Continued from Chapter III. The Abrahamic Programme – Part III..

Nearly five centuries had passed since the days of Abraham when the next great crisis in the history of redemption occurred. It is associated with the name of Moses, one who is more notable as a founder than as a father. His “seed,” his own personal descendants, were of small account. The programme of the future given through him relates, not, as in the case of Abraham, to his own posterity, but to the people of Israel to whom by birth (though not by education) he belonged—the people whom he was commissioned by God to constitute and train into a nation, and to lead to the borders of their promised inheritance. It was when he had done this, when his long and marvellous life had reached its close, when he was just about to commit to Joshua the leadership of the people who were destined to become the world’s benefactors, that he was inspired to foretell their future—in that fourth section of the Divine programme of the world’s history which we have now to consider.

In order to its right appreciation, we must briefly review the interval which had elapsed since the age of the patriarchs treated in our last chapter. We must endeavour to realize the character of the times in which Moses’ lot was cast, and recall the main features of the romantic, heroic, and most extraordinary life which he himself lived—a life unmatched among those of the sons of men for the sublimity of its incidents, the striking contrasts of its experiences, and the everlasting importance of its results.

As regards the interval since the days of Abraham, the remark made as to the days of the patriarch himself, that it is not now a terra incognita (new or unexplored field of knowledge) to historians, is even more appropriate to this period. Authentic monumental and documentary evidence takes us back to B.C. 2200 or 2300 at least, and possibly even further; so that we can now supplement and illustrate the Biblical narrative, fill in the lacunae (missing part) which it leaves, and obtain from independent sources contemporary information as to the world’s condition during those early ages. It has given its own account of itself in the monumental records which it has left, and that account often throws interesting sidelights on Bible history.

Though Scripture confines itself mainly to the story of the chosen people, yet Israel at this period came in contact with a variety of other nations—with Amalekites, Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, and Canaanites, and above all Egyptians —among whom they dwelt for centuries, and their sojourn among whom had important results of various kinds. The better we know Israel’s surroundings in Egypt, the better we understand their subsequent conduct in the wilderness and in Canaan; and the more we appreciate Egypt’s own condition, the more we perceive the power and wisdom of God in the Exodus.

When Jacob first responded to Pharaoh’s invitation, and went down with his family to Egypt, the seed of Abraham had already multiplied considerably. Seventy sons, or male descendants of Jacob, are named, and there were doubtless a similar number of daughters. But the whole party was much larger, and numbered probably some thousands; so that it was a tribe rather than a family which in Joseph’s day took up their abode in the land of Goshen. The covenant with Abraham included his entire household, which, as we have seen, was very numerous. Jacob’s was probably quite as large, and his twelve sons being all married men with families, would also be at the heads of separate households.

The entire migration consequently must have numbered several thousand persons. That such a large party should receive a hearty welcome and liberal grants of land in a strange country would be surprising, and can be accounted for only by the popularity and power which Joseph had deservedly attained. After his death, the political position of the country secured them continued royal favour and protection for one or two centuries. We learn from the monuments that about this period Lower Egypt was, conquered by the strange dynasty known as the Hyksos, or shepherd-kings, a cruel, semi-barbarous, nomadic Asiatic race of rulers, which invaded and subjugated the land of Zoan, destroyed its cities and temples, massacred all the males of adult age, and reduced to slavery the women and children. Manetho gives a terrible, but perhaps exaggerated, account of their cruelty and barbarism; but the period of their occupation of the Delta (which is of uncertain length) was undoubtedly one of misery and confusion in the once mighty and united empire of Egypt. Native Pharaohs continued to govern the upper country from Thebes during the Hyksos period,— indeed, there is reason to think that several dynasties ruled sections of Egypt at this period; in any case, it was a time of great confusion.

The monumental remains of the dynasty of foreign rulers are very curious. They represent them with countenances wholly unlike the rest of the Pharaohs.¹ This dynasty was intensely hated by the Egyptians, who never lost the memory of their cruel tyrannies, and loaded them with the most ignominious epithets. Lower Egypt was probably in subjection to these detested foreigners during the greater part of Israel’s tarriance (sojourn) in Goshen. Before it was over, the Hyksos conquerors had been expelled and the native dynasties restored, so that the Pharaoh of the Exodus was a true Egyptian. As the Egyptians were never reconciled to the rule of the shepherd-kings (though the latter quickly imbibed and adopted the civilization of their subjects, just as the Manchu Tartar emperors imbibed the Chinese civilization after they had conquered China), the antipathy between them and their people kept the Hyksos monarchs in constant fear of revolution, and the presence of such an Asiatic pastoral tribe as that of the Israelites in the land of Goshen would be welcome and regarded as an advantage. They were sure to be friendly subjects, on whose sympathy dependence might be placed.

¹ “The visage, sooth to say, is singularly plebeian (relating to the common people of ancient Rome), and as unlike as possible in its type to the pleasant, ingenuous look of the earliest European-like Egyptians of the pyramid age, or the stately calmness or the attractive kindliness of the courtly twelfth dynasty. The noses are pitifully marred, the cheek-bones are high and prominent, the upper lips long and drawn downwards, the mouth sad, heavy, and anxious, the lower lip projecting beyond the chin, which is poor and ignoble, the eyes small but not near together; the whole aspect severe, but not without a sorrowful earnestness and force.

“’I stand astonished,’ says Dr. Ebers, ‘before these outlandish features, which in their rough earnestness form the sharpest contrast to the smiling heads of the Egyptian Colossi.’”—(“Life and Times of Abraham,” pp. 135-139.)

There were two kingdoms in Egypt in those days. The grand days of the old twelfth dynasty, in which Abraham visited the land, rich and peaceful, and under one of the later kings of which Joseph acted as beneficent regent, had passed away. The empire was divided; aliens were in possession of the Delta. The native monarchs, who continued to rule in the upper country, had not for some centuries the power to drive the invaders out, but were indeed seriously threatened by them at times even in their own dominions. Meanwhile, Israel was multiplying and prospering peacefully under the to them friendly government, occupying the whole fertile district of Goshen, none making them afraid.

But the Hyksos dynasty came to an end in the reign of Apepi (or Aphobis). In his later years this monarch attacked the native king of Thebes, engaging in a war in which he was completely defeated. He was pursued by Aahmes (or Amosis), the first king of the eighteenth dynasty, to Lower Egypt, and ultimately expelled from the country with the greater part, though apparently not all of his people. (There is a tribe still dwelling around Lake Menzalch, supposed from their countenance and from other indications to be descendants of the Hyksos.) His protegés the Israelites do not seem to have been called to engage in the war; their quiet pastoral pursuits probably disinclined them to take up arms; and thus not having made themselves obnoxious to the conquerors, they did not suffer either extermination or expulsion. The victorious Theban monarch left them in quiet possession of their pastures in Goshen. “But he was emphatically ‘a new king’; of him it might be said, ‘he arose up over’ Egypt; he was, in the true sense of the word, like the Norman William, a conqueror.

The name of Joseph, whether as a minister of the ejected dynasty or of one more ancient than that, would probably be unknown to him. Nor can there be any reasonable doubt as to the feelings with which a king in his position must have regarded the Israelites. They were there as the subjects, apparently the favoured subjects, of the expelled dynasty, under whom they retained undisturbed possession of the richest district of Egypt, commanding the eastern approach to the very heart of the land. The first point that would naturally strike him would be their number (Exod. i. 9), which, after the expulsion of his enemies, would bear an alarming proportion to the native population of the Delta. A prudent man under such circumstances would not be likely to provoke rebellion by proceeding to extremities, but nothing is more probable than that he should do just what Moses tells us the new king actually did—deal with them craftily, prevent their increase, utilise their labour, and cut off all communication with foreigners.

The most advantageous employment which would suggest itself would of course be the construction of strongly fortified depositories of provisions and arms near the eastern frontier. This, we learn, was precisely the work to which the Israelites were set, and the ruins of the very treasure-cities and fortresses which they erected under the lash of the taskmaster have recently been discovered. Pithom, in Egyptian Pa-chtum, was built just about this time, and the name means “the fortress of the foreigners or sojourners.” It is also well known that during the latter part of his reign, Aahmes was occupied in building and repairing the cities of Northern Egypt.

In an inscription lately deciphered, dated in his twenty-second year, certain “Fenchu” are stated to be employed in the transport of blocks of limestone from the quarries of Rufu (the Troja of Strabo) to Memphis and other cities. These Fenchu are unquestionably aliens, either mercenaries or forced labourers. According to Brugsch, the name means “bearers of the shepherd’s staff”; and he describes their occupation as precisely corresponding to that of the Israelites.

Their rapid multiplication would in any case have caused the land of Goshen to be too narrow for the Israelites after a time, and they would be forced to scatter among the great towns and cities where they could get employment, and to hire themselves out as labourers in the flourishing country.

Trhe very rapidity of their increase must have caused a certain difficulty in obtaining subsistence, and have driven them to engage in uncongenial occupations and to accept low wages; so that, even before their heaviest affliction began, their position in Egypt must have become a painful and humiliating one. The Egyptians would dislike them because of their connection with the shepherd-kings, and would treat them probably somewhat as the poor fellaheen are now treated by the Turks—with contempt and injustice, if not with cruelty. As in spite of their hard fate they continued to multiply.

The political problem began to look serious. Egypt’s dangers always came from the northeast at that time. On all her other borders she was safe, but the Isthmus of Suez was a weak point. Invasions of the Ilittites were especially feared, and it was evident in such a case that the Israelites would be likely to throw in their lot with the enemy, or else endeavour in the confusion of war to escape from Egypt altogether. It would be in their power to welcome Hittite invaders to the land of Goshen, and so to give them a position from which they could threaten the important cities of Tanis, Heliopolis, Bubastis, and Memphis. It was natural under these circumstances that the stern and selfish monarch should adopt the course he did—deprive the Israelites of freedom, and impress them into the royal service as forced labourers or slaves, especially as he had at the time an unlimited need of such for the erection of his new fortifications.

Then commenced the most severe sufferings of the period of oppression. To the heavy and unhealthy task of brickmaking a portion of the people were assigned; others to agricultural work, or, as it is called, “service in the field,” and this service was made more severe than it need have been, on purpose to break down the people both morally and physically. One great object of the king being to diminish the numbers of the Israelites in the interests of his own safety. Hence we read:—

“And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour: and they made their lives bitter with hard bondage in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field; all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour ” (Exod. i. 13, 14).

The traveller in Egypt is familiar with the sight of naked peasants working in a burning sun throughout the day, lifting buckets of water from the level of the river for the irrigation of the fields. They seem like mere substitutes for machines; and when this sort of work is done under the lash of the taskmaster, it is easy to conceive the misery inflicted. “It fills the mind with horror to think of the thousands of prisoners of war, or forced labourers and workmen, who must have died under the blows of the drivers, or under the weight of privations and toil too great for human endurance, in raising these innumerable creations.”

Men preferred death to the horrors of slavery. The monuments give us ample evidence of the terrible tyrannies and cruelties by means of which canals were dug, towns were built, and colossal structures erected. War was often undertaken for the mere object of procuring slaves, as still in Central Africa. Even the native population had to suffer, much more the Israelites.¹

¹ “A letter of the period is still extant, which tells how the tax-collector arrives (in his barge) at the wharf of the district, to receive the government share of the crops. His men, armed with clubs, are with him, and his negroes, with batons of palmwood, cry out, ‘Where’s your wheat?’ and there is no way of checking their exactions. If they are not satisfied, they seize the poor wretch, throw him on the ground, bind him, drag him off to the canal at hand, and throw him in, head first, the neighbours running off to take care of their own grain, and leaving the poor creature to his fate. His wife is bound, and she and his children carried off.”

Egypt in all ages has been marked by the oppression of its toiling thousands, and that oppression was probably never more severe than in the days of the Pharaohs who succeeded the shepherd-kings. All the details of Hebrew slavery are illustrated by the monuments, and the account in Exodus is strikingly confirmed by existing inscriptions.

“An old writing on the back of a papyrus, apparently of the date of Seti, the founder of the Nineteenth Dynasty, brings vividly before us a picture of the brick-making, which was part of the labours of the Hebrews. ‘Twelve masons,’ says the writer, ‘besides men who are brick-moulders in their towns, have been brought here to work at house-building. Let them make their number of bricks each day. They are not to relax their tasks at the new house. It is thus I obey the command given me by my master’ These twelve masons and these brick-makers, thus taken from their own towns to build this house, at a fixed rate of task-work daily, may not have been Hebrews, but their case illustrates exactly the details of Hebrew slavery given in Exodus.”—(Geikie’s “Hours with the Bible,” p. 83.)

The over-ruling providence of God, however, caused the Israelites to multiply, in spite even of severe oppression. “The more the Egyptians afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew, and the Egyptians were grieved because of the people of Israel.” (Exod. i, 12) Pharaoh then attempted infanticide on a large scale—at first by a crafty endeavour to corrupt the midwives who attended the Jewish mothers; and when this failed, he openly issued a proclamation commanding the drowning in the Nile of the male children, and probably represented it as a sacrifice required by the Nile god. It is not likely that this edict was ever rigorously enforced, but it led to the remarkable incident by which Moses became the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.

The court seems to have been residing at the time at Memphis, which was built on the Nile, near the site of the modern Cairo. The child Moses, who according to tradition was singularly beautiful, would, as he grew up there, be surrounded by every luxury. From his character in after-life we cannot doubt, however, that his own mother’s influence continued long after the period when as an infant he was placed in her care. Intercourse with her and with his family connections among the Hebrews would naturally be very influential in the formation of his character, and it is to it probably that we must attribute the fact that he grew up a worshipper of the true God instead of an idolater. From his mother’s lips he learned the traditions of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and his earliest and strongest bias would be towards monotheism. He would also thus early have been brought into sympathy with his own people. Had he become wholly Egyptianized in Pharaoh’s court, he would never have won their confidence as he did at a later period.

As a growing lad he would have every possible educational advantage. We are told that he was “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” and that wisdom was very considerable at the period, even according to modern notions. The library at Thebes, over whose gate was inscribed, “For the healing of the soul,” contained, it is said, twenty thousand books. The principal scene of Moses’ education, according to tradition, was the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, then the chief university of Egypt.

“Shady cloisters opened into lecture rooms for the students, and quiet houses for the professors and priests, in their many grades and offices; there being room for all in the corridors of the huge pile. Outside these, but still within the precincts, were the cottages of the temple servants, keepers of the sacred beasts, gate-keepers, litter-bearers, water-carriers, washermen, washerwomen, and cooks; and the rooms of the pastophoroi (priests) who prepared the incense and perfumes. The library and writing chambers had their host of scribes, who all lived in the temple buildings, and there were besides also, as members of this huge population, the officials of the counting-house, troops of singers, and last of all, the noisy multitude of the great temple school—the Eton or Harrow of the time—from which Moses would pass upwards to the lectures of the various faculties of the university.” (Geikie, p. 103.)

Poetry, astronomy, law, medicine, the philosophy of symbols, composition, trigonometry, mensuration, geometry —all were studied by the highly civilized Egyptians of the period. Astronomy had been cultivated to a considerable extent. Egyptian astronomers were acquainted with the obliquity of the ecliptic, and had determined an exact meridian line. Their knowledge was rather practical than theoretical, however—the result of observation, and not of science, or mathematical inquiry. The practice of law was also taught at Heliopolis, together with medicine.

His university course completed, the question came to Moses which must come to every young man sooner or later—the question on which the future of his race hung. What was he going to do with his life? He did not all at once come to the decision which has immortalized him as one of the heroes of faith in the eleventh of Hebrews. He did not “refuse to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter” at three or four and twenty, not indeed until he was forty years of age. How were the intervening years spent? In his position as a “Royal Highness” and a member of Pharaoh’s court, his choice was necessarily limited. Official life, which absorbed an immense number of the upper classes in Egypt, would have been trying to one who was known to belong to the despised Hebrew race; priestly life he could not of course contemplate; literature would have been unsuited to a man of his activity; and ordinary professional or mercantile occupations would have been below his dignity. Tradition is probably tight in its assertion that he selected the profession of arms and became a soldier. The Pharaohs were all practical soldiers, and many of them great warriors. Stephen speaks of Moses as having been not only learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, but “mighty in words and deeds.” (Acts vii. 22) How could he have been the latter save in the career of arms, and by distinguishing himself in war? How could he have marshalled the hosts of Israel as we know he did, without some military experience? The probability is that he spent many years in acquiring and exercising the military profession.

Josephus gives a full account of his subsequent conduct as leader of an expedition into Ethiopia, which was victorious and successful, and from which he returned with an established reputation. Such success would raise him high in the opinion of Egypt and of Pharaoh, and give him the opportunity, had he wished to embrace it, of securing official appointments which would be practical sinecures, and enable him to lead an easy and honoured life.

It would be at this crisis in his life that Moses had to take the great decision. Amid all his personal success and prosperity, he seems never to have forgotten that he was a Hebrew, and he seems moreover to have firmly and heartily believed what he had learned from his mother and his Hebrew friends, rather than what he had learned at Heliopolis and heard in the court circle to which he belonged. His faith showed itself by works. The Hebrews were the people of Jehovah, and they were suffering affliction; he had the honour of being one of the chosen seed of Abraham, and he had influence and power at court. Could he not help them? Might he not devote his life to alleviating their burdens? Any representations he might make would surely meet with attention! He would look into their condition, investigate their grievances, inspect the various districts in which they lived and worked, and try to be of use to his nation. He took this course; “he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens.”(Exod. ii, 11) In doing this, the misery of which he had heard no doubt from his family before—the misery which he had perhaps seen at a distance, the slavery which he may have contemplated in statistics on paper—became to him for the first time a terrible reality. He witnessed the oppression of his brethren, he heard their groans, he saw their tears, he watched the cruel oppressions to which they were subjected, he noted the lash of the taskmaster and the blood of the Hebrews; the iron entered his soul, and his faith, humanity, and piety all prompted him to a momentous and noble resolution. He “refused” to be called any longer the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, and chose rather “to suffer affliction with the people of God.”

“As an Egyptian, it was evident that he could do nothing. If he remained an Egyptian, if he clung to his court life, it he maintained his position as the adopted son of princess, he must be content to resign the hope of being ever his brethren’s deliverer (Acts vii. 25), or of in any way ameliorating their life. The alternative was for him to cast in his lot with them, to make himself one of them, to ingratiate himself with them, so that they should accept him as their leader, and then, when occasion offered, to put himself at their head, and break the Egyptian yoke from off their shoulders.

“The time had arrived, as it arrives to most of us in the course of our careers on earth, to make the great decision— for God and conscience, or against them. On the one side were all the temptations that the world and the flesh can offer: first, ‘the treasures of Egypt’ (Heb. xi. 26), not the mere gold and silver that would naturally fall to his lot, if he lived on as prince in the royal palace, but the luxury, the culture, the enjoyments of the court, dainty fare, and grand banquets, and the charms of music, painting, and statuary, and sports and hunting parties, fishing and fowling, the chase of the lion and the antelope, and soft sofas and luxurious couches, and rich apparel, and chain and collars, —proofs of the king’s goodwill, and all the outward signs which mark off those on whom society smiles from the crowd of those who are of small account; and, secondly, beyond all these, ‘the pleasures of sin for a season’ (Heb. xi. 25), the seductive charms of a court circle not over-strict in its morals, the feasts that turned into orgies, the sacred rites that ended in debauchery,—all these spread their tempting array before the lower nature of the prince, now in manhood’s full vigour, and drew him towards the life of ease, of pleasure, of softness.

On the other side were conscience, and honour, and natural affection, and patriotism, and that keen longing for the higher and the nobler life which is an essential part of all great natures, and makes itself felt in crises with an irresistible force. The path of self-sacrifice will always attract the heroic portion of humanity, and the choice of such men will always be ‘the choice of Hercules.’ ‘To scorn delights and live laborious days,’ is the instinctive resolve of every strong and noble character. . . . He quitted the palace, gave up whatever offices he held, returned probably to his father’s house, and therein once more took up his abode, so making it clear to all that he renounced his Egyptian citizenship, and would henceforth only be known as one of the outcast Hebrews, one of the oppressed, downtrodden nation which had for above forty years been suffering the bitterest and most cruel persecution.” (Rawlinson’s “ Moses : His Life and Times,” pp. 56, 57)

We may not linger on the incident of the rash and injudicious attempt to which the sight of injustice to one of his brethren aroused Moses. Oppression maketh a wise man mad, and it was in a fit of such temporary madness that he committed the homicide which led to his forty years’ exile in Midian. The evil was overruled for good; for that training in Midian was a most essential part of his preparation for the great task that lay before him.

“No region more favourable to the attainments of a lofty conception of the Almighty could have been found. Nature, by the want of water and the poverty of vegetation, is intensely simple, presenting no variety to dissipate and confuse the mind. The grand, sublimely silent mountain world around, with its bold, abrupt masses of granite, greenstone and porphyry, fills the spirit with a solemn earnestness which the wide horizon from most peaks and the wonderful purity of the air tend to heighten. . . . In a city there is no solitude: each is part of a great whole on which he acts, and by which he is himself affected. But the lonely wanderer in a district like Sinai is absolutely isolated from his fellows, and must fill up the void by his own identity. The present retires into the background, and the spirit, waked to intensity of life, finds no limits to its thoughts.

In a lofty spiritual nature like that of Moses, the solemn stillness of the mountains and the boundless sweep of the daily and nightly heavens would efface the thought of man, and fill the soul with the majesty of God. As he meditated on the possible deliverance of his people, the lonely vastness would raise him above anxious contrasts of their weakness compared with the power of Egypt, which might have paralysed resolution and bidden hope despair. What was man, whose days were a handbreadth, and whose foundation was in the dust, before the mighty Creator of heaven and earth—the Rock of Israel? . . .

His wanderings would make him acquainted with every valley, plain, gorge, hill, and mountain of the whole region; with its population, whether native or that of the Egyptian mines; with every spring and well, and with all the resources of every kind offered by any spot; an education of supreme importance towards fitting him to guide his race, when rescued from Egypt, to the safe shelter and holy sanctuaries of this predestined scene of their long encampment. Still more, in those calm years every problem to be solved in the organization of a people would rise successively in his mind and find its solution; and, above all, his own soul must have been disciplined and purified, by isolation from the world, and closer and more continual communion with God.” (Geikie, pp. 111-114)

Whether, during his forty years in Midian, Moses ever contemplated returning to Egypt as Israel’s deliverer, we know not. It seems likely, yet there is no intimation of the fact; and the call of God, when it came to him, took him apparently by surprise, and found him unprepared and almost unwilling for the work of confronting Pharaoh, and demanding Israel’s liberation. Yet he must often have pondered over their miserable position, and probably also over the Abrahamic predictions and prophecies; and the quiet years of his exile must have been in some respects irksome ones to the active, richly endowed, and highly educated man, accustomed to the court and the camp, and the busy life and refined society of Egypt.

An old Egyptian story of a somewhat similar character, that of Saneha, exists still, which ended very differently from that of Moses. This fugitive received hospitality from the chief of Edom, who gave him his daughter to wife. But though Saneha prospered greatly in his exile, and children were born to him, yet he could find no rest away from Egypt. He was miserable. An irresistible longing to return to his native land possessed him, and at last he manages so to do, and is restored to his place in Pharaoh’s court.(This story is assigned to the twelfth or thirteenth dynasty. See “Records of the Past,” vol. vi. pp. 135-150.)

The fact that Moses was the Divinely selected deliverer of Israel shows that he not only had the faith and natural and acquired talents which fitted him for the great work which he accomplished, but that God saw that he had also the heart for it—the deep, tender sympathy and compassion which would be needed to save such a people from such a position, and the self-sacrificing devotedness which would make him willing to risk his life for their sakes. Though modestly and even reprehensibly reluctant to undertake the great task, Moses was not unwilling. The gracious God of Israel saw that only his hope and courage needed strengthening, and promise after promise of eventual success was given for the purpose. He was assured that the time was come for the fulfilment of the Abrahamic covenant,(Gen, xv. 13-16) as to the deliverance of his people from Egyptian bondage, and that he was privileged to be chosen as the instrument by whose means the Almighty would effect the long-predicted purpose.

“Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth My people the children of Israel out of Egypt.” (Exod. iii. 10)

Miracle-working power was committed to him as a credential of his Divine commission, and, thus endowed, he returned to the Nile valley, whence forty years before he had fled for his life.

And now he was to enter on an enterprise so gigantic that it may well have appalled him! What was it? To require and compel a proud, selfish, self-willed, and mighty autocrat —one leading passion of whose life was to be the greatest of Egyptian builders—to surrender for ever the hundreds of thousands of slaves by whose forced labours only could the great works he had in hand be completed; it was to induce, moreover, a poor, degraded, spirit-broken horde of slaves to rise and seek, at the risk of their lives, liberty and independence; to lead them with their wives and little ones, their flocks and herds, to forsake the rich and fertile land in which they had dwelt for centuries, and exchange it for a wandering life in the wilderness; and this at the bidding of the God they had well-nigh forgotten, and for the sake of a faith they had forsaken; it was to lead these quiet pastoral people, who had never learned the art of war, to the conquest of Canaan; to recover them from the ignorance and idolatry into which they had sunk to a knowledge of Jehovah, and to train and fit them to take their place as a nation selected to be His witnesses in the world.

In order to all this, Moses himself had, in the first place, to break up the home associations of forty years, and to return to a land where his life was forfeited. Nothing less than a Divine revelation,—nothing less than the burning bush, and the words which fell upon his ear from amid its sacred flames,—could have nerved the shepherd of Midian to address himself bravely to the task set before him, and to adhere to it with dauntless resolution for forty long years. It was no youthful enthusiasm which sustained this servant of God. He was already eighty years of age when he entered on his life-work.

On his return journey to Egypt he is met by his brother Aaron, from whom he had for forty years been parted. Had they corresponded from time to time through the caravans constantly passing from Sinai to Egypt and back? Had Aaron been seeking to revive Israel’s faith in Jehovah, to keep in mind the Abrahamic covenant, and to impress on the minds of the people that the time of the promise drew near? It seems likely—at any rate, he had no difficulty in putting himself in communication with the people. A kind of tribal organization under elders still existed among the Hebrews, even at the lowest point of their social degradation. “Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the children of Israel;” and the people believed when they heard that Jehovah had visited Israel, and bowed the head and worshipped.

Then commenced the memorable struggle between the slaves and their oppressors, between the idol-worshipping king and the servants of the true God, ending in the first great national emancipation on record, and in such a vindication of the might and majesty of Jehovah as has never been forgotten from that day to this. It afforded also a lesson of the care of God for His people, and His power to deliver them, which could not be equalled, and which is referred to in all the after-pages of their history. We must not here retrace the thrilling and tragic episodes of the ever memorable Exodus, but we may say that the Bible account of it is so full of local colouring and of harmonies with the time at which it occurred, that its exactitude and truthfulness are self-evident.

The Pharaohs, accustomed themselves to be worshipped and regarded as of superhuman power, were likely to resent commands issued as by a superior. But the miracles which accompanied the mission of Moses left their rebellion without excuse. Scripture lays the scene of the plagues in Zoan: “Marvellous things did He in the sight of their fathers, in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan. . . . He wrought His signs in Egypt, His wonders in the field of Zoan.” Those plagues had a double object: to manifest to Pharaoh and all Egypt the superiority of the true God over all their false deities, His absolute and almighty power; and to teach Israel not this only, but the covenant relation which Jehovah graciously sustained to them, the reality of His merciful interference on their behalf, and His present purpose to deliver them and lead them to their long-promised inheritance.

The plagues were very specially directed against the idolatry of Egypt. The first—turning the Nile to blood—was conspicuously so, for eminent among the idols of the land of Ham was its one all-important river. A long and elaborate hymn (as old as the days of Moses) is still preserved, in which this god was praised in the chant. It was the great Osiris of Egypt, and the turning of its waters to blood was a public manifestation of the utter folly of the national creature-worship.¹

The first and last verses are as follows:—

“Hail to thee, O Nile!
Thou who hast revealed thyself to this land,
Coming in peace, to give life to Egypt!
Hidden god! who bringest what is dark to light,
As is always thy delight !
* * * * *

O Nile, hymns are sung to thee on the harp;
Offerings are made to thee; oxen are slain to thee;
Great festivals are kept for thee; fowls are sacrificed to thee
Incense ascends unto heaven:
Oxen, bulls, fowls, are burned!
Mortals, extol him! and ye cycle of gods!
His Son (the Pharaoh) is made Lord of all,
To enlighten all Egypt.
Shine forth, shine forth, O Nile, shine forth!

Continued in Chapter IV. The Mosaic Programme – Part II.

All sections of The Divine Programme of The World’s History By H. Grattan Guinness

Enlightening quotes from Abraham Lincoln about the American Civil war according to “Fifty Years in the Church of Rome.” by Charles Chiniquy.

I will be forever grateful for the warning words you have addressed to me about the dangers ahead to my life, from Rome. I know they are not imaginary dangers. If I were fighting against a Protestant South, as a nation, there would be no danger of assassination. The nations who read the Bible fight bravely on the battlefield, but they do not assassinate their enemies. The pope and the Jesuits, with their infernal inquisition, are the only organized powers in the world which have recourse to the dagger of the assassin to murder those who they cannot convince with their arguments or conquer with the sword.

Unfortunately, I feel more and more every day that it is not against the Americans of the South, alone, I am fighting, it is more against the pope of Rome, his perfidious Jesuits and their blind and bloodthirsty slaves. As long as they hope to conquer the North, they will spare me; but the day we route their armies, take their cities and force them to submit, then, it is my impression that the Jesuits, who are the principal rulers of the South, will do what they have almost invariably done in the past. The dagger or the pistol will do what the strong hands of the warriors could not achieve. This civil war seems to be nothing but a political affair to those who do not see, as I do, the secret springs of that terrible drama. But it is more a religious than a civil war. It is Rome who wants to rule and degrade the North, as she has ruled and degraded the South, from the very day of its discovery. There are only very few of the Southern leaders who are not more or less under the influence of the Jesuits through their wives, family relations, and their friends. Several members of the family of Jeff Davis belong to the Church of Rome….

But it is very certain that if the American people could learn what I know of the fierce hatred of the priests of Rome against our institutions, our schools, our most sacred rights, and our so dearly bought liberties, they would drive them away tomorrow from among us, or they would shoot them as traitors. But you are the only one to whom I reveal these sad secrets for I know that you learned them before me. The history of these last thousand years tells us that wherever the Church of Rome is not a dagger to pierce the bosom of a free nation, she is a stone to her neck, to paralyze her, and prevent her advance in the ways of civilization, science, intelligence, happiness and liberty. — Ibid. pp. 294, 295.

This war would never have been possible without the sinister influence of the Jesuits. We owe it to popery that we now see our land reddened with the blood of her noblest sons…. I pity the priests, the bishops and the monks of Rome in the United States when the people realize that they are, in great part, responsible for the tears and the bloodshed in this war. — Ibid. pp. 296,297.

You are perfectly correct when you say it was to detach the Roman Catholics who have enrolled themselves in our army. Since the publication of that [the pope’s] letter, a great number of them have deserted their banners and turned traitor…. It is true also, that Meade has remained with us, and gained the bloody battle of Gettysburg. But how could he lose it, when he was surrounded by such heroes as Howard, Reynolds, Buford, Wadsworth, Cutler, Slocum, Sickles, Hancock, Barnes, etc. But it is evident that his Romanism superceded his patriotism after the battle. He let the army of Lee escape when he could easily have cut his retreat and forced him to surrender after losing nearly half of his soldiers in the last three days carnage.

When Meade was to order the pursuit after the battle, a stranger came in haste to the headquarters, and that stranger was a disguised Jesuit. After ten minutes conversation with him, Meade made such arrangements for the pursuit of the enemy that he escaped almost untouched with the loss of only two guns! — Ibid. p. 298.

The common people see and hear the big, noisy wheels of the Southern Confederacy’s cars: they call them Jeff Davis, Lee, Toombs, Beauregard, Semmes, etc., and they honestly think they are the motive power, the first cause of our troubles. But this is a mistake. The true motive power is secreted behind the thick walls of the Vatican, the colleges and schools of the Jesuits, the convents of the nuns and the confessional boxes of Rome. — Ibid. p. 305.

Continued from Chapter III. The Abrahamic Programme – Part II..

We noted, when considering the Noahic programme, the prediction that religious supremacy would run in the race of Shem. The call of his descendant Abraham and the selection of his seed to be the special custodians of the knowledge of the true God, and thus in the highest sense a blessing to all nations, confirmed this previous prediction; but the fact that such a call and such a remarkable providential training as that given to the patriarchs was needful to the preservation of true religion in the earth, even in the race of Shem, is most suggestive, and its bearings must in passing be indicated.

Modern infidelity has among its other theories started one which is virtually an endeavour to account for the widespread and beneficial influence of the faith of Abraham apart from any supernatural influence. It is argued by Renan and others that the Shemites, or Semitic races, have “a natural genius” for and tendency to monotheism, and that therefore the bud of Judaism, with its flower of Christianity, grew naturally on this stock. No assertion could well be more contrary to fact, nor could any theory be more utterly baseless. As in the case of many other rationalistic schemes, history must be blotted out or ignored before it can be received.

We have already mentioned that with the earliest dawn of monumental records gross idolatry is found already prevailing, not only among the Hamitic, but equally among the Semitic peoples of Babylonia, Mesopotamia, Elam, Chaldea, and Egypt.¹

¹ “Among the deities they worshipped were Moloch, Nisroch, Rimmon, Necho, Dagon, Ashtaroth, Baal-Chemosh, Milcom, Adrammelech, . . . Nergal, the sun, the moon, the planets, and all the host of heaven.”— (Max Muller: “Chips from a German Workshop,” vol. i. p. 345.)

If there was any difference, the Shemites would seem almost to have exceeded. Professor Ebrard, in his “ Apologetik,” has a section which gives A.D.e proof of this. He says:—

“Those Euphrates-Semites must have been given over to a spirit of confusion out of the abyss, as they declared everything which the conscience forbids and condemns as infamous and horrible to be precisely that which belonged to the service of the Godhead.”

And again:

“It was no gradual declension from A.D.rer knowledge of God to a knowledge less clear, as with the Persians, Indians, Greeks, and Egyptians. The rise of this religion—the primitive Semitic heathenism—presupposes a willful repetition of the original fall, a fall out of a state of simple sinfulness into a diabolic and demoniac hardness of heart, an accursed revolt against both God and the conscience.”

Even Jews, when their faith is undermined by rationalism, take the ground that they arrived “intuitively in A.D.ehistoric age at” the sublime conception of “the unity of the creative force ”—in other words, at a knowledge of the one living and true God—“ by the genius of the race.”¹ So far from this, we see that Terah and his family had fallen into idolatry, and that the Semitic people who were their contemporaries were distinguished, as Professor Zockler says, by “a natural inclination to a gross, sensual, idolatrous superstition, and a strong tendency to polytheism, instead of the monotheistic instinct which is claimed for them.”

¹ See article on “The Jewish Problem” in the Century Magazine for February, 1883, p. 609.

History moreover shows us that the Jews themselves, in spite of all the numerous Divine interventions recorded in their annals, in violation of their own covenant and in defiance of their own law, and even in face of the living voices of the prophets, were so strongly and so persistently inclined to idolatry that, right down to the day of the captivity of the land, they persisted in returning at intervals to debasing, licentious, and cruel idolatry, to the obscene worship of “the queen of heaven” or the unnatural sacrifices to Moloch. Nothing can be more certain than that during the whole thirteen hundred years from the call of Abram to the Babylonian captivity, the Israelites themselves were constantly falling back into the idolatry from which they had been rescued, and that it was only by frequently renewed Divine intervention, by the severest providential chastenings, and by the earnest remonstrances of inspired prophets, that the Jews were at last cured of the inveterate Semitic tendency to polytheism.

Of their ultimate national testimony against idolatry, no explanation which is purely natural can be accepted, or made to fit with the acknowledged facts of the case. The Divine choice of Abraham’s seed to be A.D.culiar people, to be the medium of conveying to the world the knowledge of the true God, is the only account which can honestly be given of the monotheism of the Jewish people amid the gross polytheism of the Gentiles.

II. As to the second point of the prediction—the fortunes of Ishmael and his descendants—three points especially were stated:

1. That God would make him a great nation.

2. That there should be a marked antagonism between it and other nations; that, in contrast to the seed of Isaac, which should be a blessing to the world, the seed of Ishmael would be a foe to all other peoples, and other peoples to it.

3. That Ishmael should “dwell in the presence of his brethren,” or continue to enjoy an independent existence in spite of the constant opposition of neighbouring nations.

Though not the promised seed, Ishmael was a son of Abraham and a descendant of Shem, and was to inherit to some extent the blessing of his forefathers. His mother Hagar, however, was an Egyptian, a descendant of Cush, and therefore a Hamite, and she is an early illustration of the fulfilment of the Noahic prediction about the servitude of the descendants of Ham to their brethren. She was a bondwoman or slave in the family of Abraham, and her child was consequently a slave also; he was the offspring, not of faith and Divine power, but of nature. He was, however, his father’s firstborn, and shared in Abraham’s affection and prayers. He was promised A.D.rt in the blessing of multiplication and increase common to all Abraham’s seed, and that he should partake to some extent of the distinction of Abraham’s children; but his lot was in other respects to be markedly contrasted to theirs.

He was to be the father of twelve princes, and ultimately to “become”—not beget—a great nation. To his mother it had been predicted that while the posterity of her son should not be numbered for multitude, he would always be a wild man, his hand against every man and every man’s hand against him. Yet he was to continue to “dwell in the presence of his brethren.” This portrait of the unborn race is drawn with such a bold individuality of touch that the race itself must be easy of recognition. The expression employed in the original to characterize Ishmael’s seed is stronger than that in our version. He was to be “a wild ass of a man,”— the race would be a wild, lawless, independent one, impatient of restraint, inclined to run free in the wilderness, and to live by plunder and robbery, “his hand against every man,” leading to the natural result that every man’s hand would be against him. Ishmael’s seed, unlike Israel, would not be a blessing in the earth, but rather a woe to mankind, ever warring and warred against, yet inextinguishable as the Jews themselves, and continuing to the end a distinct people.

Has this remarkable prediction been falsified by the course of history, or has it been, on the other hand, strikingly fulfilled? The Arabs are almost as much a living miracle as the Jews themselves. To the letter, and in the most wonderful manner, and for thousands of years in succession, this part of the programme has been realized on the stage of history.

Did Ishmael beget twelve princes? 1 Chronicles 1:29-31 gives the answer: “The firstborn of Ishmael, Nebaioth; then Kedar, and Adbeel, and Mibsam, Mishma, and Dumah, Massa, Hadad, and Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah. These are the sons of Ishmael.”

Did these sons become princes? Genesis 25:16 gives the answer: “These are the sons of Ishmael, and these are their names, by their towns, and by their castles; twelve princes according to their nations.” It is added that they occupied the country “between Havilah and Shur;” that is, districts in Arabia between Egypt and Assyria.¹ Nebajoth (“heights”), the eldest son of Ishmael, was the father of the Nebathians, A.D.ople of Northern Arabia who lived by merchandise and rapine (plunder), according to Diodorus. Kedar (“black skin”) was the father of the Cedric, characterized as good bowmen, dwelling between ArabiA.D.trea and Babylon. Dumah (‘silence ”) dwelt on the edge of the Assyrian desert. Hadad was father of the Arabs of Yemen; Tema of the tribes on the Persian Gulf; and so on.

¹ The Arabian peninsula had been originally peopled by the descendants of Joktan, the son of Heber, of the posterity of Shem, and certain Cushite (Hamitic) races had also settled there. No histories but only certain fabulous traditions of these “old Arab” races are available. The “pure Arabs” are Joktan’s descendants, and the “mixed Arabs” are the children of Ishmael. Mohammed traced his own descent from the marriage of Ishmael with Modad, a daughter of the king of Hejaz. The Arabs regard this branch of their pedigree as the most important, and boast as much as the Jews that they are “children of Abraham.” The Nabathean Arabs, under a race of native princes, long preserved a distinct name as a nation, and maintained their independence against the hosts of Egypt and Ethiopia, of the Jews, the Assyrians, the Greeks, and the Romans, all of whom in turn tried in vain to subdue them. (See Chrichton’s “Arabia and its People.”)

Archaeology has identified the early history of most of these twelve tribes. The expression “towns and castles” would be better translated by “unwalled encA.D.ents and fortified keeps.” They were nomadic tribes, and lived to a large extent by rapine, though possessed of abundant flocks and addicted to some extent to merchandise. They are often alluded to in later scriptures. “The mighty men of Kedar” and the “glory of Kedar” are expressions used by Isaiah, and Ezekiel speaks of “the princes of Kedar.” Strabo and other ancient writers distinctly connect the origin of the Arabian “Pylachs,” or heads of tribes, with Hagar and Ishmael. Psalm 83:6 speaks of “the tabernacles of the Ishmaelites and the Hagarenes,” or descendants of Hagar. The promise of rapid multiplication was conspicuously fulfilled, for already in the days of Jacob we read of a company of Ishmaelites, coming from Gilead, trading with camels to Egypt, where they carried spicery, balm, and myrrh. (See Gen. xxxvii. 27-36.)

The posterity of Abraham by his concubine Keturah, especially through his sons Medan and Midian, fraternized and united to some extent with the sons of Ishmael, so that in this passage the names of Ishmaelites and Midianites are used interchangeably. (See also Jud. viii. 12 and 24.)

The Idumeans and Amalekites, or descendants of Isaac’s son Esau, also mingled with the Ishmaelites, and were comprised under the common name “the children of the East.” In the days of Gideon these Ishmaelites were so numerous that they are described as “lying in the valley, like grasshoppers for multitude, their camels without number, as the sand by the seaside for multitude” (Jud. vii. 12). Mention is made of the hosts of the “children of the East,” and of one hundred and twenty thousand of their warriors falling in one battle. These “children of the East” were all, as Josephus distinctly says, regarded as Ishmaelites, though Arabs descended from the younger sons of Abraham were numbered among them, as well as the Edomites.

The subsequent history of the Arab tribes and peoples is most remarkable. They have retained their freedom from the first day until now. Neither the Egyptians nor any of the four great empires were ever able to subdue them. At one time they themselves subdued the larger part of the then known world, but never have they been subdued to any other power. Sesostris, the great king of Egypt, was obliged to erect a wall to secure Egypt from the incursions of the Arabs, whom he had endeavoured in vain to conquer. They remained enemies to the Egyptians rather than subjects, in spite of all his efforts, and assisted the Assyrians in overturning the kingdom, lending their aid freely and independently.

When the Persian Cyrus and his followers became the great conquerors of the East, they never could subdue Ishmael’s descendants. Herodotus says: “The Arabs were never reduced by the Persians to the condition of subjects, but were considered by them as friends, and opened to them A.D.ssage into Egypt, which without the assistance and permission of the Arabs would have been utterly impracticable.” All other countries paid tribute to the Persians, but the Arabian territories were free.

When Alexander the Great overturned the Persian empire and conquered Asia, the Arabs alone refused to make submission or send ambassadors to acknowledge the victor; they simply took no notice of him. This so angered Alexander that he was meditating a terrible expedition against them, the preparations for which showed what he thought of their prowess, when death put a stop to all his schemes and saved the Arabians from his onslaught.

Diodorus Siculus mentions that Antigonus, one of Alexander’s successors, made two attempts to subjugate the Arabians, both of which were defeated; and he adds:

“Neither the Assyrians formerly nor the kings of the Medes and Persians, nor yet of the Macedonians, were able to subdue them; nay, though they led many and great forces against them, yet they could not accomplish their attempts.”

They sometimes joined the Assyrians and sometimes the Egyptians, sometimes helped the Jews, and at others plundered them; but throughout their history they always acted as a free and independent people, who cared neither for the favour nor for the opposition of any other nation.

But the Romans surely reduced them to subjection? No, not even they! Pompey, though he conquered three-quarters of the world, failed to subdue Arabia. He obtained some victories there, but was obliged to retire before he had gained any solid footing, and directly he was gone the Arabs undertook reprisals into the Roman provinces. One of the generals of Augustus penetrated farther into the country, firmly resolved to subdue it; but a strange and unaccountable sickness broke out among his troops, so that after two years he was glad to escape with the small remainder of his army.

Trajan tried and failed to subdue Arabia, and the historian Dion gives a strange account of his reason for raising the siege of the city of the Hagarenes: “His soldiers were repelled by lightnings, thunderings, hail and whirlwinds, and other prodigies; they were constantly so repelled, as often as they renewed their assaults. At the same time great swarms of flies infested his cA.D. and he was at last forced to retire with disgrace into his own dominions,”

Eighty years later the Emperor Severus twice besieged the same city with a numerous army and a formidable train of military engines, but he had no better success than Trajan. No subsequent Roman emperor attempted the task, and the Arabs continued their incursions into Syria and their depredations in other Roman provinces with absolute impunity.

Then came the most remarkable phase of Arabian history, the time when Ishmael beyond all doubt became “a great nation”—so great as to make the world tremble. After the rise of Mohammed in Arabia, in A.D. 622, and the establishment of his monotheistic faith in place of the idolatry which was at that time beginning to prevail among the Arabians, they, under the better known name of Saracens, emerging from their desert home, conquered with the most amazing rapidity a vast extent both of Asiatic and European territory. They overran in the course of a few years more countries and subdued more nations than the Romans did in the course of centuries, and then for three hundred years they were not only free and independent of all other kingdoms, but they were themselves masters of the most important part of the earth. Their dominion extended from the walls of China to the Atlantic Ocean, and from the Sahara to the Pyrenees; and in the exercise of this wide rule they exhibited still their characteristic peculiarities. Nowhere did they reign as conquerors accepted and welcomed by other peoples, but always as tyrants who exacted either conversion to their faith and confession of their false creed, or tribute and slavery. They were a “woe” to the corrupt Christian countries they overran.

