Bible history of world government and a forecast of its future from Bible prophecy

Introduction

The average person has studied the Bible in parts : a chapter a day, a lesson a week, a Psalm or favorit portion now and then. The result is that few people have a comprehensive view of the Bible as one Book. The history, the prophecy and morals of the Bible are, to them, like so many different departments of science, beautiful and ideal, but far removed from our times and unrelated to practical affairs.

It is the intent of this book to emphasize the unity in purpose of the whole Bible. The author has taken advantage of the universal interest in the subject of world government awakened by the present upheaval in world politics to show that the whole history and prophecy of the Bible can be grouped systematically about thQ subject " World Government." For Biblk nis£ofy and prophecy have to do with events, past and future, on earth; and the issues are bound up in moral and spiritual conditions in heaven and earth.

The eight main divisions of the book were originally given as a series of lectures at the

Apostolic Holiness University, Greensboro, North Carolina, in the fall of 1917, and taken down in shorthand. The stenographer's notes have been carefully revised and condensed, in some instances, and, in other places, considerable matter has been added.

It is hoped that the reading of these pages will make the doctrine of the second coming of our Lord to appear so necessary a part of the plan of God through the ages that it will become to many others, as it has to the author, the end toward which all other events converge.

The author acknowledges his indebtedness to J. Walter Malone, of Cleveland Bible Institute, Cleveland, Ohio, for the use in this book of his chart, "The Plan of the Ages," and is constrained to testify to the fact that it was a study of this chart in connection with lessons by its designer that first interested him in this line of study.

Chapter I. God, Creator And Maker

Everywhere, east and west, north and south, people are asking questions about prophecy: what the great world war means, how near the second coming of the Lord may be, and many other similar questions.

It is comparatively easy to preach a sermon on the second coming of the Lord that will be readily understood by those who are students of the Word: and yet the masses will go away from a talk that deals exclusively with prophecy just about as much confused as they were before, because they have not been brought up to the subject by proper introductions.

It is my aim in these lectures to lay the foundation for prophetic interpretation in a proper interpretation of Bible history, and come up to the present condition of the world and its future form a measure of understanding of the whole Bible. These things can be made much more clear through a comprehensive understanding of Bible teaching, both in history and prophecy, by which method the beginning, that which is taking place now, and that which is to come are correlated so that they come together as a consecutive whole.

One reason why people, who first hear a sermon on the second coming of Christ, or read a book on the subject, are disposed to discard the teaching, is, because the idea of the personal return of Jesus to the world and the accompanying events are of an order so entirely conflicting with what they have been accustomed to as in order, that they cannot conceive of conditions like that. But if one can be made to see, by a comprehensive view of God's dealings in the past and what He says He will do in the future, that these things clustering about our Lord's second coming belong to God's major purposes, so that the present is lifted out of its little cycle into a greater one, the second coming of our Lord, instead of breaking in as a discord, becomes plainly consistent as the only possible solution of the difficulties in which the human race has involved itself.

Title of the Series

It may be in place to state the reason for choosing the title used for this series of lectures. It has been selected after a search to find a subject under which the past, the presens and the future of Bible revelation could be correlated. It is an attempt to find a mountain peak from which we can see at one time the beginning, course and continuance of God's plan through the ages, from the remotest past concerning which there is a hint in the Bible, through the events that have transpired in the history of man onward to the most distant point in eternity the Scriptures suggest.

I must admit that I am venturing on this first lecture of the series without yet seeing to the end. Somewhat like Abraham, called 4 ' unto a land that I will show thee," it is taking some faith to believe that I will arrive at the desired end that is yet dim and distant to me. At this time, however, we will consider together this subject, "The Bible History of World Government and a Forecast of Its Future from Bible Prophecy," beginning with the division "God, Creator and Maker."

The Triune God

We readily find the text for a lecture like this in the first verse of the Bible: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." The large word in this text is "God," occurring thirty-five times in the first thirty-four verses of the Bible, and in every instance in the nominative case as subject of a sentence followed by a verb in the active voice. In all this chapter of beginnings God is active and never acted upon.

