Earlier text: An Indian’s TestimonyFrance in Prophecy
By F. M. W.
In the eleventh chapter of Daniel is found the longest literal prophecy contained in the Scriptures of Truth. The preceding prophecies of this book teach truth by symbolic representation. The great universal kingdoms of earth are represented by the metals of the image of Daniel 2, and by the beasts of Daniel 7 and 8; but when we come to chapter 11, the great events in the history of mankind during the long sketch of years from the days of the prophet down to the close of time, are presented in literal language. The prophecy begins with the Medo-Persian kingdom. The succession of the Grecian empire under Alexander; the division of his mighty empire into four parts; the long conflict between the king of the north as represented by the Syrian Seleucidæ, and the kingdom of the south under Ptolemy; the entrance into the field of “the robbers of thy people,” undoubtedly referring to the Roman empire; the leading events of Rome’s universal reign, the methods and policies by which she sought to carry forward her work, finally merging into the period of papal domination,—all these are clearly outlined in this prophetic delineation. Beginning with verse 32 of chapter 11, there is brought to view a mighty conflict between the papal power and the children of God. In the long period of papal persecution many of God’s people fell “by the sword, and by flame, by captivity, and by spoil, many days.” The Lord permitted this to come upon his church, as presented in verse 35, “to try them, and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end.” Thus we are brought down in this prophecy to the close of the 1260 days of papal persecution, or to the year 1798, which also marked the beginning of a period called “the time of the end.” At this date in the prophetic outline the changing kaleidoscope of time brings before us another power. A king, or kingdom, arises whose history and experience present many new, striking, and revolutionary characteristics. What government is here introduced? Several leading specifications of the prophecy brought to view in verses 36-40 enable us with tolerable accuracy to locate the nation indicated:— 1. The power brought to view in these verses must enter in natural order into the logical sequence of the prophecy. There must be an evident reason for its notice by divine inspiration. 2. Its history, or the part it acts in the affairs of men, must be of sufficient moment to warrant its introduction into the prophetic outline. 3. That part of its history indicated by the prophecy must be fulfilled at a definite date; namely, at “the time of7 the end,” when, according to this prophecy in comparison with other scriptures, the beast, or papal power, received its deadly wound and went into captivity. Rev. 12:14-16; 13:10. 4. It must be a nation in which a great revolutionary movement, or upheaval, takes place. It must depart from the old order of things, and play a new rôle among the nations of men. 5. It must be an atheistical power, denying its faith of the past and the God of its fathers, and exalting itself above every god. 6. It must finally be brought to the creation of a god of its own, and render to it fulsome worship. 7. It must be a nation which sinks to the lowest depths of moral degradation, trampling underfoot the sacred relationship of marriage. 8. It must divide its land for gain. 9. At this same period in its history, namely, “at the time of the end,” other powers, represented by the king of the north and the king of the south, must come against it in battle. Only one power is found at this period of the world’s history which fulfils these specifications. That power is France, and the period here brought to view is the period of the French Revolution. Consider the application to France in the light of this vivid prophetic pen-picture:— 1. Why at this particular point in the prophecy should the French Revolution be brought to view? The answer is obvious,—as an object-lesson to all the world, and to all succeeding nations, of the results which follow the rejection of God, and the spurning of his message and messengers sent to bring salvation. For years the Papacy had carried forward its desolating work in the world. Religion had become a travesty, the worship of God a hollow mockery; and yet this false system continued to proclaim itself to all mankind as the one true faith, as the only pure representation of the worship of the Most High. Infinite Mercy had sought to regenerate conditions. The Reformation of the sixteenth century was designed to correct the great abuses existing in the religious, social, and political fabric of the common weal. In France itself God had raised up in the Huguenots faithful witnesses of the true faith. In the papal church, the Jansenists had sought to reform some of the great abuses. One class was expelled, carrying from the country of France her best and most substantial citizens. The other class was crushed through the connivance of the power of Rome and the French state. God was seeking to save the world from the whirlpool into which its own excesses were plunging it. Some of the nations of Europe heeded the warning. The seeds of the Reformation were allowed to germinate and bear fruit. Counter-influences were set in operation, and many abuses in the state, the church, and the social life of the nations were remedied. Not so, however, with France. Proudly