08 THE UNITED STATES HAS ARISEN IN THE EXACT MANNER INDICATED BY THE SYMBOL
The Marvel of Nations
- Contents- TABLE OF CONTENTS
- PREFACE
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- 01 EXPECTATIONS AND PREDICTIONS OF EMINENT MEN
- 02 A CENTURY’S PROGRESS
- 03 POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE OF THE NATION
- 04 IMPORTANT PROBABILITIES CONSIDERED
- 05 A CHAIN OF PROPHECY
- 06 LOCATION OF THE GOVERNMENT REPRESENTED BY THE SECOND SYMBOL OF Revelation 13
- 07 WHEN MUST THE GOVERNMENT INDICATED BY THIS SYMBOL ARISE?
- 08 THE UNITED STATES HAS ARISEN IN THE EXACT MANNER INDICATED BY THE SYMBOL
- 09 THE TWO GREAT PRINCIPLES OF THIS GOVERNMENT
- 10 INCONSISTENT UTTERANCES
-
- 12 CHURCH AND STATE
- 13 THE SUNDAY QUESTION
- 14 INDICATIONS OF COMING CHANGES
- APPENDIX
-
- INDEX
Search Results
- Results
- Related
- Featured
- Weighted Relevancy
- Content Sequence
- Relevancy
- Earliest First
- Latest First
- Exact Match First, Root Words Second
- Exact word match
- Root word match
- EGW Collections
- All collections
- Lifetime Works (1845-1917)
- Compilations (1918-present)
- Adventist Pioneer Library
- My Bible
- Dictionary
- Reference
- Short
- Long
- Paragraph
No results.
EGW Extras
Directory
08 THE UNITED STATES HAS ARISEN IN THE EXACT MANNER INDICATED BY THE SYMBOL
THE manner in which the two-horned beast was seen coming up shows, equally with its location and its chronology, that it is a symbol of the United States. John says he saw the beast coming up “out of the earth.” And this expression must have been designedly used to point out the contrast between the rise of this beast and that of other national prophetic symbols. The four beasts of Daniel 7 and the leopard beast of Revelation 13 all arose out of the sea. Says Daniel, “The four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea; and four beast came up from the sea.” The sea denotes peoples, nations, and tongues (Revelation 17:15), and the winds denote political strife and commotion. Jeremiah 25:32, 33. There was, then in this scene, the dire commotion of nature’s mightiest elements, — the wind above, the waters, beneath, the fury of the gale, the roaring and dashing of the waves, and the tumult of the raging storm; and in the midst of this war of elements, as if aroused from the depths of the sea by the fearful commotion, these beasts one after another appeared. In other words, the governments of which these beasts were symbols owed their origin to movements among the people which would be well represented by the sea lashed into foam by the sweeping gale; they arose by the upheavals of revolution, and through the strife of war.MANA 124.1
But when the prophet beholds the rising of the two-horned beast how different the scene! No political tempest sweeps the horizon, no armies clash together like the waves of the sea. He does not behold the troubled and restless surface of the waters, but a calm and immovable expanse of earth. And out of this earth, like a plant growing up in a quiet and sheltered spot, he sees this beast, bearing on his head the horns of a lamb, those eloquent symbols of youth and innocence, daily augmenting in bodily proportions, and daily increasing in physical strength.MANA 125.1
If any one should here point to the war of the Revolution as an event which destroys the force of this application, it would be sufficient to reply: 1. That war was at least fifteen years in the past when the two-horned beast was introduced into the field of this vision; and 2. The war of the Revolution was not a war of conquest. It was not waged to overthrow any other kingdom and build this government on its ruins, but only to defend the just rights of the American people. An act of resistance against continual attempts of injustice and tyranny cannot certainly be placed in the same catalogue with wars of aggression and conquest. The same may be said of the war of 1812. Hence these conflicts do not even partake of the nature of objections to the application here set forth.MANA 125.2
The same view of this point is taken by eminent statesmen here and elsewhere. In a speech at the “Centennial Dinner,” at the Westminster Palace Hotel, London, July 4, 1876, J.P. Thompson, LL.D., said:—MANA 125.3
“I thank God that this birthday of the United States as a nation does not commemorate a victory of arms. War preceded it, gave occasion to it, followed it; but the figure of Independence shaped on the Fourth of July, 1776, wears no helmet, brandishes no sword, and carries no stain of slaughter and blood. I recognize all that war has done for the emancipation of the race, the progress of society, the assertion and maintenance of liberty itself; I honor the heroes who have braved the fury of battle for country and right, I appreciate the virtues to which war at times has trained nations as well as leaders and armies; yet I confess myself utterly wearied and sated with these monuments of victory in every capital of Europe, made of captured cannon, and sculptured over with scenes of carnage. I am sick of that type of history that teaches our youth that the Alexanders and Caesars, the Frederics and Napoleons, are the great men who have made the world; and it is with a sense of relief and refreshment that I turn to a nation whose birthday commemorates a great moral idea, a principle of ethics applied to political society — that government represents the whole people, for the equal good of all. No tide of battle marks this day; but itself marks the high water line of heaving, surging humanity.” — United States as a Nation, pp. 13,14.MANA 126.1
Hon. Wm. M. Evarts quotes with approval a saying of Burke, respecting our Revolution, as follows:—MANA 126.2
“A great revolution has happened — a revolution made, not by chopping and changing of power in any of the existing States, but by the appearance of a new State, of a new species in a new part of the globe. It has made as great a change in all the relations and balances and gravitations of power, as the appearance of a new planet would in the system of the solar world.”MANA 126.3
