Bookshelf/ Vol.I / Vol. IV. Part VI. Contents. Chapter I. 1. 2. 3. II. 1. 2. 3. III. 1. 2. 3. IV. 1. 2. V. 1. 2. Appendix I. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. II. 1a. 1b. 2a. 2b. 2c. 3. 4. III 1. 2a. 2b.

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§ 2. PREMONITORY INDICATIONS AT THE PRESENT TIME OF THE NEARNESS OF CHRIST’S SECOND COMING.

And now, secondly, I turn from the Scriptural prophetic evidence, which in the times of Augustus and Tiberius seemed to warrant the Jews’ general expectancy of MESSIAH’s first coming and manifestation in human flesh, to the prophetic evidence which has been judged by many to point to his second coming as even now not very distant: - that coming at the brightness of which the Antichrist, or Man of Sin, of Daniel, St. Paul, and St. John, is to be destroyed, and Messiah’s own glorious kingdom thereupon to have its establishment in this our fallen world.

And certainly I think that very strong prophetic evidence does exist to this effect; though not, however, without objections and objectors as before.

I. As to the evidence, we shall find it to be of substantially the same character with that which was considered under my former head; only more copious , clear, and strong.

1st, then, and as the very alphabet of prophetic knowledge on the great subject of inquiry, there stands before us for contemplation that same wonderful prefigurative image of the four great successive empires of the world, which was seen by Nebuchadnezzar, and interpreted by Daniel. And, whereas the fourth or Roman Empire, answering to the statue’s legs of iron, had not in the times of Augustus and Tiberius split into its ten toes of the mixed material of iron and clay, we have in the subsequent history of the Gothic invasions of the empire in the fifth and sixth centuries of the Christian æra, and the several Romano-Gothic kingdoms supervening, seen the accomplishment of that great revolution: and consequently seen the image brought into that decem-partited state, (a state which has continued ever since,) in which the stone cut out of the mountain without hands, the emblem of Messiah’s church or kingdom, was at some time or other to smite and shiver the image to atoms, and itself to become a great mountain, and fill the whole earth.

2ndly, and in inseparable connection with the primary prophecy of Daniel, there is to be considered the prefiguration of the same four great successive empires of the world, recorded in his seventh chapter, under the symbol of four great wild beasts, (an indication of their being one and all persecutors of the truth,) the lion, bear, leopard, and ten-horned deino-therium: the last answering evidently to the iron or Roman Empire of the previously seen statue, and its ten horns to the statue’s ten toes; but with these two most important additional intimations respecting the later decem-regal form of the Roman Empire; first, that the ten kingdoms would be connected together by the common domination over them of a little horn, with eyes like the eyes of man; and secondly, that the term of allotted duration to the supremacy of that little horn was to be a time, times, and half a time, or three and a half years, according to the well-known force of the phrase in the Hebrew language. And, taking these three and a half years, or 1260 days, as the period is elsewhere expressed to symbolize 1260 years, on somewhat of the same principle, Scripturally considered, ^[1] as Daniel’s 70 weeks, (and let me observe in passing, as I shall hereafter have to show, ^[2] that the unbroken continuity of the legs and ten-toed feet of the image will be found absolutely, and of itself, to forbid our explaining the period as meant of simple days,) I say, taking the little horn’s destined time of supremacy to be 1260 years, there will appear in regard of it, on comparison of the prophecy and the later Roman history, the two facts following: - first, that a Roman power, singularly answering to the characteristics of the little horn, came, after the dissolution of the old Roman Empire, to hold supremacy over the Romano-Gothic kingdoms of Western Europe, in the usurped and most extraordinary character of Christ’s Vicar on Earth; in which character, moreover, it has, beyond all preceding powers of the world, been a persecutor of God’s truth and people: - secondly, that as measured (not indeed from its first possible epoch of commencement, but) from an epoch of all others, apparently the most fit and probable, viz. that of the ten Western kingdoms completed subjecting of themselves to the Pope, as Christ’s Vicegerent on Earth, whereby was constituted the Papal Empire, ^[3] and that too of the Eastern Roman emperor’s admission of this his claim, ^[4] both which events date near about the close of the 6th century, - I say that, as measured from this epoch, the Papal domination must have not very nearly fulfilled its destined course of 1260 years. In which case the time must also have nearly come for the Beast’s being given, together with its little horn, to the burning flame, according to the sequel of the prophetic imagery; and (even though the 75 additional days, or years, of Dan. xii. be added as still supervening) for Messiah’s triumphant establishment of his glorious kingdom, then solemnly to be committed to him by the hand of the Ancient of Days. ^[5]

