It may be said, however, of the greater things that occur in the world, the trend of public thought, the drift of conditions, the great political upheavals, things which are rather beyond man's individual control, and which involve mankind as a body and their destiny as a race--these more particularly belong to God and are made the subject of prophetic forecast. God did not create the world and then abandon its processes. He created all things according to design, and we may be assured that he has design in the progress of things as well as in their first creation. Nor will the grand play of the world's events reach its conclusion without the decree of him whose prerogative it is to say, "It is enough; time shall no longer be." Christ's coming into the world was freely prophesied hundreds of years in advance of that event. This is so plain that no student of the Bible, unless he means purposely to be infidelic, will dispute the fact. Likewise, the fulfilment of prophecies that went before concerning the Jews and their city Jerusalem is much in evidence. The events of the world naturally group themselves into periods, or epochs. They are like panoramic scenes that unfold in the theater of the universe. Thus we have the two dispensations separated by the incarnation of Christ, the grandest event in all history. And thus we have, as divisions of the latter dispensation, the event of paganism giving place to the papacy and ushering in a dark day of apostasy, known in history as the Dark Ages; and the Renaissance and the Reformation of the sixteenth century, ushering in a period of Protestantism, which is also an age of letters and invention. In the interests of his church and the progress of his truth God has shown in advance in prophetic vision the periods and epochal events covering not only the Christian dispensation, but also a considerable time previous to it. These are for the Bible-student, the minister of God, and for all Christians, to know and understand. There is a prophecy in the 7th chapter of Daniel fore-shadowing the four successive world empires--the Babylonian, Medo Persian, Grecian, and Roman--and the papal power, that grew out of the Roman. The book of Revelation is but a series of panoramic displays of the events of the entire Christian dispensation and the end of the world.