A WORLD-MOLDING NATION by M. C. Wilcox

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 2, 1915

A WORLD-MOLDING NATION

By M. C. Wilcox

Rising Quietly to Power — Its Territory Hitherto Historically Unknown

This is the third of a series of articles furnished by Elder M. C. Wilcox, on the general theme of “A Sevenfold Sign of the End,” as manifested in the fulfilment of the prophecy that pertains to the United States. It is one of the most important prophetic themes to be found in the Bible.

EDITOR.

Recall the prophecy, “I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth.” Rev. 13: 11. Recall that wild beasts symbolize, in prophetic language, nations, governments, sooner or later antagonistic to the government of God. The four beasts of Dan. 7: 2, 3 represented four world-dominant governments or empires. Verses 17, 18. The ram and he-goat of Dan. 8: 3-8 were symbols of Medo-Persia and Grecia. Verses 20, 21.

We learned, in our last study, that the two-horned beast of Rev. 13: 11 symbolized a power which should be entering upon the stage of the world’s great drama when the divided Roman Empire, under domination of the papacy, should lose the papal phase of its character, or in other words, the papal head as a dominating power should be wounded to death. This culminated in 1798, when Pope Pius VI was taken captive, and the power of the papacy as a dominator was broken by France. Then it was that the new power was to arise. It has also been shown that but one rising powerful government fitted the symbol, namely, the United States.

THE TERRITORY

But the prophecy not only notes the time of its rise, but the place where it shall be established, namely, the earth.

The four great world empires of the past are represented by wild beasts rising up out of the heaving, restless, storm-tossed sea. Dan. 7: 1, 2. The sea represents multitudes, nations, tongues, and kings. Rev. 17: 15. Through strife and war and revolution among the nations, successively rose the great empires of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. These were world-dominating powers. They ruled the eastern world. All other nations acknowledged their sway or were too insignificant to be noticed. There was no room left on the Eastern Continent, among the recognized nations of earth, for a new power to arise. We must look to the New World, and recall again the prophetic utterance of Bishop Berkeley:

“Westward the course of empire takes its way, The first four acts already past. The fifth shall close the drama with the day; Time’s noblest offspring is the last.”

But looking westward from the Old World of strife and commotion, we find but one nation rising to power on this great continent. All South America and Mexico were broken, at that time, into insignificant governments or colonies of Old World powers. The United States of America alone meets the prediction. She has, in her fulfilment of the prophecy in both time and place, not one to dispute the application of the prophecy to her.

She arose out of the earth, out of an unknown land, largely unknown even to the men who first found the government. The nation began with a narrow strip of land along the seaboard of the Atlantic, extending from Maine to Florida, with the great untrodden West in the background.

The nation did not rise among other nations. Its founders and fosterers were men who had fled from the persecutions and strife, from the intolerance and oppression, of the teeming Old World, preferring to risk the perils of an unknown land inhabited by widely scattered tribes of nomadic savages. But they found in the wilderness a home, and established, in hitherto unknown parts of the earth, a new and mighty nation.

Men were looking for this, notwithstanding the fact that what settlements there were in the New World were but weak colonies of strong European governments. Take the following as samples:

“An idea, strange as it is visionary, has entered into the minds of the generality of mankind that empire is traveling westward; and every one is looking forward with eager and impatient expectation to that distant moment when America is to give the law to the rest of the world.”—Burnaby’s “Travels Through the Middle Settlements of North America in 1759 and 1760.”

But the vision was of God, and the idea was born of His prophecy, as expressed by Bishop Berkeley. Here are others:

“Soon after the Reformation, a few people came over into this New World for conscience’ sake. Perhaps this apparently trivial incident may transfer the seat of empire to America.”—John Adams, October 12, 1775.

“The history of the United States was separated, by a beneficent providence, far from the wild and cruel history of the rest of the continent, and like a silent seed we grew into empire.”

“This hemisphere was laid away for no one race.”—George Alfred Townsend.

“It is only yesterday, as it were, in the calendar of earth’s existence, when the fact was first made known to modern men, that our planet was a globe, and that in the waters between the western coasts of Europe and Africa and the eastern coasts of Asia, there lay a vast continent teeming with life, wealth, and beauty. For generations after that discovery, the continent was wrapped in profound mystery, the subject of wild conjecture and tales of wonder. The newly awakened moral forces impelled brave and earnest men and women to venture across the Atlantic Ocean and establish homes in the virgin wilderness.”—Lessing, “History of the United States.”

Said the great Irishman and British statesman, Burke: “A great revolution has happened—a revolution made not by chopping and changing of power in any of the existing states, but in the appearance of a new state, of a new species, in a new part of the globe. It has made as great a change in all the relations and balances and gravitations of power as the appearance of a new planet would in the system of the solar world.”

Mr. G. A. Townsend, in his work entitled “The New World Compared with the Old,” page 452, says: “Since America was discovered, she has been a subject of revolutionary thought in Europe. The mystery of her coming forth from vacancy, the marvel of her wealth in gold and silver, the spectacle of her captives led through European capitals, filled the minds of men with unrest; and unrest is the first stage of revolution.”

And this specification of the prophecy has been abundantly met in the United States of America, and in no other. It is a prophecy of two millenniums ago; it is a living, throbbing, acting fulfilment to-day.

M. C. W.

The next specification is “A Nation Rising Rapidly to Power under Peaceful Conditions.”