William Shakespeare is universally recognized
as the greatest non-Bible writer of all time.
Learn why he was so proud of the British Empire-and
how God expects all mankind to become empire
builders-next, on The Key of David, with Gerald
Flurry.
The Key of David with Gerald Flurry.
GERALD FLURRY:
Greetings, everyone.
William Shakespeare helped lay the foundation
of the beginning of the great British Empire,
and that empire came on the scene in the very
early 1800s.
The British people had in many ways been prepared
to rule that Empire, and I think William Shakespeare
played a key role IN that, getting them ready
to rule over the greatest Empire EVER on this
planet.
It was HUGE, and the sun never set on that
Empire because it was, really literally around
the world.
Shakespeare also teaches us why Britain has
lost its Empire.
What happened?
What went wrong?
At least a big part of the reason or the MAIN
part of the reason that they lost their Empire,
and he also in principle shows us how America
is filled with a cauldron of evils today,
and how they could SOLVE those evils if they
were willing to do so.
There IS a giant lesson in this, and if we
don't learn it, well, the problems keep intensifying
until we do.
We have to learn WHY we're having all these
problems, or WHY the great British Empire
just faded from the scene until it's no longer
here.
Why did that happen?
Why did it come on the scene in the first
place?
Well, we need to answer those questions.
And Shakespeare really does tell us how to
sustain an Empire after we have built it.
After all, if you build it you have to be
able to sustain it.
How do you do that?
I want to read you a quote that is really
I think mind-staggering to say the least,
that most people don't know I think about
William Shakespeare.
Let me read this to you, give you this quote,
and it's taken from The Facts About Shakespeare
by William Allan Neilson and Ashley Horace
Thorndike, and here's what they had to say.
"Shakespeare knew his Bible.
Several volumes have been written to exhibit
the extent of this knowledge.
It has been shown by Anders that he knew both
the Genevan and the great Bible.
Charles Wordsworth, a bishop of St. Andrews
and a scholar well-versed in both Latin and
Greek wrote, 'Take the entire range of English
literature.
Put it together.
Our best authors, who have written upon subjects
not professedly religious or theological,
and we shall not find I believe in them all
united so much evidence of the Bible having
been read and used as we have found in Shakespeare
alone.'"
So all of these major authors of our literature,
well, have discussed very important subjects
in many cases.
But all of them together, this man believes,
never talked about the Bible as much as William
Shakespeare did.
He talked about the Bible and in many ways
how to apply it, how to apply the lessons
of the Bible.
He lived at the time the King James Bible
was printed, and at the time of Queen Elizabeth
I.
So Shakespeare was in that history at a critical
time, when it was building up toward the beginning
of that great world-circling Empire.
Let me read you another quote here, this quote
from the book Lectures on the Science of Language.
Max Muller wrote: "A well-educated person
in England who has been in a public school
and at the university, seldom uses more than
about 3000 or 4000 words."
But then he goes on to say that: "Shakespeare
had a variety of 15,000 words."
That's what kind of vocabulary this man had,
a great educator for the British people, and
he's well known all over this world because
people recognize he's the greatest poet that
has ever lived, certainly outside the Bible.
Now, he wrote a lot of poetry, but there's
also some really supreme poetry in the Bible
that people don't really understand.
Let me quote from King John, one of Shakespeare's
plays.
This would be King John II, and he said: "With
that same purpose changer, that sly devil,
that broker that still breaks the pate of
faith."
So he's talking about faith, talking about
people having faith, and that Satan the devil
is able to BREAK that.
Now, that's very Biblical.
And if you can break people's faith, you can
destroy an Empire, and that's I think something
every one of us should understand.
In The Merchant of Venice, Portia has this
to say: "But mercy above the sceptered sway,
it is enthroned in the hearts of kings.
It is an attribute to God, himself."
That is, mercy is an attribute of God, Himself.
Now, he had to know that is very Biblical.
So how many nations are really taught anything
like that in their literature?
You won't find a book like that today at all
that is considered secular.
You just don't find such books.
Now, Shakespeare's best play is arguably Hamlet,
and we talk about the "To be or not to be"
soliloquy, but Abraham Lincoln liked ANOTHER
soliloquy in Hamlet BETTER than that, and
let me just read a little bit of it to you
in this play of Hamlet.
The setting is in the royal house of Denmark,
and so Hamlet's father was king, and then
his brother KILLED Hamlet's father, and in
less than two months married Hamlet's mother,
and it was one of the, perhaps the most abominable
scenes in Shakespeare's plays.
But let me read to you what Abraham Lincoln
said about another soliloquy that he liked
more.
This is coming from Hamlet's uncle, or the
brother of his father who finally realized
what he had done, the horrible sin, and here's
what he said: "Oh, OH, my offense is rank!
It smells to heaven!"
He's in pain!
"OH, my offense is rank!
It smells to heaven!
It has the primal eldest curse upon it, a
brother's murder!"