3rdly, We have in St. John’s Apocalyptic prophecy a yet additional and most strong confirmation of this inference from the Old Testament prophetic evidence. Seeing that that revelation of the coming future was given to St. John in Domitian’s reign, while the fourth or Roman Empire still existed under its imperial regime, and when its only great remaining revolution, as foreshown by Daniel, was that whereby it was to be broken up into ten kingdoms, under the dominion of the little horn, it might à priori have been anticipated as probable that that particular revolution, and both what would happen after Domitian, introductorily to it, and what would happen subsequently under the little horn’s regime, would constitute its special subjects of prefiguration. Nor do I doubt that such was actually the case. After the most elaborate investigation of history, as compared with the Apocalyptic prophecy, the result is this: (a result which hostile criticism, the most determined, careful, and particular, has been unable to gainsay or deny:) - that there is found in it the most wonderfully exact, succinct, comprehensive, philosophic sketch of the fortunes of the Roman Empire, previous to its predicted division into ten kingdoms; and also of the character and chief changes of the Roman Papal empire, after that division, including the Christian witness against it, even to the present time; ^[6] to which Papal empire, it is to be observed, there is attached by it the same period of three and a half times, or 1260 days, as was before attached by Daniel to the little horn. - Thus does our reason for belief in the inferences from Daniel’s prophecies seem to be strengthened and confirmed; to the effect that we are indeed now approaching very rapidly to the end of the 1260 years of Papal domination, and (whether the additional 75 years be still supervening or not) to the time of Messiah’s destroying the anti-christian monster with the brightness of His own second coming.

4thly, and once more, there are various signs of the times, all which, various as they are, Scripture prophecy speaks of in one or another place as signs of the closing days of the present dispensation. Thus, first of all, in the last days of this dispensation, and towards the close of the destined time, times, and half a time of the man of sin’s abomination standing in God’s church or sanctuary; it is intimated by Daniel that “many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased:” ^[7] - increased, doubtless, with a view to the better preparation of the whole world for understanding God’s judgment in the great coming catastrophe. Let me ask then, Do not many run to and fro now? Is not knowledge of every kind increased and increasing now? Who knows not, if at all adequately acquainted with history, that there has never been anything like such an answering to the prophetic language in the whole course of the world’s history as at the present time?

Again, it is foretold that at no great distance of time before the great catastrophe the everlasting Gospel is to be sent forth and preached, for the completion of the witness, to every nations under heaven. ^[8] Look, then, at what is now done, done altogether within the present century, by our Bible Societies and Evangelic Missionary Societies; and say whether this sign of the approaching consummation seems not to be fulfilling.

