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Key Text
"The
tree grew, and was strong, and the height thereof reached unto
heaven, and the sight thereof to the end of all the earth:
The leaves thereof were fair, and the fruit thereof much, and
in it was meat for all: the beasts of the field had shadow
under it, and the fowls of the heaven dwelt in the boughs thereof,
and all flesh was fed of it." Daniel 4:11-12 |
The Bible and History (Page
4 of 4)
Every nation that has come upon the stage of action has been permitted
to occupy its place on the earth, that it might be seen whether
it would fulfill the purpose of "the Watcher and the Holy
One." Prophecy has traced the rise and fall of the world's
great empires--Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. With each
of these, as with nations of less power, history repeated itself.
Each had its period of test, each failed, its glory faded, its
power departed, and its place was occupied by another.
While the nations rejected God's principles, and in this rejection wrought their
own ruin, it was still manifest that the divine, overruling purpose was working
through all their movements.
This lesson is taught in a wonderful symbolic representation given to the prophet
Ezekiel during his exile in the land of the Chaldeans. The vision was given at
a time when Ezekiel was weighed down with sorrowful memories and troubled forebodings.
The land of his fathers was desolate. Jerusalem was depopulated. The prophet
himself was a stranger in a land where ambition and cruelty reigned supreme.
As on every hand he beheld tyranny and wrong, his soul was distressed, and he
mourned day and night. But the symbols presented to him revealed a power above
that of earthly rulers.
Upon the banks of the river Chebar, Ezekiel beheld a whirlwind seeming to come
from the north, "a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness
was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the color of amber." A number
of wheels, intersecting one another, were moved by four living beings. High above
all these "was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire
stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance
of a man above upon it." "And there appeared in the cherubims the form
of a man's hand under their wings." Ezekiel 1:4, 26, 10:8. The wheels were
so complicated in arrangement that at first sight they appeared to be in confusion;
but they moved in perfect harmony. Heavenly beings, sustained and guided by the
hand beneath the wings of the cherubim, were impelling these wheels; above them,
upon the sapphire throne, was the Eternal One; and round about the throne a rainbow,
the emblem of divine mercy.
As the wheellike complications were under the guidance of the hand beneath the
wings of the cherubim, so the complicated play of human events is under divine
control. Amidst the strife and tumult of nations, He that sitteth above the cherubim
still guides the affairs of the earth.
The history of nations that one after another have occupied their allotted time
and place, unconsciously witnessing to the truth of which they themselves knew
not the meaning, speaks to us. To every nation and to every individual of today
God has assigned a place in His great plan. Today men and nations are being measured
by the plummet in the hand of Him who makes no mistake. All are by their own
choice deciding their destiny, and God is overruling all for the accomplishment
of His purposes.
The history which the great I AM has marked out in His word, uniting link after
link in the prophetic chain, from eternity in the past to eternity in the future,
tells us where we are today in the procession of the ages, and what may be expected
in the time to come. All that prophecy has foretold as coming to pass, until
the present time, has been traced on the pages of history, and we may be assured
that all which is yet to come will be fulfilled in its order.
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