After this period, when the flood of their invasion subsided and they were once more confined within the limits of Arabia, they still maintained their independence. Tartars, Mamelukes, and Turks alike failed to subjugate them. The rest of Asia might fall under Napoleon-like conquerors, but they remained free, and as usual employed their liberty for the injury of their neighbours. The Turks even in the height of their power were obliged to pay them a tribute for the protection of the pilgrims to Mecca, and do so still. No traveller in the East has failed to be struck with the marvellous coincidences still observable between the Bedaween of the desert and the Scripture predictions as to the children of Ishmael.

It should be borne in mind that those predictions were given before Hagar’s child was born, and when no human wisdom could possibly have foreseen either his character or that of his descendants. It should be remembered also that a similar identity of characteristics extending over thousands of years cannot be traced in the history of any other nation if we except the Jews. The modern Italians are not what the old Romans were, and the English of to-day are utterly unlike the Britons of a thousand years age.

As a rule, men and manners change with the lapse of ages, but the Arabians maintain still in our nineteenth century the family and national characteristics predicted four thousand years ago. Nor can this be accounted for by the fact that they dwell in Arabia, isolated to some extent from the rest of mankind. They have trafficked with the neighbouring nations from the earliest days. When they overran the earth by their conquests, they possessed most of the learning that was then in the world, and did some service to mankind in extending and diffusing it; but they remained then, and remain still, the same fierce, intractable people, like their father Ishmael, and unlike all other nations.

Ishmael was circumcised at thirteen, and they still observe the Abrahamic ordinance at the same age; they still live in tents as he did, still trade with Egypt as he did, and exist in clans and tribes and in a state of warfare and antagonism with all their brethren precisely as foretold. How, apart from Divine inspiration, can these things have been foreseen? And how, apart from the providential power of God, can such a nation have been maintained in such a condition for four thousand years? Is not this the finger of God ?

III. The third point of the Abrahamic programme was that “all the nations of the earth,” and even “all the families” of the earth, should be blessed through Abraham’s seed. Has this prediction been fulfilled?

For answer let us glance at the world of A.D. 1888. We will divide all its nations and families into two parts, including in the one all those which have directly or indirectly been brought under the influence of his seed, and on the other hand all those which have not. The prophecy, it must be remembered, is only partially fulfilled at present. Successive ages as they have rolled away have been evermore fulfilling it, but not until “the dispensation of the fulness of times” will it be wholly accomplished. But the fulfilment has already gone quite far enough to afford the most ample proof of the inspiration of the prophetic programme.

How are we to decide which of earth’s nations have been influenced by Abraham’s seed, and which have not? The question is easily answered. All the monotheism in the world is distinctly traceable to Abraham. Wherever we find a nation or a family which worships the one living and true God, there we find a nation and a family which has been blessed through the patriarch and his seed. Hence not Jews only, but all professing Christian nations and the entire Mohammedan world as well, must form our first group of nations; while the second will consist of all those professing polytheistic, pantheistic, and other forms of religion, as well as those which have none; including thus all idolaters, and all the fetish and devil worshippers of every kind. All the theistic religions that have ever existed are distinctly and historically connected with the Old and New Testaments: the ancient forms with the Jewish Scriptures, and the more modern ones with the Christian writings of later date. Hence we may say that, but for the influence of Abraham’s seed, the world this day would have been without any true knowledge of the existence and moral government of one personal God, creator and judge of all. The influence which this knowledge has had on the development of the human race is the measure of the beneficial influence exerted among the families of the earth through the seed of Abraham. We will therefore call the two groups into which we proceed to divide the nations of the earth,the Abrahamic and the non-Abrahamic respectively.

In the Abrahamic group we should have some 600 millions of the human race who are monotheists, and in the second a rather larger number, about 800 millions, who have no knowledge of Abraham nor of his God, but are still polytheists and, like the old Chaldeans from whose midst he was called out, idolaters. Now, in the first place, is it not a very wonderful fact that nearly half the human race have actually already been influenced by Abraham’s seed and Abraham’s faith—that 600 millions of mankind know his name and revere his character, and hold sacred the cave of Machpelah at Hebron where rest his remains? But what of the blessedness of this half of humanity compared with that of the larger half which has not yet come under the influence of Abraham and his seed? By blessedness we at present mean only the evident outward manifestations of happiness, prosperity, and hopeful prospects for the future; that mental illumination and physical well-being which we include in the one comprehensive expression, progressive civilization.

Which of the two halves of humanity is in these senses the most “blessed”? In the monotheistic or Abrahamic group we should have the English, Scotch and Irish, the Norwegians, Swedes and Danes, the Dutch, Belgian and French, the Spaniards, Portuguese and Italians, the Swiss, Austrians and Greeks, the Germans, Poles and Russians; the hundred millions of similar races in America, Africa and Australia, and seven millions of Christianized Negroes in the United States and those in the West Indies, the eight millions of Jews scattered throughout the world; the Eastern Christians of the Armenian, Nestorian, Maronite and Coptic Churches of Syria and Egypt, and in addition to these the entire Mohammedan world numbering 170 millions, and including Arabs, Sikhs, Persians, Turks, Egyptians, Moors and Berbers, extending from India and Arabia to the Atlantic; together with all the converts from heathenism gathered in of late years through missionary efforts.

In the other group, the non-Abrahamic or polytheistic group, we should have such families and nations as the Japanese and Chinese, including the black hairy Ainus of the former, and the wild Shan and Miautse tribes of the latter; the dark Buddhistic Mongols, Tibetans, and Tartars, the wild and cruel Calmucs and Kurds, the superstitious and caste-ridden Tamils, Telegus and Bengalis, the Singhalese, Burmans and Siamese, the wretched and degraded Gonds, Bhils and Sauthals of India; the Malays and Papuans, the blood-thirsty Dyaks of Borneo and the animal-like native Australians; the (heathen) Malagasy, the fierce Zulus and naked Kaffirs, the warlike Griquas and Matabele, the Hottentots and Namaquas, the monkey-like Bushmen of the Kalihari desert, who have lost almost the semblance of humanity; the countless Bantu tribes and nations of Central Africa, with their cannibalism, slavery, and cruel inter-tribal warfare; the Ashanti and Fanti nations of West Africa; Dinka, Monbutto and other heathen nations of the Sudan; the Somali, Gallas and Masai of East Africa; together with the some sixteen millions of degraded and fast dying out American Indians, the Patagonians and the Terra del Fuegians, the cannibals of the Pacific Islands, and the Maori of New Zealand.

We say nothing of the past or of the future, but these two lists recall roughly the world of the nineteenth century. Can any one hesitate for a single moment in deciding as to which of these two groups of the nations of the earth is the “blessed” or happy one? There are degrees of light in the first, and degrees of darkness in the second; but, taken as groups, is not the progress and prosperity of the world found in the first? Does not the future lie with it, ay, and with the most enlightened section of it too? Which are the foremost and most rapidly advancing races of mankind? Not those which profess the faith of Islam, monotheistic though it be; but those which profess the faith of Abraham’s great seed, which is Christ. The Christian nations take the lead this day in the world, and especially those which hold the purest forms of Christianity. Foremost among all the races of the human family stand the Protestant Saxons, German and English, the two mightiest nations of Europe, and the latter, with its American representative, the dominant power in the Western world.

Surely then the most superficial and cursory glance at the present condition of the human race affords a proof of the fulfilment of the Abrahamic programme, the strength and conclusiveness of which cannot be over-estimated—a demonstration of its Divine inspiration which no candid mind can fail to perceive. The announcement of a future event whose occurrence could not possibly be foreseen by any natural human sagacity must be an inspired prophecy. In this case it cannot be for a moment questioned that the Abrahamic programme was promulgated several thousand years before any such fulfilment could be perceived. Even the most extravagant critics cannot postdate the Pentateuch more than a few centuries, and it was at least twenty-three hundred years before this fulfilment which we have indicated became even dimly visible, much longer before it became clear, while it has only been conspicuous within the last three centuries. Yet now none can deny or even question it.

The contrast in freedom, independence, power, wealth, light and leading, peace and prosperity, between the two groups we have presented is startling; but this present condition of the world could by no human sagacity have been foreseen four, or even three, thousand years ago. It could not possibly have been anticipated by man. The correspondence between prediction and fulfilment is close, the scale of the fulfilment is gigantic, the interval since the prophecy was published enormous.

For ages Israel treasured the prediction, but saw no signs of its accomplishment. Abraham was the father of their nation, and of the Arab nations, but there was no sign of all nations being blessed through him. Even when Christ came, the state of the Roman world, as contrasted with their own condition, showed that no blessing had yet flowed to mankind through Abraham’s seed. The Israelites had the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the law, and the service of God, and the promises; the fathers and the prophets belonged to them; the Scriptures were their sacred books; and they felt that they, and they only, were the children of promise and counted for the seed. As to the rest of mankind, they were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world, afar off from Him, walking in the vanity of their minds, having the understanding darkened, and being alienated from the life of God through ignorance and blindness of heart. But now we may boldly say, there is not a blessed nation on earth whose blessing has not come to it through Abraham’s seed, and every passing year makes this strange fact only more apparent.

This view, however, is but a superficial one; we must go deeper. In His promise to the patriarch, “God,” says Paul, “preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee and in thy seed shall all nations be blessed. . . . He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is CHRIST.” The great promise to Abraham was the promise of Christ. It was a second and more emphatic repetition of the hope held out in Eden, that the salvation of a sin-ruined race should be wrought out by the woman’s seed. That seed, it was now revealed, was to be Abraham’s seed, and He would not only crush the serpent’s head, but bring blessing to the wide world. What blessing? Not merely the outward blessing to which we have alluded, but the deepest and richest of all blessings—”Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin” (Rom. iv. 7, 8).

The great blessing of the Abrahamic covenant was spiritual not temporal, and it promised to man all that is included in that fathomless word SALVATION. How far Abraham understood this we know not, nor is it important to our argument to decide. “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day,” said Christ, “and he saw it and was glad.” How did he see it? Was it in the strangely typical action to which he himself was constrained in the providence of God—the offering up of his well-beloved son? One can hardly refrain from the conviction that he must have seen in that sacred scene on Mount Moriah more than met the eye! But whether Abraham understood or no, He who made the promises to Abraham, and “because He could swear by no greater, sware by Himself’—He understood the profound and comprehensive nature of the prediction, that Israel should be the universal centre of blessing to mankind, that salvation should be of the Jews, that humanity at large—the whole race, Jew and Gentile alike—should through Abraham be blessed for ever, blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly things in Christ.

The Christian Church is in a sense Abraham’s seed, as it is written: “If ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Who shall estimate the blessing which that Church, in spite of all its failures, has been to the world—the blessing that it is this day? Who can express what the gift of Christ has done for the Gentiles? How has He illuminated, emancipated, elevated, sanctified, transformed? The results of His mission include justification by faith, and the gift of the Holy Spirit—a gift not visible to the world save in its effects, the lives and the deeds of the justified and indwelt Church of God. These are sufficiently visible. The Church is a city set on a hill; the light of the world, which owes all its blessing instrumentally to her.

The great and all-important series of events which date from the incarnation, embracing the existence and all the effects of the Christian Church in the world, and all the unknown yet revealed and glorious future lying before redeemed humanity—all is foretold in embryo in this brief, simple sentence of the Abraham programme. Repeatedly and plainly it is predicted that Abraham’s seed was to be the salvation of mankind. Can there be any doubt as to the meaning of the prediction, and has it not been in process of fulfilment for the last two thousand years, at any rate? Does not every year make this fulfilment more evident? Eternal ages alone will unfold its full meaning, but do not we see already millions of mankind enjoying the promised blessing, and rejoicing in their spiritual relation to Abraham even more than the Jews glory in their natural descent from him? Has not the bud already opened into a blossom, and is not that blossom an earnest of the glory and beauty of the ancient stem when it shall be covered with such blossoms, when not half the world shall be partially blessed through Christ, but the whole world perfectly and for evermore?

How easily this prophecy might have failed of fulfilment in one or all of its particulars! The Jews might have become merged with the Egyptians, and never have escaped from the land of their bondage. They might have perished in the wilderness, or, more likely still, have become a mere tribe of uninfluential Bedaween. Still more likely, they might have failed in their attempt to conquer Canaan, or have been permanently corrupted by the gross polytheisms of their neighbours, into which they were so prone to fall. Or again, judging from the first four thousand years of human history, how utterly improbable an event was it that the Jewish nation, when it had lost all independence and even a ruler of its own—when it had become a mere province of the Roman empire—should become the centre of a movement which should revolutionize civilized society, and give birth to One who in less than three centuries should be recognised and worshipped as a Divine being by the entire Roman world, and then by degrees win the adoration and obedience of half the human race, as Christ, the son of Abraham, has done at this day. How very easily all this might not have been as it has been,—nay, how exceedingly improbable that the fact should have been what it is, and thus have fulfilled the ancient prediction.

Look again at the case of Ishmael’s seed. How perfectly natural it would have been that they should have shared the fate of all other nations, and been subjugated by the four great empires which subdued all else, in succession. How easily it might have happened that they should have remained always what they were for ages, and what they have long since become again—utterly uninfluential in the world’s history. What strange and unlikely episodes those wonderful Saracenic conquests, and that widespread Saracenic empire, those centuries in which Ishmael became indeed “a great nation”!

And it must be noted that none of these great events could have been brought about by any human intention to fulfil the Abrahamic programme. Even supposing the Jews had set their hearts on its fulfilment, and been as anxious as they were careless about it and even opposed to it (as witness their indignant refusal to believe in the call of the Gentiles), had they wished to bring all nations into their covenant with Jehovah, what could they have done? How could they have overthrown the pantheon of the Roman mythology, they who had just been themselves utterly overthrown by Roman power? It has been by no effort of the Jewish nation that Christ has become the acknowledged Saviour of the world and supreme King of humanity! As a nation they rejected and slew Him, and they have hated and spurned His name ever since.

As to the Gentiles who received Him, they most assuredly did not do so because of any knowledge they had of the Abrahamic programme! They were for the most part in total ignorance both of it and of the Scriptures which contained it. These facts are so wide in their scope, so ancient in their duration, so enduring in their character, that there is no accounting for them at all by any theory save the true one, that He who foresaw the end from the beginning was the author of that section of the programme of the world’s history given to Abraham.

To conclude; we challenge the infidel to blot out, if he can, the name of ABRAHAM, with the promise and the prophecy it contains, from the pages of the Pentateuch and of the entire Bible. If he cannot do that, we challenge him to blot out the four thousand years of Jewish, Arabian, and Gentile history which have fulfilled that prophecy, and made good that promise. If he can do neither the one nor the other —if it be beyond his power either to obliterate the name or to alter the history—let him confess with all honesty that the history was anticipated, that what has happened was foreseen and foretold; or, in other words, that there is here an unquestionable miracle of foreknowledge, and a proof of inspiration so conclusive that it cannot be gainsaid.

“I AM JEHOVAH: THAT IS MY NAME: AND MY GLORY WILL I NOT GIVE TO ANOTHER, NEITHER MY PRAISE TO GRAVEN IMAGES. BEHOLD, THE FORMER THINGS ARE COME TO PASS, AND NEW THINGS DO I DECLARE BEFORE THEY SPRING FORTH I TELL YOU OR THEM” (Isa. xlii. 8, 9). “KNOWN UNTO GOD ARE ALL HIS WORKS FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD” (Acts xv. 18).

Continued in The Divine Programme of The World’s History Chapter IV. The Mosaic Programme – Part I.

All sections of The Divine Programme of The World’s History By H. Grattan Guinness

When I was a young Roman Catholic, I was terrified of going to the confessional to tell all my sins to a priest. My own mother, when only 15 years old, was damned to hell by a priest when she confessed a boy kissed her on the mouth! She carried this burden of condemnation all her life right up to the grave. I wonder what state that priest is in now?

The following are excerpts from Alexander Hislop’s book, “The Two Babylons” I consider it a well-researched scholarly book from a learned man of God who lived in the 19th century from 1807 to 1865. The Protestant Reformation was still alive and kicking back then. Today? Only an exceedingly small minority of Christians still believe the papacy is the Antichrist of the Bible.

The clerical power of the Roman priesthood culminated in the erection of the confessional. That confessional was itself borrowed from Babylon. The confession required of the votaries of Rome is entirely different from the confession prescribed in the Word of God. The dictate of Scripture in regard to confession is, “Confess your faults one to another” (James 5:16), which implies that the priest should confess to the people, as well as the people to the priest, if either should sin against the other. This could never have served any purpose of spiritual despotism; and therefore, Rome, leaving the Word of God, has had recourse to the Babylonian system. In that system, secret confession to the priest, according to a prescribed form, was required of all who were admitted to the “Mysteries”; and till such confession had been made, no complete initiation could take place.

The pretence under which this auricular (spoken into the ear) confession was required, was, that the (Pagan) solemnities to which the initiated were to be admitted were so high, so heavenly, so holy, that no man with guilt lying on his conscience, and sin unpurged, could lawfully be admitted to them. For the safety, therefore of those who were to be initiated, it was held to be indispensable that the officiating priest should thoroughly probe their consciences, lest coming without due purgation from previous guilt contracted, the wrath of the gods should be provoked against the profane intruders. This was the pretence; but when we know the essentially unholy nature, both of the gods and their worship, who can fail to see that this was nothing more than a pretence; that the grand object in requiring the candidates for initiation to make confession to the priest of all their secret faults and shortcomings and sins, was just to put them entirely in the power of those to whom the inmost feelings of their souls and their most important secrets were confided? Now, exactly in the same way, and for the very same purposes, has Rome erected the confessional. Instead of requiring priests and people alike, as the Scripture does, to “confess their faults one to another,” when either have offended the other, it commands all, on pain of perdition, to confess to the priest, * whether they have transgressed against him or no, while the priest is under no obligation to confess to the people at all.

Without such confession, in the Church of Rome, there can be no admission to the Sacraments, any more than in the days of Paganism there could be admission without confession to the benefit of the Mysteries. Now, this confession is made by every individual, in SECRECY AND IN SOLITUDE, to the priest sitting in the name and clothed with the authority of God, invested with the power to examine the conscience, to judge the life, to absolve or condemn according to his mere arbitrary will and pleasure. This is the grand pivot on which the whole “Mystery of iniquity,” as embodied in the Papacy, is made to turn; and wherever it is submitted to, admirably does it serve the design of binding men in abject subjection to the priesthood. In conformity with the principle out of which the confessional grew, the Church, that is, the clergy, claimed to be the sole depositaries of the true faith of Christianity. As the Chaldean priests were believed alone to possess the key to the understanding of the Mythology of Babylon, a key handed down to them from primeval antiquity, so the priests of Rome set up to be the sole interpreters of Scripture; they only had the true tradition, transmitted from age to age, without which it was impossible to arrive at its true meaning. They, therefore, require implicit faith in their dogmas; all men were bound to believe as the Church believed, while the Church in this way could shape its faith as it pleased. As possessing supreme authority, also, over the faith, they could let out little or much, as they judged most expedient; and “RESERVE” in teaching the great truths of religion was as essential a principle in the system of Babylon, as it is in Romanism or Tractariansim at this day. It was this priestly claim to dominion over the faith of men, that “imprisoned the truth in unrighteousness” in the ancient world, so that “darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the people.” (Isaiah 60:2) It was the very same claim, in the hands of the Roman priests, that ushered in the dark ages, when, through many a dreary century, the Gospel was unknown, and the Bible a sealed book to millions who bore the name of Christ. In every respect, then, we see how justly Rome bears on its forehead the name, “Mystery, Babylon the Great.” — Revelation 17:5

Continued from Chapter III. The Abrahamic Programme – Part I..

Passing by for the present the incidents connected with the birth of Ishmael, we come to the fifth and principal revelation of God to Abraham, that recorded in the seventeenth chapter of Genesis. It was on this occasion that the solemn COVENANT which is mentioned eleven times over in the chapter was made. This happened thirteen years after the birth of Ishmael, the natural but not the promised seed of the patriarch. Abraham was ninety years old and nine when this covenant—sealed and attested by the ordinance of circumcision—was made with him. We read—

“And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before Me, and be thou perfect. And I will make My covenant between Me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly. And Abram fell on his face: and God talked with him, saying, As for Me, behold, My covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. And I will establish My covenant between Me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God” (Gen. xvii. 1-8).

The ordinance of circumcision is then given in detail, and Sarah is included in the covenant, her name being altered in token of it, and it is revealed that she was to be the mother of the promised seed.

“And I will bless her, and give thee a son also of her: yea, I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of people shall be of her. . . . And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him. And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation. But My covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year” (Gen. xvii. 16, 19-21).

In this last clause a chronological element is added to the promise, and the time of its fulfilment is specified. A promise as to Ishmael was uttered on this occasion, which had in substance been previously given to Hagar. He was to be blessed, to be multiplied exceedingly, to beget twelve princes and to become a great nation. It had previously been stated that he would be a wild man, his hand against every man and every man’s hand against him, and that he would dwell in the presence of all his brethren.

Once again, shortly after this time, on the occasion of the visit of the angels to Abraham on the plains of Mamre and the revelation of the coming destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the promise was for a sixth time renewed, with an intimation that the first installment of its fulfilment was close at hand, the all-essential birth of the promised seed.

“Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.”

And again, after the birth of the long-promised seed, there was a further intimation (declaration) given that Ishmael was not to be heir with Isaac, but that the child of Abraham and Sarah was to be the seed in whom the promises were to be fulfilled (Gen. xxi. 12).

And then last, not least, came the glorious prediction, confirmed with an oath, which was given in connection with Abraham’s great trial, the commanded sacrifice of his son.

“Abraham’s faith had stood all former tests. It had been strong enough to break the ties that bound him to country, home, and kindred. It had patiently endured the many and long delays in the fulfilling of the promises. It had risen above all the obstacles, physical and moral, that stood in the way of their accomplishment. It had accepted Isaac and given up Ishmael. Would it stand the last demand, to give up to God the best loved thing on earth; to do what appeared not only alien to God’s own character, but contrary to His own word and promise? For herein lay the peculiarity and severity of the trial as a test of faith. The command and the promise were in conflict. If he obeyed the command, he frustrated the promise; if he kept by the promise, he must break the command. But one way of reconciling them could be even fancied, and, dim though it was, the quick eye of faith discerned it. ‘He accounted that God was able to raise up Isaac from the dead. In obedience to the Divine command, Isaac was forthwith unbound. The ram caught in the thicket was substituted in his stead. The fire was kindled and the sacrifice completed. The father and son are preparing to return, when once again the voice from above is heard pronouncing the solemn words: ‘By Myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed My voice.’

In His intercourse with the patriarchs, God never sware by Himself but in this one case. The uniqueness and importance of the oath appears from its being quoted afterwards upon important occasions by Abraham himself, by Joseph, by Moses, by Zacharias, by Stephen, and by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, as well as from its being frequently referred to by God Himself. Its utterance was the last that fell from the lips of God upon the ear of Abraham. (Rev. W. Hanna: “The Bible Educator,” vol. i. p. 86.)

Though not given to the patriarch personally, but to his descendants, we must regard the promises to Isaac and to Jacob as all parts of the Abrahamic programme. It was because of the promise that he should inherit the land that the command was given to Isaac:

“Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of: sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and I will bless thee; for unto thee and unto thy seed I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father; and I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and I will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.”

So to Jacob at Bethel when, as an exile journeying from Beersheba toward Haran, he was granted the vision of the ladder connecting heaven and earth, the promise was again repeated, and certain additional features added:

“Thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth; thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. . . . I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.”

Haran was not to be his home; Canaan was BETH-EL—the House of God—and God was his God; God would give him that land, and a posterity countless as the dust of the earth; mankind was to be blessed in his seed. The vastness of this programme was all the more striking because the faith of Jacob was unable to take it in. At a later period in his life, when his name was changed to Israel, his faith was probably better able to grasp the promise, which now had other features added to it.

“And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel. And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins; and the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land.”

Still further was the promise expanded in this patriarch’s dying prophecy, and especially in the particulars mentioned as regards Judah.

“The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.”

The sceptre of the earth was yet to belong to the “lion of the tribe of Judah,” who should also be the lawgiver, and yet at the same time, Shiloh, the peaceable, the Prince of peace.¹

¹ Taking a wider view of the Abrahamic programme as comprising all the prophetic utterances of the patriarchal age, it would include those given to and through Isaac, Rebecca, and Jacob. Space forbids our dwelling on these, remarkable as they are. Divine foreknowledge was evinced, specially in the anticipations of the contrasted characters and fortunes of the posterity of the twin brothers Jacob and Esau. The passages of Scripture in which the subsequent history of “Esau, which is Edom,? is given, and in which the mutual relations of the Edomites and Israelites at different periods are sketched, well repay a careful study. They will mostly be found under the heading “Edom, Edomites in Bagster’s index, or in a concordance.

Combining now into one view all these predictions and covenant promises, given at intervals during a period of about forty years to the “father of the faithful,” and confirmed subsequently to his descendants, Isaac and Jacob, we ask, What is the main outline contained in this Abrahamic programme of the world’s then future history? What did it foretell?

Omitting the less salient points, the main features are three in number.

I. Abraham’s posterity was to be greatly multiplied and highly distinguished; kings were to proceed from him, he was to be the father of MANY NATIONS, and especially of one GREAT NATION, which, after a period of exile, affliction, and bondage spent elsewhere, was to inherit, as their inalienable possession, the land of Canaan.

II. That the descendants of his son ISHMAEL were also to become a great and enduring nation, and one of a most peculiar character, unlike the rest of his seed, and especially that Ishmael should be the father of TWELVE PRINCES; and—

III. Lastly and mainly, that through his true “seed”— which was to be called in Isaac—“all the families of the earth,” “ALL NATIONS,” were to be blessed.

The name of the patriarch changed from Abram—which means exalted father—to Abraham—which means father of a multitude—condenses this prophecy into a word. He was to become the father of one nation, many nations, and the channel of blessing to all nations. It was a wonderful revelation, and one apparently impossible of fulfilment. The recipient of the predictions was a childless and aged man. Nations do not as a rule spring from individuals, much less many nations from a single father; and Abraham should always be remembered, not as a founder of nations, but essentially and especially a father. As Adam was the father of the whole human race, and Noah the father of that portion of it which peopled the world that now is, so Abraham is the father, not only of the Jewish people, of the Arabs, Midianites, and other “children of the East,” or “Saracens,” but also the father of the faithful or believing people of God in all ages.

“How is the fact to be explained,” asks Max Muller,“ that the three greatest religions in the world, in which the unity of the Deity forms the keynote, are of Semitic origin? Mahometanism, no doubt, is a Semitic religion, and its very core is monotheism. But did Mahomet invent monotheism? Did he invent even a new name of God? Not at all.

And how is it with Christianity? Did Christ come to preach faith in a new God? Did He or His disciples invent a new name of God? No. Christ came, not to destroy, but to fulfill, and the God whom He preached was the God of Abraham. And who is the God of Jeremiah, of Elijah, and of Moses? We answer again: The God of Abraham. Thus the faith in the One Living God . . . is traced back to one man; to Him ‘in whom all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’

And if from our earliest childhood we have looked upon Abraham, the Friend of God, with love and veneration, his venerable figure will assume still more majestic proportions, when we see in him the Life-spring of that faith which was to unite all the nations of the earth, and the author of that blessing which was to come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ.

And if we are asked how this one Abraham passed, through the denial of all other gods, to the knowledge of the one God, we are content to answer that it was by a special Divine revelation, granted to that one man, and handed down by him to Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, to all who believe in the God of Abraham. We want to know more of that man-than we do; but even with the little we know of him, he stands before us as a figure, second only to One in the whole history of the world.”(Max Muller: “Selected Essays,” vol. ii. p. 435.)

We must now inquire into the fulfillment of the predictions of the Abrahamic programme.

I. When we ask, first, did the seed of Abraham, through Isaac and Jacob, become a great nation and possess the land of Canaan? And secondly, does that nation still exist? the former of these questions may be answered by an appeal to the state of the Jewish nation in the days of Solomon, who spoke of his subjects as “a great people that cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude.” During his reign, we read:

“Judah and Israel were many, as the sand which is by the sea in multitude, eating and drinking, and making merry. And Solomon reigned over all kingdoms from the river unto the land of the Philistines, and unto the border of Egypt: they brought presents, and served Solomon all the days of his life. . . . And he had peace on all sides round about him. And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon. . . . And there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon.” (1 Kings iv, 20, 21, 24, 25, 34)

And if we inquire, secondly, does this nation still exist? lo! we are confronted with the standing miracle embodied in the word “Israel.” The twelve sons of Jacob (unlike Esau and Jacob, who founded two; or Moab and Ammon, or Isaac and Ishmael) did not found twelve nations, but one. After a lapse of four thousand years that nation exists still— the only one on earth which can trace back its ancestry to a single individual at such a distance chronologically. Though now without a land and without a king, the authentic national history of the Jews, attested by ancient documents still extant, goes back farther than that of any other people. They have for 3,500 years been a nation and yet a family still, owning one father and one mother, bearing to each other the strong family likeness observable between brothers and sisters, using still the old family names, cherishing as their very heart’s blood the old family traditions, living among all nations yet belonging to none, retaining even among Aryan and Hamitic peoples the peculiar and refined Semitic type,—distinct in character, in religion, in worship, in language, in customs, in memories, in hopes—distinct from all other, alike only among themselves. There they are, living still among us, confronting every nation upon earth with a present fulfilment of predictions which are four thousand years old. They speak all Gentile languages, and dwell in all Gentile lands, yet sharply defined lines separate them from the rest of the Gentile world; and so broad and deep is the distinction, that the division of the human race into Jews and Gentiles puts Israel alone on the one side, and all the earth besides on the other. The Jews are the oldest of nations, and yet they exist in full vigour still, after their early contemporaries—Hittites, Amorites, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Assyrians and Babylonians, Medians, Persians and Grecians, as well as their later contemporaries—Scleucida, Ptolemies, and Caesars, have all long since passed away.

Century after century, millenary after millenary have rolled by, since the programme we are considering was first divinely announced, and all those ages unanimously attest its fulfilment. It is some four thousand years since the birth of the promised seed, three thousand five hundred since the exodus and the birth of the Jewish nation, and eighteen hundred years since the Jewish dispersion; and yet, though they have been the most sorely afflicted people known to history, they are still preserved; and now, in this nineteenth century, they are again obtaining, through their wonderful financial skill and immense money resources, such power in the civilized world, that emperors, kings, princes, and presidents are forced to treat them with consideration and respect, and are even in many lands afraid of them. Though so long scattered in all countries, and destitute of a government of their own, they are none the less one people still.

The Universal Israelite Alliance binds the scattered Jews all the world over into one body; the Hebrew Bible, the synagogue ritual, the fasts and feasts of the Jewish calendar, the ordinance of circumcision, the seventh day Sabbath rest,—these and other distinctive observances make the Jews, dwell where they may, one people. As a nation, they are absolutely unique in character; and though their national independence lasted but for a short part of their long history, though they have never been very numerous, and though they have always been despised and disliked by other nations, they have nevertheless as a people exerted more decided and widespread influence on the world than any other that ever existed. And “what conceivable explanation is there of the history of the Jews, with their inextinguishable vitality, and the fulfilment again and again of their unquenchable hopes, except the truth that God had chosen them, and that God was with them? They had no righteousness, but were a stiff-necked people. They had no splendid territory in possession, though such a one was given them. They had no grand genealogy—a Syrian ready to perish was their father. They were not powerful enough of themselves even to conquer their own small land. They were not united; Ephraim envied Judah, and Judah vexed Ephraim. They were not free, but became the prey of nation after nation. They were not a maritime people, for their strip of sea-coast was mostly harbourless, and not their own. They had no commercial industry like Venice or Holland, no art like Greece, no arms like Rome, no colonies like England, no philosophy like Germany. They were constantly starting aside like a broken bow. Yet no power has ever been able to crush, no persecution to destroy them. They have influenced, taught, pervaded mankind. Their sacred book is the sacred book of humanity, their religious ideas are becoming more and more the religious ideas of the race. What explains it all, and alone explains it? Nothing but the truth that ‘God showed His word unto Jacob, His statutes and ordinances unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation.’”

The history of the Jewish nation is familiar to all, and we shall have to consider certain phases of it in connection with more advanced and complex programmes later on. We need not, therefore, dwell on it much in this place, where the fact of its past and present existence and of its relation to the patriarch Abraham is the main point before us. We must, however, allude to one prediction frequently reiterated in the programme before passing on. The posterity of the patriarch was to be greatly multiplied—”as the sand of the seashore and as the stars of heaven.” Seven times over, to Abraham, again to Isaac and again to Jacob, was this promise repeated as something distinct from the mere development of his seed into a nation, It was characterized by a special fecundity, and was, under the blessing of God, to increase with unusual rapidity. This has been throughout their history, and still is, a remarkable characteristic of the Jewish race. Had it not been so, they must long since have become extinct. So severe have been the bondages and servitudes they have undergone, so cruel and unnatural the edicts issued from time to time against them ever since Pharaoh’s command that their male children should be drowned in the Nile, so terrible have been the wars waged against them and the massacres inflicted on them, so unhealthy the conditions in which they were compelled to exist all through the Middle Ages, that it is only by a miracle they have survived at all.

But their vitality is unquestionably greater than that of Gentiles; and the rapid increase which in Egypt, even under most unfavourable conditions, alarmed Pharaoh and his people, is habitual with them. They always tend to outgrow the nations among whom they dwell in number. After the return of fifty thousand only from Babylon (Ezra ii. 64), they had multiplied to millions by the time of Christ, in spite of the Maccabaean persecutions. When Titus destroyed Jerusalem, it is recorded that over a million were assembled in the city. Though now for eighteen hundred years an exiled nation and exposed to terrible persecutions, yet they have again multiplied to eight millions. “The more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew,” is the testimony borne about them in Egypt, and which might be borne about them still. Births occur among them in a greater proportion than among the Gentiles, and they have besides an unusually low average of mortality.¹

¹ “According to the Civilstands-Register of Frankfort, for the period between the years 1846 and 1858, while the fourth part of all children born among the Christian population had passed away before the age of six years and eleven months, the fourth part of all Jews born were not gone until twenty-eight years and three months; half of all Christians born had died before reaching thirty-six years and six months, while half of the Jews survived the age of fifty-three; of Christians born, three-fourths had passed away before reaching the age of sixty, while of the Jews one-fourth were still living at seventy-one! Again, according to the church and synagogue records of the Prussian monarchy for the eighteen years from 1823 to 1841, the average of deaths annually among the Gentile population was one in every thirty-four, but among the Jews only one in forty-six. Twenty per cent, of the Jews reached seventy years, as against only twelve per cent of the Christians.’—(Kellogg : “The Jews, Prediction and Fulfilment,” p. 181.)

The Jews in America, within the last forty-two years, have increased in number from 50,000 in a population of 20,000,000 to §00,000 in the present population. This is a most remarkable fact. It means that while the general population has trebled in the period, the Israelites have increased tenfold —far more rapidly than any other race. Their advance in wealth and power during the same time has been proportionate to their increase in numbers. They are recognised as the most influential members on all New York commercial exchanges, on several of which they occupy the position of chairman or treasurer. They negotiate the most important government loans and railway operations. They have almost absorbed the import trade in diamonds, watches, and jewellery, so that many of the oldest Gentile firms have been swept out of existence.

But one fact which is obvious to all in New York speaks more as to their growth in power and influence than many figures. The rich and important street of Broadway—the central part of New York, lying between Canal Street and Union Square—which used formerly to be occupied by magnificent shops, has of late undergone a complete change. The retail trade has gone to the up-town thoroughfares, and of the four hundred buildings in the district almost all are occupied by wholesale Jewish firms. Out of twelve hundred such firms one thousand are Jewish.

Continued in Chapter III. The Abrahamic Programme – Part III.

All sections of The Divine Programme of The World’s History By H. Grattan Guinness

It was only at the end of 2014 when I was first introduced to the theological term “Dispensationalism.” I had no idea what my new friends were talking about when they said that word. I think most Christians today don’t know what it means either in spite of the fact all their views about the Endtime, Israel, the rapture and the Antichrist have been influenced by the doctrines that sprang from it!

The doctrine of dispensationalism makes a distinction between Israel and the Church. It stresses a literal fulfillment of Old Testament promises to Israel.

The notion that God has one plan for “ethnic Jews” and another plan for the Church was utterly rejected by the “Prince of Preachers” Charles Spurgeon.

Distinctions have been drawn by certain exceedingly wise men (measured by their own estimate of themselves), between the people of God who lived before the coming of Christ, and those who lived afterwards. We have even heard it asserted that those who lived before the coming of Christ do not belong to the church of God! We never know what we shall hear next, and perhaps it is a mercy that these absurdities are revealed at one time, in order that we may be able to endure their stupidity without dying of amazement. Why, every child of God in every place stands on the same footing; the Lord has not some children best beloved, some second-rate offspring, and others whom he hardly cares about. These who saw Christ’s day before it came, had a great difference as to what they knew, and perhaps in the same measure a difference as to what they enjoyed while on earth meditating upon Christ; but they were all washed in the same blood, all redeemed with the same ransom price, and made members of the same body. Israel in the covenant of grace is not natural Israel, but all believers in all ages. Before the first advent, all the types and shadows all pointed one way —they pointed to Christ, and to him all the saints looked with hope. Those who lived before Christ were not saved with a different salvation to that which shall come to us. They exercised faith as we must; that faith struggled as ours struggles, and that faith obtained its reward as ours shall. Charles H. Spurgeon, “Jesus Christ Immutable,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit

Once you understand how the doctrine of dispensationalism originated, you will hopefully reject all the false doctrines that spring from it. These false doctrines include:

• A distinction between the Church and ethnic Israel.
• The Antichrist is a single individual in the Endtime, and will probably be a Jew.
• The Antichrist sets up a final world government and one world religion during his rule on earth which is from 7 years just before the return of Christ.
• The Antichrist makes a 7 year peace pact with the Jews which allows them to rebuild the Temple of Solomon.
• There will be a secret rapture of the Saints just before the start of the Great Tribulation which is starts 3.5 years into the Antichrist’s reign.

My friends, these doctrines all sprang from the Roman Catholic Church! The Vatican wants you to think the Antichrist will be a Jew because then you will not think of the Pope as the biblical Antichrist — which is what the early Protestant reformers used to think. The doctrine of a final 7 year reign of the Antichrist is based on a false interpretation of Daniel 9:27. That false interpretation is also the bases of the 7 year peace pact doctrine with the Jews and the rebuilding of the Temple of Solomon.

I have written extensively about Daniel 9:27 and its true interpretation on this website.

Continued from Chapter II. The Noahic Programme. – Part III..

TRAVELLING recently from Baden to Switzerland, as we emerged from the beautiful Black Forest and approached Schaffhausen, we crossed a small stream which we looked at, at first, without any special interest. It reappeared, however, again and again; and as we ran for some time along its banks, one of our party, looking at the guidebook, exclaimed, “ Why, this is the Danube!” The Danube? We looked at the little stream with new interest. The mind’s eye followed it at once from this its upland cradle amid the mountains, close to the sources of the northward and westward flowing Rhine; from this its spring in a watershed more than 3,000 feet in height, down through Wurtemburg and Bavaria, past Passau and Lintz and the castle where Coeur de Lion fretted in his captivity, past Vienna, Presburg, and Buda-Pesth (now Budapest), through Hungary on to Belgrade, till we seemed to see its broad waters rolling between Bulgaria and Wallachia, through Bessarabia and Russia, and the great delta at the end of its course of 1,400 miles. Bavarian, Hungarian, Austrian, and Turkish in turn, we remembered how for ages this great river had been one of the northern boundaries of the old Roman empire —the great moat that guarded it from the invasion of barbarian hordes. We recalled how it forms now a highway for European commerce —an international barrier whose navigation has been the subject of treaties between rival empires, and whose banks have been the scene of memorable historic battles.

Small and unimportant as seemed the little stream dashing over its rocky bed beside the railway, all that we knew of its after course made it most interesting in our eyes. When sailing on the Danube years previously through the “Iron Gates,” which it has cut in the Carpathian mountains, we had marvelled at the might of the current which had worn for itself so stupendous a gorge, gazed with interest at the Cossack villages and Turkish towns studding its banks, and spent day after day on its broad bosom as it rolled majestically through the rich pasture lands of Moldavia and Wallachia into the Black Sea. How could the infancy of such a stream fail to interest us?

With similar feelings an historian and Bible student ponders the biography of Abraham in the Book of Genesis. The brief story consists of slight and simple memorials of the quiet life led by a Semitic patriarch four thousand years ago. It tells us how he wandered over the pastures of Chaldea and Syria, growing rich in flocks and herds and in retainers, but living in tents with his wife and children; how he worshipped God in spirit and in truth, though in utter simplicity, without temple, ritual, or image; a man of child-like obedience and strong faith, not without faults and frailties, but yet loved and respected in his day. He had none of the legislative power of Moses, nor of the poetical pathos of David, much less of the far-sighted wisdom of Daniel. But there was about him a benignity, a faith, an obedience, a courtesy, a piety, and especially a paternal dignity, which are peculiarly his own; while the age in which he lived, the lands in which he wandered, and the simple tent-life of his pilgrimage, throw over the story “the light as of an early Eastern morning, and the freshness as of a breeze from the wilderness.”

Why has this old oriental biography so profound an interest still in this busy nineteenth century to men and women all the world over, not to those who profess and call themselves Christians only, but also to Jews and Arabs and all the followers of the False Prophet (the prophet of Islam)? Strange! That out of the hundreds of such ancient Eastern sheiks of wandering pastoral tribes, the name of one should still be a household word, honoured alike by Moslem, Jew, and Christian throughout the world. Yet so it is. In mosque and synagogue and Christian church alike, in the East and in the West, in the North and in the South, the patriarch Abraham is still esteemed as “the friend of God” or as the Father of the Faithful. He never occupied a throne nor wielded a sceptre; he never made a discovery nor produced an invention; he never published a volume nor framed a code of laws; he never conquered a country nor enslaved his neighbours, like the Pharaohs and the Nimrods of those early times; he reared no huge monuments to immortalize his name, nor carved on the rocks the story of his exploits: yet he lives in the loving memory of mankind while multitudes of those who did all these things are forgotten. He is held in filial respect and affection by myriads of men, who to Egypt’s greatest kings and Chaldea’s mightiest monarchs accord but an unsympathetic and disapproving wonder. What has ennobled and distinguished this ancient patriarch? The answer is, He believed and obeyed the God who had chosen him to be the channel of the world’s redemption,—and to him was communicated the third section of the Divine programme of the world’s history.

In order to the right appreciation of the importance of this programme and of the real character and career of Abraham, we must, before considering it, recall for a moment the state of the world at the time when it was given, and the general course of human history during the interval between the deluge and the call of Abraham. It was a long one of several centuries; it witnessed the second development of the human race through the stages of its childhood, youth, and early maturity. These centuries have until lately been considered prehistoric, but they cannot in the future be so regarded. The figures of the patriarch and his family no longer loom out dimly from a thick mist of historic obscurity suggestive of doubt as to their actual reality. The days are past in which the story of Abraham, told in the thirteen chapters of the Book of Genesis, can be called in question or treated by any well-informed person as unauthentic or legendary. The old isolation of the Pentateuch has passed away never to return. Formerly it presented almost all we knew about the earliest times and the pristine experiences of mankind. It stood alone, unconfirmed, and sceptics found no barriers in the way of treating it as “unhistorical” (a euphemism for “fabulous”); but all that is utterly altered now. Modern explorations and discoveries in archaeology enable us to confirm almost every detail of the narrative, and to perceive its perfect and most striking harmony with the period to which it belongs. The geographical, historical, and social allusions in the story are very numerous; and the similar incidents recorded in contemporary documents enable us mentally to reproduce the days of Abraham with wonderful exactitude and vivid reality.

We can now, in the light of its own records, study and understand the ancient and idolatrous civilization from which the patriarch was originally called out, and that with which he subsequently came in contact in Egypt. The evil and corrupt state of society in which he mixed becomes clear to us, as do the characters and exploits of his great contemporaries both in Chaldea and Egypt. The length and the direction of his various journeyings, the true nature of his momentous emigration, the size and peculiarities of the cities with which he was connected, and a hundred other particulars of his life which before seemed comparatively vague—all stand out now real and life-like, supplying the true background to the Biblical portrait of the patriarch.¹

¹ The works of Sir Henry Rawlinson and Professor Rawlinson, of Dr. Birch, the late George Smith and others connected with the British Museum, of Professor Sayce, Lieutenant Conder, Captain Warren, Layard, Lenormant, and many more; “The Records of the Past” (Bagster), “The Inscriptions of Western Asia,” published by the Trustees of the British Museum, the “Transactions” of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, and many similar works, conspire to throw a flood of light on the environment of the patriarch and the history of his times.

It is important that this should be realized, for it strengthens the foundations of our argument. The promises and predictions we have to consider were, as we hold, given to Abraham two thousand years before Christ, as we have them embodied in the books of Moses. But is the story that they were so given authentic? Any argument derived from fulfilment clearly depends on this previous inquiry; that is, on the date of the predictions and on the general trustworthiness of the narratives in which they are embodied.

Some “Studies on the Times of Abraham” have lately been published by a member of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, who devoted five years to the work of elucidating the relation between three chapters only of Abraham’s story and the results of recent research. The investigation of even this small portion of the narrative makes a volume. It is illustrated with photo-tint cuts of buildings, idols, statues, engraved seals and cylinders, portraits of various carved heads of Egyptian, Chaldean, Hittite, and Arab heroes, and of hieroglyphic inscriptions, and enriched by full references to the original oriental sources from which the facts are drawn,—enabling even readers who are unlearned in archaeological lore to judge for themselves as to the nature and value of the light thrown on the life of Abraham by existing monuments, and inscriptions of antiquity. These studies have profoundly impressed their author with the close connection between facts in the Bible biography and facts of the times as learned from other sources.