Further, it seems clearly intimated in Holy Scripture, that shortly before the time of the end the Lord’s people are to have their hearts turned in special feelings of compassionate interest to the Jew. “The time, yea the set time is come,” says the Psalmist, that is, for the Jews’ conversion and restoration: “for thy servants think on Zion’s stones, and it pitieth them to see her in the dust.” ^[9] Is not this very markedly the state of feeling with Christians now, after near 1800 years of neglect, contempt, and hardness of heart towards the Jew? If so, then remember that this, too, is a premonitory sign of Jesus Christ’s speedy second coming and manifestation. For, in the throes of their national repenting for the rejection of Jesus, the Jews, we know, are “to look on Him whom they have pierced:” ^[10] and that when, thereupon, the Lord again builds Zion, “He will appear in His glory.” ^[11] - A prophecy this remembered probably, as well as confirmed, by St. Peter in his first sermon to the Jews after the day of Pentecost; saying, “Repent and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out; and that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and he may send Jesus Christ, whom the heavens must receive unto the times of the restitution of all things, spoken of by all the prophets.” ^[12] And what shall I say of the Euphrates drying up? - the drying up not of a political power alone, but of the very heart, spirit, and life-blood of Mohammedanism itself in the great Turkish Empire; especially as accelerated, just of late, by means and in a manner so unexpected and wonderful? - The object in God’s providence of this its drying up, is stated to be “that the way of the kings from the East (not of the East, as many wrongly state it) may be prepared:” ^[13] whether meant of the light-bearing beams of Christ’s coming with His saints, ^[14] or perhaps of the converted Jews’ re-establishment in their own country. For there is a way, I think though as yet unnoticed by expositors, in which the expression, kings from the East,  may be applicable to them; albeit that their gathering at the latter day is to be not from the East alone, but alike from the East, and from the West, and from the North, and from the South. I mean by reference to their Eastern first original in Abraham; “the righteous man raised up and called from the East,” as Isaiah emphatically designates him. ^[15]

Nor if it be thought, as many think, that our Lord’s prophecy on the Mount of Olives refers at its close to the ending of the present dispensation, does that statement, “This generation auth h genea shall not pass away till all these tings be fulfilled,” (Luke xxi. 32,) present any necessary obstacles to its application to the present age. For auth h genea may mean that generation which witnesses the signs in the sun and moon, &c.; those convulsions which may have had their accomplishment in the French Revolution, agreeably with the use of similar imagery in the Apocalypse and other Scripture. Then the force of the saying will be, that ere a century or so elapse from that event, all having perished that were alive at the time of its first outbreak, the end of his second advent shall have taken place. ^[16]

Nor can I altogether omit the fact that, according to the elaborate tables of one of the most judicious and learned of our modern chronologists, the late Mr. Flynes Clinton, the world’s 6000 years would seem to be very near their ending; and this, most remarkably, just about the self-same as the ending of the 1260 years of the Papal Antichrist, so calculated, as I have stated before. ^[17] Nor if we take Usher’s somewhat more protracted Scripture chronology, and moreover consider that Daniel’s 75 years of the time of the end have to be added on to the completed 1260 years ere the consummation, will the further postponement of the ending of the 6th millennary be very long. And with the world’s 6000 years ending, the world’s sabbatism may be drawing on?

In fine, and on summing up, the more I consider it the more strong and convincing does the prophetic evidence appear to me, in indication that Messiah’s promised second coming, - that coming at which Antichrist is to be destroyed, - is near at hand. In order at all to realize its strength, it will be well to consider separately and distinctly alike that evidence which results from the demonstrated long and continuous agreement of historic fact and prophetic figuration, respecting the four great successive empires of the world, from certain known epochs of commencement, viz. that of the reign of the Babylonian monarch Nebuchadnezzar, and time of St. John’s seeing the visions in Patmos; a parallelism whereby we are brought down in John’s prophecy quite near to its close in the consummation; - that which results from the near ending of long prophetic chronological periods, dated from a commencing epoch which, within certain narrow limits, may be fixed almost certainly; - and then again, that which arises from what I have designated as the signs of the times; signs very various, very marked, very peculiar to the present æra, and each independent of the rest. Then let the cumulative force of the whole taken together be considered; all tending, as it does, to one and the same result; - that namely, as I have before said, of the nearness of Messiah’s second coming. It seems impossible to deny that it is evidence immensely stronger than that which, in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, warranted the Jews of those days in their conviction of the time for Messiah’s first coming having then arrived. ^[18]

