THE GREAT SALVATION by Geo. W. Reaser

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, Cal. · Mar 20, 1907

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 33, No. 12.

THE GREAT SALVATION

By Geo. W. Reaser

TESTIMONY OF THE AGES.

(Continued.)

The Burden of Egypt.

Egypt was one of the very first nations to attain to great power and civilization. At one time she was the strongest nation in the world. Read what God said of her:

“Thus saith the Lord God: I will also make the multitude of Egypt to cease by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. He and his people with him, the terrible of the nations, shall be brought to destroy the land; and they shall draw their swords against Egypt, and fill the land with the slain. And I will make the rivers dry, and sell the land into the hand of the wicked; and I will make the land waste, and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers; I the Lord have spoken it. Thus saith the Lord God: I will also destroy the idols, and I will cause their images to cease out of Noph; and there shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt; and I will put a fear in the land of Egypt.”

1. “In B.C. 344, Ochus of Persia invaded the land with three hundred and forty-four thousand troops, while the Egyptian king, Nectanebo, had an army of only one hundred thousand with which to meet him, and twenty thousand of these were Greek mercenaries. The king of Persia was wholly successful. ‘All Egypt submitted to Ochus, who demolished the walls of the cities, plundered the temple, and after rewarding his mercenaries, returned to his own capital with an immense booty.’ ‘Nectanebo in despair quitted the country and fled southward to Ethiopia,’ and from that day till this there has been no native ruler of Egypt. Nectanebo was the last Egyptian king that Egypt ever had. “Thus miserably fell the monarchy of the Pharaohs after an unexampled duration of nearly three thousand years. . . . More than two thousand years have since passed, and tho Egypt has from time to time been independent, not one native prince has sat on the throne of the Pharaohs. ‘There shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt,’ was prophesied in the days of Apries as the final state of the land.”—‘Encyclopedia Britannica,’ Art. ‘Egypt.’

Even so has the “more sure word of prophecy” been literally fulfilled that “there shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt.”

2. “I will also destroy the idols, and I will cause their images to cease.”

“This is also a remarkable prediction, for of all nations that have ever lived on the earth, the Egyptians were the most abundantly idolatrous. Bodies heavenly and bodies earthly, bodies animate and bodies inanimate, real and imaginary, fish, flesh, fowl, and vegetable, all were worshiped as gods in Egypt; and it was literally true that in Egypt it was easier to find a god than a man. The idols have been totally destroyed and the images have ceased utterly.

3. “I will make the land waste, and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers.”

“All history from the conquest of Egypt by Ochus, before mentioned, till this day, bears continuous testimony to the fulfilment of this prophecy. From the day that King Nectanebo fled into Ethiopia till now, strangers have spoiled Egypt of her wealth and drained her of her treasures.

“A hundred years ago, Gibbon, in describing the condition of Egypt under their rule, gave the best statement in existence of the fulfilment of the prophecy. He said: ‘A more unjust and absurd constitution can not be devised, than that which condemns the natives of a country to perpetual servitude under the arbitrary dominion of strangers and slaves. Yet such has been the state of Egypt above five hundred years.’

“And that is exactly as the prophet of God nearly twenty-five hundred years ago said it would be.”

Of the First Advent of Christ.

Among the most remarkable prophecies which, by their detailed fulfilment, have proven that “there is a God in heaven” who foretells new things “before they spring forth,” those relating to the coming and to the work of the Son of Man stand out with special prominence.

“When Alexander the Great was in the full tide of his career of conquest, he stood at the temple of the Most High in Jerusalem, and heard the witness of God concerning him read from the Hebrew Scriptures. And thru the Greek language, which the career of Alexander was instrumental in spreading throughout all the eastern world, God chose to give witness of Himself in the salvation wrought for man in the death and resurrection of His own dear Son.”

It was prophesied nearly eight hundred years before the advent of Messiah, that a virgin should conceive, and bear a Son, and call His name Immanuel. Matthew and Luke bear full witness to the literal fulfilment of this prophecy.

The place of His birth was clearly designated, and when Herod demanded of the chief priests and scribes what place should have the distinction of His nativity, they replied, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophets.”

The time of His anointing and also of His crucifixion were positively fixed by the prophecy of Daniel, while Zechariah described the scene of His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and Isaiah gave minute details of His death and burial.

It is said that full three hundred prophetic utterances were fulfilled to the very letter in the life of our Saviour, during the brief period of His incarnation, and these specifications of prophecy could have been fulfilled in no other person born to the human family.

It is worthy of our serious consideration that while nearly all of the prophetic portions of the word have found their fulfilment in the past, yet at this present time some of these predictions are in process of fulfilment, and others are to come to pass in the very near future. Of these latter, all center in one event, paramount to all others that can possibly transpire; namely, “the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.”

It has been true in the past, that individuals have even themselves fulfilled prophecies which foretold their own destruction and endless ruin, and were not cognizant of their fatal mistake until too late. Judas was one of this class, as also were those who crucified the Lord of glory. It is written of the latter, “They that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew Him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every Sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning Him.” “And when they had fulfilled all that was written of Him, they took Him down from the tree, and laid Him in a sepulcher.”

It has been well said that “the miracles of Christ are a proof of His divinity; but a stronger proof that He is the world’s Redeemer is found in comparing the prophecies of the Old Testament with the history of the New.”

“The time would fail us to tell of all the testimonies that God bore by Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and Joel, and Amos, and Obadiah, and Zephaniah, and Zechariah, not only to Assyria, and Babylon, and Egypt, and Medo-Persia, but also to Edom, and Moab, and Ammon, and Tyre, and Sidon, and Syria, and Arabia, and all the nations round about,” as well as concerning the nations that are now upon the stage of action. It is literally true that God has “left not Himself without witness” unto “all nations” in all ages.

“The revelations of prophecy are facts which exhibit the divine omniscience. So long as Babylon is in heaps; so long as Nineveh lies empty, void, and waste; so long as Egypt is the basest of kingdoms; so long as Tyre is a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the seas; so long as Israel is scattered among all nations; so long as Jerusalem is trodden underfoot of the Gentiles; so long as the great empires of the world march on in their predicted course—so long we have proof that one Omniscient Mind dictated the predictions of that Book. ‘Prophecy came not in old time by the will of man; but holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.’”

Persons to whom God temporarily lends His vision, are called prophets, or see-ers. And are they not see-ers as compared with other members of the human family? Without this vision, and without the acceptance of it as recorded, no matter how great our desire, we can not see a single day into the future. To-morrow is dark and blank, except for the light shining from the prophetic page.

All the light of past generations, thru the medium of prophecy, is focused by the greatest telescope in the universe—the all-seeing eye of God—upon the generation in which we are living. Men in our own day will have part in the fulfilment of “things written aforetime,” which will mean their eternal destruction, but thru their unwillingness

to heed the “sure word of prophecy,” will not recognize the part which they act in the great drama of eternity, till too late for repentance. Well did Peter say, “We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts.”

Men may deny the existence of God and Christ; they may scoff at the idea of the Holy Spirit; they may fail to read of God and recognize Him in the book of nature; they may misapply the witness written in the rocks, but fulfilled prophecy is overwhelming, unanswerable evidence of the existence and unlimited knowledge of the Supreme Being who declared the end from the beginning. With such abundant fruit to testify to its efficiency, surely divine prophecy must be an important factor in the plan of salvation, and one whose truthful admonitions can not be ignored by the human family, except at the peril of their souls.

[The next article in this series is entitled, “God’s Messengers.”]