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Disgraceful Monuments, July 13
There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, as an error which
proceedeth from the ruler: folly is set in great dignity.
Ecclesiastes 10:5, 6
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In the days of King Josiah a strange appearance could be seen opposite the
temple of God. Crowning the eminence of the Mount of Olives, peering above
the groves of myrtle and olive trees, were unseemly, gigantic idols. Josiah gave
commandment that these idols should be destroyed. This was done, and the
broken fragments rolled down the channel of the Kidron. The shrines were left a
mass of ruins.
But the question was asked by many a devout worshiper, How came that
architecture on the opposite side of the Jehoshaphat ravine, thus impiously
confronting the temple of God? The truthful answer must be made: The builder
was Solomon, the greatest king that ever wielded a sceptre. These idols bore
testimony that he who had been honored and applauded as the wisest among
kings, became a humiliating wreck....
His once noble character, bold and true for God and righteousness, became
deteriorated. His profligate expenditure for selfish indulgence made him the
instrument of Satan’s devices. His conscience became hardened. His conduct
as a judge changed from equity and righteousness to tyranny and oppression....
Solomon tried to incorporate light with darkness, Christ with Belial, purity
with impurity. But in the place of converting the heathen to the truth, pagan
sentiments incorporated themselves with his religion. He became an apostate
The marks of Solomon’s apostasy lived ages after him. In the days of Christ,
the worshipers in the temple could look, just opposite them, upon the Mount
of Offense, and be reminded that the builder of their rich and glorious temple,
the most renowned of all kings, had separated himself from God, and reared
altars to heathen idols; that the mightiest ruler on earth had failed in ruling his
own spirit. Solomon went down to death a repentant man; but his repentance
and tears could not efface from the Mount of Offense the signs of his miserable
departure from God. Ruined walls and broken pillars bore silent witness for a
thousand years to the apostasy of the greatest king that ever sat upon an earthly
throne
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27
Manuscript 47, 1898
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28
The S.D.A. Bible Commentary 2:1032, 1033
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