INTRODUCTION These three messages voicing pulpit, press and state represent whole libraries of daily papers, books and magazines which could be collected, telling of the terrible sea of perplexity in which our old world now rocks and strives to sail. Whoso is the pen which can portray the overwhelming importance of the last question in this book-The World's Need? With one hundred and one strategic questions, covering thousands of years, this volume contains a multitude of gems of thought. Many are clothed in exquisite language, and are culled from the writings of some of the greatest intellects and rarest souls this world has ever seen. Hence the compiler, knowing the work could be a "liberal education," physically, mentally and spiritually, would beseech each reader to earnestly study its contents with an open mind and heart. Let the outstretched hands of millions in a world in need so plead. CHAPTER I. PROPHECY. 1. Is there value in Bible prophecy for a "World in Perplexity"? BIBLE EVIDENCE. Amos 3:7-Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets. John 5:39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. II Peter 1:19-21-We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. SECULAR EVIDENCE. No section of the Old Testament, and but little of the New, comes so close to the needs of our day as does the prophetic literature. J. M. Powis SMITH, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Old Testament Language and Literature in the University of Chicago.-Preface, The Prophet and His Problems, 1914. Perhaps no better description of the true prophet could be found than that given in Jeremiah 23:29: "Is not my word like fire? saith Jehovah; and like a hammer thatbreaketh the rock in pieces?" Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, and all the other prophets smote sin with sledge-hammer blows. No true prophet ever compromises with people as to their sins. JOHN R. SAMPEY, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Interpretation of the Old Testament, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in The Biblical Review, April, 1918, p. 279. We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy. I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatever. ISAAC NEWTON in Forty Thousand Quotations Prose and Poetical, compiled by Chas. N. Douglas, p. 1546. 1 In the books of Daniel and the Revelation there are recorded long lines of prophecy which foretell many of the principal events of the world's history from six hundred years before Christ to the end of time. These lines of prophecy, which show the work and the position of one nation after another in the stream of time, are of great value to mankind. That some do not see this value does not effect the question. The blind do not see the sun, yet that luminary keeps steadily to its purpose-giving the world its light and heat. The blind sustain the loss of the light. So with those who are blind regarding the prophetic light.... A light in a dark place is to show us where we are, and to guide us in the way we ought to go. The prophecies, likewise, are to show men and women where they are in the world's history, and to guide them through the dark labyrinths of danger. Those who set the prophecies aside as of little value suffer great loss. They are like a man who would close his eyes to the light of the sun. ARTHUR G. DANIELLS, World Traveler and Lecturer, A World in Perplexity, pp. 85, 86. Talk about prophecy! What kind of Bible students are we, if we neglect the prophetic portions of the Bible? Three-fourths of the Bible is filled with prophecy. REV. JAS. M. GRAY, D.D., Dean Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, "The Bible, We often say with truth that no man is educated unless he knows the Scriptures; we should add that no man knows the Scriptures unless he knows the prophets, and yet many of us are intrusting the religious education of our children to pious young persons who have a smattering of the external facts about the kings, but who have scarcely so much as heard that there were such men as the prophets. For such ignorance of the prophets we ministers are to blame. If our people are to value these men who upheld the hands of the kings that were true, and who thundered doom against those that were false, we must lead the way. In the Sabbath school we must somehow teach our young folk to read their Bible so that they will not breathe a sigh of relief when they have finished the Minor Prophets..... The prophets, first of all, were preachers: champions of righteousness, and heralds of the Promise. The essence of preaching, according to Phillips Brooks, is twofold: truth and personality; or better still, truth through personality. And a sermon is a spiritual message from God, through a man's experience, and thence to the souls of other men. When we apply this lofty standard, where can we find such preachers as the Old Testament prophets, and such sermons as they spake and wrote? Is it any wonder that Professor James Stalker, of Glasgow, when lecturing at Yale on how to preach, devoted more than half of his course to the prophets as preachers? These preachers are worthy of study as masters of style. They were the leading orators of their own times, and to this day they have never been excelled. They were blessed with many gifts and graces, MULTITUDES SPELL-BOUND 3 all of which they dedicated to their high calling; hence they spoke with tremendous force, with impassioned feeling, and with that intangible something which we call eloquence almost divine. Their writings have served as models for the orators of later times, many of whom have counted it an honour to be told that they had modelled their periods in the manner of Isaiah, the prince among orators. ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD, The Prophets Elijah to Christ, pp. 13, 14, 21, 22. It is when the hour of the conflict is over that history comes to a right understanding of the strife, and is ready to exclaim, "Lo, God is here, and we knew Him not!" Bancroft in Forty Thousand Quotations Prose and Poetical, p. 955. For the past fifteen years I have tried to incite my students in New York University, in Rutgers College, and now in the Seminary, to read the Bible, not as a task, but as a pleasure, and have had fair success. The books of the Prophets look very dull simply as books but when we look at them as largely sketches of orations and exercise our historical imagination to hear the orators speak, they become intensely interesting. I have tried in the classroom to so describe the times, the questions of the day, and the men that we could imagine ourselves in the crowd facing Isaiah, for instance, as he held the multitude spell-bound by his eloquence. FERDINAND S. SCHENCK, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Preaching in the Theological Seminary, New Brunswick, N. J.,-Preface, The Oratory and Poetry of the Bible. Prophecy is the mould of history. REV. A. J. GORDON, D.D., quoted by W. B. Riley, D.D. As a matter of intelligence we should study prophecy, for it is impossible to understand the times in which we live without this study. Dr. C. I. Scofield's Question Box, compiled by Ella E. Pohle, p. 119. There are no songs to be compared to the songs of Zion, no orations equal to those of the Prophets, and no politics equal to those the Scriptures can teach us. MILTON in Greatest Thoughts About the Bible, compiled by J. Gilchrist With Isaiah sank into the grave the greatest classic of Israel. Never did the speech of Canaan pour forth with more brilliant splendor and triumphant beauty than from his lips. He has a strength and power of language, a majesty and sublimity of expression, an inexhaustible richness of fitting and stirring imagery, that overwhelms the reader, nay, fairly bewilders him. CARL HEINRICH CORNILL, Doctor of Theology and Professor of Old Testament History in the University of Königsberg. God had an object in calling the Jewish nation to separate themselves from other nations of the world. It was that this people might stand before the world as light-bearers. As a beacon set on a hill, Israel was to send beams of light to the world. The plan of education made known to Israel through her prophets was the means of keeping that light burning. When this God-given plan was neglected, the light, as a candle deprived of the life-giving oxygen, burned dim. Then it was that the nation was pressed upon all sides by the foe. S. N. HASKELL, author of The Cross and Its Shadow, and The Story of the Men, with their finite wisdom, write of events after they have taken place, and are not able to get even that correct. God, with His infinite wisdom, writes of events before they have taken place; and the pen of verified history confirms the writing. C. M. SNOW, The Prophetic History of the World. The prophecies of the Bible are like rare diamonds lying hidden in the soltitude of the mine. The practiced eye of the prospector discovers the gems, and intuitively reads their value; and the skillful hand of the lapidary brings out their many-faced beauties in all their sparkling glory. Every facet shines like the sun. One cannot exhaust a diamond; neither can one exhaust the prophecies. New facets remain to be polished, to add their brilliant reflection to the whole. URIAH SMITH, Introduction-The Story of Daniel the Prophet, by S. N. But, taken as a whole, the Prophetic order of the Jewish Church remains alone. It stands like one of those vast monuments of ancient days—with ramparts broken, with inscriptions defaced, but stretching from hill to hill, conveying in its long line of arches the rill of living water over deep valley and thirsty plain, far above all the puny modern buildings which have grown up at its feet, and into the midst of which it strides with its massive substructions, its gigantic height, its majestic proportions, unequalled and unrivalled. DEAN STANLEY, Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, Fifth Edition, Vol. I, p. 392. You know last quarter our Sabbath School lessons were on the book of Revelation.... I learned the book by heart, and you can never guess one half the consolation I receive from that experience. Night or day, when evil or useless thoughts come into my mind I have a perfect antidote. No matter how dark or how far from home, I can read chapter after chapter.... I wish I had done that when I was young, before my memory was so treacherous. But even this seems a blessing in disguise; it only compels me to study it more often. Once or twice every week I say it all over. Now I am beginning on the book of Daniel. I just began last week, and can now say the seventh, eighth, and part of the ninth chapters. WILLIAM BRICKEY, when a farmer seventy-six years old, near Kamiah, Idaho, in a letter to his son, 1919. |