So, when He came as Messiah, there was proof in His works of grace and miracle of His birth as Son of David, for the faith of all who would follow Him, and own Him as King, spite of lowliness and poverty. And when openly rejected, and going to the cross, a greater proof of His power and dignity is given, to sustain and invigorate the faith of His own. He who was going to be put to death by man, had power over it, and able to make death disgorge his prey. So there was the necessary resting-place, a fresh place-so to speak-for every new demand. Many received Him as Messiah who left Him when He was the object of man's scorn and hate. Even the true-hearted were in despair when death came in between them and the kingdom restored-the object of their hopes. Not one was prepared for this; not till after death and resurrection did they learn that this was the only foundation upon which their hopes could rest. Not only spiritual and heavenly blessings come to us through the cross, but all the glory of the future reign of Christ over the whole earth are founded upon His death and resurrection.
Long before the Jew was completely, though temporarily, rejected, the Gentile was brought forward. Not the Jew alone, but also the Gentile, must bear the test of the coming of Christ. Indeed the Gentile was raised to the position of power and dominion for this purpose. He was not tried because endowed with authority, but he was endowed with authority that he might be tried. The coming of Christ is the last and great test for man; and so it was seen in the fact that Jew and Gentile unite in denying and, rejecting the Lord-the one hating Him, and clamoring for His death; the other indifferent, and giving Him up to death, while finding no fault in Him. What a scene! Jewish hatred and Gentile indifference combined, and Jesus, the Holy One, is led forth to death. The Gentile was only a little less guilty than the Jew. In vain Pilate washed his hands.
The trial of the Gentiles commenced on a larger scale, and on a different platform, from that of Israel. Such dominion as Nebuchadnezzar had was never given to Israel. Not even Solomon's kingdom was anything like the extent of empire that Nebuchadnezzar had. “And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all.” (Dan. 2:3838And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold. (Daniel 2:38).) Nor has the Gentile ever realized this enormous gift, for the largest empire that ever submitted to the sway of one man never embraced the fullness of the gift as declared to the Gentile king. Yet, as it was, it was a weight of glory and power he was unable to bear; he was, as it were, crushed under it. There is a Man coming, the Man of God's right hand, who is able and worthy to bear it. The government shall be upon His shoulders, for He is the Mighty God.
Israel's trial was partly in being constituted guardians of the truth of the unity of the Godhead. They were the depositary of the oracles of God. To the Gentiles Was given power and dominion. Israel's failure was a religious failure, the Gentiles' was rather what may be called secular. God's promise secures earthly supremacy to Israel at the right time, but for this a special training was needed. The unfitness of man to rule is seen in the Gentile, the purpose of God in grace to put him there is seen in the Jew. Hence the different phases of their history, and the varied lessons of faith. God is preparing the Jew for his destined place, and preparing the place for the promised Seed-the Son of Abraham, the Son of David. He will be King, and His power will keep them so that Israel will never again forfeit their blessings, which are now secured through redemption. Even their past failure under priest, prophet, and king will then, through grace, be occasions for praise; when delivered from their enemies, purged from their sins, and sprinkled with clean water (cf. Psa. 103), they will enjoy the place given them by God, under the rule of Him who will be Savior-Priest, Savior-Prophet, and Savior-King.
Here, in the Gentile, is the exhibition of man in another and new aspect. The proof of ruin seen in Israel, and now confirmed in the Gentile. The glory of dominion and power entrusted to him was represented to Nebuchadnezzar in a dream. In the image that he saw there was gold and iron-splendor and strength. Doubtless the different aspects of power are symbolically given in the change and descent from the glittering gold to the hard iron; the former attracting by its splendor, the latter subduing all by its strength. But there it all was, expressive of what power and dominion would be in the hand of the Gentile. This is the appearance from a worldly standpoint. Very different symbols are given when that power is looked at from God's standpoint. To man it is of excellent brightness, and of terrible form, but in the eye of God the rulers of this world are beasts; nor is there in nature any creature that fittingly represents the full character of the evil, and the cruelty which would ravage the earth under their sway. This dominion was not given to man to he a blessing, and to ensure peace, but to prove him, and to demonstrate the necessity of bringing in God's King, if peace is to be established upon the earth. It is a new moral process, proving man's incapacity to rule in righteousness. Here, as in all the previous dealings with Israel, there is, and of necessity, inevitable failure. God's object in all, we may reverently say, was to bring out the absence of all good in man, and so complete failure is the natural and sure result.
