PROPHECY.
"In fifty years all Europe will be either Cossack, or Republican." So
prophesied the most sagacious of modern politicians, by the inspiration
of genius, calculating the prospects of the future by the light of his
past experience. This prediction of Napoleon's is a very fair specimen
of the oracles of human sagacity; which always overlooks the most
stupendous facts--such as the conversion of an empire--and the commonest
experiences--such as the birth of a brace of conflicting twins from the
womb of the Rachel of revolution, when history happens to predict the
failure of the self-elected conquering savior. Man learns to believe
whatever he fondly desires, to expect what he believes, and to predict
what he expects. His predictions are the mirrors which photograph his
own moods of mind, rather than views through a telescope directed to the
distant cloud-capped mountains of futurity.
But it is confidently asserted that the science of party politics is
simply the exercise of the gift of prophetic vision on the theater of
civil life; and that a sagacious politician is, within his own sphere, a
prophet. He applies the conditions of the past, so far as he knows them,
to the calculation of the future. His success proves his sagacity, not
his supernatural inspiration. Why should religious predictions be
attributed to a different power?
For the very simple and satisfactory reason, that the great majority of
the calculations of party politicians are failures, while the
predictions of the Bible are verified by the event. Name a dozen leaders
of American politics during the last half century, and you name half a
score of disappointed presidential candidates, whose unfinished
monuments prevent the kindly green sward of oblivion from vailing their
disappointments, and check the prayer of the passing pilgrim that they
may rest in peace; while of the last half dozen who have occupied the
presidential chair, and guided the destinies of the most progressive
half of the world, not a single man had been suggested by the political
leaders even ten years before his election. No wonder politicians become
shy of prediction.
But it is alleged, that while on a field so contracted as to become the
arena of mere personal partialities it is confessedly difficult to
predict the future, on the wider field of the world's great interests,
the well-known uniformity of human passions and interests render their
results calculable to the sagacious statesman.
Thus Draper argues, that nations, like the individuals composing them,
have fixed periods of growth, manhood, decay, decrepitude, and
death--more or less rapid, according to the stock and situation. Those
who accept that dogma argue that all that is necessary in order to
predict the fate of a nation is a correct calculation of its present
age; whether of childhood, manhood, or senility.
It is wonderful how rashly men will risk their reputation for common
sense on the sound of a plausible analogy, which, even were it valid,
would not justify the inference drawn from it. For, suppose that there
were as fixed laws of national as of individual life, can any man
predict the period of the life of any individual, much less his destiny?
May not the life of the nation be as liable to accidents and diseases as
that of the individual?
But the claim has been actually made, that the skillful statesman, or
philosophic observer, is able to foresee, and foretell, even such
accidents. Dean Stanley quotes Mill as suggesting an ordinary sign of
statesmanship in modern times: "To have made predictions often verified
by the event, seldom or never falsified by it."
Others give a still wider range to prophetic inspiration. They tell us
that all genius is prophetic, inasmuch as it grasps general laws,
universal in their range, and unvariable in their operation, the
application of which to particular events constitutes prediction. The
Hebrew prophets were sagacious observers of human nature, and made very
shrewd calculations of the future progress of events by a careful
induction of the invariable laws of nature from the history of the past.
But there was nothing supernatural in that. Every poet, philosopher, and
statesman is more or less of a prophet. Indeed foresight, like insight,
is common to all men: a superior degree of this common possession
constitutes the prophet. Men of profound insight, or of extensive
foresight, are equally rare in all departments of science. Ignorance
ascribes to supernatural inspiration the sagacity derived from extensive
observation of nature and history; while philosophy traces to the same
source the inspiration of Moses and Mohammed, of Isaiah and Apollo, of
the Principia, Paradise Lost, and the Apocalypse, of Rothschild,
Napoleon, and Bismarck. Some geniuses expend themselves in poems, some
in paintings, others in predictions. All are alike imperfect and
fallible. Once in centuries, perhaps, we are astonished by the advent of
a master, while occasional less perfect attempts and shrewd guesses keep
the fires of ambition alive in the human breast.
But if this were a correct account of the case we should have our best
prophets as the result of our widest observations of nature and history;
the best should come last. The prophets of this nineteenth century
should be far ahead of Moses in prophetic foresight, standing as they do
on the summit of the observatory built by the experience of forty
centuries. Whereas, as a matter of fact, the world knows nothing about
these modern prophets, or their predictions. The instances alleged by
Rationalists are contemptibly trivial when compared with the Bible
predictions. Contrast, for instance, Cayotte's alleged prediction, that
the fate of Charles would befall Louis XVI., and that the rabble would
fill Paris with anarchy--with Daniel's grand historic outline of the
four great empires; or with our Savior's detailed prediction of the
siege of Jerusalem. Cayotte's guess commanded no respect, even while the
coming event cast its shadow before it; nor did he profess to utter it
in the name of the Great Disposer of all events as the seal and
authentication of a revelation of moral duty to man; and so it was of no
value to those threatened by the calamity. But our Lord's predictions
were so authoritative in their tone, and so definite in their details,
that they enabled his disciples to escape the impending destruction at
that time; and their fulfillment has furnished a decisive proof of his
divine foresight to all generations.
We are told by men who could not read one of Apollo's oracles to save
their lives, nor recite one of Isaiah's prophecies to save their souls,
that Apollo's oracles, no less than Isaiah's, were inspired. Could such
persons be prevailed upon to read carefully any single prophetic book of
Scripture, with the historic facts to which it refers, or even the
briefest abridgment of these facts, such as that contained in The
Comprehensive Commentary, they would not thus expose their ignorance
alike of heathen and Christian oracles.
The differences between them are too numerous to be easily enumerated.
The oracles of the heathen are always sources of gain to their prophets.
The ancient Pythoness must have a hecatomb, the writing medium a dollar,
and the modern Pythoness of the platform a dime. But under the
inspiration of God even a Balaam becomes honest, and the leprosy of
Naaman marks the sordid Gehazi and his seed forever.
The oracles of the heathen are always immoral in their tendency. From
the first spiritual communication through the serpent medium in the tree
of knowledge, down to the last spiritual marriage rapped out by the
oracle, they are all in favor of pride, ambition, lying, lust, and
murder. The oracles of God begin with a prohibition of curiosity, pride,
covetousness, and theft: "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt
surely die." And they are uniformly of the same tenor, forbidding,
reproving, threatening vice, and encouraging virtue, down to the last:
"Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to
the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city; for
without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and
idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie."
This last mark--falsehood--belongs to all heathen oracles, from the
first utterance by the serpent, down to the last response rapped out by
the medium. Take any one heathen oracle of which we have any definite
account--and the number is very small--and you will find that, if it is
not "as equivocal as Apollo," _it is false_.
For instance, Dean Stanley very confidently refers to certain heathen
oracles, "the fulfillment of which, according to Cicero, could not be
denied without a perversion of all history. Such was the foreshadowing
of the twelve centuries of Roman dominion, by the legend of the
apparition of the twelve vultures to Romulus, which was so understood
400 years before its accomplishment." Comparing the prophetic
predictions with such fables, he says: "_It is not that they are more
exact in particulars of time and place_; none can be more so than that
of the twelve centuries of the Roman Empire."[81]
The oracle thus exalted to a level with the predictions of our Lord and
his apostles is quoted by Censorinus,[82] A. D. 238, from Varro, who
died B. C. 28. Varro stated that he had heard Vettius, no common augur,
of great genius in disputing, a match with any of the most learned, say,
"If it was so, as the historians related, as to the auguries of the
founding of the city of Romulus and the twelve vultures, since the Roman
people had passed 120 years safe, it would reach 1,200."
Dean Stanley misquotes the oracle, and does injustice to the old heathen
prophet. He spake no word whatever about _dominion_; all he dared
conjecture for his city was _safety_. Even that is put in a highly
hypothetical mood. The augury begins with an "if," regarding the
apocryphal story of Romulus and the twelve vultures. But whether the
fable of the vultures be true or not, the augury of twelve centuries of
safety deduced from it is undeniably false, whether it refers to the
material city, or to the political constitution then established. The
city then built was burnt by Brennus, the Gaul. Its successor was taken
and plundered by Alaric, in A. D. 410; again by Genseric, and the
Vandals, in 455; and again by the Ostrogoths, in 546. Thus the material
city was repeatedly taken and destroyed during the twelve centuries
succeeding its founding. If the augury referred to the duration of the
political constitution then instituted, every school-boy knows that half
a dozen revolutions falsified the prediction. If, however, it be alleged
that it referred to the ultimate fate of the city of Rome, that it
should cease to exist after twelve centuries, it is self-evidently
false; for now, after the lapse of twenty-six centuries, Rome is larger,
its people more numerous, and its territory wider than it was for
centuries after Romulus saw the twelve vultures. Thus God "frustrateth
the tokens of the liars." Yet men who have read Roman history, and
whose business it is to read their Bibles, continue to cite Vettius
Valens as a prophet, and to compare his false auguries with the
predictions of the Scriptures of truth!
This is only one of a number of such secular predictions confidently
cited by the learned Dean as having been as minute and specific as those
of Scripture, and undeniably fulfilled. But a scholar of his own church
has examined his references and alleged facts, and the result is, that
not a single instance remains of the fulfillment of any definite
prediction given by the original writers; and where the transcriber and
the Dean have helped them out to a more definite prediction, it has
proved a false prophecy, as in the case of Sterling's and Spence's
prediction of the year of the disruption of the Union of the United
States. Dr. Pusey summarizes this discussion in his work on Daniel (p.
637), from which we extract and condense the following paragraphs on
this subject:
"Dean Stanley produces a certain number of alleged predictions in
secular history, as counterparts of the predictions of _the political
events_ of their own, and the surrounding nations," in the Hebrew
prophets, _i. e._ (in religious language), "of God's judgments upon both
for their sins against himself and their fellow-men." He says, "Every
one knows instances, both in ancient and modern times, of predictions
which have been uttered, and fulfilled, in regard to events of this
kind. Sometimes such predictions have been the results of political
foresight. Many instances will occur to students of history. Even within
our own memory the great catastrophe of the disruption of the United
States of America _was foretold, even with the exact date, several years
beforehand_. Sometimes there has been an anticipation of some future
epoch in the pregnant sayings of eminent philosophers and poets; as for
example the intimation of the discovery of America by Seneca; or of
Shakespeare by Plato; or the Reformation by Dante. Sometimes the result
has been produced by the power of divination, granted in some
inexplicable manner to ordinary men. Of such a kind were many of the
ancient oracles, the fulfillment of which, according to Cicero, could
not be denied without a perversion of history. Such was the
foreshadowing of the twelve centuries of Roman dominion by the legend of
the apparition of the twelve vultures to Romulus, which was so
understood 400 years before its actual accomplishment. Such, but with
less certainty, was the traditional prediction of the conquest of
Constantinople by the Mussulmans; the alleged predictions by Archbishop
Malachi, whether composed in the eleventh or sixteenth centuries, of the
series of popes down to the present time; not to speak of the well-known
instances which are recorded both in French and English history. But
there are several points which at once place the prophetic predictions
on a different level from any of these. _It is not that they are more
exact in particulars of time and place_; none can be more so than that
of the twelve centuries of the Roman Empire; and our Lord himself has
excluded the precise knowledge of times and seasons from the widest and
highest range of prophetic vision." (Jewish Church, 463. The Bible: its
Form and Substance, pages 80, 82.)
