Notes on Important Eras of Fulfilling Prophecy
By W. A. S.
The Hand of God in History — No. 20
Notes on Important Eras of Fulfilling Prophecy
Increase of Knowledge in the “Time of the End”
THE seeds of a new order of growth were planted in the soil of the New World in the days of settlement that followed the period of discovery. One writer says:— Diverse and seemingly incongruous as were the nationalities represented in the colonies,—Dutch, French, German, Swedish, Scotch, Irish, English,—they had all imbibed, either by experience or inheritance, something of the spirit of personal independence, and especially of religious liberty. Gustavus Adolphus designed his colony of Swedes for the benefit of “all oppressed Christendom.” Penn, the Quaker, established Pennsylvania as “a free colony for all mankind,” where the settlers “should be governed by laws of their own making.” The first charter of the Jerseys—which were largely peopled by Quakers and Scotch and Irish Presbyterians—declared that “no person shall at any time, in any way, or on any pretense, be called in question, or in the least punished or hurt, for opinion in religion.” And Oglethorpe’s colony of Georgia was founded to be a refuge for “the distressed people of Britain, and the persecuted Protestants of Europe;” then the German Moravians settled side by side with the French Huguenot and the Scotch Presbyterian under the motto, “We toil not for ourselves, but for others.”—Thompson’s “United States as a Nation,” page 31. By the end of the eighteenth century a new nation was springing into vigorous life across the sea, founded on the principles of civil and religious liberty, and exerting a powerful influence for a new order of things. All the time the forces of progress and reform in Europe were struggling toward the same ideals. According to the prophecy, the time of the end began at the close of the period of papal supremacy, in the end of the eighteenth century. That was a turning-point in history. The minds of men were aroused to unwonted activity. The old autocratic order was broken, and the era of constitutionalism and liberty set in. The Papacy, with the closed Bible, stood for the old order. The open Bible and the spirit of genuine Protestantism stood for the new. The great evangelical movement under Wesley, Whitefield, and others, in the latter half of that passing century, had awakened multitudes. It was a revival among the masses, that made for a new life, and stimulated the desire for education and social betterment. The open Bible had yet freer course; and wherever that agency of heaven goes, enlightenment and progress follow. All influences conspired to make the opening of the nineteenth century the opening of an era of enlightenment. And back of all uplifting influences, and overruling all, was the Lord, true to his word, inspiring and leading, and ushering in the time of the prophecy, the era of increase of knowledge. As regards the marvelous increase of general knowledge, the late Dr. A. T. Pierson summed up the facts as follows:— The nineteenth century is conceded to be a century of wonders. Judged by human progress along the highway of scientific discovery and invention, and by the general widening out of the horizon of human knowledge, it is not only unsurpassed, but it leaves all previous centuries far behind. Mr. Gladstone thought that a single decade of years might be found within its limits during which the race had advanced farther than during five hundred decades preceding. This estimate is probably not an exaggeration; but, if so, what must be true of the whole century!—“Modern Mission Century,” page 41. Another writer says of the development that came with the nineteenth century:—7It is something more than a merely normal growth or natural development. It has been a gigantic tidal wave of human ingenuity and resource, so stupendous in its magnitude, so complex in its diversity, so profound in its thought, so fruitful in its wealth, so beneficent in its results, that the mind is strained and embarrassed in its efforts to expand to a full appreciation of it. Indeed, the period seems a grand climax of discovery rather than an increment of growth. . . . The negative conditions of that period extend into such an appalling void that we stop short, shrinking from the thought of what it would mean to modern civilization to eliminate from its life those potent factors of its existence.—Edward M. Byon, M. A. Two millenniums before, the prophecy had pointed to the closing years of the eighteenth century, and had said that then would be ushered in an age of increase of knowledge. Well we know, however, that it is not primarily increase in merely human knowledge that the prophecy foreshadowed. The wonderful increase in human knowledge, the progress in the arts and sciences, and the inventions that characterize the age are all providential factors; for every means of bringing to men light and information and for spreading knowledge through the world is laid under tribute of service in God’s one great purpose. That purpose is the salvation of men, and the ending of the course of sin and apostasy on earth. When divine prophecy speaks of increasing knowledge, it means first of all increased knowledge of the Lord, the true wisdom, without which the compassing of all the range of learning is but loss. And in the opening up of all the world, and the spread of general education and enlightenment, we plainly see the providential working of the Lord in preparing the way for the gospel message to reach all nations and tribes and tongues in these last days. The study of fulfilling prophecy in the time of the end leads us directly to a survey of the spreading abroad of the knowledge of God and of his Word by the wonderful achievements of the “century of modern missions.”