Who is this God that is doing such large things? We will do well to see what He says of Himself in His own Book. The name for God in the original Hebrew is itself a revelation of His nature. "Elohim" is more specific in its meaning than the English word "God." It is a plural name, like cherubim and seraphim, the ending "im" indicating more than one. This prepares us to read, further on in the same chapter, what God says: "Let US make man in OUR image," the plural pronoun again indicating that the noun for which it stands is plural. In other parts of the Bible it is revealed that God subsists in three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. There never was a time when God did not exist, nor was there ever a time when He was not three Persons. That is a very great and important fact for us to have settled in our minds in thinking about God.

It is stated in this first verse of the Bible that God created something. Here we have another word which is voluminous in its sweep. It is likely that the average Bible reader would get as much out of the verse if it read "in the beginning God MADE the heaven and the earth," but they would fail to comprehend what the Bible is talking about. It is important for us to learn to carefully consider the meaning of Bible words, "Create" is not altogether synonymous with "make." The meaning of the word "create" is to bring into existence without any material with which to begin. Hebrews 11:3 illustrates this: "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God; so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." The world did not come into existence by being made out of other alreadyexisting material, but it was created.

Here, then, are three great revelations God has given us, as equally difficult for us to prove as they would have been for us to have discovered: God always has been; He has always been a Trinity; the material universe has not always been, but was created from nothing.

In the Beginning

We have lived in the midst of these surroundings as have our fathers and grand-fathers before us, until it seems as though we live in an everlasting world. The stars have coursed in the sky above, clustered in their constellations, ages upon ages. But there was a time when there were none of these things: no earth, no sun, no moon, no stars, when the great universe was one great empty space — and I have sometimes wondered if even space itself was not a creation. There was a time when the only existing thing was God, (for He is the Creator of all things), in three Persons, and He created all these things we have just been speaking of. He brought them out of nothing by the power and authority of His word.

The Primeval Creation

Some people have taken a good deal of trouble trying to discover the ways and means by which God brought things into existence. The natural mind is always searching for a gradual process for all things. It wants a man to gradually get converted, to gradually get sanctified, and the same natural mind conceives that God gradually made planets, suns and things like that. By w T hat gradual process can you conceive of God bringing something into existence out of nothing? No matter what constructive processes He used, there must have been an instant when nothing came into something. So of necessity the first creation must have been an instantaneous creation. With this the Scriptures agree. In Psalm 33:6 we read, "By the word of the Lord w r ere the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth." In the 9th verse it says, "He spake and it was done." This is not speaking of what men call the six "creative days," but of that primeval creation when things came out of nothing into something. Oh, to think of the power of our God! The Triune God looked across the stretches of empty space, without an atom of matter in them, not a speck of dust, not a drop of w r ater. He spoke into those vast vacancies and this round earth immediately came into existence ; He spoke again and the great sun rose in splendor and poured his beams over the scene; He spoke again and the planetary system came into existence. As fast as the words of an orator follow each other, system followed system, until the vast universe was filled beyond the reach of the most powerful telescope. Oh, our God is a mighty God!

Human Theories of Creation

That primeval creation was a perfect creation. There is not much said in the Bible about it, just enough so we know there was such a creation.

To be sure it is the general opinion that God created the earth in the form described in the second verse of the first chapter* of Genesis: "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The popular opinion, even among Bible students of note and great theologians, is that God brought the earth into existence as a great shapeless mass, and all other things accordingly.

La Place's nebular hypothesis of the origin of planetary systems was in vogue when I was in public school. I believe it has been modified somewhat now, but it will serve to illustrate men's theories in general. This scientist held that space was originally filled with microscopic particles of dust. By a process, which the natural mind readily consents to, but cannot explain, these particles became attracted to each other, forming eventually a great mass. By the friction of these particles against one another heat was formed. A rotary motion shaped the mass into a sphere which became the sun, and, by means of accelerated movement, this mass threw off portions, which, contiuing their revolution around the central body, became the planets; and these planets by their rotary movement threw off portions which became their moons.

