The Worlds Redemption/11
Chapter 11
Tokens of Our Times in Relation to the Return of the Messiah
While there may be convulsions in the literal heavens and earth attending the coming crisis among nations, which will transform the kingdoms of this world into the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, it is not in the literal sun, moon, and stars that we are to look for the signs portending the end of the present order of things. When Moses foretold the end of the Jewish commonwealth he described the great nation that should come into existence, as well as the status of Israel which should provoke the downfall of that ancient and favored people. One watching the signs of the times in the first century would carefully compare the apostate condition of Israel with Moses’ prediction of what should be the reason for the punishment awaiting them. He would also compare the Roman empire in its relation to Israel and weigh well the probabilities which would suggest themselves in the natural order of cause and effect. He would see that Israel was ripe for the destruction of the last vestige of its national existence and that the "nation of fierce countenance" was the great dominating power which was ready to follow its heraldic eagles in fulfillment of the prophecy, "The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the ends of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth" (Deut. 28: 49). Notwithstanding that Israel had passed through experiences that no other people had been able to endure and survive, true to the words of Moses there was that nation actually in existence after the lapse of fifteen hundred years. While when Moses wrote the prophecy they were a new-born nation, not yet in their land, having no "gates" to besiege nor "fenced walls to come down" (Deut. 28:52), here they were with a city whose checkered history surpassed that of any other, in which stood a temple which had commanded the admiration and astonishment of the world, and around which had been built massive walls which challenged attack. These were realities, not in the clouds, the sun and the moon, but realities on the earth among nations. And the careful watcher would finally see that these signs would really culminate in the exact fulfillment of the dreadful words of the prophet, in the downfall of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans, and the captivity and scattering of her children to the four winds.
It is in this way that we must watch the signs of our times. We have now a broader world of nations to look out over, and in proportion to the magnitude of the coming revolution so is the number of unmistakable signs portending the near approach of the greatest event the world has ever witnessed.
SEVEN GREAT SIGNS
It is not our purpose here to deal with the many smaller details which point in the direction indicated, but to call attention to the great facts which must strike the most careless reader as sure and certain signs of the times. These facts are to be seen in
1. Israel, its providential existence, and its wonderful development and progress in these latter times, notwithstanding its persecution in times past in all the world and at present in some parts. This is a sign, because Israel is to be ready for deliverance at the return of their Messiah as they were about thirty-five hundred years ago at the hands of Moses.
2. The Holy Land, its desolation of the past and the present attraction which is turning the eyes of the world thither; colonization and railroad enterprises which the nineteenth century has been remarkable for; the fact that it is the desire of all nations and that many movements, great and small, are on foot, looking to the return of her people upon a large scale, a return which even now has become an accomplished fact to a considerable extent. This is a sign because it leads to the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham that all the land should be given to his seed, which Paul says is Christ, and "the Lord is to inherit Judah, his portion in the holy land, and shall choose Jerusalem again."
3. The Turkish Power, its phenomenal and rapid rise, and its gradual decline. This is a sign because the desolator of the Holy Land is losing his grasp and is ready for the destructive whirlwind from the north which will bring the great war of God Almighty when the words, "Behold I come quickly," will find their fulfillment.
4. The Papacy, its uprise upon the wave of a great apostasy; the cruel and desolating days of its ascendancy and its present decrepit and declining condition. This is a sign because before the coming of Christ the man of sin was to "wear out" the saints and then experience a "consuming" process ending in destruction by the brightness of the Lord’s coming.
5. France, the disturbing power of Europe, as the "three unclean spirits like frogs" which will gather the nations to the great war of God Almighty. This is a sign because it leads to the war of God Almighty at the coming of the Lord, to finally make wars to cease to the ends of the earth.
6. Britain, in relation to the Holy Land, Egypt, and the partial return of the Jews to Palestine; her now threatening final conflict with Russia, which will end in the destruction of the king of the north at the hands of Christ returned to claim the whole earth as his own.
7. Russia, its gradual development and present ascendancy among the nations, looking towards its ultimate victory, when it will drive out the Turks and take possession of the land of Israel. This is a sign because it indicates the readiness to form that situation which will hasten the great war of Armageddon, wherein Christ will appear as the victor over and vanquisher of all kings and rulers, sweeping every form of human government off the earth and inaugurating the heavenly reign of peace on earth, good will toward men and glory to God in the highest.
I. --ISRAEL
The providential preservation of Israel through a trying history such as no other nation could outlive has been dealt with in a previous chapter. The fact that Israel still exists is proof that the Bible is true, as is to be seen in the hitherto fulfillment of its prophecies concerning that people. Great and wonderful things are promised for this people, the fulfillment of which depended upon their preservation throughout the vicissitudes of their fickle and fearful history. Had they sunk out of sight in the waves of war which carried down the great nations of antiquity, nations of greater power than they possessed, the skeptic’s scorn would have found free vent in the taunting and unanswerable questions, Where are these people that your Bible says were to be "terrible from their beginning and forward?" Where is Israel whom Christ is to rule? The Jews of whom he is to be king? What becomes of your prophecy that Israel and Judah were to become one nation and never to be divided? But Israel is here; and as her situation in the first century was what Moses declared would and did bring the Roman eagles against her for her downfall and world-wide scattering, so is she now shaping herself preparatory to fulfillment of the prediction of the same prophet: "Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people: for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and will be merciful unto his land and to his people" (Deut. 32: 43); "The Lord will gather thee from all nations whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee" (Deut. 30: 3).
In Ezek. 37, "The whole house of Israel" is likened to a valley of dry bones, a fitting representation of the dissolution of their national existence. The question, "Can these bones live?" was one not many years ago that would have been answered in the negative. The general public sentiment was that Israel was gone never to become a people of any note again. But within the latter part of the nineteenth century they have forced themselves to the front in every department of life. This is as it should be according to prophecy of the latter days; and it is what is prophetically called the noise and shaking of the bones, and the bones coming together, bone to his bone, sinews and flesh being formed, preparatory to the breath of resurrected national life being breathed into them, when as a nation Israel shall "live and stand upon their feet, an exceeding great army" (Ezek. 37: 10). As showing the extent to which public attention was centered upon Israel in 1883 the author of "The Jews, or Prediction and Fulfillment," says that "public attention has of late years been called to the Jews in a degree quite unusual, if not, indeed, without precedent;" in proof of which he gives the following as a foot-note:
This is well illustrated by the prominence given of late to Jewish topics in the periodical literature of the day. These, e.g., to mention only a few of many instances, the Contemporary Review has had articles on various phases of Jewish affairs in the numbers for July, 1878, January and March, 1881, September and November, 1882; the Nineteenth Century in numbers for April and July 1878, February, 1881, August and November, 1882. In the last-named month, besides the Contemporary and the Nineteenth Century, Macmillan’s and Blockwood's Magazines also had articles dealing with Jewish questions. It is not without some reason that the leading Jewish paper, commenting on this last circumstance, remarks that "it is a very marked sign of the times that editors, who can gauge so well the interests of the public, are so ready to admit articles dealing with Jewish topics."
Following along to chap. 38, Gog, of the land of Magog, is introduced and the part he is to play in the final drama of this world is vividly described; and it is all to take place in the "latter years" and "latter days" (verses 8, 16). That which tempts the cupidity of Gog to overflow the Holy Land is the fact that part of Israel has returned there--to the "land that is brought back from the sword," "gathered out of many people," "dwelling without walls and having neither bars nor gates." They "have gotten cattle and goods and dwell in the midst of the land."
Now that this is partially fulfilled, and is rapidly fulfilling nothing is clearer; and the more enlightened among the Jews see that the tide is swiftly turning in the direction of the preadventual return of the Jews as the prophecies require. They have the influence; they have the talent; they have the burning desire and quenchless patriotism. The exodus has commenced and assumed proportions that will not stop short of forming the situation that will yet explode the magazines of the nations and start the wild rush of the dogs of war to the great day of slaughter that will settle the perplexing Eastern question. Of this partial and preliminary exodus the Jewish Chronicle said some time ago,
The Russian and Roumanian Jews are bent on going to Palestine. Whatever we may think or say as to the practicability of the new exodus, it is evidently to take place. To all the objections to Palestine colonization that can be pointed out, the Jews of Russia and Roumania have one all-sufficient reply: We cannot be worse off there than here. The movement is irresistible."
As far back as 1882 the movement had assumed proportions that attracted the eyes of the world, and how it has been accelerated since by Russian persecution and Zionism is too well known to need stating. In February, 1882, a writer in the Jewish Chronicle said:
Once more are we on the eve of the Exodus. . . . It wants no prophetic eye to see that the Russian empire is on the eve of one of the greatest revolutions that the world has ever seen. The time has arrived for Israel to depart thence, and for the exodus, greater even than the original one, to commence. . . .But whitherward shall the steps of the millions of Israel be bound? Shall he again, as in the exodus from Spain, betake to other and more friendly lands, to be again, perchance, in the course of time, driven from them? No! a thousand times no! For the sake of our unborn posterity let this, with God's help, be the final exodus of our race. The land of promise is now subject to a power who can barely struggle against financial difficulties. That power is not unfriendly to Israel; his sovereign rights should be purchased with no niggard hand, and the independence of Israel established under international guarantee. What Israelite worthy of the name would hesitate in giving his quota towards the redemption of the land? Once under a stable and just government the land would again flow with milk and honey, and Jewish enterprise, capital and industry combined with the geographical situation of the country, would cause prosperity once more to shine upon it. Rome, Greece, and Egypt are once more numbered among the nations and the shaphar (trumpet) which announces the resurrection of Israel, the eldest born of the nations, should soon wake the echoes in the mountains of Judah. To Israel this restoration should prove an unmixed blessing; for possessing a political centre, the dread of persecution would no longer haunt her sons."--Quoted from Prediction and Fulfillment.
This tide of public sentiment is still flowing and now it is not at all averse to the settlement of the Jews in Palestine as an independent State. Zionism is now a prominent topic, and it has gathered sufficient strength to bring about a congress of two hundred delegates from various countries of Europe in Basle, in September (1897). One of the acts of this congress was to unanimously adopt the programme for the re-establishing of the Jews in Palestine. The plan is to "send out an exploring expedition equipped with all the resources of modern science to make a careful survey of the land and its possibilities, and also to establish telephonic and telegraphic communications before actual work of colonization begins." By the aid of many societies colonization has been going on for many years to a great extent; but this is scarcely noticed in comparison with that now proposed.
Now according to prophecy a preadventual colonization should take place of Jews in Palestine. It is partially done, and is being carried on with great success, even to the extent of having the money ready to offer and tempt the bankrupt Sultan to sell his sovereign right to that part of his domain. The sign to be seen in this is that the very situation which the prophet Ezekiel says is to bring the king of the north to the mountains of Israel is forming, and almost formed. The time is then here for the fulfillment of the words, "Prophecy against Gog, thus saith the Lord God; in that day when my people of Israel shall dwell confidently, shalt thou not know it? And thou shalt come from thy place out of the north parts, thou and many people with thee, * * * And thou shalt come up against my people of Israel as a cloud to cover the land; it shall be in the latter days, and I will bring thee against my land, that the nations may know me, when I shall be sanctified in thee, O Gog, before their eyes." Then he says, "My fury shall come up in my face," and He "pleads with Gog" till he is left upon the open field to be buried in the valley of Hamon-Gog. The victor in this great battle is Christ; for it is when the king of the north "plants the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain," that Michael, the great prince, is to stand up for the children of Daniel's people, Israel, and a time of trouble is to follow such as never was; and "many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake" (Dan. 11: 45; 12: 1, 2). First, then, Israel partially returned to the Holy Land. Second, Russia's for-a-time successful assault upon them. Third, the sudden and powerful appearance of Christ to destroy the great Philistinian giant with the sling and stone of divine accuracy of aim and force of defeat and destruction. What is the sequel of the Israelitish sign then?--Christ in the earth again.(1)
(1) The Zionist movement launched in 1897 under the leadership of Dr. Theodore Herzl, has constantly gathered headway. Today it has become like a river of many tributaries. Where, in 1898, there were only a few thousands of Jews dwelling in feeble colonies, now there is a flourishing Jewish State--the nation of Israel--recognized by other great States of the world. The Jewish population of Palestine has now passed the million mark.