"It might safely be admitted," says Dr. Pusey, "that the outward
predictions of time and place are of the body, rather than of the soul
of prophecy, yet as indications that he revealed himself, who alone
could know long before what he willed to bring to pass by his
Providence, the predictions of the Hebrew prophets are not to be
paralleled by any human history.
"Definite predictions of the Hebrew prophets have been instanced above.
Dr. Stanley's instances of secular fulfillment are unhappy." He then
proceeds to examine in their turn the political, poetic, Popish,
Mohammedan, and heathen oracles quoted by Dean Stanley.
_I. The Political Predictions._
Sterling, as quoted by Mr. Spence, so far from predicting the great
catastrophe of the disruption of the United States _at the end_ of the
four years, says that no wise man would predict anything even within
those four years. "It appears to me that amid so many elements of
uncertainty as to the future, both from the excited state of men's minds
in the States themselves, and the complication of surrounding
circumstances, no wise man would venture to foretell the probable issue
of American affairs during the next four years." (On the American Union,
page 14.) And this was written amid all the heavings which preceded the
bursting of the volcano. It followed, after statesmen had, one after
another, seen the elements of that disruption. The probability of the
severance of the North and South has been a speculation to which the
older of us have long been familiar. And now [1864] who would venture to
predict the time of the close of that sad war? (First edition.) Now
[1865] that it has come to an end Americans taunt Europeans with their
want of foresight in their anticipations as to its issue. The _Times_
correspondent retorts as to false anticipations of Americans--(1) that
the issue would not interfere with slavery; (2) that there would be
separation without bloodshed; (3) that the war would last only some
ninety days; (4) that the United States would break up into fragments
(Northern); (5) they contemplated that the interests of trade would
suffice for the harmony of North and South when separated, etc., etc.
June 6, 1865. Europeans almost universally anticipated the success of
the South. So little did the human sagacity of men really sagacious,
with intimate knowledge of the strength of the different parties, their
numbers, resources, and all the calculations as to modern warfare,
enable them to anticipate within half a year the result of a war, which,
through the vivid description of it, and clear knowledge, was carried
on almost under their eyes. And these men would have us to suppose that
Hebrew prophets, living in the center of a small people, could, with
mere human knowledge, foretell with absolute certainty the overthrow of
flourishing empires, when at the acme of their power!
_II. The So-called Prophecies of S. Malachi._
These have long been recognized to be a forgery, unmeaning except for
the immediate purpose for which they were "forged by the partisans of
the Cardinal Simoncelli, one of the candidates for the tiara, who was
designated by the words 'de antiquitate orbis,' because he was of
Orvieto, in Latin, 'orbs vetus.'" (Biog. Unv'l v. Wion.) Menestrier
published a refutation of the pretended prophecies of S. Malachi, Paris,
1689, written with much solidity. Don Feijoo also refuted these
pretended prophecies in his _Teatro Critico_. The Noveau Dictionnaire
Historique, by MM. Chaudon and Delaudine, speaks of the "errors and
anachronisms with which this impertinent list swarms." "The
forgetfulness of common sense makes itself felt in a few pages. Those
who have set themselves to explain these too noted insipidities, always
find some allusion, forced or probable, in the country, name, arms,
birth, talents of the popes, the cardinalatory dignities they had borne,
etc.; _e. g._, the prophecy which related to Urban the Eighth was,
_Lilium et Rosæ_." It was fulfilled to the very letter, say these absurd
interpreters, for that pope had in his coat of arms bees, which suck
lilies and roses. (Art. Malachi and Wion.)
III. Dr. Pusey proceeds to examine the process by which a prediction of
_the conquest of Constantinople_ has been manufactured for the false
prophet, Mohammed.
"In the mosque of Sultan Mohammed the Second," says V. Hammer, "which
was finished A. D. 1469, there stands, to the right of the main door, on
a marble slab, on an azure field, in gold raised characters, the
tradition of the prophet relating to Constantinople. 'They _will
conquer_ Constantinople; and blessed the prince, blessed the army which
shall fulfill this.'" (Constant v. d. Bosporos I. 393.) Or (as he
renders more exactly in Gesch d. Osm. Reich, p. 523), "the best prince
is he who conquers it, and the best army, his army." This tradition,
being above eight centuries after Mohammed, has, of course, no value. It
reappears in a different form in Ockley, the conquest being presupposed,
rather than prophesied. Ockley says (History of Saracens, II. 128),
"Mohammed having said, 'The sins of the first army which takes the city
of the Cæsar are forgiven.'" Ockley referring only vaguely to Bokhari,
who, early in the third century, after Mohammed selected 7,000
traditions which he held to be genuine, out of some 267,000, I applied
to my friend, M. Reinaud, professor of Arabic at Paris, and member of
the Institute, not doubting that with his large knowledge he would be
able to point out to me the passage in the _Sahih_. This, with his
well-known kindness, he has done, amid his many labors. It puts an end
to all questions about prophecy. The passage is this: As Omm Heram has
related to us that she heard the prophet say, "The first army of my
people which shall war by sea will acquire merits with God, Omm Heram
said, 'I said, O Apostle of God, I will be among them.' He said, 'Thou
shalt be among them.' Then the prophet said, 'The first army of my
people which shall attack the city of the Cæsar, their sins shall be
forgiven them.' Then I said, 'I will be with them, O Apostle of God.' He
said, 'No!'" M. Reinaud adds, "There is no question but that Mohammed
conceived the idea of the invasion of the Roman Empire, and of the
kingdom of Persia by his disciples. He himself shortly before his death
tried his strength against the Roman forces in Syria. But the passage
does not say what Ockley makes him say. It does not say that
Constantinople would be taken."
The other prophecy referred to by Von Hammer is as follows: "Have you
heard of a city of which one side is land, the two others sea? They
said, 'Yea, O Apostle of God.' He said, 'The last hour will not come
without its being conquered by 70,000 sons of Isaac. When they come to
it they will not fight against it with weapons and engines of war, but
with the word, There is no god but God, and God is great!' Then will one
side of the sea walls fall; and at the second time the second; and at
the third time the wall on the land side; and they will enter in with
gladness."
The framer of this prophesy expected the walls of Constantinople to fall
like those of Jericho, which he must have had in mind. He expected it to
fall before Arabs, "sons of Isaac," not before Turks. * * * Yet,
contrary to the expectation, and the prophecy, it did fall before the
Turks, after having been seven times besieged by the Arabs, and four
times by the Turks; by whom it was taken A. D. 1453. The framer of the
prediction anticipated that the representatives of the followers of the
prophet would be Arabs to some indefinite period, near the last hour; he
expected a miraculous destruction of Constantinople; it was besieged
seven times by those before whose war-cry he expected it to fall. It did
not fall before those before whom he said it would fall; it fell in an
ordinary way, not in that predicted; it was besieged in the way in which
he said it would not be besieged; lastly, it fell, but its walls fell
not. _Every detail of the prediction is contrary to the fact._ As for
the mere capture, it befalls all great cities in turn; so that a
prediction of the capture of any great city would be the safest of all
prophecies. But the prediction did not anticipate, what is now certain,
that as soon as Christian jealousies permit, before the end of the
world, it will be wrested from its captors.
IV. The legend of Romulus and the vultures, and the falsehood of the
prediction based upon it, have been exposed on a previous page.
V. In regard to Seneca's alleged prediction of the discovery of America,
it was exceedingly vague; and was wholly based on the undoubted
knowledge of its existence by the ancient Egyptians, and by Plato,
Proclus, Marcellus, Ammianus, Marcellinus, Diodorus, Aristotle, and
Plutarch; whose assertions influenced Columbus to undertake the search
for it. Nothing could be more certain than that such a continent would
be rediscovered. But in the only indication which Seneca gives us of its
location he erred; for Thule is still the utmost land northward, no new
continent having been discovered, nor remaining to be discovered, toward
the North Pole.
VI. As to the heathen oracles we have already spoken enough.
VII. "The anticipation of Shakespeare by Plato amounts to this, that he
makes Socrates compel his friends to admit, 'that it belongs to the same
man, how to compose comedy and tragedy, and that he who is by skill a
composer of tragedies is also a composer of comedies.' (Sympos fin.)
* * * But it is mere confusion to speak of this as _anticipation_. Plato
does not say that there would be any greater combination of the two
talents than there had been; he does not even say that the highest
excellence in one involved excellence in the other; he simply says that
the two faculties belonged to the same mind. According to his maxims, if
true, it would be rather marvelous that they were not more frequently
combined than that they were remarkably in one mind."
VIII. "Those best read in Dante are at a loss to find in him any trace
of a prediction of the Reformation. Dante, with his firm faith in all
Roman doctrine, could not have imagined or anticipated such a disruption
as Luther's. Dean Stanley corrects an unimportant misprint or two in the
second edition of his book, on the ground of the above statements. He
does not even attempt to supply a passage from Dante. I have looked for
one in vain."
Yet such a collection of errors, absurdities, falsehoods, and impostures
is gravely presented, in this nineteenth century, by a learned
clergyman, as comparable in regard to exact fulfillment with the oracles
of God.
It is not intended here to discuss the question of the continuance of
prophetic powers in the Church. If, as many believe, the promise in Joel
ii. 28--"It shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, that your
sons and your daughters shall prophesy," etc.--is a promise not yet
exhausted, predictions given by the Holy Spirit may have been given
through Christians in former times, and may still be given. But if such
be the fact, these are not secular predictions; but spiritual and
supernatural, and of the same class with those of Scripture; they are
therefore not to be cited by Rationalists as examples of secular
prediction.
But it is objected that "the prophecies of Scripture are as obscure as
the oracles; are all wrapped up in symbolical language; that many of
them have a double meaning; that no two interpreters are agreed as to
the meaning of the unfulfilled predictions; and that no man can
certainly foretell any future event by means of them."