11. But now, as to objections and objectors.

And, no doubt, there are learned Rabbis now, even as then, who with various views, and on various grounds, deny, and seek to invalidate, more or less of the prophetic evidence on which our inference has been grounded. - By some it is said that the whole of the Apocalypse, and all too of Daniel’s prophecies which I have expounded as reaching in its range down to the present time, and yet beyond it, was fulfilled centuries ago. ^[19] By others, on the contrary, it is contended that all the Apocalypse, and whatever in Daniel’s two prophecies concerns the ten-toed division of the iron legs of the image, or ten-horned division, and synchronic rise and dominancy of the little horn of the fourth Beast, still waits its fulfillment in the future; ^[20] the 1260 days of the little horn’s duration in power meaning simply, say both, 1260 literal days. ^[21] And thus, though the present signs of the times may be admitted by some of them as evidence tending to the conclusion I have stated, yet that most convincing portion of the prophetic evidence, - the same substantially in kind with some that greatly tended, doubtless, to excite expectation among the Jews of Messiah’s first coming as imminent in the days of Augustus, - I mean that of a long-continued parallelism of prophecy and history, reaching from a known commencing epoch, down nearly to the event expected, - is set aside.

It is my settled conviction, after much and careful thought, that each and either of these prophetic counter-theories, the prætoristic and that of the futurists, in any of the multitudinous and mutually contradictory forms of either, may be shown to be self-refuting. Thus as regards the latter, and its fundamental dogma of the Man of Sin being an individual yet future, who is to sit as God, and have his image placed for worship, in some now-built Jewish temple at Jerusalem, which they would have to be called God’s temple in St. Paul’s prophecy, ^[22] though built in direct opposition to himself and the Son of His love, ^[23] - I say as regards this theory of the futurists, construct but the time-table of their Antichrist’s 1260 days, and you will have there what will of itself suffice to refute it. It is during the whole of these 1260 days, or 3 1/2 years, that he is, according to their interpretation of Daniel, to have his abomination standing in the Jewish temple, ^[24] (these being the 3 1/2 years, observe, which end in his destruction by Christ’s appearing,) and during the whole of them that the Gentiles, in subjection to Him, are to occupy the Holy City. ^[25] Yet meanwhile he is, during part at least of the self-same 3 1/2 years, to be occupied in besieging Jerusalem from without, according to these self-same theorists; ^[26] and, moreover, during part be busied sundry ways, in connection with, and on the site of, the Roman seven-hilled city, or Apocalyptic Babylon. ^[27] For vainly do they seek Scripture warrant for assigning more than 3 1/2 years, or 1260 days, (whether construed literally, or on the year-day principle,) to his duration in power. ^[28] - Again, admitting the iron legs of Daniel’s image to signify the old Roman Empire, as most of them do, they must, in order to the ten-toed feet being yet future in their significancy, suppose the iron legs to have appeard broken off at the ankle, and a vacuum, indicating some twelve or fourteen unrepresented centuries, (unrepresented through the all-important times of the Papacy!) to have separated in the vision between those imperial legs of iron, and the feet and ten toes of mixed iron and clay. ^[29] - No; the evidence of continuous prophecy as fulfilled in continuous history remains, I am well persuaded, to us. Coincidences, great and small, running all down the line, even to the present time, establish the connection between the one and the other. And as, when travelling down by rail, as I have often done, to the westward, I may feel sure that I am at length approaching the terminus at Torquay, not simply because of seeing the fair valley of King’s-Kerswell between Newton and Torquay on either side of me, (for valleys similarly fair there are elsewhere that resemble it,) but because I have seen past in succession all the several intervening places along the line of route, - the towers of Windsor, the red-brick buildings of Reading, the Didcot and the Swindon stations, the cities of Bath, Bristol, and Exeter, and in fine the towns of Teynmouth and Newton, each and every one with its own peculiar and distinguishing characteristics, - just such is the convincing effect to my own judgment of the evidence of continuously fulfilled prophecy from Daniel’s time even to the present; and the fact of the time now present being thereby shown, as well as by other signs of the times, to be in very truth near the termination of the 1260 years, and close consequently at least to the time of the end. Signs of the times, such as we now see around us, furnish a powerful corroboration to our conclusion as to the world’s present position in the prophetic calendar. But they will not do by themselves. By one well-known futurist expositor it has been confessed that, on the evidence he has to offer, the destruction of Babylon and so Christ’s second coming, coincidently, may either be close at hand or ages distant. ^[30] And here he speaks on his theory reasonably.

