alINY ==
warriors’ conference, but by the act of
God-—deliberate, planned, on time. It is
a fascinating story, every word and sen-
tence of it—n the Bible, the second chapter
of Daniel. Have you read it?
There are paragraphs penned by world-
renowned historians in the past hundred
vears that are as revealing as a photo-
oraphic lens. “In the darkness and con-
fusion of the might a terrible massacre
occurred. Bursting into the palace a band
of Persians slew the monarch. . . . Others
carried fire and sword through the town.
. .. When the morning came, Cyrus
found himself undisputed master of the
city—the Babylonian Empire. . . . Baby-
lon became ‘an astonishment and a hiss-
ing’ all her prestige vanished.”—Rawlin-
son. This was 538 B.c. This was the end
of the first universal empire.
“The force that he [Darius] had col-
lected for the final struggle comprised-—
besides Persians, Babylonians, Medes, and
> KL
X Japanese soldiers, part of a first contingent
of additional Japanese army and naval forces
dispatched to French Indo-China, watt in an
undisclosed place ir the southern part of the
country before moving forward. Great Japarn-
ese troop concentrations in Indo-China brought
a pertinent question from our President as to
what the future policy of Japan in southern
Asia was to be. While the Emperor answered
courteously, their armed forces struck at Hawaii
without warring.
FEBRUARY, 1942
Susianians from the center of the empire
—Syrians from the banks of Orontes,
Armenians from the neighborhood of
Ararat, Cappadocians and Albanians from
the regions bordering on the Euxine,
Cadusians from the Caspian, Bactrians
from the Upper Oxus, Sogdians from the
Jaxartes, Archosians from Cabul, Arians
from Herat, Indians from Punjab, and
even Sac from the country about Kashgar
and Yarkand, on the borders of the Great
Desert of Gobi. Twenty-five nations fol-
lowed the standard of the great king, and
swelled his vast army, which amounted
(according to the best authorities) to above
a million of men. Every available resource
that the empire possessed was brought
into play. Besides the three arms of
cavalry, infantry, and chariots, elephants
were, perhaps for the first time in the
history of military science, marshaled on
the battle-field, to which they added an
unwonted element of grotesquesness and
savagery. —/Rawlinson. This was the
Battle of Arbela mm 331 B.c. Here the
crown of Cyrus passed to Alexander of
Macedonia, and the second universal em-
pire disappeared.
Two scrolls are ended, three yet remain.
The historian says: “The great victory
gained by the Romans over Perseus, king
of Macedonia, a victory which destroyed
the kingdom of Macedonia, and added
that country finally to the Roman Empire,
was gained in the battle of Pydna, June
22, 168 B.C. Thus perished the empire of
Alexander the Great, which subdued and
The Final Hour
By Jessie Winvmore Murton
It is Jehovah's final hour!
In yonder sun's descending path
The fruit of sin hangs fully ripe,
To feed the wine press of His wrath.
But still the angel watchers hold
The angry winds—Iest there be one
Lost sheep yet to be gathered in,
Before the setting of the sun!
Hellenized the Kast, one hundred and
forty-four years after his death. The
whole empire of Alexander the Great had
fallen to the Roman commonwealth, just
as 1f the city had inherited it from his
heirs. . . . Polybius dates from the battle
of Pydna the full establishment of the em-
pire of Rome. It was, in fact, the last
battle in which a civilized state con-
fronted Rome in the field on a footing of
equality. . . . All subsequent struggles
were rebellions—wars of the barbarians.”
~—Wommsen.
This ends the prolonged agony of the
third and swiftest universal empire. And,
“by the establishment of the Herulian
kingdom of Italy a. p. 476 the final destruc-
tion of the Western Empire was accom-
plished. Rome, that mightiest fabric of
human greatness, was fallen. That power,
“the fourth kingdom’ strong as iron ‘which
had broken in pieces and subdued all king-
doms,” was now itself broken to pieces.
. . . Armies of unknown regions of the
north, had established their victorious
reign over the fairest provinces of Europe
and Africa.” —Gibbon.
Ever since the days when the clay-and-
iron confusion broke the unity of the fourth
universal empire into jigsaw pieces of
unequal national power, this world has
been plagued by violent upstarts who,
prompted by one motive or another—
whether military or economic—aimed to
solidify this mass of “strengths and weak-
nesses’ into one powerful nation. This
was the hope of Napoleon's united Europe,
this was the purpose of William II's Drang
nach Osten, this is the theme of Hitler's
New Order.
Did the Corsican succeed? Were the
Hohenzollerns mistaken? Need the world
fear Hitler? Well, let us look at Napoleon:
for if ever destiny gave birth to a man, he
was her child.
“With the military resources of France,
which then counted 130 departments, with
the contingents of her Italian kingdoms, of
the confederation of the Rhine, of the
Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and with the
auxiliary forces of Prussia and Austria,
Napoleon could bring a formidable army
into the field. On the first of June the
Grand Army amounted to 678,000 men,
306,000 of whom were French and 322,000
foreigners. It included not only Belgians,
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