God's Design Concerning Abraham and His Seed
By I. E. Kimball
God's Design Concerning Abraham and His Seed.
In early times God chose Abraham and his seed, to whom he made eternal promises. He settled them in the land of promise, with the assurance that it was given them as the days of heaven upon the earth. They were his portion, for a name and for a praise and glory before all people. They alone of all people were to show forth the wisdom, righteousness, faithfulness, and love of the Creator. They should reveal the rich treasures of his grace. Thus run the promises: “Before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation; and all the people among which thou art shall see the work of the Lord.” Blessings were promised in the city, and in the field, upon the fruits of the body and of the ground, and upon their cattle also. They should be a holy and happy people, filled with peace and plenty. But all these promises were upon condition that they “kept the commandments of the Lord, and walked in his ways.” Then would they be holy as he was holy, and able to show forth his life and favor to the world. So “all the people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the Lord; and they shall be afraid of thee. . . . And the Lord shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath.” “And the Lord shall take away from thee all sickness.” Such were the assurances repeated over and over. As to the wicked of earth, “thou shalt not be afraid of them; but shalt well remember what the Lord thy God did unto Pharaoh, and unto all Egypt; the great temptations which thine eye saw, and the signs, and the wonders, and the mighty hands, and the stretched-out arm, whereby the Lord thy God brought thee out; so shall the Lord thy God do unto all the people of whom thou art afraid.” The arm which hurled Egypt to destruction would be stretched out against all who would assail them. Again we read: “The nations, which shall hear all these statutes,” shall “say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for? And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law.” Therefore, “ten men shall take hold out of all the languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you; for we have heard that God is with you.” Zech. 8:23. How great the favors proffered to this people! God would have made them a diadem of beauty to a fallen world. The clouds from above and the depths beneath should yield their full store, and the mighty God of Jacob through his loving-kindness and power would have been exalted in all the earth. Such was the vision of all the prophets: “O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea; thy seed also had been as the sand, and the offspring of thy bowels like the gravel thereof; his name should not have been cut off, nor destroyed from before me.” “O that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways! I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries. The haters of the Lord should have submitted themselves unto him; but their time should have endured forever. He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat; and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee.” Why, O why, should Israel have so lightly esteemed the Rock of their salvation; for God reigned over them in all his goodness, majesty, and power? Following the flood, immediately a giant of apostasy and rebellion arose. The mighty Nimrod, the beginning of whose kingdom was Babylon (see Gen. 10:10, margin), consolidated the nations under his hand; the kingdom of Satan was established, and the cords of Jehovah were snapped in sunder. In the plentitude of their haughtiness and pride they said, “Who is Jehovah that I should obey his voice.” In this kingdom which stood in opposition to the Lord, lust became law. Nimrod, or, as some will have it, his successor, Belus, or Bell, was deified, and henceforth worshiped as a god—the Bell or the Baal of all heathen times. So right there began the deification of dead men, which has continued in the demonolatry of all time. For the demons who were worshiped among the gentiles were understood to be departed worthies and heroes, who were promoted by8 (248)their merits to heaven, to be the carriers, the angels, of the celestial gods. Such is demonology. In fact, it was believed in the later times that wicked men became wicked demons, and degrees and spheres and probationary periods were fixed, which prepared the demons for the highest positions with the gods. This is exactly the Spiritualism of to-day, and the sorcery, witchery, and dealing with familiar spirits which has characterized all time. And it is nothing else but the power of “the angels that sinned” exercised over wicked men. So Babylon was the birthplace of sorcery and spiritual fornication. There, too, ambitious domination first took shape. Personal ambition, love of authority, headiness, covetousness, pride, hard-heartedness, lustfulness, the stony heart, and unmerciful spirit, were there first fully developed. Sorcery and sin ran wild in Babylon. Lust and adultery were enforced by statute law. Satan was chief and ruler. Even human sacrifices were offered to the vengeful deity. All Semitic tribes and nations seem to have been under the influence of Babylon in those early times, hence their community of custom and religion continued in after times. Virgil speaks of Baal as a deified Phœnician, evidently the same as the Babylonian Bel. We may see to what lengths they went in the offering of human sacrifices when we consider that at Tyre the image of Baal would contain twoscore or more of men. Thus were they immolated by the horrible fires beneath—as it were, roasted in an oven. So we see that all about Israel the grossest idolatries and practices prevailed, but how went it in the Zion of God's choosing? Our hearts sadden to think how the above abominations were permitted to enter. The practices of heathenism were fostered under her sometimes diabolical kings, until the favored nation corrupted itself “more than they [Sodom, etc.], in all her ways.” The prophet of God spoke of Nineveh and Babylon, the heads of the Assyrian Kingdom, as follows: “Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the well-favored harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts. Behold, I am against thee. . . . For upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?” Captive Daughter of Babylon.
In the Assyrian period we read how Manasseh and all Israel, excepting a very small remnant, made altars for all the host of heaven in the house of the Lord, made their sons to pass through the fire, observed times, used enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits, all of which had been forbidden in the laws of God under pain of death. We can therefore see plainly enough how Satan made a spiritual conquest of Zion, uniting it to Babylon. The kingdom of God, being overthrown spiritually, was permitted to be overthrown visibly, and the chosen people were taken to Babylon to find for themselves a home. Babylon caused her iniquity to pass upon all the nations. Thus she pressed the golden cup of Jer. 51:7 to the lips of one and all, and the Zion of the Holy One of Israel became blinded and intoxicated, and finally found herself forsaken of her God. She was inured in the fortress of Babylonian superstition, and sank down under the iron heel of her tyranny. So the Lord turned and violently tossed Zion as a ball into the hand of the Assyrians, where she should experience the iron yoke of oppression for seventy years. It will be evident to all that Israel became a part of Babylon in truth, as soon as she was contaminated in life, and her practices became one with those over whom Satan exercised his authority; the twain became one in life. Babylonia's laws and religious statutes were accepted, and what should God in justice do, by what “testimony seal this fact to their understanding”? for they would not hear or believe the prophets who showed them their adulterous affinity with Assyria. The Lord said he would judge them as a woman that breaketh wedlock and sheds blood is judged; he told them there was a conspiracy of her prophets against God, and that the Babylonians had come to her into the bed of love, yet she would not heed. What more then could God do to convince them that he had departed from her because of her unfaithfulness, than to give up his dearly beloved, to go and dwell with the daughter of Babylon? This he did, and the kingdom of Israel passed to Babylonia.