II --THE HOLY LAND
Over thirty-eight hundred years ago God made selection of the Holy Land as the center around which His plans and purposes in relation to the world’s redemption should revolve. We have, in a previous chapter, shown how this land is involved in the covenants of promise, and made clear that the extent as described in the promises is far greater than was that possessed by the descendants of Abraham. Since this land was promised to Abraham, all signs of God's dealings with nations and all fulfillment of such signs, so far, have been closely connected therewith. In a special sense it is God's land; it is Israel's land; it is the land of the Bible, and the birthplace, home, and future inheritance of the Son of God, the world's Redeemer. To see the signs that the "iniquity of the Amorites was full" (Gen. 15: 16), and to prepare for Israel's deliverance from Egypt to take the promised land of milk and honey, the eyes of the watchers of those times of the far distant past must have been fixed upon the Holy Land. From the Exodus to the Babylonish captivity, there is no reliable history which is not closely associated with this land. It is the center of the world's history. Signs of Judah's deliverance from Babylon at the expiration of the allotted seventy years of Jeremiah's prophecy had all to do with the turn of things in this land and the attitude of Babylon's king towards it and its people. From this great historic landmark down to the time for the complete desolation which still curses that forsaken country, history is as nothing considered apart from the Holy Land. Upon the arrival of that dreadful time of trouble for the land and the people, the eyes of the world were forcibly attracted thither; and from then till now the changing scenes upon the stage of national dramas have all, in a direct or remote sense, had the Holy Land as their background.
Notwithstanding the fame and renown of this wonderful land, its commanding geographical position, its fertile soil, and its healthful climate, no nation, except Israel while obedient, has ever been able to prosper there. The usurper and conqueror might take possession of it and punish its people for their wickedness; but to appropriate it to its profitable use for any considerable length of time has not been permitted. The Holy Land in the hands of usurpers, and Israel in the hands of enemies are like the ark in the hands of the Philistines (I. Sam. 5), and the time will soon come when Dagon will fall and dreadful scourges will make all Philistinian foes quite anxious to return the land and the people to their rightful owner, when "The Lord shall comfort Zion, he will comfort all her waste places; make her wilderness like Eden and her desert like the garden of the Lord."
In the strongest language the prophet Jeremiah speaks of the desolation of the land, and at the same time foretells its restoration. The desolation is a fact which needs no proof; it is known of all. Thus far the prophecy has been literally fulfilled; and in view of this who can deny its future restoration? And since its desolation gradually came with the decline and fall of the nation to which it belongs, is it not reasonable to expect that as Israel's restoration is now to some extent taking place, simultaneously the resources and returning fertility of the land will become again recognized and the attraction of public attention become a sign of the times?
The desolation and restoration are clearly set forth in the following words:
Thus saith the Lord: Again there shall be heard in this place, which ye say shall be desolate without man and without beast, even in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, that are desolate, without man, and without inhabitant, and without beast; the voice of joy, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the voice of them that shall say, Praise the Lord of hosts; for the Lord is good; for his mercy endureth forever; and of them that shall bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord. For I will cause to return the captivity of the land, as at the first, saith the Lord. Thus saith the Lord of hosts; again in this place, which is desolate without man and without beast, and in all the cities thereof, shall be a habitation of shepherds causing their flocks to lie down. In the cities of the mountains, in the cities of the vale, and in the cities of the south, and in the land of Benjamin, and in the places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, shall the flocks pass again under the hands of him that telleth them, saith the Lord. Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will perform that good thing which I have promised unto the house of Israel and to the house of Judah (Jer. 33).
Now that it is a fact that public sentiment has been turning favorably to the land as it has to its people is witnessed in the popular literature of our time; and the adaptability of the country for what prophecy has laid out for it in the future is recognized. Nearly twenty years ago the Hebrew Observer bore the following testimony:
Is there no other destiny for Palestine but to remain a desert, or to become the appendage of an ambitious foreign power? Syria will ere long be the entrepot between the East and the West. On the Euphrates and along the coast old cities will revive and new ones will be built; the old times will come back on a scale of greater vastness and splendor, and the steam cars will run in the tract of the caravan.
Since the foregoing was written the whistle of the locomotive has become a familiar sound in parts of Palestine and a general enhancement in the value of land has taken place. And now some of the leading Jews of the world are vigorously advocating the establishment there of an independent Jewish State.
George Eliot, in Deronda, represents a Jew as giving eloquent expression to present prospects for Palestine. In this the Jew voices the growing sentiment which must soon be realized in the rising of Israel's sun to shine upon that favored but long-desolate land. He says:
Looking towards a land and a polity, our dispersed people in all the ends of the earth may share the dignity of a national life, which has a voice among the peoples of the East and the West--which will plant the wisdom and skill of our race so that it may be, as of old, a medium of transmission and understanding. Let that come to pass, and the living warmth will spread to the weak extremities of Israel, and superstition will vanish, not in the lawlessness of the renegade, but in the illumination of great facts which widen feeling, and make knowledge alive as the young offspring of beloved memories.
What is it to me that the ten tribes are lost untraceably, or that multitudes of the children of Judah have mixed themselves with Gentile populations as a river with rivers? Behold our people still! Their skirts spread afar; they are torn and soiled and trodden on; but there is a jeweled breast-plate. Let the wealthy men, the monarchs of commerce, the learned in all knowledge, the skillful in all arts, the political councillors, who carry in their veins the Hebrew blood which has maintained its vigor in all climates, and the pliancy of the Hebrew genius for which difficulty means new device--let them say, "We will lift up a standard, we will unite in a labor hard and glorious, like that of Moses and Ezra, a labor which shall be a worthy fruit of the long anguish whereby our father’s maintained their separateness, refusing the ease of falsehood." They have wealth enough to redeem the soil from debauched and paupered conquerors; they have the skill of the statesman to devise, the tongue of the orator to persuade.
This was written about twenty years since, and goes to show how sensitively in touch with the heart of the times was that able, heart-reaching writer. The "land and a polity," a restoration of the land and the people that shall "redeem the soil," and again establish a nationality of a people who have the "skill of the statesman to devise, the tongue of the orator to persuade," are the objects seen. Is it not remarkable that the spirit breathed in these words is now clothed with a reality which manifests itself in the form of definite organization for the establishment of a Jewish State in the Holy Land?
Among the promoters of the project to establish the Jews in the Holy Land as a free State is Dr. Pereira Mendes, who recently found welcome to the advocacy of his claims in the North American Review. He says among many other things favorable to this favored spot, that the land once in the hands of its people--the Jews--would cause
The opening up of a vast commerce, for which the Hebrews are peculiarly qualified by commercial genius, and for which they are prepared by their commercial establishment in all countries, which would be maintained and continued (See Isa. 61: 9). In this commerce all nations would advantageously participate, for Palestine geographically is the natural converging point of the trade routes between two continents, Europe and Africa on one side, Asia and Australia, on the other. Tyre, Sidon, Elath, Ezion-Geber, Beyroot (Beyrout), Haifa, and Acre among her ports would speedily become the London, Marseilles, New York, or Hamburg of the East. And while to them the ships of the world would "fly as a cloud and as doves to their windows" (Isa. 60: 8), the hum of industry's pauseless fingers would be the psalm of life of myriads in a land once the granary of the world, the successors of the myriads of whose existence the countless ruins of to-day are the dumb but heart-moving witnesses.
It would mean the solution of the so-called Jewish question, whether it is Russian Pan-Slav policy or Franco-German anti-Semitism which propounds it. And the Hebrew nation of to-day by its eminence in finance, letters, science and trade, deserves attention, for reasons that need not here be noted.
It is well known that large tracts of land in Palestine have been purchased by rich Jews during this year, and that colonization there is quite a success, proving that the fertility of the soil is abundantly sufficient to sustain a great population. The return of the "early and latter rains," too, is another sign of the providential dawn of prosperity. "Westward ho!" has been the cry for ages; but now it is "Eastward ho!" The East is the attraction which draws the attention of men and nations. Railroads are built and more are projected; the rise in real estate has been what in the West would be called a "boom," and the products of the field and the garden have, during this year, been shipped as far west as the city of Chicago.
The newspapers of the world have just been saying to their readers that
The Jewish conference at Basle which closed August 31, marks an important epoch in the history of that prophetic people. The interest manifested and the work accomplished were fully as great as had been expected. To establish a Jewish kingdom in Palestine and colonize there under an autonomy the world’s millions of wandering Jews, "from the land of the north (Russia) and from all the lands whither he has driven them," thus bringing to its climax the mystery and miracle of the ages, is no small project, and to its contemplation there gathered at Basle the chief thinkers of the Jewish race from Europe, America, Asia, and Africa. It is reported that there were present beside the leaders of the movement--Drs. Herzl, Nordau and Ernst--W. Bainbus; Dr. Hirsch Hildesheimer, of Berlin; D. Bodenheimer, of Cologne; Oscar Strauss, New York, late United States minister to the Ottoman Empire; Simon Wolff, of Washington, D. C.; Jacob Schiff, of New York; Julius Bien, President of the order B'nai B'rith, New York, and many other well-known Hebrews.
The topics discussed were: Position of the Jews in different countries; reports from Jewish colonies; the chaluka, or funds collected for Jerusalem; emigration question as it affects the United States; subscription funds, agitation plans, etc., the Jewish question as it will be presented before the approaching diplomatic congress of the great powers, and the feasibility of acquiring a fee simple title to Palestine and part of Syria.
A central committee consisting of twenty-three members, to be located at Vienna, was elected, with the exception of the English and American delegates. All Jews are asked to contribute to the central fund, their subscriptions being made the basis of franchise for the election of delegates to future congresses.
A resolution was passed authorizing the committee to raise a fund of fifty million dollars. This, taken in connection with the rumor recently current that the Paris house under Baron Edmond de Rothschild's direction, has already offered this exact sum (fifty millions) to the Sultan of Turkey for the Province of Palestine, not only tends to confirm that report, but would also indicate that negotiations were progressing favorably along that line.
Baron de Rothschild is already the owner of large tracts in Galilee and the mountains of Judea, where he has established twenty-one Jewish colonies, having expended thus far over a million dollars in aiding these colonies, until they become self-supporting.
Fifty thousand Jews from Russia, Austria, Germany and the Balkan Provinces are now settled in Palestine, and these various colonies were reported at the congress to be in a flourishing condition.
The Alliance Israelite Universelle of France has established and is maintaining extensive schools and colleges in Palestine, and a commission was appointed at Basle to report on the subject of the proposed university at Jerusalem.
The congress closed after a week's session amid scenes of great enthusiasm, and the next meeting was appointed to be held at Jerusalem in 1898.
Now, while we do not believe that Israel’s hope and consolation will be realized by these projects, yet they are providential means towards that end. The natural means generally precede the supernatural, leading events up to that climax when the visible hand of God is stretched out for his glory and the final well-being of His creatures.
So it must be evident to all that "the time to favor Zion" is close at hand, and that the various remarkable trains in modern events are making, as railroad men would say, "close connections." All these things, without recognizing the hand of God, would be co-incidental beyond possibility; but viewed as the developments of a Guiding Hand toward the grand fulfillment of the covenants of promise they are as beacons of light in the darkness of a dismal night.
III.--THE TURKISH POWER
When the Macedonian empire passed into the hands of Alexander’s four generals in accordance with what had been revealed through the prophet Daniel, that empire became divided into four parts. "Four kingdoms stood up for it (Alexander's), but not in his power" (Dan. 8: 22). These were to be "toward the four winds of heaven" (Dan. 8: 8; 11: 4), or east, west, north and south. After a while the four merged into two--the king of the north and the king of the south. These are the subjects of Daniel 11, and are Egypt, the king of the south, and Syria, the king of the north. Under the symbol of fiery horsemen the inrush of the Turks into Europe is represented in Rev. 9. In verse 12 we read, "One woe is past; and, behold, there came two woes more hereafter. And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates." In this the terrible conquests of the Turks would seem to be fitly represented by the overflow of the river Euphrates, its waters inundating a large part of Europe and at one time threatening to deluge the entire civilized world.
The prophecy further says, "And the four angels were loosed which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. And the number of the army of horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand." There is then a description of the war horses which many able writers have identified with the Turkish forces. History is prophecy fulfilled; and in strict harmony with the foregoing prophecy the pen of the historian says, "Six centuries ago a pastoral band of four hundred Turkish families was journeying westward, from the upper streams of the river Euphrates. Their armed forces consisted of four hundred and forty-four horsemen, and their leader’s name was Ertoghrul." Commenting upon this Grattan Guinness says, "This little band of Euphratean horsemen were the ancestors of that terrible host or army of horsemen two hundred thousand thousand strong, whom the Seer of Patmos beheld loosed from the Euphrates and overflowing the Roman earth, carrying distress and death wherever they went."
