THE GREAT SALVATION by Geo. W. Reaser

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Mar 13, 1907

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 33, No. 11.

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THE GREAT SALVATION

By Geo. W. Reaser

By GEO. W. REASER.

TESTIMONY OF THE AGES.

(Continued.)

ANOTHER striking fulfilment of prophecy, told over and over again, was the great commercial emporium of ancient times.

Fall of Tyre

The antiquity of Tyre "is of ancient days." "It was founded by a colony from Sidon, about twenty-five miles south of the mother city on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It was 'planted in a pleasant place;' and in the days of Isaiah, 715 B.C., she was 'the crowning city,' 'a mart of nations,' and her merchants were princes, and her 'traffickers' were 'the honorable of the earth.'

"The builders of Tyre were so accomplished that they are said to 'have perfected her beauty.' Five hundred and eighty-eight years before Christ, Tyre was so rich that she could afford to make all her shipboards of fir, and their masts of cedar of Lebanon; their oars of oak of Bashan, and their benches of ivory; their sails of fine linen with broidered work from Egypt, and their coverings of blue and purple from the Isles of Elishah. The inhabitants of Zion and Arvad were her mariners, her own wise men were her pilots, and her army was hired from Persia, Lud, Phut, and Arvad. Her traffic was so great that she enjoyed a continual 'world's fair.'

"Because of the multitude of all kinds of riches, and the multitude of the wares of her own making, Tarshish came to trade in her fairs with silver, iron, tin, and lead. Javan, Tubal, and Meshech, Libia, and Russia came with persons of men and vessels of brass. The house of Togarmah came with horses, horsemen, and mules. Bedan came with horns of ivory and ebony, and with precious cloths for chariots. Syria came with emeralds, purple and broidered work, and fine linen, and coral, and agate. Damascus came with the wine of Helbon and white wool; Judah and Israel with wheat, and honey, and oil, and balm; Arabia came with lambs, and rams, and goats; Sheba and Raamah came with chief of all spices, and with precious stones and gold; Babylonia and Assyria came with all sorts of things in blue cloths and broidered work, chests of rich apparel bound with cords and made of cedar; and she enriched the kings of the earth with the multitude of her riches and her merchandise." Read Ezekiel 27.

Ezekiel's Prophecy.

In the height of her power, Ezekiel uttered the following prophecy:

"Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up. And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus and break down her towers; I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea; for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God. . . . With the hoofs of his horses shall he tread down all thy streets."

"By the work of Nebuchadnezzar there was fulfilled that part of the prophecy which said that they should destroy the walls and break down the towers, and that with the hoofs of their horses they should tread down all her streets; but there were yet two important statements unfulfilled. These were: 'I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock;' 'and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water.'

"After its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, the Tyrians rebuilt the city, but they rebuilt it on the island instead of on the mainland, and left the old city lying in its ruins. The new city in the course of time regained much of the glory that had so exalted the old." "It was built very strong, being 'completely surrounded by prodigious walls, the loftiest portion of which on the side fronting the mainland reached a height not less than 150 feet.' Thus it stood, a mighty city, when, in 332 B.C., Alexander the Great, in his course of conquest, was compelled also to besiege it, or leave behind him a powerful enemy. He determined to take the city, and accordingly began 'one of the most remarkable sieges ever recorded,' which lasted seven months.

"His first move was to build a solid mole two hundred feet broad from the mainland to the wall of the city, and, says Grote, 'he had stones in abundance' from old Tyre, for the work, and here was the perfect, literal fulfilment of the prophecy, spoken more than two hundred and fifty years before, that 'they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water;' for, to make that mole, the troops of Alexander the Great did literally lay the stones and the timber and the dust of old Tyre in the midst of the water. Nor was that all, for the prophecy had also said that they should 'scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock.' And so it came about that in the very nature of the case, the builders were compelled to literally 'scrape' the dust from old Tyre, and at the last to leave her 'like the top of a rock.'

" 'It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea.' This was not fulfilled by the capture of the city by Alexander. Altho he took the city, he did not destroy it, and altho Alexander sold many of the people into slavery, yet the place was soon repopled, and regained much prosperity. In the fourth century, Jerome called it the noblest and most beautiful city of Phœnicia, and wondered at what seemed to be the non-fulfilment of the prophecy that pronounced its desolation. In the time of the crusades it sustained a long siege, and was taken in 1124; but from the conquest of Syria by Selim I, in A.D. 1516 its decline was rapid, and soon its ruin became complete.

Words of Travelers.

It was visited by Sandys, the traveler, in A.D. 1610-11, who said:

"This once famous Tyre is now no other than a heap of ruins; yet they have reverent aspect, and do instruct the pensive beholder with their exemplary frailty."

In 1697, Maundrell visited it, and said of it:

"On the north side is an old Turkish ungarrisoned castle, besides which you see nothing here but a mere Babel of broken walls, pillars, vaults, etc., there being not so much as one entire house left."

Dr. Robinson, in 1838, spent a Sunday there, and wrote of it thus:

"I continued my walk along the shore of the peninsula, part of which is now unoccupied, except as a place to spread nets upon, musing upon the pride and fall of ancient Tyre. Here was the little isle once covered by her palaces, and surrounded by her fleets; but alas! thy riches and thy fame, thy merchandise, thy mariners, and thy pilots, thy calkers, and the occupiers of thy merchandise that were in thee—where are they? Tyre has indeed become like the top of a rock. The sole tokens of her ancient splendor—columns of red and gray granite, sometimes forty or fifty heaped together, or marble pillars—lie broken and strewed beneath the waves in the midst of the sea."

The word uttered by Ezekiel, nearly twenty-five hundred years ago, concerning Tyre, has been literally fulfilled.

[In the next paper will be presented "The Burden of Egypt" the conclusion of this article.]