The objection proceeds on a total mistake of the nature and design of
prophecy, which is not to unvail the future for the gratification of
your curiosity, but to give you direction in your present duty;
precisely the reverse of the oracles referred to, which proposed to tell
their votaries what should happen, but rarely condescended to direct
them how to behave themselves so that things might happen well. The
larger part of the prophecies of Scripture is taken up with directions
to men how to regulate their conduct, rather than with information how
God means to regulate his. There is just as much of the latter as is
sufficient to show us that the God who gave the Bible governs the world,
and even that always urges the same moral lesson: "Say ye to the
righteous that it shall be well with him, for he shall eat the fruit of
his doings." "Woe to the wicked; it shall be ill with him, for the
reward of his hands shall be given him." Whenever a vision relates to
what God will do in the distant future, it is dark and mysterious; but
whenever any directions are given necessary for our immediate duty, then
the "vision is written and made plain on tables, _that he may run that
readeth it_." The possessors of a clearly engrossed title-deed have
surely no reason to complain that the president has chosen that his seal
appended to it shall consist of a device, which, by reason of its being
hard to read, and harder to imitate, secures both himself and them
against forgery. The double meaning of some prophecies is a double
check. So far from resembling the equivocations of heathen oracles, by
taking either of two opposite events for a fulfillment, they require
both of two corresponding ones; and some prophecies, like a master key,
open several successive events, and thus show that the same mind planned
both locks and key. When the prediction is fulfilled all mystery
vanishes, and men see plainly that thus it was written; that is to say,
men who look; for the man who will not open his eyes will never see
anything that it concerns him to know. But the man who thinks that it
concerns him so much to know what God will do with the world a hundred
years after he is dead, that unless the prophecies of the Bible are all
made plain to him, he will neither read God's word, nor obey his law,
may go on his own way. We expound no mysteries to such persons; for it
is written, "None of the wicked shall understand."
As to the objection taken from the symbolical language of prophecy, and
which seems to a number of our modern critics so weighty that they
remove to the purely mythologic ground everything "couched in symbolical
language," and account nothing to be prediction unless "literal history
written in advance"--I would merely ask, How is it possible to reveal
heavenly things to earth-born men but by earthly figures? Do you know a
single word in your own, or any other language to express a spiritual
state, or mental operation, that is not the name of some material state,
or physical operation, used symbolically? Heart, soul, spirit, idea,
memory, imagination, inclination, etc., every one of them a figure of
speech--a symbol. Nay, is there a letter in your own, or in any other
alphabet, that was not originally a picture of something? I demand to
know in what way God or man could teach you to know anything you have
never seen, but by either showing you a picture of it, or telling you
what it is like? That is simply by type or symbol; these are the only
possible media of conveying heavenly truth, or future history to our
minds. When, therefore, the skeptic insists that prophecy be given
literally, in the style of history written in advance, he simply
requires that God would make it utterly unintelligible. We can gather
clear and definite ideas from the significant hieroglyphics of
symbolical language, but the literalities of history written in advance
would be worse to decipher than the arrow-headed inscriptions of
Nineveh. Just imagine to yourself Alexander the Great reading Guizot,
instead of Daniel; or Hildreth, as being less mysterious than Ezekiel;
and meeting, for instance, such a record as this: "In the year of
Christ, 1847, the United States conquered Mexico and annexed
California." "In the year of Christ--what new Olympiad may be that?" he
would say. "The United States of course means the States of the Achæn
League, but on what shore of the Euxine may Mexico and California be
found?" What information could Aristotle gather from the record that,
"In 1857, the Transatlantic Telegraph was in operation?" Could all the
augurs in the seven-hilled city have expounded to Julius Cæsar the
famous dispatch, if intercepted in prophetic vision, "Sebastopol was
evacuated last night, after enduring for three days an infernal fire of
shot and shell?" Nay, to diminish the vista to even two or three
centuries, what could Oliver Cromwell, aided by the whole Westminster
Assembly, have made of a prophetic vision of a single newspaper
paragraph of history written in advance, to inform them that, "Three
companies of dragoons came down last night from Berwick to Southampton,
by a special train, traveling 54-1/2 miles an hour, including stoppages,
and embarked immediately on arrival. The fleet put to sea at noon, in
the face of a full gale from the S. W.?" Why, the intelligible part of
this single paragraph would seem to them more impossible, and the
unintelligible part more absurd, than all the mysterious symbols of the
Apocalypse.
The world has accepted God's symbols thousands of years ago, and it is
too late in the day for our reformers to propose new laws of thought,
and forms of speech, to the human race. David's prophetic lyrics,
Christ's graphic parables, Isaiah's celestial anthems, Ezekiel's
glorious symbols, and Solomon's terse proverbs, will be recited and
admired, ages after the foggy abstractions of mystified metaphysicians
have vanished from the earth. The Thirst of Passion, the Cup of
Pleasure, the Fountain of the Water of Life, the Blood of Murder, the
Rod of Chastisement, the Iron Scepter, the Fire of Wrath, the Balance of
Righteousness, the Sword of Justice, the Wheels of Providence, the
Conservative Mountains, the Raging Seas of Anarchy, and the Golden,
Brazen, and Iron Ages, will reflect their images in truth's mirror, and
photograph their lessons on memory's tablet, while the mists of the
"positive philosophy," "the absolute," and "the conditioned," float past
unheeded, to the land of forgetfulness. God's prophetic symbols are the
glorious embodiments of living truths, while man's philosophic
abstractions are the melancholy ghosts of expiring nonsense.
The prophetic symbols are sufficiently plain to be distinctly
intelligible _after_ the fulfillment, as we shall presently see;
sufficiently obscure to baffle presumptuous curiosity before it. Had
they been so written as to be fully intelligible beforehand, they must
have interfered with man's free agency, by causing their own
fulfillment. They hide the future sufficiently to make man feel his
ignorance; they reveal enough to encourage faith in the God who rules
futurity.
The revelation of future events, however, is not the principal design of
the prophecies of the Bible; they bear witness to God's powerful present
influence over the world now. For God's prophecy is not merely his
foretelling something which will certainly happen at some future time,
but over which he has no control--as an astronomer foretells an eclipse
of the sun, but can neither hasten nor hinder it--but it is his
revealing of a part of his plan of this world's affairs, to show that
God, and not man, is the sovereign of this world. For this purpose he
tells beforehand the actions which wicked men, of their own free will,
will commit, contrary to his law, and the measures he will take to
thwart their designs, and fulfill his own. Nay, he declares he will so
manage matters that, without their knowledge, and even contrary to their
intentions, heathen armies, and infidel scoffers shall serve his
purposes, and show his power; while yet they are as perfectly voluntary
in all their movements as if they, and not God, governed the world.
Every fulfilled prophecy thus becomes an instance and evidence of a
supernatural government; and is, to a thinking mind, a greater miracle
than casting mountains into the sea. The style of prophecy corresponds
to this design. It is not by any means apologetic, or supplicating;
but, on the contrary, majestic, convincing, and terrifying to the
ungodly.
"_Remember this and show yourselves men.
Bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors.
For I am God, and there is none else.
I am God, and there is none like me.
Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from, ancient times the things that are not yet done,
Saying_, 'MY COUNSEL SHALL STAND, AND I WILL DO ALL MY PLEASURE.'"[83]
Infidels feel the power of this manifestation of God in his word; and
are driven to every possible denial of the fact, and evasion of the
argument drawn from it. They feel instinctively that Bible prophecies
are far more than mere predictions. They would rather endow every human
being on earth with the power of predicting the future than allow the
God of heaven that power of ruling the present which these prophecies
assert. Hence the attempt to admit their predictive truth, and yet deny
their divine authority, by ascribing them to human sagacity.
Transatlantic steam navigation has produced a remarkable change in the
tone of Infidel writers and speakers in regard to the prophecies of the
Bible. You could not converse long with an Infidel on this subject, a
few years ago, until he would assure you, with all confidence, that the
prophecies were all written after their fulfillment, and so were not
prophecies at all. But now that travelers of all classes, scoffers,
sailors, and doctors in divinity, scientific expeditions, and
correspondents of daily papers, have flooded the world with undeniable
attestations that many of them are receiving their fulfillment at this
day, none but the most grossly ignorant and stupid attempt to deny that
the prophecies of the Bible were written thousands of years since, and
that many of them have since been accomplished; and that so many have
been fulfilled that their accomplishment can not be ascribed to chance.
But the force of the argument for the divine inspiration of the prophets
is met by the assertion, that there is nothing supernatural in prophecy,
and that it is only one form of the inspiration of genius applying the
general laws of nature.
Calculating securely on that profound ignorance of the Bible which
characterizes their followers, modern writers inform them that "none of
the prophets ever uttered any distinct, definite, unambiguous prediction
of any future event which has since taken place, which a man without a
miracle could not equally well predict." It is alleged that the
prophecies, in predicting the overthrow of the nations of antiquity,
predicted nothing beyond the ken of human sagacity, enlightened by a
careful study of the experience of the past, and the invariable laws of
nature; that it requires no inspiration to foretell the decay of
perishing things; that the invariable progress of all things, empires as
well as individuals, is first upward, through a period of youthful vigor
and energy, then onward through a period of ripe maturity, and then
downward, through a gradual decay, and final dissolution, to the
inevitable grave. The world's history is but a history of the decline
and fall of nations.
1. Now, if this be true, it is an awful truth for the Infidel, for _it
sweeps away the last vestige of a foundation of his hope for eternity_.
The only reason any unbeliever in Revelation could ever give, or that
modern Rationalists do give, for their hope of a happy eternity, is the
analogy of nature--the alleged constant progress of all things toward
perfection in this world. It is an awkward truth that individually we
must die, and the worms crawl over us; but then the wretched fate of the
individual was to be compensated by the glorious progress of the race
onward and ever onward and upward; from the fungus to the frog, and from
the frog to the monkey, from the monkey to the man, from the noble
savage wild in woods, to the pastoral tribe, thence to the empire and
the federal republic, and finally to the reign of individual and
passional attraction, and union with the sum of all the intelligences of
the universe, through a constant progress toward infinite perfection.