Thus the Turkish power became a terror to all nations and grew to such proportions in a territorial and military sense that writers who saw from prophecy that the empire was destined to decline and fall and who could apply the prophecy to no other power, were at a loss to see how such a thing could come to pass.
The same inspired writer, however, who had foreseen its triumph saw also and declared, in spite of all appearances otherwise, that the great political river would be dried up. He says, "And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east (kings from the sun's rising) might be prepared" (chap. 16: 12). These kings from the sun's rising are the saints redeemed and made "Kings and priests to reign on the earth" (Chap. 5: 10). The Sun, by whose rising they are made kings, is the "Sun of righteousness" who is to arise "with healing in his beams" to those "who fear Jehovah's name" (Mal. 4: 2). This will find its glorious fulfillment at the return of Christ, and therefore, since the drying up of the political Euphrates is to prepare for this, and since the drying up is a symbol of the decline of the Turkish power, it follows that in this we have a sign of the approaching advent of the Messiah.
The next thing which follows the account of the drying up of the Euphrates is the issue of the three frog-spirits (verse 13) to gather the kings of the earth and of the whole world to the great war of God Almighty which in the Hebrew tongue is called Armageddon (verses 14-16); and right in connection with the drying up and the issuing of the frog-spirits we have the declaration, "Behold I come as a thief; blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments" (verse 15).
Against all human probabilities, the decline of the Turkish power came, and came, too, just as the sign of the evaporation of a river would indicate. The gradual disintegration has been going on till now the Sultan is invariably spoken of as "the sick man of the East," and the so-called "integrity of the Ottoman power" is a theory with which all the great nations are playing, and about which their constant quarrels are hastening the great day of the war of God Almighty, when all nations shall be brought against Jerusalem to the battle which will bring upon the scene the World’s Great Conqueror who will finally make wars to cease to the ends of the earth.
As showing to what a remarkable degree prophecy has been fulfilled concerning the drying up of the political Euphrates, we quote from Mr. Guinness in his Approaching End of the Age, page 367.
The "drying up" of this flood, that is to say the liberation from Turkish oppression, of the Christian nations and lands overwhelmed by it began with the Greek rebellion in 1820. But fatal blows to the power and prestige of the Ottoman Empire had previously been dealt by Russia. In the war of 1768 between the two kingdoms, the Turkish armies were beaten and destroyed, and ruin and disgrace attended each succeeding campaign. In 1770 the Russian admiral annihilated the Turkish fleet in the Aegean sea. In 1774 a large Turkish army was again most disgracefully beaten, and the humiliating peace of Kainarge, showed that the conqueror was in a position to dictate terms. Three years later war again broke out between the two powers, and again the Russians had the mastery both by sea and by land, and obtained the session of important towns and districts before concluding peace. In 1806 Russia occupied Moldavia and Wallachia and the old hostility broke out afresh, the weakness of the Ottoman Empire becoming more apparent than ever. A new fleet, which had been created, was destroyed by the Russians at Lemos. Mahmoud II had to buy a peace by the cession of all his territory north of the Pruth, of a number of fortresses on the Danube, and of a principal mouth of the Danube itself. In 1820 began a formidable insurrection in Greece, the finest province of the Turkish Empire, which quickly spread to Wallachia, Moldavia and the Aegean Isles.
In 1826 the Porte surrendered to the Russians all the fortresses it retained in Asia; in the same year civil commotions distracted Constantinople; and the awful slaughter of the Janissaries took place, four thousand soldiers being shot or burned to death in their own barracks in the city, and many thousands more all over the empire, by the Sultan’s own command.
The Greek rebellion continued till 1827, when, after a severe and prolonged struggle, Turkey was obliged to acknowledge the independence of Greece. The sympathies of Western Christendom had been aroused by the horrible cruelties perpetrated by the Turkish admiral in the conquest of Scio: and England, France and Russia intervened between the Porte and its Greek Christian subjects. At the great naval battle of Navarino the fleet of Turkey was once more destroyed, and Greece became independent.
In 1829 the freedom of Servia was similarly secured by a treaty which forbade a single Turk to reside north of the Danube; and in the same year the Turkish province of Algeria in Africa became a French colony.
Mehemet Ali, the powerful Pacha of Egypt, who had long been aiming at an hereditary kingdom for himself, rebelled against his master, and asserted his independence in 1832. He attacked and conquered Syria, and defeated the Turkish armies in three great battles. Nothing but the interference of Christendom at that time prevented his marching on Constantinople, and overthrowing the Sultan altogether. He was forced back into his own province, and made again nominally dependent on the Sultan by payment of an annual tribute, and the furnishing certain military aid when asked. But Egypt is virtually independent of the Porte, and her present ruler has assumed the title of Khedive, or king, in recognition of the fact.
In 1844 the Porte was compelled, under threat of European interference, to issue an edict of religious toleration, abolishing forever its characteristic and sanguinary practice of execution for apostasy (i. e., for the adoption of Christianity). This compulsory sheathing of its persecuting sword was a patent proof that its independence was gone, and a marked era in its overthrow.
The same able writer, in dealing with the predicted cleansing of the sanctuary, which depends upon the removal of the desolator of the East says:
Every step in the downfall of Turkey is a step in the direction of the cleaning of the sanctuary, and these steps are in our day succeeding each other rapidly. Since 1821 Turkey has lost Greece and Servia, Moldavia and Walachia, Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt; and now in the recent war, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria. The once mighty Ottoman Empire is in Europe practically extinct. Its power in Asia is also seriously diminished, and notably so in Syria. Aliens, or non-Mussulmans, are now allowed to hold landed property in Palestine, and the number of Jews resident in their own land is every year on the increase. Thousands of intelligent Christians visit its shores annually, and the Palestine Exploration has completed a survey of its every square mile. "Thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof." There is every sign, when the present is contrasted with the past, that the time for the complete liberation of Palestine from tyranny is at hand.
Returning to Dan. 11, where the Turkish power is spoken of as the king of the north, we shall find the prophecy leading on to the final destruction of this abominable desolator of the Holy Land and the appearance upon the scene of Christ as the deliverer of Daniel's people, Israel. It must not be supposed that the Turkish power is the king of the north spoken of all through this chapter. While Rome held the East in its grasp it would be denominated by this title. Indeed, the title seems to apply territorially. That is, under its heading the history of that country is given, without specifying the powers in possession, except so far as the parts they play help to identify them. Hence the "taking away of the daily sacrifice" (verse 31) and honoring the god of forces mauzzim--gods, protectors, or guardian saints (verse 38), point to the Roman power, while at "the time of the end" there is to be a power in possession of the land under the same title who is to be removed by another power north of it, which in its turn is to be removed by Michael the great prince, when the resurrection is to take place (chap. 12: 1, 2). Now we shall show, in its proper place, that Russia is this last usurper of the Holy Land, and nothing is clearer among the facts of to-day than that Turkey is to fall at her hands; and since Turkey is the one now in possession, a comparison of the facts with the prophecy leaves no room for doubt that she is the "king of the north" of verse 39. (2)
(2) There is a tendency with interpreters of unfulfilled prophecy to telescope events, making one event of what time proves to be several events. It was clearly seen that prophecy required the removal of the desolating Turk, so that the preliminary re-settlement of the Jews might take place, but events have shown that--not by Russia--but by the Arabs under Lawrence and the British under Allenby, the Turks would be forced to withdraw from Palestine.
We feel impelled to point out also, that there are many who hold that the latter port of Dan. 11, and Ezek. chs. 38 and 39, are prophecies applying to different world powers. That Daniel's "King of the North," and what is predicted concerning that power, is now historical, and relates to the uprise and dominion of the Saracen amid the Turk. Whereas Ezekiel's prophecy is still unfulfilled, and is correctly applied to an invasion of the Holy Land by Russia (Gog), at Armageddon.
It may also be worthy of suggestion, that Armageddon is not one event or one crisis, but a number of events and of world crises--not one war, but a series of wars. If one man may, in the Apocalypse, represent a multitude; and one year, many years; and a city, ten nations; so Armageddon may consistently embrace a number of terrible wars near the end, preparatory to the establishment of the Kingdom of God. World War I, in its eastern phase, culminated at Armageddon--the ancient battleground of nations. Thus it was that Lord Allenby came by his title, Field-Marshal Viscount Allenby of Megiddo and Felixstowe.
Now the question is, Wherein is the sign of Christ's coming to be seen in these things? We are distinctly told that the causes of the decline and fall of this "king of the north" are events of the "time of the end" (verse 40) and that within this time the king of the south is to "push at him," the king of the north. This "push" cannot mean its destruction; for that is reserved for the "king of the north" which is still north of him. The very phraseology indicates the character of the conflict.
A push is not a death-blow. Nothing seems to so well fit this "time-of-the-end" event as the assault of Mehemet Ali, of Egypt, in 1831. The history of this "push" is thus given by McCabe, and I see it is partly quoted in a book recently published, entitled Armenian Massacres and Turkish Tyranny:
Mehemet Ali was given the sovereignty of Crete by the Sultan for his services in the Greek revolution. Not satisfied with this acquisition, he sent Ibrahim Pasha, an able commander, in 1831, to conquer Syria. That country was overrun by the Egyptian forces, who also advanced to Asia Minor. Their progress was at length stayed by the intervention of Russia, England and France, whose forces defeated Ibrahim at Nisibis on the Euphrates. A few days after this battle Sultan Mahmoud died, France was anxious that Mehemet Ali should succeed him, but England and Russia drove him out of Acre and Syria, and secured the Turkish throne for Abdul Medjid, the young son of Mahmoud. In 1840 the treaty of London was signed. Crete and Syria were restored to the Porte, and Mehemet Ali was limited to Egypt.
Here is the "push" from the king of the south, answering clearly to the prophecy, and nothing else can be found that will answer to it. Some recently have applied this prophecy to the late war between Turkey and Greece; but Greece cannot be called the "king of the south" within the meaning of that term in Dan. 11.
Subsequent to this, against the same power at which the king of the south was to push, the king of the north was to come like a whirlwind. Here is a new "king of the north" introduced, and still north of the Syrian king of the north. The words are, "And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him; and the king of the north shall come against him [the same him] like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries and shall overflow and pass over" (verse 40). That this is a new king of the north is clear from the fact that he is to "enter into the glorious land" (verse 41), while the old king of the north is already there and is the object of attack.
Several attempts have been made by the czar of Russia, the new and latter-day dominant king of the north, to carry out this, but the fact that hitherto he has not succeeded is also provided for by prophecy. He was to have hooks put in his jaws and be "turned back" (Ezek. 38: 4), and afterward be "brought forth and all his army," etc., to finally "enter the glorious holy mountain." It is at this juncture that the end is reached, when as the prophet Daniel declares, "At that time shall Michael stand up," the unequaled "time of trouble" ensues, "Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth awake" and they shine as the brightness of the firmament in the new heaven, or the kingdom of the stone which is to "fill the whole earth." This, then, is how the Turkish power is a sign of our times indicating the near approach of Christ. She is declining; she is ready to fall. Her conqueror has the will and is rapidly getting the power to "overflow and pass over," when he will gloat in his universal triumph. Christ, meanwhile, is hidden behind the dark clouds, waiting for the climax of human pride and pomp to be reached, when he will break through with lightning flash and thunder peal which shall clear the foul atmosphere and give health and happiness to a troubled, priest-ridden and oppressed world. (3)
(3) There is written evidence (see Eureka, vol. iii, p. 546) that the prophecy in the 16th of Rev. concerning the drying up of the river Euphrates has been understood to apply to the decline of the Ottoman Empire, for nearly three hundred years--which would take us back to a time when it was at the supreme height of its power. A series of wars and adversities, beginning about 1820, have caused a steady decline in strength and area of sovereignty, aptly comparable to the receding of the water of a river, after having reached flood-stage. Perhaps no prophecy has ever had more striking and unmistakable fulfillment.
IV.--THE PAPACY
What was a reason in apostolic times for not expecting the immediate coming of the Lord was that the "man of sin" and "son of perdition" had not yet appeared. It follows, therefore, that when he had appeared and performed his wicked part in the worlds drama, it is safe to look for the Lord soon to return.
The apostle Paul says:
Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work; only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that wicked be revealed, whom the Lord, shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming; even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
This description of the man of sin whose ambitious, corrupt and abominable career was to precede the coming of Christ is evidently identical with the little horn of Dan. 7, as a comparison will show:
1. Daniel says, "The same horn made war against them," and shall wear out the saints.
Paul says "there shall be a falling away, and that man of sin shall be revealed.
2. Daniel says the little horn has eyes and a mouth and speaks great swelling words against the Most High.
Paul says the man of sin shall oppose and exalt himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped.
