| News and Views | October 1941 |
Held in Derision
“Why do the nations rage (margin, tumultuously assemble) and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against His anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall He speak unto them in His wrath, and vex them in His sore displeasure. Yet have I set My King upon My holy hill of Zion.”—Psalms 2:1-6
TODAY the world, as a whole, finds itself in the greatest distress of all time. Human wisdom and efforts, no matter how well-meaning, have utterly failed to forestall this time of trouble; and now that it is upon all nations, no way out can be found, For years prior to the outbreak of the first World War in 1914, far-seeing statesmen, economists, and some students of Biblical prophecy, saw the gathering of the elements, and the mustering of the hosts of battle, preparatory to the great struggle through which the world has been passing since. An exhaustive accumulation of thoughts and expressions was assembled and published in the book, “The Day of Vengeance” (later known as “The Battle of Armageddon”). This remarkable book, which contains also an outline of the prophetic background of these developments as then discernible, was first published in the year 1897.
Many then scoffed at the idea that an enlightened world, blessed with all the modern advantages of science and education, could lapse into such a state of barbarism as the prophecies of the Bible indicated would occur. “Brain age” philosophy reasoned that the world would steadily get better rather than worse; that wars would decrease, rather than increase; that Christianity would soon encompass the globe, rather than be encompassed by faithless worldliness and pagan ideologies. But this philosophy proved to be wrong, while the prophecies of the Bible have proved to be a true index of the future of men and nations.
Students of prophecy prior to 1914 could, by the study of national, international and ecclesiastical trends, discern the assembling of the forces that later were to be engaged in the great Armageddon struggle with which, according to the prophecies, this “present evil world” was to come to an end. It would have been unwise then for any prophetic student to be influenced by the wishful thinking of those who claimed that “every day and in every way” the world was getting “better and better.” The prophecies declared otherwise, and the climax of events proved that the prophecies were right.
Today, also, it is important that we who are peering into the prophetic pages of God’s Word to learn what will be either the temporary or permanent outcome of the trouble, should permit the prophecies to guide us, rather than to form opinions upon the basis of what may be the claims or ambitions of rulers, great or small. The universal testimony of the prophecies is that once the “day of vengeance” starts against “this world,” of which Satan is the prince, there would be no let-up in the disintegration of the elements until both the symbolic heavens and the symbolic earth were completely destroyed. There were to be periods of easement between the severe spasms of destructive trouble, but these were not to be long enough to permit society’s physicians to cure the patient, nor even to hold back the birth processes of God’s new order.
It is but natural that the rulers of the world, having no vital faith in God’s promises, and knowing very little, if anything, about His Kingdom purpose, should themselves be giving consideration to various schemes for a new order to follow the present struggle. Thus, for example, Herr Hitler is talking much about the new order he proposes to set up in Europe and the world. Many claim that Hitler’s new order will have no place in it for churchianity, either Catholic or Protestant. Others, getting their information from different news sources, visualize Hitler’s new order as one in which Papacy will have a dominant part. Certainly the Nazis are now trying hard to marshal the forces of the Catholic Church to help them defeat Communism, which it is claimed, has been the bulwark of atheism in Europe.
On the other hand, the democracies apparently do not intend to permit the Nazis to establish a new order of any kind, whether Catholic or anti-Catholic. We can’t blame the democracies for this. They have their own ideas of what the new order should be. Perhaps the weakness of their plans is in the fact that they have too many ideas. We hear of the “Four Freedoms,” the “Eight Points,” etc. Back in 1918 we heard of “Fourteen Points,” the League of Nations, and other things that were to have been the foundation of a new and lasting order of peace and happiness.
The statesmen of the world are to be commended that, in spite of all the discouragements of the last twenty-seven years, they still have the will to even plan for better things to come. Surely the whole world would enjoy peace and security. All peoples, especially the oppressed peoples of the old world, would appreciate a higher standard of living. They also would enjoy liberty, and a greater degree of education in order to know better how to use liberty for the common good of all. But what the prophecies reveal is the fact that all human efforts to bring these blessings will fail. They show that the time has come when God is intervening in the affairs of men and of nations, hence that they will not be permitted to reorganize their kingdoms, nor to establish new ones that will be capable of producing desirable results.
