Notes on Important Eras of Prophecy by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 22, 1912

Notes on Important Eras of Prophecy

By W. A. S.

The Hand of God in History — No. 1

Notes on Important Eras of Prophecy

The Divine Hand in Human History

THE story of human history is a fascinating theme for study. An old English essayist, in a fine paragraph, strikes a note that touches a chord in the heart of every lover of good books. In an essay, “From an Old Book-Shelf,” he says:—

I go into my library, and all history unrolls before me. I see the pyramids building; I hear the shouting of the armies of Alexander; I feel the ground shake beneath the march of Cambyses. I sit as in a theater—the stage is time, the play is the play of the world. What a spectacle it is! What kingly pomp! what processions file past! what cities burn to heaven! what crowds of captives are dragged at the chariot wheels of conquerors! . . . The silence of the unpeopled plains, the outcomings and ingoings of the patriarchs, Abraham and Ishmael, Isaac in the fields at eventide, Rebekah at the well, Jacob’s guile, Esau’s face reddened by desert sun-heat, Joseph’s splendid funeral procession,—all these things I find within the boards of my Old Testament. What a silence in those old books as of a half-peopled world! What bleating of flocks! what green pastoral rest! what indubitable human existence! Across brawling centuries of blood and war I hear the bleating of Abraham’s flocks, the tinkling of the bells of Rebekah’s camels.—“Essays,” Alexander Smith.

And in these latter days a new thing has come to pass, touching this matter of the study of history. We have not only long-treasured volumes on the “old book-shelf,” with their heart-gripping story of the past; but we have a “new book-shelf”—historical sources that students of a half century ago never dreamed of. The pick and spade of the explorer have uncovered buried records that give a new setting to the history of early empires.

In these ancient tablets, brought forth to light within this last generation, the stones cry out in corroboration of the Scripture record. We hear the voices of the Pharaohs. The bricks without straw in the walls of the storehouses of Pithom “almost reecho the rigor of Pharaoh’s words.” Sennacherib, of Assyria, speaks to us out of the ground, and here are the sayings of Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, and Darius.

This development is in keeping with the prophecy of the “time of the end,” in which knowledge was to be increased, and light shed forth from the unsealed book of the prophetic scriptures. Dan. 12:4. Prof. Ira M. Price, of Chicago University, speaking of the study of history, says:—

This is the century of Romance,—romance in exploration, in discovery, in invention, in thought, and in life. The achievements of man have far exceeded the most sanguine dreams of the forefathers. We have not only made but discovered vast periods of history. . . . It has been dug out of mounds, tombs, and pyramids. It has been found written on granite, alabaster, wood, clay, and papyrus. It has been translated from tablets, rolls, cylinders, statues, and temples. Through a series of marvelous discoveries and romantic events we have been let into the secrets of wonderful centuries of hitherto unknown peoples and events. . . . Now through the cooperation of explorer, archeologist, and linguist, we are the heirs of what was formerly regarded as prehistoric times. . . . These marvelous revelations from the archives of the nations of the past have painted for us a new background, in fact our first background, of the Old Testament.—“The Monuments and the Old Testament.”

Regarded from any serious point of view, the study of history is of deepest interest. But from the view-point of divine prophecy, the study becomes one of eternal interest. The course of human history is one continuous testimony to fulfilled prophecy. And prophecy explains and illuminates the record of history. In the light of the “sure word of prophecy” this age-long drama of mankind assumes a meaning and reveals a guiding motive quite beyond the apprehension of unaided human vision.

By aid of divine revelation we see not only mankind moving across the stage of time, but we see the hand of God in history. Angels from heaven mingle with the actors in earthly scenes. Evil angels are there, too. And above all, we catch glimpses of the living God ruling and overruling, seeking to rescue and save, restraining and guiding, and shaping all things for the eventual carrying out of his own divine purpose in the creation of the earth and of man.

As we watch the moving scenes, and see how accurately the predictions of the prophetic word have been fulfilled in great crises in human history, we know of a surety that “the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will,” and are led anew to join in King Nebuchadnezzar’s ascription of praise to—

“Him that liveth forever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation: and all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?” Dan. 4:34, 35.

In the migrations of the sons of Noah, and the spreading abroad of the races of mankind, in the rise and fall of empires, and in the history of the believing children of God, fulfilment of prophecy is seen. The world has not escaped from the hand of its Creator. Still—

“Thy chains the unmeasured universe surround, Upheld by thee, by thee inspired with breath.”

Writing for the Roman pagans, in the first century of our era, Josephus, the Jewish historian, cited the fulfilment of the prophecies of Daniel as evidence of God’s hand in history. After reviewing the prophecies concerning Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, even to the predicted taking of Jerusalem by the Romans, he drew this lesson for the Epicurean teachers of the ancient philosophy of a mechanical evolution:—

All these things did this man [Daniel] leave in writing, as God had showed

them to him, insomuch that such as read his prophecies, and see how they have been fulfilled, would wonder at the honor wherewith God honored Daniel; and may thence discover how the Epicureans are in error, who cast Providence out of human life, and do not believe that God takes care of the affairs of the world, nor that the universe is governed and continued in being by that blessed and immortal nature, but say that the world is carried along of its own accord, without a ruler and a curator; which, were it destitute of a guide to conduct, as they imagine, it would be like ships without pilots, which we see drowned by the winds, or like chariots without drivers, which are overturned; so would the world be dashed to pieces by its being carried without a Providence, and so perish and come to naught. So that, by the forementioned predictions of Daniel, those men seem to me very much to err from the truth, who determine that God exercises no providence over human affairs; for if that were the case, that the world went on by mechanical necessity, we should not see that all things would come to pass according to his prophecy.—Antiquities, book 10, chap. 11.

Of a truth, a divine Pilot has been at the helm of human history through all this world’s stormy passage. And he is still the living God, at the helm.

W. A. S.