But, alas! it seems it was a false analogy, an ill-observed fact, a
delusion; the course of nature is all the other way. The tendency of all
perishing things is not to perfection, but to perdition; and it needs no
inspiration to tell that man's loftiest towers, and strongest cities,
and proudest empires will come to ruin; or that the most polished,
powerful, and populous nations of antiquity will dwindle down into
Turks, Moors, and Egyptians. Here is a fact of awful omen. Death reigns
in this world of ours; death moral, social, political, and physical, has
ever trampled upon man, proud man, learned man, civilized man, over all
the plans of man, over every man, and over every association of men,
even the largest, the widest, the mightiest. And now the Infidel, having
taken away our hope of help from heaven, comes with the serpent's hiss,
and fiendish sneer, to taunt the perishing world with this miserable
truism--that the tendency of everything on earth is to perdition, and
that it needs no inspiration to tell it. Truly it does not. Were that
all the prophets of God had to tell us--as it is all the prophets of
Infidelity can prophecy--we had as little need for the one as for the
other. Earthquake and hurricane, volcano and valley flood, autumn frosts
and winter blasts, fever, consumption, war, and pestilence, the
grave-yard and the charnel-house, the Parthenon and the Pyramids, the
silent cities of Colorado, and the buried palaces of Assyria, unite to
attest this awful doom.
But what reason has the skeptic to believe that this invariable law of
nature shall ever be repealed, and this inevitable progress of all
things to perdition be arrested? Why may not men be as selfish, and
filthy, and grasping, and murderous in the other world, as they are in
this? Why may not the course of nature be as fatal to the sinner's
prosperity there as it is here? Why may not the progress of the proud
empires and spheres of futurity be such as the skeptic declares the
progress of the past to have been, so invariably toward dissolution and
death, that it shall need no inspiration to predict its course downward,
downward, ever downward, to endless perdition? Stand forward, skeptic,
and point the world to an instance in which an ungodly nation has
stemmed this all-destroying torrent of ruin; or acknowledge that all you
can promise the nations of the world to come, from your experience of
the invariable laws of nature, is _perdition, endless perdition_.
2. It is manifest, however, that this destruction of nations and
desolation of empires must have had a beginning some time or other.
Nations could not perish before they had grown, nor empires be destroyed
till they had accumulated; and during all this period of their growth
and vigor the experience of mankind would never lead them to predict
their ruin. The sagacious observer, beholding Babylon, Nineveh,
Damascus, and Tyre, growing and flourishing during a period of a
thousand years past, could have had no reason from such an experience to
expect anything else than a thousand years of prosperity to come.
Especially impossible is it for human sagacity, enlightened by
experience, to predict _unexampled_ desolations, destructions such as
the world had never witnessed.
_Now the predictions of the Bible are predictions of unexampled
desolations, and unparalleled ruin of empires._ The desolation of any
extensive region of the earth, or the overthrow of any great nation, was
an event absolutely unknown to the world when the prophets of the Bible
began to utter their predictions; unless the skeptic will allow the
truth of the Bible record of the prediction and execution of the
deluge, and the destruction of Sodom. War and conquest had indeed caused
some provinces to change masters; one nation had made marauding
invasions on others, and carried off cattle and slaves; but the result
of the greatest military operation of which we have any record, at the
commencement of the prophetic era--the conquest of Palestine by the
Israelites--so far from desolating the region, or exterminating the
people, had been merely to increase its productiveness, and to drive its
former occupants to new settlements, where at that era they were fully
able to cope with their former conquerors. Whatever the experience of
thirty centuries may have since taught the nations concerning the
certainty of the connection between national crime and national ruin, a
long-suffering God had not then given any such signal examples of it, as
those of which he gave warning by the prophets.
The course of the nations and cities founded after the deluge had been
regularly onward and prosperous, and they were just rising to the
maturity of their power and splendor when Jonah, Micah, Hosea, and
Isaiah, began to pronounce their sentences. They denounced desolation
and solitude against nations more populous than this continent, one of
whose cities enumerated more citizens than some of our proud
commonwealths, and displayed buildings, a sight of whose crumbling ruins
is deemed sufficient recompense for the perils of a journey of six
thousand miles. The hundred churches of Cincinnati could all have been
conveniently arranged in the basement of the temple of Belus; on the
first floor our hundred thousand non-church-going citizens might have
assembled to listen to a lecture on spiritualism from some eloquent
Chaldean soothsayer; and the remaining seven stories would have still
been open for the accommodation of the natives of the original Queen
City. Every product of earth was trafficked in the markets of Tyre; a
single Jewish house imported annually more gold than all the banks of
this continent possess; and the whole coinage of the United States since
1793 would want a hundred millions of dollars of the value of the golden
furniture of a single temple in Babylon. In fact, in the suburbs of
Babylon or Nineveh, Washington or Cincinnati would have been
insignificant villages; and the stone-fronted brick palaces of Broadway
and the Fifth Avenue would make passable stables and haylofts for the
mansions of Thebes or Petra.
So far, therefore, from being the teaching of experience, there was
nothing more utterly unexampled and unparalleled than the complete
desolation of any nation at the time the prophets of Israel predicted
such things. If the world has grown wiser since regarding the decline
and fall of empires, it has gathered the best part of its sagacity from
the prophecies.
The degradation of the seed of Ham, and the colonization of Asia by the
descendants of Japhet, were however undeniably predicted by Noah long
before any examples or experiences of such things had occurred.
Centuries after the degradation of Canaan had been predicted, his
descendants were powerful, prosperous, and colonizing the shores of the
world. But God foresaw, and compelled their ancestor to foretell, the
corruption of the blood which would reduce his descendants to be
servants of servants to their brethren; and now the ruins of their
cities, and of the people descended from Canaan, are proverbial alike in
the libraries and slave markets of the world.
But on the other hand, the colonization of the world by the descendants
of Japhet was as particularly predicted by Noah as the degradation of
the Canaanites; and this can not be called a prediction of destruction,
but rather of great prosperity: "God shall enlarge Japhet." Every
emigrant ship which discharges its cargo at New York, and every new
prairie farm in America, and every sheep ranch in Australia, and every
new cattle kraal in South Africa fulfills the prediction: "He shall
dwell in the tents of Shem." The various Greek, Roman, English, and
Russian Empires of Asia attest the truth. From the Volga to the Amour,
and from Hong Kong to Singapore, and from the Ganges to the Indus,
Japhet to-day dwells in the tents of Shem.
3. The prophecies of the Bible are not vague general denunciations of
natural decline and extinction to all the nations of the world, which,
if they were merely the exposition of a universal _natural_ law of
national death, they would be; nor yet the application of any such
natural and inevitable law to some particular nation, denouncing its
destruction, without any specification of time, manner, instrument, or
cause of its infliction. They are all the applications of _moral
law_--sentences pronounced on account of national wickedness. In every
case the prophecy charges the crimes, and specifies the punishment,
selected by the Judge of all the earth. The nations selected as examples
of divine justice are as various as their sentences are different;
covering a space as long as from Eastport to San Francisco, and climes
as various as those between Canada and Cuba; peopled by men of every
shade of color and degree of capacity, from the negro servant of
servants, to the builders of the Coliseum, and the Pyramids. They
minutely describe, in their own expressive symbols, the nations yet
unfounded, and kings unborn, who should ignorantly execute the judgments
of the Lord. They predict the futures of over thirty States, _no two of
which are alike_; each prediction embracing a large number of minute
particulars, any one of which was utterly beyond the range of human
sagacity. To predict that a man will die may require no great sagacity;
but to tell the year of his death, that he will die as a criminal,
allege the crime for which he will be sentenced, the time, place, and
manner of his execution, and the name of the sheriff who will execute
the sentence, is plainly beyond the skill of man. Such is the character
of Bible predictions. Zedekiah's sentence was thus pronounced; and thus,
too, the sentences of nations doomed to ruin for their crimes are
recorded in the Bible, that men may know that the mouth of the Lord hath
spoken them. If, for instance, a prophet should declare that New York
should be overturned, and become a little fishing village, and that her
stones and timber, and her very dust, should be scraped off and thrown
into the East River; that Philadelphia should become a swamp, and never
be inhabited, from generation to generation; that Columbus should be
deserted, and become a hog-pen; that Louisville should become a dry,
barren desert; and New Orleans be utterly consumed with fire, and never
be built again; that learning should depart from Boston, and no
travelers ever pass through it any more; that New England should become
the basest of the nations, and no native American ever be President of
the Union, but that it should be a spoil and a prey to the most savage
tribes; and that the Russians should tread Washington under foot for a
thousand years; but that God would preserve Pittsburg in the midst of
destruction--and if all these things should come to pass, would any man
dare to deny that the prophet spake not the dictates of human sagacity,
or the calculations of genius, but the words of God?
To attempt to illustrate the divine wisdom displayed in a system of
connected predictions, covering the destiny of the nations of the world,
and extending from the dawn of history to the end of time, by presenting
two or three instances of the fulfillment of specific predictions, would
be something like exhibiting a fragment of a column as a monument of the
skill of the architect of a temple; yet, as such a fragment may excite
the curiosity of the traveler to visit the structure whence it was
taken, I shall present two or three prophecies in which specific
predictions are given, concerning the _geographical, political, social,
and religious condition_ of three of the great nations of
antiquity--_Egypt, Judea, and Babylon_--the fulfillment of which is
spread over the surface of empires and the ruins of cities, patent to
all travelers at the present hour, and abundantly attested in many
volumes.[84]
Could human sagacity have calculated that Egypt--the most defensible
country in the world, bounded on the south by inaccessible mountains, on
the east by the Red Sea, on the west by the trackless, burning desert;
able to defend the mouths of her river with a powerful navy, and to
drown an invading army every year by the inundation of the Nile; which
had not only maintained her independence, but extended her conquests for
a thousand years past, whose victorious king, Apries, had just sent an
expedition against Cyprus, besieged and taken Gaza and Sidon, vanquished
the Tyrians by sea, mastered Phoenicia and Palestine, and boasted that
not even a god could deprive him of his possessions--Egypt, which had
given arts, sciences, and idolatry to half the world, and which had not
risen to the full height of its world-wide fame, or the extent of its
influence for twenty-five years after the prediction[85]--that Egypt
should be invaded, conquered, spoiled, become a prey to strangers and
evermore to strangers, never have a native prince, sink into barbarism,
renounce idolatry, and become famous for her desolations? Yet the Bible
predictions are specific on all these matters: "_I will make the rivers
dry, and sell the land into the hand of the wicked: and I will make the
land waste, and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers: I the
Lord have spoken it. Thus saith the Lord God; I will also destroy the
idols, and I will cause the images to cease out of Noph; and there shall
be no more a prince of the land of Egypt._"[86]
Let Infidels read the fulfillment of these predictions, as described by
Infidels: "Such is the state of Egypt. Deprived twenty-three centuries
ago of her natural proprietors, she has seen her fertile fields
successively a prey to the Persians, the Macedonians, the Romans, the
Greeks, the Arabs, the Georgians, and at length the race of Tartars
distinguished by the name of the Ottoman Turks. The Mamelukes, purchased
as slaves and introduced as soldiers, soon usurped the power and
selected a leader. If their first establishment was a singular event,
their continuance is not less extraordinary; they are replaced by slaves
brought from their original country."[87] Says Gibbon: "A more unjust
and absurd constitution can not be devised than that which condemns the
natives of the country to perpetual servitude under the arbitrary
dominion of strangers and slaves. Yet such has been the state of Egypt
about five hundred years. The most illustrious sultans of the Baharite
and Beyite dynasties were themselves promoted from the Tartar and
Circassian bands; and the four and twenty beys, or military chiefs, have
ever been succeeded, not by their sons, but by their servants."[88]
Mehemet Ali cut off the Mamelukes, but still Egypt is ruled by the
Turks, and the present ruler (Ibrahim Pasha) is a foreigner. It is
needless to remind the reader that the idols are cut off. Neither the
nominal Christians of Egypt, nor the iconoclastic Moslem, allow images
to appear among them. The rivers, too, are drying up. In one day's
travel forty dry water-courses will be crossed in the Delta; and
water-skins are needed now around the ruined cities whose walls were
blockaded by Greek and Roman navies.