and arrogantly she rejected every overture at reformation of life. She cast from her the means whereby she might have been saved from her terrible downfall. Nothing then remained but for her to reap the baneful fruitage of the pernicious seed sowing of the past. To the whole civilized world was afforded a revelation, an example, of the natural harvest resulting from a rejection of God and his saving truth. Viewed as a whole, the French Revolution presents in its destructive effects, a spectacle of divine judgment without a parallel in human history. Terrible as was the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, even it sinks into a secondary place when compared with the wholesale slaughter by massacre and war which accompanied this fearful modern judgment, affecting not only the whole of France, but all the surrounding nations of Europe. In letters of flame across the movement, is written the word Retribution.—“History Unveiling Prophecy,” by H. Grattan Guinness, D. D., page 226. 2. Were the events connected with and growing out of the French Revolution of sufficient importance in their bearing upon the history of the world to warrant the introduction of France into the prophetic outline?—They certainly were. This revolution, so far as European history is concerned, and its effect upon the after-civilization of the world, formed a connecting link between the old régime and the new. Speaking of the influence of this great national upheaval upon the history of mankind, Sir Archibald Alison, in his “History of Europe,” Vol. II, page 243, says:— The French Revolution was a revolt not only against the government and institutions, but the opinions and the belief, of former times. It was ushered in by an inundation of skepticism and infidelity; it was attended by unexampled cruelty to the ministers of religion; it led to the overthrow of every species of devotion, and the education of a generation ignorant even of the first elements of the Christian faith.
Similar testimony is borne by G. P. Gooch, M. A., Trinity College, in “The Cambridge Modern History,” Vol. VII, page 754:— The French Revolution is the most important event in the life of modern Europe. Herder compared it to the Reformation and the rise of Christianity. . . . It brought on the stage of human affairs forces which have molded the thoughts and actions of men ever since, and have taken a permanent place among the formative influences of civilization.
As expressed by another writer:— The history of the French Revolution is the history of Europe for more than a century, the history of the modern world. Never was there anything more terribly majestic in human history; never will there be—till the last judgment-day. Viewed in relation to the past and to the future, to all that it destroyed, to all that it inaugurated, the French Revolution stands alone, without a parallel. Viewed in itself as an explosion of infidelity, immorality, massacre, and war, there is nothing in the range of the world’s history to compare with it. Before the tremendous forces which it unchained, thrones, temples, and institutions which had stood for ages were overturned as trees by a tempest, and swept away as straws by a whirlwind.—“History Unveiling Prophecy,” pages 201, 202.
France naturally fills a place in this long-prophetic outline of the world’s history. Indeed, without it, the delineation would be incomplete. 3. That this revolution occurred at the time specified, namely, at the beginning of the time of the end, goes without saying. At this period the deadly wound was inflicted upon the papal power. Indeed, France became the agent in the hand of God whereby his judgments were meted out to this apostate system. 4. Most fully and completely did France meet the requirement of a nation in the throes of a great revolution. The whole purpose of that movement was to change the existing order of things, and this was true not only as related to the form of government, but to the social order and to long-cherished doctrines and venerated ideals. The historical statements given in succeeding paragraphs very fully demonstrate this. 5. France fulfilled the prophecy in that it stood before all the world as atheistical in its profession. Verse 36 declares, “He shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvelous things against the God of gods.” And in verse 37, it is said, “Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers.” The highest conception of religion on the part of the French people was that embraced in the Roman Catholic system; hence in revolting against that church and its abuses, in casting out the crafty priesthood which in union with an oppressive monarchy had brought it into bondage, France verily believed that it was destroying Christianity. Holding God responsible for the abuses it had suffered from his professed but misguided representatives, France counted heaven the author of its woe, and bade defiance to the Most High. Alison in his “History of Europe,” Vol. III, page 21, speaks of the spirit which actuated the French revolutionists at this period:— Having massacred the great of the present, and insulted the illustrious of former ages, nothing remained to the revolutionists but to direct their fury8 against Heaven itself. Pache, Hébert, and Chaumette, the leaders of the municipality, publicly expressed their determination “to dethrone the King of heaven, as well as the monarchs of the earth.”—Page 21.