3. Daniel says he shall think to change times and laws and the saints shall be given into his hand.
Paul says he shall be revealed as a wicked one giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons.
4. Daniel says he shall not regard the God of his fathers nor the desire of women.
Paul says he shall forbid to marry and command to abstain from meats, which God hath ordained to be received with thanksgiving.
5. Daniel says his dominion shall be taken away to consume it and to destroy it unto the end.
Paul says the Lord shall consume him with the spirit of his mouth and destroy him with the brightness of his coming.
Now before the Reformation, when Rome was supreme and could dictate what men should believe and teach, it was not to be expected that the papacy would be clearly pointed out as answering to these prophecies. The "consuming" process must first commence so that the hands of the tyrant may be held from torturing and killing those who had the courage of their conviction. The consuming process of which the apostle speaks commenced with the Reformation, for that event resulted in infusing the "spirit of the Lord's mouth" as it breathed in the Scriptures of Truth into the minds of the common people; and they learned enough from it to become Protestants. Previous to this a Bible was not allowed in the hands of a layman.
In the development of the papacy, the religious element worked first, and afterward the civil power. The former worked upon the ignorance and superstition of the people till it had them awed into submission, and then all was ready for a union of church and state, and temporal power as well as spiritual became the possession of the pope.
In the decline of the papacy, also, the religious element did the first work, and receiving an impetus from the Reformation it gained power till the claims of the pope to temporal dominion were denied him, and the power wrested from his blood-stained hands.
During the dark ages the papacy thrived, for then it was in its native element; but, as prophecy had ages before declared, men began to "run to and fro and knowledge increased," and Protestantism became a welcome fact which allowed men to read the Bible wrested from the monopolizing priestcraft of Rome and opened to be read and studied by old and young, rich and poor. In this "the earth again helped the woman," and made it possible for her return, in her doctrinal purity, after twelve hundred and sixty long years exile in the wilderness (Rev. 12: 6). Had not this great revolution taken place, the production of this book we are writing would cost the writer his life and itself would soon end its existence, as thousands of men and women have who dared to believe what it sets forth, by the torch of Roman bigotry and tyranny. We may therefore thank God that the consuming power has largely done its work and that, while we wait and watch, the day is hastening when the last vestige of the abominable system will be destroyed by the brightness of the Lord's coming. We may also thank God for the Reformation; we may thank Him for Protestantism; we may thank Him for such men as Luther, Tyndale, and for Newton and those of his class, who have boldly and masterly pointed out from the facts of history that in the sorceries and cruelties of the papacy, prophecy concerning the latter days finds its unmistakable fulfillment.
Years ago there was published a pamphlet by Canon Wordsworth of Westminster, in which Rome was fully shown to answer in every particular to prophecy concerning "Babylon the great the mother of harlots," Daniel's blasphemous horn with eyes and mouth, and Paul's man of sin; and that there was no other power or system which could possibly be made to fit these prophecies. The pamphlet was entitled Babylon; or the Question Examined. Is the Church of Rome the Babylon of the Apocalypse? Mr. Guinness quotes largely from this book and says:
In 1859 the author challenged the Church of Rome to answer his argument in the following words; "If any minister or member of the Church of Rome can disprove this conclusion he is invited to do so. If he can doubtless he will; and if none attempt it, it may be presumed that they cannot; and if they cannot, then, as they love their salvation, they ought to embrace the truth which is preached unto them by St. John, and by the voice of Christ." Sixteen years ago, when the above was published, the author reiterated the challenge, and no reply has as yet been made to it by any member of the Church of Rome! "Speechless!" "Guilty before God!"
According to Daniel's prophecy this power was to wear out the saints. According to Paul's, it was to cause a falling away from the truth. According to the revelation to John the woman was to be drunken with the blood of the saints and of the martyrs of Jesus. That this was all to commence in apostolic times, and is not a matter of the future is clear from the fact that Paul says, "The mystery doth already work" (II. Thess. 2: 7); and that as soon as that which "hindered" were removed, the system would be revealed. Paganism was the hindering religion and power, and as soon as the pagan dragon was cast out of the Roman heaven and a so-called Christian emperor was enthroned the way was open for the full development of the mystery which in Paul's time was secretly at work to become finally boldly and openly and boastfully the "MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH" (Rev. 17: 5).
This is the title emblazoned upon the brow of the woman whom John was shown riding upon a scarlet colored beast "full of names of blasphemy" (verse 3). At this woman John was astonished and wondered, and to him she represented a system which God's people must shun as they would the most foul and fatal disease. The spirit cries, "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partaker of her sins, that ye receive not of her plagues." Persecuted as the early Christians were by pagan Rome, they would naturally expect exemption from the cruel hand of the persecutor when "Christian emperors" seized the throne. John’s astonishment is not to be wondered at when it is remembered that he beheld "Christianity" enthroned and become a greater persecutor of God's people than was the pagan Satan, which it had displaced.
The Scriptures speak of Israel under the symbol of a woman, first in marriage relation with God and afterwards, when it apostatized, as a woman divorced. In the former state the woman would be pure and chaste; in the latter, lewd and impure. In the New Testament the pure church of Christ, before the "falling away" of Paul's letter and the "wearing out" of Daniel’s prophecy, is given under the symbol of a chaste and pure virgin. "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. For we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones" (Eph. 5: 25-27, 30). "For I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ" (II. Cor. 11: 2).
With this key to the understanding of the symbolic meaning of woman in the symbolic book of Revelation, we may safely conclude that in one case the bride, the Lamb's wife, is the true church, while the "mother of harlots" who has spiritually cohabited with the kings of the earth and is intoxicated with the blood of saints, is the church of the apostasy--developed from the "falling away" and the Laodecean lukewarmness which was so nauseating to God as to be spewed out of His mouth.
These two women are held in contrast throughout the book, and they are also represented by two cities--Rome and Jerusalem, the one hated of God and the other loved. On account of the idolatry of Rome and its likeness to ancient Babylon it is fitly given that ancient synonym for confusion as a title. These two systems are thus spoken of in the book of Revelation:
A COMPARISON
THE BRIDE, THE LAMB'S WIFE;
THE NEW JERUSALEM
There came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife (Rev. 21: 9).
And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem (Rev. 21:10).
To her it was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of the saints (Rev. 19: 8).
And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband (Rev. 21: 2).
And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman. * * * And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ (Rev.12: 13-17).
THE HARLOT THAT SITTETH UPON
MANY WATERS, BABYLON THE
GREAT
There came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters (Rev. 17: 1).
So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns (Rev. 17:3). And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth (verse 18).
And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls. . . . And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH (Rev. 17: 4, 5).
And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints (Rev. 17: 1-6). And I heard another voice from heaven saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins (Rev. 18: 4).
Now Rev. 17 is self-explanatory. It leaves no room for doubt as to the meaning of the symbols. The first that John sees is the apostate woman. Let us ask,
1. What does the woman represent?
ANS.--"And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth" (verse 18).
2. What do the waters which the woman sitteth upon represent?
ANS.--"The waters which thou sawest, where the harlot sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues" (verse 15).
3. What do the seven heads of the beast represent?
ANS.--The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth (verse 9).
4. What do the ten horns in the head of the beast represent?
ANS.--"And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings" (verse 12).
5. What does the beast represent?
ANS.--It was not necessary to give the answer to this in this chapter, because it had been made clear by the prophet Daniel, and well known as the fourth beast with ten horns or the Roman empire.
Here we have the seven-hilled city of Rome, representing the headquarters of that apostate church, which should be headed up in the man of sin, or little horn that was to come up among the ten horns of the Roman beast. "The spirit speaketh expressly," says the apostle Paul, "that in subsequent times" this power should arise "forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meats," etc. Here is the prophecy which shows the earmarks of this creature in forbidding its priests and nuns and "Sisters of Mercy" to marry, and all its devotees to eat meat on Fridays and at certain "times" of its own appointment.
Now wherein is the papacy a sign of our times in relation to Christ's return? The antichrist is declining and ready to fall, and when we see the Lord thus consuming him with the spirit of his mouth, Christ is due to destroy him with the brightness of his coming. Before the little horn of Daniel’s prophecy, three of the horns of the Roman beast were to fall. The pope's tiara is the answer to this. The arrogancy and impudent assumption of his power in "exalting itself above all that is called god or that is worshipped" is a well-known fact in its history and instances of exemplification are too numerous to admit of collating and recording. Mr. Guinness says:
"Fox, in his Acts and Monuments, gives extracts from two hundred and twenty-three authentic documents, comprising decrees, decretals, extravagants, pontificates, and bulls. Twenty pages of small type in a large volume, are filled with the ‘great words’ of the popes, taken from these two hundred and twenty-three documents alone."
We can hardly afford space for comparatively a few samples, but here they are:
"Wherefore, seeing such power is given to Peter, and to me in Peter, being his successor, who is he then in all the world that ought not to be subject to my decrees, which have such power in heaven, in hell, in earth, with the quick, and also the dead. . . . By the jurisdiction of which key the fullness of my power is so great that, whereas all others are subjects--yea, and emperors themselves, ought to subdue their executions to me: only I am a subject to no creature, no, not to myself; so that my papal majesty ever remaineth undiminished; superior to all men; whom all persons ought to obey, and follow, whom no man must judge or accuse of any crime, no man depose but I myself. No man can excommunicate me, yea though I commune with the excommunicated, for no canon bindeth me: whom no man must lie to, for he that lieth to me is a church robber, and who obeyeth not me is a heretic, and an excommunicated person. . . . Thus, then, it appeareth, that the greatness of priesthood began in Melchisedec, was solemnized in Aaron, continued in the children of Aaron, perfectionated in Christ, represented in Peter, exalted in the universal jurisdiction, and manifested in the Pope. So that through this pre-eminence of my priesthood, having all things subject to me, it may seem well verified in me, that was spoken of Christ, ‘Thou hast subdued all things under his feet, sheep and oxen, and all the cattle of the field, the birds of heaven, and fish of the sea,’ etc., where it is to be noted that by oxen, Jews and heretics; by cattle of the field, Pagans be signified. . . . By sheep and all cattle, are meant all Christian men, both great and less, whether they be emperors, princes, prelates, or others. By birds of the air you may understand angels; and potentates of heaven, who be all subject to me, in that I am greater than the angels, and that in four things, as afore declared; and have power to bind and loose in heaven, and to give heaven to them that fight in my wars. Lastly, by the fishes of the sea, are signified the souls departed, in pain or in purgatory. . . . For, as we read, ‘The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof;’ and, as Christ saith, ‘All power is given to Him, both in heaven and in earth;’ so it is to be affirmed, that the Vicar of Christ hath power on things celestial, terrestrial, and infernal, which he took immediately of Christ. . . . I owe to the emperor no due obedience that he can claim, but they owe to me, as to their superior; and, therefore, for a diversity betwixt their degree and mine, in their consecration they take the unction on their arm, I on the head, And as I am superior to them, so am I superior to all laws, and free from all constitutions; who am able of myself, and by my interpretation, to prefer equity not being written, before the law written; having all laws within the chest of my breast, as is aforesaid. . . . What country soever, kingdom, or province, choosing to themselves bishops and ministers, although they agree with all other Christ's favored people in the name of Jesu, that is, in faith and charity, believing in the same God, and in Christ, His true Son, and in the Holy Ghost, having also the same creed, the same evangelists, and scriptures of the apostles; yet, notwithstanding, unless their bishops and ministers take their origin and ordination from this apostolic seat, they are to be counted not of the church, so that succession of faith only is not sufficient to make a church, except the ministers take their ordination from them who have their succession from the apostles. . . . And likewise it is to be presumed that the bishop of that church is always good and holy. Yea, though he fall into homicide or adultery, he may sin, but yet he cannot be accused, but rather excused by the murders of Samson, the thefts of the Hebrews, etc. All the earth is my diocese, and the ordinary of all men, having the authority of the King of all kings upon subjects. I am all in all and above all, so that God Himself, and I, the Vicar of God, have both one consistory, and I am able to do almost all that God can do. In all things that I list, my will is to stand for reason, for I am able by the law to dispense above the law, and of wrong to make justice in correcting laws and changing them. . . . Wherefore, if those things that I do be said not to be done of man, but of God: WHAT CAN YOU MAKE ME BUT GOD? Again, if prelates of the church be called and counted of Constantine for gods, I then, being above all prelates, seem by this reason to be ABOVE ALL GODS. Wherefore no marvel if it be in my power to change time and times, to alter and abrogate laws, to dispense with all things, yea, with the precepts of Christ; for where Christ biddeth Peter put up his sword, and admonishes his disciples not to use any outward force in revenging themselves, do not I, Pope Nicholas, writing to the bishops of France, exhort them to draw out their material swords? And, whereas Christ was present himself at the marriage in Cana of Galilee, do not I, Pope Martin, in my distinction, inhibit the spiritual clergy to be present at marriage-feasts and also to marry? Moreover, where Christ biddeth us lend without hope of gain, do not I, Pope Martin, give dispensation for the same? What should I speak of murder, making it to be no murder or homicide to slay them that be excommunicated? Likewise, against the law of nature, item against the apostles, also against the canon of the apostles, I can and do dispense; for where they, in their canon, command a priest for fornication to be deposed, I, through the authority of Silvester, do alter the rigour of that constitution, considering the minds and bodies also of men now to be weaker than they were then. . . . If ye list briefly to hear the whole number of all such cases as properly do appertain to my Papal dispensation, which come to the number of one-and-fifty points, that no man may meddle with but only I myself alone, I will recite them:
"The Pope doth canonize saints, and none else but he.