The story of Lot’s rescue, for instance, given in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, mentions some fifty facts of geography, history, and chronology; it gives the names of fourteen kings, chiefs, and other individuals living at the time; of eight different tribes and peoples, and of no less than twenty-three different places. It has, moreover, three notes of chronology, and several statements of number. Now most of these become possible points of contact with ancient contemporary records, or else with existing facts as to present names, sites, and distances. We do not pause to remark on the a priori evidence of truth and authenticity offered by the very existence of such a narrative so full of statements which if false would be easily proved so. But we ask, is this remarkable narrative of the first great organized military expedition recorded in history—a narrative which bristles thus with biographical, historical, local, and chronological notices—confirmed or contradicted by comparison with extraneous authorities? It is most amply confirmed.

“All that is hitherto known tallies in the most remarkable manner with the firm, strong outline in the Book of Genesis of facts which, as M. Lenormant justly pronounces, have ‘a historic character the most striking;’ and when we estimate at its true value the decisive interposition of Abraham in his only recorded act of warfare, we do not wonder at the honourable acknowledgment of the sons of Kheth, ‘A prince of God art thou among us’” – (From Tomkins’ “Studies on the Times of Abraham” p. 203 (Bagster : 15, Paternoster Row).

This expedition against the king of Elam and his confederates seems to have been a far more important affair than one would have judged from the fifteenth chapter of Genesis, though the native inscriptions of Babylonia and Assyria amply confirm the main and most surprising facts contained in that story. Canon Rawlinson says:—

“A certain amount of light is thrown on the narrative contained in Genesis xiv. by the inscriptions of Babylonia and Assyria. We learn from that narrative that in the time of Abraham (about B.C. 2100-1900) an important monarchy was established in Elam, under a king named Chedor-laomer (more properly Kedor-Lagomer), to whom Babylonia and other adjacent countries were subject, and who was powerful enough to carry his arms into Syria, and to exercise dominion for the space of twelve years over the more eastern parts of Palestine. The position of Elam is well marked by the Greek and Roman geographers, who place it between Persia proper and Babylonia, to the east of the Lower Tigris. In classical times and in oriental history as made known to us by the classical writers, the country appears as insignificant; it is never independent, and though it has a line of native kings, they at no time show themselves of much importance, even among vassal princes. Till recently the passage of Genesis stood alone in representing Elam as a great kingdom, one capable of exercising for a time the chief authority in Western Asia, of establishing her supremacy ever Babylonia, and making expeditions to the distance of a thousand miles from her proper frontier. But the later Assyrian inscriptions have now shown that from the time of Sargon (B.C. 722) to nearly the close of the empire, Elam was the second power in Western Asia, that she sturdily maintained her independence, and long resisted the utmost efforts of Assyria to bring her into subjection. . .

“Documents, probably fourteen hundred years older, found in Babylonia itself, establish the fact that at least one king of the country held his crown as a fief under an Elamitic monarch, who had placed and maintained him on the throne. Kudur-Mabuk, whose probable date is about B.C. 2100, and who is distinctly called ‘king of Elam,’ established his son, Ardu-Sin, in Babylonia, and names him with himself in his inscriptions, invoking the blessing of the gods upon him. Similarly Ardu-Sin mentions and invokes blessings on his father, ‘Kudur-Mabuk, lord of Elam.’ It is further remarkable that this same ‘Kudur-Mabuk, lord of Elam,’ calls himself also ‘lord of Syria,’ thereby implying that his dominion reached from the mountains of Luristan on the one side to the Mediterranean upon the other, which is exactly what Scripture implies of Chedor-laomer.

“The native inscriptions of Babylonia and Assyria tell us, therefore, three things concerning this early period; namely—first, that there was a powerful dynasty established in Elam about B.C. 2300-2000; secondly, that this dynasty exercised authority over Babylon; and thirdly, that it had carried its arms into Syria; thus confirming three of the main and most surprising facts contained in the narrative of Genesis xiv.” (Canon Rawlinson, “The Bible Educator,” vols. i, and ii. pp. 67, 68.)

The Bible, and especially the Book of Genesis, passes rapidly over long intervals of time during which no special advance was made in the work which it is written to record —the redemption of the human race. It presents only one incident and two genealogical tables as bridging over the interval between the death of Noah and the call of Abram. The story of Babel is narrated and the subsequent dispersion of mankind, and “the generations of the sons of Noah in their nations,” which we have considered in our last section, follows.

The generations of Shem—that is, of the son of Noah in whose race the knowledge of God was to be preserved, and in which deliverance for a ruined race was destined to arise—are given very fully, “the generations of Terah,” the father of Abraham, coming last. These are all comprised in the tenth and eleventh chapters of the Book of Genesis, from which we may also gather some passing indications of the state of things in the early post-diluvian earth, though it would have been beside the purpose of the book to deal with facts having only a remote connection with its main subject. From later scriptures we may glean a few other particulars as to this period, while from classical authors, and especially from the most ancient oriental sacred classics, some of the earliest hymns and prayers of which go back nearly to Noah’s days—such as the Zend Avestas of Persia, the Brahminic Vedas of India, the She-king of China, and The Book of the Dead, or funeral ritual, of ancient Egypt—and, above all, from the monumental remains and inscriptions still extant and deciphered by modern research, we can, as we have seen, to a great extent fill up the outline.

Combining the rays of light proceeding from these different sources, we learn that during the early centuries after the flood a very rapid development of the race had taken place, leading to extensive colonization of even distant regions; that the earth had been already in the days of Peleg divided into nations, and that the international strifes which have characterized all subsequent time had at once arisen; wars and fightings had become common; and though the wide world lay open before the young human race, and though their utmost fruitfulness and multiplication could not have replenished it, they nevertheless fought for territory and for supremacy, displaying the same lust of conquest and of power that all subsequent nations have done. Hence there arose empires, with all their concomitant slavery, cruelty and pride, inordinate pomp and luxury on the part of some, with cruel toil, suffering, and oppression on the part of others.

The original unity of speech and of religious faith which had prevailed in the family and immediate descendants of Noah, and of which distinct traces abound in all the most ancient writings of every land, was gradually lost in these altered circumstances, and a great variety of idolatries sprung up in the earth, especially the worship of the host of heaven. The primitive monotheistic faith—the worship of one invisible God, the maker and judge of all— lingered on in certain families and in a few spiritual oases, but the desert waste of an idolatrous world was evermore encroaching even on these, and threatening towards the close of the period to swallow them up.

It is not easy for us to conceive the condition of the world four thousand years ago, when neither the Christian Church nor the Jewish nation were in existence, when men possessed neither the Old Testament nor the New, when tradition and conscience were the only sources of religion, and when the fathers of the race—who had known something of the antediluvian world, been eye-witnesses of the deluge, and recipients of the gracious revelations that followed it—had passed away. No line of special witnesses for God had as yet been selected or invested with responsibility for the maintenance of the true faith. The family of Shem retained apparently more of piety and morality than the descendants of his two brothers, but even Shem’s posterity had for the most part lapsed into creature worship. The adoration of the sun and moon were common, as also the worship of Jupiter and Saturn, Mercury and Venus, and idolatry was fast spreading in the earth.

Egypt had already become mighty and grossly idolatrous; the Hittite power had developed into an extensive empire, and together with the Hamitic races occupying Southern Babylonia and Palestine, had also sunk into unblushing polytheism. Traditions of the creation and fall of man, of the flood, and of Babel, existed in all lands, and were recorded on monuments and tablets, on papyri and mummy cases, which we can still read and study after four thousand years. But they were all more or less distorted and corrupted. Gleams of the light of revelation were retained in different lands, and backed by the teaching of nature and by conscience—the voice of God in the soul of man—they saved some from the almost universal apostasy of deifying the heavenly bodies, the elements, and the passions, together with men and animals, reptiles and vegetables, and even stocks and stones.

This corruption had not in Abraham’s day become as universal as the wickedness of man before the flood, when one righteous man alone remained on earth, for there were such men as Melchizedek here and there—true priests of God. Yet even in the elect line of Shem, and in the chosen family of Terah, idolatry prevailed. As the Lord said to Joshua, “Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood (or Euphrates) in old time, and they served other gods; and I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan.”

Terah’s home, UR of the CHALDEES, was the name both of a city and of a country. The former is now identified with Mugheir, which stands about six miles from the Euphrates on its right bank. In Abraham’s day it was a large, busy maritime place on the Persian Gulf, the capital and the port of Southern Babylonia. The beautiful region around was the natural home of the wheat plant, which would produce two and even three hundred-fold in the soil of which classic writers speak as the richest in all Asia. Shady palm groves embowered the country laden with their golden clusters; and Professor Rawlinson says that the region was amongst the most productive on the face of the earth, yielding spontaneously some of the best gifts of God to man, and capable under careful management of being made one continuous garden. Sir Henry Rawlinson supposes that the Garden of Eden was in this neighbourhood. The situation of the ruins now was not the situation of the ancient city, for the alluvium (loose clay, silt, sand, or gravel that has been deposited by running water) brought down by the Tigris and Euphrates encroaches very rapidly on the Persian Gulf. Geologists consider that the increase of the land in that direction has been at the rate of a mile in thirty years on an average all through the historic period, so that the ruins which now stand considerably inland mark the site of a city which was a seaport town in Abraham’s days.

The patriarch was, it would seem, a citizen of no mean city. Ur was the residence of a great monarch called Urukh, remains of whose immense idolatrous temple are still in existence, as also the ruins of his palace. The walls which once defended his city are traceable as low sandy mounds surrounding an oval space some two miles in extent, in the midst of which the temple mound still rises seventy feet above the plain. Several of the Assyrian and Babylonian monuments allude to this country of UR. Contracts between citizens, transfers of land duly attested by witnesses and preserved in duplicate, astronomical and political records as well as royal inscriptions relating to this place and kingdom, exist in abundance; its traffic by land and its commerce by ships are described, and its monarch, Urukh, must have had ample resources to have been able to erect the buildings he describes, the ruins of which still attest the truth of his accounts. The people were—as in all seaport towns—a mixture of various races and nationalities. The merchants of Ur traded with countries in Arabia and on the African coast, the Chaldeans themselves being a Cushite or Hamitic people, though Semitic tribes had also descended into their country. Terah’s ancestor Arphaxad seems to have dwelt on the borders of Armenia, where a district of country bore his name; but some of his posterity had migrated southward, and Terah, at the time of Abraham’s birth, was resident either in the country or the city of Ur.

The one fact which is more prominent than any other in all the inscriptions of the period is the rank polytheism and idolatry which prevailed. The heavenly bodies were worshipped, and the great gods Ra and Bel or Belus, with their respective wives, together with Vul and Shamas and Sau, and especially Hurki, or the moon-god, who was esteemed the leading protector of the land, Merodach, Nergal, Ishtar, Nebo, and a host of other deities too numerous to mention. They attributed to their gods the caprice and the evil notions of which they were conscious in themselves, and a base and degrading superstition had replaced the Noahic faith in the justice and mercy of God, and the ante-diluvian hope of a mighty coming deliverer.

Most of the Chaldean literature which has been deciphered consists of formula for warding off disease and sorcery, charms for bewitching people or for exorcising evil influences, treatises on omens and divinations, and records of business transactions. Long hymns for ritual worship and prayers both for public and private use show that the popular religion was of a base and sensual type, and that it must have had the effect of degrading rather than of elevating its adherents,

Yet many fundamental truths were still retained in the minds of men, and the Akkadian and Semitic records alike prove that a consciousness of sin and of its guilt, a fear of death and of future punishment, an appreciation of righteousness and a yearning after holiness, found constant expression, together with allusions to the flood as a great proof of God’s justice, to the fall of men and angels and the existence of a tempter, a belief in a future life and judgment to come, an observance of the Sabbath, and, above all, a recognition of the value of vicarious sacrifice. The nearer we draw to the days of Noah, the clearer do all such allusions become. They had even some notions of resurrection, though these latter were hazy. All the truth they retained was, however, smothered by corruption, superstition, and error.

Whatever Abraham’s after life, we must picture his earlier years therefore as spent in a renowned and much-venerated city, where was the then magnificent temple of a popular faith, the seat of a flourishing commerce, and which was moreover a garrison town, the frontier walled fortress of the empire on the western side of the Euphrates. It seems to have been also a sacred burial city, where the dead in innumerable multitudes were gathered round the walls, as at the present day around the sacred cities of the Mohammedans and Jews.

It used to be a matter of vague conjecture as to whether Abraham was acquainted with the art of writing, but, as we have seen, modern research has shown that it was in familiar use in his native place. In the daily transactions of business, in loan and sale contracts, and indeed in all important transactions, duplicate memoranda on terra-cotta tablets or on papyrus were preserved. Multitudes of these exist, and such multitudes more have perished that immense heaps of fine powder-like dust are composed of their remains. Libraries and stores of records were common, so that Terah’s family registers were doubtless preserved in this permanent form, and Abraham himself may very probably have left similar memorials of his own life, to be subsequently utilised by Moses.

Abraham was doubtless trained in military exercises, as is proved by his ability and promptness in undertaking the expedition for the rescue of Lot; and he was probably accustomed to river navigation on the great Euphrates, as well as to seafaring customs and to the sight of foreigners “brought in the ships of Ur” to his native town. So great a mixture of races prevailed in the country that he was equally well acquainted with Semitic, Hamitic and Japhethic tribes. Indeed, these names are found in cunciform texts as ethnic expressions, and are identified in meaning (according to Professor Sayce and Mr. Boscawen) with the different hues of complexion—yellow, black, and fair respectively. Abraham was therefore no mere wandering Arab sheik, but familiar with all sorts and conditions of men, and with various phases of human society.

It was no easy thing for one accustomed to the life of Ur to forsake home and country and break up his family and social ties. “He was born and grew up in his father’s house: a man of rank surrounded by all the conditions and influences of civilized life; in the centre of the world’s interests and rivalries; the hive which had thrown off the strong swarms of ASSUR, of CANAAN, and it may be, before that, of MIZRAIM; a land thick with conflicting powers, where his own kindred the sons of Shem had been in the ascendant, but were now for a while once more thrust down by the Cushite lords of Susa.”(Tomkins’ “Times of Abraham,” p. 49.)

What moved the patriarch to obey so readily the call of God? “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham,” said Stephen, “when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran.” A revelation—in what form or style we know not—of God, the God of glory: that was the motive power with Abraham, as with Saul of Tarsus in later days. The first command to leave his country and kindred was not accompanied by the promise of Canaan. The patriarch had to go forth not knowing whither he went—in simple obedience; and from that day to the day when, at God’s command, he offered up his son, his only son, accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead, the same strong faith a and implicit obedience to God characterized the father of the faithful. When, later on, Jehovah made a covenant with him to which the mark of circumcision was attached, Abraham lost not a day in assuming that mark himself, and requiring Ishmael and all his house to do the same. When Jehovah desired him to offer his only son, he rose up early in the morning to start on the mournful expedition. Obedience became a habit with him, and faith was strengthened by long trial.

Providential circumstances seem to have facilitated the original removal of Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees, Many movements of Semitic tribes and families westward were then taking place. His father Terah, for some reason not assigned, resolved about this time to emigrate with his family. Whether the premature death of his son Haran was the cause of this removal (as Josephus asserts), or whether his son Abraham’s influence had recalled the aged father to the faith of his ancestors and made him anxious to free his family from the degrading idolatrous usages around them— whatever the impulse, Terah and his tribe, as well as Abraham, forsook Chaldea, and journeying slowly some six hundred miles up the stream of the Euphrates, reached the district and town of KHARRAN, or Padan-Aram, where the emigrants and their flocks halted for some years, and where Terah ended his days. This was an important commercial town on a rich alluvial plain in Northern Babylonia, a station on the high-road from Syria to Palestine. It is well known in secular history as a busy and important town of ancient date, the key of the highway from east to west. Its name, which is still attached to the spot (Kharran, “a road”), as also the mention of the place in Ezekiel xxvii, 23, implied this; and it was dedicated to the same moon-god worshipped in Ur. There is an inscription in the British Museum (K 2701) mentioning this temple.

Nahor and his wife Milcah, who had at first been left behind, joined the family party again at Kharran, where they prospered greatly and increased in number and grew rich. But the place was an outpost of the old Chaldean rule, and full of, and surrounded by, the very idolatries that had prevailed in Ur, and it was consequently no suitable home for the chosen race. It was not the land which God had promised to show Abram; and when, after fifteen years, Terah died at the age of two hundred and five, Abraham, relieved of filial duties, was once more free to pursue his pilgrim path.

It was then that a second and more definite call came to Abraham, and this time a glorious promise was attached to it (Gen. xii, 1-3): “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee: and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”

From time to time in the life of the patriarch and in those of his son and grandson, additional particulars were added to this promise, as we shall see; details were filled in, the predictions were enriched and defined in their scope; but here is the third programme of the world’s history in outline. A childless man was to become the father of a great and blessed nation; the nation was to possess a land which would be indicated later on, and the whole human family were to be blessed through it.

For many a year already Abram had pondered in his heart the first revelation of the God of glory granted to him in his own home. It had molded his life and his hopes, sanctified his spirit, and separated him from an idolatrous world. Hence this command finds him prompt to obey, and with all the souls he had gotten in Haran, and great wealth in flocks and herds, to separate himself from his brother Nahor, and plunge into the wide wilderness which divided Haran from Canaan. The expression, “the souls he had gotten in Haran,” may imply that his large household had learned the true religion from their master. Many Jewish and Christian commentators take them to signify that he had converted them to the worship of Jehovah, and taught them his own faith. He rejoiced doubtless to sever himself and his dependents from the idolatries of Babylonia, and he went forth to the unknown west leaning on the promised guidance of God. “They went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came.”

The pilgrim party must have been, like those still often to be seen in the East following some Arab sheik, furnished with large numbers of the black goats’-hair tents for encampment so familiar to oriental travellers. If Abraham’s retainers numbered over twelve hundred, as is with good ground supposed, judging from the number of his well-trained servants, it was rather the emigration of a tribe than that of a family. The route taken seems to have led them to Damascus, for there are local traditions distinctly indicative of a prolonged visit of Abraham to the neighbourhood of that great and ancient city. A secretary of Herod the Great, Nicolaus of Damascus, says: “Abraham ruled at Damascus. He was a foreigner, who had come with an army out of the land beyond Babylon, called the land of the Chaldees.” And he adds that he migrated to Canaan, and that his name is well known even to this day in Damascus; a village in the suburbs being pointed out which is still called the house of Abraham, and a well also being named from him. (Josephus’ “Antiquities,” Book I. chap. vii.)

We know that the steward of his house was one Eliezer of Damascus; but the narrative proves that he cannot have remained long in the city, even if he did visit it. Crossing the land of Bashan and the Jordan River, he descended into Palestine probably near the plain of Esdraclon, and passing through it made his first encampment at Sychem. There between Ebal and Gerizim, in one of the loveliest valleys in Palestine, was his first home in the land of promise; and before we follow him we must ask, What was the condition of the country and who were its inhabitants at this time?

We are told that the Canaanite was then in the land, or, as it might be better rendered, was already in the land. Various tribes of the children of Ham had at this time settled in the country, though their number was not as yet great, and they seemed to have had no inclination to oppose the residence of so mighty a “prince” as Abraham. Four hundred years later these Hamitic tribes had grown up into the seven nations of Canaan whose gross corruptions led to their extermination.

In Abraham’s day the Amorites and the Hittites were chief among them. Both of these are largely mentioned in the Egyptian records, and a head of one of the Amorite kings may be seen in the British Museum. It was here at Sychem that Abraham received a definite gift of this very country to his posterity, the second promise from God, “Unto thy seed will I give this land.” We believed the promise and built an altar to the name of the Lord who appeared unto him. His obedience to the Divine call in forsaking Chaldea was rewarded by this gift of the land of Canaan. But the promise must have tested his faith, for its accomplishment seemed impossible. It was given to a childless man, and it related to a country already in the possession of others. But he staggered not at the promise of God either on this occasion or on any subsequent one: he was strong in faith giving glory to God, and being fully persuaded that what He had promised He was able also to perform.

Journeying still towards the south of Canaan, Abraham was led at last by the stress of famine to a brief and unhappy tarriance (sojourn) in Egypt, where he came in contact with another phase of the high civilization then existing among the sons of Ham, accompanied as usual by gross idolatry and polytheism. How long his sojourn in Egypt lasted is not recorded, probably only a few months. Josephus says that he went there not merely to share the plenty of the land, but to examine into the state of religion, and ascertain whether the Egyptian priests had any true light; to endeavour also to teach them the truth, if, as he expected, he found them ignorant of it; that he convinced many of the superiority of his own faith, and gained the reputation of a learned philosopher. But we have no confirmatory testimony for these statements, and look upon his sojourn in Egypt as a period of failure in faith, and a time of leaning to his own understanding—one illustration of the fact that Egypt and its antitype have always been scenes of temptation to the people of God.

The patriarch speedily returned to the place where his tent had been in the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, and it was here that when trouble arose with Lot, he showed his noble forbearance and unworldly generosity, by giving his nephew the choice of the land, and accepting for himself the inferior portion. It was on the occasion of this separation, when his own act had broken the link between himself and the last of his kindred, that the Lord appeared the third time to Abraham.

“And the Lord said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. Arise, wall through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee” (Gen. xiii. 14-17).

Yet again a fourth time was the promise renewed to the patriarch after his rescue of Lot and the inhabitants of Sodom from Chedor-laomer, king of Elam, and his confederates. “After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.” But Abram, unable to see in his childless condition how the promises of God could be fulfilled, sadly pleaded: “Lord God, what wilt Thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus? Behold, to me Thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir.”

God had pity on his perplexity, and “Behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, This Eliezer of Damascus shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir. And He brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and He said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And he believed in the Lord; and He counted it to him for righteousness. And He said unto him, I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it” (Gen. xv. 4-7).

In connection with this promise the announcement was also made that Abraham’s seed would be a stranger in a land not their own. “And He said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance. And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full” (Gen. xv. 13-16).

This prediction was full of contrasted elements, calculated some to sadden and some to rejoice the heart of Abraham. His posterity was to suffer, to be brought into bondage, to endure hardness, not to possess the promised land at once, but only after a long course of discipline. On the other hand, they were to possess it, they were to inherit the land on which their father merely pitched his tent. Why might they not take possession of it at once, and without the preliminary suffering? They would not be numerous enough to people the land, for one thing, not warlike enough to drive out its inhabitants; moreover, and this was the reason assigned, the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full. That of the Canaanites settled in the plains of Jericho among whom Lot had rashly elected to reside, was almost full; their cities were a very hotbed of corruption. But the moral condition of Aner and Eschol and the sons of Heth, or Hittites, at Hebron, seems to have been at that time widely different, and for four hundred years they were to be still spared and tested. The cup of iniquity was filling—not yet full.

It should be noted that the limits assigned to the promised land are here broadly stated as from the Nile to the Euphrates, “from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.” This large and important territory was the one bestowed by God on Abraham, and is still the entailed inheritance of his seed, “or the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.”

Note from the webmaster: I strongly disagree with Rev. Guinness that the land that God gave to the children of Abraham still belongs to people who call themselves Jews today! Yes, the gifts and calling of God are without repentance, but their right to live in that land was conditional upon their obedience to God’s law!

Leviticus 18:26 Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you:
27 (For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled;)
28 That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you.

Leviticus 20:22 Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: that the land, whither I bring you to dwell therein, spue you not out.

For more what that Bible has to say about this, please see: God’s Promise to Physical Israel to Live in the Land Was Contingent on Obedience

Another point: The so called Jews living now in the modern state of Israel may not even be biological descendants from Abraham but are the descendants of a Turkish tribe, the Khazars, descendants of Japheth, not Shem.

Moreover, Paul clearly says in Galatians chapter 3 that only those of faith in Jesus Christ are the children of Abraham!

Galatians 3:7  Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.

Luke 3:8  Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.

The Apostle John wrote:

John 1:11  He came unto his own (the Jews), and his own received him not. 12  But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name (Jesus): 13  Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

2 John 1:9  Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son.
10  ¶If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed:
11  For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.

Ask yourself, are those people who call themselves Jews today who live in the modern state of Israel obeying God? Not of they reject Jesus of Nazareth as their Messiah!

John 8:22  Then said the Jews, Will he kill himself? because he saith, Whither I go, ye cannot come.
23  And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world.
24  I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.

Why would any brother or sister who calls on the Name of Jesus for their salvation disagree with me on this point? I’ll tell you why: The doctrines of Dispensationalism and Christian Zionism were heavily promoted by C.I. Scofield in the Scofield Reference Bible from the early 20th century. Influential seminaries such as the Dallas Theological Seminary was founded on the doctrines of Dispensationalism which includes Futurism and Zionism. All sorts of false doctrines were spread abroad including two peoples of God, Israel and the Church. The Bible does not teach that at all! This is a VERY deep subject and I have written a multitude of articles about it!

Also see: Israel is the Church & the Church is Israel.

So it seems to me that H. Grattan Guinness was somewhat under the influence of 19th century doctrines of Christian Zionism. I won’t hold that against him. Nobody’s perfect, including your webmaster.

Continued in Chapter III. The Abrahamic Programme – Part II.

All sections of The Divine Programme of The World’s History By H. Grattan Guinness

Continued from The Divine Programme of The World’s History Chapter II. The Noahic Programme. – Part II..

THE ARYAN FAMILY.

The great Indo-Aryan, or Japhethic family, is so extensive and so varied that we shall best convey a fair idea of it by presenting Professor Max Muller’s own table of its principal members.

GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF THE ARYAN FAMILY OF LANGUAGES.

It will be seen at a glance that this family of languages comprises most of the ancient and modern languages of Europe, including Greek and Latin and all the Slavonic and Teutonic dialects; in fact, with a few exceptions—the Finn, the Lapp, the Hungarian, and the Crimean languages —all. It comprises also the Indian languages derived from the ancient Sanskrit, though not the Tamil and Telegu tongues, nor the languages of the aboriginal tribes in India, which are Turanian.¹

¹ The aboriginal races of India belong to the Turanian type, though the Hindu—the leading race—is Aryan. The difference is very marked between the hill-tribes, as they are called, and the Aryans of the plains. The former are despised and outlawed by the Hindus, own no property, seldom cultivate the land, and have institutions and customs wholly different from those of the Hindus. They do not observe caste; their widows are allowed to marry again; they eat flesh and have no objection to the shedding of blood; they indulge freely in intoxicating drinks, do not venerate the Brahmans, and bury their dead instead of burning them. All these things establish decisively that they are of a different origin, and the difference in their language confirms that conclusion. There are a great variety of races among them, but they all differ as widely as possible from the Aryan Hindus, among whom they have dwelt for ages.

The Parsee, the Persian, and the Armenian languages are also Aryan. Though differing so widely among themselves, all these forms of speech, belonging to various and widely scattered nations and peoples, have retained enough of the original language from which all alike sprang to demonstrate their common origin.

“One of the greatest discoveries of modern time, as affecting the question of races, is that conclusion from comparison of languages, which has defined what is called the Aryan or Indo-European family of nations.

“By a simple examination of the roots and structure of various languages, and their comparison especially with those of the Sanskrit, it has been ascertained, on evidence clear and unassailable, that certain nations, the most widely separated and the most diverse in physical characteristics, have a common origin. The blonde Norwegian and the dark-eyed Spaniard, the mercurial Celt and the steady Anglo-Saxon, the Slavonic Russian and the lively Frenchman, the practical Anglo-American and the dreamy Hindu, the German and the Persian, the Greek and the Roman, are proved to be all emigrants from one home, and to have spoken once a common tongue.

“We can see also, in the words they have all preserved, how far their common forefathers had progressed in thought and in civilization, before the remarkable causes arose which scattered them in various tribes over the face of the earth.

“The words which all, or nearly all, their descendants have in common are those which convey the simplest ideas of existence and action; those which describe the nearest family relations, such as father and mother, son and daughter; those for domestic animals, such as dog, pig, sow, boar, goose, and duck; those for the simplest articles of food, for certain for the great luminaries of the sky, and the objects of religious worship, derived from these great phenomena; and words of feeling, like heart and tears.

“Language shows conclusively that the Aryan tribes had passed beyond the lowest barbaric stage before they separated. There is no certain evidence that they were agricultural, but they were probably nomadic or occupied with the care of flocks; they had built houses and worked in metals; they had constructed boats and fastened animals to vehicles for domestic labour, and were acquainted with the art of sewing if not of weaving. Words present to us as clearly as a historical record that even in that distant antiquity, certain great features, common to Indo-European nations, whether for good or evil, still existed.

“The relation of husband and wife, the position of the sexes, the absence of caste, and the priestly authority of the father, were characteristics of our earliest ancestors. It is an additional evidence of their early peaceful life, that the words which are different in the many branches of their descendants are, with a few exceptions, the names of wild animals, and those for the instruments of war. The common parent tongue of our ancestors has perished, but in the various languages of their descendants—whether Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Celtic, or English—we see traces of the primeval tongue.

“The centre from which these various races first migrated is hid in the mists of a distant antiquity; but both language and the traditions of two races designate the high plateau of Asia lying east of the Caspian, as their common home.

From the Indian Aryans have come the great people of the Brahmanic Hindus; and from the Iran or Persic Aryans descended the Persians, the Medes, the Carmanians, the Bactrians, the Sogdians, the Hyrcanians, the Sargartians, and others of minor importance. . . . However early may have been the original dispersion of the Aryan tribes, the historical appearance of this powerful family is comparatively late. The Turanian, the Hamitic, and the Semitic peoples, had successively erected powerful empires, ere the vigorous Aryan family came forward upon the field of history. Since that period, with the exception of the Assyrian empire, and the Semitic conquests under Mohammed, and occasional Turanian invasions, the Aryan races have held the dominion of the world; bearing with them Art and Law, and Science and Civilization; exercising the singular philosophic and intellectual power of this family; manifesting especially to the world the principle of public spirit (or individual sacrifice for the good of a community); and becoming the universal instruments through which the Semitic conceptions of Deity, and the Semitic inspirations of Christianity, have been spread through all nations.

“Their two great streams of population—the European and the Asiatic Aryans, the practical races and the meditative races—after unknown ages of separation, modified by incomprehensible and countless influences of climate and of nature, as apparently diverse as any two branches of the human family, have, during the past two centuries, met again in the valleys of India, and the last few years have witnessed what is perhaps the final prostration of the Asiatic Aryan beneath the ingenuity and vigour of the European Aryan.” (From Brace’s “Manual of Ethnology,” pp. 38-42.)

THE HAMITIC FAMILY.

It is difficult to define the elements of the Hamitic family, as the most varied opinions exist among philologists on the question. Dr, Edkins, of the London Missionary Society, thinks that even Chinese is a Cushite, or Hamitic, language, and that the migration which peopled the Celestial empire was connected with the age and race of Nimrod. It is impossible to decide that many of the so-called Turanian languages are not Hamitic; but it is easy to prove that certain languages are so, and a consideration of these is sufficient for our present purpose.

The unquestionably Hamitic nations include Egypt, Babylonia, Ancient Syria and Palestine, and other parts of Africa.

1. EGYPT. There is abundant proof that the most ancient organized state of which we have any knowledge—Egypt— was peopled by the descendants of Mizraim, the son of Ham. The present Arabic name of Egypt is Misr; and the Hebrew Mizraim, which is dual in form and signifies the two Misrs, or Egypts, indicates the upper and lower sections of the long valley of the Nile. We learn from the tenth chapter of Genesis that the early Egyptians were closely related to the primitive inhabitants of Canaan, who were descended from Mizraim’s brother Cush. Herodotus, Diodorus, and other Greek writers are agreed that settled government was established in Egypt under monarchical institutions at an earlier date than in any other country. Some writers carry back the origin of Egypt into a fabulous antiquity, but historians of repute are agreed that it dates from a time anterior to B.C. 2000; in other words, that it goes back to a time soon after the Noahic deluge. Hamitic speech seems to have developed first in Egypt, and to have spread thence to other Hamitic races who were then perhaps dwellers in that land, by whom it was carried in two distinct lines to other parts of the earth—in one line it passed to Ethiopia, Southern Arabia, Babylonia, Susiana, and the adjoining coast; and in another line to Philistia, Tyre, Sidon, and the country of the Hittites.

In Scripture Egypt is frequently mentioned as “the land of Ham.” “He smote all the firstborn in Egypt; the chief of their strength in the tabernacles of Ham.”(Psalm 78:51) “Israel also came into Egypt; and Jacob sojourned in the land of Ham.”(Psalm 105:23) “They forgat God their Saviour, which had done great things in Egypt; wondrous works in the land of Ham, and terrible things by the Red Sea.” (Psalm 106:21,22)

2. BABYLONIA. The earliest or one of the earliest empires established in the great Mesopotamian valley was undoubtedly a Cushite or Hamitic one. Nimrod was the founder of a dynasty which reigned in Babylonia for some centuries; but whether his empire was the earliest founded in that region —whether it rose soon after the flood, as is commonly supposed, or nearer to the days of Moses—is as yet an undecided question. On account of its mention in the genealogical table in the tenth chapter of Genesis, it is generally assigned to the earliest post-diluvian antiquity. But it should be noted that Nimrod is there introduced in a parenthetical way. He is not mentioned among the sons of Cush in verse 7, but separately and subsequently. It is not asserted that he built Babel or Babylon, but only that it became his first seat of empire, and that from Babylon he went forth to Asshur and built a new capital for himself—Nineveh.

It is further asserted that his renown was proverbial apparently in the days when the Pentateuch was published, as if his exploits were fresh in the minds of men as late as the days of Moses, a thousand years after the flood. Several things are implied in these statements:—That Babylonia and the country to the north of it in the great valley between the Tigris and the Euphrates, “the land of Shinar,” was originally inhabited and governed by “Asshur,” or by Assyrians, i.e., by descendants of Shem. That after a considerable lapse of time— sufficient for many great cities to have arisen beside Babylon itself—Nimrod, a Hamite and a descendant of Cush, invaded and conquered the country, taking Babylon and the other places mentioned first, and gradually extending his dominion northward and eastward, till he reached the magnificent site on the Tigris which tempted him to erect a new capital to his empire—Nineveh, the remains of which are with us to this day.

The words “Cush begat Nimrod” need not necessarily mean that the latter was the great-grandson of Noah, for very numerous parallel expressions elsewhere, both in Scripture and in various oriental works, prove distinctly that the words convey nothing more than that Nimrod was by descent a Cushite. No information of his chronological distance from his ancestor, nor of the number of generations which intervened between them, is given in the passage. That his empire did not belong to the earliest post-diluvian antiquity is implied in Genesis xiv. where we have an enumeration of the monarchs reigning in Abraham’s time in the great valley between the Tigris and the Euphrates. The kings of Shinar and Elam are specially mentioned, and yet there is not the least allusion to Nimrod as reigning at Babylon, or to the existence of such a city as Nineveh, indicating that the latter was not built, nor the kingdom of Nimrod established in the days of Abraham. The rulers of the entire district seem to have been involved, more or less, in the great war of the “four kings with five,” and the occupants of Babylon at the time were descendants of Shem, as is evident from their names. Hence it would seem as if Nimrod and his Cushite dynasty cannot at that time have come into existence.

Now cuneiform monuments speak distinctly, like Genesis x., of a Cushite dynasty conquering Babylonia, spreading to the north, and erecting Nineveh on the Tigris. But they place this event about the sixteenth or seventeenth century before Christ, and state that by these conquests one original Chaldean empire was overthrown. Traces of Nimrod’s empire—i.e. of a Hamite dynasty—having ruled in Mesopotamia were found by Layard among the ruins of Nimrod, carved ivories bearing a strong resemblance to similar antiquities found in Egypt, and even monuments with distinctly Egyptian physiognomies. Cush and Mizraim, the founders of the Egyptian kingdom, were brothers. Berosus, the Chaldean priest, of whose history of his people considerable fragments exist, also throws light on the subject. He states that the fifth dynasty which ruled in Babylon consisted of “nine Arabian kings,” who reigned 245 years. Now as Arabia was originally peopled by the Cushites, this dynasty may well be that of Nimrod. Further, some very ancient Babylonian writings, discovered in an Arabic translation, and investigated by Professor Chwolson, of St. Petersburg, mention a foreign dynasty founded in Babylonia by one called Nemroda, or Nimrod, as actually ruling in the days when the author wrote. His book has no date, but its internal evidence shows that it belongs to a period long prior to the second Babylonian empire founded by Nabonassar, and subsequent to the early Chaldean monarchy.

On these and other grounds the existence of the Cushite empire of Nimrod is, by many careful scholars, now considered to be proved, independently of the statement in the tenth chapter of Genesis; but they hold it to have intervened between the old Chaldean monarchy and the rise of the Semitic Assyrians to supreme power in Western Asia. Even as late as the century of Nebuchadnezzar, 600 B.C. the Hamitic race is shown by the monuments to have formed a large element in the population of Babylonia.

Thus, while altering our preconceived opinion as to its precise chronological position, profane history and archaeological discovery alike agree in maintaining what Scripture asserts: (1) That Babylon was founded very soon after the flood; (2) that Mesopotamia was at first occupied by descendants of Shem; (3) that Nimrod, a Cushite invader, conquered the country, and then extending his empire northward, built Nineveh, and founded a dynasty which ruled over the neighbouring nations for a considerable period of time before the later Assyrian dynasty arose. Further explorations of the mounds on the Tigris and Euphrates will probably in years to come make still clearer our present conceptions of the exact nature of these events, and help us more accurately to determine the dates of these early political revolutions.

“The close connection between Egypt and Babylonia is in any case unquestionable. Ancient classical tradition and recent linguistic research agree in establishing a close connection between the early inhabitants of the lower Mesopotamian plain and the people which under the various names of Cushites, Ethiopians, and Abyssinian, had long been settled upon the Nile, . . . Names which are modifications of Cush have always hung about the lower Mesopotamian region, indicating its primitive connection with the Cush upon the Nile. Even now ancient Susina is known as Khuzistan, or the land of the Cushites. Standing alone, these might be weak arguments; but Sir Henry Rawlinson, the first translator of primitive Babylonian documents, declares the vocabulary employed to be decidedly Cushite or Ethiopian, and states that he was able to interpret the inscriptions chiefly by the aid which was furnished to him from published works on the Galla or Abyssinian and the Mahra or South Arabian dialects.” – From Rawlinson’s “Egypt and Babylon,” p. 8.

The EMPIRE OF THE HITTITES.

Nor was it in Egypt and in Babylonia only that the Hamites rose to supremacy in early post-diluvian times. A third great empire arose among them before any of the descendants of Shem or Japheth became prominent on the stage of the world’s history. And this third empire was not merely Hamitic, it was also distinctly. Canaanitish; so that whatever reading we adopt of the text of Noah’s prophecy— whether we read “Ham the father of Canaan,” or “Canaan” alone—the history of this empire is in point.

The Bible notices of the races who occupied the land promised to Abraham include a variety of nations under the general name Canaanites. Among these the Hittites appear frequently as first and mightiest, as having widespread dominions and great power. They are called “the children of Heth,” the second son of Canaan. In the Bible we first meet with them at Hebron, on the high-road from Egypt to Jerusalem, where they seem to have been recognised as the rightful owners of the place, from whom Abraham, regarded as a prince among them, purchased a burying ground. The Hittites were not only a commercial people, as we see by this money transaction, but they were also the proprietors of the land. This is the earliest transfer of land on record, and they were Hittites who made out these earliest title deeds. It seems that they subsequently secured sufficient foothold in Egypt to found the city called Zoan; as we are told in a parenthetical sentence, that Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.

Esau married several Hittite wives, who were a bitterness of spirit to Isaac and Rebecca. When Joshua took possession of Canaan, the command to destroy the Hittites was definitely given; and the limits of the land were defined in the words, “From the wilderness and Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast.”

In the various confederacies formed against the Israelites by the nations of Canaan, the Hittites are frequently mentioned; and in the great and decisive battle of Lake Merom their chariots and horses are alluded to. Though their power was crushed on the conquest of Canaan, many of them were spared and continued to dwell in the land (Jud. iii. 5). David had Hittite warriors in his army; and Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon and ancestress of our Lord, was the wife of Uriah the Hittite. Solomon also had Hittite wives. At the time of David’s extensive empire, Kadesh, the southern capital of the Hittites, was included in it (2 Sam. viii.), for he sent Joab there to number the people.

Some of them, however, continued to enjoy an independent existence, for in 1 Kings x. 29 we read that the kings of the Hittites had horses and chariots brought up for them out of Egypt. In 2 Kings we read that the Syrians fled panic-stricken from the siege of Samaria, on imagining that the king of Israel had hired against them “the kings of the Hittites.”

In all these passages there is implied, if not plainly stated, the existence of a wide-spread Hittite power from the days of Abraham to those of David.

Historical critics, however, asserted that there were no traces of any such empire in classic history, and pronounced the Bible notices of it to be unhistoric and unworthy of credence. Professor Newman and the Rev. I. K. Cheyne entirely rejected the Scripture account, and asserted that it was not, in spite of its great antiquity, of equal value as historic evidence with the hieroglyphic inscriptions of Egypt. Remarkable recent discoveries prove the Bible to be right and the critics to be wrong, and establish by a surprising amount of evidence the existence for about a thousand years of a great and mighty Hittite empire, which was able to dispute supremacy in the earth with the most powerful Pharaohs of Egypt for many centuries, and to extort from one of them at last a treaty of peace, which was sealed by a matrimonial alliance—a marriage from which it seems probable that the foster-mother of Moses was born.

It is about ten years since Dr. Wright first obtained casts of some very ancient inscriptions from Hamath in Northern Syria, and called public attention to them as Hittite remains. Many similar ones have since been discovered in the same script elsewhere by other explorers, in Asia Minor, on the shores of the Euxine Archipelago and Levant, on the borders of Egypt, and on the banks of the Euphrates. These inscriptions have been deciphered by Professor Sayce, who has devoted his life to the study of such questions, and who says: “We may now consider the Hittite origin of the peculiar system of writing first noticed by modern travellers on the site of Hamath, to be among the ascertained facts of science;” (“Transactions of the Soc, Bib, Arch,” vol. vii. part ii. p. 246) and Dr. Isaac Taylor, in his learned book, “The Alphabet,” refers to those hieroglyphics and sculptures “as in the unmistakable style of Hittite art.” (Vol. ii, p. 120)

The cumulative evidence resulting from the decipherment of these very ancient historical remains proves that the empire of the Hittites was wider and their power even greater than is implied in the Scripture notices. “That their empire extended,” says Dr. Isaac Taylor, “as far as the Euxine and the Egean, is shown by hieroglyphics scattered over Asia Minor, more especially in Lydia, Lycaonia, Cappadocia, and Cilicia.”

“Scholars are only just beginning to realize the vast extent of the dominions of the Hittites, and their important place in primitive history. Till the rise of Assyria, they were the most powerful nation in North-western Asia. Dr. Schliemann’s discoveries at Troy, and the Hittite monuments scattered over Asia, as far west as the neighbourhood of Smyrna, prove the extent of their empire to the west; while to the south, at a time prior to the exodus of the Hebrews, their dominion extended as far as Hebron; and if Mariette is right in his belief that one of the Hyksos dynasties was Hittite, they must have established their rule over Egypt itself.” (“The Alphabet,” by Dr. Isaac Taylor, vol. ii. p. 121.)

“In the inscriptions at Karnak, referring to the victories of Thothmes III, there is a long list of towns in the land of the Hittites. Of these Brugsch says: ‘It is clear that this list exhibits in their oldest orthography the greater number of these towns which are afterwards mentioned so frequently in the records of wars, in Assyrian history, in the cuneiform inscriptions which have been deciphered. They are the old allied cities of those “Kheta,” of unknown origin, who long before the rise of Nineveh and Babylon played the same part as at a later period the Assyrians undertook with success’ (Brugsch’s “Egypt under the Pharaohs,” vol. ii, p. 7.) . . . As at Megiddo in Palestine, so at Kadesh on the Orontes, the king of the Hittites had under his command all the surrounding peoples, either as subjects or allies, and it is clear that the mighty host was brought into the field by a voice of command that had to be obeyed.” (Wright’s “The Empire of the Hittites,” pp. 52, 53)

Dr. Isaac Taylor says, speaking of the monuments: “They are those of a people who have been identified with the Hittites of the Old Testament, the Kheta of the Egyptian monuments, the Khattai of the Assyrian records, and the Keteioi of Homer.

“They were one of the most powerful peoples of the primeval world, their empire extending from the frontier of Egypt to the shores of the Egean, and, like the Babylonians and the Egyptians, they possessed a culture, an art, and a script peculiar to themselves, and plainly of indigenous origin.” (“The Alphabet,” vol. ii. p. 120.)

Perhaps, however, the most striking indication of the might of this ancient empire is afforded by its relations to Egypt. After tracing these by means of the monumental records of Egypt itself, Dr. Wright says: “We thus see the Hittite kings the rivals of the Pharaohs in peace and war from the twelfth to the twentieth dynasty. The shock of Egyptian invasion exhausted itself against the frontier cities of Kadesh and Carchemish, but the mighty empire of the Hittite extended beyond, on the broad plains and islands of Asia Minor, and so there were always fresh Hittite armies, and abundance of Hittite wealth, to enable the Hittite empire to withstand the might of Egypt for a thousand years.” (“Empire of the Hittites,” p. 35.)

If we ask how far back can the existence of this Hittite empire be traced, Professor Sayce replies: “Already in the astrological tables of Sargon of Agané, in the nineteenth century B.C, the Hittites are regarded as a formidable power.” (“Transactions of the Soc. Bib. Arch.,” vol. vii. part ii. p. 261.)