Of the manner in which this spirit was manifested, Alison continues:— To accomplish this design, they prevailed on Gobel, the apostate constitutional bishop of Paris, to appear at the bar of the convention, accompanied by some of the clergy of his diocese, and there abjure the Christian faith. That base prelate declared “that no other national religion was now required but that of liberty, equality, and morality.” Many of the constitutional bishops and clergy in the convention joined in the proposition. The convention received them with loud applause, and gave them the fraternal kiss. Crowds of drunken artisans and shameless prostitutes crowded to the bar, and trampled under their feet the sacred vases, consecrated for ages to the holiest purposes of religion. The sections of Paris shortly after followed the example of the constitutional clergy, and publicly abjured the Christian religion. The churches were stripped of all their ornaments; their plate and valuable contents were brought in heaps to the municipality and the convention, from whence they were sent to the mint to be melted down.—Pages 21, 22.
The effect of these principles upon the life of the nation was at once apparent:— The services of religion were now universally abandoned. The pulpits were deserted throughout all the revolutionized districts; baptism ceased; the burial service was no longer heard; the sick received no communion, the dying no consolation. A heavier anathema than that of papal power pressed upon the peopled realm of France—the anathema of Heaven, inflicted by the madness of her own inhabitants. The village bells were silent; Sunday was obliterated. Infancy entered the world without a blessing; age left it without a hope. In lieu of the services of the church, the licentious fêtes of the new system were performed by the most abandoned females; it appeared as if the Christian worship had been succeeded by the orgies of the Babylonian priests, or the grossness of the Hindu theocracy. On every tenth day a revolutionary leader ascended the pulpit, and preached atheism to the bewildered audience; Marat was universally deified; and even the instrument of death was sanctified by the name of the “Holy Guillotine.”—Id., pages 23, 24.
6. The prophecy declares, however, that while the nation at first should turn from every god, in the end it should establish a god of its own; “a god whom his fathers knew not,” “a strange god,” should it honor. The human heart is so constituted that when it turns away from the worship of the true God, it inevitably seeks some other object of adoration. This France did. The principles of justice, equality, and liberty, the dictates of reason, the forces of nature, were set before the multitude as the objects of their adoration. A sort of deism dominated national thought and teaching. The one hope above all others, of life beyond the tomb, which in every age and with every people has proved a strength and solace in the ills of this world and in the end robbed death of its awfulness, was ridiculed. “On all the public cemeteries the inscription was placed, ‘Death is an eternal sleep.’” And in response to the public sentiment, “the comedian Monvel, in the church of St. Roch, carried impiety to its utmost length. ‘God, if you exist,’ said he, ‘avenge your injured name! I bid you defiance. You remain silent; you dare not launch your thunders; who, after this, will believe in your existence?’” Hesitating at no means nor methods which human ingenuity could conceive, the nation with one consent did everything in its power to cast reproach upon what it conceived to be the religion of Christ. Ceremonies once regarded sacred were derisively parodied. An ass was dressed in pontifical garments, and in solemn procession paraded to the church. He was made to drink sacramental wine. Forty thousand churches were turned into stables for horses; the populace gloried in their shame. A popular actress was enthroned as the goddess of reason, and before her the multitudes prostrated themselves in worship of their new idol. No such scene was ever before witnessed in any nation under heaven. Truly France renounced the God of its fathers. The people cast aside every semblance of the worship in which their fathers before them had engaged; and in their personification of reason paid reverence to a new and hitherto unrecognized deity. Verily this fulfilled in a marked manner the “strange god” of the prophecy to whom this power should pay reverence. 