Well, what is THAT about?
Well, he's talking about Adam and Eve, who
led the world away from God.
What do you think about the very first family
had one son kill another?
Now, you'd think they would realize how HORRIBLE
it is to turn away from God when something
like that happens, but let me read to you
just a little more here from that section.
Here's what it says: "Try what repentance
can.
What can it not?"
Talking about repentance.
Now, how many secular books do you find today
that talk about repentance?
But, "Try what repentance can, What can it
not?
Yet, what when one cannot repent?
Oh, wretched state!
Oh, bosom, black as death."
That sounds quite a lot like Romans 7 and
verse 24 where Paul says, "Oh, wretched man
that I am!"
And he was repenting toward God!
And this is about repentance here.
A man, one of the main characters in that
play repenting of his sins, and Abraham Lincoln
thought that was more moving than the "To
be or not to be" soliloquy.
Here's another part of that: "Bow, stubborn
knees, and heart with strings of steel.
Be soft, the sinews of the newborn babe.
All may be well."
In other words, if you repent like you should
as it says in Matthew 18, verses 1 through
3, become as a little child, I think Shakespeare
certainly did understand that.
And then further down, Hamlet then goes to
his mother, who was an accomplice in killing
her own husband and Hamlet's father.
Notice what he said to her: "Mother, for love
of grace, confess yourself to heaven!
Repent what's past, avoid what is to come!"
Now, that's from secular writing in Shakespeare.
Now, do you think that might have had quite
a lot to do with laying the foundation for
the great British Empire, and where God promised
those blessings to them, gave those birthright
blessings to them, and to America?
They came through Abraham and his obedience,
and our book on The United States and Britain
in Prophecy tells you all about that, and
will teach it to you very forcefully and prove
it to you.
But Hamlet went on to say, "The time is out
of joint.
Oh, cursed spite that ever I was born to set
it right."
And of course, God does sometimes call people
in the Bible as He chose His last era of His
Church to look at the corruption and the turning
away from God by the sixth era of the Church,
and God said He would raise up those ruins,
or He'd set it all right through His very
elect, a principle you'll read throughout
the Bible.
So one more question here that Hamlet asked.
Notice this question: "What is a man?"
And of course he's referring to the man's
Creator as "He that made us with such large
discourse."
Well, it says in Psalm 8 and verse 4: "What
is man?"
Well, Shakespeare's asking practically the
same question, and he says: "He that has MADE
us," created us, "with such large discourse."
Wow!
Now, who made us with this large discourse
and this mind of man that can REASON and THINK
like God in many ways?
This poem goes on to say: "Surely he that
made us with such large discourse looking
before and after, gave us not that capability
and God-like reason to fust in us unused,"
or to grow moldy in our minds, unused, and
not use this great God-like REASON that God
has given us.
There's something DIFFERENT about man.
No animal has that capability, and we're not
animals.
The Bible certainly teaches against that.
We are made in the likeness of God and are
to be made in the image of God with the very
mind and character of God (Genesis 1 and verse
26), right in the first chapter of the Bible.
But here we have minds where we can reason
like God.
Now, that's POWERFUL poetry!
Unbelievably powerful!
Well, I don't have time to read too much of
this, but I tell you there is a lot here that
we really, really need to understand.
Another quote here, James Russell Lowell wrote:
"It may be reckoned one of the rarest pieces
of good luck that ever fell to the share of
the race that was true of Shakespeare.
Its most rhythmic genius, its acutest intellect,
its profoundest imagination, and its healthiest
understanding should have been combined in
one man."
Now, he says it was just luck.
But was it just luck?
Or do you think maybe God might have had a
HAND in that?
Because He did give this birthright blessing
to Britain, and that world-girdling Empire,
and so He had to certainly get the British
peoples ready to do that job.
I mean it takes some ability to rule the greatest
Empire there ever has been on this Earth.
Amazing!
And he goes on to say, well, "All the favorable
stars seem to have been in conjunction at
his nativity."
Well, favorable stars.
I think again he thinks maybe there was something
to it besides just luck, himself, perhaps.
Let me read you another quote referring to
William Shakespeare.
This is taken from The Mysterious William
Shakespeare, the Myth and the Reality by Charles
A. Ogborn.
In this part he quoted Herman Sinchheimer
and this is what that man said, "There was
not room enough for him in the island of Britain.
He had to roam far and wide in order to keep
his genius supplied with raw material.
Like Drake and Raleigh, he discovered and
held his booty, the material which set his
imagination on fire.
Between the lines and between the characters,
one may read the legend, 'Our island is too
small.
Our kingdom is the world.'
Our kingdom is the world!
And they almost RULED the world!
They certainly had control of the real power
in the world at that time.
So Shakespeare really did expand the minds
of many of the British people, especially
the leaders, and they read Shakespeare and
they know about Shakespeare.
Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln loved William
Shakespeare and said, look, all you need is
Shakespeare and the Bible and you can be a
really well-educated person.