"His sentence maketh a law.
"He is able to abolish laws, both civil and canon.
"To erect new religions, to approve or reprove rules or ordinances, and ceremonies in the church.
"He is able to dispense with all the precepts and statutes of the Church.
"The same is also free from all laws, so that he cannot incur any sentence of excommunication, suspension, irregularity, etc., etc.
"After that I have now sufficiently declared my power in earth, in heaven, in purgatory, how great it is, and what is the fulness thereof, in binding, loosing, commanding, permitting, electing, confirming, disposing, dispensing, doing and undoing, etc., I will speak now a little of my riches and of my great possessions, that every man may see by my wealth and abundance of all things, rents, tithes, tributes, my silks, my purple mitres, crowns, gold, silver, pearls and gems, lands and lordships, for to me pertaineth first the imperial city of Rome; the palace of Lateran, the kingdom of Sicily is proper to me, Apulia and Capua be mine. Also the kingdom of England and Ireland, be they not, or ought they not to be, tributaries to me? To these I adjoin also, besides other provinces and countries, both in the Occident and Orient, from the north to the south, these dominions by name (here follows a long list). What should I speak here of my daily revenues, of my first-fruits, annates palls, indulgences, bulls, confessionals, indults, and rescripts, testaments, dispensations, privileges, elections, prebends, religious houses, and such like, which come to no small mass of money? . . . But what should I speak of Germany, when the whole world is my diocese, as my canonists do say, and all men are bound to believe; except they will imagine (as the Manichees do) two beginnings, which is false and heretical? For Moses saith, In the beginning God made heaven and earth: and not In the beginnings. Wherefore, as I began, so I conclude, commanding, declaring and pronouncing, to stand UPON NECESSITY OF SALVATION, FOR EVERY HUMAN CREATURE TO BE SUBJECT TO ME."
There surely is no room to expect a greater fulfillment of the prophecies than we have in this. What more can any being or institution claim? In what can there be greater pretenses? Has not the climax of iniquity been reached? And is not this enough to identify the antichrist beyond the shadow of doubt? The counterfeit Christianity was to appear and play its hypocritical, foul, and cruel part in the darkness of its own creating. It is done. What next is due? Surely the Christ, true Christianity, the kingdom of God. The "mystery of godliness," has been removed by the "mystery of iniquity," and every sacred thing has been counterfeited. As Mr. Guinness says, "The papacy has its counterfeit high priest, the pope; its counterfeit sacrifice, the mass; its counterfeit Bible, tradition; its counterfeit mediators, the Virgin, the saints and angels; the forms have been copied, the realities set aside. Satan inaugurated and developed a system, not (avowedly) antagonistic to Christianity, but a counterfeit of it; and as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses so (i. e. by imitation) he has withstood Christ." Now there is another way by which we can follow the history of the papacy as a sign of the times; and whether or not it is safe thereby to fix definite dates, it serves approximately, which is near enough for a sign to stir to readiness and cause to lift up the head--to point out our whereabouts in relation to our Lord's return.
It is safe to say that, along with signs, prophecy gives times by which the diligent student may determine approximately how near we are to the realization of our hope. The length of time is not always given in literal terms, for in this, as well as in other advanced phases of revelation, the principle is followed, that it is "the glory of God to conceal a thing and the honor of kings to search out a matter."
It is not wise to be dogmatic in dealing with prophetic times, as the experience of many failures in the past go to show. Still, it is an interesting branch of Divine revelation and the interest awakened in the mind by its study is of a healthful nature to those aspiring to be spiritually minded. If "variety is the spice of life" why should there not be some "spice" in the most interesting study the mind can be engaged in?
There are two sides to what is known as the "day for a year" question. Some claim that this method of representing time is employed in the Scriptures, while others deny it and claim that literal days are meant always. We cannot here elaborately give the strong arguments in favor of the day for a year theory; but must limit our remarks on this subject to reference to the seventy weeks of Dan. 9. Here we have a period which would seem to us to give a safe precedent. The events to transpire in the period called "seventy weeks" can only be found inside of the period of four hundred and ninety years beginning with the "going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem," and reaching to the "cutting off of Messiah" (verses 25, 26). In this time Israel was to "finish its transgression," which it did in the crucifixion of the Messiah; sin offerings under the Mosaic law were to end, Christ’s offering upon the cross being the "end of the law"; "reconciliation for iniquity" was to be made, which was effected by the death of Christ; everlasting righteousness to be sealed up or confirmed, which Christ did in the shedding of the "blood of the everlasting covenant" through which he was raised from the dead (Heb. 13: 20); and the Most Holy was to be anointed, which was fulfilled when Christ was made immortal and thus constituted the antitypical Most Holy.
The beginning of this period is shown by history and by the marginal note in our reference Bibles to be the twentieth year of Artaxerxes which was 456 B. C. Seventy weeks are four hundred and ninety days, or on the prophetic principle of a day for a year, four hundred and ninety years. Add the year of Christ’s death A. D. 34, to 456 B. C. and we have four hundred and ninety years as the time in which all the events named were to take place. This principle of using a day to represent a year is laid down in Ezek. 4: 4-6, where the prophet is commanded to lie first upon his left side and then upon his right three hundred and ninety days and forty days, of which it is said, "For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity," and "I have appointed thee each day for a year."
Now returning to the subject, the prophet Daniel is told that the little horn of the Roman beast was to have power to dominate over the saints for "a time, times, and the dividing of time" (chap. 7: 25). In chap. 12: 6, 7, in answer to the question, "How long shall it be to the end of these wonders?" the answer is, that "it shall be for a time, times and a half." This was to reach towards the accomplishment of the scattering of the holy (set apart) people (Israel). A Jewish time was three hundred and sixty days. It is remarkable that the power of "swelling words" is spoken of in Rev. 13: 5 of one to whom is given "a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies" and "power is given unto him to continue (in persecuting power) forty and two months." Counting the Jewish month of thirty days this would be twelve hundred and sixty days.
Thus 42 x 30= 1,260 day-years.
And in the time, times and an half of Daniel we have
One time 360
Two times 720
One half time 180
1,260 day-years.
Taking the day for a year this would be twelve hundred and sixty years that the papacy should have power to "wear out the saints."
Now the development of political power in any form must necessarily be more or less gradual. It is therefore difficult to fix upon one definite time when we can say it commenced. Indeed, it would seem that some of the prophetic times have gradations of beginning and of ending, each beginning reaching the whole given length of time to its ending. The "seven time" period, or twenty-five hundred and twenty years of Jewish suppression and Gentile dominion, would seem to be presented in this form; and in the Babylonish captivity there were several deportations, and the restoration was on what we might term the installment plan. The seventy years of Jeremiah's prophecy would therefore have several beginnings and several endings; but seventy years would measure the time from each beginning to its own ending. This is capable of elaboration at great length, but we cannot deal with it here. Perhaps we shall in another part of this book. We have only referred to it to show that seeming failures on the part of prophetic students in dealing with this question have only been the result of expecting the last end of the given time when the date was only one of the previous endings.
On the end of the twelve hundred and sixty years of papal supremacy we have the same advantage as with the seventy weeks--we can begin at the end and count backward to the beginning. That the end came in A. D. 1870 cannot be questioned. Cardinal Gibbons says that it was then that the pope lost his temporal power, termed by him "temporalities." And what more fitting than that he should, and that it should be at the hands of Victor Immanuel--a victor in the hands of God for that purpose and therefore in that sense "God with us?" In 1870 Pius IX reached the climax of blasphemy by calling the famous Ecumenical council, at which sat "six archbishop princes, forty-nine cardinals, eleven patriarchs, six hundred and eighty-nine archbishops and bishops, twenty-eight abbots, twenty-nine generals of orders, eight hundred and three spiritual rulers, representing the Church of Rome"--all to decree the impudent claim of the infallibility of the pope. It is said that "arrangements had been made to reflect a glory around the person of the pope by means of mirrors at noon, when the decree was made (July 18, 1870). But the sun shone not that day. A violent storm broke over Rome, the sky was darkened by tempest and the voices of the Council were lost in the rolling thunder." Now the remarkable thing is that the very day following this the Franco-German war was declared, which necessitated the withdrawal of the French soldiers who had been stationed in Rome to protect the pope from Garibaldi: and this opened the door for the king of Italy to make the pope a "prisoner in the Vatican," which he confesses himself to be. It was then that the last vestige of temporal power was wrested from the pope and the "consuming" process was accelerated. On September 20, Rome was proclaimed the capital of Italy and became the seat of government of King Victor Immanuel. From this time it seems to have been a foregone conclusion that the sick man of sin of the West was indeed a consumptive. The London Times, commenting on the event, said:
"The most remarkable circumstance in the annexation of Rome and its territory to the kingdom of Italy is the languid indifference with which the transfer has been regarded by Catholic Christendom. A change which would once have convulsed the world has failed to distract attention from the more absorbing spectacle of the Franco-German war. Within the same year the papacy has assumed the highest spiritual exaltation to which it could aspire, and lost the temporal sovereignty which it had held for a thousand years."
Counting back from this complete overthrow of the temporal power twelve hundred and sixty years and we are in A. D. 610, when the Phocan decree, which is supposed to have been issued in A. D. 606 or 608, and which made the pope a Supreme pontiff, might be said to be in full effect.
We can now safely conclude that the "consuming" has been going on in our days, that the lease of temporal power of "forty and two months," and of "time, times and an half" has expired and the next thing due is the coming of the Christ to destroy the antichrist, and what clearer signs can we ask for to prove that we are nearing the end of Gentile times and the inauguration of the glorious reign of righteousness and peace? (4)
(4) Later, the Author came to believe that there would be a restoration of the temporal power, though of short duration. Prophecy requires that the False Prophet take the leadership of the "ten kings" in their militant opposition to Christ. (See Rev. 17: 12-14; 19: 11-20.) It is not difficult to conceive as to how this may come to pass. The Pope has already been accorded rule in the Vatican State, to which the envoys and ambassadors of other countries are delegated. Statesmen have come to recognize the vital need for religion as a basis for stability in world affairs. And in turning to religion, we may be sure they will not adopt such doctrines as are proclaimed in this book, however Scriptural, reasonable and wonderful. In the fight against Communism, forces are being joined with Catholicism in both Church and State.
FRANCE
A power represented by three frogs is to be a great disturber among the nations under the sixth vial, and it is to play a prominent part in gathering them to the "war of God Almighty." Rev. 16: 13, 14 read as follows:
And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.
History well establishes the fact that France was once represented by three frogs. Dr. Thomas, in his Eureka, an exposition of the Apocalypse, quotes the following from Elliot’s Hor. Apoc.:
In M. Court de Gebelin’s work, styled "The primitive world compared with the Modern world," he says, "The armoral bearings of Guyenne are a leopard; those of the Celts (especially of the Belgians) are a lion; and of the French a frog. The frog represents the marshes whence the French originated." And again, "The Cosmography of Munster has transmitted to us a very remarkable fact of this kind. Mercamir, king of the French, having penetrated from Westphalia into Tangres, saw in a dream a figure with three heads, the one of a lion, the other of an eagle, and the third of a frog. He consulted there, it is added, a celebrated Druid of the country, named Al Runus; who assured him that this figure represented the three powers which had successively reigned over the Gauls; the Celts whose symbol was a lion; the Romans designated by an eagle, and the Franks by the frog because of their marshes."