Nor, indeed, are other objectors wanting. There are some so-called expositors who, explaining the numerals of the great prophetic periods as simply typical, would make them all but meaningless; and thus set aside all argument as to the world’s present position in the prophetic calendar drawn from them. ^[31] And some there are who indulge themselves further in sneers at the disappointments of one and another of earlier or more recent Protestant interpreters, who have calculated the 1260 years from some too early a commencing epoch, ^[32] have had their expectations of Messiah’s then coming to judgment falsified by the event: - whence a suggestion as to the folly of such calculations altogether.

About such objectors, however, I little trouble myself: remembering the similar mistake of dating the 70 weeks’ commencing epoch from too early a decree, into which some of the Jews, as we saw, may have probably fallen shortly before the time of Jesus Christ’s birth; and yet how, calculated from a later decree as the commencing epoch, that famous prophecy was found to have its fulfillment in respect of time, as well as in respect of all other particulars, in the coming, life, and death of Jesus. - Nor, yet again, is my mind affected, nor are my convictions of judgment disturbed, by the allegorizing system of our modern Philos; ^[33] who would explain away the promised second coming itself of our blessed Lord, with all its glorious accomplisments, as nothing persona, and almost nothing real. The thing is too absurd, except on principles of direct infidelity, which is disclaimed. - But there is another kind of difficulty in the way of realizing its probable nearness (one to which I made allusion at the opening of this Paper) which I confess does exercise on me, almost in spirte of myself, a most powerful influence towards the deadening of my faith in the fact: i.e. the generally thoughtlessness, scepticism, and indifference of the mass of men around me on the subject. Is it possible, I think with myself, that so unparalleled an event in the world’s history can be near at hand with all its infinitely important results, and yet the world be so utterly unaware and thoughtless about it? Then, however, I again resort to the parallel sketched in this Paper. I bethink me of the world’s general unpreparedness and thougtlessness about Messiah’s first coming, when quite near at hand, and how, mighty as may be that coming which we have now to expect, it cannot be an event mightier, or more wonderful, than Messiah’s first coming; seeing that that was in truth nothing less than the incarnation in human flesh and blood of the INFINITE SELF-EXISTENT ONE, THE CREATOR, THE INHABITER OF ETERNITY. Moreover, I remember our Lord’s own premonitory warning, to the effect that in the last days the general careless state of the world before His coming would be just such as that we see around us: that like as it was in the days of Noah, and like as it was in the days of Lord, so should it then be with men: - eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, immersed in wordly business, wordly politics, worldly pleasures; and with all going on just as usual. Just agreeable with which, too, is St. Peter’s prophecy: “There shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? for, since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” It becomes me evidently, and all who are conscious of similar weakness of faith, very earnestly to battle against such skepticism. And, in order to this, after the most careful consideration of Scripture prophetic evidence on this subject, and when the judgment has been sufficiently satisfied with its consistency and strength, then to ask the teaching of that Holy Spirit, who can alone savingly impress upon the soul Scripture verities: Him who effectually taught Jesus Christ’s early disciples to recognize Messiah on his first coming, when the Jews generally, in spite even of their previous expectancy, failed to recognize Him: and who, on the subject of Messiah’s promised second coming, is able now also to lead the sincere inquirer into all truth.

