"OF WHOM THE WORLD WAS NOT WORTHY"
-311-
DECEMBER
A CONTINUING COMMENTARY
" ...There never was yet discovered a nation or
tribe of holy or righteous men in any part of the world; nor is there a
record that any such people was ever known . . ..
"From all the accounts we have of the most eminent,
ancient, and celebrated nations, such as the Egyptians, Chaldeans,
Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans, we find them from their own
relations to have been destitute of the knowledge of the true God, and
although cultivating the various arts and sciences, yet fierce,
barbarous, and cruel. Their history is a tissue of frauds, aggressions,
broken truces, assassinations, revolts, insurrections, general disorder,
and insecurity. Their laws despotic and oppressive; their kings and
governors tyrants; their statesmen time-servers and oppressors of the
common people; their soldiers licensed plunderers; their heroes human
butchers; their conquests the blast of desolation and death on empires
and nations; their religion superstitious, gross, brutal, and unclean;
and their gods, and general objects of their worship, worse in their
character and acknowledged practices than the most villainous and
execrable of men. And what must be the imitations in their votaries when
they had such originals to copy? This was their general state and
character.
" ...(The histories) of the republics of Greece
(reveal) treasons, insurrections, crimes, and carnage of all
description. Consult also the Roman writers on their Republican,
Consular-Tribunal, Regal, and Imperial States; and see the portraits
which those master painters have sketched ...features fell and
distorted, scowling through the deep and murky shades which serve to
relieve and make them prominent.
" ...(History reveals) Darkness covers every
land, and gross darkness the hearts of the people; idolatry the most
disgusting, and superstition the most foolish and degrading, closely
associated with ridiculous ceremonies and cruel rites; religious
suicide; abandonment of the aged to starvation when past labour, or left
in the woods to be devoured by wild beasts when in hopeless disease;
exposure of infants; burying of widows with the bodies of their deceased
husbands, their own children lighting the funeral pyre; the most
painful, unmeaning and lengthened-out pilgrimages; religious fasts, by
which health and strength are exhausted; and feasts where the man sinks
into the beast: --All these, and more of a similar kind, equally
degrading and destructive, prevail among the millions of Asia, and
especially among what are called the civilized, mild and pacific
inhabitants of Hindostan.
"I have no doubt that the power of strength of the
Divine Nature was the attribute principally contemplated by our rude
ancestors, and indeed by all the primitive inhabitants of the earth.
Hence colossal statues, immense rocks and massive temples were dedicated
to this power or strength which at last the licentious imagination of
man personified, and adored in a monstrous human form under the name of
Hercules, among the Greeks and Romans; Baal, among the Canaanites;
Bramah, among the ancient Hindoos, etc.; and Tuisco, etc. among our
Teutonic and Celtic ancestors; and hence every strong man was supposed
to be the principal favourite of the Deity, and to be under the peculiar
direction of this strength or power. It was this which gave rise to the
histories of Hercules, Theseus, Bellerophon, and the giants of different
countries;" so wrote Adam Clarke.
But admiration for strength soon changed to worship,
then to fear and resulted in the incorporation of temple prostitution,
homosexuality, and beastiality, and finally human sacrifices as part of
their religious rites. The Egyptians sacrificed children to crocodiles
to appease Osiris. The Canaanites roasted their children in sacrifice to
Molech. The Hawaiians would throw the strongest man or the most
beautiful woman into a volcano to appease the volcano god. The Chinese
and Egyptians would bury alive servants of their deceased masters, often
as many as two hundred people. The Aztecs and Mayas performed human
sacrifices as part of their idolatrous worship. The Incas tore the
hearts from their live sacrificial victims. And many of the tribes of
American Indians as well as some tribes among the ancient Europeans were
cannibals.
The deification of strength cast such unholy fear into
some peoples that they would inflict pain upon themselves and would
suffer tortuous practices believing such strength would appease their
angry gods. While some walked upon beds of hot coals, others lay upon
beds of nails.
" ...Look at men in a state of warfare; look at the
nations of Europe, who enjoy most of the light of God; see what has
taken place among them from 1792 to 1814; see what destructions of
millions, and what misery of hundreds of millions, have been the
consequence of Satanic excitement in fallen, ferocious passions!"
Consider the one hundred million souls plowed into the
ground in order to force Communism upon the people of China.
Consider all the tortures inflicted by men upon one
another. Consider all the hardships brought upon families. "0 Sin, what
hast thou done! How many myriads of souls hast thou hurried, unprepared
into the eternal world? Who, among men or angels, can estimate the
greatness of this calamity! this butchery of souls! What widows, what
orphans are left to deplore their sacrificed husbands and parents, and
their own consequent wretchedness!"
" … Who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a
man that shall die?" "The name of the wicked shall rot." "Fear not them
which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear
him which is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell." "We may boldly
say, 'The Lord is my Helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto
me.'" -(Isaiah 51:12b; Proverbs 10:7b; Matthew 10:28; Hebrews 13:6)
-Excerpts from Adam Clarke's Christian Theology. London, Thomas Tegg and
Son, 1835; Pp.103, 104-105, 106, 76-77, 107-108.