THE ASSYRIAN INSCRIPTIONS record the struggles of Tiglath-Pileser, Assur-Nasir-Pal, and other Assyrian monarchs with these same “Kheta,” or Hittites. Shalmaneser conducted thirty campaigns against them, according to his own account on two important monuments, one of which is known as the Black Obelisk of Nimrod, and the other as the Monolith of Kurkh; but still the warlike sons of Heth renewed the conflict, nor was it until the days of Sargon that they were finally subdued at Carchemish, their Eastern capital. This important event is narrated in one of Sargon’s numerous annals, translated by Dr. Julius Oppert:

“In the fifth year of my reign, Pisiri of Carchemish sinned against the great gods, and sent against Mita the Moschian messenger, hostile to Assyria. He took hostages. I lifted my hands to Assur, my lord. I made him leave the town. I sent away the holy vases out of his dwelling. I made them throw him into chains of iron. I took away the gold, the silver, and treasures of his palace. The Circesian rebels who were with him, and their properties, I transplanted to Assyria, I took among them fifty cars, two hundred riders, three thousand men on foot, and I augmented the part of my kingdom. I made the Assyrians to dwell in Circesium, and I placed them under the domination of Assur my lord.” (“Records of the Past,” vol. vii. p. 30.)

If now we inquire what was the moral character of these people, and what their religion, we shall perceive that they shared with Egypt and Babylon the moral degradation which fitted them to exchange dominion and rule for a servile position, that their moral decadence involved their perishing and passing away from the stage of history. The rites with which their goddesses were honoured should hardly be called religion. The priestesses were mere ritualists, and the business of their service was attention to ceremonies without any reference to morality. Their impure worship seems to have been mingled with the primitive nature-worship; and in the name Kadesh, the capital of the Hittites, we see one of the numerous shrines where Hittite girls were devoted to wickedness in the name of religion. The worship of these deities took many repulsive forms. Devotees surrendered their children to Baal in the flames, and the children’s screams were drowned by trumpet and drum; and the rites of Astarte were equally vile, though accompanied by the cooing of doves and clouds of incense.(Wright’s “ Empire of the Hittites,” pp. 75, 76) Their idol-gods were innumerable. Treaties and agreements were placed under the sanction of gods and goddesses just as in Egypt, and the catalogues of deities whose names are affixed to such documents are very long.

The Hittite empire passed away after an existence of about 1000 years. It disappears from the stage of history subsequently to the battle of Carchemish, and leaves scarcely a trace behind, so that its ever having existed at all was eventually called in question. But its records happily withstood the ravages of time, though the power to read them was lost. The key to their decipherment now recovered, the old empire emerges from the oblivion of ages, a resuscitated witness to the historical accuracy of the Old Testament. And though the Hittite monuments leave unrevealed much which we would fain learn, yet they bring clearly to our knowledge an important early development of the posterity of the youngest son of Noah, and the Hittites must henceforth take their place along side of the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Canaanites. All four rose to early eminence in the earth; the moral and religious character of three of them is sufficiently evidenced by their still existing remains, and that of the fourth is plainly stated in Scripture.

THE TURANIAN RACES.

We have now indicated the three leading groups of nations connected with the three sons of Noah as they appear in ancient and modern times. A very large number of nations which have existed and exist still in the earth are, however, as we have said, not included in any of these groups—the Turanian races, the Chinese, and most of the nations who speak the hundreds of African languages. No certain knowledge of the racial connections of these nations and peoples has as yet been attained. Ethnographers and linguists differ among themselves on the question at present. Science is therefore silent, or ventures only to make suggestions; it cannot announce any conclusions. But from this very fact it is clear that the nations we have omitted are not those who have made history. Had they exerted any great influence in the world, their genealogy would not have been thus obscured, nor the family connections of their language lost.

Great peoples preserve their archives just as noble families preserve their genealogies, and can trace back their family tree to its founder. It is only the most illiterate who can scarcely tell the names of their great-grandfathers, and only as to the less influential! And degenerate peoples of the earth can any doubt exist as to their true ancestry.

This will be seen at once by a glance at the names of the Turanian group of languages. There are few among them known generally at all, and fewer still known to fame. The family embraces the greater portion of the Asiatic peoples—the Tartars, Mongols, Thibetians, Tamulians, and aboriginal Indian peoples, as well as in Europe such nations as the Finns and the Lapps; and it is possible that the Malay inhabitants of the Eastern Archipelago and the Central African nations also belong to it, but it is by no means certain. None of them have in any obvious or notorious way shared in the distinctive fortunes of either Shem or Japheth; none of them have attained any great religious supremacy, or exercised any marked spiritual influence in the earth like the Semites; nor have any of them secured vast extension or enlargement like the sons of Japheth.

If we could, as we doubtless shall be able to do in due time, connect them by means of their languages with their parent stock, it would in no way affect our conclusions as to the fulfilment of Noah’s wonderful prophecy; for just as a family of great musicians may have some unmusical members, or a family of painters some who have no talent for art, so a great family of nations, characterized as a whole, and in its leading members by certain peculiarities, may have inferior members wholly destitute of such distinctive features. Such characteristics as these nations do possess, associate them rather with the Hamitic races than with either of the other two, and the special destiny of Ham’s descendants attaches very clearly to some of them. So markedly have servitude and slavery been the portion of the coloured races of the Dark Continent, that it is difficult not to believe that they are descendants of the youngest son of Noah. It has indeed generally been assumed that they are so,—as, for instance, by Dr. Keith in his admirable unanswered and unanswerable “Evidence of Prophecy;”¹ but it must be admitted in the light of modern linguistic discovery that this is an assumption which it is as impossible to prove as to disprove.²

¹ “Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion derived from the Literal Fulfilment of Prophecy,” by Dr. Alexander Keith, p. 513, 37th edition.

² We have consulted on this point Robert Cust, Esq., the well-known writer on languages, and our inquiry referred especially to the large family of dialects known as the Bantu languages of Central Africa, which extend from the east to the west of the continent, and from the south of the Sudan to the borders of Cape Colony, embracing thus nearly the southern half of Africa, and including hundreds of large tribes and nations—all the languages spoken on the Congo and its great tributaries, the Zulu and Kaffre tongues with their sub-divisions, though not the Hottentot. As regards these languages, Mr. Cust says: ‘The Bantu family is quite distinct and separate from any other linguistic family; it has no affinity whatsoever to any, either in structure or vocabulary. How it came into existence is a secret reserved for the next century. We have not a tittle of evidence to hang a theory upon. It will be safe to say nothing, because we know nothing; nor can I for a moment admit that the Berber, Galla, Agau, etc., are Semitic tongues in any sense—they are Hamitic.”

Language does not as yet indicate the connection, but on the other hand it gives no counter-indication. In the case of the Central African races, history cannot enable us to decide their origin any more than language, for Central Africa may be said to have no history. Geography, however, points distinctly to a Hamitic source for all the populations of Africa. South-western Asia was the cradle of the human race, and the nature of the case requires, consequently, that Africa should have been entered from its north-eastern quarter—not across the Isthmus of Suez only, but also from the shores of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean to the south of it. The early Hamitic Chaldeans had ships, and were great traders by sea to these regions, as we know. Now as Ethiopia, Nubia, and Egypt were unquestionably peopled by Hamites, we have no reason to doubt that it was the same with the rest of the continent.

Conquest, commerce, and colonization have, in the course of ages, introduced many other elements—Arabs, Moors, Greeks, Romans, English, French, Portuguese, and Dutch. But in considering the dark races as one and all descended from Ham, we take the most probable, and therefore the most scientific, ground. As long as no whit of evidence can be adduced for an opposite theory, we are justified in assuming from geographical probabilities, and from the marvellous and long-continued social degradation of the people, that the condition of the population of the Dark Continent illustrates and fulfils the brief but pregnant foreview of Noah as to the posterity of his youngest son.

Four men and four women were saved in the ark; who were the latter? We know the names and characters of the men, but Scripture gives no particulars of the women. Noah’s wife was doubtless a godly woman, and so, in all probability, the wives of Shem and Japheth. Ham’s unfilial (not becoming a child) and impious character suggests the question as to the sort of wife such a man would have been likely to choose. Can the foreseen character of his posterity, which was to blight them with the doom of servitude in the earth, be traceable to the mother’s character as well as to that of the father? We must remember that Noah was five hundred years old when he begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and six hundred years old at the time of the flood, so that the young men had lived for a century in the midst of that ungodly antediluvian race, one of whose specially recorded sins was the contraction of unequal marriages. Ham, though actually one of the godly family, may, like others, have taken to himself a wife of Canaanite origin (as Esau afterwards intermarried with the daughters of Heth and Canaan). If so—and there is nothing in Scripture to forbid the thought, and much, on the other hand, to suggest it—may there not lie in this fact an explanation of more difficulties than one? Not only would it account for the character of the family of Noah’s youngest son, as evidenced afterwards in their conduct, but it may furnish an explanation of the remarkable physical differences which existed in the very earliest ages between the Hamites and the rest of mankind.

REVIEW OF THE Facts.

We have now indicated the three groups of nations descended respectively from the three sons of Noah, including all those whose ancestry can be undoubtedly ascertained. We have consequently before us the facts on which must be based any valid reply to the question, Has the second section of the Divine programme of the world’s history been fulfilled ?

We recall first the dark foreview which it gives of the descendants of HAM, and we inquire, Does the state of the Hamitic peoples of this day justify it? We look round the world, we see many ruling races, foremost among which is the Anglo-Saxon, girdling the globe with its empires, and holding in subjection men of all creeds and colours. We see Europe and America in the forefront of civilization and power—Asia enormously behindhand (in the 19th century), and Africa almost immeasurably in the rear.

Europe and America call Japheth father; and even India, if we except its degraded aboriginal hill-tribes, is Aryan or Japhethic. China and the Turanian races of Asia cannot be adduced in evidence at all, as their ancestry is uncertain; the Jews and the Arabs are Shemites, and there remains only poor, dark, degraded Africa to tell us the present condition of the descendants of Ham. The distinguishing feature of Africa is slavery. The low type of its populations morally and intellectually is such that liberty and independence, to say nothing of rule and dominion over others, is to them impossible. To tyrants at home, and to slave-raiders from afar, they submit without a thought of struggling for their liberties. Disunion and mutual distrust reign among neighbouring tribes, and forbid their uniting for mutual defence. Public spirit is wholly wanting; the bracing and elevating influence of true religion is replaced by degrading superstition, and hence despotic tyranny and cruel devil-worship reign unopposed. The woman is slave to the man, the subject to the chief, the petty tyrant to the great tyrant, and the negro races as a whole to the white races. In America, until recently, millions of Africa’s sable sons served the children of Japheth as bond-slaves. In Egypt, the Hamitic races have for ages served the Semitic; the degradation of the land is indeed wonderful (or full of wonder), and especially so when contrasted with its early glory.

It is long since its days of dominion passed away for ever. Nebuchadnezzar, a Semitic monarch, was its first conqueror; and Ezekiel, the prophet of the Captivity, announced its fate from that time forth in a very distinct and detailed way. “It shall be a base kingdom; it shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations.” “I will diminish them,” said God, “that they shall no more rule over the nations, . . . The sword shall come upon Egypt, and great pain shall be in Ehiopia, when the slain shall fall in Egypt, and they shall take away her multitude, and her foundations shall be broken down.” “They also that uphold Egypt shall fall… . I will also destroy the idols, and I will cause their images to cease out of Noph; and there shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt: and I will put a fear in the land of Egypt. . . . The pomp of her strength shall cease in her, . . . a cloud shall cover her, and her daughters shall go into captivity.” (Ezek. xxix, xxx)

When the Persian power succeeded the Babylonian, Cambyses—a Median, and therefore Aryan or Japhethic monarch— conquered Egypt, and treated the people with barbarous cruelty. As Isaiah had predicted, they were given over “into the hand of a cruel lord, and a fierce king ruled over them.” The Persians oppressed them so severely that they were driven again and again to revolt, but each time they were subdued with fresh cruelties. When the Persian empire fell, Alexander the Great—a Grecian, and therefore another Aryan or Japhethic conqueror—became their master, and left the city of Alexandria as a memento of his dominion in the land. After his death Egypt fell to the share of his general, Ptolemy, whose successors governed it for many generations, the first few fairly well; but, as Strabo asserts, “all after the third very ill, being corrupted by luxury.” This dynasty, after reigning 294 years, ended in the suicide of the infamous Cleopatra. Octavius Caesar then reduced Egypt to a Roman province (30 B.C.), and for 670 years it was governed by prefects sent from Rome, or—after the division of the empire —from Constantinople. Then succeeded the Saracen dominion, when Omar conquered Egypt, and burned the invaluable Alexandrian library of 400,000 volumes, sinking the already base kingdom lower than ever before, by leaving it a prey to ignorance and superstition. For six centuries this Saracenic rule lasted; and then a dynasty of actual slaves ruled Egypt for 267 years. (Until A.D. 1517.)

THE MAMELUKS were Circassian or Turkish slaves bought young and trained to military service by the Sultans of Egypt, who grew insolent at last, slew their sovereign, and usurped the government of the country. Here then were the once proud Egyptians become servants of servants indeed! The rule of the Mameluks was a succession of “wars, battles, injuries, and rapines.” Twenty-four Turkish and twenty-three Circassian sultans succeeded each other, the last being hanged before one of the gates of Cairo by Selim, the Turkish emperor, who put an end to the Mameluk government, and annexed Egypt to the Ottoman empire, to which nominally it still (then in the 19th century) belongs.

Thus, for twenty-five long centuries, the Egyptian descendants of Ham have been in subjection to successive forms of Semitic and Aryan rule; never once independent, never ruled even by a native viceroy, never able to throw off the yoke, much less to impose their authority on others, they have continued a kingdom, but have been, and are, “the basest of the kingdoms.” “A servant of servants will he be unto his brethren,” said Noah; and such is Egypt to this day. Look where we will the world over, nowhere can we see Hamitic races in a position of supremacy.

But it was not always thus. The earliest empires of antiquity were Hamitic. Nimrod conquered Semitic peoples; Egypt held Israel in bondage. In chronological order, supremacy in the earth fell first to the Hamites, then to the Shemites or Semitic nations, and lastly, up to the present time, to the descendants of Japheth.

Now, here a remarkable and most interesting fact claims our attention, and is in itself a strong argument for the inspiration of this Noahic prophecy. So far from there being any sign of its fulfilment in the days of Moses, or even at the latest date to which skeptical criticism assigns the authorship of the Pentateuch, appearances were all entirely the other way. No human foresight would have anticipated degradation and servile subjection for the Hamitic races in those early ages. Things looked as if nothing could have well been more mistaken than the prediction. All the greatest empires of the earliest antiquity were Hamitic: the mighty and long-continued kingdom of Egypt; the great empire of Nimrod, of whose gigantic and magnificent cities and temples we have ocular evidence in our own day; all the seven nations of Canaan; and above all, this mighty, warlike, extensive, and long-lasting empire of the Hittites— all were Hamitic. Wherever the eye turned, the posterity of the youngest son of Noah would in those early ages have been observed to be in the ascendant. While Abraham was still nothing but a sheik of a pastoral tribe wandering over the quiet uplands of Palestine, the Hamitic Pharaoh surrounded by his princes was already reigning in state in Egypt; and centuries later, when Abraham’s posterity were groaning under cruel bondage in the land of Ham, its proud monarch refused to liberate his oppressed captives. Even when a first installment of fulfilment occurred in the conquest of the Canaanites by the Israelites under Joshua, the mighty empire of the Hittites remained, and continued to hold by far the larger part of the territory promised to the seed of Abraham. Just as Cain, who was cursed from the earth which had opened her mouth to receive his brother’s blood from his hand, went out from the presence of the Lord, and with his descendants built cities, invented arts, cultivated music, grew rich and great and wicked, so with the descendants of Noah’s youngest son. Their doom of degradation did not overtake them all at once. God’s great judgments linger; they are slow, but sure. The nations of Canaan were not expelled until their iniquity was full; the Hamites generally did not sink into servile subjection to their brethren until they had proved their utter unfitness to be the leading races of the world.

A thousand years is with the Lord only as one day. The Lord was not slack concerning His promise of supremacy to Shem and Japheth, but He was in no haste to vindicate His own truth and faithfulness. The two great branches of the Hamitic family —the African and the Asiatic—were both permitted to rise into eminence in the earliest ages of history:

“For the last three thousand years the world has been mainly indebted for its advancement to the Semitic and Indo-European races, but it was otherwise in the first ages. Egypt and Babylon, Mizraim and Nimrod—both descendants of Ham—led the way and acted as the pioneers of mankind in the various untrodden fields of art, literature, and science. Alphabetic writing, astronomy, history, chronology, architecture, plastic art, sculpture, navigation, agriculture, textile industry, seem all of them to have had their origin in one or other of these two countries.” (Rawlinson’s “Ancient Monarchies,” vol. i, p. 60)

Is this strange? No, but it is in harmony with the course of Divine providence revealed to us throughout Scripture: “That was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual.” “Many that are first shall be last, and the last shall be first.” These sons of Ham had ample time and a wide sphere allowed them in which to show forth what was in them, in which to display the character that was subsequently to bring down upon them the degradation predicted. God never inflicts undeserved judgments; He waits until men fill up the measure of their iniquity. Had servitude overtaken the Hamites from the first, it might have seemed an arbitrary and unjust infliction —a thing of which the providential government of God affords no instance. He renders to every man according to his works, What a man sows, that he also reaps; and what is true of individuals, is true also of nations and of races. Egypt and Babylon, the Canaanites and the Hittites, one and all fell into the lowest depths of idolatry, and into the vilest forms of sensualism, cruelty, and sin; they perished in their own corruption, and were the victims of their own iniquities. They deserved the degradation that in after ages overtook them, and sank not into servitude ere they had proved themselves unworthy of supremacy.

The Hamitic races have left us—what? The inheritance of great and influential religions, like the Semites? Descendants who form the leading nations of the earth to-day, like the Japhethites? A rich and precious literature moulding still the minds of men? No; none of these, They have left us—the pyramids of Egypt, the monstrous carvings of Memphis and Thebes, the masses of masonry buried in the mounds of Nimrud; boastful, vainglorious inscriptions by the hundred, with bas-relief presentations, all too vivid, of their horrible cruelties, their devastating wars, and their degrading superstitions. We know what their religion and their morals must have been from these, as well as from the assertions of history. Nineveh, Babylon, and Egypt were, besides all of them, enemies and oppressors of Israel. Ezekiel’s description of the idolatry, the pride, and the wickedness of Egypt present an awfully dark picture of the nation.

They are described by contemporary historians as a luxurious, unwarlike, vicious, and faithless people. “Such men are evidently born not to command, but to obey; they are altogether unworthy of liberty, and slavery is the fittest for them, as they are fittest for slavery.” For “righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people.” Where now are the Hamite races? What thrones do they occupy? what sceptres do they wield? what influence do they exert in the earth? They have disappeared from the stage of history as rulers, leaders, actors, almost as completely as if they had never been. They continue to exist, but as degraded and enslaved peoples; living witnesses of the truth of God, almost as great a miracle as the Jews themselves.

And next we inquire, What about the religious supremacy of Shem? Has God in any peculiar sense been the God of His descendants, and have they held Hamitic races in subjection ?

The answer to this question is the simple but all-comprehensive statement that Shem was the father of Abraham. As we shall see more fully in a later section, all the true religion in the world comes to it through Abraham, and thus through Shem. The only three religions on earth which have any knowledge at all of the one living and true God are Semitic. Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism (which, defective and even blasphemous as it is, is yet infinitely nearer the truth than any form of idol-worship or “fetish ”)—all three flow from Abraham, the Hebrew, as their human fountainhead; and thus from the second son of Noah—Shem. God has been the Lord God of Shem in an altogether peculiar and distinctive sense.

The Saviour of the world descended from this son of Noah. Revealed religion has flowed through Semitic channels. This is a fact that none can deny, and a fact that must have been foreseen, and that well deserved to be foretold. We do not dwell further on it here, as it must come under consideration in our next chapter in another connection. Every psalm of David, and every Christian hymn and sacred song of later days, every authentic narrative of the earliest ages of humanity, the sublime law of Sinai, and the beatitudes and parables of Christ, the visions of prophecy, the teachings of apostles, the testimony of the martyrs, the missions of modern Christianity—all that has lifted our world from ruin and misery and darkness and death, all that has purified and ennobled it and opened to it a door of hope for the future—all has come to it through Shem.

It is true that the bud of Judaism, when it blossomed into the flower of Christianity, exhaled its heavenly perfume far and wide, and knew no distinction of races. The sons of Japheth and the sons of Ham shared in the great salvation. It was to the Jew first and also to the Gentile, but the point is that it came through Shem. Religious supremacy belonged to his line. No fact in human history is clearer than this. The prediction has been fully accomplished, and the future will exhibit this even more clearly than the present; for the unspeakable blessings of the ages to come all flow to our race through Christ, who, as Son of man, is the offspring of Shem.

And it is equally clear that the prediction as to Japheth has been and is abundantly accomplished. Not only were the Medo-Persian, Grecian, and Roman empires, which ruled the world in their day, Japhethic, or Aryan (meaning, in Sanskrit, lordly, or of good family), but so are the vast majority of the nations of modern Europe Teutonic, Slavonic, and Celtic alike, with all their colonies throughout the world, as well as the United States of America, and some of the leading nations of Asia, including India, Armenia, and Persia. When we remember what the dominion of Greece and Rome were, and what the dominion of the Teutonic race now is, to say nothing of the vast power of Russia and the Slavonic nations, there can be no question as to the superior dominion which has fallen to this branch of the human family. The British empire alone exceeds the old Roman empire both in area and in population. For industrial and commercial development and for wealth it has no equal in the world, and never had even in bygone ages. No previous kingdom ever extended its dominions into all parts of the world. And yet it represents only half the Anglo-Saxon race, and that race is only one out of a multitude of Japhethic kingdoms.

Some 300 millions of mankind are under the government of Great Britain; and if we add to this the sixty millions governed by the United States, we may say a third of the human family is under the dominion of the Anglo-Saxons alone! The Germans and French rule another 150 millions, and the Russians 100 millions more. The Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, and other European nations rule about another 100 millions; so that probably half the human race is even now under the government of the sons of Japheth, and that in all parts of the world. Here is indeed enlargement and dominion on a vast and long-enduring scale!

The HAMITIC races lost all rule and empire twenty-five centuries ago; they now count for nothing among the powers of the world. The SEMITIC races were never greatly enlarged—never great conquerors, save for a short period in the Saracenic era. They have ruled the world by another weapon than the sword; they rule it still, and will rule it for ever— religiously. The Japhethic races are, and have for over 2,000 years been, supreme among the children of men. The round globe itself is the only measure of their enlargement. They influence even China and Japan and the vast expanses of Central Asia and Central Africa. The North Pole and the South alike are visited by them. They girdle the globe with submarine cables, cross its continents with their railways, and its oceans with their steam-ships, carry their commerce to its most distant shores, and force the unwilling heathen into friendly intercourse. Moreover, they dwell in the tents of Shem both spiritually and physically; they share by faith the blessings of Abraham’s covenant, and they occupy and influence lands once occupied by Semitic peoples.

Is not all this fulfilled prophecy on the grandest of scale: The entire ethnological development of the posterity of Noah foreseen and foretold when as yet the patriarch himself still lived! Did he guess how all this prolonged future would turn out? Was it by chance he assigned these widely different destinies to the descendants of his three sons? How came he to make no mistake? If Moses puts these words into his lips, why did he delineate a future absolutely contrary to every indication of his times? Why did he not make Noah assign supremacy to Ham, seeing, as he did, Hamitic empires all around him? Why did he not assign enlargement to Shem, and, as he knew little of Japheth, put the servitude down to his account? It would have seemed to human foresight a much more likely outline of the future. But no. Moses had nothing to do with the prophecy save as an editor. Noah had nothing to do with it save as an utterer. God Himself was and must have been its Author; and the second father of the human race was and must have been one of the “holy men of old,” who “spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”

Continued in Chapter III. The Abrahamic Programme – Part I.

All sections of The Divine Programme of The World’s History By H. Grattan Guinness

Introduction

I first posted this article on Dec. 7, 2015. It was written by a former Roman Catholic priest, Richard Bennett of Berean Beacon. He was born in Ireland on March 10, 1938. In 1963 at 25 years old, he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest but after 23 years he left the Catholic church when he was 48 years old after reading the Bible and realizing that life in Jesus Christ was not possible while remaining true to Roman Catholic doctrine. Please read his testimony and you will see he was a sincere truly born again child of God in Jesus Christ who escaped the clutches of Rome! I myself am also a former Roman Catholic and can testify that Richard Bennett knows what he is talking about. Richard went to his Heavenly reward on September 23, 2019.

Dear Friend,

When you study the facts documented in the article below, you will understand that it is imperative that you disapprove of Pope Francis and the Roman Church. No matter how cleverly Romanism is presented, to accept the Church of Rome as a genuine Christian church is mortally dangerous. In history, there are many examples of how perilous it is. For example, in Ireland in 1172, the acceptance of the Roman Church by Christian Pastors across the nation finally meant, for most people, the end of true Christian faith on that island. Thus it was that Roman Catholicism was imposed on Christian Pastors in 1172 by Pope Alexander III with the military might of King Henry II of England. The Pastors and people accepted the Church of Rome, rather than die. How different things could have been if the Pastors and people sacrificed their lives for the Gospel of grace.

In a similar way, in the 1560s, the Jesuits arrived in Poland. They created a network of schools and colleges across Poland, and they managed in a very clever way to present Romanism as the true Church. Thus it was that the Pastors, leaders, and people acclaimed the Roman Church, and what the Reformation had achieved was sadly lost for the most part. Also from 1600 to 1610 the Jesuits also were in the forefront of the Counter-Reformation in Hungary. They were successful in reconverting two-thirds of the population back to Catholicism, when the country was in its golden age of biblical faith.

Now with another clever Jesuit leading the field; i.e., Pope Francis, Romanism is foisted on the nations of the world. It is time for you and all true Christians to take a stand against the encroachment of this apostate Church.

Please forward this article, and have it posted on Internet Websites. Pray that Christ Jesus the Lord will show Himself as the Head of His Church. He it is that rules His Church according to His written Word of truth and the Gospel of grace.

Yours in the Lord’s truth and grace,

Richard Bennett

Refuting Pope Francis and the Roman Church

By Richard Bennett

The New York Times reported the frenzy of adulation for Pope Francis during his September 2015 visit to the United States,

“Welcomed with a fanfare of trumpets and a chorus of amens, Pope Francis introduced himself to the United States on Wednesday with a bracing message on climate change, immigration and poverty that ranged from the pastoral to the political. On a day that blended the splendor of an ancient church with the frenzy of a modern rock star tour, Francis waded quietly but forcefully into some of the most polarizing issues of American civic life.” [1]

It appeared as though no lofty controversy was beyond the insight of his judgment, and no lowly mortal beyond the reach of his mercy. And as if unseen hands were covertly orchestrating them, crowds chanted homage and acclamation for the Roman Pontiff. To all appearance the world wonders after him, in great admiration of his power, policy, and pomp. Yet very few comprehend the truth about the institution that he directs. Very few also have bothered to analyze biblically what Pope Francis actually said. An example of this is what the Pope said at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. On September 24, 2015, Francis offered prayers for the hundreds of Muslim pilgrims killed during Islam’s Hajj; saying,

“I would like to express two sentiments for my Muslim brothers and sisters…My sentiments of closeness in the face of tragedy. Tragedy that they suffered in Mecca…In this moment I give assurances of my prayers. I unite myself with you all. A prayer to all mighty God all merciful.”[2]

This sentiment is consistent with the official teaching of the Vatican. In the measure that Rome has distanced herself from the Lord of Salvation, so has she moved into solidarity with Islam, and confesses that they both worship the same god.

“‘The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.’”[3]

Pope Francis’ expression of a union of faith in the “Allah” of Islam is an abomination before the One and only True God, as He commands, “For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God,[4] and “I am the Lord that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another.”[5] Thus, sacerdotal wickedness and doctrinal outrages are blights that even Francis’ affectation cannot charm away.

The Wickedness of the Roman Church That Needs to Be Analyzed

What was revealed to the world in 2003 remains true today: “From Canada to Australia, South Africa to Hong Kong, across Europe from Ireland, and to Pope John Paul II’s native Poland, clergy sex abuse cases and the ensuing cover-ups have proven to be a worldwide problem.”[6] “It is not about one man or one country; it is about an institution.”[7] Time and again it has proved itself to be “an institution” of betrayal, abuse, and lies. Cases of sexual misconduct by Catholic clerics continue to come to light as was reported as recently as August 5, 2015,

“Monday’s deadline for filing claims has passed, the bankruptcy case of the Twin Cities archdiocese moves to its next stage. By the deadline, more than 600 claims had been filed, including 407 by alleged victims of clergy sex abuse.[8]

On July 15, 2015, The New York Times reported,

“Though sexual misconduct by individual priests has long drawn headlines in Minnesota and around the world, the latest resignations [Archbishop John C. Nienstedt and an auxiliary bishop, Lee A. Piché] come amid a push to punish the church leaders who did not intervene.”[9]

It is well recognized that the Roman Catholic Canon Law imposing priestly celibacy has been the root cause of moral degradation and licentiousness among Catholic priests. These men are but human beings with human passions. To force celibacy upon them is an abomination because it goes against the will of God that men and women are to marry and bear children. Hence the predictable outcome: it drives these men to illicit acts. These priests corrupt women, boys, and girls, with acts of fornication and sodomy. It is also known and readily admitted by Catholics that it was Pope Gregory VII who first imposed the law banning priests from marrying. Thus, a Catholic website www.uscatholic.org states, “In 1075 Pope Gregory VII issued a decree effectively barring married priests from ministry, a discipline formalized by the First Lateran Council in 1123.”[10]

Pope Francis is touted as a pope who breaks with Roman traditions. If he is truly concerned for the countless clergy and laity, casualties of a papal law, which viciously ripped through their lives, then he should hasten to abolish that vile regulation. Rumor has it that he may just do that. But if, after 940 years of the enforcement of the absurd regulation of his predecessors, were Francis to rescind it, we would suspect that his main reason might be financial weight of legal costs rather than concern for the victims of the abuse perpetrated by the Roman priests. News sources such as The Guardian report,

“Pope Francis has hailed US bishops for their handling of the sexual abuse crisis that has rocked the Catholic church for decades, saying they had shown ‘courage’ throughout and regained the authority and the trust which was demanded of them…Between 2004 and 2013, US diocese paid $1.7bn in legal settlements, according to a report released last year by the US Conference on Catholic Bishops. In that same period, it also paid $379m in legal fees.”[11]

The Catholic Church is a corporation, and no corporation could long sustain such financial losses. She must maintain her authority and power over the millions of Catholics who look to her, in spite of the record of her lies and corruption; thus, indeed, Pope Francis may rescind the law barring married priests from ministry.

Worse than Abuse: RC Dogma of Spiritual Life Obtained by Sacraments

Sunday, May 3, 2015, Pope Francis, in the manner of popes who have preceded him, emphasized participation in the sacraments as a way of possessing spiritual life and communion with Christ. He said,

“Jesus is the vine, and through Him … we are the branches, and through this parable, Jesus wants us to understand the importance of remaining united to him. Grafted by Baptism in Christ, we have freely received from Him the gift of new life; and we are able to remain in vital communion with Christ. We must remain faithful to Baptism, and grow in friendship with the Lord through prayer, listening and docility to His Word, reading the Gospel, participation in the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation.”[12]

This has been the unbroken theme of Papal Rome’s doctrine, insisting that physical rituals are the effective means of grace. The Church of Rome asserts that the sacraments are necessary for salvation, and that they impart sanctifying grace automatically.”[13] Thus the official Church doctrine states:

“The [Roman Catholic] Church affirms that for believers the sacraments of the New Covenant are necessary for salvation. ‘Sacramental grace’ is the grace of the Holy Spirit, given by Christ and proper to each sacrament.” [14]

However, in Scripture, before the All Holy God, an individual is saved by God’s grace alone, through the exercise of faith and not from the practice of rituals. Scripture is adamant on this subject. For example, Ephesians 2:8-9 states, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast .” Ephesians 2:7 states that it is in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus that God shows the riches of His grace, “That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.” That He alone saves is the whole meaning of divine grace, it is not through the sacraments of the Roman system.

The Official Vatican News: Pope Francis and the Sin of Abortion

The Vatican news agency has stated the following,

Pope Francis specifically turns his attention to women who have resorted to abortion and ‘bear the scar of this agonizing and painful decision’ saying the forgiveness of God cannot be denied to one who has repented. ‘For this reason’ he writes, ‘I have decided to concede to all priests for the Jubilee Year the discretion to absolve of the sin of abortion those who have procured it and who, with contrite heart, seek forgiveness for it. ’” [15]

This is in compliance with the Roman Church’s law that Catholic people seek forgiveness by confessing their sins to a priest. Their law is seen in the following, “One who desires to obtain reconciliation with God and with the Church, must confess to a priest all the unconfessed grave sins he remembers after having carefully examined his conscience.”[16]

This system of confession in the ear of a priest is a ritual unknown in Scripture. Nonetheless, Catholics are obliged to confess all sins, no matter how serious! The Catholic Church teaches that she alone possesses the authority and privilege to forgive sins. This is confirmed in the Vatican’s own words, “There is no offense, however serious, that the Church cannot forgive. ‘There is no one, however wicked and guilty, who may not confidently hope for forgiveness, provided his repentance is honest.’”[17]
It would be difficult to conjure up words of greater arrogance. Pope Francis states, “I have decided to concede to all priests…discretion to absolve of the sin of abortion those who have procured it.” It is blasphemy for Pope Francis to grant his priests (human creatures) the “discretion to absolve of the sin of abortion.” For a mortal to presume to absolve the sin of others is blasphemy, for that is God’s prerogative alone. The Lord God declares, “I, even I, am he that blots out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.”[18] God graciously assures contrite sinners that sins are blotted out for God’s own name’s sake. The pronoun “I” is repeated to make it emphatic that He alone can forgive sins. By grace, sins are forgiven when people believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

In believing on the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ alone, God bestows both the forgiveness of sins, as Scripture states, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,”[19] and eternal salvation. This is biblical truth, rather than the Catholic dogma of auricular confession to a priest, which is a soul-deceiving lie! The scandals that have resulted from the confessional and other close encounters within the Catholic system have reached such horrendous proportions that the documented evidence overwhelms a person. Nonetheless, Pope Francis stays the course of the traditional Papal dogma of auricular confession as we see his August 2015 decree. Our hearts ought to grieve in anguish, and our desire increase, to give the pure Gospel to Catholics so that they can come to the Lord Himself and know the freedom and joy it is to be His very own. As our Lord Himself proclaimed, “if the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”[20]

The Lord’s Test of Character

Our Savior gave us the proper test of character, saying, “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? ”[21] Pope Francis and his Roman Church are theologically heretical, thus their moral theology leads to grievous corruptions. While the Vatican is the smallest independent state in the world (108 acres), it is one of the greatest states in political intrigue. In the words of Lord Acton, it is, “the fiend skulking behind the Crucifix.”[22]

The lesson we learn from what we have documented about Pope Francis concerns the very nature of the Papacy and its modus operandi. The “mystery of iniquity” spoken of in Scripture is not the evil lives of atheists, prostitutes, drunkards and the like, but rather it is the evil of false religion.[23] Christ Jesus has His people, His Church. Christ Jesus is truly the Light of the world; yet in opposition to Him there is one who is “transformed into an angel of light” and has his system and his own false teachers.[24]

We have seen that Pope Francis’ teachings, like that of his Roman Church, are that salvation is accomplished through physical sacraments. Looking to physical things to give spiritual life was historically the first lie of Satan, “…in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”[25] Satan offered the fruit as the efficacious means of bestowing good upon Eve. She believed in the inherent usefulness of the physical object to open her eyes to the knowledge of good and evil. In the same way, Pope Francis and his Church present seven physical sacraments as the inherent means of obtaining the grace of the Holy Spirit. Pope Francis’ pretense is to present physical symbolic sacraments as the efficacious cause of sanctity and salvation. As we saw, he stated, “Grafted by Baptism in Christ, we have freely received from Him the gift of new life.”[26] Pope Francis as we also saw, stated, “I have decided to concede to all priests…discretion to absolve of the sin of abortion those who have procured it.” This he stated, precisely because he believes the official teaching of the Roman Church,

“All grave sins not yet confessed, which a careful examination of conscience brings to mind, must be brought to the sacrament of Penance. The confession of serious sins is the only ordinary way to obtain forgiveness.”[27]

As we know, this is scripturally a horrendous blasphemy.

Nevertheless, honor and veneration are paid to Pope Francis. The world admires his charm, policy, and success. So great is the darkness and degeneracy of the world! Roman Catholics live their lives under Pope Francis’ jurisdiction. Thus, they have a long journey through the sacrifice of the Mass, sacraments, good works, merit, veneration of Mary, and the Saints. Each one is required to partake of the sacraments. Even for all this, yet they will be dispatched for some duration to the fires of a place by tradition known as “purgatory.”

Time for True Christians to make a stand

It is a time to be serious. For those of us who really love the Lord and the truth of the Bible, it is time to show where we stand. Each of us is commanded by the Lord not only to contend for the faith, but we are also commanded to separate from those who have already compromised and refuse to repent of their disbelief in the truth of God’s own Word. The Lord Jesus Christ’s great commandment to give the Gospel is laid on all we who call ourselves Christians. To uphold His Gospel of truth based on His written Word alone is what is set before each of us who takes the name of Christian! The Lord Himself warned us against “other christs.” The Apostle Peter warned of “false teachers,” and the Apostle Paul warned of “wolves” within the flock. It is not simply that apostates existed in former days, but these warnings are for the year 2015 every bit as much as they were in the time of the Apostles, Peter and Paul.

Conclusion

Self-salvation by Mass, sacraments, good works, accumulated merit, veneration of Mary and the Saints, is a wasteland before the All Holy God. It is thousands of light years away from the conviction of the Holy Spirit that comes through the Scriptures. The advantage of God’s written Word is that it is all in black and white, leaving no room to escape. Pope Francis’ Church in contrast tries to control religion, morals, politics, and education. The bottom line in Francis’ Rome is not the convicting power of the Holy Spirit through the written Word; rather, it is Pope Francis himself and his bishops and priests who make pronouncements on moral questions and preach what is to be believed and applied in moral life. In stark contrast, the final word in Scripture is that “He [The Holy Spirit] will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.”[28] The Spirit works powerfully and with evident effects. When we are brought to truly mourn our sin, to groan under the burden of our own corruption, to long for Christ Jesus, and to cry to the Lord God to rescue us from our helpless state, then we know that the Spirit of the living God has moved us. The Lord God’s intent was centered and terminated in Jesus Christ’s sacrifice; it was both an act of His will, and most profitable for His people. The priceless double empowerment of Christ’s perfect sacrifice is proclaimed by the Holy Spirit, “by the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”[29]

Christ Jesus’ sacrifice was vicarious, in that He substituted Himself in the place of believing sinners and thus satisfied the law on their behalf. So complete was this substitution that His sacrifice alone ruled out all necessity of punishment for them. In becoming the substitute for His people, Christ Jesus took their legal responsibility. In the wonderful words of Scripture, “when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.”[30]

The Lord God has promised to be a Father to true believers that they shall be His sons and His daughters. This is the greatest honor possible to man. How ungrateful is it that those to whom this privilege is explained should degrade themselves by attempting to replace Christ Jesus and eternal life with a form of godliness that does not deliver. The Lord Christ Jesus has promised that, “all that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”[31] Those who come at the call of God are given to Christ, because it is through His blood alone that they can be saved. God, by His Spirit, convinces of sin, righteousness, and judgment those who acknowledge their iniquity and their need of salvation. Rather than Pope Francis addressing people in the U.S.A and other nations of the world, it would make sense if he addressed the iniquity of his Roman Church.

What we have documented in this article is with purpose and intent, which the Apostle Paul expressed when he wrote, “the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. ”[32]

Only in the Lord Jesus Christ, i.e., the Son of the living God is found freedom and eternal life! Believe on Him and Him alone “and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.”[33] If the Lord has indeed touched your heart by His sovereign grace, please let us hear from you using the email address; [email protected]. Thank you ♦

Richard Bennett of “Berean Beacon”

Permission is given by the author to copy this article if it is done in its entirety without any changes.

Permission is also given post this article in its entirety on Internet Websites.

[1] www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/us/politics/pope-francis-obama-white-house.html?

[2] http://abcnews.go.com/US/pope-francis-offers-prayers-muslim-pilgrims-died-hajj/story?id=34022523

[3] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Para. 841

[4] Exodus 34:14

[5] Isaiah 42:8

[6] B. Whitmore and C. Sennott, Boston Globe Staff, www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/print3/121402_failings.htm

[7] Ibid., “Colm O’Gorman, director of One In Four, a United Kingdom- and Ireland-based organization that assists sexual abuse victims.

[8] http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/08/05/archdiocese-bankruptcy8/28/2015

[9] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/15/us/archbishop-nienstedt-and-aide-resign-in-minnesota-over-sex-abuse-scandal.html? 8/29/15

[10] www.uscatholic.org/glad-you-asked/2009/08/why-are-priests-celibate.

[11] The Guardian report 23 September 2015, “Pope Francis: U.S. Bishops Show ‘Courage’ Over Catholic Church Sex Scandals Abuse Crisis.”

[12] www.missionsandiego.org/pope-francis-bear-the-fruits-of-membership-in-christ-and-the-church-regina-caeli-messsage-may-3-2015/

[13] “This is the meaning of the Church’s affirmation that the sacraments act ex opere operato (literally: “by the very fact of the action’s being performed.” Catechism, Para. 1128

[14] Catechism, Para. 1129

[15] www.news.va/en/news/pope-says-holy-year-indulgences-are-an-experience9/1/2015

[16] Catechism, Para. 1493

[17] Ibid., Para. 982

[18] Isaiah 43:25

[19] I John 1:9

[20] John 8:36

[21] Matthew 7:16

[22] Acton, Correspondence, 55; as quoted in Himmelfarb, Lord Acton, p. 151

[23] Matthew 7:15; 24:24-25; II Thessalonians 2:3-12; I Timothy 4:1-2; Acts 20:29; II Peter 2:1

[24] Revelation 2:9; 2 Peter 2:1

[25] Genesis 3:5

[26] www.missionsandiego.org/pope-francis-bear-the-fruits-of-membership-in-christ-and-the-church-regina-caeli-messsage-may-3-2015/ (Bolding is not in the original.)

[27] Catechism, Para. 1456

[28] John 16:8

[29] Hebrews 10:10

[30] Galatians 4:4-5

[31] John 6:37

[32] I Corinthians 15: 1-4

[33] Ephesians 5:11″/>

Continued from Chapter II. The Noahic Programme. – Part I.

Now it is evident that before we can trace the fulfilment of this prophecy, we must to some extent divide the races of mankind, both ancient and modern, into ethnic groups, distinguish the families of nations apart each from the other, ascertain which sprang from Shem, which from Ham, and which from Japheth. The question consequently arises, Are there in existence such materials as enable us to disentangle the complex ramifications of the genealogical tree of the human race during the last four thousand years, so as to arrive at satisfactory conclusions on this subject? If not, it must of course be impossible to demonstrate that the Noahic programme has been fulfilled.

The reply is, There are, in the good providence of God, ample materials in existence for this preliminary inquiry— a rich and ever-increasing abundance; and so well have these materials been utilised of late by scholars that the main questions connected with this difficult problem are practically set at rest. Many a minor point may still remain obscure. There are certain tribes and peoples, both of ancient and modern times, whose ethnic relations may be doubtful, but the outline is clearly ascertained, and details do not affect our argument. The sources of information are: the wonderful genealogical table in the tenth chapter of Genesis, and other Bible notices on the subject; the statements and tables of profane historians and other ancient writers, such as Herodotus, Strabo, Josephus, etc.; the hieroglyphic and cuneiform inscriptions on monumental remains and other antiquities, brought to light and deciphered by modern archaeological research in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and elsewhere; the ever multiplying observations and investigations of modern explorers and travellers into the languages, laws, customs, traditions, and ethnic affinities of newly visited tribes and peoples; and last, but not least, the very important and interesting, though somewhat bewildering, young science of language, which though almost the youngest of the sciences, is yet one which has already secured great acquisitions of knowledge, read some of the puzzling riddles of antiquity and ethnology, and, like all other true science, confirmed in a wonderful way the veracity of Scripture. We must gather and focus a few of the rays proceeding from these various sources on the point we have in hand.

The tenth chapter of Genesis—the most ancient genealogical table in existence—a wonderful and profoundly interesting document, is our first guide. It is a book in itself, the book of “the generations of the sons of Noah”; and short as it is, it contains more important matter than many a bulky volume. A careful study of it will show that the first five verses give us the names of the seven sons of Japheth and their descendants; the next, and by far the longest section (verses 6 to 21), mentions the four sons of Ham and the nations which sprang from them, including the Canaanites; while the third and closing section enumerates the five sons of Shem with their posterity, including that family descended from Eber, from which Abraham the Hebrew was ultimately called out The great value of this ancient record in our present investigation is, that it links the three races of mankind with the geographical spheres which they originally occupied, and from which their first migrations took place.

“It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this ethnological table. Whether regarded from a geographical, a political, or a theocratical standpoint, ‘this unparalleled list, the combined result of reflection and deep research,’ is ‘no less valuable as a historical document than as a lasting proof of the brilliant capacity of the Hebrew mind.’ Undoubtedly the earliest effort of the human intellect to exhibit in a tabulated form the geographical distribution of the human race, it bears unmistakable witness in its own structure to its high antiquity, occupying itself least with the Japhethic tribes which were furthest from the theocratic centre, and were latest in attaining to historic eminence, and enlarging with much greater minuteness of detail on those Hamitic nations, the Egyptian, Canaanite, and Arabian, which were soonest developed, and with which the Hebrews came most into contact in the initial stages of their career. It describes the rise of states, and, consistently with all subsequent historical and archeological testimony, gives the prominence to the Egyptian or Arabian Hamites, as the first founders of empires. It exhibits the separation of the Shemites from the other sons of Noah, and the budding forth of the line of promise in the family of Arphaxad. While thus useful to the geographer, the historian, the politician, it is specially serviceable to the theologian, as enabling him to trace the descent of the woman’s seed, and to mark the fulfilments of Scripture prophecies concerning the nations of the earth. In the interpretation of the names which are here recorded, it is obviously impossible in every instance to arrive at certainty, in some cases the names of individuals being mentioned, while in others it is as conspicuously those of peoples.”