With the Gentile, God begins with the fundamental truth of His Godhead-we may say the simplest principles of natural religion. This was the test applied to the Gentile king-it was the right one for him. If Israel were tested by a revealed law, the Gentile was by what needed no revelation. “For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.” (Rom. 1:2020For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: (Romans 1:20).) God was recalling this to their minds; truths which, though forgotten, left man without excuse. Now that Christ is revealed, mere natural religion becomes infidelity. God has revealed Himself in His word, in Christ. Men talk of nature, and of God as the God of nature; and though this is true, and man responsible on that ground, there is no salvation in it. In effect it is denying Him and His word. Even in Adam, while untainted with evil of any kind, we have proof that natural religion, in its pure form and when all was good, did not preserve him from sin. How willful the ignorance and pride of the infidel, who, denying plain fact, assumes to be on the ground where Adam fell He had dominion given him, but soon became a slave. Sin made him the lawful captive of Satan. The serpent at the first gave the lie direct to God, and though Adam did not believe the devil's lie-” Adam was not deceived” (1 Tim. 2:1414And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. (1 Timothy 2:14))-yet he preferred the creature to the Creator, and thus he fell under Satan's power. And here is evidence that Satan's power is unbroken. The Gentile king is no sooner invested with authority than he commands the whole world, under pain of death, to worship his image. The first act of universal power was to decree universal idolatry. “And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth, shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.” (Dan. 3:66And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace. (Daniel 3:6).) In the arrogance of pride he forgets that it was the “God of heaven” who had given him a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory; he defies God, and daringly says, “Who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?” Pride was the condemnation of the devil (1 Tim. 3:66Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil. (1 Timothy 3:6)), and Satan employs that which caused his own fall to effect the ruin of the Gentile. The first State religion established by man was idolatry.
The book of Daniel is a brief but comprehensive outline of the times of the Gentile, and of the carrying out of God's purposes, given in prophetic words of most solemn import, while veiled under supernatural imagery. It is also morally the history of the complete and immediate failure of man. It tells the same tale as Gen. 3. Adam, just created, becomes a sinner; Nebuchadnezzar, just invested with power, becomes an idolater. In the former case there was all that was good and beautiful in nature, fresh from the hand of the Creator, where man could rise from nature to the God of nature in acceptable adoration; in the latter case, the astonishing power of God who preserved His worshippers from the fury of the idolatrous king. Man broke through both. The circumstances of each widely differ, but the spirit of man is proved to be the same. Adam innocent, or Nebuchadnezzar idolatrous, show that nothing short of new life, a life above nature, even in its pristine condition, can suffice wherein to work righteousness and be obedient.
God begins with declaring His sovereignty. Nebuchadnezzar acknowledges it (see Dan. 2), but his conscience is not, touched, and he learns next that God is not only a revealer of secrets, but also One who can, and does, deliver by almighty power. And in these two facts are manifested two of what are called the natural attributes of the Deity-that is, the Omniscience and the Omnipotence of God. And do we not see the wisdom of God, who adapts the revelation of Himself to meet the conscience of a heathen who could hardly apprehend the moral attributes of God—goodness, love, and truth-but who could, and did, confess Him as the Omniscient and Omnipotent God? “Of a truth it is that your God is a God of gods, and a Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, seeing thou couldst reveal this secret.” Here is the Omniscience of God acknowledged. And when the three Hebrews came out of the fire untouched, the amazed king confessed the Omnipotence of God: “There is no other god that can deliver after this sort.” But in the deliverance of the three Hebrews a deeper truth appears, and at once flashes across the mind of the king. Not three men, but four, are walking, unhurt, in the midst of the furnace of fire, the flames of which slew the ready ministers of his rage. Who taught the king to say, “the form of the fourth is like the Son of God"? Was not this a direct revelation to him of the Being and Personality of God? I doubt if the words, “Son of God,” express any intelligent apprehension of the king's mind, or anything beyond the fact of a divine person; but there is certainly this, that God made the king use the words which reveal to us the way in which He afterward revealed Himself. The idea of absolute power and Omniscience, unconnected with a person, is intangible, a mere abstraction. A person was revealed to Nebuchadnezzar-not the vague idea of a Supreme Being, unseen and unknown, but a fourth Man-form walking in the midst of the fire. The truth of God Omniscient, Omnipotent, and who deigned to be seen, though where it was death to approach, was the suited test for a heathen. So debased was man, and sensual, that he could form no idea of God, save what he could see and touch. Hence he made idols. God met this degraded condition of mind by presenting Himself to the king as the “fourth.” There was a visible Object, yet not then to be approached. Not till Christ had been here could it be said, “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of Life.” The Son had to humble Himself in becoming a real Man before such intimacy of approach were possible. But enough was displayed on the plain of Dura to have banished idol-worship.