In harmony with this theory of the origin of things, scientists tell us that, after some ages, the surface of these planets congealed into a rocky crust, which, by atmospheric action and erosion, clothed themselves with soil. After more ages vegetation sprang up by some protoplasmic process. Plants evolved higher and higher forms until eventually the lower forms of animal life were produced. Darwin and his school splice out and consummate this body of theory by imagining that these animals evolved higher and higher forms, from frogs to monkeys and monkeys to men.

The unregenerated mind accepts that so readily, and grasps it so easily! But this Book tells us that "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.'' It originally came into existence a perfect earth, suitable for habitation, with all its features perfectly formed for the purpose for which it was designed. It was not created waste and void.

The Primeval Earth Wrecked

A careful examination into the meaning of words and the comparison of different portions of Scripture will greatly help one to an understanding of these first verses of Genesis. This word "was" in Genesis 1:2. "The earth WAS without form and void," is the same word as that translated " became" in

Genesis 19:26. "His wife looked back from behind him and she BECAME a pillar of salt." Now, it would be absurd to think that Lot's wife was always a pillar of salt, would it not? But there are a great many people that suggest that the earth was CREATED without form and void because Genesis 1:2 says that at that time it was without form and void. The fact is that it was created a perfect world, and later became without form and void, as the result of some prehistoric cataclysm which we will later endeavor to discover.

Proof of this statement is found in Isaiah 45:18. "For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God Himself that formed the earth and made it; He hath established it, He created it not in vain, He formed it to be inhabited." Reference to the Hebrew, in which Moses wrote Genesis 1:2, shows that " without form" is translated from the word tohu. Isaiah wrote in the same Hebrew language, and comparison reveals the fact that the expression "in vain" used in Isaiah 45:18 is translated from the same word TOHU. Putting the two texts together we read in

Genesis 1:2, "the earth was tohu," and in Isaiah 45:18, "He created it not tohu."

Now it is plain that, if the earth was not created tohu, it must have become tohu after it was created. It seems evident that some disaster befell the primeval earth, wrecking it and leaving it tohu and bohu, (bohu is the Hebrew word from which "void" is translated). If that disaster was of a sufficiently violent character, we can imagine that it might have scattered the elements of the earth, sun, moon and stars as meteoric dust throughout the umVerse, and there La Place may begin his nebular hypothesis, if we must find a place for it. The Bible goes farther back than scientists do. They have to begin when there was some matter in existence ; but the Bible begins when there was no matter in existence.

The Six Days of Genesis In between the first and second verses of Genesis you can throw all the nebular hypotheses, geological ages and other things science demands. The attempt has been made to take the six days described in the remainder of the first chapter of Genesis and extend them out to cover the ages through which the earth has evidently been in existence, but no such questionable process is necessary. All the time science demands can go, as we have seen, between verses one and two. And, then, it seems very evident that those six days are days of twenty-four hours each. They are evidently intended to be so understood. From the Bible account alone, compared with all the Bible says on the subject, the unsophisticated mind would have to conclude that the six days are days of twenty-four hours each. A description of the days themselves indicates this: "The evening and the morning were the first day." That was written by a Jew, originally to Jews, whose days began at sunset and continued through the twelve hours of darkness and twelve hours of light. This phrase follows the description of every day. Again the fourth commandment says: "In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is." Note it says MADE here not CREATED, so it is not referring to the creation of verse one, but to the re-making described in the remainder of the first chapter of Genesis.

To be sure the word "day" has other uses in the Bible than the designation of 24-hour periods. For instance, "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years," (II Peter 3:8). Again periods of time of varying length are spoken of as a "day." For instance, Gen. 2:4, "In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." This use, however, is not as common in the Bible as one might at first think. The word "day" is also used of the light period of each day as distinguished from the night, (Gen. 1:5). But this does not mean that every time the word "day" occurs in the Bible it means one thousand years or some indefinite period. In fact ^"day" always means a period of twenty-four liours unless the context shows a different meaning is intended. The use of a numeral with the word always marks it as applying strictly to a twenty-four hour period. The words "first," "second," etc., are used of these Genesis days, and the word "six" in the recapitulation in Exodus 20:11. We conclude, therefore that God intended us to understand that, after the lapse of a period of time, the length if which is not stated, He in six days prepared the once devastated earth for the habitation of man.

