THE GLORIOUS CONSUMMATION 491
" And when we remember how literally prophecy has been fulfilled, we cannot but expect as literal a fulfilment in the future.
" How natural it would have been for those who lived before the First Advent, to think that only the spiritual features of the Messiah s Coming and Kingdom could be the object of inspired prophecy, and that the outward and minute circumstances predicted were either allegorical and figurative, or only the drapery and embellishment of important and essential truths. And yet the fulfilment was minute even in subordinate detail." 1 For our own part, it is unnecessary to say, after what we have already written on chaps, xii. and xiii., that we have here a great and solemn prophecy which will yet be literally fulfilled in the future. And when it is objected by some of the modern writers that the literal fulfilment is " impossible," because it would involve not only national upheavals, but physical convulsions of nature, our answer is that this is just what the prophet declares as most certainly to take place ; and, as if to anticipate the objection on the ground of its being naturally " impossible," or, according to human judgment, " improbable," he reminds us at the very outset of this section of his prophecy that it is the ivord of Jehovah, " Who stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him" 2 with whom nothing is impossible.
THE EXPOSITION 3
The first verses of this fourteenth chapter, which are an expansion and amplification of the last three verses of the preceding chapter, lead us back, I believe, to the point of time with which the twelfth chapter opens, and tells us
1 Adolph Saphir. a Chap. xii. I.
3 The exposition of the first seven verses of this chapter now slightly altered was originally written out and read as "a paper" at a meeting of the " Prophecy Investigation Society," which also printed it for private circulation among the members. This will account for its being slightly different in form and style from my exposition generally.