"_It shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself
any more above the nations: for I will diminish them, that they shall no
more bear rule over the nations._"[89] Every traveler will attest the
truth of this prediction. The wretched peasantry are rejoiced to labor
for any who will pay them five cents a day, and eager to hide the
treasure in the ground from the rapacious tax-gatherer. I have seen
British horses refuse to eat the meal ground from the mixture of wheat,
barley, oats, lentiles, millet, and a hundred unknown seeds of weeds and
collections of filth, which forms the produce of their fields. For
poverty, vermin, and disease, Egypt is proverbial. Let us hear a
scoffer's testimony, however: "In Egypt there is no middle class,
neither nobility, clergy, merchants, nor landholders. A universal air of
misery in all the traveler meets points out to him the rapacity of
oppression, and the distrust attendant upon slavery. The profound
ignorance of the inhabitants equally prevents them from perceiving the
causes of their evils, or applying the necessary remedies. Ignorance,
diffused through every class, extends its effects to every species of
moral and physical knowledge. Nothing is talked of but intestine
troubles, the public misery, pecuniary extortions, and bastinadoes."[90]
The objector perhaps will allege in extenuation the modern improvements
now in progress, the Suez Canal, the railroads, the steamboats on the
Nile, the bridge across the Nile at Cairo, and the sugar and cotton
plantations.
But if these were as evident tokens of progress in Egypt, as they would
be in America, they would not in the least invalidate the facts of the
past degradation of Egypt for centuries. But these speculations of the
Khedive are of no advantage to the people; rather, on the contrary, do
they afford him additional opportunities of exacting forced labor from
the miserable peasants. I have seen the population of several villages,
forced to leave their own fields in the spring, to march down to an old,
filthy canal, near Cairo, and almost within sight of the gate of the
palace, men, and women, and little boys, and girls, like those of our
Sabbath-schools, scooping up the stinking mud and water with their
hands, into baskets, carrying them on their heads up the steep bank,
beaten with long sticks by the taskmasters to hasten their steps; while
steam dredges lay unused within sight. Egypt is still the basest of the
nations.
Here, then, we have conclusive proof of the fulfillment at this day of
four distinct, specific, and improbable Bible predictions: concerning
the country, the rulers, the religion, and the people of Egypt.
Let us note now a distinct and totally different judgment pronounced
against the transgressors of another land. Pre-eminent in inflicting
destruction on others, her retribution was to be extreme. Degradation
and slavery were to be the portion of the learned Egyptians, but utter
extinction is the doom of mighty Babylon. It is written in the Bible
concerning the land where the farmer was accustomed to reap two
hundred-fold: "_Cut off the sower from Babylon, and him that handleth
the sickle in the time of harvest. * * * Every purpose of the Lord shall
be performed against Babylon, to make the land of Babylon a desolation
without an inhabitant. * * * Behold the hindermost of the nations shall
be a wilderness, a dry land, and a desert. * * * Because of the wrath of
the Lord it shall not be inhabited, but it shall be wholly
desolate._"[91]
Proofs in abundance of the fulfillment of these predictions present
themselves in every volume of travels in Assyria and Chaldea. "Those
splendid accounts of the Babylonian lands yielding crops of grain of two
and three hundred fold, compared with the modern face of the country,
afford a remarkable proof of the _singular desolation_ to which it has
been subjected. The canals at present can only be traced by their
decayed banks. The soil of this desert consists of a hard clay, mixed
with mud, which at noon becomes so heated with the sun's rays, that I
found it too hot to walk over it with any degree of comfort."[92] "That
it was at some former period in a far different state is evident from
the number of canals by which it is traversed, now dry and neglected;
and the quantity of heaps of earth, covered with fragments of brick and
broken tiles, which are seen in every direction--the indisputable traces
of former cultivation."[93] "The abundance of the country has vanished
as clean away as if the besom of desolation had swept it from north to
south; the whole land, from the outskirts of Babylon to the farthest
stretch of sight, lying a melancholy waste. _Not a habitable spot
appears for countless miles._"[94]
As the desolation of the country was to be extraordinary, so the
desolation of the city of Babylon was to be remarkable. When the prophet
wrote, its walls had been raised to the height of three hundred and
fifty feet, and made broad enough for six chariots to drive upon them
abreast. From its hundred brazen gates issued the armies which trampled
under foot the liberties of mankind, and presented their lives to the
nod of a despot, who slew whom he would, and whom he would allowed to
live. Twenty years' provisions were collected within its walls, and the
world would not believe that an enemy could enter its gates.
Nevertheless, the prophets of God pronounced against it a doom of
destruction as extraordinary as the pride and wickedness which procured
it. Tyre, the London of Asia, was to _become a place for the spreading
of nets_,[95] and the Infidel Volney tells us its commerce had declined
to _a trifling fishery_; but even that implies some few resident
inhabitants. Rabbah, of Ammon, was to become _a stable for camels and a
couching place for flocks_.[96] Lord Lindsay reports that "he could not
sleep amidst its ruins for the bleating of sheep, that the dung of
camels covers the ruins of its palaces, and that the only building left
entire in its Acropolis is used as a sheepfold."[97] Yet sheepfolds
imply that the tents of their Arab owners are near, and that some human
beings would occasionally reside near its ruins. But desolation,
solitude, and utter abandonment to the wild beasts of the desert is the
specific and clearly predicted doom of the world's proud capital. The
most expressive symbols are selected from the desert to portray its
desertion.
"_Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees'
excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall
never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to
generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall
the shepherds make their fold there: but wild beasts of the desert shall
lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls
shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of
the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their
pleasant palaces._"[98]
Every traveler attests the fulfillment of this strange prediction. "It
is a tenantless and desolate metropolis," says Mignon; who, though
fully armed, and attended by six Arabs, could not induce them by any
reward to pass the night among its ruins, from the apprehension of evil
spirits. So completely fulfilled is the prophecy, "_The Arabian shall
not pitch his tent there._" The same voice which called camels and
flocks to the palaces of Rabbah, summoned a very different class of
tenants for the palaces of Babylon. Rabbah was to be a sheepfold,
Babylon a menagerie of wild beasts; a very specific difference, and very
improbable. One of the later Persian kings, however, after it was
destroyed and deserted, repaired its walls, converted it into a vast
hunting-ground, and stocked it with all manner of wild beasts; and to
this day the apes of the Spice Islands, and the lions of the African
deserts, meet in its palaces, and howl their testimony to the truth of
God's Word. Sir R. K. Porter saw two majestic lions in the Mujelibe (the
ruins of the palace), and Fraser thus describes the chambers of fallen
Babylon: "There were dens of wild beasts in various places, and Mr. Rich
perceived in some a strong smell, like that of a lion. Bones of sheep
and other animals were seen in the cavities, with numbers of bats and
owls."
Various destructions were predicted for Babylon. "_I will make it a
habitation for the bittern, and pools of water_,"[99] says one prophecy.
"_Her cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness_,"[100] says
another. How can such contradictions be true? says the scoffer.
But the scoffer's contradiction is a fact. God can cause the most
discordant agencies to agree in effecting his purpose. Babylon is
alternately an overflowed swamp, from the inundations of the obstructed
Euphrates, and an arid desert, under the scorching rays of an Eastern
sun. Says Mignon: "Morasses and ponds tracked the ground in various
places. For a long time after the subsiding of the Euphrates great part
of this place is little better than a swamp." At another season it was
"a dry waste and burning plain." Even at the same period, "one part on
the western side is low and marshy, and another an arid desert."[101]
Another, and widely different agent, to be employed in the destruction
of the great center of tyranny and idolatry, is thus specifically and
definitely indicated in the prediction: "_Behold, I am against thee, O
destroying mountain, saith the Lord, which destroyest all the earth: and
I will stretch out my hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks,
and will make thee a burnt mountain. And they shall not take of thee a
stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations; but thou shalt be
desolate forever, saith the Lord._"[102]
"There is one fact," says Fraser, "in connection with the most
remarkable of these relics (the Birs Nimrod), which we can not dismiss
without a few more observations. All travelers who have ascended the
Birs have taken notice of the singular heaps of brick-work scattered on
the summit of this mound, at the foot of the remnant of the wall still
standing. To the writer they appeared the most striking of all the
ruins. That they have undergone the most violent action of fire is
evident from the complete vitrification which has taken place in many of
the masses. Yet how a heat sufficient to produce such an effect could
have been applied at such a height from the ground is unaccountable.
They now lie on a spot elevated two hundred feet above the plain, and
must have fallen from some much more lofty position, for the structure
which still remains, and of which they may be supposed originally to
have formed a part, bears no marks of fire. The building originally can
not have contained any great proportion of combustible materials, and to
produce so intense a heat by substances carried to such an elevation
would have been almost impossible, for want of space to pile them on.
Nothing, we should be inclined to say, short of the most powerful action
of electric fire, could have produced the complete, yet circumscribed,
fusion which is here observed. Although fused into a solid mass, the
courses of bricks are still visible, identifying them with the standing
pile above, but so hardened by the power of heat, that it is almost
impossible to break off the smallest piece; and, though porous in
texture, and full of air-holes and cavities, like other bricks, they
require, on being submitted to the stone-cutter's lathe, the same
machinery as is used to dress the hardest pebbles."[103]
The doom of Nineveh, the great rival and predecessor of Babylon, was
also predicted as the result of two apparently contradictory
agencies--an overrunning flood and a consuming fire. But both these
antagonistic elements conspired to devour her. The river, with an
overrunning flood, swept away a large portion of the walls. The
besiegers entered through the breach, and set the city on fire. The
charcoal, burnt beans, and slabs of half-calcined alabaster, in the
British Museum, demonstrate the fulfillment of the prediction.
