Christ, Christianity and the Bible

by Isaac Massey Haldeman

This prophecy has been fulfilled.

For nineteen hundred years the Jew—as a Jew—has steadily rejected a crucified Christ. Here and there an individual, paying the penalty of scorn and contumely from his own people, has believed the Gospel and owned the crucified and despised man of Nazareth as his very Lord and God. He has done so according to that election of grace which the Bible foretells (an elect remnant is seen through all the ages, under one dispensation or another, responding to the call of God—like the seven thousand who would not bow the knee to Baal; and belonging to that election of grace the believing Jew stands out marked and sealed of God) but the Jew as a nation with unbroken solidarity refuses to-day the only Jew who can establish him in the land of his fathers and fulfil the covenant promises.

Equally fulfilled is the other side of the prophecy.

The Gentiles, who, racially considered, despise the Jew and everything of the Jew, to-day own and accept this rejected and crucified Jew of Calvary, not only as Israel’s Messiah and king, but as the redeemer and saviour provided of God for Gentiles; so that the Gentile world now worships and adores him as very God, holding up the cross of his shame and death as the symbol of highest honor and most radiant glory.

The Bible has predicted the final characteristics of the present age in terms precise and clear.

By type, figure and direct prophecy it announces that the last form of government among the nations just previous to the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ will be democracy—the rule of the people: “The government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

That prophecy practically has been fulfilled.

Democracy is, nearly, the universal mode of government. England in some respects is more democratic than the United States. France, Portugal and Switzerland are republics. Spain, Italy and Greece are constitutional monarchies; that is to say, the people are recognized as the ultimate authority. The Northern nations, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland and Belgium, are liberal kingdoms. The monarchy is simply a fashion—the people are the rulers. Germany is a military nation. The Kaiser, speaking at times as the war lord, gives the impression that he is absolute emperor. He is far from it. The socialists count their votes by millions, and while the German people accept the empire, they do so because it is the most satisfactory agent for their business and prosperity. The German people behind the throne are the absolute power; and the voice of democracy makes no more radical utterance and demand than in the German kaiserreich. Recently, in a public interview, the Kaiser is reported to have said, he expected his son to be the last emperor of Germany, as within fifty years the whole world would become democratic. Austria is still more or less under the influence of Cæsarism, but beneath the surface, the various peoples and nationalities constituting that empire are restless, feverish, and full of democratic ideas. Turkey has been shaken by a revolt of “The Young Turks,” and the demand for more popular government. Japan has broken loose from the customs and traditions of centuries—her flag is the symbol of the rising sun, and indicates that she is seeking to take her place in the new dawn of popular sovereignty. China, the oldest civilization and the mightiest population, has become a republic, her young men returning from the universities of Europe and America having sown broadcast the seed of democracy and the claim of the people. Russia, alone, remains absolute in name, but the absolute has been shattered even there—it is supported only by bayonets and drawn swords. Every now and then a sullen sound is heard, dying away to be renewed in deeper tones; it is the voice of the people, in spite of the knout, the prison and Siberian exile, calling for what they claim to be their “rights.”

Everywhere the evidence is manifest that the prophecy of Daniel announcing the rise of the “clay” (Daniel’s symbol of the people) and the warning of Isaiah that “the nations should rush like the rushing of many waters,” and “make a noise like the noise of the seas,” are being fulfilled.

After “Clay,” or Democracy, there remains only anarchy, or power in the hands of an absolute ruler. That absolute, world-wide ruler is declared by all the prophets to be the Son of God, and his kingdom is symbolized by a stone—a stone is the very opposite of clay.