All questions raised by this interpretation are readily settled if we stay with the Bible as we have begun. If we ask how the trees in the garden, planted the third day, were full grown and bearing fruit when Adam, created the sixth day, was ready to eat it, we will find our answer in Gen. 2:5. where it says that God made every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew. He made the trees full-grown just as He made Adam a full-grown man to start with. Of the animals also we are told, Gen. 2:19, "out of the dust of the ground God formed every beast of the field," quite evidently full-grown, as He took them to Adam to get a name for them.

We cannot, in this lecture, follow Adam and the restored earth further without infringing on some of the following lectures, but it may be well, before leaving the subject, to briefly consider two lines of teaching set forth in this connection.

Four Fundamental Truths Stated In the first three chapters of Genesis certain fundamental truths are briefly stated that it is well for us to carefully consider for they serve as the elements of Bible doctrine. To a remarkable degree the rest of the Bible is but an enlargement and elucidation of truths here stated, as it were, in germ. There are especially four such truths Avorthy of mention. To show their practical value it may be said that these four truths, here briefly stated, will serve as a touchstone to prove the soundness or unsoundness of any sermon or writing purporting to be based on the Bible. Every sermon may well include them all; and any sermon that cannot be made to stand upon them is wrong somewhere.

The first of these great truths is that God created all things. Nothing is said anywhere in the Bible that throws any doubt on that statement. Any suggestion about matter having always existed, or having come into existence by processes other than by God's creative act, must be discarded as unscriptural.

The second great truth is that all men descended from Adam. No word of Scripture casts a shadow of doubt on that statement, or raises any question or suggests a race of men that did not descend from Adam.

The third great truth is consequent upon the second — the involving of all men in the results of Adam's fall. If there were men in the world who could trace their ancestry to some one else than Adam they might claim that they did not have inbred sin. But the Bible statements are absolutely consistent in this history.

The fourth great truth is the promise of the Redeemer to come as a member of the same human family of Adam.

Just remember these four teachings of the Scriptures. Every one of them is a revelation from God which we can know only by believing what He says about it. The Bible does not attempt to prove that these things are so; it simply reveals the fact that they are so. Whenever you hear a sermon that denies any of these four teachings, bear in mind that it is not an orthodox sermon. To be sure, people who are not orthodox will not usually radically deny them when they are trying to deceive you. They prefer instead to say something to lead you away from these truths. Well, take what they say and see if it stands on these four great principles. If it does not there is something the matter with that sermon. The preacher who says something that will not fit in with God's Creatorship, the descent of all men from Adam, the involving of all men in the results of the fall, and the promise of the Redeemer, is a man to avoid as a leader, no matter how nicely he may do it, for he is intending to take you away from the foundation. Four Fundamental Errors Refuted

I notice also that these three chapters of Genesis refute four popular modern errors.

First, Unitarianism. It has already been shown that the very name of God in the original, Elohim, used thirty-five times in the first thirty-four verses, is plural; and the pronoun "us" shows that the God of the Bible is not after the Unitarian conception. The object of the Unitarian error is to rob Jesus Christ, the Son of God, of His Deity. The Holy Ghost foresaw this attempt and inspired Moses to write these chapters in such a way that the error would be refuted in advance.

The next popular teaching we will mention as being refuted by these chapters is Pantheism. That, as the derivation of the word plainly shows, is simply the belief that God is everywhere, God is in everything, and everything is God. It confuses God and. nature. There are people who say they see God in the stars, in the grass, in the flowers,, and claim to have something of God in themselves, but they are strangers to the true God. The God of the Bible is prior to the stars and flowers, prior to the zephyrs and summer breezes. He has something to do with them all, but He existed before any of these things did; so He cannot be them, and they cannot be Him. The way this error is now generally propagated is under the term, "the divine immanence." Now, there is a truth about God being everywhere that is Scriptural, but it is not true to the extent that God is in everybody, converted or unconverted. If He were He would send part of Himself to hell when He sent sinners there. You will see that the pantheist is necessarily a no-hellite.