From this table we learn:—

1. That the descendants of Japheth’s seven sons peopled “the isles of the Gentiles,” in which expression not islands only are included, but all those countries from which visitors would approach Palestine by sea—the coasts of the Mediterranean and the adjoining maritime provinces, the shores of the Black Sea, and of the Caspian, the Levant, Archipelago, and Adriatic.

2. That the four sons of Ham settled in the more southern, portions of the then known world—in Southern Babylonia round the head of the Persian Gulf, in Southern Arabia, in Abyssinia, Ethiopia, Egypt, and other parts of Northern Africa; and especially that Nimrod, the first founder of imperialism, was descended from Cush, Ham’s eldest son, as well as that the seven nations afterwards expelled by the Jews from the land of promise were the offspring of Canaan, his youngest son.

3. That the five sons of Shem were ancestors of the Syrians, Lydians, Elamites, Arabs, and Hebrews.

Now here we have, as we have said, three ethnic groups linked with three distinct sets of localities; the young nations are mentioned in connection with their respective habitations. In other words, the primary geographical distribution of the descendants of the sons of Noah is plainly indicated in this genealogical table of his posterity. Profane history, as far as it has anything at all clear to say on the subject, adds its confirmation to these statements, and modern discovery and research are producing every year fresh proof of their accuracy.

But Noah’s predictions about his threefold posterity have less to do with their primitive settlements than with their permanent fortunes. The question we must therefore consider next is, whether it is possible clearly to connect these original nations and peoples, first, with their representatives in the ages of subsequent history, and secondly, with their descendants now living? This will evidently be no easy matter. Peoples, tribes, and nations flourish for a time and then fade from view, to reappear afterwards under other names in other connections, and possibly in distant spheres. Nation rises against nation, conquest leads to the subjection of one people to another, to the merging of many into one, or again to the breaking up of one into many. Such political changes have introduced great complexity into the mutual relations of the different peoples of the earth; so that in the course of ages the problem of their ethnic affinities becomes of necessity an exceedingly difficult one. Unless, however, it can to some extent be solved, it is evident that we can never discern the fulfilment of the Noahic programme.

We ask then, have historians been able to do for the existing nations of the earth what Garter King-at-Arms and the College of Heraldry do for the representatives of ancient families—trace out their genealogies, establish their relationship by unquestionable evidence, exhibit their connections, and show, not only the line of their own descent, but that of the collateral branches of their families? The answer is, that, to a large extent, they have.

In the first century of our era, for instance, Josephus gives a glance at the problem as it presented itself in his day, eighteen hundred years nearer to the dispersion of mankind than our own, and when consequently it must have been comparatively easy to trace back the genealogy of nations. He says:—

“Now they were the grand-children of Noah, in honour of whom names were imposed on the nations by those that first seized upon them. Japheth, the son of Noah, had seven sons. They inhabited so, that, beginning at the mountains Taurus and Amanus, they proceeded along Asia, as far as the river Tanais, and along Europe to Cadiz; and settling themselves on the lands they light upon, which none had inhabited before, they called the nations by their own names. For Gomer founded those whom the Greek now called Galatians (Gauls), but were then called Gomerites. Magog founded those that from him were named Magogites, but who are by the Greeks called Scythians. Now as to Javan and Madai, the sons of Japheth; from Madai came the Madeans, who are called Medes by the Grecks; but from Javan, Jonia (or Ionia) and all the Grecians are derived. Thobel founded the Thobelites, which are now called Iberes; and the Moscheni were founded by Mosoch; now they are Cappadocians. There is also a mark of their ancient denomination still to be shown; for there is even now among them a city called Mazaca, which may inform those that are able to understand, that so was the entire nation once called. Thiras also called those whom he ruled over Thiracians; but the Greeks changed the name into Thracians. And so many were the countries that had the children of Japheth for their inhabitants. Of the three sons of Gomer, Aschanaz founded the Aschanasians, who are now called by the Greeks Rheginians. So did Riphath found the Ripheans, now called Paphlagonians; and Thruggramma the Thragrammeans, who, as the Greeks resolved, were named Phrygians, Of the three sons of Javan also, the son of Japheth, Elisa gave name to the Eliseans, who were his subjects; they are now the Aeolians. Tharsus to the Tharsians, for so was Cicilia of old called; the sign of which is this, that the noblest city which they have, and a metropolis also, is Tarsus, the Tau being by change put for the Theta. Cethimas possessed the island Cethima: it is now called Cyprus; and from that it is that all islands, and the greatest part of the sea-coasts, are named Cethim by the Hebrews; and one city there is in Cyprus that has been able to preserve its denomination; it is called Citius by those who use the language of the Greeks, and has not, by the use of that dialect, escaped the name of Cethim, And so many nations have the children and grand-children of Japheth possessed. Now when I have premised somewhat, which perhaps the Greeks do not know, I will return and explain what I have omitted; for such names are pronounced here after the manner of the Greeks, to please my readers; for our own country language does not so pronounce them. . . .

“The children of Ham possessed the land from Syria and Amanus, and the mountains of Libanus; seizing upon all that was on its sea-coasts, and as far as the ocean, and keeping it as their own. Some indeed of its names are utterly vanished away; others of them being changed, and another sound given them, are hardly to be discovered; yet a few there are which have kept their denominations entire; for of the four sons of Ham, time has not at all hurt the name of Cush; for the Ethiopians, over whom he reigned, are even at this day, both by themselves and by all men in Asia, called Cushites. The memory also of the Mesraites is preserved in their name; for all we who inhabit the country (of Judea) call Egypt Mestre, and the Egyptians Mestreans, Phut also was the founder of Libya, and called the inhabitants Phutites, from himself. There is also a river in the country of the Moors which bears that name; whence it is, that we may see the greatest part of the Grecian historiographers mention that river and the adjoining country by the appellation of Phut. But the name it has now, has been by change given it from one of the sons of Mestraim, who was called Lybyos, We will inform you presently what has been the occasion why it has been called Africa also.

“Canaan, the fourth son of Ham, inhabited the country now called Judea, and called it from his own name Canaan. . , , Nimrod, the son of Cush, stayed and tyrannized at Babylon, as we have already informed you. Now all the children of Mesraim, being eight in number, possessed the country from Gaza to Egypt, though it retained the name of one only, the Philistim, for the Greeks call part of that country Palestine. . . .

“The sons of Canaan were these; Sidonius, who also built a city of the same name; it is called by the Greeks, Sidon; Amathus inhabited in Amathine, which is even now called Amathe by the inhabitants, although the Macedonians named it Epiphania, from one of his posterity; Arudeus possessed the island Aradus; Arucas possessed Arce, which is in Libanus. But for the seven others (Eucus), Chetteus, Jebuis, Amorreus, Gergesus, Eudeus, Sineus, Samareus, we have nothing in the sacred books but their names, for the Hebrews overthrew their cities.

“Shem, the third son of Noah, had five sons, who inhabited the land that began at Euphrates, and reached to the Indian Ocean. For Elam left behind him the Elamites, the ancestors of the Persians: Ashur lived at the city of Nineve and named his subjects Assyrians, who became the most fortunate nation, beyond others. Arphaxad named the Arphaxadites, who are-now called Chaldeans. Aram had the Aramites, which the Greeks call Syrians, as Laud founded the Laudites, which are now called Lydians.

“Of the four sons of Aram, Uz founded Trachonitis and Damascus; this country lies between Palestine and Celesyria. . . . Sala was the son of Arphaxad; and his son was Heber, from whom they originally called the Jews, Hebrews, Heber begat Joctan and Phaleg : he was called Phaleg or Peleg because he was born at the dispersion of the nations to their several countries; for Phaleg, among the Hebrews, signifies division. Now Joctan, one of the sons of Heber, had these sons. . . . And this shall suffice concerning the sons of Shem.”

This statement of Josephus—and many similar ones might, if space permitted, be presented from both earlier and later historians—forms a link between the primitive state of things and the present. It gives us a glance at one of the countless stages by which the young nations enumerated in the tenth of Genesis have been gradually developed in the course of four thousand years into the world full of nations and peoples, civilized and savage; with which we are familiar.

The process has resembled that of organic growth. The Noahic acorn has become an immense and ancient oak, its three main stems having divided into numerous great branches extending in all directions, each giving rise in its turn to countless shoots and twigs bearing generation after generation of leaves.¹

¹ Is it not destined to develop yet into a forest, and to fill many of the myriads of worlds belonging to our own galaxy, with the ransomed race of man?

Josephus modernizes in measure the archaic nomenclature of Genesis. “The isles of the Gentiles” are seen to include “Europe and Cadiz,” Gomer becomes “the Galatians and the Gauls,” “Javan” changes into the Ionians and the Grecians; and instead of a list of names which convey to our modern minds only the most hazy ideas, we get Cappadocians and Thracians, Phrygians or Eolians, the island of Cyprus, the land of Palestine, Egypt, Judea, Persia, the Indian Ocean, the Lydians, the Chaldeans, and the Syrians. Here we see our way, and feel that there can be no insuperable difficulty in connecting the condition of things in Josephus day with that existing in our own.

It might be difficult to recognise in old age a man known only in infancy, but not so if he had been seen at intervals through life. To the uninitiated it may seem that there must be a good deal of guess work and uncertainty in the identification of modern nations with primitive peoples, but the historian who has traced the whole process of development feels that he stands on terra firma, and his conclusions may be accepted with confidence. He begins with the main branches of the oak, and following one till it forks, he traces its divisions down to the latest shoot.

The student of language, on the other hand, adopts the opposite course, and approaches the problem the other way. He examines the languages of existing nations, and traces them backwards to their origin. He finds the latest shoots running into older twigs, these again into small branches, these in their turn to larger ones, and these finally into one or other of the three main stems of the old tree. When the results of historian and philologist agree, we may rest satisfied that they are substantially correct.

But there are multitudes of nations to-day in Central Africa, Asia, Western America, and elsewhere, who have no history, who have sunk so low that, like the arab children of our streets, they do not know where they were born, nor how old they are, nor to whom they belong, and scarcely can tell their own family name. In discovering the birth and parentage, the relationships and affinities of such nations, the science of language is especially helpful. Experience has proved that there is no basis for a classification of the innumerable nations and tribes into which mankind is now divided so broad and so certain as that of language.

“Physical resemblances, or diversities, are not found to present so ultimate a ground of classification as those of the human speech. The Word is the highest outward expression for the soul; and the properties of the immaterial part of man—his unconscious instincts, his hopes, his passions, his imaginings, his tendency of thought, his general habit of nature, appearing in language and its forms—are transmitted more entirely from generation to generation, and are less liable to be changed by external influences than any features of the face or the body. It is well known that time and external circumstances, and the mingling with other stocks, can change to a considerable degree (how far, is not here in consideration) the colour, the hair, the shape of the skull, and the size of the body. Yet after many generations, when the physicist could scarcely, by external signs, recognise the bonds of common blood binding different peoples together, the student of language discerns the clearest and most irrefutable proofs of their common descent. What scholar doubts now the brotherhood of descent, at a remote period, between the Hindu and the Englishman? and yet how few physical ethnologists could discover it by any bodily feature. It is as if the more intangible properties of man’s nature were those most acted upon by the principle of inheritance, and the last to be changed or destroyed by external physical influences.” (Brace’s “Manual of Ethnology,” p. 3.)

Language then, alone or in connection with history, is the clue to the discernment, not of nationality, but of race—a far stronger and deeper bond than mere nationality. There is a mysterious, far-reaching influence connected with heredity and conveyed by blood, which associates a distant ancestor with his remotest posterity, and links together by common characteristics the families, tribes, and nations descended from him, marking them off at the same time from all others.

It might have been supposed that the mixture of nations which has taken place all over the world during the last four thousand years, through emigrations, conquests, and colonization, would have so mingled languages that it would now be impossible to distinguish their original character. This is far from being the case. Such agencies have extensively modified language, but research shows that no tongue is ever entirely obliterated by another, and that the primary streams of language, even though they may meet in close contact, never merge into each other, as Norman and Saxon did in the formation of English. These were cognate tongues to begin with, spoken by different families of one race. But where, as in Western Asia at present, three primary languages, belonging to three different races—Tartar, Arabic, and Persian—co-exist side by side, it is found that no such combination takes place; the three races remaining distinct in speech, as in appearance, character, and habits.

Now, at the furthest point to which history and tradition can conduct us in the past, we discover three prominent families of nations from whom have come down through the ages of history three broad streams of language covering the ancient continents, from which have branched out the almost innumerable rivulets of speech which now interlace with each other all the world over. They are THE HAMITIC, THE SEMITIC, and THE ARYAN, or INDO-EUROPEAN, families of language. These three, however, do not include all the languages of the world.

There is no fourth family, but there is a fourth group—the Turanian languages. This large and widely scattered group is less distinctly defined, and its various branches are less distinctly related to each other than are those of the three families above named, though they have some common characteristics. It includes the nomad languages, those which are less settled and more changeable than any others, which have a remarkable facility in assuming new forms and producing rapidly diverging dialects of great irregularity.

According to some authorities it includes also the Chinese language, which has been called the most infantile form of human speech, and which seems in some respects to antedate other forms even of Turanian language. But this is one of the unsettled problems of the science, other authorities classing Chinese as Hamitic. The group of so called “Turanian” or barbarous tongues will probably be in due time, as a result of further investigation, to a large extent distributed among the three principal families—leaving a residuum of dialects which may be degenerate descendants of the mother tongue, from which all languages alike sprung. At present the Turanian group is considered by Professor Max Muller to consist of the Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, Samoyedic, Finnic, and aboriginal Indian languages.

The ethnological connections of this Turanian group being extremely uncertain, it is evident that it can have no bearing on our present argument. We pass it by consequently, remarking merely that the existence of such a group of miscellaneous unclassified languages affords no presumption against the historical veracity of the statement in the tenth of Genesis, that the human race divided after the flood into three great branches.

The genealogies there refer of course to descent by blood and not to linguistic connection. We know that tribes and nations often change their languages, though they cannot alter their ethnic connections. All Jews, for instance, are children of Abraham, no matter what language they may speak; and the Negroes in America do not cease to be Africans because they talk English. In a word, language may or may not be a clue to the ancestry of a people. It needs to be considered in connection with history and geography; taken alone it may be valueless.

In the case of the Turanian nations, where history and geography afford little light, language is an insufficient guide to genealogical connection; while in the case of the three great families of language, their speech forms a principal clue to the relation of the different nations and peoples, leading us to attribute a common descent to some that are now far separated socially and geographically, though their earliest ancestors dwelt under the same roof tree.

The conclusions of ethnologists do not contradict the genealogical table of Genesis 10, but confirm it. It asserts that there were three original races. The science of language asserts that there are still three distinct families of nations, but it adds that there are also a number of nations whose ethnic relations cannot be traced out from either historic or linguistic clues. What more natural than that such should be the case after the lapse of four thousand years, and especially with regard to the less important and more uncivilized and remote branches of the human race? New dialects, not to say new languages, spring up even now as a result of isolation and barbarism among peoples who have no literature and hold no public assemblies.

But if the Turanian group throws no light on our subject, the three families of language throw not a little, and we will now proceed briefly to consider them in their order.

THE SEMITIC FAMILY.

The Semitic family is divided into three main branches— the Aramaic, the Hebraic, and the Arabic. The Aramaic includes Syriac and Chaldee. The former is still spoken in a corrupt form by the Nestorians and other Christians in Kurdistan and Armenia; and the latter was the language adopted by the Jews in Babylon. After the captivity, Syriac became vernacular in Palestine; it was the language spoken by our Lord and His disciples, and was the speech of common life over all the territory extending from the Mediterranean to Mesopotamia.

The Hebraic includes the Biblical Hebrew, the language in which the Samaritan Pentateuch was written, and the language of the Carthaginian and Phoenician inscriptions. It was the language of the later Canaanites, though not of the original seven nations of Canaan.

The Arabic branch includes the Amharic tongue, the Gees language of Abyssinia, and the ancient Himyaritic inscriptions in Arabia. It includes also the languages spoken along the north of Africa from Egypt and Ethiopia to the Atlantic Ocean.

“Of all the families of man, the Semitic has preserved the most distinct and homogeneous mental characteristics.

“Always, in all its branches, tenacious of the past, conservative, not inclined to change or reform, sensual and strong of passion, yet deeply reverent and religious in temperament, capable of the most sublime acts, either of heroism or fanaticism, it was, from the first, a fit medium for some of the grandest truths and principles which can inspire the human soul. Its very peculiarities—its tenacity and sensuousness and reverence —adapted it to feel and retain and convey Divine inspirations. The Semitic mind was never capable of artistic effort, but has made its great contributions to human knowledge in the invention of the alphabet, and in the exact sciences. In poetry, it has given to the world the most sublime lyrics which human language can present; though in the drama, it has produced only as it were the type or introduction, and in the epic it has contributed nothing. The Semitic races have never shown themselves skilled in colonization—even the Phoenician colonies formed no permanent States —and they seemed almost as little capable of organizing enduring governments. Individuality has been too strong with them for permanent associated effort.

“In one of their earliest branches—the Phoenicians—and in the modern Jew, they have manifested a wonderful capacity for traffic and commerce. In the primeval ages, probably no one influence tended so much to unite and civilize mankind as the Semitic commerce and ingenuity under the Phoenicians, The sensuousness and the religious reverence of the race —so vividly shown in the Bible history—united in the heathen Semites, the tribes of Syria and Asia Minor, to produce a mythology debasing and corrupt beyond what the human imagination has anywhere else brought forth; a mythology which, transplanted to Greece and refined by the Grecian sense of beauty, has poured through all ages a flood of sensual and licentious imaginations, corrupting art and literature almost to the present day.

“Three of the great religions of history—Mohammedanism, Judaism, and Christianity—have come forth from the Semitic races, and through future time it will be their glory that with all their former vices, and their subsequent degradation, one of their humblest tribes was fitted to receive and was appointed to convey the purest oracles of God to all succeeding generations.”

The influence of the Semites reasserted itself very strongly in the Middle Ages. Under the rule of the Aryan Romans and Byzantines they had been subject and inferior tribes; but—

“With the tenacity peculiar to the race, they had still retained, under all the conquests, their national characteristics, and after centuries of submission and quiet they rose again at the call of religious fanaticism, with the same fire and passion which they had shown as Jews, under the Maccabees or against Titus. The foundations for their remarkable conquests were laid by the constant emigration of Arab tribes to Persia and various countries of Asia, whose population became thus gradually much mingled with Semitic elements.

“In 622 Mohammed proclaimed the Semitic doctrine of the unity of God and the peculiar tenets of the Islam faith. Within twenty years vast countries of Europe and Asia were overrun and conquered by his fiery disciples. Syria was subdued from 632 to 638; Persia from 632 to 640; Egypt in 638; Cyprus and Rhodes in 649.

“Within a century the Semitic Moslems had conquered Asia from Mount Taurus to the Himalaya and the Indus, and from the Indian Ocean to Mount Caucasus and the Iaxertes on the north; they held the north of Africa, and after defeating the Teutonic Goths in Spain, took possession of most of that country. They had even invaded France, and seemed about overrunning all Europe, when they were defeated at Tours, in 732, by Charles the Hammer. . . . Since this brilliant period of conquest, the Semitic family of nations has never again attained to a leading place among the races of men.

“Even as in the ancient days of Semitic glory in Assyria, this race again distinguished itself in the exact sciences and in architecture. Geometry, astronomy, anatomy, and chemistry, all witnessed a revival under the new Arabian civilization; and the Moorish architecture, a product of the sensuous Semitic mind, under the more graceful influences of Byzantine taste, covered Spain with its gorgeous and fantastic structures.

“This family of the human race is distinguished by the peculiar character of the language which it spoke. Those languages, in fact, constitute a group clearly separated from the other leading forms of human speech. The great peculiarity of the group lies in the very structure of its roots, which consist mostly of three consonants, while those of the Aryan and Turanian groups have only one or two. Out of these tri-literal roots the mass of their words were coined by merely varying the vowels, and in some cases by adding a syllable; on the other hand, words formed by composition are almost unknown. The verb has but two tenses, the noun but two genders, and the relations of cases are not, in general, expressed by inflected forms. In the structure of the sentence, the Semitic dialects present little more than a process of addition; words and propositions are placed side by side, and are not subject to the involution and subordination of clauses, so striking in many of the Indo-European tongues.

“In short, these languages have a kind of poetic power, and express passion and feeling with great intensity; but they are lacking in logical precision, deficient in analytical terms, and imperfectly adapted to embody the grandest results of human thought.¹

¹ “Long before recorded history, perhaps even before the full formation of their distinctive language, that family of mankind from which the Semitic tribes have come, poured forth its hordes from Asia over the northern portion of Africa. Of these, one vigorous tribe, with the tenacity of the Semitic stock, have held possession of the valleys of the Atlas under all the successive waves of conquest which have passed over Northern Africa. The colonies and conquests of the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Vandals, and the Arabs, have not destroyed or absorbed this tough and warlike people. Pressed farther to the south by the fierce attacks of the Arabs, in the first half of the eleventh century, they could not be driven from the desert; and they hold, now, a larger extent of territory than is occupied by any other race on African soil.” From the Atlantic Ocean, on the west, their tribes extend to the borders of Egypt on the east, and from the Atlas chain on the north over the oases of the Great Desert.

“The name by which this race is best known is BERBER, a word much disputed, but whose origin may be naturally traced to the Roman name of these people, Barbari.”—(Brace’s “Manual of Ethnology,” p. 171.)

The Semitic territory in antiquity included Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Chaldea, Assyria, Susiana, and the immense deserts of Arabia. The Semites had less tendency to spread abroad in the earth than either of the other great families. It was not till the thirteenth century before Christ that they began to become prominent; and though at that time their political importance was not great, they soon rose to be the principal commercial and manufacturing people in the world. They planted commercial stations around the whole length of the Mediterranean, which it took at that time seventy or eighty days to traverse. Their ships brought tin from England, and the luxuries of India from the mouths of the Indus. They had a chain of commercial stations into the interior of Asia, and traded between points as far separated from each other as Babylon and Cadiz, Italy and India, Arabia and Armenia. During the same period they established the old Assyrian empire on the Upper Tigris, an empire which lasted over six and a half centuries, and held a vast extent of country in subjection, from Suza in Persia to Lower Egypt. The turning point in the history of this empire was the destruction of Sennacherib’s host by pestilence, B.C. 691. It gradually declined after that event, and its great city, Nineveh, fell before an Aryan king, Cyaxares the Mede, in B.C. 625. The second Babylonian empire lasted scarcely a century, and the MEDO-PERSIAN empire which followed was the opening of the Aryan period of history. Cyrus the Persian belonged to the Aryan race; and when his empire fell, the ruling power in the world passed from Asia to Europe.

“What is especially remarkable of the Semitic family is its concentration, and the small size of the district which it covers compared with the space occupied by the other two. Deducting the scattered colonies of the Phoenicians, mere points upon the earth’s surface, and the thin strip of territory running into Asia Minor from Upper Syria, the Semitic races in the time of Herodotus are contained within a parallelogram 1,600 miles long from the parallel of Aleppo to the south of Arabia, and on an average about 800 miles broad. Within this tract, less than a thirteenth part of the Asiatic continent, the entire Semitic family was then, and, with one exception, has ever since been comprised.

“Once in the world’s history, and once only, did a great ethnic movement proceed from this race and country. Under the stimulus of religious fanaticism, the Arabs in the seventh century of our era burst from the retirement of the desert, and within a hundred years extended themselves as the ruling nation from the confines of India to Spain. But this effort was the fruit of a violent excitement which could not but be temporary, and the development was one beyond the power of the nation to sustain. Arabian influence sank almost as rapidly as it had risen, yielding on the one side before European, on the other before Tartar attacks, and, except in Egypt and Northern Africa, maintaining no permanent footing in the countries so rapidly overrun. Apart from this single occasion, the Semitic race has given no evidence of ability to spread itself either by migration or by conquest. In the Old World, indeed, commercial enterprise led one Semitic people to aim at a wide extension of its influence over the shores of the known seas; but the colonies sent out by this people obtained no lasting hold upon the countries where they were settled, and after a longer or a shorter existence they died away almost without leaving a trace. Semitism has a certain kind of vitality— a tenacity of life—exhibited most remarkably in the case of the Jews, yet not confined to them, but seen also in other instances, as in the continued existence of the Chaldeans in Mesopotamia, and of the Berbers on the North African coast.

“It has not, however, any power of vigorous growth and enlargement, such as that promised to Japheth, and possessed to a considerable extent even by the Turanian family. It is strong to resist, weak to attack, powerful to maintain itself in being notwithstanding the paucity of its numbers, but rarely exhibiting, and never for any length of time capable of sustaining, an aggressive action upon other races. With this physical and material weakness is combined a wonderful capacity for affecting the spiritual condition of our species, by the projection into the fermenting mass of human thought, of new and strange ideas, especially those of the most abstract kind. Semitic races have influenced, far more than any others, the history of the world’s mental progress, and the principal intellectual revelations which have taken place are traceable in the main to them.” (Rawlinson’s “Herodotus,” vol. i. p. 661.)

Continued in Chapter II. The Noahic Programme. – Part III.

All sections of The Divine Programme of The World’s History By H. Grattan Guinness

Continued from The Divine Programme of The World’s History Chapter I. The Adamic Programme. – Part II.

THE voice of prophecy was not altogether silent in the intervals between the seven successive commencements of human history of which we have spoken. From time to time it gave utterance to isolated predictions—such, for example, as that of Enoch about the coming of the Lord with ten thousands of His saints to judge the wicked—a very glorious prophecy, yet one which had in view exhortation and warning rather than definite prediction. It was no chart of future events, it did not foretell the course of human history, but only the moral aspects of its final issues. As such detached and hortatory (tending or aiming to exhort) prophecies do not form parts of the programme we have to consider, we do not pause to dwell on this utterance of “the seventh from Adam,” who was translated that he should not see death.

With the second father of the human family the definitely predictive element reappears. Not only was the approaching end of the antediluvian age made known to Noah—not only was he acquainted beforehand with the purpose of God to destroy by a flood the evil generation which had corrupted the earth—but he was informed also of the exact chronological distance of the deluge. It was not to overtake the world for a hundred and twenty years: thus far would the longsuffering of God wait, if men would perchance be warned and repent. This is the first chronological prophecy in the Bible, and it indicated in advance the end of the antediluvian age. We shall see, as we proceed, that all the other chronologic predictions of Scripture similarly throw their light forward to the close of the different ages to which they respectively belong.

Moved with fear—the fear born of faith—Noah prepared an ark to the saving of his house, and while doing so acted as “a preacher of righteousness” to the evil generation in whose midst his lot was cast. His knowledge of the approaching end of the age in which he lived did not make him idle, impracticable, speculative, or despairing; it roused him rather to preach with power and labour with diligence, and it separated him in spirit from the wickedness, the worldliness, and the unbelief of his age. None of the wicked understood, believed, or heeded his warning words. As decade after decade of the last century of the old world rolled away, its millions remained as full as ever of carnal confidence and unbelieving indifference. They were occupied exclusively with earth and its interests—agricultural, commercial, social— right up to the hour when Noah and his family entered into the ark. The Divine Hand that shut him in, opened at the same time the windows of heaven and broke up the fountains of the great deep; and though its approach had been revealed by God more than a century previously, and though His righteous servant had not failed to proclaim to men the counsel and purpose of the Almighty, “they knew not until the flood came and took them all away.”

When Noah and his family emerged into the new world, they were wiser than our first parents in paradise. Adam, gazing around him in Eden, may well have inwardly exclaimed as to God, “ He can create”; but Noah, doing the same from Ararat, must surely have added, “He can destroy.”

Sorely must the second father of the human race have needed the light of promise and of prophecy at the solemn crisis when he and his stood amid the wreck of the old world—the sole survivors of a perished race. Events had forced upon them a vivid realization of the solemn fact that the great Creator would actually destroy the works of His own hands, rather than permit the victory of moral evil. It was a terrible revelation, for did not they too belong to the sinful race? What was to be their future and that of their posterity? Must they anticipate a recurrence of the late awful catastrophe? Oh, how they needed the sure word of prophecy as a lamp to shine in the dark place where they stood! The wrath of God seemed to have recalled His gift of the earth to the sons of men. Dared they take possession of this new earth as Adam had done of the old? Evil might and probably would fill the world afresh, and what then was their tenure to be?

Never did trembling mariners launching on a stormy and unknown ocean more need the compass, pilot, and daylight, than did the prisoners of the ark when they first alighted on Ararat need the guidance of Divine promise. And hence, as might be expected, the grace that had saved speedily reassured their fearful hearts: God set His bow of promise in the cloud, and prophecy witnessed the reflection of her beams of light from the retiring waters. A covenant of mercy gave them a new charter of natural blessings, and a new grant of dominion in the earth. A second time was the human family commanded to multiply and replenish all its waste places. The word of promise soothed the fears of the rescued; no recurrence of a deluge was to be apprehended. Seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, were not again to be interrupted in their natural sequence; and four thousand years have proved God’s faithfulness to His promise. The Noahic covenant is our present lease of the earth. According to its terms, God legislates for the winds and waves, the sunbeams and the storm clouds, so as to secure to man the indispensable order of the seasons.¹

¹“The great circle of the heavens apparently described by the sun every year (owing to our revolution round that body) is called the ecliptic. . . The plane of the earth’s equator, extended towards the stars, marks out the equator of the heavens, the plane of which is inclined to the ecliptic at an angle known as the obliquity of the ecliptic. It is this inclination which gives rise to the vicissitudes of the seasons during our annual journey round the sun. . . . The obliquity of the ecliptic is now slowly decreasing at the rate of about 48” in 100 years. ‘It will not always, however, be on the decrease; for before it can have altered 1 and 1/2°, the cause which produces this diminution must act in a contrary direction, and thus tend to increase the obliquity. Consequently the change of obliquity is a phenomenon in which we are concerned only as astronomers, since it can never become sufficiently great to produce any sensible alteration of climate on the earth’s surface. A consideration of this remarkable astronomical fact cannot but remind us of the promise made to man after the deluge, that “while the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” That the perturbation of obliquity consisting merely of an oscillatory motion of the plane of the ecliptic will not permit of its inclination ever becoming very great or very small, is an astronomical discovery in perfect unison with the declaration made to Noah, and explains how effectually the Creator has ordained the means for carrying out His promise, though the way it was to be accomplished remained a hidden secret until the great discoveries of modern science placed it within human comprehension.’”—(Chambers’ Handbook of Descriptive Astronomy,” p. 73)

The promises and predictions that followed the flood were of a cheering and merciful nature, and exactly calculated to restore in the hearts of those who had witnessed the evil effects of the fall, and seen a guilty race whelmed in the darkness and death of the deluge, hope, courage, and confidence in God. No threats, no conditions were attached to the gracious covenant of which the rainbow is the beautiful and abiding token. It should be noted here that the promise of redemption was not renewed in the Noahic covenant, be- cause nothing that had happened had in the slightest degree invalidated it. It stood as before; and Noah and his family evinced their acquaintance with it by offering sacrifice. They doubtless prized it in the new earth as they had ever done in the old, for the dark background of judgment and perdition must have made more precious than ever the hope of redemption and deliverance.

We must not pause to dwell at any length on these early Noahic predictions, the fulfilment of which has been a matter of experience to the human race for four thousand years. We must pass on rather to those given at a later point in the life of the patriarch Noah, which partake more of the nature of a programme of the world’s history.

Just as it was subsequently granted to Jacob and to Moses to foresee and to foretell the future of the different tribes of Israel, so to Noah, the second father of the human race, it was given towards the close of his long life of nine hundred and fifty years, to foresee and foretell the future of the races that should descend from him, by whom the whole earth should in due time be overspread. We have no means of fixing the exact date of the very remarkable prophecy in which he does this. (Gen. 9:24-29) Owing to its position as the first recorded incident after the flood, it is often taken for granted that it followed closely upon that event; but there is really no ground for this assumption. It is the only incident mentioned in the subsequent life of the patriarch; indeed, with the exception of the death of Noah, the only incident recorded between the flood and the building of Babel—a period of many centuries. Its place in the narrative is therefore no guide to its actual date, nor to its position in the life of Noah. If it occurred as early as is generally supposed, then Noah’s grandson Canaan is mentioned before he was born, or had done good or evil; which is most unlikely. On the other hand, if it shortly preceded the event next following in the record—the death of Noah—then the parallel with the cases of Jacob and Moses is close, and an additional solemnity and importance attaches to the prediction.

Further, this memorable utterance of the great preacher of righteousness must never be regarded as the imprecation of a curse and the bestowal of blessings, much less as if the words had been prompted by any angry or vindictive feeling on Noah’s part against his youngest son. A thoughtless reading of the narrative might produce such an impression on the mind, but reflection will show it to be an unworthy and wholly groundless one. The words were, as their fulfilment proves, an inspired prophecy, not an imprecation; the future of each race is not so much assigned as foretold, and the good or bad destiny in each case is connected not so much with the moral character of Shem, Ham,and Japheth personally, as with that of their descendants in distant ages, all whose deeds lay even then naked and open before the eyes of the revealing Spirit of God. The incident in connection with which the prophecy was given was not in any sense the cause of the destinies declared, though it gave occasion to the utterance of the prediction.

The prophet speaks of races, not of individuals, as Isaac spoke of the future of Jacob’s and Esau’s descendants, rather than of their own personal experience. The portion foreseen for each was not merited by the parents’ conduct only or mainly, but by the character and conduct of their unborn posterity. Such oracles are far removed from the nature of private fortune-telling; they are utterances given by inspiration of God.

As Bishop Newton well observes on this passage: “Noah was not prompted by wine or by resentment, for neither the one nor the other could infuse the knowledge of futurity or inspire him with the prescience of events which happened hundreds, nay thousands, of years afterwards. But God, willing to manifest His superintendence and government of the world, endued Noah with the spirit of prophecy, and enabled him in some measure to disclose the purposes of His providence towards the future races of mankind.”

The points emphasized in Noah’s foreview of human history are few but important. The predictions are brief and clearly expressed. There is no indistinctness about them, no vague wording which might apply equally well to any course of events. Like the predictions in paradise, the sentences though simple contain a world of meaning, are all inclusive in their scope, and reach right on to the end. On the other hand, they differ from them widely in their subject-matter, dealing not with the moral issues, fundamental physical experiences, or final results of human history, but rather with the great ethnological divisions of the race, with the distinctive fortunes of its three main sections, and with their relations to each other.

The programme of Noah presents the future—not of the race of mankind as a whole—as did the Adamic foreview; nor that of individual kingdoms and nations—as do subsequent programmes—but that of the three main races into which mankind has been divided since the flood. The destiny foreseen for each race is sharply defined, and widely distinct from that foreseen for the other two. Thousands of years of human history have elapsed since this wonderful prophetic utterance: if therefore the prophecy has been falsified by the event, it will be futile to deny it; and if, on the other hand, it has been fulfilled, there can be no mistake about the fact, which must be capable of full demonstration.

In our Authorised Version the prediction runs thus:—

“And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.

“And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

“God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.” (Gen. 9:25,26,27)

Now the first question which arises in considering this prediction is, Why is Canaan, the fourth son of Ham, mentioned instead of his father, whose gross misconduct, evincing his depraved moral character, afforded the occasion for the prophecy? There is some ground to think that we have not here the true original reading of the passage, that a copyist’s error has obscured it, and that the two words, “Ham abi” (Ham the father of), have been omitted. Some copies of the Septuagint and the Arabic Version give these words as the text. Their insertion would certainly give the passage far more internal consistency, as well as bring it into fuller harmony with other Scriptures. As it stands, it does not include all the posterity of Noah, but leaves entirely unmentioned nearly one-third of it—that of all the sons of Ham, with the exception of Canaan. Bishop Newton says, in speaking of this passage:—

“Hitherto we have explained the prophecy according to the present copies of our Bible; but if we were to correct the text, as we should that of any classic author in a like case, the whole might be made easier and plainer. ‘Ham, the father of Canaan.’ is mentioned in the preceding part of the story; and how then came the person of a sudden to be changed into Canaan? The Arabic version in these three verses hath ‘the father of Canaan,’ instead of ‘Canaan.’ Some copies of the Septuagint likewise have Ham instead of Canaan, as if Canaan were a corruption of the text. Vatablus and others by ‘Canaan’ understand ‘the father of Canaan,’ which was expressed twice before. And if we regard the metre, this line, ‘Cursed be Canaan,’ is much shorter than the rest, as if something was deficient. May we not suppose therefore that the copyist by mistake wrote only ‘Canaan, instead of ‘Ham the father of Canaan, and that the whole passage was originally thus: ‘And Ham the father of Canaan saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. . . . And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Ham the father of Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Ham the father of Canaan shall be servant to them. God shall enlarge Japheth; and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Ham the father of Canaan shall be servant to them.’

Note from the webmaster: I don’t consider the Septuagint a reliable resource. The Septuagint translation of a key Messianic prophecy of Daniel 9:27 is, unlike the KJV, totally unclear in that it’s talking about the ministry and murder of the Messiah in the first half of the verse, and the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem in the second half of the verse. Most modern English translations get their text from the Septuagint which obscures the true meaning of Daniel 9:27. It’s been said that the Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Old Testament that Jesus and the writers of the New Testament quoted from, but there is evidence to the contrary. Please see The Truth About the LXX Septuagint. So Dr. Guinness may not be correct in everything he writes, but who is? He’s such a prolific writer! Proverbs 10:19 says, “In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin (error)”.

“By this reading all the three sons of Noah are included in the prophecy, whereas otherwise Ham, who was the offender, is excluded, or is only punished in one of his children. Ham is characterized as ‘the father of Canaan’ particularly, for the greater encouragement of the Israelites, who were going to invade the land of Canaan; and when it is said, ‘Cursed be Ham the father of Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren, it is implied that his whole race was devoted to servitude, but particularly the Canaanites. Not that this was to take effect immediately, but was to be fulfilled in process of time, when they should forfeit their liberties by their wickedness.”

There is a possibility that Ham alone was mentioned in the original prophecy, and that the allusion to his being “the father of Canaan” was introduced by Moses in view of the approaching invasion of the land of Canaan by the Israelites, to encourage them hopefully to undertake the subjugation of its seven nations, by recalling the fact that it had long since been predicted that the descendants of Ham, including these wicked Canaanites, should be their servants. But that the prophecy spoke of the Canaanites exclusively is not likely, or even credible. As it correctly predicts the future of all the descendants of Ham, not that of those of his fourth son merely or mainly, it is most improbable that Canaan alone was mentioned.

It is true that in the parallel prophecy of Moses the name of Joseph does not occur, but those of his sons Ephraim and Manasseh do: so that the prophecy of Moses covered the entire posterity of Jacob. Moreover, it was Ham’s misconduct, not Canaan’s, that was the occasion—though not the cause—of the delivery of this oracle. How highly improbable then that his name should be omitted from it! The Jews have a tradition that it was the young Canaan who first saw his grandfather’s exposed condition, and called his father to join him in ridiculing and mocking the aged patriarch. There is, however, nothing but traditional evidence for this story; and even if it were true, it would account only for a mention of both father and son, and not for the exclusive naming of the son, as in our text. Whichever view be taken as to the text, it makes however no difference as to the fulfilment of the prophecy. If the original prediction was worded as in our version, it has been abundantly fulfilled, as we shall show; and if Ham was mentioned as well as, or instead of, his son, it has been fulfilled still more conspicuously on a wider sphere and through a longer period. We lean to the view that all the three sons of Noah were mentioned, and that thus the future of the entire human race was outlined in this second programme of the world’s history.

It contains several distinct points. First, it implies that each of Noah’s sons would become the father of a race. This might have been otherwise, as one of them might, like Abel, have been cut off and have left no issue.

Secondly, it states that the descendants of Ham were to be servants to their brethren. Servile subjection, including various forms of slavery, would be their specially characteristic portion, though there might, of course, be exceptions to the rule, which would only tend to prove its general prevalence; that the race would be servants of servants to their brethren is thrice over asserted.

Thirdly, it states that a peculiarly sacred character would be connected with the descendants of Shem, that Jehovah would be in some special sense the Lord God of Shem. The passage must not be read as an invocation, as it sometimes is, as if it were “Blessed of Jehovah my God be Shem.” It is an ascription of praise, “Blessed be Jehovah-Elohim of Shem!” implying that the one living and true God would be the God of Shem’s descendants, or, as Luther puts it, that Shem should enjoy “a most abundant blessing, reaching its highest point in the promised seed.” The name Shem means “renown”; and the prophecy shows that the exaltation and renown of his seed would depend rather on spiritual and religious advancement than on mere political prosperity. That it is the race of Shem, and not he himself personally, that is contemplated by the prophecy, is intimated in the plural pronoun, “Canaan shall be their servant,” not his servant. Ham’s descendants would be in tributary subjection to Shem’s descendants.

Fourthly, it is stated that the race of Japheth, Noah’s eldest son, whose name means “the one that spreads abroad,” should be the most widely diffused and, as regards material blessings, the most prosperous of the three; that God would greatly multiply it, and open to it vast spheres. The words have been rendered, “God will concede an ample space” to Japheth’s posterity, or “make wide room” for them. So great was to be this enlargement of Japheth that his descendants would ultimately not only occupy all their own tents, or dwelling-places, but inhabit also some of those belonging to Shem; and though it is not distinctly stated in the prediction, yet there is nothing in the words to exclude the thought—that the enlargement of Japheth may include vast intellectual as well as material development, and that his descendants were to dwell in the tents of Shem in this sense also, i.e., to enter into their spiritual and religious inheritance. Japheth’s race, like Shem’s, was also to hold in subjection Hamitic races.

Thus the patriarch, gazing down the dim vista of ages then unborn, and extending his view even to our own day, beheld with eyes opened by the revealing Spirit, the future of his threefold family. He who in retrospect could recall the history of the first human race, with its tragic close, was allowed in prospect to foresee the main outline of the fortunes of the second family of man—his own family. And what did he foresee? For the Semitic races religious supremacy and sacred renown; for Japheth’s posterity vast enlargement and political supremacy; and for the descendants of Ham, the father of Canaan, servile degradation.¹

¹ We must not omit to note, in passing, the important practical lesson taught by the fact that the evil races for whom the doom of perpetual servitude is foreseen are the descendants of a bad man. A straw shows which way the stream runs; the incident here recorded of Ham is trivial in one sense, yet it clearly shows what manner of man he was—destitute of the fear of God, without natural affection, gratitude, reverence, compassion, self-respect, or decency; full of heartless levity, addicted to coarse amusement and brutal vulgarity; in short, a bad son who could never make a good father. It is a solemn thought for parents that they cannot help transmitting to their offspring of the most distant generations, their own moral character as well as their own physical features.

Note from the webmaster: I think it’s unfortunate that H. Grattan Guinness uses the word “race” in his book. I would rather say, “ethnic group” instead. I believe the word “race” is connected to Darwinian Evolution. Darwin believed humanity descended from monkeys, and this therefore led him to believe that some ethnic groups are more highly evolved than others. The very subtitle of Darwin’s book indicates that! ” On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.” If we are all descendants of Noah, that means there is only one race of humanity on earth. It’s called the human race. I think many sons and daughters of Ham are doing very well in all fields of science, education, society, and government. Of course, there are still poor black people but there are also poor white people living homeless on the streets in what’s supposed to be one of the wealthiest nations on earth, the USA. And there are poor people nearly everywhere throughout the world. “For the poor always ye have with you,” Jesus said. What nation on earth has not been colonized at one time by a white nation? Thailand and Japan are the only two nations that come to mind, but some Japanese tell me they believe Japan is now a colony of America! Many of those formerly colonized nations are in Asia, the children of Shem.

Continued in Chapter II. The Noahic Programme. – Part II.

All sections of The Divine Programme of The World’s History By H. Grattan Guinness

Continued from The Divine Programme of The World’s History Chapter I. The Adamic Programme. – Part I.

It is thus with the long conflict between the serpent and the woman’s seed. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus practically won the day, though the full fruits of victory are not reaped yet. In Him, man, born of a woman, resisted Satan’s temptations, fulfilled all righteousness, suffered the just for the unjust, tasted death for every man, broke its bonds and rose again from the dead, triumphant alike over the wiles, the malice, and the power of Satan. There is ample and unquestionable historic evidence of these facts, and this virtually decided the struggle. The author of evil had met his match, and been wounded in a vital point. One member of the human family had vanquished him, and became thenceforth the champion and deliverer of His brethren. It was all over with the Philistines when Goliath was slain, though much remained to be done before they were finally driven from the land of Israel.

Since the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the ultimate triumph of the seed of the woman has, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, been a settled question; and the final issue becomes continually clearer in the light of the actual course of mundane events.

The victories of moral good over moral evil which have resulted from the influence whether of Judaism or of Christianity, whether direct or indirect, may all be fairly regarded as the achievements and initial triumphs of “the seed of the woman.” In considering a few of the most notable of these, we must distinguish between results that have been and are the proper outcome of the doctrines and example of Christ —the fruits of real Christianity—and the results of the existence in the world of the great corrupt outward organization that bears His name—the professing Christian Church.

This, alas! has too often completely misrepresented the religion of Christ, and acted in opposition to His laws and to His Spirit. It has cultivated bigotry and hatred, instigated religious wars and persecutions, opposed liberty of thought and action, established bloody courts of inquisition, upheld cruel and inhuman systems of slavery, sought for itself earthly power and wealth, and by its enactments and practices encouraged a host of terrible social evils and degrading popular superstitions.

