History and Prophecy
141
[183]
The prophets to whom these great scenes were revealed longed
to understand their import. They “inquired and searched diligently:
... searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which
was in them did signify.... Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto
themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now
reported unto you; ... which things the angels desire to look into.”
1
Peter 1:10-12
.
To us who are standing on the very verge of their fulfillment, of
what deep moment, what living interest, are these delineations of the
things to come—events for which, since our first parents turned their
steps from Eden, God’s children have watched and waited, longed and
prayed!
At this time, before the great final crisis, as before the world’s
first destruction, men are absorbed in the pleasures and the pursuits of
sense. Engrossed with the seen and transitory, they have lost sight of
the unseen and eternal. For the things that perish with the using, they
are sacrificing imperishable riches. Their minds need to be uplifted,
their views of life to be broadened. They need to be aroused from the
lethargy of worldly dreaming.
From the rise and fall of nations as made plain in the pages of Holy
Writ, they need to learn how worthless is mere outward and worldly
glory. Babylon, with all its power and its magnificence, the like of
which our world has never since beheld,—power and magnificence
which to the people of that day seemed so stable and enduring,—how
completely has it passed away! As “the flower of the grass” it has
perished. So perishes all that has not God for its foundation. Only that
which is bound up with His purpose and expresses His character can
endure. His principles are the only steadfast things our world knows.
[184]
It is these great truths that old and young need to learn. We need to
study the working out of God’s purpose in the history of nations and
in the revelation of things to come, that we may estimate at their true
value things seen and things unseen; that we may learn what is the true
aim of life; that, viewing the things of time in the light of eternity, we
may put them to their truest and noblest use. Thus, learning here the
principles of His kingdom and becoming its subjects and citizens, we
may be prepared at His coming to enter with Him into its possession.