Egypt was to be reduced to slavery and degradation. Babylonia to utter
barrenness and desolation; but a different and still more incredible
doom is pronounced in the Bible upon Judea and its people. The land was
to be emptied of its people, and remain uncultivated, retaining all its
former fertility, while the people were to be scattered over all the
earth, yet never to lose their distinct nationality, nor be amalgamated
with their neighbors: "_I will make your cities waste, and bring your
sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savor of your
sweet odors. And I will bring the land into desolation: and your
enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it. And I will
scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and
your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. Then shall the land
enjoy her Sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your
enemies' land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her
Sabbaths._"[104] "_Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and
the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate, and the Lord
have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst
of the land. But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and
shall be eaten: as a teil-tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in
them, when they cast their leaves._"[105] "_The generation to come, of
your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall
come from a far land, shall say, * * * Wherefore hath the Lord done thus
unto this land? What meaneth the heat of this great anger?_"[106]
It is superfluous to adduce proof of the undeniable and acknowledged
fulfillment of these predictions, but as an example of the way in which
God causes scoffers to fulfill the prophecies, let us again hear Volney:
"I journeyed in the empire of the Ottomans, and traversed the provinces
which were formerly the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria. I enumerated the
kingdoms of Damascus and Idumea, of Jerusalem and Samaria. This Syria,
said I to myself, now almost depopulated, then contained a hundred
flourishing cities, and abounded with towns, villages, and hamlets. What
has become of so many productions of the hand of man? What has become of
those ages of abundance and of life? _Great God! from whence proceed
such melancholy revolutions? For what cause is the fortune of these
countries so strikingly changed? Why are so many cities destroyed?_ Why
is not that ancient population reproduced and perpetuated? A mysterious
God exercises his incomprehensible judgments. He has doubtless
pronounced a secret malediction against the earth. He has struck with a
curse the present race of men in revenge of past generations."[107] The
malediction is no secret to any who will read the twenty ninth chapter
of Deuteronomy; nor is the avenging of the quarrel of God's covenant
confined to the sins of past generations. The philosopher who would
understand the fates of cities and empires should read the prophecies.
The Word of God specifies no less distinctly and definitely the destiny
of the Jewish than of the Babylonian capital, but fixes on a widely
different kind of destruction. Babylon was never to be built again, but
devoted to solitude; busy Tyre to become a place for spreading nets; the
caravans, which once brought the wealth of India through Petra, were to
cease, and the doom was to "cut off him that passeth by and him that
returneth." But Jerusalem, it was predicted, should long feel the
miseries of a multitude of oppressors, should never enjoy the luxury of
a solitary woe, but "_be trodden down of the Gentiles_."[108] Saracens,
Tartars, Turks, and Crusaders, Gentiles from every nation of the earth,
fulfilled the prediction of old, even as hosts of pilgrims from all
parts of the earth do at this day.
So minute and specific are the predictions of Scripture, that the fate
of particular buildings is accurately defined. One temple to the living
God, and only one, raised its walls in this world, which he had made for
his worship. Its frequenters perverted it from its proper use of leading
them to confess their sinfulness, to seek pardon through the promised
Savior to whom its ceremonies pointed, and to learn to be holy, as the
God of that temple was holy. They hoped that the holiness of the place
would screen them in the indulgence of pride, formality, and wickedness.
The temple of the Lord, instead of the Lord of the temple, was the
object of their veneration. But the doom went forth. "_Therefore for
your sakes shall Zion be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become
as heaps, and the mountain of the house like the high places of the
forest._" History has preserved, and the Jews to this day curse the name
of the soldier, Terentius Rufus, who plowed up the foundations of the
temple. It long continued in this state. But the Emperor Julian the
Apostate conceived the idea of falsifying the prediction of Jesus,
"_Behold your house is left unto you desolate_,"[109] and sent his
friend Alypius, with a Roman army, and abundant treasure, to rebuild it.
The Jews flocked from all parts to assist in the work. Spades and
pickaxes of silver were provided by the vanity of the rich, and the
rubbish was transported in mantles of silk and purple. But they were
obliged to desist from the attempt, for "horrible balls of fire breaking
out from the foundations with repeated attacks, rendered the place
inaccessible to the scorched workmen, and the element driving them to a
distance from time to time, the enterprise was dropped."[110] Such is
the testimony of a heathen, confirmed by Jews and Christians. The
inclosures of the mosque of Omar, forbidding them all access to the spot
on which it stood, leave it desolate to the Jews to this day. I have
seen them (in 1872) kissing a few large stones, supposed to belong to
its foundations or sub-structures, from the outside; for which miserable
privilege they were obliged to pay their oppressors. On approaching the
spot from the Zion gate, right across Mount Zion to the temple ruins,
our way lay through a plowed field of young barley, and gardens of
cauliflowers hedged with enormous rows of cactus. To this day Zion is
plowed as a field.
4. No sane man can believe that such minute and accurate predictions of
various and improbable events could be the result of human calculations;
yet there is another feature of the Bible prophesies still farther
removed beyond the reach of human sagacity, and that is, remarkable and
unaccountable _preservation amidst the general ruin_. If, as skeptics
allege, destruction is the natural and inevitable doom, then
preservation is supernatural and miraculous--a miracle of divine power
controlling nature; and its prediction is a miracle of divine wisdom.
Now the prophecies of the Bible contain several very definite, and
widely different predictions of the preservation of people and cities
from the general destruction. We shall refer in this case also to those
of whose fulfillment there can be no manner of doubt, for the facts are
palpable and undeniable at the present day.
The prediction of the character and fate of the Arabs stands out a
remarkable contrast to the predictions of the destruction of the
surrounding nations. Of their ancestor, Ishmael, it was predicted: "He
will be a wild man; his hand shall be against every man, and every man's
hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his
brethren."[111] The nomad and warlike habits of the sons of Ishmael are
here distinctly predicted; and the singular anomaly which exempts them
alone, of all the people of the earth, from the law, "They that take the
sword, shall perish by the sword." The unconquered Arab laughs alike at
the Persian, Greek, Roman, Turkish, and French invaders of his deserts,
levies tribute on all who enter his territory, and dwells to-day, a free
man, in the presence of all his brethren, as God foretold.
Of the Israelitish nation God predicted, that it should be a peculiar,
distinct people, separate from the other nations of the world: "_Lo, the
people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the
nations._"[112] In apparent contradiction to this separation, he further
threatened to punish them for their sins, by dispersing them over the
world: "_I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword
after you._"[113] "_For lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of
Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall
not the last grain fall upon the earth._"[114] It was further
threatened, as if to make sure of their national destruction: "_And
among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of
thy foot have rest: but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling
heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind: and thy life shall hang
in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shall have
none assurance of thy life._"[115] Contrary to all appearances, and in
spite of all this dispersion and persecution, it is predicted that
Israel shall still exist as a nation, and be restored to the favor of
God, and that prosperity which ever accompanies it: "_And yet for all
that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them
away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break
my covenant with them: for I am the Lord their God._"[116]
Here are four distinct predictions, of national peculiarity, universal
dispersion, grievous oppression, and remarkable preservation. The
fulfillment is obvious, and undeniable. You need no commentary to
explain it. Go into any clothing-store on Western Row, or into the
synagogue in Broadway, and you will see it. The Infidel is sorely
perplexed to give any account of this great phenomenon. How does it
happen that this singular people is dispersed over all the earth, and
yet distinct and unamalgamated with any other? How does it happen that
for eighteen hundred years they have resisted all the influences of
nature, and all the customs of society, and all the powers of
persecution, driving them toward amalgamation, and irresistible in all
other instances? In the face of the power of the Chinese Empire, in
spite of the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition, amid the chaos of
African nationalities, and the fusion of American democracy, in the
plains of Australia, and in the streets of San Francisco, the religion,
customs, and physiognomy of the children of Israel are as distinct this
day as they were three thousand years ago, when Moses wrote them in the
Pentateuch, and Shishak painted them on the tombs of Medinet Abou. How
does the Infidel account for it? It will not do to allege the favorite
story about purity of blood and Caucasian race; for the question is, How
does it happen that this people, and this people alone, have kept the
blood pure; while all other races are so mingled that no other race can
be found pure on earth? Besides, lest any should suppose such a cause
sufficient for their preservation, another nation, descended from the
same father and the same mother--the children of Jacob's twin
brother--has utterly perished, and there is not any remaining of the
house of Esau.
Human sagacity, with all the facts before its face, can not give any
rational account of the causes of this anomaly. It can not tell to-day
why this people exists separate from, and scattered through all nations,
from Kamschatka to New Zealand; how, then, could it foretell, three
thousand years ago, this singular exception to all the laws of national
existence? While the sun and moon endure, the nation of Israel shall
exist as God's witness to God's word, an undeniable proof that the mouth
of the Lord hath spoken it.
A very peculiar feature of the desolation of Israel was the
_desolation_, but not the _destruction_ of the cities. In most cases of
the desolations of war, the cities have been burned and the buildings
destroyed. There is no shelter for man or beast in the mounds of rubbish
which cover the ruined cities of Assyria. Where the buildings have not
been destroyed, or have been rebuilt, they have again been inhabited; as
we see in the cases of Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and many others.
But on the cities of Israel it was written that God's curse should go
forth "till the cities should be wasted without inhabitant, and the
houses without man, and the land be left utterly desolate." But for a
long time the literal fulfillment of this prediction was not witnessed,
as the cities on this side the Jordan had been mostly reduced to ruins.
The richest and most populous part of the land, however, was the land of
Bashan; where, in a territory of about thirty miles by twenty, sixty
cities still remain standing to attest the wonderful fertility of the
soil and industry of the people. "And though the vast majority of them
are deserted, _they are not ruined_. * * * Many of the houses in the
ancient cities of Bashan are perfect, as if only finished yesterday. The
walls are sound, the roofs unbroken, the doors, and even the window
shutters in their places."[117] From two hundred to five hundred houses
have been found perfect in some of these cities; and from the roof of
the Castle of Salcah, Dr. Porter counted thirty towns and villages
dotting the plain, many of them perfect as when first built; "yet for
more than five centuries there has not been an inhabitant in one of
them." So sure is every word of God.
Take another instance of preservation, so remarkable amid the
surrounding destruction, that it arrested the attention and admiration
of the author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, skeptic and
scoffer though he was.
The seven churches of seven of the most considerable cities of Asia
were then, as the churches of Christ still are, the salt of the earth.
Ten righteous men would have averted God's judgments from Sodom. Jesus
pronounced the sentences of these churches seventeen hundred and sixty
years ago, and the present condition of the cities attests the divine
authority of the record containing them. They are various and specific.