The mischief done by the so-called Christian Church must not be laid at the door of true Christianity. Its effects are to be traced by the changes which its doctrines have produced in the world through the influence exerted by its true professors. In all ages, even the darkest, there have been such consistent disciples of Christ, filled with His spirit and followers of His example, whose lives have been potent for good, and whose influence, though they may have themselves been martyred, has been mighty enough to shame men out of some of their evil deeds, and move them to a measure of self-reformation, even when it did not make of them true converts.

A work was published (“Gesta Christi.” By C. Loring Brace) by an American writer which carefully traces the history of human progress under Christianity, The author is one who has had the opportunity of practically testing for thirty years on a large scale its power in diminishing poverty, misery, and crime; and of estimating the part Christian ideas had in the great effort of the United States to remove the giant evil of slavery. There can indeed be no question that they were the foundation of this greatest of modern reforms, and that they stimulated and supported the country through its long and costly struggle to deliver itself from this dread incubus. This author had also studied for many years the laws and history of the later Roman period and of the middle ages, and had been struck by the ever-recurring traces of the silent yet profound working of “the great reforming power of the world.” He had also been engaged in examining and presenting in public writings the influence of the Christian faith in the more modern period on international law, arbitrations, and the relations of nations. This experience fitted him to do—what he has very cautiously and candidly done in the work alluded to—trace the progressive influence of Christianity in the earth. He writes:

“There are certain practices, principles, and ideas, now the richest inheritance of the race, that have been either implanted or stimulated or supported by Christianity. They are such as these: regard for the personality of the weakest and poorest; respect for women; the absolute duty of each member of the fortunate classes to raise up the unfortunate; humanity to the child, the prisoner, the stranger, the needy, and even the brute; the duty of personal purity and the sacredness of marriage; the necessity of temperance; the obligation of a more equitable division of the profits of labour, and of greater co-operation between employers and employed; the right of every human being to have the utmost opportunity of developing his faculties, and of all persons to enjoy equal political and social privileges; the principle that the injury of one nation is the injury of all, and the expediency and duty of unrestricted trade and intercourse between all countries; and, finally and principally, a profound opposition to war, a determination to limit its evils when existing, and to prevent its arising by means of international arbitration.”

Space forbids us to enlarge as we would fain do on this theme, but we may say in a sentence the world little knows how deeply it is indebted to Christianity and its parent Judaism! Light, love, liberty, peace, preservation, progress, happiness, harmony, hope have all flowed to mankind from the advent of the woman’s Seed. Take away from the human family the nations and peoples who have more or less fully come under the Redeemer’s influence, and what remains? Nothing but polytheism and idolatry, paganism and fetishism, despotism, slavery, degraded womanhood, female infanticide, inter-tribal wars, depopulated countries, and dwarfed, stunted races who have retrograded through vice almost to the level of the beasts.

China is the only apparent exception; and even there, alongside of an ancient and comparatively high civilization, idolatry, superstition, female oppression, judicial cruelties, and social miseries prevail.

Mohammedan countries must be included among those which have, though very slightly, come under the Redeemer’s influence, for their monotheism was derived both from Judaism and Christianity.

The point we have to settle is, whether the Eden prediction of the triumph of the seed of the woman seems likely, from what has already happened, to be ultimately fulfilled? Or, to put the question in another form, are idolatries, cruelties, and degrading superstitions passing away before the liberating, ennobling doctrines of Christ? Are the more corrupt forms of the Christian faith itself giving place increasingly to purer and more beneficial ones? Is a constantly increasing section of the human race enjoying vast temporal and spiritual benefits traceable to the advent of Christ? The answer to these questions must be an affirmative one. In an ever-increasing ratio, the faith of Christ is spreading in the earth; the most marked increase in our days (the 19th century) is in the purer Protestant forms of that faith; and everywhere civil, political, social, and religious elevation follow as a consequence.

Contrast the moral and social condition of (19th century) Protestant England, Scotland, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, North America, Australia, New Zealand, with the condition of India, Burma, Siam, China, Central Africa, Zululand, or with that of the American Indians. The more thoroughly the two groups are studied, the more apparent will it become that the contrast of condition between Christian and heathen countries is like that between night and day. Roman Catholic countries, which, though Christian in profession, have been moulded by a worldly and corrupt ecclesiastical system, rather than by the pure doctrine of Christ and the open Bible, occupy an intermediate position; as witness Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Mexico, Haiti, and the States of South America, where, instead of wealth, might, prosperity, progress, and peace, we see poverty, feebleness, disaster, retrogression, perpetual unrest, and constant wars.

The following statements are taken from a recently published pamphlet, entitled, “Political Issues of the Nineteenth Century, with Important Statistics drawn from the most Authentic Sources”:

“The social progress of the last century has been signal. That progress has been chiefly a Protestant progress. The Catholic nations have been comparatively torpid, and exhibit little movement, except when by tolerating a Protestant minority they have admitted an infusion from the reform.

“The general decay or comparative stagnation of Catholic countries is patent, but a prolonged insight shows more. It is evident the Catholic nations advance more slowly in proportion to their complete subjection to the religious influence of Catholicism, while, on the contrary, strong religious sentiment among Protestants seems favourable to rapid advance. Historians remark that the Reformation has given extraordinary force to every nation which embraced it, and that history cannot explain this force.

“Protestantism being founded on a book reciting covenants between God and every man, it claims that every man should read. Hence the necessity for education. Personal covenant implies individual liberty and individual intelligence. With the exercise of private judgment comes discovery. The conscience is reached by a higher sense of moral contract than in the adherents of a system subordinated to some fellow creature, who assumes solely to interpret obligation and regulate duty. The enthusiasm of Protestants has remodelled the most important States of Europe on a basis of deliberative assent and representative government. Catholic communities, when they aspire to imitate this conception, invariably fall into disorder, for Catholicism requires unthinking submission. In the States founded by Protestantism in America, liberty and industrial energy are concomitant with order. Wherever Protestantism prevails, there is more frankness, more affiance, more culture and morality. . . .

“This is the secret of the strength of Protestantism. It rends the cerements (shrouds for the dead) which have long enwrapped the Church, and gives to every member the breath of life. M. Renan says: ‘The formation of new sects which Catholics bring, as a mark of weakness, against Protestants, proves, on the contrary, that the religious sentiment lives among the latter because it is creative. There is nothing more dead than that which is motionless.’ Protestantism substitutes a Christian republic of genial intelligence for a pharisaic cabalism of hierarchs, The laity are no longer the proletaires of the clergy, and both escape the deteriorating immorality of the confessional. The estates and judgments of men are freed from the figment and the exactions of a vice-Christ who conveyances the invisible world to others and the visible to himself.

It seems incumbent on the nineteenth century to examine the extent and nature of this evil before transferring the burden to the next. Let us dispassionately ascertain how much of it is traceable to Christianity, travestied with paganism, whether the intellectual nonage of nations is not prolonged by it only in a less degree than by the vitiated theisms of Asia. Judged by the gradual corruption of the Church from Lactantius to Luther, but for the Reformation of the sixteenth century Christianity should by this time have sunk so low as to be unrecognisable, and Europe would know no more of the writings of Moses, Isaiah, Paul, or John, than do the votaries of Buddha, Siva, and Mahomet. The condition of the Jesuit-ruled portions of America and their painful history for three hundred years would raise a further question, Does such Christianity sink populations lower than it finds them?”

Mr. Gladstone, referring to these, the vital subjects of our day, writes: “There is a question which hitherto can scarcely be said to have been presented to the public mind, and which it seems high time to examine that question is,— whether experience has now supplied data sufficient for a trustworthy comparison of results in the several spheres of political liberty, social advancement, mental intelligence, and general morality between the Church of Rome on the one hand, and the religious communities cutoff or separated from her on the other.” He proceeds then to reason that Scriptural faith will prove efficient “against the ultramontane (advocation of supreme papal authority) conspiracy,” and urges the need of the purified form of Christianity. Macaulay, Ruskin, Dickens, Hallam, Hepworth Dixon, and J. A. Froude have touched the question frequently; but Continental writers, Romanist and Protestant, have dilated upon it.

Taine has recognised the Bible as “the secret of England’s greatness.” Agassiz says of the teaching of Romanist priests, that “as long as the people do not demand another sort of religious instruction they will continue in their downward course or not be able to improve.”

M. Geroult writes in the palmy days of the second empire (1866): “The nations in which Papal, religion prevails are doomed to IRREMEDIABLE DECAY, the future of the world is all to the Reformed Church. What nations are at the head of civilization, and exercise a sovereign influence? The United States, Britain, and Prussia. Which, on the contrary, drag painfully along in the routine of the past without strength or grandeur? Spain, Rome, and Austria. As for France, she is indebted to a peculiar temperament and to the free spirit of inquiry with which she is long animated, not to have fallen to the rank of a fifth or sixth-rate power in Europe. But let her take care, the Catholicism to which she obstinately remains attached—why, it is not easy to say—will indubitably in the long run paralyse her forces.”

Professor Emile de Laveleye remarks: “The Catholic nations seem stricken with barrenness; they cannot rest, because free and representative government is the logical outcome of Protestantism only. Catholic nations aspiring to this perpetually oscillate between despotism and anarchy. Christianity is favourable to liberty. Catholicism is its moral enemy, so admits its infallible head—the pope. If France had not persecuted, strangled, and banished her children who had become Protestants, she might have developed the germs of liberty and self-government. The fact being that the chief of a state, be he king or president, cannot be a true constitutional sovereign if be is a devotee, and confesses as an obedient penitent. He is governed by a confessor who is subject to the pope, the real sovereign. The constitutional system becomes a figment or a fraud, for it enslaves the country to the will of an unknown priest; or else when the land refuses to bear the humiliating yoke, it produces a revolution. In Protestant lands the constitutional system flourishes naturally being in its native soil; while on Catholic soil, being an heretical import, it is undermined by the priest.”

“Such is its fate in Ireland, The franchises bestowed by an heretical empire to ascertain the individual will of its subjects can effect that object in a Protestant population; in Ireland it expresses nought hut the collective will of Rome. Even the juryman must submit ta the Church’s interpretation of duty; he is influenced, as M. de Laveleye says the monarch or the minister is influenced, through the confessional. He is abject before the priest, who is abject before the pope. Thus Vaticanism wields imperial sway in Ireland, and no proof can be given that demagoguism is not its puppet.

The effort to govern Ireland on constitutional principles becomes a farce and even a fraud… Would ultramontane success make Ireland happy? It has had its way in many lands, and shown that ii perishes by its own corruption. Suppose Ireland was made into another Spain or Mexico. Let the history of those countries be repeated. Let property so gravitate into the custody of the Roman Catholic Church, that even the banks became monkeries, and the trader and the property-owner must borrow through the prelacy. The inquisition in Mexico became the discounter as well as the torturer. The wealth of the insubordinate was extracted by the rack. Money could always be had through the prelates, and through them only. Did this being prosperity to Mexico? A new administration every nine months attests the fearful unrest which Romanism brings to agonized nations. . .

The traveller in Ireland is pained and surprised to find within twelve hours of London a lawlessness, truculence, and degradation defying the philanthropy and statues of an empire which girdles the globe with its benignity. On lands where the energy of Protestantism would by emigration disengage itself from impracticable resources, the Catholic remains in chronic inanity (lack of sense) of mind and body, and priests enjoy munificent (bountiful) living among the victims of superstition and sorrow. A moral map of Europe would show in darkening circles our approach to the former States of the Church. The remark of Edmund About on prosperity holds true of morality, that ‘it is proportioned to the square of the distance which separates it from Rome.’

“Niebuhr, speaking of the Papal capital in 1830, says: ‘They are a nation of walking dead men. When that which is living disgusts, can the human heart find compensation from statues, painting, and architecture? Intellect and knowledge, any idea which makes the heart throb, all generous activity seems banished, all hope, all aspiration, all effort, even all cheerfulness, for I have never seen a more cheerless nation.’

Macaulay says, ‘Under the rule of Rome, the loveliest provinces of Europe have been sunk in poverty, in political servitude, in intellectual torpor, and reduced to the lowest depths of degradation.’

Mr. Gladstone (‘Vaticanism’) says: ‘The education of the religious orders in its influence is adverse to freedom in the mind of the individual, freedom in the State, freedom in the family; all that nurtures freedom, all that guarantees it, is harassed, denounced, cabined, confined, attenuated, and starved. To secure these is the claim of civilization; to destroy them, and to establish the resistless domineering action of a central power, is the aim of Rome.’

Sir Robert Kane, an Irish Roman Catholic, says, in every country where education has been in the hands of the religious orders of Catholicism, ‘it had resulted in social decay and the political debasement of the people.’

In Spain the adult illiteracy has attained the figure of seventy-five per cent. ‘The condition of Spain, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Sicily, rural France, and indeed of Southern Europe as contrasted with Northern, is instructive. In Northern we find education, municipal repose, rural sweetness, and contentment. In the South with or without education, there is municipal unrest, tumult, and licentiousness, in the rural districts, filth, ignorance, coarseness.

The virtues of content and industry come PALPABLY FROM SPIRITUAL SOURCES. The manifestation of wisdom and goodness in a Divine Being, as conveyed in the evangelic message of the New Testament, has proved itself the firm support of authority and obligation. When Christianity was pure it tamed the Goth, and Hun, and Scandinavian, who were never tamed till the gospel reached them. The nations of the South who had the advantage of starting with the developed civilization of pagan Rome have retrograded.”

Statistical tables are then given to show the demoralizing effect of the Papacy, and especially of the confessional, in the countries subjected to Catholic influence. We have not space to give these, but may mention that while, in 1853, in Protestant England murders, for instance, occur in the proportion of four to a million of the population, in Ireland there are nineteen to the million, in Austria thirty-six, and in Italy seventy-eight. In 1869 the report of the French police gives still more horrible figures for the Papal States and Italy. In the former the murders were one hundred and eighty seven in the million, and in the latter one hundred and eleven.

And not only does Romanism fail to restrain crime, but it fails equally to restrain vice. The official records of the birth of illegitimate children in Protestant and Roman Catholic countries present a fearful contrast. While in the great cities of England such births vary from four to seven per cent, in Paris, Brussels, and Milan they are thirty to thirty-five per cent.; and in Prague, Munich, Vienna, and Gratz they vary from forty-seven to sixty-five per cent. In the Pontifical States, before their annexation to Italy, not only was the death-rate from crimes of violence, as we have seen, enormous, but the corruption of society was appalling to contemplate. Nowhere else, probably, was the number of illegitimate births so great: it amounted to seventy-two per cent. Or, to contrast the cities: in London, for every hundred legitimate births there are four illegitimate, in Paris there are forty-eight, and in Rome a hundred and forty three—though it has between seven and eight thousand clergy, monks, and nuns!

What has made these differences and shades of difference? Divine revelation: first the law, and since the gospel. The Lord Jesus said to His disciples, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” If mankind has been to any extent liberated from the tyranny of Satan, if foolish and degrading idolatries and ignorant superstitions have lost their hold on a considerable portion of our race, it is a result of the redeeming work of the woman’s Seed. It is true that many influences—material, moral, and intellectual—have combined to effect the advance of the race in morality and humanity, and that it is not always easy to estimate the separate influence of the new moral power introduced into the world by the advent and death of Christ; but all the most important ameliorations of the condition of mankind will be seen on careful investigation to be gesta Christi,— achievements of Christ.

To judge fairly of this fact, we must compare the condition of the Roman earth before Christianity became the religion of the empire with its condition subsequently and with its condition now. The moral and social revolution connected with the abolition of heathenism was immense and universal. It is difficult for us at this date to realize the corruption which characterized the old Roman civilization, the gigantic obstacles which Christianity had to overthrow in the laws, customs, and habits of the people, as well as in their religion. Satan’s power in the world has diminished indeed since the days when parents could legally kill their children, and husbands had the power of life and death over their wives; when divorce was so frequent that Seneca speaks of illustrious and noble women who reckoned their years, not by the number of the consuls, but by that of their husbands, and mentions one man, Moecenas, as having “married a thousand wives,” and Tertullian says that divorce was the very purpose of the Roman marriage. He who is a murderer from the beginning had full sway in the days when Caesar forced three hundred and twenty pairs of gladiators at once into the arena to destroy each other, or when Trajan kept up such bloody sports for one hundred and twenty three days together and made 10,000 unhappy prisoners contend for life in the amphitheatre; when human sacrifices were offered on great occasions to the gods, and noble and lovely children specially sought out as victims; when parents exposed their female children without the slightest compunction if too poor to rear them, or if they seemed weakly, leaving them to die or be devoured, or rescued by others to be brought up as the lowest slaves; when corruption of still worse and more unnatural kinds was so common that Tacitus mourned over the utter decadence of his people, and, believing no redemption possible, anticipated only final and general ruin. It was in such a world as this that the triumphs of “the Seed of the woman” began.

“The influence of the great Friend of humanity was especially seen in the Roman empire in checking licentious and cruel sports, so common and so demoralizing among the classic races; and in bringing on a new legislation of beneficence in favor of the outcast woman, the mutilated, the prisoner, and the slave. For the first time the stern and noble features of Roman law took on an unwonted expression of gentle humanity and sweet compassion under the power of Him who was the brother of the unfortunate and the sinful. The great followers of the Teacher of Galilee became known as the ‘brothers of the slave,’ and the Christian religion began its struggles of many centuries with those greatest of human evils, slavery and serfdom. It did not, indeed, succeed in abolishing them; but the remarkable mitigations of the system in Roman law, and the constant drift towards a condition of liberty, and the increasing emancipation throughout the Roman empire, are plainly fruits of its principles. All these and similar steps of humane progress are the gesta Christi, and the direct effects of His personal influence on the world.”

Dr. Cunningham Geikie, in his “Life and Words of Christ,” after tracing the new principles and the fresh light brought into the world by the advent of Christ, says:

“It has already largely transformed society, and is destined to affect it for good, in ever-increasing measure, in all directions. The one grand doctrine of the brotherhood of man, as man, is in itself the pledge of infinite results. . . . Such an idea was unknown to antiquity, to the Jew, to the Greek, and to the Roman alike.

“It was left to Christ to proclaim the brotherhood of all nations by revealing God as their common Father in heaven, filled towards them with a father’s love; by His commission to preach the gospel to all; by His inviting all, without distinction, to come to Him; . . . by His equal sympathy with the slave, the beggar, and the ruler; by the whole bearing and spirit of His life; and, above all, by His picture of all nations gathered to judgment at the Great Day, with no distinction of race or rank, but simply as men.

“In this great principle of the essential equality of man and his responsibility to God, the germs lay hid of grand truths imperfectly realized even yet. . .

“The slave, before Christ came, was a piece of property of less worth than land or cattle. An old Roman law enacted a penalty of death for him who killed a ploughing ox, but the murderer of a slave was called to no account whatever. Crassus, after the revolt of Spartacus, crucified 10,000 slaves at one time. Augustus, in violation of his word, delivered to their masters, for execution, 30,000 slaves who had fought for Sextus Pompeius.

“The great truth of man’s universal brotherhood was the axe laid at the root of this detestable crime—the sum of all villainies. By first infusing kindness into the lot of the slave, then by slowly undermining slavery itself, each century has seen some advance, till at last the man owner is unknown in nearly every civilized country, and even Africa itself, the worst victim of slavery in these later ages, is being aided by Christian England to raise its slaves into freemen.

“Aggressive war is no less distinctly denounced by Christianity, which, in teaching the brotherhood of man, proclaims war a revolt, abhorrent to nature, of brothers against brothers. The voice of Christ, commanding peace on earth, has echoed through all the centuries since His day, and has been, at least, so far honoured that the horrors of war are greatly lessened, and that war itself—no longer the rule, but the exception—is much rarer in Christian nations than in former times.” (Written before the two world wars when Protestantism was stronger.)

The writer from whom we have before quoted says on this subject:

“Peace among all men and all nations is the ideal presented by Christ. And by one class of means or other, when at length His teachings have thoroughly permeated mankind, this ideal will be attained.

“Outside of the nominally Christian nations there is no international law. The Turks appear to have had little idea of it till instructed by European nations. The Koran’s teachings tended in the very opposite direction, and made war the natural condition towards non-Mohammedan races, and treachery justifiable towards an ‘infidel.’ The Mohammedan peoples in the North of Africa lived in a constant state of hostility with all foreigners. The Chinese, with all their advancement in arts and sciences, seem never to have thought of any code of humanity and justice towards foreign nations.

“The Japanese have indeed recently made efforts to introduce the international law known to the Christian nations to their own people, and one proposed code at least has been translated.

“No Buddhist, so far as we are aware, has written on this topic, nor does a Buddhistic code of laws and customs between different peoples exist.

“Nor, as we have shown, does international law owe much to Greek culture or to Roman law. The first general tinge of humanity in the world’s relations, mercy to the wounded and helpless, the softening the rugged face of war, the binding different nations in a certain bond (feeble though it be) of brotherhood, the disposition to refer injuries to arbitration rather than violence—these are the gesta Christi.”

But we must turn now to the second part of the prophetic programme given in Eden—the announcements of the penal consequences of sin.

Man having rebelled against the great and good Creator, in whose image he was made, and under whose law he was placed in paradise, the threatened penalty and the natural results of sin followed.

The announcement of these should be read not merely as a judicial sentence inflicting penalties, but much more as a sure and certain word of prophecy, foretelling what would be the natural and inevitable consequences of sin.

DEATH was predicted as the wages of sin: “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” We need not pause here to inquire what Adam’s destiny and that of his race would have been if sin had not entered, nor to examine into the nature of that death which is the wages of sin. What we have to do is to observe how the prediction has been fulfilled —how, notwithstanding the redemption promised, Adam and all his seed have experienced the truth of the prophetic announcement, “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” How simple the words, but how awfully sad and solemn their fulfilment! The echo of that sentence uttered ages ago in Eden rolls back upon us in ever-multiplying funereal dirges from all lands and ages. Death, death, death, universal, all-devouring death! Enthroned king in paradise, death reigned from Adam to Moses, and has reigned ever since. Every biography ends like the patriarchal genealogies in Genesis v., with their ever-recurring strain, “and he died.” Our globe is one great cemetery. Successive generations of men have passed away to the grave, as the successive crops of grass fall in turn beneath the mower’s scythe. “We cannot hold mortality’s strong hand; men must endure their going hence e’en as their coming hither.” Two hundred generations of men have succeeded each other on earth since their Creator put into the hands of our first parents this programme of the experiences of their race. What these generations averaged it would be impossible to say; the one now living is computed at 1,400 millions. Average them at even a quarter of that number; then seventy thousand millions of times over has this prediction been accomplished! Each day sees it fulfilled afresh in more than eighty thousand cases, for such is the present daily death-rate of the world’s inhabitants.

With two interruptions only—the raptures of Enoch and Elijah—death held unbroken sway from the fall of the first Adam to the resurrection of the second. And though the resurrection of Christ has robbed death of its sting and the grave of its victory, yet even as to believers who already have eternal life in Him, “the body is nevertheless still subject to death because of sin.” (Romans 8:10) Christians are no exception to the universal law, “it is appointed unto men once to die.” The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

Nor must we, in considering the fulfilment of this prediction, leave out of sight the universality of sickness and suffering, of disease and decay, that form no inconsiderable part of this curse of death. “We that are in this body do groan being burdened,” and each groan is an evidence of sin and death! From the cradle to the grave we carry in ourselves the seeds of death. Men are born dying as well as to die, and the sole hope of our race lies in the promise and prediction, that God will yet “swallow up death in victory.”

A second point in this Eden prophecy was that while awaiting death, man should suffer from the curse of excessive labour. All labour is not a curse. Adam in Eden while still unfallen had his appointed task to dress the garden and to keep it, and for fallen man with all his evil propensities and incessant exposure to Satanic temptation, the necessity of labour is a mercy. Without it earth would speedily become a pandemonium. But still it was as a punishment for human sin that the ground was cursed, and it was foretold that the earth ceasing to yield spontaneously suitable human food would being forth thorns and thistles, and would in order to make it productive demand human labour, amounting to painful, incessant, wearisome toil, “In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread.”

To note the fulfilment of this prediction, we must not confine our attention to agricultural labour merely. Glance over the world again, look back over intervening centuries and abroad throughout all races of men! Has it not ever been so? Have not multitudes, yea, the masses of mankind, even now to endure weary, wasting toil, that they may live? Is not life to the great majority a hard battle for existence? We must not think of the few who form the exception, but of the many who fall under the rule. We must note how the races who refuse thus to toil (like the Red Indians, who prefer to live by the chase, or the Bushmen of the Kalihari, who depend on the natural produce of their country) die out by degrees and cease to be. We must note how even, with all their toil, millions of industrious Chinese, Hindus, and others are periodically carried off by famine. Millions of our fellow subjects in India do not know what it is to have more than one meal a day, and are rarely free from a painful feeling of hunger.

We must consider the overwhelming labours imposed on millions more by slavery; the arduous, exhausting, and dangerous toil involved to still other millions in such operations as underground mining for coal and other minerals, navigating stormy seas as fishermen, or in pursuit of commerce. We must think of the life of drudgery and weariness led by multitudes of women and young children in factories of various kinds, of multitudes of poor sempstresses toiling all their lives for the barest subsistence; think of the thousands of men employed in the great cities of the world, as drivers of cabs, trains, omnibuses, and other public vehicles—men whose hands must grasp the reins for twelve or fourteen and even sixteen hours a day, and that for seven days a week! And even if we rise above the classes condemned to the lowest forms of labour, oh, how full of toil is this our world! Rest and leisure for enjoyment are the rare exceptions, the stern, rarely relaxed rule is toil, labour in the sweat of the brow!

So do men realize this, that multitudes die of over-work, over-wrought brains, or worn-out bodies. Some of this is doubtless self-inflicted and needless, but for all that, the curse of labour presses heavily on the race, and always has done so everywhere. There may be some lovely islet of the southern sea where no more of labour than is healthful and pleasant is needed to secure sustenance. But such spots are as much exceptions in the earth as men rich enough to afford idleness are exceptions in the race.

It is a fact proved by carefully compiled statistics, that in the State of Massachusetts alone 72,700 lives were lost in their prime, in the manufacturing towns, in the course of the five years, 1865—1871,—the vast majority from excessive labour, which soon destroys women and young girls especially. What hundreds of thousands of such perish annually in England, and die premature deaths from the same cause! Is not this a heavy penalty? Does it not press painfully on the human family the world over to this day as predicted? Was not the foreview of human history given to Adam correct in this particular? Let the great mass of mankind—straightening their weary backs and wiping the sweat from their brows with stiffened, aching hands —reply.

But the heaviest burden of this Eden prophecy fell not on the man. It fell where the sin was greatest, on the first transgressor—woman. Hers was a double guilt, for she not only yielded to temptation, but became in her turn a tempter. She fell not alone, but drew her husband down with her. The natural, inevitable consequences were foretold, and themselves constituted to a large extent woman’s peculiar curse, though there is superadded a Divine infliction of punishment. Given to be man’s helpmeet and companion, woman became first his tempter and then his slave; for man, in becoming a sinner, became of course selfish. Might took the place of right, and the weaker vessel, instead of being honoured and cherished, was oppressed and degraded. “Thy desire will be to thy husband,” or, as it is better rendered, “thou wilt be in subjection to thy husband, and he will rule (or tyrannize) over thee.”

Has this prediction been verified in the history of the sex? Alas! alas! almost too terribly for description. The shameless, brutal, cruel degradation of woman by the stronger sex has been perhaps one of the very darkest results of the fall, and one of the plainest proofs of the ruin which sin has wrought in the nature of man.

Save where Divine revelation has shed its beams of healing light, woman is to this day a slave, or a captive, or a victim. The Indian loads his wife like a beast of burden, with all his goods and chattels, drives her before him with her infant on her back as he would drive a brute, and walking unburdened by her side, flogs her when her strength fails. The Bantu chief in Central Africa dies; straightway a dozen of his living wives are forced into the great square pit which is to be his grave, to make a couch for the corpse, and be buried alive to keep the dead man company. How often, when the Hindu husband has died, has the wife been burned on his funeral pile as a compliment to his memory! One hundred millions of women and young girls—fellow-subjects of our own—are immured as prisoners to this day in the dark and loathsome zenanas of India, doomed to a wretched, cruel, dreary lifelong captivity, and to an ignorance which degrades them into mere talking animals; and this by the laws and customs invented and established by men. They may never eat with their own husbands, or share any of his pleasures or pursuits, never walk abroad for exercise, or travel for health, instruction, or amusement. They are simply slaves, lifelong prisoners, defrauded of the first right of a human being, and worse off than any negro in the West Indies in days gone by.

Such is the portion of woman in heathendom, and it is not much better among the hundred and twenty millions of Mohammedans. Woman is denied her just rights by the degrading custom of polygamy, denied education and culture, denied even the possession of a soul! Even the Jews in their daily ritual thank God that He has not made them women, and do not permit wives and mothers to worship God with their husbands and sons in the synagogues, but assign to them a separate gallery. Everywhere and in all ages, savage or civilized, man—black, white, red, yellow, or brown—has tyrannized over and oppressed his weaker companion, degraded her into his servant, regarded her as property to be bought and sold, and imposing on her his share of the curse—excessive toil—in addition to her own of excessive suffering in child-bearing and fatigue in child-rearing, has inflicted on her, in wanton wickedness, multitudes of other sufferings, both physical and mental.

Christianity, as we have seen, makes men new creatures in Christ, and does away with all this; and even where it is a mere profession instead of a reality, it still makes men ashamed of this undisguised brutality and selfishness, so that some forms of the degradation and oppression of the weaker sex have disappeared in Christendom. But we must not think they have ceased to be because we see them not! By very far the largest part of the sex are still—after six thou- sand years—victims to these terrible sufferings, so awfully wide and long continued has been the fulfilment of this part of the Adamic programme.

Even in professing Christian countries there exist still many cruel and oppressive laws and customs, indicating that the original Divine ideal of the equality of the sexes is not even yet, after eighteen hundred, years of Christianity, fully recognized. Only a year ago were the abominable laws which sanctioned the vilest form of female slavery abolished, and the same personal liberty secured to women as to men. And these laws are still in full operation in India, in our colonies, and in most of the countries of Europe—laws that condemn the young and feeble of one sex to assault and infamy, to degradation and imprisonment for the sake of securing to the other immunity from the natural penalties of vice! It is only a year or two since the law of our land shielded tender, helpless female children from the worst form of brutal assault by men, and even now it gives no protection to girls after sixteen, Thus too wife-beating and wife-murder are lightly esteemed if men can plead intoxication as an excuse; and the judges in cases of divorce may give the custody of children to a bad father, and refuse recognition to the mother’s rights.

As to the remaining portion of the prediction, the more direct infliction of penal suffering, “in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children,” it is needless to dwell on its mournful worldwide and still-continued fulfilment. The sufferings of childbirth are the severest known. They are used throughout Scripture as a similitude for the extremest and most distressing pain and danger. The fact that in all lands and ages large numbers of mothers actually die in them, and the fact that this process is merely a climax preceded and followed by a vast variety of related sufferings, so that the greater part of every woman’s life is chequered at intervals by sickness and pain unknown to the other sex, leave no room to doubt the long-continued and universal realization in human experience of this part of the prediction.

It may of course be argued by unbelievers that phenomena so conspicuous as death and toil and female suffering could not but have been noted and pondered by Moses, and that their existence and universality in his day accounts for the “legend,” or “myth,” of the predictions in Genesis iii. To this we reply that it is vain to contend that the second part of the Adamic foreview of the future may have had a natural origin in the days of Moses, when it is perfectly clear, as we have shown, that the first part cannot be similarly accounted for. If a portion of the prophecy evinces supernatural foreknowledge, it is safe to conclude that the whole is an inspired prediction.

To conclude, This first section of the Divine programme of the world’s history is, as befits its early and primitive character, fundamental and moral. It has no ethnographic nor political features; it does not distinguish between one part of the human race and another; it alludes to no special occurrences of history, gives no order of events, and no indications of chronology. Later predictions do all this, but not so the grand primitive Genesis outline. The general course of providence under the government of a righteous and holy but merciful God, the consequences of Satanic temptation and human sin, and the existence of a Divine plan for the ultimate destruction of moral evil and for the redemption of the fallen race by means of a suffering yet triumphant member of it—these were the broad, fundamental, all-important particulars contained in it. It was not a detailed foreview of any one section, but a general programme of the whole. It covered all lands and all ages, stretching in its geographical sweep to the uttermost ends of the earth, and in its chronological range from the days of Eden to a still future time. The experience of every single descendant of Adam has harmonized with it, and the great central event of all history—the first advent of Christ—has already to a large extent fulfilled its promise, and many infallible signs indicate its perfect accomplishment in days to come.

Nothing of a similar character can be found in all the range of literature; it arches over the guilty and suffering human race like the grand vault of heaven, simple, abiding, all-embracing, vast, unutterably lofty, and illuminated by a glorious central sun—the promise of the Redeemer. Whence came it? Is this the manner of man?

Continued in The Divine Programme of The World’s History Chapter II. The Noahic Programme. – Part I

All sections of The Divine Programme of The World’s History By H. Grattan Guinness

Continued from The Divine Programme of The World’s History By H. Grattan Guinness.

THE ADAMIC FOREVIEW OF HUMAN HISTORY.

“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” – Genesis 3:15-19

THE brief revelation given to Adam in Eden immediately after the fall threw light upon the character and course of human history as a whole, and foretold its grand result as viewed from a moral standpoint. Brief and few as the predictions are, they are all-embracing in their compass, and profound in their depths of meaning. They are multum in parvo (Latin meaning much in little)—the entire history of mankind summed up in a few brief sentences. They differ widely from subsequent prophecy in character, as befits such primitive predictions. There is about them a combined simplicity and majesty, which stamp them as Divine. Their range is universal, so that all ages and all lands bear witness to their marvellous fulfilment.

They deal not with minor matters or temporary, passing experiences and changes, but with all the great permanent, essential facts and phenomena of human existence, including conception, birth, food, labour, the relation of the sexes, the conditions of agriculture, the existence and variety of suffering, the phenomena of conscience, and the relation of men to the evil one, as well as with the awful though universal fact of death.

Wonderfully condensed and pregnant with latent meaning as they thus are on their human side, they are not less marvellous on their Divine side; that is, in what they reveal of God, and of His character and His purposes, If His creative words and works had revealed His wisdom, power, and goodness, these utterances with their fulness of moral majesty reveal as clearly His righteousness, His justice, and His grace. That to Adam, in the hour of his utter ruin, should have been given the assurance of the redemption of his race, is in itself a proof of the Divine mercy. At the gloomy crisis when man fell under the power of moral evil, the promise revealed the glorious goal of human history—final and complete victory over this evil. Man was not left in his self-inflicted ruin without an intimation that God had toward him purposes of redeeming grace. He was made to feel himself the subject both of judgment and of mercy, and thus was laid the foundation of all true religion in sinful beings — a consciousness of unworthiness, a sense of guilt, helplessness, and utter dependence on God, mingled with a hope based on Divine promises, and a faith built upon Divine predictions. Despair was forbidden as much as pride and self-dependence. On this dark page of human history—the first after man had passed out of his Maker’s hands into his own—there fell the light of foretold redemption, like a gleam of sunshine gilding even the storm-clouds of judgment with beauty and glory.

These primitive predictions, it should be noted, were not equivocal, oracular, or but dimly comprehensible. On the contrary, they were singularly definite and simple, so that no one can misunderstand their plain meaning. If they were in one point mysterious, the mystery lay not in what was revealed, but rather in that which was left unrevealed. The mode of redemption and restoration was not made plain; that was left a mystery which the fulfilment of the promise would alone entirely remove, but on which clearer and still clearer light was in subsequent ages to be granted. The glorious terminus only was revealed at first, not how or when it was to be reached. The scheme of Divine mercy was not fully explained, but it was made perfectly clear that such a scheme existed, and that the Almighty Creator and righteous Judge of man purposed to be also his Saviour and Redeemer.

The foreview of history given to the father of the human race after the fall consists of two contrasted portions.

1. THE PROMISE OF REDEMPTION.
2. THE PREDICTION OF THE PENAL CONSEQUENCES OF SIN.

We will consider them in this order, which is that in which Scripture presents them, and which is in itself an illustration of the truth that “mercy rejoices against judgment.” The God against whom they had sinned hastened, if we may so say, to cheer and encourage the trembling criminals with the blessed hope of ultimate recovery and restoration, before He proceeded to utter the sentence of punishment, and declare to them the inevitable results of their fall.

The Eden prophecy of redemption predicts, first, a perpetual enmity and conflict between the serpent’s brood and the woman’s seed; and, secondly, the ultimate destruction of the tempter and destroyer himself, by a suffering yet victorious deliverer, who is mentioned as “the seed of the woman.” “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” Not only would a fixed and inveterate enmity exist throughout the future history of the race between man and the serpent—this was but a figure of the truth—but a similar and deeper antagonism would exist between the tempter and mankind. “Thy seed,” the seed or posterity of the serpent, must mean those among men who should imbibe the devil’s spirit, and be partakers of his character, subjects of his “power of darkness,” as contrasted with those who should be of an opposite character. (Matthew 23:33) Enmity would exist between good men and bad, the conflict then commenced between man and his tempter would be continued in the history of the human race. But further and mainly, a special “seed,” a person, a great individual descendant of Eve should in due time arise in whom this conflict would culminate: “He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” The redemption of men should be accomplished through a man, and through a suffering man— one who would himself be bruised in the battle, not fatally crushed like his adversary, but yet not free from hurt. The serpent should in the end be completely destroyed, his head crushed by this “woman’s seed.”

Now we know who is styled by pre-eminence “the Seed,” who because men are partakers of flesh and blood “Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” These words have always been held, and rightly held, to be the first promise and prophecy of the Redeemer of mankind—the Son of God, who by incarnation became “the woman’s Seed.” Nor can any question be fairly raised as to the fact that we have in these words the germ of the Messianic idea so largely unfolded subsequently in the Old Testament, and realized historically in the events of New Testament gospel story. What was that idea—interwoven with the histories, prophecies, laws, and ordinances of Israel, and pervading the Bible from beginning to end? Was it not that there should arise, as the Deliverer of sinning and suffering humanity, ONE who should Himself suffer before He triumphed, one who should be a bleeding Victor, a conquering Victim, a self-sacrificing Saviour?

The Anointed One, the Christ, was first “to suffer,” and only then “to enter into His glory.” The prophets testified beforehand “the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow.” Nature itself taught that, “except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” The martyred Abel, the offered Isaac, the outcast Joseph exalted to be lord of Egypt and saviour of his brethren, Moses rescued from a watery grave to be king in Jeshurun, David despised in his father’s house, hated and hunted by Saul, yet father of the royal line of Judah and founder of the kingdom of Israel,—all these and similar incidents presented continually the same ideal, each adding to it some new and special feature, until Isaiah was inspired to present the perfect portrait of the Divine yet human sufferer, who was to be the victorious Saviour of men. He was to be Jehovah’s servant, humbled, marred in form and in visage, without beauty or comeliness, despised, rejected, sorrowful, burdened with grief, laden with transgressions not His own, wounded, bruised, stricken of God and afflicted, oppressed and ill-used, cut off prematurely and unjustly, numbered with transgressors, laid in a grave, made a sin-offering. And yet He was to be “exalted and extolled and very high,” to have “a portion with the great” and to “divide the spoil with the strong,” to justify many, to become an intercessor for transgressors, to sprinkle many nations, to be the arm or power of the Lord, and through Him all the ends of the earth should behold the salvation of God. He was to be “cut off” in the midst of His days, yet He was, as “Messiah the Prince,” to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins; to make reconciliation for iniquity, and bring in everlasting righteousness; to cause Jewish sacrifice and oblation to cease, and to confirm a covenant with many (Dan. 9:24-27) He was to be “a child born” to Israel, and yet “the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of peace.”

Now though in the light of its own fulfilment and realization in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, this MESSIANIC IDEAL has become familiar to the mind of Christendom, what mystery must have overshadowed it, and what perplexities must have attended any attempt to give it even in imagination a definite embodiment previously to the event! How impossible therefore that it could have been a mere human invention, whether of Moses or of Adam or of any one else! Here, in the earliest prophecy of Scripture, a document dating back at least to the days of Moses, and possibly much further, we meet with the distinct germ and embryo of this strange, mysterious, peculiar Messianic ideal, predictions which subsequently shaped for ages the expectations of a nation, and the fulfilment of which in history has since shaped for ages more the experience of a world.

It is true that the Jews lost sight of one half of the ideal —the foretold sufferings of Messiah—and dwelt only in anticipation on His glories ; but this makes it only the more remarkable that the Scriptures of the prophets, which they read continually in their synagogues, should present so fully and so frequently a feature as to which the people were blinded. Whence did they get this ideal? Whence did Moses get it? Or if, as some think, Moses embodied in Genesis documents which even in his day belonged to a primitive antiquity, whence did the writers of those documents get this notion of the double bruising, the suffering Victor, the tried but triumphant Redeemer of mankind? Place the date of the birth of this ideal where we will, it must have been in existence before the death of Moses, else we could not meet it in the Pentateuch. Now whether Moses found it in some ancient document or received it through Noahic tradition, or more directly by Divine inspiration, little matters to our present argument. The point of that argument lies in the fact that fifteen centuries at any rate before the strange Messianic ideal was realised in an actual character, the essential features of it were foreseen, foreshadowed, and foretold.

Who foresaw them? Certainly not Moses or the prophets by mere human intelligence, for they understood not their own predictions, but searched “what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when It testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow.” There is but one rational explanation of the early existence and long continuance of this Messianic ideal. It was the hope set before the lost and ruined human family, by their compassionate and omniscient Creator; holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” This primitive germ of a prophetic character, which afterwards occupied so ruling a position in the hearts and minds of men for ages before it was realized in history, and the actual appearance of which on the stage of human life, not only forms the greatest and most widely spread era of mundane chronology, but has proved by far the most influential event that ever happened in human experience—this first Messianic prediction must have come “by inspiration of God.”

From this first prophecy of the Redeemer right on to the last prediction of Christ prior to His advent, this leading feature of triumph preceded by defeat, glory introduced by suffering, redemption for man secured by self-sacrifice, is uniformly kept in view and gradually developed. So markedly is this the case, that after His resurrection Christ could reproach His incredulous disciples with being “slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken,” and “beginning at Moses and all the prophets” He could expound to them “in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself,” putting to them the unanswerable question, “Ought not the Christ (or the Messiah) to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?” He reminded them that not only had He Himself told them that suffering and death were to befall Him, but that it was predicted in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, adding, “Thus it is written, and thus it behoved the 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.” The oak tree of Messianic prediction lies latent in the acorn of this Eden prophecy. Judaism and Christianity alike are the outcome of this ideal, —the one of the mere prediction of it, the other of the fulfilment of the prediction, These are facts that cannot be gainsaid. How are they to be explained? Whence came the embryo if not from God?

The only alternatives seem to be either frankly to admit the inspiration of the Eden promise, or else to deny, not only that it has ever been fulfilled, but that Messianic predictions as a whole have been so. This would be to assert that they were one and all—though so exactly answering to notorious and universally influential facts-—unmeaning Jewish speculations; and even then there would remain to be explained the difficulty that she Jews who wrote and treasured these predictions did not understand them, had not the true ideal before their minds, and when it was realized in history actually failed to perceive that a suffering Saviour was a fulfilment of their own prophecies, or a realization of their long-cherished hopes.

Now it must be freely granted that Messianic prophecy as a whole has not yet received its full accomplishment,—that only a part of it has done so, “The woman’s seed” has not yet completely crushed the serpent’s head, as is evident from his present tremendous and universal activity in our world, where the tempter is undeniably still alive and at large! He is still in our day what our Saviour called him in His day, “the prince of this world,” (John 14:30)and what Paul called him, “the god of this world,” (2 Corinthians 4:4) “the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” (Ephesians 2:2) Sin still reigns unto death. No one contends that the work of human redemption is as yet complete. It stands indeed to reason that it could no more be accomplished in a few centuries than was the work of creation. This Christian age, though fast nearing its close, has not yet run its course; and according to Scripture, another age—the millennial—is to succeed the one in which we live before the old serpent will be fully destroyed, before redeemed humanity will rest and rejoice in the new heavens and new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

But it may nevertheless be boldly asserted that the prophetic programme presented by inspiration at the beginning of the Adamic age has, even in this its first point, the promise of redemption, been largely fulfilled, and that the unfulfilled portion is so closely linked and indissolubly connected with the fulfilled, as to warrant the confident expectation that it also will in due season become matter of history instead of prophecy. In order to show this, we must consider a little more fully each of its three points: the COMING, SUFFERINGS, and TRIUMPHS of the woman’s “Seed.”

1. THE COMING OF THE SEED. It cannot be questioned that among all those born of woman one individual stands out solitary, supreme, pre-eminent; that though there have been many heroes among men, He rises above them all high as the vault of heaven above the hills of earth. Rightly or wrongly He is this day believed in and beloved, esteemed to be Divine as well as human, obeyed as Lord, worshipped as God, and trusted as Saviour, by over four hundred millions of mankind —that is, by a third of the entire human family; that He holds this place, not among the more ignorant, superstitious, and degraded nations of the earth, but on the contrary among the most advanced, intelligent, and highly cultured.

And why? He holds it because He is believed to have sacrificed Himself for the salvation of men, to have died and to have risen from the dead, to be evermore the living, loving, almighty Saviour of the human race, who will yet return to earth and finish the work He has begun. Let all this be truth or error, it matters not to our present argument. We are not now defending the faith of Christians, but calling attention to the fact of its existence as a proof of the fulfilment of the Adamic programme. We point to the fact that a great Deliverer has, in the judgment of the most enlightened part of mankind, appeared among men in the person of one who was emphatically the woman’s Seed—“born of a virgin”— one who Himself professed that He came into the world to save it, who engaged in a personal struggle with the tempter and defeated him, whose mission it was to destroy him and his works, who resisted his temptations, delivered his victims, exposed his delusions, endured his malice, and who finally yielded to his power of death that He might—by rising again—destroy both it and him.

