Page 80 - Demo

76“I am the fashioner of the light, and the creator ofthe 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 wasso different from that of the other animals, that God Himself had, asit 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 thewords sholtana, yaqar, malkutha, which signify respectivelythe “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.