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Another epoch, however, must be sought for the commencement of Babylon's 2,520 years. These are Babylon's seven times in its relation to Judah; and must therefore be calculated from the epoch of Judah's first subjection to its dominion. This happened in the 4th of Jehoiakim's reign, which was also the first of Nebuchadnezzar's, and B.C. 611. In this year Jeremiah prophesied that Judah and the surrounding nations should be subject to the King of Babylon for 70 years; and that at the end of these, in the reign of his grandson, many nations and great kings should serve themselves of him (Jer. 26:1-11; 27:7); that is, make the Babylonish kingdom their own: all of which has come to pass to the very letter.

There seems to be a remarkable fitness in commencing the seven times of the kingdom of Babylon with the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar's reign; inasmuch as he may be regarded as the second, or modern, founder of the state, Nimrod being the first. "Is not this great Babylon", said he, "that I have built for the capital of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty? While the word was in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven saying, O king Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken, the kingdom is departed from thee! And seven times shall pass over thee, until thou know that the Most High hath power over the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will".

Admitting, then, these epochs for a beginning, Judah's seven times will terminate in the A.D. 1892; and Babylon's, A.D. 1908. Judah's period is thus spoken of by Hosea: "I will be unto Ephraim, saith Yahweh, as a lion, and as a young lion to the house of Judah: I, even I, will year and go away; I will take away and none shall rescue. I will go and return to my place till they acknowledge their offence and seek my face; in their affliction they will seek me early". This is their seven-times condition. The particular "affliction" called in Jeremiah "the time of Jacob's trouble" (Jer. 30:7), has not yet come upon them. "Alas!" he exclaims, in the prospect of it, "for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it. For it shall come to pass in that day, saith Yahweh Tzvaoth, that I will break his (the Russo-Gogian Autocrat's) yoke from off thy neck, and will burst thy bonds; and strangers shall NO MORE serve themselves of Jacob; but they shall serve Yahweh their Elohim, and the Beloved their King, whom I will raise up unto them" from the dead (Acts 2:30).

This is the "time of trouble" spoken of by Daniel, and yet future. Now, in view of this, Hosea represents them as saying to one another, "Come, and let us return unto Yahweh; for he hath torn, and he will heal us: he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight" (Hos. 6:1,2). These days are three periods of a thousand years each. The two days are past, and the nation is now in the third day of its smitten condition, 2,497 years of the seven times having passed away. The posterity of Jacob have advanced 497 years into "the third day". Thus it is, that as the Beloved their king was raised up bodily in the third day; so, after the similitude thereof shall his nation be politically (and many of them as literally as he) raised up to live in Yahweh's sight (2 Kings 17:23), that is, in their fatherland, in the current day of the seven times.

Woe be to the kingdom of Babylon when the political resurrection of Israel occurs (Ezek. 37:1-14); for "much torment and sorrow" are decreed against its populations during the last forty years of its existence. This will appear from the testimony of Micah. The prophet in behalf of his countrymen supplicates Yahweh, saying, "Feed thy people with thy rod, the flock of thine heritage, which dwell solitarily in the wood (alone and not reckoned of the nations) in the midst of Carmel: let them feed in Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old". To this Yahweh replies, "According to the days of thy coming out of the land of Egypt will I show unto him (Israel) marvellous things. The nations shall see and be confounded at all their might: they shall lay their hand upon their mouth, their ears shall be deaf. They shall lick the dust like a serpent, they shall move out of their strongholds as creeping things of the earth: they shall be afraid of Yahweh, our Elohim, and shall fear because of thee", O Israel. There can be no mistake here. History proves that since the prophet wrote this it has never come to pass. It is, therefore, in the future. Israel were forty years passing from Egypt to Canaan; they will consequently be forty years in passing from their enemies' lands of the Babylonian dominion into the Holy Land, from Egypt to Canaan; they will consequently be forty years in passing to dwell there as an independent nation. In this their transit through "the wilderness of the people" (Ezek. 20:35) they will have to fight their way; and in so doing make the Babylonian nations "lick the dust like a serpent"; a phrase very appropriate to the prostration of the Serpent power.

Here, then, are forty years to be deducted from the seven times of Babylon for the period during which the Holy Ones and their people are" taking away its dominion to consume and destroy it unto the end" (Dan. 7:11:26). This brings us back from A.D. 1908 to A.D. 1868. But before Israel and the Holy Ones can enter upon this work, Michael, the great commander, must stand up, and the Holy ones must be raised from the dead; and a communication must be established between Israel and the land of their enemies and their future commanders: for the reason given for their fighting against the sons of Greece is "because Yahweh is with them, and shall be seen over them". The Lord, then, will have come as the Ancient of Days at some time soon after 1868: how is that epoch to be approached?

In reply to this inquiry, it may be remarked, that nothing can be done by Israel without the Saints or Holy Ones; therefore it must be ascertained what is testified of them, that it may be seen, if possible, when they appear upon the arena of debate.