That's how Abraham Lincoln thought about this.
And Samuel Johnson called him Britain's triumph,
or the soul of the age.
In other words, there was just a spirit there
that William Shakespeare gave to the British
people.
Well, I don't have time to read that, and
I'll just give you some scriptures you might
want to check, but Genesis 35 and verse 11
says there's a nation and a company of nations
shall be of you, a great nation it goes on
to say, and a company or a commonwealth of
nations, the British Commonwealth.
That's what this prophecy is talking about
in the first book of the Bible.
They were prophesied to receive the great
wealth, the great Empire that they did, and
America was prophesied to receive the greatest
single nation ever on this Earth, the greatest
superpower ever on this Earth.
It's all prophesied, and our book on The United
States and Britain in Prophecy will show you
that.
And the name of Israel, you can read in Genesis
48 and in that book, that the name of Israel,
or Jacob, is on two nations-Manasseh and Ephraim-or
the United States and Britain, and again,
you can prove that to yourself very easily.
That's in Genesis 48 and verse 19.
And then in verse 1 of chapter 49-there really
shouldn't be a chapter break there-and it
says: "And Jacob called unto his sons, and
said, Gather yourselves together that I may
tell you that which shall befall you in the
last days."
In the last days.
Well, what do you know?
All this is prophesied from the first book
of the Bible and it's about the last days,
that we're living in right now!
I think that's phenomenal.
And it prophesies of all the prosperity that
they would have, that the branches would just
run over the wall, they would be so wealthy
and such a colonizing people.
It really is an AMAZING and mind-shattering
prophecy that very few people understand.
At least 25 percent of the Bible is written
in poetic form, so you can really compress
the language and have more power in great
poetry than you would in prose.
Shakespeare wrote all of his plays in poetry.
Miriam Joseph notes that "Shakespeare lived
in an age ardently devoted to the reading
of the Bible, wherein the knowledge of the
figures of rhetoric 'helped much for the better
understanding of the Holy Scriptures.'"
That's from Shakespeare's Use of the Arts
of Language.
So here at that time he wrote at a time when
the British people were ardently devoted to
the reading of the Bible, but that's not the
case today and the Empire is gone.
Is there a connection?
Well, of course there is.
Of course there is!
See, again, if you want to rule an Empire,
if you want to really be an Empire-builder,
you'd better learn this lesson or your Empire
will never, ever last.
It will always falter.
Now, that was really just the beginning of
the great British Empire, and Shakespeare
lived in that age, and today in America or
in Britain, those two birthright nations,
are they ardently devoted to reading the Bible?
Oh, you know they're not, and they should
be, because it shows the SOLUTIONS to all
of our problems that we have, and we have
many of them.
Many problems.
We have to have a certain amount of faith
to endure in an Empire.
And really it's very condemning history, I'll
tell you, because there is a kind of a rot
that has set in in Britain and America, and
why is that?
In America you just have this great cauldron
of EVILS!
Why is that?
What is causing it?
What is the solution?
Well, really, you can find it in Shakespeare
even.
You certainly can find it in the Bible, and
all of our literature that we'll send to you
to prove that to yourself.
We are facing some great crises, and we have
to understand that.
Well, he goes on to talk about this greatest
mind in the history of literature, and let
me give you one more quick quote here, one
more quote.
This again from Lowell that I quoted earlier.
Then he talked about, well, the uncouth meter
of false grammar, and well, just being kind
of crass in literature.
You don't find that in Shakespeare at all.
And then Samuel Johnson went on to talk about
how the "muse's anvil," and how he kept sweating
and working and doing everything that he could
to perfect his poetry, and he worked extremely
hard.
And he said "For a good poet's made as well
as born."
He wrote a poem ABOUT that.
But this is all about the early beginning,
well, at least the foundation, of the British
Empire.
God makes us sweat and struggle to be successful
and we need to understand the mind of Shakespeare
and as he understood the human mind, and we
also need to develop the very mind of God,
which EXCELS William Shakespeare.
Philippians 2 and verse 5.
We can have the very MIND that was in Jesus
Christ, the very FAITH that was in Jesus Christ
(Galatians 2 and verse 20).
And of course at that time Britain had the
throne of David, and there's just tremendous
poetry, King Richard stated about the terrible
life of a king and how difficult it was for
a king.
And Lincoln just loved William Shakespeare,
and he of course was facing the Civil War
and he realized that he needed help from God
to be successful in that Civil War.
Well, I'll give you one final quote here where
in Julius Caesar it says, "There is a TIDE
in the affairs of men, which taken at the
flood, leads on to fortune."
And Lincoln said, "Well, that's a POWERFUL
truth," and he applied it in his own life,
and he said, "Now, if you'll take the affairs
of men and just ride the tide and really look
to God, you'll have great, great success in
your lives, and you'll be an Empire-builder."
Until this next, this is Gerald Flurry, goodbye,
friends.
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