A SEVENFOLD SIGN OF THE END
By M. C. Wilcox
A Nation Rising Rapidly to Great Power Under Peaceful Conditions THIS is the fourth of the series of articles by Elder M. C. Wilcox on the general theme of “A Sevenfold Sign of the End.” In these articles, he is presenting seven of the most striking characteristics of the prophecy that relates to the United States government. Editor. BABYLON rose to her height of power under the skill and daring of her greatest warrior-king, Nebuchadnezzar, who subjected to himself all surrounding countries, and extended his power to the subjugation of Egypt, as God declared he would by Jeremiah the prophet. Medo-Persia succeeded Babylon, with still greater dominion to the east and the north, and under the powerful arms of Darius Hystaspis, conquered Egypt. Her whole dominion of one hundred and twenty-seven provinces was acquired and maintained by force of arms; not merely in wars of defense, but in wars of conquest. As with Babylon and Medo-Persia, so it was even more emphatically with Grecia. The great empire of the Hellenes started in the insignificant little kingdom, so far as territory was concerned, of Macedonia; but in the space of a few years, Alexander had conquered the then known civilized world. He built a kingdom by conquest, and by constant contest it was maintained, even in its divided state, till it became subject to Rome in B. C. 168. The great Roman Empire was built and gathered in the same way and by the same means. The little tribes on the Tiber in Italy, by rigorous warfare, spread the domain of Rome over all the known civilized powers of earth. She was the mistress of the world by war and conquest. The power with which our prophecy deals, arises to world prestige in a different manner. Said the prophet, foreseeing the future, at the time of the breaking of papal supremacy (1793-1798), “I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth.” Rev. 13: 11. The former dynastic powers, represented by the seven-headed beast, arose from the great storm-tossed, turbulent sea (Dan. 7: 3; Rev. 13: 1), symbolizing “peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues” (Rev. 17: 15), as we have more fully shown in number three of this series. This power was to come up out of the earth. The word rendered “coming up,” is anabaino, from the preposition ana, up, and baino, to walk. It means to arise, ascend, climb, grow. It is used of the rapid growing up of the mustard plant (Mark 4: 32), which we have seen grow from the seed to a small tree fifteen feet tall in three months; of the quick climbing of Zacchaeus into the sycamore tree (Luke 19: 4); of the thief who climbs into the house in some other way (John 10: 1); of the ascending of the Son of man (John 20: 17); of the thoughts which suddenly arise in the heart (Luke 24: 38); of the tumultuous smoke that poured out of the bottomless pit (Rev. 9: 2). So John saw a beast rising up out of the earth, even while he looked upon him, as a smoke would ascend from a pit, as a plant would quickly spring from the earth. We need not say that but one great nation on the face of the earth so came to power and influence—namely, the United States. Her war of the Revolution was not for conquest, but for freedom. Her people risked all to win it, and they won. Her subsequent extensions were not by the sword, from conquered peoples, but were purchased from France and Spain and Russia. From a narrow strip of land skirting the western shore of the Atlantic in 1800, when the United States was fairly launched as a nation, with a meager population of 5,308,483, and an area of 827,844 miles, it increased in one century to a population of 76,303,987, and an area of 3,026,789. In the decade 1900 to 1910, there was added more than three times the population of the whole nation in 1800. One city on the Atlantic coast has over a million more inhabitants than had the entire country when the nation first started. In 1850 the Nation, of Dublin, Ireland, said: “In the east there is arising a colossal centaur called the Russian Empire. With a civilized head and front, it has the sinews of a huge barbaric body. There one man’s brain moves 70,000,000 [now 160,100,000]. There all the traditions of the people are of aggression and conquest in the west. There but two ranks are distinguishable, serfs and soldiers. There the map of the future includes Constantinople and Vienna as outposts of St. Petersburg. “In the west an opposing and still more wonderful American empire is emerging. We islanders have no conception of the extraordinary events which amid the silence of the earth are daily adding to the power and pride of this gigantic nation. Within three years, territories more extensive than these three kingdoms, Great Britain, France, and Italy put together, have been quietly and in almost ‘matter of course’ fashion annexed to the union. “Within seventy years, seventeen new sovereignties, the smallest91of them larger than Great Britain, have peaceably united themselves to the federation. No standing army was raised, no national debt was sunk, no great exertion was made, but there they are. And the last mail brings news of three more great states about to be joined to the thirty,—Minnesota in the northwest, Deseret in the southwest, and California on the shores of the Pacific. These three states will cover an area equal to one half of the European continent.” Emile Girardin wrote in La Liberte in 1868: “The population of America, not limited by any conscription, multiplies with prodigious rapidity, and the day may before long be seen when they will number sixty or eighty millions of souls. This parvenu is aware of his importance and destiny. Hear him proudly exclaim, ‘America for Americans.’ See him promising his alliance to Russia; and we see that power, which well knows what force is, grasp the hand of this giant of yesterday. “In view of his unparalleled progress and combination, what are the little toys with which we vex ourselves in Europe? What is this needle gun we are anxious to get from Prussia, that we may beat her next year with it? Had we not better take from America the principle of liberty she embodies, out of which have come her citizen pride, her gigantic industry, and her formidable loyalty to the destinies of her republican land?” The nation has now forty-nine sovereign states, and a population of 100,000,000. We may still use the words of Mitchell’s school geography, “It presents the most striking instance of national growth to be found in the history of mankind.”—Fourth revised edition. In the quiet yet rapid manner of its rise, in the rapid increase of strength and capital, in its great wealth and resources developed and undeveloped, in its material prosperity, in its marvelous inventions, in its colossal undertakings, in every material thing which goes to make a nation great, in free education and religion, there is no nation to compare with it. The nations that have the territory and people, like Russia and China, are fettered and weighted by superstition, degradation, bureaucracies, tyranny, and the dead traditions of unprogressive centuries. America has spelled “Opportunity.” Vice President Schuyler Colfax thus spoke of this country in 1870: “Wonderful, indeed, has been that history. Springing into life from under the heel of tyranny, its progress has been onward, with the firm step of a conqueror. From the rugged clime of New England, from the banks of the Chesapeake, from the savannah of Carolina and Georgia, the descendants of the Puritans, the cavalier, and the Huguenot swept over the towering Alleghenies, but a century ago the barrier between civilization on the one side and almost unbroken barbarism on the other; and the banners of the republic waved from flagstaff and highland, through the broad valleys of the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Missouri. Nor stopped its progress there. Thence onward poured the tide of American civilization and progress, over the vast regions of the Western States fronting the calm Pacific, an empire of themselves in remoteness and wealth, but loyal in our darkest hours to the nation whose authority they acknowledge, and in whose glory they proudly share.” Said Edward Everett, speaking of the English exiles who founded the government: “Did they look for a retired spot, inoffensive from its obscurity, safe in its remoteness from the haunts of despots, where the little church of Leyden might enjoy freedom of conscience? Behold the mighty regions over which in peaceful conquest—Victoria sine clade—they have borne the banners of the cross.” This third specification of the prophecy has been met. As the world never witnessed before, under “peaceful conditions” a nation has risen to power before the very vision of our generation. The next article will be a study upon the “Two Horns Like a Lamb.”