Three were to be utterly destroyed. Against two no special threatening
is denounced. To the remaining two promises of life and blessing are
given.
Ephesus, famous for its magnificence, the busy avenue of travel, the
seat of the temple of Diana, long the residence of an apostle, and
afterward of Christian bishops--"one of the eyes of Asia"--as it stood
first on the roll of cities, first receives the doom of abused
privileges: "_I will remove thy candlestick out of its place, unless
thou repent._"
Says Gibbon: "The captivity and ruin of the seven churches of Asia was
consummated (by the Ottomans) A. D. 1312; and the barbarous lords of
Ionia and Lydia still trample on the monuments of classic and Christian
antiquity. In the loss of Ephesus the Christians deplored the fall of
the first angel, and the extinction of the first candlestick of the
Revelation. _The desolation is complete_, and the temple of Diana or the
church of Mary will equally elude the search of the curious
traveler."[118]
Since Gibbon's day the foundations of the temple have been discovered
twelve to fourteen feet below the soil; but no church of Christ remains
to illuminate the minds of the few squalid and lazy dwellers in the
village of Aisayalouk. One cobbler's stall represented the whole
manufacturing industry of Ephesus; and four boys playing a game like
drafts, with pebbles, in front of it seemed the only public likely to
patronize its theater, as I took note of its people and their
occupations, in 1872. Then leaving the storks in their nests, on the
top of the ruined arches of its great aqueduct, to proceed toward the
ruins of the great theater, we tried in vain to procure horses or asses
for the ladies; found the only road so filled with water from the recent
rains as to be impassable, and were fain to plunge on foot through the
plowed fields till we reached the elevation on which it was erected.
Here we surveyed its rock-hewn seats, capable of accommodating an
audience larger than that of all the theaters of New York; but there was
no longer a voice to cry, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" The sea has
forsaken the harbor, which is now a pestilential morass. We passed
through the ruins of the custom-house, now miles inland, and found a
single Turkish soldier on guard. The peasants who cultivate some parts
of the plain come from distant villages, and fever, filth, and beggary
reign in Ephesus.
Had the twenty thousand patrons of the drama, in the thirty-one theaters
of New York, honored the theater of Laodicea with their presence, its
polite citizens would have accommodated them all on the reserved seats,
retiring themselves to ten thousand less commodious sittings, and to two
less gigantic theaters. While yet busy in the erection of their splendid
places of public amusement, Jesus said, "_I will spew thee out of my
mouth._" "The circus, and three stately theaters of Laodicea, are
peopled with wolves and foxes," says Gibbon.
The church was spewed out of Christ's mouth, and the city too. It has
been overturned by earthquakes, and is now nothing but a series of
magnificent ruins, from which, however, ample evidence may be collected
of its former magnificence. Those of the aqueduct, the theater, and the
amphitheater, are remarkable; in the latter an inscription has been
found showing that it was in course of erection when the Lord dictated
the warning to its people. But the warning was unheeded, and now the
whole space inside the city walls is strewn with fragments of columns
and pedestals.
A Lydian capitalist once deposited in the vaults of Sardis more specie
than is now in circulation in this whole continent. But Jesus said,
"_Thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead. If, therefore, thou
shalt not watch, I will come upon thee as a thief, and thou shalt not
know what hour I will come upon thee._"
"Sardis," says Gibbon, "is a miserable village." A later writer (Durbin)
tells us that the Turks say, "Every one who builds a house in Sardis
dies soon, and avoid the spot." Arundell, in his account of his visit to
the seven churches, says: "If I were asked what impresses the mind most
strongly on beholding Sardis, I should say, its indescribable
_solitude_, like the darkness of Egypt, that could be felt. So deep the
solitude of the spot, once the lady of kingdoms, produces a feeling of
desolate abandonment in the mind which can never be forgotten." Connect
this feeling with the message of the Apocalypse to the church of Sardis,
"Thou hast a name that thou livest, and _art dead_, and then look around
and ask, Where are the churches? Where are the Christians of Sardis? The
tumuli beyond the Hermus reply, '_All dead!_'--suffering the infliction
of the threatened judgment of God for the abuse of their privileges. Let
the unbeliever, then, be asked, Is there no truth in prophecy?--no
reality in religion?"
Only twenty-seven miles north of this desolate metropolis, the
manufactories of Thyatira dispatch weekly to Smyrna, cloths, as famous
over Asia for the brilliancy and durability of their hues as those which
Lydia displayed to the admiration of the ladies of Philippi. Two
thousand two hundred Greek Christians, two hundred Armenian, and a
Protestant Church under the care of the missionaries of the American
Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, assemble every Sabbath to
commemorate the resurrection of Him who said to the church of Thyatira:
"_I will put upon you no other burden; but that which ye have already
hold fast till I come._"
The fragrant citron (_Bergamot_) still flourishes around the birthplace
of Galen; but the ruins of the famous library of 200,000 manuscripts are
far less durable memorials of the city of booksellers than those
beautifully dressed skins, which, taking their name (_Pergamena_) from
the place of their manufacture, will preserve the name and fame of
Pergamos as long as parchment can preserve man's memorials, or God's
predictions. Though famous for fragrance, physic, and philosophy,
Pergamos was infamous for idolatry, licentiousness, and persecution; yet
still endeared to Jesus as the scene of the martyrdom of faithful
Antipas, and the dwelling-place of a hidden church; and widely different
sentences are recorded against those opposite classes. The public
memorials are to perish, but the hidden word to endure. "The fanes of
Jupiter and Diana, and Venus and Esculapius (worshiped under the symbol
of a live snake), were prostrate in the dust, and where they had not
been carried away by the Turks to cut up into tombstones or pounded into
mortar, the Corinthian columns and the Ionic, the splendid capitals, the
cornices and the pediments, all in the highest ornament, were thrown in
unsightly heaps,"[119] is the comment on the threatening of Jesus, "_I
will fight against them_--the idolaters--_with the sword of my mouth_."
The 3,000 Greek and 300 Armenian Christians, and even the 10,000 Turkish
inhabitants of the modern Pergamos, have received hundreds of copies of
the promise, "_To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden
manna, and will give him a white stone and in the stone a new name
written, which no man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it._" But
whether the hidden church of Pergamos shine forth or not, Gibbon was
inaccurate in stating, in the face of facts, that "the god of Mohammed
without a rival is invoked in the mosques of Pergamos and Thyatira."
God's providence is as discriminating as his prophecy, though unbelief
may overlook both.
We have noted here instances of the prediction of remarkable destruction
to Sardis, Ephesus, and Laodicea; of continued existence to Pergamos and
Thyatira; let us now note a prediction of remarkable escape and
preservation from the universal doom. If it requires no inspiration to
prophecy destruction--the universal fate of humanity, according to the
Infidel--surely it requires more than human skill to say that any city
shall escape this universal fate, and more than human power to avert
this destruction. Of Philadelphia, but twenty-five miles distant from
the ruins of Sardis, Jesus said, and the Bible records the prophecy: "_I
know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man
can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and
hast not denied my name. Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of
Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will
make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have
loved thee. Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I will also
keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the
world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. Behold, I come quickly:
hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. Him that
overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God; and he shall go
no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name
of the city of my God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of
heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name._"
"Philadelphia alone," says Gibbon, "has been saved by prophecy, or
courage. At a distance from the sea, forgotten by the emperors,
encompassed on all sides by the Turks, her valiant sons defended their
religion and their freedom alone for fourscore years, and at length
capitulated with the proudest of the Ottomans. Among the Greek colonies
and churches of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect--_a column in a scene
of ruins_--a pleasing example that the paths of honor and safety may be
the same."
In the pages of this eloquent writer it would be hard to discover
another instance of unqualified hearty commendation of soldiers or
sufferers for Christianity and liberty, such as Gibbon here bestows on
Philadelphia's valiant sons. But it was written, "_I will make them come
and worship before thy feet_," and the skeptic and scoffer must fulfill
the word of Jesus; even as the unbelieving Mohammedan also does, when he
writes upon it the modern name, Allah Sehr--_The City of God._ _A
majestic solitary pillar_, of high antiquity, arrests the eye of the
traveler, and reminds the worshipers in the six modern churches of
Philadelphia of the beauty and faithfulness of the prophetic symbol.
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but Jesus' word shall not pass away.
Improbable to human sagacity as this preservation must have seemed, the
resurrection of a fallen city is more utterly beyond man's vision. In
the Bible, however, tribulation and recovery were foretold to Smyrna:
"_Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil
shall cast some of you into prison that ye may be tried; and ye shall
have tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give
thee a crown of life._" "The populousness of Smyrna is owing to the
foreign trade of the Franks and Armenians," says the scoffer. No matter
to what it is owing, he who dictated the Bible foresaw it, and made no
mistake in foretelling it. Says Arundell: This, the other eye of Asia,
is still a very flourishing commercial city, one of the very first in
the present Turkish empire in wealth and population, containing 130,000
inhabitants. The continued importance of Smyrna may be estimated from
the fact that it is the seat of a consul from every nation in Europe.
The prosperity of Smyrna is now rather on the increase than the decline,
and the houses of painted wood, which were most unworthy of its ancient
fame and present importance, are rapidly giving way to palaces of stone
rising in all directions; and, probably, ere many years have passed, the
modern town may not unworthily represent the ancient city, which the
ancients delighted to call the crown of Ionia. Commercial activity and
architectural beauty, however, are but a small part of the glorious
destiny of the community to which Jesus says, "I will give thee a crown
of life."
Mark Twain suggests that the prophecy refers to the church, rather than
to the city; but forgets to remind us that the Church of Christ is well
represented and crowned with life in Smyrna. God's predictions regard
the vital part of communities, the spiritual forces; these, vigorous and
outspreading, secure the material progress. Close the Bible House,
printing presses, and schools of America, and real estate would not be
worth much more than in Asia. The Lord Christ rules this world. His
blessing has revived both the church and the city of Smyrna, according
to his promise. In 1872 I found its harbor busy with coasting craft and
ocean steamers, and its railroad doing a brisk business. Smyrna is a
live city.
Deliverance from the curse of sin, and communion with the Lord of Life,
alone can secure either a nation's or an individual's immortality.
Smyrna possesses the gospel of salvation. Several devoted English and
American missionaries proclaim salvation to its citizens. From its
printing presses thousands of copies of the Word of Life issue to all
the various populations of the Turkish Empire. A living Church of Christ
in Smyrna holds forth, for the acceptance of the dying nations around
her, that crown of life promised and granted by the Word of God, not to
her only, but to all who love his appearing and his kingdom.