In a funeral sermon preached by a Hicksite (Unitarian) preacher the statement was made of the young man who had been killed that, because he believed in the divine immanence, therefore lie was saved, because he could not go where God was not. That is all the foundation some people have for their comfort regarding eternity. There are some places where God is not in the w^ay in which He is in other places, and we need to guard ourselves a little on the expression, "God is everywhere." God is not everywhere like a great volume of gas, impregnating everywhere. God is not everywhere like the atmosphere. God is a Spirit, and the sense in which God is everywhere is more Scripturally suggested by the thought that God is able at any instant to manifest Himself anywhere in His universe, rather than a great gaseous presence that is everywhere alike all the time. There is a place in the universe that God is in a way that He is nowhere else. There is a place where Jesus is today bodily, and He is nowhere else in that way. As Christians we may speak of His being in our hearts, but that is as the Spirit manifests His presence there and takes of the things of Christ and shows them to us. He is at the right hand of God the Father in the body, and He is not here in that way, and He has not been since New Testament times. He will be here again some day, when He comes again, but He is not here now in that way.

Another modern error exploded by the statements of these first chapters is Christian Science. The first chapter of Genesis refutes one of the fundamental teachings of that misnamed error. I had mv first battle with Christian Science almost without knowing it and won by being fortified with the first chapter of Genesis. A woman approached me and, after talking religiously, asked, "Did you ever study Christian Science?" I told her I never had. She said, "Christian Science teaches that matter is evil and mind is good, and that mind triumphs over matter." I responded, "Does the Bible mean mind or matter when it says in Genesis, 'And God saw all that He had made, and, behold, it was very good!" There was no further argument. I then learned one great lesson, not to study systems of error to meet them, but to be familiar with the Bible, and the Holy Ghost will bring to remembrance what you need to meet the error.

But there is another popular error that is exploded by the Bible. We have heard much about evolution: that life has moved upward from lower vegetable forms to higher ones, until it became semi-animal, and finally animal; then from lower animal forms it evolved the higher animal forms, and, eventually, man. In this first chapter of Genesis it is stated ten times, of the different kinds of plants and animals, that they brought forth after their kind. That is, if you plant wheat you get wheat, and you will keep on getting wheat as long as you plant wheat; it brings forth after its kind on and on indefinitely. Where would evolution make any progress if it is true that everything brings forth after its kind'?

But the thing that shows us the error of evolution most crushingiy is the experience Adam had in hunting a wife. He found himself alone in the garden; and, though he had a propensity for a companion, he found no companionable creature about him. "The Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make an help meet for him." As a preliminary to relieving Adam's loneliness we read, "Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them, and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof." Let the evolutioists say what they please about Adam being just out of apedom. the indications are that Adam was a smart man. He excelled all the modern scientists in his ability to invent names without going into the Latin language : ' ' And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field." But the quest for a companion for Adam among all earth's creatures is concluded in these words: "but for Adam there was not found an helpmeet for him."

Now if it is true, as evolutionists explain, that the gradation of improvement is so small that it takes centuries to see any advance from species to species, how does it come that Adam was so far in advance of all other creatures? Surely, if evolution is true, there would have been a suitable mate for Adam as there had been for his ancestors all the generations before — if he had had ancestors. But when Adam had looked over all the creatures there was not one at all like him. So God had to do an additional creative act*

The infidels and higher critics do not make much fuss about God creating Adam out of the dust, but they make a great howl about his making the woman out of one of Adam's ribs. Why is the creation of Eve made a point of attack instead of the creation of Adam? Surely not altogether because of the miraculous, though that is one reason, because to make a man out of dust would be as miraculous as making a woman out of a rib. T have noticed that the devil seems to know the things in the Old Testament that speaks beforetime of Jesus Christ, and he invariably attacks these points. That is why Jonah is so attacked by these agents of Satan. Jonah, in his experience with the fish, and his final rescue, is a type, a picture, which Jesus Himself refers to, of Christ's death and resurrection; and the devil is determined he will destroy that picture or terribly mar it.