GOD’S PROTEST

In the Bible there is fully set forth this side of the story; and, in this, the true philosophy of the whole story. Without the Bible, GOD’S PROTEST. that philosophy never can be known. For it can not be denied that the Bible reveals the fact that at the crisis of the history of each one of these great empires that have dominated the world, God has directly manifested Himself; and, without a single exception, has manifested Himself in protest. The Bible reveals that God set a protest against Nimrod’s ambition, and against Chedorlaomer’s sway; likewise that of the Pharaoh of Egypt. By the prophet Samuel, God entered most solemn protest against the establishment of kingship in Israel. To early Assyria, by the prophet Jonah, He sent a message of protest, and a call to repentance; and in the affairs of later Assyria, God revealed Himself again and again. At the height of the dominion of Babylon, He more than once entered protest, and called to righteousness the mighty king Nebuchadnezzar. In the final crisis of Babylon, by His own handwriting on the wall, He entered His protest and pronounced judgment. To the mighty kings of Media and Persia He revealed Himself in instruction and protest, and called them to the way of righteousness, and so continued as along as even He could endure it. When the “prince of Grecia” arose, He likewise called him to the way of righteousness. When the Grecian power, by transgression to the full, had sunk herself, and mighty Rome came in, God revealed Himself to Rome and to the world, and,in the person of His Son, came to make perfectly plain the way of righteousness and self-government, in view of judgment of come. ^{31Acts 24:24, 25.} And when this most exalted One thus humbled Himself and came to show the Way, He came saying to God, His Father, “I am thy servant forever.” “I delight to do. Thy will, O My God; yea, Thy law is within my heart.” ^{32Psalm 40:6-8.} “I can of Mine Own Self do nothing”; ^{34John 14:10.} “the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works.” “My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me.” “He gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.” “I came ... not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me,” “and to finish His work.” “Not My will, but Thine, be done.” This He did all of His own free, eternal choice. And thus He not only showed the way, but He is eternally “the Way,” of true, original and ultimate government; that it s self-government, under God, with God, and in God. And only in Christianity, as Christianity is in Christ, is found this true self-government, this original and ultimate government. But, even in this display of divine condescension, He was renounced and rejected. He grace was continuously beaten off, perverted, and trodden under food. Yet still, through all the consequent Dark Ages, He revealed Himself in protest, culminating in the mighty demonstration of the Reformation. And in the new nation of the United States, founded “upon the principles on which the Gospel was first propagated, and the reformation from popery carried on,” God set before all the world a great national example of protest against monarchy and imperialism of every kind, ecclesiastical or civil. And when this great example is perverted to the very building up of that against which it was originally established as that protest among nations, God still reveals Himself in protest in that mighty message of solemn warning to every nation and kindred and tongue and people, against the worship by “any man” of the beast and his image, or the receiving of his mark. ^{39Revelation 14:6-12.}EB xxii.6