The characteristic restlessness of the French people and the uncertainty of their governmental movements are facts too well known to need recording here. They are always croaking to the annoyance and disturbance of the other nations, allowing of no political rest. According to the prophecy, they are to breathe out their unclean spirits of disturbance and political mischief through the mouth of the dragon, the beast and the false prophet. These mouths are supposed by some to be Constantinople, Vienna and Rome, and they give the history answering well to this view of the matter.
It is sufficient for our present purpose, however, to identify the nation represented by the three frogs, and this will enable us to see how France is playing the part allotted to it leading up to the final crisis when the thief-like advent will take place. In our day France is continually an uncertain element in the universal unrest among the nations. We hear of "another crisis in Paris" time after time, and any morning and any evening the world is prepared to read blazing headliners, "Another crisis in Paris!" Russia and England are necessarily opposing powers shaping their policies preparatory to the final struggle, which they know must come, the jealousy and envy which will hasten it being for the present hidden behind the thin netting of "diplomatic courtesy." Now it happens that France, though a republic, has allied itself with despotic Russia--a strange mixture. It is not for any love she has for Russia, but to show her spitefulness towards England and Germany, the latter because of the galling defeat she suffered in the Franco-German war; the former because she was foolish enough to withdraw from Egypt and leave England in full control to carry out her plans there as prophecy requires her to do. Ever since she did this she has been croaking impudently at the British lion while that "king of the forest" has looked down upon her with contempt and only answered her croaks with an occasional growl, holding fast to Egypt and steadily and persistently penetrating into the interior of that country. It is only recently that a great ado has been made about a visit of the president of the French republic to the Czar, in which France in her usual running-over excitement and frenzy has done all that was possible to arouse the jealousy of England and to intensify the hatred of Germany towards her. Smarting under the humiliating defeat her impudence received at the hands of Germany, she never will be quiet as long as Alsace and Lorraine are in the hands of her victor; and this, with her mistake in leaving Egypt to British control, is the providential net in which she has entangled herself as one of the last causes of her frog-like disturbing spirit which is to be a great factor in "gathering all nations to the war of that great day of God Almighty." Every month widens the breach and intensifies the jealousy; and every action seems to be guarded to effect the greatest insult possible in the faces of her foes. All the great writers on the political situation see this danger as the outcome of the French frog-like Spirits; and to the prophetic student it is evident from this sign that the war is near, when that great end will be reached declared in the words thrown into this passage in Rev. 16: 13-16, "Behold I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked and his shame appear."(5)
(5) Some see the "three unclean spirits like frogs" in Bolshevism, Naziism, and Fascism. A frog is a loud-mouthed creature, and may appropriately symbolize these so-called ideologies, characterized by noisy and lying propaganda. They have led and are leading the world to Armageddon.
BRITAIN
There is not much trouble in identifying Britain in prophecy, a fact which might naturally be expected, for a nation of such power and fame in all the world, and one whose subjects and rulers have a higher regard for the Bible than any others upon the face of the earth, and have done more to give the world an open Bible, free to poor and rich alike, than all others combined--such a nation surely should be found distinctly marked out in prophecy.
In view of these considerations, we should have no trouble in discovering Britain as a prominent sign in the political heavens of the last days of Gentile times; and since it is in the hostile movements of the nations the signs are to be found, and since Britain must necessarily be one of the chief actors in the final drama, it must be certain that prophecy has given her part in the programme in a manner which cannot escape attention.
Now there are various scenes in which she is found playing her parts. Here are the most remarkable ones and the easiest to understand:
1.--Woe (rather Ho!) to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia: that sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters, saying, Go ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a nation terrible from their beginning hitherto (or forward--Lesser); a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled (Isa. 18: 1, 2).
Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring my sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the Lord thy God, and to the Holy One of Israel, because he hath glorified thee (Isa. 60: 9).
The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents: the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts (Ps. 72: 10).
Sheba and Dedan, and the merchants of Tarshish, with all the young lions thereof, shall say unto thee (Gog), Art thou come to take a spoil? (Ezek. 38: 13).
For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee (Isa. 43: 3).
THE LAND OF SHADOWING WINGS
Britain is the only nation that will fully answer to the description of Isa. 18. Some have tried to apply it to the American continent, allowing their imaginations to see the shape of two wings in the geographical form of the country. There is no fitness in this theory. The wings are "shadowing wings," which belong to the land; not that the wings are the land and vice versa. It is strictly an island country whose ambassadors must go to foreign nations "by the sea," and a land remarkable for shadowing wings or protection beyond its own domain proper. The words, "Hide me under the shadow of thy wings" imply protection, and this is the sense in which the words, "shadowing with wings" are used in this chapter.
Now there is no nation upon earth who has wings stretched out as Britain has. Her dependencies reach far and wide, and upon them it is said the sun never sets. Not only is it true of her as it is of no other nation in a geographical sense; but it is universally admitted that Britain protects her subjects at home and abroad with a jealous care unequalled in all the world. In regard to her "the land shadowing with wings" is no empty phrase.
Another mark of identification is that the land of Isa. 18 is remarkable for the possession of "swift messengers upon the waters;" this to such an extent as to point out the nation as distinct from all others. With this consideration no room is left for the faintest surmise of the prophecy applying to any power except the proud nation of the song, "Britannia, the pride of the ocean, the home of the brave and the free." That "Britain rules the waves" is a proverbial fact which removes all doubt as to what nation is in these latter days to play such an important part in the dreadful drama, whose last act is Armageddon.
There has been some difficulty with the chapter because of the "vessels of bulrushes," students thinking Egypt must be meant by this sign; but Dr. Thomas seems to have good grounds for translating this, "vessels of turning or whirling things." If this is the correct translation the question is still further removed from doubt; for the fulfillment of the prophecy is clearly seen in Britain being foremost in the possession of the great leviathans, which by the "whirling things" of modern wonderful mechanical inventions become "swift messengers" to plough the mountain waves of the mighty ocean. But even accepting the translation of the A. V., there should be no difficulty. Let us grant that Egypt is referred to, and that her ancient "vessels of bulrushes" are alluded to, to whom does Egypt belong at the present time? Is not Britain the dictator of its destiny? It is not unusual for the bows and arrows of ancient warfare to be spoken of in prophecies relating to the latter times when such weapons have been superceded by cannon and shell. Speaking of the time when God will be known in Judah and His name be great in Israel, and when "in Salem also is his tabernacle, and his dwelling place in Zion," it is said, "There brake he the arrows and the bow, the shield and the sword, and the battle--Psa. 76: 1-3. And to Gog of the latter days the spirit through the prophet Ezekiel says, "And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand" (Ezek. 39: 3). Many other similar cases may be found by the diligent reader. Now when Gog is destroyed in the latter days (Chap. 38: 16) there will be no literal bows and arrows, but mightier weapons of destruction than these; but language familiar to the times of the prophet is carried down to the latter days. So with the vessels of bulrushes; the great merchant ships and warships of our times as far exceed these as the cannon and shell do the bow and arrow. England therefore, having control of Egypt, the land of papyrus vessels is in the chapter clearly marked out as that nation that will respond to the Providential call (unwittingly, no doubt) Ho! to the land shadowing with wings. Send your swift messengers to bring the scattered nation of Israel to the Mount Zion.
There is a reason why Britain’s possessions "beyond the rivers of Ethiopia," and those of Egypt should be given more prominence here than the British Isles, and that is that these countries in the hands of England are the natural cause for her response to the call to bring Israel to the Holy Land. Her Indian possessions, the Suez Canal, as the main artery of her life, and her advantageous possession of Egypt combine to make it necessary for her to have Israel as a friendly people in the East; and it is with a view of helping to hold back the force of the great northern mountain that she is so deeply interested in colonizing the Jews in Palestine. When the great conflict takes place between England and Russia, British troops in India and Egypt will necessarily be foremost in the battle, and this is why the land of bulrushes and ancient Cush "beyond the rivers"--the Euphrates and the Tigris--a country now in Britain's possession, are named in this latter day prophecy.
In Isa. 43: 3 we are told that preparatory to the divinely bestowed favor upon Jacob and Israel (verse 1), in redeeming them, when Jehovah will be "The Lord their God, the Holy One of Israel, their Saviour," Egypt is to be given to a nation as a reward for ransoming Israel. This is to be at a time when it is declared "I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back! bring my sons (Israel) from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth" (verse 6). When the time for the deliverance of the twelve tribes from Egypt came, God gave the peremptory command to Pharaoh, "Give up." For a time Pharaoh was not willing; but at last Israel became a sore and a scourge to him to an extent that he was quite willing to "give up" and to hasten them out of the land.
Now in the latter-day deliverance of Judah and Israel there will be preliminary work, and circumstances should shape themselves so as to make "the north give up." The nation north of the prophet’s standpoint is Russia, and only three years ago Providence said to the Russian Pharaoh, "Give up!" and the Jews were hastily driven out by thousands. Simultaneously with this, and previous to it, the call, which is couched in milder words because addressed to a friendly nation instead of an unfriendly one, "Keep not back," was being obeyed by a nation south of the prophet’s standpoint. What nation was and is helping Israel’s return to their land? Not Egypt, considered of itself in the hands of its nominal ruler; but Britain, who is the real ruler of that country, and has done more towards colonizing the Jews in Palestine than any other nation. To her God has given Egypt, in spite of the discontent and threats of other powers, France in particular.
It is a Britain, then, that the words of Isa. 18 are addressed, and she is called upon to send her swift messengers upon the waters to a "nation scattered," whose land the rivers (nations) have spoiled; and she is to bring them as "a present unto the Lord of hosts" "to the place of the name of the Lord of hosts, the mount Zion" (verse 7). She has partly done this, and is doing it; and since this is preparatory to the appearance of the "Lion of the tribe of Judah," in it we have a latter-day sign leading up to the grand sequel we are looking for and hoping for. It is not, we presume, necessary to prove that England is the real ruler of Egypt, for it is generally known and admitted. At this very time the Chicago Record is giving a series of lessons on various useful branches, one of which is "General History," and in the history of Egypt it says,
"The Macedonians were succeeded in turn by the Romans, Saracens, Mamelukes, and Turks, to the last mentioned of which Egypt still nominally owes allegiance, though its policy is now controlled absolutely by England and it is practically a part of the British empire, under whose protection it is even now winning back the vast territories in the Soudan which were undoubtedly under its sway in the days of the Pharaohs."
Not only is England addressed by the prophet as in possession of Egypt, but as "beyond the rivers of Ethiopia" (verse 1). In this again we have the ancient name of a country brought down to our times. For the Ethiopia of this chapter we must look back further in history and farther east than Abyssinia. Looking east from the prophet’s standpoint we reach beyond the rivers Euphrates and Tigris to India. According to some ancient descriptions, of Ethiopia it would embrace part of the country through which these rivers run and include India. The American Cyclopedia has the following:
Recent linguistic discoveries, says George Rawlinson (Herodotus), book I, essay xi), tends to show that a Cushite or Ethiopian race did in the earliest times extend itself along the shores of the southern ocean from Abyssinia to India. The whole peninsula of India was peopled by a race of this character before the influx of the Aryans; it extended from India along the sea coast through the modern Baluchistan and Kerman, which was the proper country of the Asiatic Ethiopians; the cities on the northern shores of the Persian Gulf are shown by the brick inscriptions found among their ruins to have belonged to the race; it was dominant in Susiana and Babylonia, until overpowered in the one country by Aryan; in the other by Semitic intrusion. It can be traced, both by dialect and tradition, throughout the whole south coast of the Arabian peninsula; and it still exists in Abyssinia.
This again identifies England as the nation of Isa. 18. So we have her as a land of shadowing wings; a land beyond the rivers of Ethiopia; an island nation that "sendeth ambassadors by the sea"; a nation to which Egypt is given as wages for helping Israel’s return to its home; a nation remarkable for the possession of "vessels of turning things;" the nation sent to a people terrible from their beginning and forward, but who for a time have been "scattered and peeled" and that takes them to the land of Mount Zion.
In Isa. 60: 9 Britain is again spoken of as bringing God’s sons (Israel) from far, and here she is called the "isles," that are to "wait for me" (Jehovah) as the "ships of Tarshish." Again she is called "the kings of Tarshish and of the isles" (Psa. 72: 10); and the "merchants of Tarshish, with all the young lions thereof" (Ezek. 38: 13). We have only to ask, Which is the great merchant nation of the world? Which is the great maritime nation of the world? What nation is represented by the lion, having many possessions as "young lions?" To Britain and to Britain alone we must look for the answers to these questions. Since it is this merchant, Tarshish, lion power that is to defiantly meet the king of the north in defence of Israel colonized in the Holy Land, according to Ezekiel’s prophecy, and since the consequent conflict is to bring upon the scene "Michael, the great prince," it is important that we show that Britain is Tarshish. To this end we cannot do better than quote a digest by R. Roberts, in Prophecy and the Eastern Question of a book entitled, The Kings of the East, published in 1842. He says:
The first fact to be looked at is the one stated in Ezek. 27: 12, that Tarshish was a merchant of Tyre (ancient Phoenicia), supplying the Tyrian market with "silver, iron, tin and lead." If the source of the supply of these metals to the Tyrian market can be ascertained the Scripture Tarshish is discovered.