5. This is the grand distinction of God's word of prophecy, _that it is
the Word of Life_. It is the only word which promises life, the only
word which bestows it on fallen humanity. Recognizing no inevitable law
of destruction but the sentence of God, no invariable law of nature
superior to the counsel of Jehovah, nor any progress of events which his
Almighty arm can not arrest and reverse, it points a despairing world to
sin as the cause of all destruction, to Satan as the author of sin, to
ungodly men in league with him as the foes of God and man, and to Christ
pledged to perpetual warfare with such until the last enemy be
destroyed. This word of prophecy tells us, that the battle-fields
Messiah has won are earnests of that great victory; points to the
columns which he has preserved erect amid scenes of ruin, as assurances
that he is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him;
goes to the graveyards where fallen Smyrnas, idolatrous Saxons, debased
Sandwich Islanders, and cannibal New Zealanders have buried the image of
the living God, and in Jesus' name proclaims, "_I am the resurrection
and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he
live_;" and, amid the very ruins of destroyed cities, and the crumbling
heaps of their perished memorials, beholds the assurances that Satan's
rule of ruin shall not be perpetual, anticipates the day when the course
of sin and misery shall be reversed, and teaches Adam's sons to face the
foe, and chant forth that heaven-born note of victorious faith, "_Oh,
thou enemy! destructions are come to a perpetual end._"
Come forth, trembling skeptic, from the cave of thy dark invariable
experience of death and destruction, and from the vain sparks of thy
misgiving hopes of an ungodly eternity to come less miserable than the
past, and lift thine eyes to this heavenly sunrising on the dark
mountain tops of futurity, the like of which thou didst never dream of
in all thy Pantheistic reveries. Search over all the religions of the
world--the hieroglyphics of Egypt, the arrow-headed inscriptions of
Assyria, the classic mythologies of graceful Greece and iron Rome, the
monstrous shasters of thine Indian Pundits, or the more chaotic clouds
of thy German philosophies--in none of them wilt thou ever find this
divine thought, _an end of destructions--a perpetual end_. Cycles of
ruin and renovation, and of renovation and ruin, vast cycles, if you
will, but evermore ending in dire catastrophies to gods and men--an
everlasting succession of death and destructions--is the fearful vista
which all the religions of man, and thine own irreligion, present to thy
terrified vision. But thou wast created in the image of the living God,
and durst not rest satisfied with any such prospect. Now I come in the
name of the Lord to tell thee, that "God so loved the world that he gave
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him _should not
perish, but have everlasting life_;" and I demand of thee that thou
acknowledge this promise of life everlasting to be the word of that
living God, and to show cause, if any thou hast, why thou dost
relinquish thy birthright, and spurn the gift of everlasting life which
is in Christ Jesus our Lord?
But, if thou hast no sufficient cause why thou shouldest choose death
rather than life, then hear, and your soul shall live, while I relate
the promise which God hath made of old to our fathers, and hath
fulfilled to us, their children, by raising up his Son, Jesus Christ,
from the dead, and sending him to bless you, by turning away every one
of you from your iniquities. For there can be no deliverance from misery
and destruction but by means of delivery from sin and Satan.
It is quite in agreement with the manner of our deliverance from any of
the evils of our fallen condition, that our deliverance from the power
of sin and Satan be effected by the agency of a deliverer. Our
ignorance is removed by the knowledge of a teacher, our sickness by the
skill of a physician, the oppressed nation hails the advent of a
patriotic leader, and oppressed humanity acknowledges the fitness and
need of a divine Deliverer, even by the ready welcome it has given to
pretenders to this character, and by the longing desire of the wisest
and best of men for a divinely commissioned Savior; a desire implanted
by the great prophecy, which stands at the portal of hope for mankind,
in the very earliest period of our history, that "_the seed of the woman
should bruise the serpent's head_," and so leave man triumphant over the
great destroyer.
The prophecies regarding the Messiah are so numerous, pointed, various,
and improbable, as to set human sagacity utterly at defiance; while they
are also connected so as to form a scheme of prophecy, which gradually
unrolls before us the advent, the ministry, the death, resurrection, and
ascension of the Lord, the progress of his gospel over all the world,
and the blessed effects it should produce on individuals, families, and
nations. It closes with a view of the second coming of Jesus to conquer
the last of his enemies, and take possession of the earth as his
inheritance. I can only lop off a twig or two from this blessed tree of
life, in the hope that the fragrance of the leaves may allure you to
take up the Bible, and eat abundantly of its life-giving promises. As I
have in the previous chapters abundantly proved the veracity of the New
Testament history, I shall now with all confidence refer to its account
of the birth, life, and death of Jesus, as illustrating the prophecies.
The time, the place, the manner of his birth, his parentage and
reception, were plainly declared, hundreds of years before he appeared.
When Herod had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people
together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born, and they said
unto him, "In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the
prophet: _And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, art not the least
among the princes of Judah: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that
shall rule my people Israel._" The first verse of this chapter records
the fact, "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea."
The throne of Judah was to be occupied by strangers, and the line of
native princes was to cease upon the coming of this Governor, and not
till his coming: "_The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a
lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh shall come; and unto him
shall the gathering of the people be._" On the day of his crucifixion
the rulers of the Jews made this formal and public announcement of the
fact, "We have no king but Cæsar."
He was to address a class of people whom no other religious teacher had
condescended to notice before, and very few save those sent by Him ever
since: "_The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath
anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek: he hath sent me to
bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the
opening of the prison to them that are bound._" Hear Jesus' words: "Come
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest. Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see: The
blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed,
and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, _and the poor have the gospel
preached to them_. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in
me."
Yet, notwithstanding his feeding of thousands, and healing of
multitudes, and teaching of the lowest of the people, it was foretold he
should be unpopular: "_He is despised and rejected of men; a man of
sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from
him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not._" The brief records are:
"Then all the disciples forsook him and fled." "Then began Peter to
curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man." "Pilate saith unto
them, Ye have a custom, that I should release unto you one at the
passover: will ye therefore that I release unto you the King of the
Jews? Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now
Barabbas was a robber."
All the prophets agree in predicting that for the sins of his people,
and to atone for their guilt, he should be put to death by a shameful
public execution: "_In the midst of the week Messiah shall be cut off,
but not for himself. He was wounded for our transgressions, he was
bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him;
and with his stripes we are healed. He was numbered with the
transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for
the transgressors. They pierced my hands and my feet._" The record says:
"The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to
give his life a ransom for many." "And when they were come to the place
which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors,
one on the right hand, and the other on the left. Then said Jesus,
_Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do._"
The one grand unparalleled fact, one which demands the hope of dying men
for a victory over the great destroyer, and a resurrection from the
tomb--the fact that one man born of a woman died, and did not see
corruption, but rose again from the dead and went up into heaven, and
dieth no more--forms the theme of many a prophetic psalm of triumph:
"_Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nor wilt thou give thine Holy One
to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life. Thou wilt make me
full of joy with thy countenance. Thou hast ascended on high. Thou hast
led captivity captive._" Often did Jesus predict this prodigy before
friend and foe: "_Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, when he was
yet alive, After three days I will rise again._" The last chapters of
the gospels relate the proofs by which he convinced his incredulous
disciples that the prophecy was fulfilled: "Behold my hands and my feet,
that it is I myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and
bones, as ye see me have. And when he had thus spoken, he showed them
his hands and his feet. And while they yet believed not for joy, and
wondered, he saith unto them, Have ye here any meat? And they gave him a
piece of broiled fish, and of an honey comb. And he took it and did eat
before them; and said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it
behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day; and
that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name
among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these
things. And behold I send the promise of my Father upon you, but tarry
ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high.
And he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands and
blessed them. And while he was blessing them he was parted from them,
and carried up into heaven. And while they looked steadfastly toward
heaven, as he went up, behold two men stood by them in white apparel,
which said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This
same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in
like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven."
With your own eyes you shall see the fulfillment of this prophecy. Every
eye shall see him. The clouds of heaven shall then reveal the vision now
sketched on the page of revelation: "And I saw a great white throne, and
Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away,
and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and
great, stand before God; and the books were opened; and another book was
opened, which is the Book of Life; and the dead were judged out of those
things which were written in the books, according to their works. And
the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered
up the dead which were in them; and they were judged every man according
to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This
is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the Book of
Life was cast into the lake of fire. And I saw a new heaven and a new
earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and
there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem,
coming down from God, out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her
husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, Behold the
tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they
shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their
God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall
be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying: neither shall there be any
more pain; for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon
the throne said, _Behold, I make all things new._ And he said unto me,
WRITE, FOR THESE WORDS ARE TRUE AND FAITHFUL."
FOOTNOTES:
[81] Jewish Church, 463, 4. The Bible, 80.
[82] De Die Natali, c. 17, cited in Pusey on Daniel, 642.
[83] Isaiah, chap. xlvi. 8-11.
[84] Newton on the Prophecies, and Keith on the Prophecies, are to be
found in all respectable libraries. The former contains valuable
extracts from ancient historians; the latter from the journals and
engravings of travelers.
[85] Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, I. 169. Herodotus, II. 169.
[86] Ezekiel, chap. xxx.
[87] Volney's Travels, I. 74, 103.
[88] Decline and Fall, chap. lix.
[89] Ezekiel, chap. xxix.
[90] Volney, I. 190.
[91] Jeremiah, chaps. l. and li.
[92] Mignon's Travels, 31.
[93] Trans. Bombay Lit. Soc. I. 123.
[94] Porter's Babylonia, II. 285.
[95] Ezekiel, chap. xxvi.
[96] Ezekiel, chap. xxv.
[97] Lindsay's Travels, II. 78, 117.
[98] Isaiah, chap. xiii.
[99] Isaiah, chap. xiv.
[100] Jeremiah, chap. li.
[101] Mignon, 139.
[102] Jeremiah, chap. li.
[103] Fraser's Mesopotamia, page 145.
[104] Leviticus, chap. xxvi.
[105] Isaiah, chap. vi.
[106] Deuteronomy, chap. xxix.
[107] Volney's Ruins of Empires, Book I.
[108] Luke, chap. xxi.
[109] Micah, chap. iii. Matthew, chap. xxii.
[110] Ammianus Marcellus, 23d chap. I.
[111] Genesis, chap. xvi. 12.
[112] Numbers, chap. xxiii.
[113] Leviticus, chap. xxvi.
[114] Amos, chap. ix.
[115] Deuteronomy, chap. xxviii.
[116] Leviticus, chap. xxvi.
[117] Porter's Giant Cities of Bashan, passim.
[118] Decline and Fall, chap. lxiv.
[119] Macfarlane's Seven Apocalyptic Churches.