as a channel of earthly and spiritual
blessing and make this world the most perfect and happiest spot in
all the wide universe.

They failed to meet their opportunity.

Then the Lord transferred the possibility of world rulership from
the Jews to the Gentiles.

He did this by handing political power and authority to
Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon.

This rulership and sway of the world descended in its ordained and
foretold succession down through Medo-Persia with its incorporation
of Babylon, through the temporary but immensely extended empire of
Greece which under Alexander included both Babylon and Medo-Persia,
and after that the colossal and magic empire of Rome, swallowing up
as it did the three empires or kingdoms which preceded it.

Since the division of Rome into Western and Eastern empires the
rulership of the world has been maintained by the various nations
composed of those people dwelling in the territory once occupied by
Rome.

The world has been ruled by Turks, Spaniards, Germans, by the French
and by the English.

The Gentile nations in this special and prophetic territory have
been the world rulers.

It has been peculiarly Gentile rulership and in Scripture is called,
"The times of the Gentiles."

Gentile times, Gentile rulership has lasted for twenty-five hundred
years.

It has been an amazing rule.

It has been a rulership that has revealed the genius, the brilliance
and the God-given powers of man.

It has been a rulership that has revealed the iniquity, the sin, the
mad ambition and devil-inspired policies of man.

In all the twenty-five hundred years of this Gentile rule there have
not been one hundred consecutive years of universal peace.

It has been twenty-five hundred years of war, of rapine, murder and
measureless lust.

Cities have been destroyed, fields have been laid waste, women have
endured the last outrage. Children have been orphaned, right has
been upon the scaffold and wrong upon the throne, prison chains have
been for virtue, silk and velvet for vice, civilization after
civilization has been destroyed, the earth has been filled with
anguish beyond the power of tongue or pen to describe, and blood
enough has been shed through man's inhumanity to man to float all
the navies of the world, and money and treasure enough wasted to
have provided a palace for every man and woman on earth.

A little less than five years ago men everywhere were talking of
peace and