It is a fact that tin was universally used by the ancients as the alloy for the hardening of copper, in the making of swords and other implements. It is another fact that none of the ancient civilized countries possessed tin mines. It is another fact that till the destruction of Tyre by Alexander, all countries were supplied by the markets of Tyre, and that the source of the Tyrian supply was till that time a secret. The secret was afterwards open to the Greeks and Romans, who went to the same source of supply. What source was that? The answer derivable from Strabo, Herodotus, and other ancient historians, is that the Greeks and Romans, like the Phoenicians before them, went for tin to the islands known as the "Cassiterides."
What does "Cassiterides" mean? The tin islands, from cassiieros--the name given by the Greeks to tin. Look on any ancient map and Cassiterides will be found marked under the British Islands. But originally the Greeks did not know the name by which the Cassiterides were known to the original Phoenician traders. They only knew there were such islands without knowing where, or what geographical phrase they were known by. When they did know they found they were known as the Britannic Isles. Why Britannic Isles?
Britannia is a Celtic name. The Celtic language is Phoenician naturalized in these islands from the first settlers, the descendants of the Tarshish, son of Javan, one of those by whom "the isles of the Gentiles were divided in their lands" (Gen. 10: 5). In pure Celtic, Britannia signifies the LAND OF METALS: in Syriac, from which it is derived, Baratanac means the land of tin. The modern name, Britain, is but a modification of the ancient Baratanac, or Britannia, consequently, The British Isles literally mean the tin isles, and identify Britain as the Cassiterides (tin islands) of the Greeks, and the Tarshish of the Scriptures which supplied Tyre with "silver, iron, tin and lead."
In addition to the evidence of historians that Tyre drew her mineral supplies from certain northern islands beyond the pillars of Hercules (the straits of Gibralter) there is abundant evidence in Cornwall and the south and west coasts of Ireland of the existence of ancient mineral mines worked by Phoenician enterprise. Not only are numerous exhausted tin mines found in various localities, whose history is totally unknown, but implements of Phoenician workmanship are found abundantly. Messrs. Lysons, in their account of Cornwall (page 204), say: "Cornwall has been celebrated for its tin mines from very remote antiquity. We learn from Strabo, Herodotus and other ancient writers that the Phoenicians, and after them the Greeks and Romans, traded for tin to Cornwall, under the name of the Cassiterides, from a very early period, Diodorus Siculus, who wrote in the reign of Augustus, gives a particular description of the manner in which the valuable metal was dug and prepared by the Britons." Fragments of ancient weapons are frequently discovered in Cornwall, in streams and buried in the ground. Messrs. Lysons, in the book already quoted, say, "They are instruments of mixed metal, commonly called celts, apparently cast in imitation of the stone hatchets and chisels of the early inhabitants. They are found in greater abundance in Cornwall than in any other part of the kingdom. . . . Several were found on the side of Larnbri Hill in the year 1844. In the parish of Halant, four miles north St. Michael’s Mount in the year 1802, a farmer discovered, about two feet below the surface of the earth, a quantity of celts, weighing about fourteen to fifteen pounds, with pieces of copper swords and heavy lumps of fine copper. . . . Another large quantity of celts, with spearheads and broken pieces of copper swords, with several lumps of metal, weighing altogether about eighty pounds, was discovered in the parish of St. Hilary, about the year 1800." Other similar discoveries have been made, and a comparison of these ancient relics, with the armor described by Homer in the Iliad, as worn by the Greeks (who were supplied by Tyre), shows that they are identical in metal and manufacture. As regards Ireland, a report on the metallic mines of Leinster was presented to the Royal Dublin Society in 1828, in which the following paragraph occurs: "If we may judge from the number of ancient mine excavations, which are still visible in almost every part of Ireland, it would appear that an ardent spirit for mining adventure must have pervaded this country at some very remote period. . . . Many of our mining excavations exhibit appearances similar to the surface workings of the most ancient mines of Cornwall, which are generally attributed to the Phoenicians." M. Moore, in his first volume of the History of Ireland, says: "Numbers of swords made of brass have been found in different parts of the country. . . . It has been thought not improbable that all these weapons, the Irish as well as the others, were of the same Punic or Phoenician origin, and may be traced to those colonies on the coast of Spain which traded anciently with the British Isles." Dr. Vincent, in his treatise on the commerce and navigation of the ancients in the Indian Ocean, says: "Tin is mentioned as an import into Africa, Arabia, Scindi and the coast of Malabar. It has continued an article of commerce, BROUGHT OUT OF BRITAIN IN ALL AGES, and conveyed to all the countries in the Mediterranean by the Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans, and carried into the Eastern Ocean, from the origin of commerce."
Now in the latter days of Gentile times just previous and preparatory to the coming of Christ, prophecy requires a colonization of Jews in Palestine in which Britain is to be the chief helper. She is before us as an unmistakable sign in this. Prophecy promises that she shall have possession of Egypt as wages for this work; and this, too, is to place her in position ready to meet the king of the north defiantly in the last act of the great war that will bring Christ upon the scene as a man of war. She is in that position as another sign of the end. England was also to be in position in India, "beyond the rivers of Ethiopia" when her latter-day service would be required. She is there. Her young lions are also to willingly assist her in the great and final struggle as shown by the words, "The merchants of Tarshish with all the young lions thereof shall say, Art thou come to take a spoil?" It is a remarkable fact that in the late Queen’s Diamond Jubilee the British colonies have been brought into closer relations than ever; and they voluntarily proposed to render assistance in increasing and upholding the strength of the navy, a fact which shows their willingness to rush to the aid of the old lion in fighting the bear from the north in his plundering of the Jews who have "gotten cattle and goods, and dwell confidently in the midst of the land."
When the nations are raging and imagining the vain thing of breaking the bands assunder of Christ and his victorious hosts, the stubborn ones will be broken to shivers and dashed in pieces like a potter’s vessel; but England will undoubtedly be the most willing to respond to the invitation to "Kiss the Son lest he be angry and ye perish by the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little" (Psa. 2). Should the good queen of England be alive there is no doubt she would rather lay her crown at the feet of Christ as the king of the whole earth than have it placed upon the head of the Prince of Wales. While there is much pomp and aristocratic show in England, her people are the most reverential and Bible-loving of all the earth. With all their display of power and with all the excitement of the late Jubilee, it was possible for the pen of the poet to arrest attention to a few words commencing with "God" and ending with "Lord." It seemed as if bands of martial music and the roar of cannon were hushed into silence, processions seemed suddenly to stand still, when, from the throne to the humblest cot, heads were bowed in reverence to hear the words, "Lest we forget--lest we forget!" Mr. Kipling quietly sent his poem, "Recessional," to the London Times, and, as McClure’s Magazine says, "It was at once recognized as the strongest and most searching word of all that the Jubilee had called forth." A nation that can be so touched to the heart with the words of this poem will not be slow to yield all the power, glory and honor to the King of kings and Lord of lords.
RECESSIONAL
God of our fathers, known of old-- Lord of our far-flung battle-line-- Beneath Whose awful Hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine-- Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget! The tumult and the shouting dies-- The captains and the kings depart-- Still stands Thine ancient Sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart, Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget! Far-called our navies melt away-- On dune and headland sinks the fire-- Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget! If drunk with sight of power we loose Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe-- Such boasting as the Gentiles use Or lesser breeds without the Law-- Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget--lest we forget! For heathen heart that puts her trust In reeking tube and iron shard-- All valiant dust that builds on dust, And guarding, calls not Thee to guard-- For frantic boast and foolish word, Thy mercy on thy people, Lord! Amen.
The Jubilee was no sooner over than it was being published in the papers that Queen Victoria was a believer in the Lord’s return to reign on earth.
QUEEN VICTORIA LOOKING FOR CHRIST
An English journal reports that the Queen recently said to a minister of the Church of England:
"I am looking for the coming of our Lord and I do not think it impossible that I may not have to surrender my crown till I shall lay it down at his feet."
"What a change! The Queen of Sheba came to behold the splendor of Solomon, whose fame had filled the world, and whose wisdom was known to the nations afar. But a greater than Solomon once appeared and is coming again. Earth’s greatest sovereign sees in the events now occurring evidence of His coming who is the Desire of nations and the rightful heir to the world’s empire.
The Queen apparently passes by the Prince of Wales (who many predict will never come to the throne) and longs to lay her crown at the feet of the King of kings. Truly when Jerusalem shall be rebuilt in the light of the new day, "kings shall come to the brightness of her rising." The ships of Tarshish (England) shall bring her sons from far because the Lord hath glorified her (Isa. 60: 9).
Whether the queen personally will have the honor of repeating the historical drama of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon or not, it is evident that the time cannot be far distant when England as a nation will have the honor of playing that noble part of the greatest drama that has ever been acted upon the stage of the world of nations.(6)
(6)The Author comments upon this further, at the time of the Queen’s death in January of 1901. In an Editorial in the February Advocate, of which he was editor and publisher, he says: "By the death of Queen Victoria a pretty little romance which many of our brethren have indulged in has been disappointed--that personally the Queen would literally repeat before Christ the historic drama of the queen of Sheba before Solomon, and that the present she would lay at his feet would be no less than the crown of the vast empire of Great Britain." The failure of this speculation may well serve to illustrate the difference between human imagination and Bible prediction--it requires only the passage of time to discredit the one and to confirm the other.
RUSSIA
The marks of identification of Russia are as clear as those of Britain; and that, too, for the same reason--the prominent part she is to play as a sign of the advent of Christ and in the final struggle. Under various historic names she is spoken of by the prophets; but for our present purpose it will be sufficient to note what is marked out by Ezekiel and Daniel. As with other branches of the subject so with this--the relation of Russia’s actions to Israel--Ezekiel 37 deals with Israel’s restoration, and chapter 38 presents certain details leading up to the coming of the Messiah. All that is necessary here is to show that "Gog of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal," is the Russian power. This is best done by quoting from Dissertations of Unaccomplished Prophecy, by W. Snell Chauncy, a work written in the beginning of this century, and which is remarkable for its clear insight into the fulfillment of prophecy. Commenting upon verse 2, he says:
Rather Gog the prince of the land of Magog, the Prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal. By Magog is most probably meant the Scythians or Tartars, called so by Arabian and Syrian writers. Josephus is the earliest Hebrew authority of weight and learning, to which we can address ourselves; and he distinctly informs us, "that Japhet, the son of Noah, had seven sons," whose names, as recorded in Gen. 10: 2, were Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal and Meshech, and Tiras; who, proceeding from their primitive seats, in the mountains of Taurus and Amanus, ascended Asia to the river Tanais (or, Don); and there entering Europe, penetrated as far westward as the straits of Gibraltar, occupying the lands which they successively met with in their progress (all of which were uninhabited), and bequeathed their names to their different families or nation.--Granville Penn.
By Rosh is most probably meant the Russians, descendants of the ancient inhabitants on the river Araxes or Rosh. See Bochart, Phaleg, lib. III, cap. 13, &c. Michaelis, Spicileg. Georg, part I, p. 34, &c., D’Herbelot and others.
According to our common English translation, the prophecy is addressed to "Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal."
So the English translators of the Bible have rendered that important title, following the interpretation of the Vulgate, or Latin version of Jerome, used in the western church; which interpretation rests upon a criticism of that same ancient writer. But the first translators of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Septuagint, or Seventy Jews of Alexandria, who translated the prophecies of Ezekiel into the Greek tongue above six hundred years before the age of Jerome, and above two hundred years before the birth of Christ, rendered this passage with a very notable and essential difference, viz.: "Gog, the chief of Ros, Mesoch and Thobel."
The difference between the two interpretations turns upon this one point. The Hebrew word rosh or ros, used as an appellative noun, signifies indeed "head," "chief," or "prince." But the ancient Jews were sensible that in this place it was not an appellative, but a proper name; and they therefore rendered it by the proper name Ros.
