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

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 14, 1912

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 89, No. 11.

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Notes on Important Eras of Prophecy

By W. A. S.

The Hand of God in History — No. 3

Notes on Important Eras of Prophecy

Witness Borne to Nations in Ancient Times

(Concluded)

2. The Deliverance From Babylon

AGAIN, a time prophecy was uttered, promising deliverance to captives in a strange land; and all the nations saw the arm of God made bare in bringing about the fulfilment.

Jeremiah the prophet had foretold the doom of Jerusalem. Its people had rejected the counsels of the God of Israel, whose protection alone had warded off conquest by their more powerful neighbors. Now it was declared:—

“This whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the Lord, for their iniquity.” Jer. 25:11, 12.

The time of the promise was drawing near—the ending of the seventy years. The nations were in convulsion. It was a crisis in human history. The time had come for the living God to fulfil his word.

Cyrus the Persian was the commander of the army that overthrew Babylon. More than one hundred years before he was born, the prophet Isaiah had written:—

“Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut.” Isa. 45:1.

For nearly if not quite two centuries that prophecy had stood written on the parchment roll. The night came when the army of Cyrus was to make its attack upon Babylon. The golden city, inside its mighty walls, scoffed at the besiegers. Belshazzar made a feast, in which, with a thousand of his lords, he drank defiance to the living God from the cups of gold and silver taken from the temple in Jerusalem.

Meanwhile the troops of Cyrus were entering beneath the outer walls, where the Euphrates River flowed into the city and out again. By trenches far above, the channel of the river had been turned aside, and the waters were so lowered that the soldiers could march in along the river bed. But even so they would ordinarily have gained little; for massive walls lined the river banks inside the city. Had the gates of these river walls been shut, the troops of Cyrus would have been helpless; in fact, as one writer suggests, they might have been caught by the Chaldeans like “rats in a trap.”

But a century or two before, the prophecy had been written: “The gates shall not be shut.” So it was that night. Careless and confident and drunken, the Babylonians had left the river gates open, and the Persian troops were rushing into the city even as the mystic hand was writing the doom of Babylon on the wall of Belshazzar’s palace. That night the dominion of the world passed into the hands of the Medes and Persians.

The Chaldean scribe who at the time wrote the story on a clay tablet (which was secured by the British Museum in the year 1879) closed his record with the words:—

On the sixteenth day, Gobryas, pasha of the land of Gutium, and the troops of Cyrus, without a battle, entered Babylon.—From tablet, “Annals of Nabonidus,” quoted by C. J. Ball, in “Light From the East.”

That provision foretold by the prophet so long before—“the gates shall not be shut”—turned the scale of world-empire.

But Cyrus was not only the rod in the hand of Providence for the punishment of Babylon; he was to be the agent for the deliverance of the Lord’s people from captivity. Isaiah’s prophecy had said of him:—

“He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.” Isa. 44:28.

The seventy years of the captivity were at an end, and it was time for the work of restoration to begin according to the prophecy. Josephus, the Jewish historian, says that this prophecy came to the knowledge of Cyrus:—

This was made known to Cyrus by his reading the book which Isaiah left behind him of his prophecies. . . . This was foretold by Isaiah one hundred forty years before the temple was demolished. Accordingly, when Cyrus read this, and admired the divine power, an earnest desire and ambition seized upon him to fulfil what was so written.—Antiquities, book 2, chap. 1.

How he fulfilled the word written is told in Scripture:—

“Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The Lord

God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of Israel (he is the God), which is in Jerusalem.” Ezra 1:1-3.

Thus witness of the living God—“he is the God”—was borne by a master of the world before all nations; and when the seventy years of the prophecy were fulfilled, the return from captivity began.

In the story of the rebuilding of the temple, an incident is recorded in Scripture which draws aside the veil for a moment, and gives us a thrilling view of the work that angels from heaven are doing in this world of ours.

As soon as the work was fairly going forward, opposition arose. Ezra says:—

“Then the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah, and troubled them in building, and hired counselors against them, to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus.” Ezra 4:4, 5.

The scene now shifts from Jerusalem to the court of Cyrus, in Persia. The hired counselors are there seeking to turn the king against the work that he had authorized at Jerusalem in accordance with the purpose of God. At the same time Daniel, the prophet, is in Persia, by the river Tigris.

For three weeks Daniel had been specially seeking God in prayer. At last an angel came to answer his cry. “Fear not, Daniel,” the angel said; “for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words.”

But why had the angel delayed his appearance for three weeks, if at the first Daniel’s prayer was heard? The angel told why:—

“But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes [“the first” of the chief princes, margin], came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.” Dan. 10:13.

It is all plain,—the hired attorneys, and, no doubt, the representatives of the Jews at the Persian court; the king wavering, and inclined to yield to the opposers of God’s plan and purpose; and there, too, unseen by mortal eyes, were angels from heaven, working day after day to restrain the evil counsel and to lead the king in the right way.

And at last the Prince of the host, Michael himself, came to help in the great crisis. The king was prevailed upon to do the right, and the work at Jerusalem went forward according to the prophecy.

We know that the angels of God are still abroad in the earth, ministering to the least of the heirs of salvation, and standing in the courts of kings or in the halls of legislation.

The God who declared things to come and brought them to pass, and who delivered his children in ancient days, is still the living God. As King Darius once proclaimed him to “all people, nations, and languages,”—

“He delivereth and rescueth, and he worketh signs and wonders in heaven and in earth, who hath delivered Daniel from the power of the lions.” Dan. 6:27.

W. A. S.