THE END.

Missed notes on Page 15 (A 129) and moved HERE:

It may be curious and instructive to mark the applications of the figure to the fact, by persons of different character and view, in that extraordinary crises.

1. The democratic revolutionists. - M. Lamartine, May 9, 1848, thus made his Report to the National Assembly. “Before the Revolution no European thought was permitted us. We were 36 millions isolated on the continent . . . The system was one of repression and force: our horizon was exceedingly limited: air was wanting to our dignity, as to our policy. At present our system is the system of a democratic truth, which shall swell to the proportions of a social universal faith: our horizon is the futurity of civilized nations: our vital air is the breath of liberty in the free breasts of the whole universe.” From the Galignani of that date.

And so, near about the same time, the Giornale Constituzionale of Naples, (where I was then residing,) of May 20, 1848. After mention of the Frankfort Assembly, gathered with the view of forming a new German Constitution, it thus wrote: “Hannovi dei tempi in cui Popinione pubblica, come Paria atmosferica, riempie tutti gli sparsi vuoti, in cui questa viene respirata da taluno, e da lui nuovaniente infusa megli altri.” And then the writer adds, that the aristocratic element, which for 1000 years had been so prominent in Italy, “svani dinanzi al saffie dei volere popolare.”

2 The philosophic observer, as in the Paper of the British Association cited above, called attention to the remarkable analogy between the physical atmospheric disturbances, and the political agitations and storms which had been sweeping over Europe. And so too, more than once, the Times, the Illustrated London News, and other newspapers.”

Let me abstract from the leading article of the Illustrated News of Oct. 25, 1851. “Long before the great Revolution of 1789 skillful mariners . . were aware of the signs and portents of the approaching tempest. In like manner the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 betrayed their coming by a premonitory darkening of the atmosphere, by a sudden fall in the social barometer, unintelligible to the many, but full of meaning to the few. The air was surcharged with electricity; and the weather-wise were enabled to calculate when the clouds would meet, the thunder roar, and the lightnings flash upon society.” “Similar warnings,” it is added, “are heard at the present time. There are clouds on the verge of the horizon laden with lightnings, and which are certain to break somewhere. The cry of danger comes loudest from France. It is still the focus of revolution.” Besides which, the writer then particularizes Germany, Hungary, Italy. In 1861 may we not repeat this?

3. As a specimen of the practical Christian’s feelings, let me select the following from the Bible Society’s Report of May 1848. “The storms of political agitation have gathered round the close of the year.” [i.e. of the Bible Society’s year, ending May 1.] . . . “The present state of the Continent of Europe makes the work of the highest importance. The fashion of the world passeth away. Thrones are being overturned, nations shaken. Is it not on a dark stormy night, and in the tempest, that the compass is most useful, the skillful pilot, and a correct chart? So the heavenly chart, &c. . . The political atmosphere however of this country [Belgium] is less troubled than that of the neighboring nations. Again, at the conclusion of the Report: “Recent extraordinary events have brought the continent of Europe before us under a most unexpected aspect.  . . The hurricane of political revolution has already swept away barriers which have for ages impeded the free circulation of truth . . . Your Committee watch the events with anxious emotion. . . But they do not think it necessary to wait till the sea of agitation is calmed, till the broken framework of society is reconstructed, and the world once more at rest. Why should we not now go forth; and, taking our stand amidst the nations rocked to and fro by the storm, fearlessly hold up before them the volume of inspired truth? . . God hath come out of his place. He arises to shake terribly the earth. It is as though the oracle had again broken silence, I will overturn, overturn, overturn. Yet let not our hearts be troubled, . . for it may be after these things, that there shall be heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of great waters, and may thunders, saying the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.”

4. Of prophetic students many, as might be expected, recognizing the correspondence of fact and prophecy; and loudly exprested their conviction of the seventh vial’s effusion into the air having begun.

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