7. Disregard of the marriage ordinance. Verse 37 declares that this power should not regard “the desire of women.” Following as an inevitable result of its rejection of God, France was plunged into the depth of moral degradation. How strikingly this was done is pictured in the word of history:— The most sacred relations of life were at the same period placed on a new footing, suited to the extravagant ideas of the times. Marriage was declared a civil contract, binding only during the pleasure of the contracting parties. Divorce immediately became general; the corruption of manners reached a pitch unknown during the worst days of the monarchy; the vices of the marquises and countesses of the time of Louis XV descended to the shopkeepers and artisans of Paris. So indiscriminate did concubinage become, that, by a decree of the convention, bastards were declared entitled to an equal share of the succession with legitimate children. Mademoiselle Arnould, a celebrated comedian, expressed the public feeling when she called “marriage the sacrament of adultery.” The divorces in Paris, in the first three months of 1793, were 562, while the marriages were only 1,785—a proportion probably unexampled among mankind. The consequence soon became apparent. Before the era of the consulate, one half of the whole births in Paris were illegitimate.
A decree of the convention soon after suppressed all the public schools and colleges, even those of medicine and surgery.—Alison, Vol. III, page 24. 8. “He . . . shall divide the land for gain.” Verse 39. Reference is undoubtedly made here to the appropriation of the landed property of the church on the part of the state. This amounted to two fifths of the territory of the nation, and was sold to the general public to obtain revenues to carry forward the expensive government which then existed. “The confiscation of the land placed funds worth above £700,000,000 sterling ($3,500,000,000) at the disposal of the government, which they were enabled to squander with boundless profusion.” 9. The conflict with other nations at the time of the end. In this last leading specification which we shall notice we are again brought to the chronology of the prophecy. In verse 40, “at the time of the end,” the king of the south and the king of the north, the powers occupying these original divisions of the Grecian kingdom, are again brought to view, and these are represented as coming into active conflict with the French nation. It is no coincidence of history which enables us to find at that period France in active conflict with the powers represented by these terms. Its history presents a striking fulfilment of the prophetic outline. Its conflict with the king of the north and the king of the south must be left for future study. The Test for This Generation
By C. M. S.
We are now entering upon the time of this world’s greatest test. When Satan appeared to Christ in the wilderness, he reserved his greatest temptation for his last temptation. Having failed in his first two, surely he will succeed in the third. This is the supreme effort. Christ had come into the world to redeem it from the usurper, Satan. He had come prepared to lay down his life for that purpose. Now comes the tempter,—the very one out of whose hands Christ was to win this world and such of its inhabitants as were willing to become subjects of the heavenly kingdom. The tempter presents a scheme by which Christ could gain “all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them,” without the necessity of his cruel death upon the cross. “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me,” said the fallen cherub. Christ could have yielded, received what Satan promised, and then perished with9 Satan and his world. But Satan’s scheme failed; the redemption price was paid; and the earth and its inhabitants are redeemed from the hand of the enemy. Many will not avail themselves of their purchased rights, and so will be lost; but, nevertheless, the work has been done, and the world and the race have been redeemed. As that temptation in the matter of worship was Satan’s supreme test for Christ, we may expect to see a similar test brought upon the people of the last generation of this world. Christ, in his answer to Satan, has given this generation the proper ground upon which to stand: “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” This declaration of our Saviour in the time of his great temptation, is, to our generation, a warning which can not be too greatly emphasized. We know this by the fact that God’s last great message to this world—to the people of this last generation—is based upon that very matter, the matter of worship. Hear him: “Fear God, and give him glory; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made the heaven and the earth and sea and fountains of waters.” Rev. 14:7. Had we only this, we should be without excuse for yielding to the last powerful deception of the enemy; but the Lord does not leave it there. The warning continues (verses 9 and 10): “If any man worshipeth the beast and his image, and receiveth