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النشر الإلكتروني

REVELATION XVII. CONSIDERED IN CON

NECTION WITH ZECHARIAH V.-MANI-
FESTATION OF THE HARLOT.

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THAT an ungodly mercantile system is to be established in the land of Shinar, and that an individual named in Isaiah, "King of Babylon" "Lucifer"—" the Assyrian," will be ruling and acting in the prophetic earth when "the Day of the Lord" comes, will not, I think, be questioned by any who candidly consider the evidence that has been adduced from the Old Testament Scripture. At present no such System is established either in "the land of Shinar" or elsewhere; nor does any such Individual rule. The kingdoms of the Roman earth are many of them convulsed and disorganized. As a whole, they are under the control of no sovereign system, nor of any sovereign lord. Society has been shaken; and men have seemed in danger of becoming "as the fishes of the sea, as the creeping things that have no ruler over them." But society will not finally be disorganized. The Scripture reveals that there will be a sovereign system, a sovereign city, and a sovereign monarch

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at the close. The system is symbolized by the woman in the Ephah, established in the land of Shinar. The city is Babylon, "the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency." The monarch is "the Assyrian," the "King of Babylon." Such is the conclusion to be drawn from the testimony of the Old Testament Prophets alone.

Nor can the evidence of the New Testament be discordant therewith. If the Old and New Testaments treat of the circumstances which are immediately to precede the Advent of the Lord in glory, the substantive facts of that period must be alike referred to in both. If the Old Testament declares that Babylon and "the land of Shinar" is to be the focus of influential wickedness at the time of the end, it is impossible that the Revelation, when professedly treating of the same period, should be silent respecting such wickedness, or respecting the place of its concentration. If the Old Testament speaks of any individual of surpassing power who will connect himself with this wickedness, and be the King of Babylon, and glorify himself as God, it is not to be supposed that the Revelation should treat of the same period and be silent respecting such an event. If, therefore, in the Old Testament, the sphere be fixed, the locality named, the individual defined, it is impossible that the Revelation, when Revelation, when detailing the events of the same period, should alter the localities,

There cannot be two

or change the individual. sovereign individuals, nor two sovereign cities in the same sphere at the same time. If the mention of the "land of Shinar," and of Assyria," and of "the King of Babylon," be intended in the Old Testament to render our thoughts fixed and definite, why should similar terms applied in the Revelation to a period

avowedly the same, be less definite?

Can any one who had once seen the prophecy of Zechariah v., read the eighteenth chapter of Revelation, without the thought of the establishment of the Ephah in the land of Shinar occurring spontaneously to his mind? If in that land a great mercantile city were established (and this Zechariah's prophecy indicates, when it speaks of the house being there builded for the Ephah, and her who is within it), would it not exactly answer to the description given in the Revelation of the world's last sovereign city? Merchandize would be there: "the merchandize of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner of vessels of ivory, and all manner of vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, and cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and bodies, and souls of men." Such is the picture of that city which is to

close the history of the world's evil greatness. And if at this moment Western civilization were permitted to revivify the East, and to rear there a city suited to its desires, would it vary from the picture the Revelation gives of Babylon? The whole world would be ransacked that it might supply its treasures; the city would be filled with the earth's goodliness; nor would either the bodies or the souls of men be spared in the eagerness of acquisition. Such a city will ultimately appear, but none Rome is not this, nor

never answered to this

such exists at present. ever has been. It has picture.* Of Rome it

I quote the following from Dr. Chalmers, to show the doubts that have already been raised in godly minds as to Rome being the Babylon of the Revelation :

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"Revelation xviii. What can be the city here spoken of? It is much liker London than Rome-a commercial than a mere ecclesiastical capital . . . . . The lamentation of the kings for Babylon points more to the ecclesiastical capital of their monarchies, whereas the description of her wealth and merchandize points greatly more to our own London. The lamentation of the sailors points more to a place of great shipping interest than to Rome, or any place in Italy, and strengthens the argument for its being the capital of our own land. We cannot perceive that shipowners are much engaged by the traffic of Rome; and the lamentation seems far more applicable to London, lapsed, it may be, when the period of this fulfilment come round, into Antichristianism. The merchants of our land are far more the great men of the earth than those of any other nation.

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never could have been said, that her merchants were the great men of the earth," nor that that had ships in the sea were made rich by her," nor that "every shipmaster, and all the company in ships and as many as trade by sea," found in her the centre of their interests. These things have not been true of Rome, neither are they true to the full of any other city. The metropolis of our own country resembles far more nearly than Rome this last great merchant city. Ships -shipmasters-merchants-merchandize and costliness, mark on London and its dependencies the outward characteristics of Babylon, far more distinctly than on any city of the earth beside. Nor is this other than we might expect. It is certain that the revived East will receive its character from the civilization of the West; and we know that the Ephah is not first seen in the land of Shinar. It is transplanted there when the time comes to prepare for it a house. The character of that house it is the object of the eighteenth of Revelation to describe.

But the question respecting the woman in the Ephah is far more important than any respecting either the Ephah itself, or the house in which its glory is to be displayed. The facts of Babylon's outward condition are indeed important-

("Sabbath Scripture Readings," by the late Thomas Chalmers D.D., vol. iv., p. 423.)

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