The seventh of Daniel reveals that the Holy Ones sojourning under the dominion of the Latino-Babylonian power, or Papacy, are to be given over to its power to the end of a time, times, and the dividing of time, or 1260 years. This period is in the current year complete. Their oppressor and destroyer still exists indeed, but sick unto death; and will Continue so till their corporeal resurrection. Now the element of the power that has moved heaven and earth for their destruction, is that represented by the Eyes and Mouth of the Little Horn that subdues the Three Horns. The Eyes and Mouth power is evidently the chief actor against the holy ones, the horn in which they are placed being subordinate to its will. The 1260 years of its prevalence against them must therefore be calculated from the institution of the Eyes and Mouth as a power of the Babylonian dominion; which institution would be equivalent to "The king honouring a god of guardians in his estate or realm; and acknowledging and increasing him with glory" (Dan. 11:38, 39); and not from the first appearance of the Ten Horns, or of the Little One that came up after them and subdued three of them. Now, the acknowledgment of the Eyes and Mouth as the god of the Kingdom of Babylon, or "god upon earth", as the Pope is styled, was in the reign of Phocas, who wrote to the Latin Bishop in the A.D. 604 and acknowledged his supremacy over all other ecclesiastics of the realm. This private recognition was followed by an imperial decree in A.D. 607, and in the year after, as before mentioned, a pillar was erected commemorative of the event, with the date of A.D. 608, inscribed upon it. This may have been only the date of the erection of the pillar. Is it not safe, then, to select for the beginning of the period which is to end at the coming of the Ancient of Days, the A.D. 607? The analogy of the signs of the times favours it; the date of the Phocian decree confirms it. My conviction is that the judgment upon Babylon will be announced as about to sit; and that the Ancient of Days and the saints will meet "in the air" and in clouds (1 Thess. 4:17), in the ending of the 1260 years from the epoch A.D. 606-8.

At the end of this period, then, the saints are delivered. The papacy, with all the power it can stir up, cannot make successful war upon them any more; we must not, however, conclude from this that the Latino-Babylonian confederacy will immediately be dissolved, and become powerless. It has power to make war after the resurrection, though not successfully; for it is written of it, "power was given to him to practise forty and two months", or 1260 years. These must therefore end at the termination of the Mouth's practising prosperously; yet the powers wiII contend for empire till the end of the period indicated in Dan. 12:7, which is marked by the finished concentration of the power of the Twelve Tribes, at the end of the seven times of the kingdom of men.

Taking the resurrection then, soon after A.D. 1868, the beginning of Micah's forty years will have arrived in which "the mystery of the Deity" will be finished. Is the Russo-Gogian Autocracy broken by the Stone-power before or after the end of this forty-year period? I should answer, In the course of it. Again: Is it broken to pieces before or after the resurrection of the saints? After it, without doubt; for speaking of the destruction of the Clay power: that is, of a power that "ladeth itself with thick clay", by gathering unto it all nations, and heaping unto it all people, and thus accumulating what does not belong to it: Habbakuk says to its chief, "Shall they not rise up that shall bite thee unexpectedly... and awake that shall vex thee?... For the Stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it .... For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Yahweh, as the waters cover the sea . . . Yahweh is in his holy place; be silent, all the earth before him". This is evidently a prediction of the resurrection of the power that is to destroy the Clay-dominion. The Clay-power stands unconsciously waiting for this in the Holy Land and City. The saints gathered unto Christ in the political air or heaven, will be witnesses of its prostration as Israel were of Pharaoh's. All the glory of this will be due to the Ancient of Days, with whom none who are not spirit, but "the chosen" only, co-operate in the infliction of the first disaster upon the enemy, which is by pestilence, mutual slaughter, hail and thunderbolts from heaven. This cripples and disintegrates, but does not finally destroy, the Image. It is as a Moscow to Napoleon, which subsequently required repeated blows for the destruction of his power. Christ and the holy ones as clouds and hail grind the shattered fragments of the Russo-Gogian Image to powder. The Lion-man, the Bear, and the Leopard, or the gold, the silver, and the brass, must have their dominion taken away. These are borderers upon the Holy Land, and will demand the immediate attention of the Stone and Beam out of the timber; "who shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimroud in the entrances thereof: thus shall Israel be delivered from the Assyrian, when he cometh into the land, and when he treadeth within their borders" (Mic. 5:6). The taking of the saints up into the aerial will be to gather them there for the execution of judgment upon those who are to be the objects of divine indignation; and to make them as the falling artillery of the clouds. For these reasons and others that might be adduced, it may be conduded that the resurrection will precede the overthrow of the Russian hosts upon the mountains of Israel.