a mark on his forehead, or upon his hand, he also shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is prepared unmixed in the cup of his anger.” This is a solemn warning, and it is not given without cause. God foreknew that the most subtle deceptions the people of this world have ever experienced would be practised upon the world in the last days. He foreknew also that that deception would come over the question of worship. So he not only tells the world who should be worshiped, but who must not be worshiped, and declares the penalty that will be visited upon those who will not heed. In that last punishment there is no mixture of mercy; for all that mercy could do, it will have done, and those upon whom that punishment is inflicted are those who will go down into eternal death. God designates that power which will be demanding the people’s worship as “the beast.” Here, then, are two great powers whose principles are utterly at variance the one to the other, and both powers have to do with the worship of the people. God calls upon the people to worship him only, and declares that the penalty for doing otherwise is death. The adversary calls upon all the people to worship “the beast and his image,” and he declares his penalty for doing otherwise, and that penalty also is death. Beyond question, that “beast” power is the Papacy. An image to it is now in the process of making, and the process is well along toward completion; and the time is not distant when these will work as one, demanding the religious homage, the worship, of all the people, under the penalty which has been named. Plans are rapidly being consummated at the present moment which will result in that full union of church and state that will complete the specifications of “the image.” With that accomplished, the road is easy and the distance short to the accomplishment of all that the prophet predicts in this matter. The menacing voice of the “beast” is soon to be heard, and quickly will follow the sifting of the wheat from the chaff, the one for God’s garner, the other for the fire that will purify the earth. In the time of Christ’s greatest physical weakness came that great test, the greatest of Satan’s temptations. Just so in the time of this world’s greatest weakness and most unpreparedness comes this crowning temptation of the adversary. With “all deceiveableness of unrighteousness” we may expect to see that deception worked out and that demand insisted upon; but God has faithfully warned the world; and, when the great test comes, and the demand is made by that heaven-defying power for the worship of men, “see thou do it not;” for the most priceless interests of the soul are at stake. Notes on Important Eras of Fulfilling Prophecy
By W. A. S.
The Hand of God in History — No. 27
Notes on Important Eras of Fulfilling Prophecy
Providential Agencies for a Quick Work in Evangelizing the World
The steam railway came on apace with the steamship. While Fulton was completing his “Clermont,” he was also studying the steam-railway problem. A letter sent him by Chancellor Livingston reads so curiously now that it may well be given here as a memorial of times that shortly preceded this last generation:— DEAR SIR: I did not until yesterday receive yours of the twenty-fifth of February. Whether it has loitered on the way, I am at a loss to say. I had before read your very ingenious propositions as to the railway communication. I fear, however, upon mature reflection, that they will be liable to objections, and ultimately more expensive than a canal. They must be doubled, so as to prevent the danger of two such heavy bodies meeting. The walls upon which they are placed must be at least four feet below the surface and three feet above, and must be clamped with iron, and, even then, they would hardly sustain so heavy a weight as you propose, running at four miles an hour on wheels. As to wood, it would not last a week; they must be covered with iron, and that, too, very thick and strong. The means of stopping these carriages without a heavy shock, and of preventing them from running into each other (for there would be so many on the road at once) would be very difficult, and in case of accidental or necessary stops to take wood, water, and the like, many accidents would happen. The carriage for condensing water would be very troublesome. Upon the whole, I fear the expense would be much greater than that of a canal, without being so convenient. What men whose minds were awakening to the future possibilities had sometimes to suffer is difficult to realize now:— Henry Meigs, a member of the New York Legislature in 1817, a young man of fine talents, lost his influence, ruined his prospects, and came to be regarded as a proper subject for a strait-jacket because he expressed his belief that steam-carriages would be operated successfully on land.