY at
what is coming upon the earth.
| AMELIA GOULD