The divine and sovereign right to rule the earth is now in the hands of Christ—“I have set My King upon My holy hill of Zion.” (Psa. 2:6) And while the glory of God’s holy hill, Zion, is not yet fully established to accomplish the full scope of His purpose concerning the children of men, His King is now preparing the way for its ultimate manifestation. Revelation 11:17,18, reveals that Christ’s taking unto Himself His power to reign would be accompanied by the nations becoming angry. Evidently it is this same anger that is referred to in Psalm 2:1. Here the raging of the nations is accompanied by their imagining or meditating vain things. That is, they imagine they can establish a new order of their own; some visualizing one kind of a new order, and others another kind. And they take counsel together in order to accomplish their ends, but all their plans will fail.—Isa. 8:9,10
The Psalmist reveals that this taking counsel together is “against” the Lord. This does not mean that the nations are necessarily aware of the fact that their plans are against the Lord; although it is reported that the Nazi plans are quite openly against the God of the Jews, and against the Jewish Christ, Jesus. Today, because the time for Christ’s Kingdom has come, any effort to establish a new order other than that which God proposes to establish, is against the Lord, hence is doomed to failure. Sometimes God uses kings and armies as pawns to accomplish His purposes, but without their knowledge of how they are being used. (Isa. 10:5-7) Likewise, nations may take counsel together against the Lord; that is, to formulate plans opposed to His purposes, yet be ignorant of what they are really doing.
Today, the foretold “increase of knowledge” which was to accompany the Master’s second presence, has aroused the masses of the world to a sense of their rights as human beings. It has also, and in ever increasing measure, broken the shackles of superstition by which the people have been bound. This makes impossible a return of the proverbial “good old days,” hence the world’s rulers are feverishly endeavoring to formulate plans for a new order which will more nearly conform to the changed outlook of the people. They do not know that the increase of knowledge is of divine origin, and for the purpose of preparing the world for Christ’s Kingdom; hence they take counsel to meet the emergency, which counsel is against the Lord.
But “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision,” the prophet declares. This means that all the plans of nations that are not in keeping with God’s plan will come to naught. It is interesting to note the various ways in which the prophecies emphasize this fact. Isaiah 30:28 says: “And His breath, as an overflowing stream, shall reach to the midst of the neck, to sift the nations with the sieve of vanity: and there shall be a bridle in the jaws of the people, causing them to err.” According to the Revised Version, it is a sieve of “destruction” in which the Lord is now sifting the nations. The method by which it is done, the prophet shows, is by causing the people to err. How meaningful this is in the light of circumstances which have brought the nations into their present predicament.
Isaiah 63:6 reads: “And I will tread down the people in Mine anger, and make them drunk [confused] in My fury, and I will bring down their strength to the earth.” Again: “The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again.” (Isa. 24:20) There are a number of prophecies which describe this drunkenness that comes upon the nations in the time of trouble.
Symbolic Babylon made the nations “drunk” with the wine of her fornication. This drunkenness played a large part in leading the nations into their present state of chaos. But beyond this, the prophecies show that the Lord causes a drunkenness to come upon the nations, in which they stagger, or reel to and fro. The primitive root meaning of the Hebrew word translated “reel” in Isaiah 24:20, is to “waver.” Is not this exactly what has been occurring among the nations during recent years? Think of the changing scenes that have appeared in the international news parade, as friends have become enemies and enemies have become friends. We hardly know from one day to another who is on which side. Surely the Lord is keeping His word to “make them drunk,” as evidenced in the strangely changing and varied conditions now arising, and which are productive of general confusion and disruption.
The prophecy of Jeremiah 46:10 is also very much to the point. We quote: “For this is the day of the Lord God of hosts, a day of vengeance, that He may avenge Him of His adversaries: and the sword shall devour, and it shall be satiate and made drunk with their blood: for the Lord God of hosts hath a sacrifice in the north country by the river Euphrates.” The location of this “sacrifice” is interesting—“in the north country by the river Euphrates.” The use of the names Ethiopians and Libyans, in the 9th verse, would put the river Euphrates in the “north country”; but the real meaning of this prophecy can be appreciated only from the symbolic standpoint.