—C. F. Carter, “When Railroads Were New,” page 8. It was in 1825 that George Stephenson, of England, the pioneer of steam railways, was allowed to drive his first locomotive over the Stockton-Darlington coal-and-mineral tramway line, “with a signalman on horseback in advance.” That same locomotive is still to be seen on a platform in the Darlington station, rude and out of date, but a mechanism that revolutionized human locomotion over the earth. In 1829 Stephenson’s “Rocket” was built, the first high-speed locomotive, and next year the short Liverpool-Manchester line showed that the era of steam-railway passenger traffic was really at hand. M’Carthy says in his history:— The London and Birmingham Railway was opened through its whole length in 1838. The Liverpool and Preston line was opened the same year. The Liverpool and Birmingham had been opened the year before; the London and Croydon was opened the year after. The act for the transmission of mails by railways was passed in 1838. In the same year it was noted as an unparalleled, and to many an almost incredible, triumph of human energy and science over time and space, that a locomotive had been able to travel at a speed of thirty-seven miles an hour. June 18, 1842, the Railway Times, of England, recorded: “Her Majesty made her first railway trip on Monday last.” In 1843 Louis Philippe, king of France, proposed to take his family by rail from Paris to Rouen, on their journey to his summer château at Bizy, some distance beyond Rouen. But we are told:— The council of ministers, on being acquainted with His Majesty’s project, held a sitting, and came to the conclusion that this mode of traveling by railway was not sufficiently secure to admit of its being used by the king, and consequently His Majesty went to Bizy with post-horses.—W. M. Acworth, “Railways of England,” page 19. In the United States, which has witnessed so great a development of railway traffic, the first experiments with steam locomotives were made in 1829. In that year even the horse railway was a marvel. We read in Griffith’s “Annals of Baltimore,” published in 1833:—10 December 14 (1829), thirty-seven persons were drawn by one horse, in a car planned by Mr. Ross Winans, of New Jersey, on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, at a rate of about ten miles per hour, or as fast as the horse could trot or gallop; which was done in the presence, and to the astonishment, of a multitude of spectators, who, not having witnessed such an exhibition, could scarcely realize the effect. The Baltimore and Ohio was worked by horse-power until 1832. Now the change to steam was fast taking hold. Time could no longer wait. Strange, is it not, to read of New England, in 1842:— Dorchester, Mass., in a town meeting assembled in 1842, instructed its representatives in the legislature to “use their utmost endeavors to prevent, if possible, so great a calamity to our town as must be the location of any railroad through it.”—“When Railroads Were New,” page 11. The New York Herald, reviewing the beginnings of systematic railway development in America, says:— Cornelius Vanderbilt opened a railway office on Manhattan Island in 1844, and that was the beginning of the railway methods that have grown into such enormous proportions on the island to-day, with ninety-six railway corporations and all of their direct and indirect interests represented here. All of this means the interests of 280,000 miles of railway track, which cost $19,000,000,000, carrying 1,000,000,000 passengers and 1,700,000,000 tons of freight annually.—Jan. 22, 1911. The mileage mentioned is more than sufficient to girdle the globe ten times over; and think of the systems in all the continents, linking together city and country, and states and provinces. And note how the successful development of these wonder-working facilities dates from the time of 1844,—just before and after,—when the hour came that was to see the message of the “everlasting gospel” carried quickly to all nations, warning the world of the approaching end. We read of the beginnings of Scotland’s railways:— The coal-fields of Dalkeith were brought into communication with the capital [Edinburgh] by means of a railway, which continued to be drawn by horses until 1845.—Scottish Geog. Magazine, June, 1910. The times just following were the years of railway extension on the continent of Europe and in America. The iron trail was soon pushing along to open unbroken wildernesses to civilization and settlement. In 1862 Congress authorized the Union Pacific extension. May 10, 1869, at the head of Great Salt Lake, the line from California met the line from the Mississippi Valley. The last tie was laid—of laurel wood, silver-banded. The last spikes were driven, a golden one from California, one of silver from Nevada, and another of gold, silver, and iron, from Arizona; and, standing by the two locomotives facing one another, the workers saluted the first transcontinental railway running from ocean to ocean. Bret Harte, the poet of the old-time West, put into words the message of the two engines standing there:— “Pilots touching, head to head,
