IS THE END NEAR? by G. L. B.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, February 17, 1885

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 62, No. 7

IS THE END NEAR?

By G. L. B.

TESTIMONY OF EARTHLY GOVERNMENTS.

“Surely the Lord will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.” Amos 3:7. From this we understand that all the important events connected with the plan of salvation, in which man is so intimately interested, God will reveal to his servants the prophets. We should therefore expect to find in their writings references to all the great events of human history, and their relation to the age of the world and the end of time.

The apostle says, “Ye, brethren, are not in darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief.” It must be that these brethren had diligently considered these prophecies; for there is no other source from which the child of God can ascertain such facts. No scientist or statesman pretends to be able to shed light on this subject. None but God can reveal it, and unless he gives light through his prophets, he has given none at all upon this subject. But the word of God claims to give much evidence on this very point. There are a variety of ways in which this instruction is given, many roads, all terminating in the same grand event, the great central point of all revelation, the Judgment, and the coming of Christ. In this article we will notice but one of them; the testimony of earthly governments.

The witnesses are important; for they have been the proudest actors in the affairs of mankind. No one can say that the evidence they give is on a small scale. They have been the observed of all observers. The attention of all mankind has been drawn to them. It is a striking fact that what is valuable in history pertains to the very same nations which God has introduced as witnesses in the fulfillment of his word, showing the time of the end.

China is claimed to be one of the most ancient and populous nations that ever existed; its people most intelligent, its civilization higher than most others in the past. What mark has she made in history? The most intelligent men can give very little information concerning it. India is likewise ancient and populous, having to-day a population far surpassing that of many of the modern nations. The people were intelligent, while our ancestors were lawless savages. But who knows what has transpired in the history of India?

How different when we consider Babylon, Media and Persia, Greece, and Rome, and the nations into which the Roman empire was divided? All that is valuable in the records of the past we cull from the history of these kingdoms. All the great examples of heroism, wisdom, art, and learning, piety and virtue, we find in their annals.

It is the testimony of these nations that has a bearing upon our nearness to the end. God had revealed in his word the great facts of their history before many of them even existed. The records of two thousand five hundred years prove the correctness of the prophetic statements. Various writers in the Bible have given us important facts relative to this interesting theme. We have space to glance at but few of them.

In Dan. 2 we have the starting point in this interesting subject. As God’s servants were carried away into captivity among the Gentile nations, God seems to have made it the occasion for revealing the history of those nations as related to that of his people, and their strange experience among the nations of the earth. The king of Babylon had a remarkable dream, which he could not recall. Daniel, the Hebrew captive, was at last called in to tell what it was. It having been previously revealed to him in a vision, he was enabled to do it. He told the king in substance what he had seen in his dream. A great image, whose head was of gold, whose breast and arms were of silver, whose sides were of brass, whose legs were of iron, and whose feet and toes were partly of iron and partly of clay, stood before him.

Its appearance was very majestic. Suddenly a stone, cut out of a mountain by no human hand, struck the image on the feet, and the whole figure was shivered to atoms, and swept away as the whirlwind sweeps away the chaff from the threshing floor; and the particles could not be found. And the wonderful stone became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth. A wonderful, startling revelation!

The prophet immediately tells the king that these divisions of the image represent great kingdoms, commencing with his own, and each succeeding one taking the dominion of the earth, and ruling for a period of time, till another came upon the stage. The stone which smote the last division was the everlasting kingdom of God, which should make a clean sweep of them all, and should itself stand forever and ever.

We shall take no time to prove what all sensible commentators admit,—that these successive kingdoms were Babylon, Medo-Persia, Grecia, and Rome, and that the ten kingdoms were those which rule in the world to-day. No other application worthy of a moment’s thought can be made. The first great kingdom rising after the deluge was Assyria, essentially the same people that built Babylon. This nation continued nearly 1,700 years, till Cyrus the Great extinguished it a little more than 500 years before Christ. Then the Medo-Persian kingdom, brought into supreme power by him, reigned some 200 years more, when Alexander the Great overthrew Cyrus’ degenerate successors.

The Grecian kingdom thus founded bore sway a little less than two centuries, when the rising power of Rome crippled and destroyed it.

The iron kingdom of Rome, stronger and more cruel than any that preceded it, continued without a successful rival till its people, satiated with wealth and power, gradually lost their vigor, and became weak and effeminate. The barbarous tribes of Northern Europe at last broke up the empire, and divided it up among themselves, a little less than 500 years after Christ, since which time the sovereignty of the world has been held by them. As proof of this, the little kingdom of England, with less than forty millions of people, holds under her authority perhaps one hundred millions of Asiatics in India, and overawes the kingdom of China with several hundred millions more. She does her pleasure in the continent of Africa, and makes the islands of the ocean bow to her mandates. France, Germany, and other powers do the same on a smaller scale. No government except our own would dare dispute their supremacy.

This succession of kingdoms is plainly pointed out in prophecy. (See Dan. 5:25–31; 8:20, 21, etc.; Luke 2:1 and many other Scriptures.) The merest child in historical lore knows these things to be true. There is scarcely a page in history that does not corroborate in some way these facts. For 1300 years we have been down in the last earthly governments brought to view in prophecy. The next event mentioned (Dan. 2:44) in the days of these (the ten) kings, is that the God of heaven shall set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and shall stand forever. Earthly governments are to pass away and close with these which derived their origin from the Roman empire. No new order of things is to be introduced, no great conqueror to unite them all in one; but God’s coming kingdom will destroy them all together, and that shall never pass away.

Here we have a rough outline, brief but exceedingly comprehensive, taking in all the prominent governmental actors in history. How wonderfully keen was the prophet’s vision! Who can doubt that it was God alone who could thus predict history. Never was there an infidel who could set aside the arguments of the second chapter of Daniel. It presents a simple, plain prophetic outline of history from the flood to the burning day. All the prominent actors pointed out two thousand five hundred years ago! Can any man deny it? Has a single mistake been made by the prophet?

And where do we stand in this interesting chain? In the very last and closing link. The wonderful stone is about to fall, and all earthly power to be demolished. God’s glorious kingdom is about to be established, and the saints of God to be rewarded. Can there be any doubt on the point? Not unless there is a mistake in the vision on the last point where there has never been one on any other. We are willing to risk it, and therefore believe that the end is near.

G. L. B.