That the great majority of men will be wicked, is proved by the comparison of those days to the times of Noah and Lot. The result of the apostasy, or the rejection of Christ, is, that the men of the time are wholly absorbed in the world. The denial of resurrection brings them to the epicure's motto: 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die; and beyond death there is nought.'

'But you millenarians make too much of the comparison. You are not to suppose that Jesus compares the men of those past days with the men of that time; He is teaching us only that the events He foretells will fall unexpectedly upon men.'

If Mr. Y. does not see clearly here, others, not blinded by system, will. The wickedness of the men of Noah's day and of Lot's day was, he thinks," one of the accidents of the case And was the flood accidental? And was the burning up of Sodom and Gomorrah an accident also? And will the fire and brimstone of Christ's second advent have no judicial bearing on the sinners of mankind? Do not these blows of wrath descend after Jesus is rejected, and as the just consequence of so great sin? Reader, what is your verdict?

Is there no voice in that verse: "And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, "Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles (vultures) be gathered together"? (Ver. 37.) When do vultures prey upon an animal? When it has become a corpse. So will it be with the spiritual corpse of the earth! Jesus descends in judgment with his hosts only when its iniquity is flagrantly manifest. (Rev. xix.)

Does not the parable of the Unjust Judge tell us what will be the character of the rulers of the earth then? "I fear not God nor regard Jesus' disciples will be in the case of a widow, oppressed by an adversary, and having no resource in a godless judge. There will be no hope, no help for them on earth, but in importunate prayer to God. Does that say nought about the religious condition of the world?

'But is there not a manifest reference to the destruction of Jerusa lem, in those words, "In that day he which shall be upon the housetop and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away; and he that is in the field let him likewise not return back ?" Is not this warning repeated in Luke xxi. with an evident reference to the destruction of Jerusalem ?'

It is. But it refers to a destruction of Jerusalem yet to come. There was no necessity for such instant, headlong flight when Jerusalem was besieged by the Romans. And beside, both this prophecy and that of Matt. xxiv. take in a sphere vastly larger than Judæa. It is to be the time of the destruction of all sinners. The day of Noah embraced the world. The judgment of Lot's day cut off all the sinners of the plain. Jesus asks in reference to the earth in general, will there be faith on it? The "generation" which has rejected Him will be cut off. The Son of Man comes in wrath to avenge the insolent unbelief that defies Himself, and the wickedness which oppresses his people, and makes them cry out for vengeance.

'You make too much of that question: "When the Son of Man cometh shall he find faith on the earth ?" First, you cannot prove that it refers to the second advent. Secondly, you cannot show that it neces

sarily supposes that Jesus will not find faith on earth. such a question be put to spur Jesus' saints to activity?'

June 1, 1868.

Why may not

That the whole discourse refers to the kingdom of God and the personal advent of Christ, has been proved above. That it supposed a disastrous evil time, the whole of the parable assumes. The widowed state of his disciples, the oppression they suffer, the awful hands to which power is committed, their own reeling faith, which has, as its only weapon, importunate prayer, combine to assure us, that the words are to be taken in their most melancholy sense. The question is to be weighed with its context. In every season believers were to pray, and not faint. His disciples pressed with trouble, would cry day and night to God for vengeance. "I tell you he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man cometh shall he find faith on the earth?" In spite of all promised aid, in spite of the actual swift coming of the destruction of the persecutors in answer to ardent prayer, scarcely would faith survive this, its last and sorest trial.

The same conclusion is strongly confirmed by the Gospel history. The transfiguration was a vivid miniature of the Saviour's millennial kingdom. It was shown to a few in secret on the top of the Mount. But Jesus the next day descends; and what finds He at its foot? A poor demoniac fearfully possessed by the wicked one, who had found the disciples unable to eject the evil spirit. Jesus then comes with reproach for want of faith. "O, faithless and perverse generation!" He rebukes Satan, and the man is set free; but the disciples, no less than the generation, are rebuked in private for want of faith. 66 Why could we not cast him out?" "Because of your unbelief." So will it be when Jesus descends. He will find the world possessed by the Evil One, to an extent greater than ever before, as the parable of the evil spirit proves. (Matt. xii. 43—45.)

'But even granting that this does suppose the almost entire extinction of faith, you have not shown that it must precede the millennium. For after the millennium Satan will have his hour of triumph.'

Nay! If the millennium were to precede these words of Christ, that sunny day of joy must have been interposed somewhere in our Lord's description of the days that should intervene. But his disciples are led onward to look for joy only at his coming. They desire the days of the Son of Man, but find them not, till He is revealed in fire.

The saints in millennial days (Rev. xx. 4-10), whether rulers or subjects, are never in the condition supposed in the parable. The rulers are all holy. A camp of saints guards the beloved city. Christ the Lord of lords reigns supreme. How should He be like the unjust judge, who fears not God nor regards man? No adversary can oppress without being instantly cut off.