Facing in the single track,
Half a world behind each back.” The one from the East said:—
“Listen! Where the Atlantic beats
Shores of snow and summer heats;
Where the Indian autumn skies
Paint the woods with wampum dyes,
I have chased the flying sun.” The one from the West replied:—
“. . . I bring the East to you;
All the Orient, all Cathay,
Find through me the shortest way;
And the sun you follow here
Rises in my hemisphere.” Now the iron rails span the continents of Europe and Asia, and very soon the Cape to Cairo system will meet in the heart of the Dark Continent, with side lines running out to open all the great divisions of Africa’s territory. South American lines are crossing wildernesses and piercing mountain chains again and again. By steamship and steam railway almost any part of the world is more accessible to-day than remote parts of a single province were two generations ago. Where the narrow Isthmus of Suez blocked the way from sea to sea, the Suez Canal opened a new highway to the Orient; and now the Panama Canal comes to join the Atlantic and Pacific, shortening distances by thousands of miles in a single journey. Not so many years ago Jules Verne wrote a book, “Round the World in Eighty Days,” the point of his tale depending on exaggeration, and the impossibility of so rapid a journey. The romance of the early days of this generation is surpassed by the facts of the present. A Paris despatch of Aug. 26, 1911, said:— Andre Jaeger-Schmidt completed his round-the-world dash in the office of Excelsior, the newspaper he represents, at two minutes, nineteen and two-fifths seconds after nine o’clock this morning, setting a record for globe-circling of 39 days, 19 hours, 43 minutes, 37 4-5 seconds.—Washington Times. What is the meaning of this change in the history of human locomotion and world travel? It is a sudden development . Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, the scientist, says:— From the earliest historic, and even in prehistoric times, till the construction of our great railways in the second quarter of the present century [the nineteenth], there had been absolutely no change in the methods of human locomotion.—“The Wonderful Century,” page 7. Why, in that second quarter of the nineteenth century, should this change break abruptly upon the world?—In that same second quarter of the century the time of the prophecy came, when, as the prophet saw in vision, the message of the everlasting gospel was to be carried swiftly to every nation and tongue and people. Up to within a few years of the coming of the judgment hour, in 1844, men were traveling about the world just as Abraham did, or as men traveled in the days of ancient Babylon. For nearly six thousand years that was the history of man. But the time was drawing near when the closing gospel message was to be carried swiftly to all the world—and suddenly the whole history of man changed, so far as methods of swift locomotion are concerned. There came the steamship, the steam railway, the application of electricity to locomotion, and all the facilities that this generation has for swift communication with all the earth. It is the hand of God. This is the generation, according to the sure word of prophecy, in which the work of evangelizing all nations is to be done; and to this generation has come these material factors for hastening the work to completion. Truly, it is the marvelous working of God’s direct providence. When Israel went out of Egypt, the Lord opened the Red Sea before them. Where there was no way, the living God “made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over.” When the generation came in which the “everlasting gospel” was to be carried to every nation and tongue and people as a preparation for the coming of the Lord in power and glory, it was not sufficient that a way be provided through merely one little arm of a sea. The living God, the same who wrought in the ancient days, made a pathway over all the seas. “He hath made the deep as dry,
He hath smote for us a pathway
to the ends of all the earth.” It is the hand of the living God. The world is full of material evidences of the providential workings of the Lord of hosts in our day, preparing the way for the fulfilment of all that the “sure word of prophecy” has spoken concerning the finishing of the gospel work in the earth. W. A. S.