There might have been some even there who secretly despised the image which they openly worshipped, but they remained idolaters. The wonderful display of the power of God was in vain. The truth which glanced for a moment upon the king's mind was immediately forgotten. Another means was used before Nebuchadnezzar could speak as he does in chapter 4: 2, 3, 37. This chapter is his narrative of an event which happened to himself, and which puts his history far apart from every other man. Infidelity, in its far-seeing reason, which is able to account for all that the Bible contains upon the most approved rationalistic method, says it was only madness, and his being driven from the haunts of men, and having his dwelling with the beasts of the field, is mere poetry for being put into an asylum! On the contrary, it was plain, literal fact. Moreover, besides its moral effect upon the king, it is symbolic of the times of the Gentiles, who, after being like the beasts of the field, shall in the end be restored to “reason,” and “clothed, and in their right mind,” will, like this king, “praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase.” This wonderful close to his life raises the thought whether it is the evidence of personal salvation. We can say that a man is judged according to that which he hath, and not according to that he hath not. To look for anything like Christian faith, or even Jewish faith, would be very unintelligent.
But it is man we look at here, not Nebuchadnezzar individually; and the next phase of his evil and misuse of power, is the bringing of the holy vessels of God to serve in his idolatrous orgies. And this was not ignorant desecration, but boasting against the God of Israel. They praised the gods of gold, of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone. Even a piece of wood, or a stone, was better than God. Did that impious Belshazzar know no better? Had he never heard of God's ways with his father? Nay; “And thou, his son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knowest all this,” &c. In that same night he was slain. Judgment delayed not its avenging stroke upon one so daringly impious. Nebuchadnezzar, while worshipping other gods, yet dared not to desecrate the vessels of God, like this Belshazzar. The former put God above all gods-this one ignores the testimony of His power, of all that God was known to be, and insults Him to the utmost. The vessels of God are used to keep the devil's feast. Then comes the hand and writes upon the wall. As in Israel in the wilderness, when a man sinned presumptuously he was stoned. Belshazzar sinned presumptuously, for he knew better, and he was slain that night.
If Nebuchadnezzar gives a picture of Gentile idolatry, such as existed before the wide-spread profession of Christianity, there is something analogous to the impiety of Belshazzar, in what now has taken the place of paganism in the sphere of Christendom, where the great and aggravated sin is the making of the revealed word of God a means for the attainment and enjoyment of the world's pleasures and honors, doing in a spiritual way what Belshazzar and his court did in a physical and vulgar way. But this is man, religions man; for the feast the king made was a feast before his gods, whose praises they sing. Religious evil is worse than worldly corruption, and, just as the Babylon of old was taken and suddenly destroyed, while in the midst of revelry, so will the mystic Babylon be thrown as a great millstone into the sea. “In one hour is she made desolate.” (Rev. 18:1919And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate. (Revelation 18:19).)
There is a third phase of Gentile evil, and the worst of all-it is the deification of man. Historically Darius was entrapped by those who hated and were jealous of Daniel. The king was personally sorry, and had some sort of faith that the prophet would be preserved. “Thy God, whom thou servest continually, he will deliver thee.” Or it may be that he did not fully apprehend the words of faith and comfort that God caused him to say to Daniel. He was grieved nevertheless, and he had “labored till the going down of the sun to deliver him.” He passed the night in fasting, and hastened early in the morning to the den, and there his own heart-love for Daniel-speaks, not faith. He had said on the night previous, “He will deliver.” Now he says, “Is thy God able?” The joyful certainty of Daniel's safety works so mightily upon his mind-but it was God's judgment upon Daniel's foes-that those who so entrapped him are themselves subjected to the fate they had planned for Daniel. But, although this is highly interesting as history, and morally instructive, the whole scene is Gentile advance in wickedness, and more than failure in the place of dominion where God had put him. This first part of the book of Daniel gives in Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, and Darius, three distinct characters of the evil resulting from Gentile supremacy, which cover the whole period of the “times of the Gentiles” that are now running their course. Rampant idolatry, religious corruption, and, lastly, defiant and open denial of the rights of God; and these not only distinct, but consecutive. The darkest time is yet to come, then it will be death to pray to Him. (Rev. 13:11,11And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. (Revelation 13:11) &c.) Then, all who have not, in one way or another, the mark of the beast will be killed, and the Antichrist will assert himself to be God, and claim the homage of men as his due.