Ezekiel makes mention of other proper names of nations besides Ros, which yet are nowhere to be met with in the writings of Moses; and the question has long been set at rest by the concurring judgment of the learned, who have adopted decidedly the primitive interpretation of the Alexandrian Jews. And although our common English version has not derived the benefit of that decision, yet the title of the prophecy has been generally received among the erudite portion of the western nations for nearly two centuries, according to the ancient Greek interpretation; that is to say, as uniting the THREE proper names of nations. Ros, Mosc, and Tobl. Vitringa observes that "the Seventy interpreters, Symmachus, and Theodotion, perceived Ros in this place to be the proper name of a people." Conformably to this corrected interpretation Archbishop Newcome has expressed the three names Rhos, Meshech, and Tubal, in his English translation of Ezekiel; following Michaelis in the orthography of these words. And David Levi, the most learned Jew of our own days, thus determined the signification of the word Ros: "So to this word I must observe, that it is not an appellative, as in the common translation of the Bible, but a proper name,"--Dissert, on the Prophecies, vol. II, p. 308. The word "prince" in our common translation, ought therefore to be replaced by the proper name Ros. The celebrated Bochart has observed that Ros is the most ancient form under which history makes mention of the name of Russia; and he contended that the two first of those names properly denote the nations of Russia and Muscovy. "It is credible," says he, "that from Rhos and Mesech, that is the Rhossi and Moschi, of whom Ezekiel speaks, descended the Russians and Muscovites, nations of the greatest celebrity in European Scythia." We have, indeed, ample and positive testimony that the Russian nation was called Ros by the Greeks, in the earliest period in which we find it mentioned.
"The Ros are a Scythian nation, bordering on the northern Taurus."
This testimony is given by Cedrenus, Zonarus, Leo Grammaticus and Tzetzes. And their own historian thus reports: "It is related that the Russians, whom the Greeks call Ros and sometimes Rosos, derived their name from Ros, a valiant man who delivered his nation from the yoke of their tyrants. This is the identical name which the first interpreters of Ezekiel found in the text of that ancient prophet; upon the peculiar form of which name Mr. Gibbon has this remark: "Among the Greeks this national appellation has a singular form, Ros, as an indeclinable word, of which many fanciful etymologies have been found." Moskwa or Moscow, the ancient capital of the Russian empire, derives its name from the river Moskwa, which runs in the south side of it. Busching’s Geography vol. I, p. 452. The river Tobol gives name to the city Tobolum or Tobolski (ut supra, p. 506, 483), the metropolis of the extensive region of Siberia, lying immediately eastward of the territories of Muscovy or Mosc. "Tobol and Mosc are mentioned together in a former chapter of the same prophet, 27: 13, where they are characterized as nations trading in copper; a metal which it is notorious abounds in the soil of Siberia. And thus the Three Denominations, united in the prophecy, point out, with equal capacity and conciseness, those widely extended regions which, at the present day, we denominate collectively, THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE. It is true that in I. Chron. 5: 4, we find the name Gog in our English Bible as a Hebrew name among the Reubenites; but the ancient Greek interpreters teach us that in that place it was properly enounced Goug, and not Gogue. But the name in Ezekiel’s prophecy is not a Hebrew but a Gentile name. "If," as Michaelis says "Gomer was the Hebrew name for the Gauls, it is not improbable that the Trocmi, a nation of the Gauls, were Togarmah." --Penn’s Prophecy of Ezekiel.
Here we have the Prince of Rosh, or Czar of Russia beyond doubt; and now we have only to follow him in the great feats he is to perform in the latter days up to his final destruction upon the mountains of Israel. He is an enemy of God and of His people Israel, and, therefore, in verse 3 it is said, "Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog." Verse 4 says, "I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws." This implies that he was to step upon forbidden ground, and make attempts to force his way before the time appointed by Him who "rules in the kingdoms of men." After he is turned back, a time is to come when, it is said, "I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen" etc. Now when this bringing forth takes place he is to be prepared with a great company to "come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel;" and this is to be in the "latter years." Since it is to the mountains of Israel he is to come, it follows that thither he was bound in his attempts when he was "turned back." Constantinople is what Russia wants, not as an end; but as a means to an end--the possession of the Holy Land, the holy places of Mount Zion and Jerusalem in particular. The Crimean war was with this in view; but he was "turned back." The war with Turkey in 1876 seemed as if it must be the final "bringing forth;" but instead there was another "turning back," for the reason that the situation had not been fully formed. The situation to be formed is:(7)
(7)This is another particular, in which time has brought change. In the Crimean War, charge of the Holy Places, and jurisdiction over the Principalities, mostly Greek-Catholic, was made the pretext for Russian expansion. It does not now appear probable that history will repeat itself in this respect. Bolshevik zeal is addressed to the abolition of all religion. In this it agrees with its prototype, the Assyrian of old. (See Isa. 10: 10, 11; 36: 18-21.)
1. The settlement of Jews in the Holy Land, which now has taken place to a large extent and is growing apace, as we have shown under "Israel" in this chapter.
2. Turkey weakened and in the power of Russia, which has fully become a fact as the result of the Armenian outrage, the pressure of the other powers leaving no other alternative for the Sultan, and the intrigue of Russia welcoming it.
3. England well settled in Egypt, which has of late became the policy to a remarkable degree under the administration of Lord Salisbury, even to the extent of recovering lost prestige in the Soudan.
4. France in a position to disturb, which she has become quite able to do of late by her alliance with Russia whom she threatens against England in Egypt and Germany in Alsace and Lorraine.
The situation is now formed, and all is ready for Turkey to go down, for Russia to take Constantinople, and afterwards prepare to execute the "evil thought," when she shall say, "I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell confidently all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates, to take a spoil, and to take a prey; to turn thine hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited, and upon the people that are gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land" (verses 11, 12). Here are the Jews whom the "swift messengers upon the waters" have taken there and colonized under British guarantee of protection. Russia’s "evil thought" is to plunder them and make conquest of the land; but England must be true to her promises of protection, as well as obey the "first law of nature," that of self-defence; and it is now that the "merchants of Tarshish, with all the young lions thereof" are to challenge the Prince of Rosh, Gog, of the land of Magog, the "king of the north," saying, "Art thou come to take a spoil? hast thou gathered thy company to take a prey? to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take a great spoil?" (verse 13). Now the battle begins in earnest; but the Prince of Rosh is to be victorious over all human foes. He is to "overflow and pass over" to the extent of "planting the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain" (Dan. 11: 45) stopping not short of Egypt; for it is said, "He shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over the precious things of Egypt. He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries and the land of Egypt shall not escape" (verses 42, 43). Thus he has carried everything before him and become the Nebuchadnezzar of the latter days, who will in his pride and pomp, flushed with the glory of his successful conquests, say, "Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty?" (Dan. 4: 30.) But a voice comes not from this nation nor that, for there is no power on earth that is able to meet the Philistinian giant. They are all "at his steps." Human pride, and pomp and haughtiness have been permitted to reach the climax, and a voice comes from heaven, saying, "O, King Nebuchadnezzar! O proud Prince of Rosh! The kingdom is departed from thee." "I am against thee, O Gog, Prince of Rosh, Moscow and Tubal" (Ezek. 39: 1). "My fury shall come up in my face. For in my jealousy and in the fire of my wrath have I spoken. Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel" (chapter 38: 18, 19). "I will call for a sword against him throughout all my mountains, saith the Lord; every man’s sword shall be against his brother and I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands and among the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire and brimstone" (verse 22). "At that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people, and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was, since there was a nation, even to that same time; and at that time thy people shall be delivered every one that is found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake" (Dan. 12: 1-3).
ALL NATIONS GATHERED
The going forth of the three unclean spirits like frogs is to "gather all the kings of the earth and of the whole world to the war of the great day of God Almighty" (Rev. 16: 14). The same great event is predicted in the following prophecies:
For behold in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehosaphat, and will plead with them there for my people, and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations and parted my land (Joel 3: 1, 2).
Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee, for I will gather all nations against Jerusalem; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle (Zec. 14: 1-3).
The king of the north, or Russia, is destined to become the head of all nations in this final gathering against Jerusalem. It is the final stroke so far as the nations are concerned in the settlement of the Eastern question, which has been so perplexing for a long time. When Russia comes forth to execute his evil thought, and to be as a "cloud to cover the land," Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya "are to be with him, all of them with shields and helmet, Gomer and all his bands; the house of Togarmah of the north quarters, and all his bands; and many people with thee." He and all that are to be with him are warned, "Be thou prepared and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company, that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them" (Ezek. 38: 5, 7). Either by agreement, under pressure, or by force all these nations will be under the power or guardianship of Russia; and this will constitute the Czar the king of Babylon of the latter days and the head of Nebuchadnezzar’s image when it stands upon its feet in all its military power and pride. At this time, the point of attack and the coveted spot is Jerusalem, which will have been a "burdensome stone to all nations." It is for this great and final war that the nations are now preparing in fulfillment of the words, "Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles: Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up; beat your ploughshares into swords, and your scythes into spears; let the weak say, I am strong; assemble yourselves, and come, all ye nations, and gather yourselves together round about" (Joel 3:9-11). This proclamation is obeyed till the nations are all assembled in the valley of Jehoshaphat to the extent that there will be "multitudes, multitudes in the valley of threshing" (verse 14), which is the Armageddon, "or heaps of slain," of Rev. 16: 16, and of which it is said, "and he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon."
This great gathering completed and under the guardianship of Russia, the power, and the only power in sight, to be dealt with is Britain, who as the "merchants of Tarshish, with all the young lions thereof," is preparing to resist the attack, but in the end fails, as we have already seen, from the fact that "the land of Egypt shall not escape." It is now that the great giant says in his heart, "I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north" (Zion--Psa. 48: 2); "I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High." The climax is reached now, and the time has come for Jehovah to be sanctified in Gog before the eyes of all nations (Ezek. 38: 23). But by what means? Where is there a power to be used as the "rod of God’s anger and staff of His fury?" There is no power in sight--no such nation known upon the earth. The world stands amazed and breathless before the victorious king of the north, Prince of Rosh, wondering what will be next. The unexpected comes, and comes with such force as to "leave but the sixth part" of the mighty hosts of the Gogian army. The great giant falls upon the mountains of Israel, "thou and all thy bands, and the people that are with thee." That which smites the image and brings it down to the ground is the "stone which the builders rejected," the stone of Israel, the man of God’s right hand--Christ.
After this first and staggering blow to the power which has forced its guardianship over the nations, the One who smites him seems to disappear for a time; and the nations, seeing their despotic victor stricken down, cry out, "How hath the oppressor ceased, the golden city ceased! The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked, and the sceptre of the rulers. He who smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke, he that ruled the nations in anger, is persecuted, and none hindereth," "How art thou fallen from heaven, O day star: how art thou cut down which didst weaken the nations!" "They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms!" (Isa. 14).
Then there seems to be a rally in the vain hope that now their great enemy that had made them tremble is destroyed they can seize the coveted spot and after all settle the Eastern Question to their own satisfaction. But their attention is suddenly arrested, and turned Edom-ward, and the question goes out, "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength?" Who can this be? It cannot be a power of any great strength coming in that direction. What Madhi is this that presumes to come from the wilds of the wilderness to contest the rights of Christian nations in the land of the birth and death of our founder and protector? "The nations rage and the people imagine a vain thing. The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord (ignorantly) and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands assunder and cast their cords from us" (Psa. 2: 1-3)--"Who is this that cometh from Edom?" The answer comes in thunder tones, "I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save * * * I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury, and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment. For the day of vengeance is in my heart, and the year of my redeemed is come. * * * And I will tread down the people in my anger, and make them drunk in my fury, and I will bring down their strength to the earth" (Isa. 63 :1-6). "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak to them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure." Setting His king upon His holy hill of Zion, and giving him the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession, he shall break the nations with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. The "time of trouble such as never was" is now over. The sickle has been thrust in and the harvest of the earth reaped. Armageddon’s war has been fought. God has plead with all nations in the valley of decision. What now? To those that are left the command will go out from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and it will be obeyed, in the nations "beating their swords into plowshares and their spears into scythes, and nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." "O, house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord" (Isa. 2:3-5). The world’s storms have now passed away. The howling winds have been hushed into silence. The raging sea has been calmed and the sweeping tempest stilled. The gently descending rain comes down upon the mown grass, which springs up in beautiful verdure. There is a handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains, the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon; and they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth. All nations call the Messiah blessed; all nations are blessed in him. Peace, sweet peace, reigns universally. "Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wonderous things, and blessed be his glorious name for ever, and let the whole earth be filled with his glory." The world’s conqueror and saviour reigns till he hath put down all enemies under his feet, when the last enemy death is destroyed, and God is all and in all, and here is the world’s redemption. Amen and amen.