It is over one thousand eight hundred years since this great Deliverer appeared, and each generation as it passes beholds name becoming a greater and greater power in the earth. The influence of His life and death, of His words and example, increases year by year continually, and at the present rate of progress will soon fill the world.

The greatest intellects of all ages have owned the unique excellence and felt the unequalled power of the character and teaching of Christ. Kepler, Bacon, Newton, Milton, Shakespeare, in our own land; Goethe, Schelling, Hegel, Kant, in Germany, even the infidel Jew Spinoza, have left on record their hearty recognition of His matchless personality. Jean Paul Richter speaks of Him as “ the holiest among the mighty, and the mightiest among the holy, who lifted with His pierced hand empires off their hinges, turned the stream of centuries out of its channel, and still governs the ages.”

In a word, we may say that all men, no matter what their faith or what their indifference and unbelief, who have considered carefully this subject, admit that the man Christ Jesus stands high above all. Napoleon’s well-known testimony shows how profoundly the character and worth of Jesus of Nazareth impressed a leader among men, though himself the very opposite of Christlike, a destroyer and not a saviour of his fellows.

“No man will accuse the first Napoleon of being either a pietist or weak-minded. He strode the world in his day like a colossus, a man of gigantic intellect, however worthless and depraved in moral sense. Conversing one day at St. Helena, as his custom was, about the great men of antiquity, and comparing himself with them, he suddenly turned round to one of his suite and asked him, ‘Can you tell me who Jesus Christ was?’ The officer owned that he had not yet taken much thought of such things. ‘Well, then,’ said Napoleon, ‘I will tell you.’ He then compared Christ with himself and with the heroes of antiquity, and showed how Jesus far surpassed them. ‘I think I understand somewhat of human nature,’ he continued, ‘and I tell you all these were men, and I am a man; but not one is like Him: Jesus Christ was more than man. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded great empires; but upon what did the creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded His empire upon love, and to this very day millions would die for Him.’

‘The gospel is no mere book,’ said he at another time, ‘ but a living creature, with a vigour, a power, which conquers all that opposes it’ Here lies the Book of books upon the table (touching it reverently); I do not tire of reading it; and do so daily with equal pleasure. The soul, charmed with the beauty of the gospel, is no longer its own; God possesses it entirely: He directs its thoughts and faculties; it is His, What a proof of the divinity of Jesus Christ!

Yet in this absolute sovereignty He has but one aim—the spiritual perfection of the individual, the purification of his conscience, his union with what is true, the salvation of his soul. Men wonder at the conquests of Alexander: but here is a conqueror who draws men to Himself for their highest good; who unites to Himself, incorporates into Himself, not a nation, but the whole human race.’

On another occasion Napoleon said: ‘From first to last Jesus is the same; always the same—majestic and simple, infinitely severe and infinitely gentle. Throughout a life passed under the public eye, He never gives occasion to find fault. The prudence of His conduct compels our admiration by its union of force and gentleness, Alike in speech and action, He is enlightened, consistent, and calm. Sublimity is said to be an attribute of divinity; what name then shall we give Him in whose character were united every element of the sublime? I know men; and I tell you that Jesus is not a man. Everything in Him amazes me. His spirit outreaches mine, and His will confounds me. Comparison is impossible between Him and any other being in the world. He is truly a being by Himself. His ideas and His sentiments, the truth that He announces, His manner of convincing, are all beyond humanity and the natural order of things. His birth, and the story of His life; the profoundness of His doctrine, which overturns all difficulties, and is their most complete solution; His gospel; the singularity of His mysterious being, His appearance, His empire, His progress through all centuries and kingdoms: all this is to me a prodigy, an unfathomable mystery. I see nothing here of man. Near as I may approach, closely as I may examine, all remains above my comprehension—great with the greatness that crushes me. It is in vain that I reflect—all remains unaccountable. I defy you to cite another life like that of Christ.’”

Account for the strange coincidence as we will, there is no denying either that the Divine programme foretold long before Mosaic times of the advent of a great Deliverer who should be the woman’s seed, or that one answering to the prediction did actually appear in our world 1,800 years ago; nor that this individual is now more widely regarded than ever before as the Saviour of mankind. His coming is admitted to have introduced into the world a new moral force, a force which is opposed to evil in all its forms. He appeared as the great antagonist of moral evil, and of its author. It is asserted of Him that “He was manifested to take away our ins,” that He came “to destroy the works of the devil,” and, more, to destroy him himself. (1 John 3:5,8) No candid mind can fail to see in the advent of Jesus Christ of Nazareth an apparent fulfilment of the promise given in Eden.

2. THE SUFFERINGS OF THE SEED. These were dimly intimated in the original prediction, but largely described, as we have seen, in later Messianic prophecies; and we ask, Was suffering a conspicuous feature in the history of Jesus Christ of Nazareth? The question scarcely needs a reply, for it is universally recognised that He was the Prince of sufferers. To no form of human suffering was the “Man of sorrows” a stranger, and all His sufferings came upon Him because He willed to be the Saviour of men. It was in His struggle with the serpent that He was bruised and crushed—His heel or human nature bruised even to death! “He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost.” His incarnation itself involved the suffering of supremest self-denial. He emptied Himself of His Divine glory and became an “obedient servant.” He suffered being tempted; He had not where to lay His head. He was misunderstood and reproached, doubted and disbelieved, provoked and insulted, stricken, smitten, and afflicted. For His love He had hatred, from His friends faithless desertion, from His foes relentless malice. No sorrow was ever like His sorrow; He gave His back to the smiters, and His cheeks to them that plucked off the hair, He hid not His face from shame and spitting. Reproach broke His heart and filled Him with bitterness, and when He voluntarily assumed all the guilt of sinners and tasted death for every man, He had to endure the deepest of all sufferings, the sense of being forsaken of God. The woman’s Seed was beyond all question the great sufferer. And He Himself spoke of His dying sufferings as inflicted by the great enemy of man; “the prince of this world cometh,” He said on the last night of His life, “and hath nothing in Me.” “Now is your hour and the power of darkness,” He said to His captors in Gethsemane. He recognised too that His own death was the destruction of His foe, that the two bruisings synchronised, “Now shall the prince of this world be cast out”; (John 12:31) and again He said in connexion with His own death, “the prince of this world is judged.” (John 16:11)

The intensity of suffering can be estimated only in relation to the character of the sufferer; for that which is acute suffering to one is none at all to others. We must not judge of the sufferings of Christ by our own standard, but learn from Himself what the experiences through which He passed when He became “the woman’s Seed” cost Him. The Gospels give us the story of His outward life and of His teachings, but they say little of His feelings: It is from the prophetic book of Psalms mainly that we learn something of them. Who can study the 22nd, 40th, 69th, or similar psalms without feeling that the depths of mental and spiritual anguish were sounded by the Son of man. Sorely was He bruised by the serpent and his seed —scribes and Pharisees, Jews and Romans, traitors, executioners, and revilers! Moreover, the hand of God was laid heavily on the willing Substitute; as it is written, “the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” If the advent of Christ answer to the first point of the Adamic prediction, assuredly His experiences in life and in death answer to the second, But it remains to consider—

3. THE TRIUMPHS OF THE SEED. The work of redemption being still in progress and avowedly incomplete, it is impossible to indicate under this last point anything more than the incipient fulfilment of the prophecy as to the destruction of the tempter of mankind by the woman’s seed. Four thousand years rolled by before the great Deliverer appeared, eighteen hundred only have passed since His advent. Sufficient time has not elapsed to show the full results of His work. But the interval has been long enough for great effects to have resulted already, and above all for the general tendency of the results to have become apparent. Can we then point to any tangible, unquestionable victories won for mankind over moral evil and its author by “the seed of the woman”? Its main results are spiritual ones, and these are, of course, not cognisable by human sense—intangible, invisible. The cleansing of human consciences, the forgiveness of sins, reconciliation between God and men, the Justification of sinners, the bestowal of eternal life —all these great and supremely important changes are not of a kind to be adduced in evidence of the bruising of the serpent’s head, because they are not evident, they cannot be seen or heard or handled by men; and while they may serve as evidence to those who are themselves conscious of being delivered from the kingdom of Satan and translated into the kingdom of Christ, yet they cannot be adduced in argument with unbelievers,

But if spiritual changes such as these take place in considerable numbers and over any large sphere, they must needs produce other changes in the world which will be of a visible, tangible nature, and which may consequently be cited as evidence of the ever-increasing victories of Christianity. For it must be borne in mind that just as it was through his “seed,” or human agents that the serpent bruised the heel of the Saviour, so it is through His people that Christ is at present triumphing over Satan.

The first fatal blow He Himself delivered by His spotless life, atoning death, and glorious resurrection; and He will Himself give the last blow also, at His coming again in glory. Indeed, as Scripture puts it, He has already in a sense destroyed, not only the works of the devil, but their author. It is written, “He hath destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil,” as well as delivered many of his captives.

The crisis of the long conflict is past, the victory has been won, though much of the fruits have yet to be reaped. So it may be said the power of France was crushed at Sedan, though a long period elapsed ere the full fruits of the conquest were enjoyed by Germany. Her hosts could not all at once close the campaign and rest on their laurels. Many a strong fortress still held out, many a weary siege had yet to be laid, many a soldier had yet to fall, and many a million had yet to be expended before France, disarmed and helpless, acknowledged her defeat and submitted to the conqueror’s terms. No one questions that Sedan practically settled the ultimate result of the war, sending the discrowned monarch and his hosts into captivity, though it was some time before the transferred imperial crown was placed on the victor’s brow at Versailles, and before the treasures of France were poured into the lap of Germany.

Continued in Chapter I. The Adamic Programme. – Part II

All sections of The Divine Programme of The World’s History By H. Grattan Guinness

I am very excited to find a hard to read PDF file of H. Grattan Guinness’ famous work! It’s now my major ministry in my service to the Lord to present classic books like this in a format you can easily read from a phone.

I left the British spelling as is because the title of the book uses British spelling.

PREFACE

THE days in which we live have seen the growth of a godless materialism. Providence, by many, is denied. History, we are boldly taught, is but a blind evolution. The ages drift without an aim.

In the “sure word of prophecy” we have a Divinely provided safeguard against this false philosophy. Prophecy is history written in advance. It unfolds with unerring wisdom not merely the facts of the future, but their underlying plan. It demonstrates Providence. It reveals the glorious truth that the history of the world is none other than the history of man’s redemption. The revolving ages fulfil the programme.

The present volume exhibits the testimony of Scripture prophecy as a whole. Selecting its chief elements, and arranging them in their natural order, it compares them with the events of the last six thousand years. In former works we have sought to set forth the general principles of prophetic interpretation, and also the fulfilment in the last twenty-five centuries of things predicted by prophets and apostles. The scope of this volume is wider and its intention different. It embraces, though but in outline, the story of the world, And it treats exclusively of fulfilled prophecy. Its object is evidential, The Scriptures contain the Divine Programme of the world’s history. Programme and history correspond.

We hope to follow this volume, when our practical missionary work permits, by one on the Last Prophecy in Scripture, viewing it from the double standpoint of history and typology.

It is our earnest desire that the present work may prove helpful to many. When the Rock of history is struck by the Rod of prophecy, there flow forth living waters. Such are ever needed, and refreshing. Evermore shines on the instructed mind the sacred truth—God is in Christ, reconciling the world; and Christ is in history, its Alpha and Omega, its beginning, its centre, and its end.

Hartey House, Bow,
March, 1888.

INTRODUCTION.

IT is an unquestionable fact, and one which has hardly received the consideration it deserves, that the volume which claims to be a supernatural revelation—the inspired word of God—clearly and boldly commits itself even from its opening pages to A PROPHETIC PROGRAMME OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY. It is daring enough to present on its forefront an orderly chart of the events of ages lying at the time far in the future—a distinct and detailed map of the untrodden shores and untraversed oceans of time, to inform men beforehand of the main outline of all that should befall their race.

The course thus taken in Scripture is a bold one. In assuming the possession of knowledge so entirely superhuman, the Bible necessarily exposes itself to the perpetual danger of being demonstrated to be erroneous in its predictions, and consequently false in its pretensions. A definite programme published at the beginning of any series of events, and professing to give their nature and order, must inevitably be either verified or falsified by the result. The things predicted either come to pass or fail to do so, and experience decides the worth of the programme. Would any spurious or pretended Divine revelation dare to risk its own future rejection by exposing itself to such a test as this? The Bible alone does so, and this fact is a strong a priori proof of its Divine origin. It is a book which presents itself to mankind saying: “I am from God, and in order that you may see that I am so I tell you beforehand things that are to happen on the earth ; I sketch out to you the whole course of future events, together with their order and their times. I reveal the end from the beginning. Prove me herewith! Let every age as it rolls past bear its witness to my truth or to my falsehood. I am content to stand or fall by this test.”

We propose to accept this virtual challenge, and to test the Bible in these pages in the very way in which God commanded that those who professed to be prophets of old should be tested. “When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.” If the Bible has foretold, as regards the past, things that have never been fulfilled, then it is not of God, and we need not reverence it in the slightest degree. But, on the other hand, “when the word of the prophet shall come to pass, then shall the prophet be known, that the Lord hath truly sent him.” If the predictions of Scripture have been fulfilled, not once or twice, but in a thousand particulars; if the programme has been acted out, exactly as given in advance, all through the past ages of history and up to our own day; if not one point has failed to be fulfilled in its due season;—then we are bound to believe that the book which contains it is inspired, and to reverence it as the very Word of God.

Christ Himself submitted His claims to this test among others. “Now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe” (John xiv. 29). And Jehovah in the Old Testament challenges idolaters to demonstrate the worth of their idols in the same way. “Let them . . . show us what shall happen; . . . or declare us things for to come”; and again, “Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods” (Isa. xli. 22, 23). A test thus recognised and applied by God Himself must needs be a good and sufficient one. If we can prove that the Bible stands this test, we demonstrate its Divine origin, perhaps more clearly than in any other way.

Three thousand five hundred years of history have rolled away since the days of Moses, when its earliest books were published, and eighteen centuries (by 1888) have elapsed since its latest “Revelation” was given to John in Patmos, Apart therefore from the history of the earliest centuries, which it alone contains, the predictions of Scripture can now be compared with the events of at least thirty centuries recorded by profane historians, as well as with the events transpiring in our own day. What a magnificent opportunity is thus afforded of testing the true character of the book! How easy to prove its claim to inspiration false, if false it be! and if true and valid, what abundant evidence must exist of the fact! If the general history of the world throughout all these ages has been foreseen and foretold, then clearly the records which embody the revelation must in some way or other owe their authorship, not to saint or seer, to prophet, priest, or king merely, but to the only wise God, who alone knows the end from the beginning.

We live in days when inspiration is more than ever doubted and denied, and this not by Gentile professors of Christianity only, but by the Jews themselves. The very custodians both of the Old and of the New Testaments are now calling in question their Divine authority.¹

¹ The following quotation from a work published recently in Boston, and entitled “Messianic Expectations and Modern Judaism,” amply supports the statement as regards the rationalistic Jews: “I do not believe in a Divine authorship of any book whatsoever, be it called the Old or the New Testament. . . . The Jew of to-day is no longer the Jew of one thousand nine hundred years ago…”

It is therefore more than ever incumbent on those who adhere to the faith once delivered to the saints, and still believe that all Scripture was given by inspiration of God, to give a reason for the hope that is in them—for their belief that though heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or tittle of the word of God can fail. “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” The present generation of Christian believers has had to withstand many a deadly onslaught from the hosts of unbelief, and has withstood them. But the rising generation will have a still harder conflict to endure, for faith is failing on every hand, and the treachery of unbelief has crept into the very citadel itself. The standard bearers are one by one deserting to the enemy; nor can we wonder that it is so, since this too was foretold as a feature of the days in which we live. Our Lord asked the question, “When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?” But all the more because of this state of things, and because we see the day approaching, must we exhort and encourage one another to “hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering,” and earnestly seek its confirmation and support.

We have reached what is emphatically “a dark place” in the history of the Church. A lamp has however been put into our hands to illuminate the gloom—the lamp of fulfilled and ever-fulfilling prophecy—a light shining in a dark place, “whereunto we do well that we take heed.” In the following pages we shall endeavour so to hold forth this lamp that its beams may fall on the path we are treading; and though they may be insufficient to remove all mystery or to lighten the darkness that shrouds the providential government of God, they will nevertheless give us light enough to perceive and avoid the dangers of the way.

There are many things which a traveller journeying by night would like to see—the winding valley, the distant view, the mountain tops; and he will see them all clearly by-and-by, when the clouds have cleared away and the sun rises in the morning. But, in the meantime, the important thing for him is to see his way in the pitchy darkness, to see the path before him if only for a few steps at a time, so that he may avoid the pit land the precipice, and distinguish between the road and the by-path. This much at any rate his lantern enables him to do, and he values it accordingly, and although it be not bright as the sun, refuses to allow it to be extinguished. May Christian pilgrims similarly refuse to be robbed of that “sure word of prophecy” which is “a light unto their feet and a lamp unto their path”! And may the following pages help to enhance their sense of its inestimable value!

Before entering on our investigation, we must recall the fact that different historians regard history from different standpoints, and select from the mass of events those which have a bearing on their own special theme, passing by hosts of facts less directly related to it. In writing, for instance, the history of the Christian Church, Mosheim did not feel it needful or desirable to enter fully into the political or military history of the various nations in which the Christian Church from age to age took root. It was needful to glance more or less briefly at these subjects and similar ones in order to the exposition and comprehension of the main theme, but only as subordinate to it. So Gibbon, in tracing the decline and fall of the Roman empire, had to glance at the height from which it fell, and at the fragments into which it was broken by its fall; but the causes and the stages of the decline and fall itself being the theme of his work, all beyond is merely subsidiary. The question arises, from what standpoint does the Bible regard the world’s history? Either in narratives of the past or in predictions of the future it tells the entire story, and much of it in both ways. It carries us right through from Paradise lost to paradise regained, from the rise of the earliest empire—that of Nimrod, the mighty hunter—to the fall of the last form of the empire of Rome and the full establishment of the kingdom of God on earth—that kingdom which is to succeed all earthly monarchies and to subsist for ever. But Scripture tells this long story in brief compass, and omits much more than it records. What principle underlies its selection of facts? From what standpoint does it consider the story?

The purpose and plan of a book must be clearly grasped before it can be understood. We must not expect from a work information on any subjects which have no connexion at all with its theme, nor full information on such as have but a slender connexion with it. The Bible, like other histories, has a definite scope of its own, a well-defined purpose, and can only be properly appreciated when this purpose is recognised. An undiscerning critic, if ignorant of the title and scope of the work, might say of Mosheim’s Church History, for example: “I cannot understand it or admire it at all. It ranges over a vast extent of history, but gives only the most partial and unsatisfactory views of very interesting and important points. It dwells with disproportionate fulness on some episodes of little moment; it wastes, for instance, whole chapters on the disputes of councils and the analysis of heresies, yet it fails to describe the decisive battles of history or to trace the careers of its heroes. It is a poor, unequal, disjointed account of the world’s progress during the period.” This judgment would be just, had Mosheim undertaken to write a general history. It is absurdly unjust in view of the fact that what he intended to write, and did write, was the history of the Church only.

For what view of history then are we to look in the Bible? — political? social? scientific? philosophic? ethnographic? military? Clearly none of these would either require or be worthy to become subjects of Divine revelation. No! If God condescends to become the historian of human affairs, the only possible standpoint from which they can be viewed is evidently the religious one; that is, He will present them in their relation to Himself as Creator and Redeemer of mankind. In other words, the Bible must be the history, first, of man’s creation and fall, and, secondly, of his redemption and restoration.

Further, for religious purposes, that is, in order to human salvation, the first of these two sections—that describing the creation and fall—would not require to be a full or detailed one. All that was needful was to reveal the great facts that God made man, and that He made him in His own image. How or when is irrelevant to the great argument and need not consequently be enlarged upon. Man as an intelligent, free, responsible being was created by God, not developed from mere matter; and he was therefore bound to love and obey his Maker. He failed to do so, and thus he fell. Further, his fall did not introduce moral evil into the universe, for it existed previously, and it was an enemy both to God and to man who tempted the latter to his ruin. How or whence this ensues, or from what period this moral evil dated, why it was suffered to exist at all,—these and other interesting questions on which mere curiosity would crave for light, being beyond the scope of a book which has the salvation of the lost race as its object, are passed by in silence; and man’s creation and fall having been briefly recounted on the opening page, the whole of the rest of the volume is devoted to the history of human redemption. Events are selected for record solely in view of their relation to this all-important theme, and human affairs are viewed from the standpoint of their bearing on it. This is the key to the Bible as a book. It narrates the history of human sin and human redemption, carrying us steadily forward from the perfected and “good” condition of things in Eden at the close of the first creation to the still higher perfection of the new creation, to the “new heavens and the new earth,” and the renewed and restored race of man, when “ He that sitteth on the throne shall say, It is done! Behold, I make all things new.”

He therefore who criticises the Bible because it does not contain what it does not profess to contain, and could not consistently contain, violates a fundamental canon of literature, and exposes his own folly, and not that of the book. Its nature, object, and scope require that it should be utterly imperfect as a mere secular history of the events of ages, in order that it may be perfect as a sacred history of the redemption of mankind. Not a word does it contain, consequently, about Julius Caesar, though Augustus Caesar and the Roman emperor Claudius are alluded to; they were remotely connected with the Saviour and His apostles, but not so their great military predecessor. Both the historic and the geographic sphere of Scripture story are limited, and this very limitation is a feature of perfection. The book keeps to its point, and that point is to reveal God to man and to bring man back to God.

The work of human redemption has been carried on from age to age in ever-widening spheres, and will continue to be so until it embraces the world. It begins in the individual heart and extends to the life, and then, like the concentric rings produced by a stone thrown into water, it extends until it affects the extreme circumference of humanity.

Hence we find in Scripture individual biographies, patriarchal and tribal stories, a national history, and prophetic histories of imperial dominion, all playing their part in the narrative, all linked together by one golden line—their common relation to a great redeeming work. Whatever be the sphere and whatever be the style—whether the history be anticipated in prophecy, or simply recorded in narrative—it is always the story of the redeeming work of God which is traced, and the salvation of men is always the end in view. Only as we bear in mind this self-evident truth shall we be able to estimate aright the selection and treatment of historic events in Scripture.

THE DIVINE PROGRAMME OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY CONSISTS OF SEVEN MAIN SECTIONS, CORRESPONDING WITH SEVEN GREAT EPOCHS OF FRESH COMMENCEMENT WHICH STAND OUT PROMINENTLY IN THE BIBLE STORY OF HUMANITY, CONNECTED WITH EACH OF THESE THERE HAS BEEN A FRESH DIVINE REVELATION, SKETCHING OUT WITH MORE OR LESS FULNESS THE EVENTS DESTINED TO TRANSPIRE IN THE COURSE OF THE AGE THEN BEGINNING. THESE SEVEN GREAT EPOCHS ARE ASSOCIATED WITH SEVEN MEMORABLE NAMES: ADAM, NOAH, ABRAHAM, MOSES, DAVID, NEBUCHADNEZZAR, AND LAST, BUT NOT LEAST, OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST—THE SECOND ADAM, THE LORD FROM HEAVEN.

“God, who at sundry times and in divers mangers spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds.” The first six of these names are the names of men merely; the seventh is that of the glorious God-Man: it stands apart from all the rest—the stately procession closing with the majestic figure of the Redeemer Himself. ADAM was the father of the human race; NOAH, the father of the world that now is; ABRAHAM, the father of the Jewish people and the Arab races—and in another sense the father of the faithful, or believing people of God in all ages; MOSES, the founder and legislator of the Jewish nation; DAVID was the founder of Jewish monarchy, and the father of the royal line of Judah, destined yet to rule the world in the person of “David’s Son and David’s Lord, the Lion of the tribe of Judah”; NEBUCHADNEZZAR, the spring-head of Gentile monarchy—the head of gold in the fourfold image of it shown to Daniel; and lastly, OUR LORD AND Saviour Jesus CHRIST, the founder of the kingdom of God and the head of redeemed humanity, whose kingdom, established in a mystery eighteen hundred years ago, is yet to bear sway over all the earth in manifested power and glory. It is represented by the stone cut out without hands which smote on its feet the image of Gentile monarchy, ground it to powder, “became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.”

Now it is undeniable that to and through each of these FATHERS, or FOUNDERS, of a new order of things was given a FOREVIEW OF THE FUTURE, a more or less full and clear revelation of the events of the era at the opening of which he stood. Most of these seven prophetic outlines embrace the entire interval from their own date to the full accomplishment of the work of human redemption. But as each starts from a later chronological point than its predecessor, it covers a shorter interval. The New Testament predictions of the events of this Christian dispensation, for instance, necessarily cover an interval sixteen hundred years shorter than that covered by the Mosaic foreview. But the later charts give fuller details than the earlier ones; and thus, though the interval they cover be shorter, the later revelations are the longest and most complex. In the following chapters we take up these seven foreviews of the future, examining in each case, first, what is predicted, and secondly, what has happened.

It is not to be expected that our readers can derive from the perusal of this work the same sense of the overwhelming and unanswerable nature of the argument here developed as the writers obtained in its preparation, because a sample only can be presented of the mass of evidence which has been passed under review. Some of the following chapters would have had to be swelled to volumes to do full justice to their themes. Our world is so wide that few, if any, are acquainted with all its countries; and human history is so long and so complex that still fewer are familiar with all its facts. Memory may retain enough to attest the accuracy of general outlines, but when fresh research furnishes the mind with fresh material for comparison, the correspondence of a multitude of particulars is perceived in addition; and it is realized that, not only does the key open the lock, but that it fits it down to its most minute divisions—fits it as no key but one made to fit it could possibly do, fits it so as to reflect the highest credit on the skill of its designer and maker.

Peculiarities in the key which might have been thought to be defects were it alone considered, prove to be delicate perfections as soon as it is inserted in the lock. So portions of a prophecy which when considered alone seem perplexing, prove when compared with the history to be absolutely and accurately exact as predictions of the peculiar and complicated relations of certain powers or persons. All is seen to be perfection, and we are constrained to exclaim, “Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! Of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things ; to whom be glory for ever. Amen.”

Continued in Chapter I. The Adamic Programme. – Part I.

All sections of The Divine Programme of The World’s History By H. Grattan Guinness

This is from the March 1946 edition of the Converted Catholic Magazine founded by L.H. Lehmann, a former Roman Catholic priest. Dr. T. D. Tahar was a Roman Catholic physician in a Benedictine monastery who became a Baptist missionary.

“And Caleb stilled the people . . . and said: Let us go up at once and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.” —Numbers 13:30.

MOSES sent forth twelve men to spy out the land of Canaan. Not ordinary men, but captains—men of experience and proven valor. All twelve returned. They were all of one accord in their reports—extraordinary richness and fertility of soil, phenomenal physical strength of the inhabitants.

But their descriptions of unavoidable hardships and fierce fighting threw the listening Hebrew multitudes into a panic. Gone was the lofty dream of the Promised Land, gone the jubilant victory for the ten cowards, who, in the heat of their harangues, never gave a thought to the power of the living God of Israel. In less than a few hours we find a whole nation in the throes of a spiritual upheaval and betrayal.

“And Caleb stilled the people … and said: Let us go up at once and possess it!”

There was no response. The multitudes followed the leadership of their political bosses. They were eager enough to come into the inheritance of the land, but the fighting for it was not to their taste. They wanted Jehovah to throw the wealth of Canaan into their lap, the easy way, the way of the world.

When faced with the need for decision in the spiritual life, hesitation is fatal. Spiritual degeneracy is never spontaneous. It always follows in the trail of a protracted record of disloyalty to virtue. A man never becomes a Judas Iscariot overnight. The crucifixion of a lofty ideal is always preceded by the betrayal of a principle. The final uprising against God never flares up until after the jailing of a pleading, tormented conscience.

Thus I have seen it among young men deluded into giving up their lives to become monks in Roman Catholic monasteries. Imbued with high ideals at the start, they gradually succumb to the deadening atmosphere of the monastery, where there is nothing to lift them up to the sublime truths of the Gospel. Spiritual degeneracy is a cultivated vice, and in monasteries it flourishes on ecclesiastical arrogance and adherence to the cult of Bacchus. In the late hours of the night those young men came to me to talk about the desolation of their souls, the soaring agonies of their perplexed minds. I have heard the quiver of their voices as they laid bare the loneliness that accompanies their spiritual disillusion, the hopelessness of their outlook upon their chained tomorrows. Priests, and expounders of Roman dogmatism that they were, like Nicodemus they came stealthily by night reaching out for a freedom that they already had despaired of attaining.

There is a kind of felony of cowardice that keeps multitudes of priests incarcerated in the gilded jails of Roman Catholic institutions. And there is tragedy in the fact that so many of us remain content to look on as unconcerned spectators, unable and unwilling to do anything to counteract the growing power of Roman Catholicism in our midst. If Protestantism is to preserve its glorious heritage, the time now has come to listen to the timely warning of the Calebs and Joshuas. Protestant leaders today must fall in step with the few who, like the fiery Captain of the Hebrews in the wilderness of Paran, dare to shout with the fervor of spiritual enthusiasm: ‘‘Let us go up at once… for we are well able to overcome it!”

This article is for webmasters and technical people who use the Linux operating system on their PCs. If you’re not one of them, you might want to give this one a pass.

Some of the information here was previously in the beginning of The Present Antichrist By Rev. Fred J. Peters. I moved it from that article to here because most of my visitors are not technical people.

The main purpose of this website now is to find rare books, especially materials the Jesuits and Roman Catholic Church doesn’t want to you read, books either in hard-copy or PDF files which are hard to read from a phone, and make them more accessible to the public by converting them to HTML format which makes them easy to read from the small screen of a phone. This is how I do it.

If I start out with a PDF file that I can’t easily get the text from by copy and paste, I first create a directory for the PDF file, then I copy the PDF file into that directory, and then I open Terminal in that directory. After that I convert the PDF file into images with the following command:

pdftoppm -png name-of-file.pdf name-of-output

This will create in the directory multiple files with the name of the output file with -01.png, -02.png, -03.png etc. added to the name of the output file name you gave it. This is especially good when working with PDF file with multiple columns. It will give you images of single columns only.

After that I use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to create editable text files one by one using the “for in do” command in Terminal (the Linux command line) to run the OCR software (tesseract) on each PNG file. I used the following command on my Fedora Linux Desktop PC:

for i in img??.png; do tesseract "$i" "text-$i" -l eng; done;

This created files, text-img01.png.txt, text-img02.txt, text-img03.txt, etc.

Then I combined them all together with the following command which created the file present-ac.html

cat text-img*.png.txt >name-of-combined-file.html

And then using a text editor, I proofread present-ac.html and corrected all the things the OCR software didn’t get right which was very little.

And then I used an online service to remove all the needless line breaks.

If I start out with a hard copy book, I scan the pages of the book with xsane (or any available scanner software in Linux) to create png files with numbers – img01.png, img02.png, img03.png, etc. – of each scan of the open two pages of the book. It’s important to save these files in its own new directory. After that I run the above commands to extract text from the PNG files.

Continued from The Present Antichrist By Rev. Fred J. Peters – Part 3.

Antichrist a Dynasty

It seems needful at this point to insert an answer to the objection that most Futurists raise concerning the long duration of Antichrist’s sway. Is he one single individual or a line of rulers? As we have already noticed, Futurists assert that he is a single bad man who is to be manifested during the last three and a half years of this age. On the contrary, Historicists believe the Scriptures teach he will be a dynasty or succession of rulers like Pharaoh or the Kaiser.

Is there any Scripture ground for this?

There certainly is.

It is well to recall the fact that in Scripture the word Christ does not always stand for an individual. In I Cor. 12:12, Paul describes the entire body of believers, who are “all baptized by one spirit into one body” as “Ho Christos” “The Christ.”

In Eph, 2:15, the long line of believers of all the ages, is spoken of as “one new man.”

With this Scripture usage in mind look back to Dan. 7:17. Speaking of the four universal empires which were to occupy the course of history it says, “These great beasts which are four are four kings which shall arise out of the earth.” Does this mean four individual kings? No, but the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Grecian and Roman Empires, with a dynasty or succession of rulers over each. This is common knowledge.

Again, Daniel interpreting Nebuchadnezzar’s dream to him says, “Thou art the head of gold.” He, however, was not the only king of the Babylonian Empire, but the head of gold stood for the whole of it, and Nebuchadnezzar represents the whole dynasty at that time. So one man stands for a number of men in Scripture usage in this passage also.

Now let us read Dan. 8:20-22, “The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia. And the rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great horn that is between his eyes is the first king. Now that being broken, whereas four stood up for it, four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power.”

This we submit is the clue to the use of the word “King” in many of the prophetic Scriptures. Here it is evident that the word stands for kingdom whether a single king or a succession rule, for the rough goat is said to be the king (kingdom) of Greece of which the great horn is the first king Alexander.

Again, the ten horns of Dan. 7:20, 24, etc., are proven by fulfillment to be the ten kingdoms into which the Western Roman Empire was divided at its fall, yet these ten kingdoms are called kings, verse 24, and they have existed 14 centuries with a succession of kings over each. Side by side with these the strange little horn “which had eyes, and a mouth that spake very great things” had to arise and run its course. It is therefore a dynasty of rulers as the others are. And only a cramped conception of the great movements of prophecy could make a student maintain the contrary. We therefore conclude that the Protestant interpretation of the Great Reformation was and is the correct one.

Antichrist is a succession of rulers in the professing Church.

“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.”—Rev. 13:18.

This mystic cryptogram has tasked the wisdom of the past eighteen centuries. What does it mean? Can it be ignored? Certainly not, any more than John 3:16, or God would not have caused it to be written. The Holy Spirit does an almost unknown thing here: He literally urges those who are wise and have understanding to decipher the number of the beast, and who dare charge Him with folly. The very form of it indicates that we have here hidden wisdom that we dare not ignore.

How, then, shall we understand it?

“No prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation,” we are told, and this, being prophecy, comes well under the ruling.

Whatever, then, may be the meaning of this perplexing number, it will be so unfolded that it will be recognized as given by the Holy Spirit one of whose offices is to show us things to come. And when given, it will be evident that it is not a little private matter. Moreover, the result of the deciphering will be in harmony with all the other features revealed as to the beast or Antichrist.

Every century, yea almost every decade, has seen the rise of some individual of frightful personality, whose name has been tested by the number 666.

During the Great War, we found the following printed in “The Philadelphia Inquirer”: Believing the Kaiser to be the Antichrist, the writer endeavored to decipher his name in the following outrageous fashion:

We do not recollect ever having seen anything more arbitrary than this.

Let the reader note that in this fanciful and capricious private interpretation, the letter K has a numerical value of 116; A, a value of 16; I, a value of 96, etc. Thoughtful minds will at once see the absurdity of such a method of deciphering this great secret number, for nowhere can these letters be found to bear such values. And the result of the Great War has settled the matter in this case.

We give this as a case in point of the kind of thing that is multiplied ad nauseam, but which is all the time diverting the public mind from the true solution and shielding the true beast or Antichrist. They are either deliberately placed before the Christian public for a purpose or are the result of a misconception of the true character of the Antichrist.

But there is an interpretation which comes to us with supreme authority, because it is not growth of a year, or a decade or even a century, and it has served a purpose commensurate with the evident importance of such a revelation. The preachers and teachers of the early church began to discover and decipher the meaning of it. Irenaeus (A.D. 155-202), who was contemporary with those who had known the Apostle John, says “Lateinos has the number 666, and it is a very probable solution, this being the name of the last kingdom (of Daniel), for the Latins are they who at present rule.” And from that early date to the present time, a period of 1700 years, this solution has predominated and has been adopted by great Christian thinkers in all the centuries.

Note what is said about the number of the beast, that it is the number of a man. Now this agrees in a very direct way with what is written about the little horn of Dan. 7:8, which had “eyes like the eyes of a man,” etc. This little horn was a later development of the fourth or Roman beast, in which one man was dominant. This man as indicated by the eyes, was an overseer or bishop. A beast and a bishop. A political and religious combination, for, be it remembered, that a beast in prophecy is the symbol of a political system. What, then, is the politico-religious system denoted by the mystic 666?

We give herewith the great Protestant solution to this riddle which has never been tampered with by any of Rome’s agents, secret or otherwise. It is evident that the language which should be used to “count the number of the beast is the Greek, in which the Apocalypse was written; but it has been discovered that the Hebrew and Latin give the same result, and a threefold cord is not easily broken. We now submit the three readings, reminding our readers that none of these languages had numerals, but the letters had numerical values. Therefore, when such letters were used for a name, that name had numerical value or number.

In The Greek

The word “Lateinos”__The Latin Man_here deciphered reads:

This we have verified carefully with the Greek grammar and find absolutely correct. It reveals the Pope as the beast or Antichrist.

Even a very slight knowledge of the papacy will reveal how Latin everything is in that system. Its decrees and bulls are in Latin, its masses are Latin; its prayers are Latin; its worship is Latin; it blesses in Latin and curses in Latin—all is Latin.

In The Hebrew

The word “Romiti”__A Roman Man_here deciphered, reads:

This gives the same unerring results as the Greek, locating the Antichrist in Rome. It is also true that the word Romith, The Roman Kingdom, gives 666. We have had this Hebrew verified by an educated Jewish Rabbi born in Palestine, who is a master of Hebrew.

In The Latin

Vicarius Filii Dei—Vicar of the Son of God.

This is the Pope’s official title, and is synonymous with the original meaning of the Greek word Antichrist, which meant a Vice-Christ, or one in the place of Christ, which is the Pope’s most insistent claim. We now give this Latin name and number. Anyone can count this, for we still use the Roman numerals. Let the reader try it for himself.

As we look over these results what do we see revealed? Just this incontrovertible fact, in harmony with all the other teaching of this book, that the decoding of this strange number points, with unerring certitude, to the Pope or Papacy as the Antichrist who was to come.

Why then look for another?

The Doom of Antichrist

This booklet would be incomplete without a statement as to the future of this great system.

Has it a pre-destined end?

If so, what is it to be and when?

Is there any Biblical light on this?

Yes! Thank God! there is, and that a most decisive and awful one. We quote from 2 Thess. 2:8, “That wicked one the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.”

Now there is scarcely any doubt as to the application of this. What is the spirit of his mouth? I read in Rev. 19:15 of One out of whose mouth goeth a sharp sword. In Eph. 6:17 this sword is declared to be the Word of God. So the interpretation of the consuming referred to above is clearly a process of disintegration in the system of Antichrist brought about by the operation of God’s Word—The Bible. Has such a consuming process ever taken place in this system?

Can there be any doubt as to the answer?

The Great Protestant Reformation is the answer. This was brought about by one thing, viz., the discovery and proclamation of God’s Word. The printing and distribution of the Bible. The placing of the Bible into the hands of the common people. The result is very apparent on the map of the world today in the great Protestant nations numbering nearly 200,000,000 of people. These would now have been Catholic but for the consuming power of the Word.

Verily the Lord has been consuming it with the spirit of His mouth. This is the first stage of the pre-destined end of Anti-Christ.

The second stage can hardly be called a stage, it is a cataclysm. “It will be destroyed by the brightness of His coming.” It will therefore last till He comes, when all hypocrisies will be immediately manifest, and all false lights will wane in the oncoming dawn.

To be destroyed, that is the fate awaiting the mighty, anti-christian system which has its seat in Rome, that so-called church which still deceives untold millions. Listen to God’s judgment of Antichrist and his system.

“And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all. Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her.” Rev. 18:20, 21.

Reader, are you one of God’s true children? Then dare to take the place of these who rejoice in heaven in response to God’s call here. Rejoice over the prospect of the fall of this system which has sent untold millions to hell by its deceptions. Rejoice, for as much as you love Christ, you should detest and oppose His enemy, the Antichrist, who has usurped His place through these long weary centuries.

An Appeal To Brethren

Many futurist brethren, beloved in the Lord, are looking eagerly for the development of this personal Antichrist. Some expected him during the Great War. Some pointed to the Kaiser as he. But the futurist’s Antichrist is still as far away as when the Jesuit Ribera started the deception 300 years ago. Nor is there the slightest vestige of him on the horizon.

Our brethren adopted this teaching unwittingly and innocently at the beginning; have made themselves believe it because other orthodox teachers believed it; then they taught it, written tracts and books about it, and consequently must needs defend it. It is hard for a man, even a consecrated christian teacher, to climb down and acknowledge he has taught wrongly. But the recent rapid growth of Romanism in Protestant lands is the result and strongest condemnation of futurism. It has no positive witness against Rome.

Oh! Brethren beloved, open your eyes. Put away the Jesuit deceit. Come back to the faith of the Reformers. Your churches and classes need this teaching. It is the food that has been lacking for many a day. It is the missing link in your teaching.

Christian brother, these prophetic words are more needed by you today than at the time of the Great Reformation. Reject them not. Without them you will be completely in the dark with regard to Christ’s greatest enemy on earth, Satan’s masterpiece; The Man of Sin; The Papacy.

Postscript

There are many questions that cannot be answered in such a small work as the present. But let the reader be assured that his queries have been already answered in works extant and available. We hope that the result of a perusal of this tract will be to create a desire to know more about these things. If so we shall thank God.

We are well aware that, if a person accepts the Protestant presentation of Prophecy as herein set forth, it will change his method of interpretation of the Apocalypse a good deal, but it will not alter his belief in the Personal Pre-Millennial Coming of the Lord Jesus. This is “Our Hope,” our sheet anchor.

We conclude this testimony with some pointed words on this subject by that sainted scholar, Dr. A. J. Gordan:

“The papal ‘Man of Sin’ was accurately photographed on the camera of prophecy thousands of years ago; that no detective searching for him today would need any other description of him than that which is found on the pages of the Bible. Taking these photographs of Daniel and John and Paul, and searching the world upside down for their originals, I am confident that this same detective would stop at the Vatican, and after gazing for a few moments at the Pontiff, who sits there gnawing the bone of infallibility, which he acquired in 1870, and clutching for that other bone of temporal sovereignty which he lost the same year, he would lay his hand on him and say ‘You are wanted in the court of the Most High, to answer to the indictment of certain souls beneath the altar, who were slain for the Word of God and for the testimony which they bore, and who are crying, How long O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?’”

Art Thou he that should come or look we for another?

In vain shall we look for another, for Thou oh! Bishop of Rome, Art the Man of Sin, the Antichrist.

This is God’s judgment. Reader, will you side with God?

Download the entire booklet The Present Antichrist By Rev. Fred J. Peters in PDF format.

Continued from The Present Antichrist By Rev. Fred J. Peters – Part 2.

The Temple of God

The phrase “The Temple of God” examined in the original Greek repudiates the idea of a Jewish Temple. It is “Ho Naos tou Theou” (ὸ ναὸν τοῦ θεοῦ), while the word used for the Temple is “Hieron” (iepov). Dr, A. J. Gordon writing of this says, “There is no undisputed instance in the New Testament where this word ‘Naos’ is applied to the Jewish Temple.

In the lexicons the prime meaning given for “Naos” is “a dwelling.” Now a careful study and comparison of the following Scriptures conclusively demonstrates that this temple or dwelling is the Church,—Eph. 2:20-22; 2 Thess. 2:4; 1 Cor. 3:16,17; 2 Cor. 6:16. Seeing that all these passages were written by the apostle Paul, it would be inconsistent with the Pauline spirit and method to interpret three passages as applying to the Church, as all expositors do, and one passage as applying to some future Jewish Temple as futurists do. The Word “Naos” is the word Paul uses in all these passages. Indeed so evident is this to all readers of the original that we feel compelled to lay these passages side by side with the Greek word inserted in such a way that even the simplest Bible student will see and understand. This we now proceed to do:

A simple reading of these passages placed thus in parallelism reveals several startling facts:

1. That, Paul distinctly tells us that this Naos or temple is the Church, “ye are the Naos or temple.” “Which Naos (temple) ye are.”

2. That, it was possible for this Naos or temple to be defiled, and if defiled, one would be destroyed. 1 Cor. 17.

3. That, the man of sin or Antichrist, was to appear in this Naos or temple, exalt himself in it above all that is called God, and be worshipped therein; that is, in the professing Church.

If we examine the other Scripture quoted above, the conviction will be further deepened that, this Temple (NAOS) is the very church of God, and it is impossible to apply it to anything else. In 2 Cor. 6:16 we read, “And what agreement hath the NAOS (TEMPLE) OF GOD with idols? for ye are the NAOS (TEMPLE) OF GOD.”

In Eph. 2:19-21 Paul writes, “Ye are… the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone; in whom all the building… groweth unto an holy NAOS (TEMPLE) in the Lord.”

There is no doubt whatsover as to the application of this. It tells us unequivocally that the Church of Christ is the Temple, Naos, Dwelling of God. This is Paul’s use of the word. It can in no way or sense be applied to the Jewish Temple, for all these Epistles of Paul are written to ultra-gentile Churches, who were taught by Paul to regard the Church as the Temple of God.

Seeing then that this is a divinely given interpretation which none can deny, upon whose authority is this Naos, which is God’s dwelling, changed into a Jewish Temple? Such treatment of God’s Word is “handling the Word of God deceitfully.” We beg our readers to study these passages carefully for the more he does so, the more he will be convinced that this is the truth of God according to Scripture. He will also be convinced that some enemy has put leaven into the pure meal of sound doctrine upon which God’s children are to be fed. And because this poison has been working in the Church for so long, things are not going well with her. It is because this God-given interpretation, which buoyed up the reformers and made them like lions against Antichrist, has been abandoned, that today Rome lifts her shameless head with such audacity in this “Land of the Pilgrims’ pride.” We need to sound the alarm indeed. But we need above everything to come back to the true Protestant interpretation of the prophecies, which were given for our help and warning upon whom the ends of the ages have come.