The word which John uses to describe the manner in which this beast comes up is very expressive. It is anabainon, one of the prominent definitions of which is, “To grow or spring up as a plant.” And it is a remarkable fact that this very figure has been chosen by political writers as the one conveying the best idea of the manner in which this government has arisen. Mr. G.A. Townsend, in his work entitled, “The New World Compared with the Old,” p. 462, says:—MANA 126.4
“Since America was discovered, she has been a subject of revolutionary thought in Europe. The mystery of her coming forth from vacancy, the marvel of her wealth in gold and silver, the spectacle of her captives led through European capitals, filled the minds of men with unrest; and unrest is the first stage of revolution,“MANA 127.1
On p. 635, he further says:—MANA 127.2
“In this web of islands — the West Indies — began the life of both [North and South] Americas. There Columbus saw land, there Spain began her baneful and brilliant Western Empire; thence Cortez departed for Mexico, De Soto for the Mississippi, Balboa for the Pacific, and Pizarro for Peru. The history of the United States was separated by a beneficent Providence far from this wild and cruel history of the rest of the continent, and like a silent seed we grew into empire [italics ours]; while empire itself, beginning in the South, was swept by so interminable a hurricane that what of its history we can ascertain is read by the very lightnings that devastated it. The growth of English America may be likened to a series of lyrics sung by separate singers, which coalescing, at last make a vigorous chorus, and this, attracting many from afar, swells and is prolonged, until presently it assumes the dignity and proportions of epic song.”MANA 127.3
A writer in the Dublin Nation, about the year 1850, spoke of the United States as a wonderful empire which was “emerging,” and “amid the silence of the earth daily adding to its power and pride.”MANA 127.4
In Martyn’s “History of the Great Reformation,” Vol. 4. p. 238, is an extract from an oration delivered by Edward Everett on the English exiles who founded this government, in which he says:—MANA 127.5
“Did they look for a retired spot, inoffensive from its obscurity, safe in its remoteness from the haunts of despots, where the little church of Leyden might enjoy freedom of conscience? Behold the mighty regions over which in peaceful conquest-victoria sine clade they have borne the banners of the cross.”MANA 127.6
We now ask the reader to look at these expressions side by side, — “come up out of the earth,” “coming forth from vacancy,” emerging amid the silence of the earth,” “like a silent seed we grew into empire,” “mighty regions” secured by “peaceful conquest.” The first is from the prophet, stating what would be when the two-horned beast should arise; the others are from political writers, telling what has been in the history of our own government. Can any one fail to see that the last four are exactly synonymous with the first, and that they record a complete accomplishment of the prediction? And what is not a little remarkable, those who have thus recorded the fulfillment have, without any reference to the prophecy, used the very figure which the prophet employed. These men, therefore, being judges, — men of large and cultivated minds, whose powers of discernment all will acknowledge to be sufficiently clear, — it is certain that the particular manner in which the United States has arisen, so far as it concerns its relation to other nations, answers most strikingly to the development of the symbol under consideration.MANA 128.1
We now extend the inquiry a step further: Has the United States “coming up” in a manner to fulfill the prophecy in respect to the achievements this government has accomplished? Has the progress made been sufficiently great and sufficiently rapid to correspond to that visible and perceptible growth which John saw in the two-horned beast?MANA 128.2
In view of what has already been presented in Chapter 2., this question need not be asked. To show how the development of our country answers to the “coming up” of the symbol, would be but to repeat the evidence there given. When was the wonderful national development indicated by the two-horned beast to appear? — In the very era of the world’s history where our own government has appeared. Where was it to be witnessed? — In that territory which our own government occupies. We call the attention of the reader again to the wonderful facts stated in Chapter 2. Their significance is greatly enhanced by the representations of that portion of the prophecy we are now considering. Read again the statement from Macmillan & Co., on p. 26, showing that during the half century ending in 1867, the United States added to its domain over fourteen hundred thousand square miles of territory more than any other single nation added to its area, and over eight hundred thousand more than was added to their respective kingdoms by all the other nations of the earth put together. Its increase in population and all the resources of national strength during the same time were equally noteworthy. And this marvelous exhibition has occurred, be it remembered, at that very epoch when the prophecy of the two-horned beast bids us look for a new government just then arising to prominence and power among the nations of the earth. According to the argument on the chronology of this symbol, we cannot go back of the present century for its fulfillment; and we submit to the candid reader that to apply this to any other government in the world but our own during this time, would be contrary to fact, and utterly illogical. It follows, then that our own government is the one in question; for this is the one which, at the right time and in the right place, has been emphatically “coming up.”MANA 128.3
The only objection we can anticipate is that this nation has progressed too fast and too far, — that the government has already outgrown the symbol. But what shall be thought of those who deny that it has any place in prophecy at all? No; this prodigy has its place on the prophetic page; and the path which has thus led us to the conclusion that the two-horned beast is the prophetic symbol of the United States, is hedged in on either side by walls of adamant that reach to heaven. To make any other application is an utter impossibility. The thought would be folly, and the attempt, abortion.MANA 130.1