But the holy ones raised from the dead, and Jerusalem and the Holy Land delivered after the ending of the 1335 years, "Yahweh is in His holy palace", and for a time "all the earth is silent before Him", and trembling in expectation of what shall come next. At this crisis, He is as "an ensign upon the mountains"; and the tranquillity of the epoch is "dry heat impending lightning, as a cloud of dew in the sultriness of harvest". It will then be said of Jerusalem, "Yahweh is there". The remnant of Judah in the land for the seven months ensuing the fail of Gog on the mountains of Israel will be occupied in burying the dead, and cleansing its surface from the slain (Ezek. 39:11-16). The destruction of Pharaoh and his host, which, with the plagues of Egypt, were well known to all that generation, did not cause the nations to confederate and to rush upon Moses and his people to swallow them up; nor did it forty years after deter the seven nations of Canaan from combining to preserve their country from conquest by Israel. It is true that when, in addition to this, they heard that Yahweh dried up the waters of Jordan, and that the two Amorite powers east of that river had been exterminated, "their hearts melted, neither was their spirit in them any more"; nevertheless, the kings assembled their armies and contended for five years in numerous battles against Israel. Though melted with fear, they found no chance of escape but in resistance. Extermination was decreed against them. Death without resistance or with it was their only alternative; they accepted the latter, and perished sword in hand by the armies of Israel.

After the same type will it be with the Ten Toes of the Image, the Latin Kingdoms of the Babylonian dominion after the fail of the Czar and his hosts, the Pharaoh of modern times. Micah says, "Their ears shall be deaf". Whatever may greet them from the Holy Land, will have no more effect upon the powers than Yahweh's message to Pharaoh. They are to be dashed in pieces as a potter's vessel; diplomacy or resistance, the result will be the same. They are to become as the chaff of the summer threshing-floors. Fair warning, however, will be given, that Israel and their friends who, believing in the bursting forth of impending vengeance, may desire to escape it, may separate themselves from those who determine to resist. "I will be still, saith Yahweh; yet in my dwelling-place I will be without fear". This is subsequently to their overthrow at Bozrah-an awful pause between the treading of the Edom and Jehosaphat winepress, and Yahweh's roaring out of Zion, and uttering His voice from Jerusalem (Joel 5:16).

In the silence of this "truce of God", what is the great movement of the time? The question may be answered in the words of Isaiah that Yahweh having beaten off the enemy from the channel of the river (Euphrates) to the stream of Egypt (the Nile), it shall come to pass that the great trumpet shall then be blown, and the Israelites shall come who were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship Yahweh in the holy mount of Jerusalem (Isa. 27:12-13). Another prophet says, "Adonai Yahweh shall blow the trumpet", when he shall be seen over Israel (Zech. 9:14). This is the period referred to in the "memorial of blowing of trumpets" on the first day of the seventh month under the Law (Lev. 23:24). Two trumpets will be blown. By the blowing of the first the princes, heads of the thousands of Israel, called the holy ones, are gathered unto the Lord; and when the second is also blown, all Israel's hosts will begin to assemble towards the dwelling-place of their King (Num. 10:1-7).

The trumpet to be blown by the Anointed One of Yahweh, styled Adonai Yahweh, is a proclamation to the world: as it is written "will send, maihem, of those that escape to the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, moshkai kesheth, sounders of truth ;* to Jubal and Javan, the coasts far off that have not heard my name, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the nations" (Isa. 66: 19). "Yahweh gives the word; great is the company of those that publish it" (Psa. 68:11).

The literal sense of the words cannot, therefore, be the proper one in this place. I have rendered it, "sounders of truth", which is in agreement with what is affirmed of those sent, saving, "And they shall declare my glory (or sound the truth) among the nations".

Moshkai comes from mashakas, to draw, mashalah haz-zera signifies literally to draw the seed, or figuratively to sow; because the seed is drawn out from the bag to be scattered. Also the phrase rnashakh Isyyovail, literally to draw the trumpet, This expresses the reai action in sounding a trumpet before the bhst is given; hence the figurative word for mashaleh here is to sound,' that is, it signifies "to sound" by implication.

The word kesheth literally signifies a bow: but the bending of the tongue in speech is likened to a bow in Scripture, as, "they bend their tongue like a bow for lies". It may also be bent like a bow for truth. In process of time the last letter of the word called Thav was regarded as a radical, and changed into another called Teth, being written without the points k-sh-t instead of k-sh-th: hence the Chaldee kushta for the Hebrew kashtha pronounced kashta, "to shoot with a bow".

The word kesheth and koshet, then, may be taken as the same. By turning to Gesenius under the last word it will be found to signify both a bow and truth. Hence, mosbkai kesheth are drawers of truth. They are sent to draw the great trunspet of Adonai Yahweh, the sound of which is the declaration of His ~1ory among the nations that had not previously heard of His fame nor seen His glory. Drawers of truth, then, are sounders or proclaimers of truth Apolocalyptically styled euaggelion aionion, "the good message pertaining to the age".

Continued