This study has now made positively sure that Antichrist will never sit in a Jewish Temple. Seeing that this is so, we shall have to revise a great deal of that which we have spoken and written. And the sooner that this is done the better for the true church of Christ. Let us put honest hands to this work, dear brothers, and scrap some of the theories and teachings that have brought to pass the present state of things. Back to the teachings of the Reformers on this subject as on others.

Not a Private Interpretation

For fifteen hundred years this interpretation has been developing. All the Reformers held it. It is not possible in this little work to quote extensively, for that would defeat the object we have in view. But to show how long this has been developing in the Church we quote from well known Christian writers of the fourth and fifth centuries.

Athanasius taught that Antichrist would be a person making a Christian profession, assuming Christ’s place and character and saying “I am Christ.” Hilary, Bishop of Poictiers asked, “Is it a doubtful thing that Antichrist will sit in Christian Churches?” Cyril of Jerusalem says, “Antichrist will sit in the temple of God; not that which is in Jerusalem, but in the Churches everywhere.” Jerome interpreting the 2 Thess. 2 declares that “The Man of Sin is to sit in the temple; that is in the Church.”

And from that time till the present the greatest saints and martyrs and reformers have held the same views. They held them because they saw them in God’s Word as they were anointed with Christ’s eye-salve, and were not looking at God’s Word through a perverted interpretation foisted on the Church by cunning Jesuits in-breathed by Satan.

We believe we have made the foregoing clear, the sum of which is,—The Apostle Paul declares that a Man of Sin, an Antichrist, was to arise in the apostate Church who would,—

1. Oppose God by exalting himself above that which is called God, etc.

2. Sit in the temple of God (Church) showing himself that he is God.

Our inquiry now is, has anything like this ever taken place in the professing Church of Christ? We believe it has been more than fulfilled in the Papacy during the past thirteen centuries. And as this is stoutly denied by some uninformed Protestants, we want to be very careful in our presentation of the evidence.

Antichrist as God. The Fulfillment

He was to “exalt himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped.” “Sit in the temple (Naos, church) of God, showing himself as God.”

Notice carefully the wording, “exalt himself above that is called God.” What is there in the Roman Church that is called God or worshipped? We know of only one thing so called, and that is the “Host.”

There are multitudinous idols in that church, but only one thing called God, and that is the piece of bread or wafer used in the Mass, which is truly worshipped by all faithful Catholics.

The writer was invited with others by a certain earnest Catholic woman to witness a procession of the Corpus Christi from her house which faced a great cathedral. After witnessing a great number of enormous images come forth, she suddenly cried out: “Oh! there comes the Most Holy One (El Santissimo),” and immediately fell down on her knees and crossing herself began to pray it. I asked her which was the Most Holy One, and she pointed to a canopy borne by four priests, under which was the bishop carrying the host. The thousands of people who were in the large square had at the same time fallen on their knees praying. This prevails everywhere in Catholic lands where Rome still dominates. In this land (U.S.A.) such things are enacted inside the churches. Thus there is no doubt whatsoever that Catholics worship the host. It is their God, on earth.

Now for the fulfilment of this prophecy.

At the time of the coronation of a new Pope, the host is consecrated and placed on the high altar in St. Peter’s at Rome. It is now God. Above the high altar there is a throne built into the architecture. When the mass is over the Pope invested with his scarlet robes, and the host is upon the altar, the following takes place:

“The Pope rises, and wearing his mitre, is lifted by the cardinals, and is placed by them upon the altar to sit there. One of the bishops kneels and begins the Te Deum (we praise thee Oh! God). In the meantime the cardinals kiss the feet of the Pope, etc.” This ceremony is called by Roman Catholic writers “the Adoration,” it has been observed for many centuries. For Pius IX a medal was struck to celebrate the occasion, and on it is the inscription,— “Quem creant adorant,” “whom they create (viz., the Pope) they adore.” Such language is blasphemous in the extreme.

This Famous Chair of St. Peter, Rome, Above the High Altar, where Antichrist has sat for over 1000 years. “Above That Called God.”

During the coronation of a new Pope there are no less than five distinct adorations, at each of which the canons and clergy of St. Peter’s, with their cardinal high-priest leading them, come and kneel before the Pope and kiss his feet. At this time also the Pope is carried up to the throne above the high altar where he sits literally “above that which is called God.”

That there be no mistake concerning the fulfillment of this prophecy we will quote words of past Popes. Among volumes written on this, let these words suffice: “I am all in all and above all, so that God Himself, and I, the Vicar of God, have both one consistory, and I am able to do almost all that God can do… Wherefore, if those things that I do be said not to be done of man, but of God, WHAT CAN YOU MAKE ME BUT GOD? Again, if prelates of the Church be called and counted of Constantine for gods, I then, being above all prelates, seem by this reason to be ABOVE ALL GODS. Wherefore, no marvel if it be in my power to dispense with all things, yea, with the precepts of Christ.” End of Age, p. 191 Words of Pope Nicholas.

If these doings and these words are not the fulfillment of prophecies concerning Antichrist, then we cannot see how they will ever be more definitely fulfilled. Ponder it long and carefully, dear reader, and ask yourself if it does not correspond to the prophecies and completely fulfill it. And this being has been on the stage for thirteen centuries deceiving untold multitudes of souls.

Again we ask, Art thou the Antichrist, art thou he that should come, or look we for another?

Assuredly not, there is no other.

This is he who was to come, there will be no other.

The Papacy exhausts all the prophecies.

This is the Antichrist.

Antichrist a Persecuting Power

“He shall wear out the saints of the Most High.”—Dan. 7:25. “He had power to cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.”—Rev. 13:15. See also Rev. 17:6; 18:24.

Most Protestants have a vague idea of the persecutions of Rome in past days, with its Inquisitions, autos de fe (public penance of the accused), etc., but not many have adequate knowledge of the depths to which Rome has sunk in her hatred of those who dared to oppose her errors with the authority of God’s Word.

When Daniel saw the power of the Antichrist under the symbol of the little horn, he saw that it would “wear out the saints,” a statement that cannot be understood on any short time interpretation. The wearing out was to be a process of long duration. It was to occupy nearly all the period of the Church’s existence on earth, and these prophecies cover more than a thousand years, and not some little, pigmean (very small, short) epoch that may happen in our days.

It is so hard for us in our conceit to convince ourselves that the Great God is not specially interested in our generation because, forsooth, we happen to be alive.

It is so easy, on the contrary, to fall into the mistake of applying all prophecies to the days in which we live, or the near future, and imagining we are to see the whole fulfillment thereof. We are all such egotists that we carry our egotism into the very Holy of Holies of God’s Word.

But the fact is that God was just as much interested in the Church of the fourth, or tenth, or fifteenth centuries as in our time, and He gave prophecies for them. And it is an incontrovertible fact that they were mightily helped and heartened by them.

Now in Dan. 7:8 we read of the little horn (kingdom) which sprang up among the ten horns or kingdoms into which the Roman Empire was divided at or after its fall. This little horn is recognized by all schools of interpreters to be the kingdom of Antichrist. It was to spring up among the ten. It was to be like them yet different, for it had “eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things.” It was a power or kingdom with an overseer as indicated by the eyes. Nothing has appeared to fit this but the Papacy, which indeed fits it like the key the lock. Shall we throw away the clue we have because the Jesuits offer us an interpretation they have manufactured to protect the Pope from the condemnation of God’s Word?

Now this power was to “wear out the saints of the Most High,” Dan. 7:25, and they should be “given into his hands until a time and times and the dividing of time.” That is three and a half times, in prophetic hieroglyphic language equals 1260 years. Now this is a long time and the wording demands a long time. Antichrist was to “wear out the saints,” that necessitates a long drawn out period. No little three and a half ordinary years is this.

Now let us suppose an Antichrist were to come as foretold by our futurist brethren. He is to continue his work against the saints during 3^1/2 literal years. If that man were to do his worst he could not equal the black record of the papacy during the 1260 long years of its awful reign. The futurist Antichrist is a lilliputian, a pygmy, a caricature compared with him who has already come and accomplished such terrible work. Listen to the inspired prediction again and weigh it well:

“He shall wear out the saints of the Most High.” “Drunken with the blood of the saints and the martyrs of Jesus.”

These words demand long centuries for their fulfillment. Nothing but long periods of time will justify such language as this. Nothing but a long drawn out age justifies the awful wonder of the apostle John, as he gazed upon and comprehended the figures shown by the angel. He says in Rev. 17:6 “When I saw her I was amazed beyond measure.” (20th Century Trans.) Something more awful than the Great War produces this wonder and amazement. And we affirm that the record of the Papacy is far worse. So terrible is it that the mind reels as it contemplates it, and one would fain reject it as an impossibility, or the product of a superheated imagination.

The Awful Fulfillment

The question now is, has this terrible persecuting power come? Has this wearing out of the saints of the Most High, etc., been fulfilled or is it still future? Listen to the record history and judge ye. We quote from “End of Age, by Grattan Guinness, pp. 202-212:

“The massacre of St. Bartholomew’s day (in 1572) is a history of unparalleled atrocity, when according to some writers 100,000 were killed. In Paris alone the blood of 10,000 innocent Protestants deluged the streets, and for a whole week the shouts of “kill, kill,” resounded on every hand. These Protestants perished on account of their faith, in the month of August, 1572. Pope Gregory III, who was privy to the plot, celebrated a Te Deum (Latin for ‘Thee, God, we praise’) on hearing the news, ordered a jubilee and a solemn procession which he himself accompanied, to thank God for this glorious success. He had a medal struck in memory of the happy event, and a picture of the Massacre painted and hung in the Vatican.

“A century after this a worse persecution began in France against the Protestants. A Huguenot historian writes of it: ‘Never did hell in the direst persecution invent or employ means so diabolical and inhuman as the dragoons (mounted infantry) and the monks who head them, have used to destroy us.’

“Pope Clement XI did all in his power to secure their utter extinction. For three years this cruel crusade continued till the Protestants were completely crushed.

“Look at Ireland in 1641, when the Romanist Bishops proclaimed a ‘war of religion’ and incited the people by every means in their power to massacre the Protestants. North, south, east and west, throughout the island, Protestant blood flowed in rivers. Popish children were taught to pluck out the eyes of their Protestant playmates, to hack their little limbs and hunt them to death. Some were forced to murder their own relatives, and then were butchered themselves over the bleeding remains; the last sounds that reached their dying ears being the savage assurance of the priests that these agonies were but the commencement of eternal torment.

“In Armagh 4000 Protestants were drowned: in Cavan the road for twelve-miles together was stained red with the gory track of the wounded fugitives. In Ulster upward of 154,000 Protestants were massacred or expelled from Ireland. O’Neil, the Romish Primate of all Ireland, declared this rebellion to be ‘a pious and lawful war,’ and Pope Urban VIII by a bull, dated May, 1648, granted ‘full and absolute remission of all their sins,’ to those who had taken part in it.”

We will conclude this section with the following quotation from Dr. Guinness which history more than substantiates:

As some Emperors of Rome exhausted the art of pleasure, so have Romanish persecutors exhausted all the arts of pain, so that it will now be difficult to discover or invent a new kind of it, which they have not already practiced upon heretics.

“They have been shot, stabbed, stoned, drowned, beheaded, hanged, drawn, quartered, impaled, burnt or buried alive, roasted on spits, baked in ovens, thrown into furnaces, tumbled over precipices, cast from the tops of towers, sunk in mire, and pits, starved with hunger and cold, hung on tenter hooks, suspended by the hair of the head, by the hands or feet, stuffed and blown up by gunpowder, ripped with swords and sickles, tied to the tails of horses, dragged over streets and sharp flints, broken on the wheel, beaten on anvils with hammers, blown with bellows, bored with hot irons, torn piecemeal by red-hot pincers, slashed with knives, hacked with axes, hewed with chisels, pricked with forks, stuck from head to foot with pins; choked with water, lime, rags, urine, excrement, or mangled pieces of their own bodies crammed down their throats, shut up in caves and dungeons, tied to stakes, nailed to trees, tormented with lighted matches, scalding oil, burning pitch, melted lead, etc.

“They have been flayed alive, had their flesh scalped and torn from their bones; they have been trampled and danced upon till their bowels have been forced out; their entrails have been tied to trees and pulled forth by degrees; their heads twisted with cords till the blood or even the eyes started out; strings have been drawn through their noses and they led about like swine and butchered like sheep.

“To dig out eyes, tear off nails, cut off ears, lips, tongues, arms, breasts, etc., has been but ordinary sport with Rome’s converters and holy butchers. Persons have been compelled to lay violent hands on their dearest friends, to kill or to cast into fire their parents, husbands, wives, children, etc., or to look on while they have been most cruelly and shamefully abused. Women and young maids have also suffered such barbarities, accompanied with all the imaginable indignities, insults, shame and pungent pangs to which their sex could expose them. Tender babes have been whipped, starved, drowned, stabbed and burnt to death, dashed against trees and stones, torn limb from limb, carried about on the points of spikes and spears and thrown to the dogs and swine.”

Let the impartial and unbiased reader calmly consider this evidence and weigh it well, comparing it carefully with the prophetic picture of Antichrist and he will be overwhelmingly convinced that it fulfills all the terrible demands of prophecy. And remember, Rome has never repented of these things. If she has we would like to know the name of the Pope who had the courage to do it, for it certainly has escaped the attention of the public.

“If such treatment as this, inflicted on successive generations of disciples of Christ, for centuries together be not ‘wearing out of the saints of the Most High,’ what could be? History affords no parallel, for the Pagan persecutions were brief in comparison to the Papal.”

These evidences are more than sufficient to condemn a criminal many times over, but the following single statement makes all other arguments on the subject needless: “It has been calculated that the Popes of Rome have, directly or indirectly, slain on account of their faith, fifty millions of martyrs.”

Ponder that well. Fifty millions of souls faithful to Jesus and the Word of God, slain by Antichrist. Fifty millions of blood-washed souls who would rather die than bow to the idolatry of Rome. Fifty millions of our dear brethren “who loved not their lives unto the death.” Fifty millions whose blood has flowed in rivers at the command of the Papacy, and that blood is even now crying to God for vengeance.

With all this and more before us, we are bold enough to take our stand with God’s Word and its visible fulfillment and say to our beloved brethren THERE WILL BE NO FUTURE ANTICHRIST APART FROM THE PAPACY. It is vain to look for another. Thou Antichrist on the Tiber, we recognize thee. THOU ART HE THAT SHOULD COME.

Continued in part 4.

Continued from The Present Antichrist By Rev. Fred J. Peters.

THE EVIDENCE EXAMINED

Lying Wonders

“Him whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders.’—2 Thess. 2:9.

The Antichrist evidently was to be characterized by the deepest kind of satanic working, with much deception and apparent miracles. They were to be lying wonders not real wonders. Keep this fact well in mind as you read the following elucidation of the prophecy from actual happenings past and present. These lying wonders or false miracles would be believed by the credulous, those who were willing to be deluded by them, and to them they would seem to be wonderful, and yet they would be lies, deceptions. We now ask, has such a thing as this existed during the past 1800 years since the Apocalypse was written? Is there anything like this existing today? Is it possible that such a thing could endure the searching light of the twentieth century? Yes, it is only too true that there exists today, and has existed for over twelve centuries, a system literally loaded with these lying wonders; and sad to relate millions of people still believe in them. The following is a very brief suggestion of what deceptions have been and are found in the Church ruled by the Roman Hierarchy.

“In the church of All Saints at Wittemburg there was shown a fragment of Noah’s Ark, some soot from the furnace of the Three Children, a piece of wood from the cradle of Jesus Christ, some hair from the beard of St. Christopher, and nineteen thousand other relics. At Schaffhausen was exhibited the breath of St. Joseph which Nicodemus received in his glove. In Wurtemberg you might meet a seller of indulgences, his head adorned with a large feather plucked from the wing of the Angel Michael.”

We have ourselves seen a renowned “Lord of the Earthquakes,” a black image of Christ, in Cuzco, Peru, which is reputed to have put an end to a terrible earthquake, and ever since has been venerated and worshipped by multitudes in that region. In Callao they have a “Lord of the Sea.” In Lima there is a weeping Virgin, whose head moves and whose eyes shed copious tears on a certain set day in the year. In many churches we have met with images covered with gold and silver medals which have been given by credulous persons who are reputed to have been healed by praying to those images.

In Italy there is a “Holy House of Loreto,” proclaimed by the priests to be the house in which Mary was born and grew up, and where the Angel Gabriel spoke to her. The Virgin herself announced to the Bishop of Modrino (so the priests teach) that this house was translated, through the air, from Nazareth in Palestine to Tersatto in Fiume, and then to Loreto in Italy; a journey of over 1500 miles. This story is believed by all faithful Catholics, and is a source of enormous revenue for the Pope, and the poor deluded pilgrims “have worn a furrow all around it, by making the circuit of it on their knees” if we are to believe the Catholic Herald of Aug. 30, 1895.

In the church of St. Prassede, Italy, they have a regular museum of relics, of which the following are but a fraction. They profess to have a tooth of St. Peter and another of St. Paul. They have the chemise (undergarment) of the Virgin and the girdle of the Lord Jesus. They do not blush to declare that they have the rod of Moses, and the heads of St. Peter and St. Paul. The towel with which Christ wiped the feet of the disciples happens to be in their possession. And strange to say, they claim to possess the swaddling clothes of the Lord Jesus and three thorns from the crown of thorns. They claim to have the stone which killed Stephen and four pieces of the true cross. And all these objects are supposed to have miraculous powers. And who has not heard of the miracles of Treves and Lourdes and a hundred other places.

Who can fail to see in these deceits the complete fulfilment of the prophecy of the “Lying wonders” that Antichrist should invent? The fulfilment is so exact and minute that no person who really knows these depths of Satan by experience would think of looking for any other. And we believe it is a fact that, most missionaries who work in Catholic lands sooner or later come to hold this view of prophecy.

The Apostasy

“Let no man deceive you by any means: for the day of Christ shall not come except, there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed.”—2 Thess. 2:2, 3.

Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians clearly shows that Antichrist was to be head of an apostasy, a falling away. This is also referred to in I Tim. 4:1-3. Paul is not concerned about apostasies in pagan religion, but he does frequently warn as to the coming of declensions in the Church. He says to the Ephesian elders, “I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.” Acts 20:29, 30. In like manner the falling away, mentioned in 2 Thess. 2, is a falling away in the Christian Church, and the revelation of the man of sin is also in the church. It was to be some abnormal development in the Church that would be altogether foreign to the teachings of the founder of it. It was not to be an openly atheistical system as some would have it. Nor was Antichrist to be an open unbeliever, but a Vice-Christ which is the meaning of the word in I John 2:18. The most approved meaning of the Greek prefix anti, (αντι) is “over against, instead of, in place of.” Thus Antichrist is a person who opposes Christ by putting himself in the place of Christ, usurping the authority and power of Christ.

The following quotation, from an article by the Rev. A. H. T. Clarke, M.A., of Devises, England, which appeared in “The New Menace” of Sept. 1, 1923, reveals the true sense and use of the word “antichrist” in the original:—

“When the term ‘Antichrist’ is applied by Protestant writers and speakers to the papal system, occasionally some Protestant objects, because the word sounds harsh, and because it does not seem applicable to a church professedly Christian. ‘Antichrist’ however, must not be understood as being against Christ, but rather as one who takes the place of Christ. Here is a paragraph from an ancient document that makes the matter very clear:—

“In the year 5, when Justin the King, that old man of whom we related above, that he came from the country of Illyricum, he made his sister’s son, who was general, anti-Caesar; and Justinian became anti-Caesar on the fifth day of the week in the last week of the fast. And, after he had governed for three months his uncle died, at the end of July, and he became emperor.’ Chronicles of Zachariah, of Mytilene, written in the 6th century, in the days of Justinian, chapter 1, paragraph 1 (Bury’s Byzantine Texts.)

“Anti-Caesar does not therefore mean one against Caesar, it means one in the place of Caesar—his deputy, his representative, his vicegerent. Latin usage would have called Justinian vice-Caesar. In English we have vice-president, vice-chairman, etc., which in Greek usage would be expressed as anti-president, anti-chairman meaning one ruling in the place of another.”

Dr. Hale, an old English writer, says this of the papacy:

“The vicegerent of Jesus Christ, which by a singular coincidence, meant the same as the obnoxious ‘Antichristus,’ originally signifying a pro-Christ, or deputy-Christ, or false Christ, who assumed his authority and acted in his stead.’ This is the kind of Antichrist referred to by John in his epistle. And who can deny that this is what the Papacy lays claim to today? To deny this would be to reveal a woeful ignorance of facts and of simple church history.

The Roman Church was a true Church of Christ at the beginning, but as the centuries passed it gradually forsook the truth, or buried it under a mass of errors. It was not content to be one of the Churches of Christ, it must be the only Church, and dominate all the rest. This was the end it sought. For this it worked and planned and schemed until it was attained, and this process was the very falling away which the apostle Paul foretells in the text at the head of this section. In this awful manner the apostasy had its revelation and the Anti-christ had his epiphany, and today is found masquerading under the title of “The True and Only Church Of Christ.” Hundreds of millions blindly follow its teachings and submit to its claims. Thousands of millions have gone into eternity trusting its blind leaders, only to awaken to the terrible truth of Christ’s words, “If the blind lead the blind both shall fall into the ditch.”

Brother teacher of prophecy, consider we beseech you, the vast multitudes that have gone into eternity trusting in the sacrament of Rome instead of the “Precious Blood of Christ.” Trusting in the Pope instead of Christ. Trusting in Mary as the Queen of heaven and mother of God. Think of this traffic in “the souls of men,” Rev. 18:18, extending over a millennium and a half, and ask yourself honestly, “Can there be any Antichrist in three and a half years that can possibly do a fraction of the harm that this one has caused?”

“Art thou he that should come or look we for another?”

Pope of Rome, art thou the Vice-Christ, Antichrist, Man of Sin, that should come?

History answers loudly, yes!

Thine own claims say, yes!

The souls under the altar clamouring for vengeance say, yes!

Fidelity to the Truth of God’s word demands that we say yes! Thou oh! Vicar of Christ at Rome art the very Antichrist, and it is vain to look for another, for no other will appear.

The Son of Perdition

“And that Man of Sin be revealed, The Son of Perdition.”— 2 Thess. 2:3.

This is the startling title that St. Paul gives to this great opposer of the Christ, who is to have a revelation (apocalypse) in this falling away or apostasy, and become the leader thereof.

Who is he? Where shall we get light upon his identity? Who is this Son of Perdition?

There is only one other place in Holy Writ where the name is found, and it will at once occur to Bible students. It is in John 17:12, “Those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition.” These are Christ’s words. Who is the son of perdition to whom He refers? It is Judas. And who was Judas? An apostle, a bishop (Acts 1:20), a companion of Peter, and an equal of Peter in the days of the Lord. But without a doubt the Lord refers to him as fallen in this phrase. It is Judas the traitor that Jesus refers to here.

In like manner St. Paul must use the title; his “Son of Perdition” is a fallen apostle, a fallen bishop. Is this not exactly what we have in the Pope? But if Judas was a son of perdition, then this “Son of Perdition” spoken of by Paul must be a Judas. As this undoubtedly refers to the Pope, The Papacy (or dynasty of Popes) must be a Judas. He is not an open enemy, but as Judas, professing love and friendship for Christ, calling Him Master, yet betraying Him with a kiss.

Those of you readers, who have any knowledge of the lives of the long line of Popes, ask yourselves if this picture of Antichrist does not correspond to him as the print to the negative.

You will recall that, there is scarcely a teaching of Christ’s that has not been perverted by the papacy; while the Bible, itself God’s Word, has been prohibited and put in the list of immoral books. Pope Pius IX in his encyclical letter of 1850, speaks of Bible study as “poisonous reading.” Many a colporteur (book seller), in Catholic lands, has witnessed an priests collect all the Bibles he has sold and burn them in the public square. The writer has been through such an experience. Is this not treason to Christ? Is it not the work of a Judas? “The Son of Perdition?”

Dr. H. Grattan Guinness
England’s Greatest Teacher of Prophecy

Furthermore, call to mind the perversion of Baptism into baptismal-regeneration, robing (clothing with a robe) the priest with supernatural powers. Think of the travesty of the Mass in place of the simple love-feast of the Lord’s Supper. What a work of a Judas! What about the imposition of purgatory, never mentioned once under any form in God’s Word. Call to mind also the institution of auricular confession, salvation by works, worship of saints and relics, etc., etc. Is it not clear as day that, the one who authorizes all this and who calls himself the Vicar of Christ, is a traitor to Christ? A Judas? The Antichrist?

The fulfilment of this sign also, answers the cry of a multitude of hearts today,—“Art thou he that should come, or look we for another?”

It answers in the affirmative, “Yes, thou Oh! Fallen Bishop of Rome art the Antichrist, and it is vain to look for another.”

Antichrist as God

“Who opposeth and exalted himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped: so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.”—2 Thess. 2:4.

It is here that one of the greatest difficulties has arisen in the minds and teaching of some of our dear brethren. They have from this passage, coupled with Dan. 9:27 drawn a picture of a single, superman in the future, who is to make a covenant with the Jews for a week (of seven years). In the midst of the last week of Daniel (after 3_1/2 years) he is to break the covenant, overthrow the restored Jewish sacrifice, sit in the literal, restored Jewish temple, and be worshipped by the Jews in their restored temple. As we find it impossible to accept this teaching, we propose to enter the study of it somewhat at length, as such vital issues depend upon it.

Now let our brethren honestly look at the above passage with an un-biased mind if they can, not following blindly any system of teaching, however popular, and then carefully consider the following:

THE LAST WEEK OF DANIEL

Exposition by Dr. Grattan Guinness

In the first place let us deal with the popular interpretation of Dan. 9:27, which we are convinced is a grievous error, and is responsible for much of the mischief and confusion of thought. We will appeal to the words of Dr. Grattan Guinness, one of God’s ablest prophetic expositors, if not the greatest. In his famous work, “The Approaching End of the Age,” he says:

“One of the gravest evils of futurism is the terrible way in which it tampers with this great fundamental prophecy (Dan. 9:27), applying to the future doings of some ideal Antichrist, its Divine description of the past deeds of the historic Christ.

“To hear their disquisitions on the subject, one would suppose that ‘Antichrist’s seven year’s covenant with the Jews was as unquestionable an event as God’s covenant with Israel on Sinai! Few would surmise how frail the foundation on which this cardinal doctrine of Futurism rests. Few would suppose that the notion has really no solid ground at all in Scripture, but is derived from an erroneous interpretation of one single clause of one single text. The only basis for the idea is the expression in the 27th verse of the 9th chapter of Daniel. The sentence occurs in the midst of Daniel’s celebrated prophecy of the 70 weeks, a prophecy that does not even allude to Antichrist, but is exclusively occupied with the first advent of Christ, His rejection and death, and the Roman destruction of Jerusalem which was the result.

“Interpreted in the light of history, as a fulfilled prophecy, this remarkable chronological prediction affords conclusive evidence of the Messiahship of Jesus, of the inspiration of Scripture, and the divine origin of the Christian faith.

“What are the words of this sacred and marvellous prediction given between five and six hundred years before Christ?

“Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy. Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and three score and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall even in troublous times. And after three score and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of a prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.’

“‘And He (Messiah) shall confirm the covenant with many for one week (Or during the one or last week): and in the midst of the week He shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations He shall make it (i.e., the city) desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate or desolator.’ Dan 9:24-27.

“This prophecy was given just as the 70 years’ captivity in Babylon was drawing to a close. It announces the duration of the restored national existence of Israel up to the great epoch of all history, the advent of Messiah the Prince. It was foretold that within 490 years from the date of the decree to restore and to build Jerusalem, the long foreshadowed, long predicted supreme atonement for sin was to be accomplished by the advent of Messiah the Prince, reconciliation for iniquity effected, and everlasting righteousness brought in; that vision and prophecy should be sealed up, and the most Holy anointed.

“This period was then subdivided into three parts: 7 weeks, 62 weeks, and 1 week; i.e., 49 years, 434 years, and 7 years. The rebuilding of the city, and the re-establishment of the Jewish polity would occur in the first forty-nine years or ‘seven weeks.’ Four hundred and thirty-four years more would elapse, and then Messiah the Prince would appear. After that, at some time not exactly specified, but within the limits of the seventieth week or last seven years of the period, Messiah would be cut off; but not for Himself. It is further foretold that Jerusalem and its temple would subsequently, and as a consequence, be destroyed, and that a flood of foreign invasion would overflow the land. But though thus cut off, Messiah would confirm the covenant with many (not the whole nation) during the course of the ‘one week’; in the midst of it He would ‘cause sacrifice and oblation to cease.’ Jerusalem should then be made desolate, until a certain pre-determined doom should fall upon the power that should desolate it; a fact which our Lord afterwards foretold in the words, ‘Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.’

“All this was accomplished with wonderful exactness. The edict to restore and build the city was issued by Artaxerxes, and Ezra and Nehemiah were the two great restorers of the Jewish people, polity and religion. Their joint administration occupied about ‘seven weeks’ or forty-nine years; the wall and the street were rebuilt in troublous times. After a lapse of 434 years more, Messiah the Prince did appear, saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand;’ i.e., the time indicated by this very prophecy. He came unto His own, but alas! His own received Him not! He was cut off; but not for Himself! Shortly after the Roman Soldiery—‘the people of a prince that shall come’—(Titus) did destroy the city and the sanctuary; the end of Jewish independence came with a flood of foreign invasion, and predetermined desolation fell on land and people. But though the nation was thus judged, Messiah did ‘confirm the covenant’ with many.

“What covenant? and how did He confirm it? ‘This is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you,’ said He to his disciples the night before His passion (Luke 22:20); or as Matthew and Mark give the words: “This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for many for the remission of sins.’ ‘He shall confirm the covenant with many,’ said the angel to Daniel. ‘My blood of the new covenant shed for many,’ said Christ. Is not His blood declared to be ‘the blood of the everlasting covenant’ And is not He Himself repeatedly styled ‘the Mediator of the new covenant’? Heb. 8:6; 9:15; 12:24. And can any Bible student doubt what is the event predicted, when in immediate connection with the coming and cutting off of Messiah, it is added, ‘He shall confirm the covenant with many’? (See also Heb. 8).

“What excuse is there for introducing into this most solemn and touching prophecy of the life and death and work of CHRIST, the political action of some future Antichrist? It is needless, groundless, unpardonable discord! Antichrist making a league with the Jews! What? in a prophecy which speaks of the accomplishment of atonement, of the making an end of sin, of the effecting of reconciliation, of the bringing in of everlasting righteousness!

“What has Antichrist to do here?

“Oh! he is the ‘prince that shall come’ of v. 26, it is answered.

“Impossible! That prince was the prince of the people who did the deed here predicted, destroyed the temple and city of Jerusalem in consequence of the Jewish rejection of Messiah. That must be Titus, for it was his soldiery that did this. ‘Then where is Antichrist in this prophecy? It is replied that even granting the earlier reference to be to Titus, still it is Antichrist who in the midst of the week causes the sacrifice and oblation to cease. No! the Actor is one and the same in all the clauses of v. 27—Messiah Himself. Who else put an end to the sacrifices offered by the law continually, and caused them to cease by the offering of one sacrifice for sins for ever?

“What was it that did actually as a matter of historic fact, cause the Jewish sacrifice and oblation to cease? ‘The offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all,’ that offering which took place ‘in the midst of the week’—that is, in the course of the seventieth of Daniel’s predicted weeks, the one week which stands alone at the close,—the week which comprised the earthly ministry and the atoning death of the Son of God, the giving of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, and the formation of the Christian Church.

“Christ and His work is the one great theme of this prophecy. The judgement that should overtake the Jews for rejecting Him, and Titus and the Romans by whom these judgements were to be inflicted, are mentioned, but there is no allusion to Antichrist.

“How could there be? 490 years includes chronologically the events foretold here, and Antichrist is not yet come according to futurist views! How then could he figure in a prediction which expired 1800 years ago? Oh, it is said, ‘The angel said 490 years but he meant plus 1800 or 2000 years; there is a chronological gap of this length between the sixty-ninth and the seventieth weeks. The last week has not begun yet. When it does begin, Antichrist will appear and make his covenant with the Jews.

“To state such a theory ought to suffice for its refutation. Language has lost all meaning if a definite period of 490 years, interposed between two great historical events, may be extended by two thousand years. Prophetic revelations of such a character would be worse than none; for they would be misleading and deceptive.

“Not thus was the forty years wandering in the wilderness lengthened! Not thus was the Babylonian captivity measured! If God condescends to give chronological predictions at all, they will be truthful, accurate, divinely exact. The events mentioned as occurring in the midst of the last week, occurred within 490 years from the Edict of Artaxerxes. They are long, long past. The prophecy is a fulfilled prophecy. The judgements on the Christ-rejecting nation continue, it is true, and will continue till the end of this age; ‘even until the consummation, and that determined be poured upon the desolator.’ But the object of the prophecy was not to announce these judgements, but to measure the interval to Messiah the Prince. It was given to intimate beforehand the period of the greatest events of all history, the greatest events of time, not to say the greatest events of eternity, the atoning death of the Son of God, and the establishment of the new covenant.

“The great anti-christian power, symbolized as ‘the little horn’ and called the ‘man of sin,’ and the eighth head of the beast, being the last form of Gentile power, and belonging to these ‘times of the Gentiles,’ has little to do with the literal Israel, or the literal Jerusalem, or the literal Temple.

‘He (Antichrist) co-exists not with a recognized Jewish nation, but with the rejection and dispersion of the Jews, and with a recognized professing Christian Church. His sphere is not Palestine, but Christendom; his throne is not Jerusalem, but Rome; his victims are not Jews, but Christians; his end and doom are brought about by that event which marks the commencement of the restoration of Israel to God’s favor —the second advent of Christ; when Israel shall look on Him whom they pierced, and mourn because of Him, and when the times of the Gentiles shall be ended.”—End of the Age, pp. 711-717.

We quote this passage so extensively because it is so unanswerable. In our opinion it is the last word on that passage. We believe it ought to be continually at work among the rank and file of our people, and so we herewith launch it forth.

There is then no last week of Daniel in the future, and therefore all the teaching that hangs around it as future, falls to the ground. It is well to face the issue at once. All prophetic teaching based on the theory that the last week of Daniel is still future, is based on a false premise. It is therefore unscriptural. Why go on any longer building up a system of teaching that will certainly never be fulfilled? We appeal to all our dear brethren who are innocently teaching it, to prayerfully reconsider the whole subject.

Antichrist is here. He has been on the stage his allotted time and has fulfilled his predestined awful career. The next event is the coming of the King to destroy him whom He has been consuming with the Spirit of His mouth since the glorious Reformation.

We are now free to consider the true Protestant interpretation of the Scripture that heads this section.

Continued in The Present Antichrist By Rev. Fred J. Peters – Part 3

I was very pleased and honored to receive yet another gift of a rare book from from Ron Bullock of Old Working Books & Bindery, the book you see in the above photo!

If you like technical things, you can read how I converted a paperback book into html text.

FOREWORD

One of the crying needs of today is to popularize the prophetic teaching of our Great Reformers. The growth of Roman Catholicism in Protestant lands by immigration, and its bid for popular leadership, and the audacious canvass of Protestants all over our land by the priests, for money to build their churches and schools and sustain their propaganda, causes us to ask why Protestants have lost their Protest. For Rome is semper idem (a Latin phrase that means “always the same”) and has never changed. We are convinced that the reason is—the loss of the knowledge of the Papacy in Prophecy, which was the mighty tonic that nerved the Reformers to fight and die. No man can dally with Rome who sees her as God sees her.

We herewith make an attempt to supply this lack to the general public, in as reduced a form as the subject will allow, trusting and praying that God will use it to awaken many dormant Christians to the peril of Antichrist’s domination.

What we have given in this tract is but a brief introduction to a vast subject, and it is our earnest hope that it will be the means of so awakening interest in the readers, that they will be led to search the larger standard works written upon it.

If that be the result, we shall count it the highest kind of success.

How John Knew Christ

“Art thou he that should come or look we for another?” —Luke 7:19-22.

John the Baptist was in prison and things did not look very sunny for him just then, and doubts formed in his mind as to whether he had been deceived in the Messiah. To settle these doubts and clear his spiritual atmosphere, he resolved to send a direct request to Jesus Himself. Two of his disciples are called and sent with the question, “Art Thou He that should come or look we for another?” His soul needs a clear “Yes” or “No” to this appeal. He must have it, nothing else will suffice.

The men come to Jesus and deliver the message, thereby requesting the Lord to tell them plainly whether He be the Messiah or not.

How did the Master answer this anguished appeal? Did He give a simple, direct, unequivocal affirmative or negative, to ease the tension of the breaking heart of the faithful John in prison? It would have been easy for the Lord to have done this. We are prone to think He ought to have done this, but He did not.

What did He do?

How did He answer the eager prophet’s request? Listen,—

“In that same hour He cured many of their infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits, and unto many that were blind He gave sight. Then Jesus answering said unto them, go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached.”

What does all this mean?

Is this an answer to the Baptist’s question?

It apparently is not, and yet it is.

Yes, and it is the greatest and best answer Christ could give to this man. Christ adapts His words to the minds of His hearers. To the uneducated woman of Samaria He says, “I that speak unto thee am He.”

To the great prophet, steeped in the prophetic Word of God, he works miracles which fulfil the prophetic scriptures concerning the Messiah, (See Is. 35:3-5; 61-1, etc.) John knowing these prophecies and looking eagerly for their fulfilment, would at once recognize such as credentials of supreme authority, and would be more convinced by them than by any number of bold claims of a man without them.

There is nothing more re-assuring to genuine faith than the perception of the fulfilment of “the more sure word of prophecy,” for which one has been watching through the clouds and mists of many a long weary year.

John was re-assured and satisfied, and joyfully reconciled to his dark, mysterious martyrdom. And millions more have, since that time, under the influence of the same prophetic word, gone gladly to the rack and flame, for love of that same Christ.

Fulfilled prophecy had conclusively proven to John that, this was indeed the Christ foretold of old. He was the very Messiah, the long expected Coming One.

It was therefore useless to look for another.

A Future Antichrist Taught by Some

The foregoing applies with overwhelming force to the prophecies concerning Antichrist. We hear a great deal today about the Antichrist who is still to come. Many of our leading Bible teachers are telling us that he is soon coming, and that when he is come he will do terrible things. He is to be a superman, a special offspring or incarnation of Satan: while some go as far as to say that he will be Antiochus Epiphanes literally risen from the dead. We have in one book, widely sold, read of the doings of this man in detail, all carefully mapped-out like a railroad timetable. And we confess that, as set forth therein, the record is as gruesome and blood curdling as words can possibly make it.

Among the teachers who look for this future Antichrist, we count many, if not most of our dearest friends in the cause of Christ. We have been working shoulder to shoulder with them for a quarter of a century. We have read their books; have been with them in conventions; have discussed with them the different phases of this burning subject; and have earnestly endeavored to see eye to eye with them, and have tried honestly to adopt their view of prophecy on this point; all this because they are brethren beloved for their work’s sake.

But we confess again that, the more we have studied “the sure word of prophecy” and compared it with their findings, the more we are compelled to differ from them on this one point. We are in full agreement with them on all fundamental points, and as to the personal, premillennial coming of our Blessed Lord. But concerning Antichrist we differ. We are very sorry to have to say this, but fidelity to God’s Word and its fulfilment demands it.

The Faith of the Reformers

While these aforementioned brethren, beloved in the Lord, are looking for a still future Antichrist; there are others, the descendants of a long line of mighty Christian worthies and warriors, who see the fulfilment of the prophecies concerning Antichrist, in the Papacy. That is to say, the dynasty of Popes during the past twelve or fourteen centuries, is the full and complete fulfilment of those prophecies that foretell the coming of the Man of Sin, the Antichrist.

Let not the dear reader who reads this for the first time be startled. This is no new teaching. This is the faith of the great Reformers who were Spirit-taught and Spirit-filled men; whose work has stood the test of time and remains to this day, and is still a blessing to us, in fact the foundation of all evangelical religion now existing.

Behold a few of the paves of the men of God who have held this Spirit-given interpretation of prophecy,—The Waldenses (AD 1180), Wycliffe, John Huss, Jerome of Prague, Luther, Calvin, Tyndale, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Sir Isaac Newton, Bunyan. And coming to more modern times, Gaussen, Elliott, Finney, Moody, A. J. Gordon, Hudson Taylor, Spurgeon, Grattan Guinness, F. B. Meyer, Campbell Morgan, A. C. Dixon, etc.

It was this belief, viz.: that the Pope was the very Antichrist spoken of in the Word of God, which made the Reformers brave as lions and gave them courage to face the Inquisition with its dungeons, rack and flame, singing as they went. We have asked ourselves many times during the past twenty-five years,—Were these noble armies of martyrs buoyed up by a false faith? Was it an imaginary interpretation that caused them to “love not their lives unto the death?” Impossible. Did God sustain them on lies? To state the proposition is to annihilate it at one breath. Just as easy to sustain life on a painted loaf. We are compelled to believe that the Reformers’ interpretation of prophecy was right. It was Spirit-given and therefore God’s Truth.

The Truth Perverted

But earnest enquirers will ask,—“How came it about that this teaching did not continue in the whole of the Protestant Church, which owed its very life to it? And where did the other teaching come from?”

The teaching that the Papacy was Antichrist was so self-evident, so simple, so clear and so incriminating that, it threatened to shake the whole fabric of Popedom to pieces.

This had to be offset somehow.

The Jesuits were appointed to combat this teaching.

Two of their number, Ribera and Alcasar, invented systems of interpretation intended to shield the Papacy and sidetrack Protestantism. In the year AD 1585 Ribera founded the Futurist system of interpretation of prophecy, and sent it forth on its work of chloroforming the Protestants. His subtle teaching was something as follows:—“Why, you Protestants are all off the track. You imagine the Pope is the Antichrist. You are all wrong, for these (stated) reasons. The real Antichrist is still future and will come in the last few years of the world’s history.” And many of our leading Bible teachers have adopted this error and are earnestly teaching it to others.

Alcasar, another Jesuit, invented the Praeterist system of interpretation in AD 1603, which declares there is no Antichrist to come. In fact there is no Second Coming of Christ, He came in the year AD 70 at the fall of Jerusalem, and Antichrist must have come before Him. This system is being serenely followed by our postmillennial brethren in great numbers of Protestant pulpits today.

Both the Praeterists and the Futurists have fallen into the cunningly laid Jesuit trap. The Jesuits have succeeded in splitting the Protestant Church into three camps, The Praeterist Futurist, and the Historical which still holds with the Reformers, and keeps the Truth alive and the witness against the real Antichrist. And the sad thing about it all is that these divisions are shooting at each other. The Futurists belabour the Praeterists because they are not biblical, and the Praeterists deride the Futurists for believing such trash. But the fact is that, the Futurist brethren who attack the post-millennial brethren with such avidity, are as much wrong as they on this point.

Rome has no kick against the teaching of a future Antichrist.

Rome does not persecute those who hold it and teach it.

Why?

Because it is her child.

Because it has robbed Protestantism of its real witness against her.

Brethren, we are fallen into the Jesuit trap.

How and When the Error was Absorbed

This Jesuit teaching did not pass into the Protestant Church for a long while. It did not deceive the Reformers or their immediate followers. It had no chance while they were on the scene. Not until the year AD 1826 was it effective. Then the bait was swallowed by the Rev. S. R. Maitland, D.D., librarian to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who endeavored to introduce it into Great Britain by publishing it.

Four years later, Mr. J. N. Darby, founder of the Plymouth Brethren, looking about him for some novelty in the interpretation of the Apocalypse, found this adopted it, and incorporated it into his works. This is in line with the well known character of the Plymouth Brethren, who criticize the churches and aim to be different from them in teaching and work. This denomination has persistently propagated the teaching of a future Antichrist ever since their origin at the time of Darby.

Now, disguise it how they will, those modern teachers who are proclaiming a still future Antichrist, are following the Plymouth Brethren. Some do not care to have it mentioned to them, while others frankly admit it and read the works of Darby and of others of that sect. This is by no means an impeachment of the Plymouth Brethren, for we are glad to admit that most of their teachings are admirable. But in this one matter they have grievously erred.

The source of a stream indicates its nature. The Jesuits originated in a fierce hatred of Protestantism, and only exist now to overthrow it by fair means or foul. And the fact that the futurist interpretation originated with them, for ever determines its traitorous character, and it should be shunned and combated by all Protestants who are indeed children of God by faith in Jesus Christ.

The True Interpretation

We are by no means attempting an exhaustive treatise in this little volume. Other far more competent witnesses have done this. We aim to present a few of the evidences in small compass, in a simple, popular way, that demonstrate that the Pope and the Papal Church are the true fulfilment of all that is written concerning Antichrist and his connections. We desire to arouse our sleeping brethren in all the different Protestant Churches, and bring this mighty God-given interpretation of prophecy within the reach of a public which may not have time to peruse the large volumes written on it. It is heart rending to see the lethargy that has fallen on the Churches in this matter as a result of Jesuit intrigue, so that the very prophecies that were given to light the Church through this dark time have absolute no light for her. Therefore we believe there is a present need for such a little book as this, and we send it forth in God’s name. We make no claim to any great originality in this tract but own our indebtedness to the following,—Albert Close, of England; Dr. A. J. Gordon, late of Boston, Mass., and Dr. H. Grattan Guinness, of England, the latter being in our humble estimation the greatest prophetic gift God has given to the modern Church. And we record with gratitude that it was our great privilege to have been a student in his college in London, and to have sat at his feet.

We will now open the prophetic word with a view to answering the question which is constantly before us,—“Art thou, O Papal Antichrist, he that should come, or look we for another?”

It is our object to select from the prophetic Scriptures a few of those passages which undoubtedly refer to the Antichrist, and are held to refer to him by all well balanced expositors, though he appears under various names, such as —“The Little Horn,” “The Man of Sin,” “The Beast ,” etc.

Continued in Part 2.