The decree of Darius (chap. 6: 26, &c.), in one particular, goes beyond that of Nebuchadnezzar; there is a millennial note in his praise— “His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed, and his dominion shall be even unto the end.” We have here, in brief, Gentile history; God beginning with the declaration of Himself as God in heaven, and, by the wonderful display of His power, demanding the worship of man, and man ending with denying God, and appropriating to himself the homage which belongs to God alone. It is the worst, if not absolutely the last, phase of man's evil and rebellion.
But if God has put the earth under the dominion of man, has He ceased to control the actions of men? Nay; but another, feature now appears in His moral processes with man during the times of the Gentiles. Empire was not, and could not, be given to the Gentile so long as Israel or Judah retained their position in the land, with a king of their own, even though a wicked king. When they were carried away as captives, and Jehovah's presence had left the temple, room was made for the Gentile. No ritual or formal law was given to them, but God was a revealer of secrets, and therefore He knew their hearts and secret evil. He was of infinite power, they could do nothing against Him, and His power was exerted to preserve His servants. There was no intelligence in man to lay hold of these truths, which yet made him responsible, and be became like the beasts. But though the glory had departed from Jerusalem, and no divine presence given to the nations as had been to Israel, God still governed the world-not visibly, as before, but by an unseen Providence, as real, but not so self-evident, save to faith, which is taught to trace the ways of God, where man sees nothing but mere contingency and fortuitous combinations. The book of Esther, which is no record of faith, affords an instance of how God watches over His ancient people, and brings to naught the machinations of their enemies. In this book there is no temple, no priest, no service, no visible manifestation of power, such as had been, yet faith sees the overruling hand of God as certain as when in more favored times God visibly interposed. All was the result, apparently, of mere human agency, that is, by that which we should now call providence. It would have been a loss to the empire if Haman had succeeded in his intention.
But the king, Ahasuerus, on one night could not sleep, and one of his attendants reads to him. This is extremely natural. But that the attendant should read the preservation of his life, that the preserver of it should never have been rewarded, that Haman, the plotter, should be waiting in the court at that very moment to obtain the king's consent for the destruction of Mordecai, the man who was the means of saving the king's life, the man most hated by Haman, and the one to whom Haman must now be servant-for so was the king's pleasure now to honor him, an honor which Haman's vanity thought could be only for himself-is a combination of circumstances which man calls most wonderful, if not very improbable. We know that the unseen hand of God was surely guiding all, marvelously preserving His own people, and making the wicked eat the fruit of his own doings. Thus it is how God works behind the scenes of this world's activities. The scheme so cleverly arranged for the simultaneous massacre of the Jews throughout the whole empire is frustrated by what appears to be a mere accident-the king could not sleep-but by it God performs His will.
Man not holding the gift of dominion from God becomes the prey of Satan, who can only use what he finds with man as a means to effect his ruin; and, from the days of Nebuchadnezzar to this present time, the lust of power has been one of the most fruitful sources of human woe. There is no spring of action in the natural man so strong as this. The history of the four empires are abundant evidence. Their struggles for supremacy tell the perversion of God's gift. All that God gave to man as a responsible creature has only brought out his sin, and made him more guilty. God gave Israel the truth of one God-they became idolaters. He gave the Gentile dominion, and they became tyrants, and scourges to the earth. But while the empires existed, the mind taught of God sees in all the contention and struggle the fulfillment of God's word, and the means by which He accomplishes His purpose. Every event foreseen and controlled by Him, yet not the less appears man's pride and self-exaltation. It is part of the moral process by which man in any position is brought out into the light, and his incorrigible nature made manifest. In the use, or rather abuse, of conferred power, he became vile, and God to the prophet revealed the result. The rulers of the world became beasts, and as such will be destroyed. This is the end of Gentile power. At the beginning they were weighed in the balances, and found wanting; at the end they will be found in open rebellion against the Lord.
We have seen that the first test applied to the Gentile was God making Himself known as the “God in heaven.” But that was not the greatest, nor the final one. However much their guilt appeared in this, it was a far more solemn trial when Christ came. It was specially as the King that the Roman condemned the Lord. The Babylonian, the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman had each tried their hand at ruling the world, and naught but misery, war, and increased iniquity were the result. God sends His King, who will bring peace upon the earth. The Roman was reigning when Christ appeared. The Roman cared not for the truth, but when Pilate's friendship for Cesar was challenged, be consigned the Lord Jesus to death rather than be thought to fail in his allegiance to the Roman emperor. Both Jew and Gentile unite in this point, both reject God's anointed King. The Jew, from other motives, more guilty than the Gentile, joins with him in saying, We have no king but Caesar. Man, in that awful moment, is brought face to face with God, and be deliberately refuses God. True, God was veiled under humanity, but enough was seen to prove Who the Lord Jesus was.