Page 77 - New English Book L
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“I am the fashioner of the light, and the creator of the
darkness; the maker of peace, and the creator of evil; I am
the Lord who does all these” (Isa. xlv. 1-7).
That God is the author of evil as well as of good is
not in the least repulsive to the idea of God’s goodness.
The very denial of it is opposed to the absolute unity of
the Almighty. Besides, what we term or understand as
“evil” only affects the created beings, and it is for the
development and the improvement of the creatures; it has
not in the least any effect on God.
Leaving this digression, I hasten to say that all these
wild beasts were the enemies of the “holy people of God,”
as the old Israel and the early followers of the Gospels
were called. For they alone had the true knowledge, the
scriptures and the revelation of God. These wild beasts
persecuted and massacred the people of God. But the
nature and the character of the Little Horn which sprang
up on the head of the fourth monster was so different from
that of the other animals, that God Himself had, as it were,
to come down and establish His throne in the firmament,
to judge and condemn to destruction the fourth animal;
to summon to His presence the Bar Nasha –»Son of
Man”- and to make him the Sultan of men; for the words
sholtana, yaqar, malkutha, which signify respectively the
“empire, honour, kingdom” of all the peoples and nations,
were granted to him (verse 14) and to the “people of the
Saints of the Most High” (verse 27).
It will be noticed that as the Son of Man in nobler
than, and superior to, the beasts, so the religion that he
professed and established is infinitely holier than that of
the Little Horn.