In the prophetic symbolisms the river Euphrates is the “waters” upon which symbolic Babylon sits, and from which she derives her support. Thus, while the Old Testament prophecies relative to the destruction of Babylon appear to apply in some respects to the overthrow of the literal city of Babylon; yet the many quotations from these prophecies, and allusions to them, found in the book of Revelation, show clearly that their main fulfillment is to be looked for in the fall and destruction of symbolic Babylon. A careful study of chapters 50 and 51 of Jeremiah, comparing the language with that used in Revelation, chapters 15 to 18, will be very enlightening on this point.
For example, Jeremiah 50:28 and 51:11, tell us that it is the vengeance of God’s temple that comes upon Babylon. Revelation 15:5,6, reveals that the seven angels having the seven plagues, come out of the temple. All of these plagues, when they are poured out, affect Babylon and her illicit lovers, the kings of the earth. In Revelation 18:4, God’s people are invited to come out of Babylon in order that they might escape the plagues that come upon her. The sixth angel that came out of the temple poured out the plague from his vial upon the great river Euphrates, “that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.” (Rev. 16:12) Compare Jeremiah 50:38.
One of the seven angels which had the vials filled with the plagues to be poured out upon Babylon, said to John, “Come hither; I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters.” This identification of the “whore” of which he speaks, is clearly a reference to Jeremiah 51:13, which reads, “O thou that dwellest upon many waters, abundant in treasures, thine end is come, and the measure of thy covetousness.”
Thus in prophecy the “north country” and the Euphrates is seen to have more than a local setting. Concerning God’s vengeance that comes upon Babylon who sits upon the Euphrates, the prophet further explains: “For, lo, I will raise and cause to come up against Babylon an assembly of great nations from the north country; and they shall set themselves in array against her; from thence she shall be taken.”—Jer. 50.9
But apparently Babylon will not realize her danger in full. In Jeremiah 50:24, we read: “I have laid a snare for thee, and thou art also taken, O Babylon, and thou wast not aware; thou art found, and also caught, because thou hast striven against the Lord.” Here we are informed that Babylon—as well as the nations in general—is also guilty of striving against the Lord. Like the nations who “set themselves against the Lord and against His anointed,” Babylon also endeavors to conceive a new order that is not the Lord’s. But, like the nations, God also holds her in derision. He sets a “snare” for her, the prophet says, which evidently means that there is held out to her, in an alluring manner, what seems to be a golden opportunity to reestablish herself as queen of the nations, only to throw her down like a “great millstone … cast … into the sea.”—Rev. 18:21
Thus will Babylon also be held in derision before the Lord. Some would have healed her, but she could not be healed. (Jer. 51:6-9) Like the symbolic heavens of II Peter 3:10, which pass away with a great “noise,” so the passing of symbolic Babylon is accompanied by “noise,” that is, by confusion along all lines. An illustration of this is her claim to be sitting as a queen at the very time the Lord’s judgments are coming upon her. (Rev: 18:7) But this “noise” is not confined to Babylon. Because of her alliance with the nations throughout the centuries, her passing is accompanied by the removal of the entire symbolic earth, in the midst of a time of confusion. The prophet says, “At the noise of the taking of Babylon the earth is moved, and the cry is heard among the nations.”—Jer. 50:46. Compare Rev. 18:8-19.
Whether or not the nations are now going through the final spasm of trouble which will bring about their complete overthrow, remains to be seen. There may still be another short period of easement, during which further efforts, both by Babylon and by the “kings of the earth who have committed fornication with her,” will try to reestablish at least a semblance of a new order in the earth. But of the final outcome there can be no doubt.
And what a blessed outcome! Instead of the peoples of the earth being exploited by an unholy city, “sitting” upon them and oppressing them; they will come under the rulership of that “holy city,” which is not a harlot, but, “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” Out from this city will flow the pure waters of the river of life. On either side of this symbolic river, will be the trees of life, bearing their life-giving fruit; and the “leaves of the trees” will be for the “healing of the nations.” How much the nations will need healing. How happy we should be that such a blessed outcome of the world’s troubles is near. Truly it is wonderful to be living at this time when there is so much evidence that “our King is marching on.”