Besides, the deliverance which at length is granted to the oppressed disciples, results from the Son of Man's coming in vengeance. Now, there is no description of Jesus' advent after the millennium, much less is there after Satan's loosing in Rev. xx. Fire comes down from God out of heaven and devours Satan's host at last. Jesus' second coming in vengeance is related at large before the millennium (Rev. xix. 11-20), but there our brethren cannot see it.

Hitherto we have been engaged in repelling objections; but, these

June 1, 1868.

answered, let us now bear down upon our opponents with an array of Scripture evidence upon this important topic.

What then is the testimony which the New Testament gives concerning the state of the Lord's people and cause in the latter days? Is it one of brightness or of darkness?

Jesus foretells that among his disciples there would be many stumbled, many would be traitors, many hating one another, false prophets deceiving many, and lawlessness abounding to such an extent that the love of the majority would wax cold. (Matt. xxiv. 10-12.) There would be grievous wolves attacking the flock, and perverse men from within leading astray the disciples. (Acts xx.) The latter times would be perilous, because of the very evil dispositions of men; all, however, being covered with a form of religion. (2 Tim. iii.) There would be wicked teachers of licentiousness within the church, followed by a multitude of adherents, bringing disgrace upon the name of Christ. (2 Pet. ii.) Some, led by demons to adopt principles subversive of Christianity, would abjure the faith. (1 Tim. iv.) In short, the Gentile churches, as branches having lost faith and not continued in God's goodness, would be broken off. (Rom. xi.)

As it regards the world, it would hate and persecute the disciples even unto death, imagining that slaying them was service to God. (Luke xxi. 12-18; John xv. 18-21; xvi. 2, 3.) There would be Antichrist denying the Father and the Son (1 John ii.), and scoffers ridiculing the idea of any miraculous interference on God's part. (2 Pet. iii.) There would be sore woe as the result of all this sin, till women should celebrate the superior happiness of the barren wife over the fruitful mother. Shall we turn to the Apocalypse? What eye not beclouded by system can fail to see there wickedness increasing as God's judgments deepen in frequency and intensity, till at length Satan rules openly, setting up his king visibly over men? Then the woes of God visit with awful severity the impiety of men; but the repeated response is blasphemy! At length there is no longer delay, but as the nations and kings are assembled to fight against Christ, so are they trodden in the dust in the terrible battle of the day of God Almighty. (Rev. viii. xix.)

Shall we look at the witness of the Old Testament? Take the 74th and 76th Psalms. We shall find there God's saints slain at Jerusalem, his temple desolated, blasphemy, the false Christ, and the cry of the persecuted remnant. But God at length answers, and cuts off his assembled foes. Shall we ask counsel of Moses' last testimony to Israel ? He tells of the generation that has no faith, and of the troubles which shall be rained from heaven because of it. (Deut. xxxii.) With one or two quotations from the prophets we will conclude this chapter. "Come near, ye nations, to hear, and hearken, ye people: let the earth hear, and all that is therein, the world, and all things that come of it. the indignation of the Lord is upon all nations, and his fury upon all their armies; he hath utterly destroyed them; he hath delivered them up to the slaughter. Their slain also shall be cast out, and their stink shall come up out of their carcasses, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood. . . For it is the day of the Lord's vengeance, and the year of recompense for the controversy of Zion." (Is. xxxiv. 1-8.) "A voice of noise from the city, a voice from the temple, a voice of the

For

Lord that rendereth recompense to his enemies."

June 1, 1868.

"For behold the

Lord will come with fire, and with his chariot like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and and by his sword will the Lord plead with all flesh, and the slain of the Lord shall be many." (Is. lxvi. 6, 15, 16.)

THE

FIVE ARE FALLEN.

HE pursuit of the study of prophecy, while it is a blessed and profitable occupation, is attended by many dangers, not the least of which is that of being led by plausible inferences and incomplete deductions, to take untenable positions, and to receive assumptive statements as the basis of interpretation. It is well, therefore, to encourage a wholesome fear of taking anything for granted, except what is plainly and positively asserted in the Scriptures themselves; but along with this it is also well to cherish a disposition of implicit submission and acquiescence while consulting the Divine records. The watchfulness needed to keep us observant of these principles of conduct is good discipline, and leads to broad and unbiassed views.

I have stated in more than one publication, and in the pages of the RAINBOW, my belief that the eighth head of the apocalyptic beast must be one of the first five revived, on the ground that the interpreting angel, in speaking to John, informed him that the eighth-head beast was, and is not, and shall ascend out of the abyss."

My valued friend, the author of "The Revelation Unravelled," takes exception to this, and says that if this proposition can be substantiated, very much of the Book of Revelation, if not all, except the Epistles to the Seven Churches, had been fulfilled before the record reached us." How this conclusion is reached from the premises indicated does not appear; but it seems to take for granted several points which rather call for proof than for assertion. I see no logical connection between the statement that the eighth head is one of the five fallen before the apostle's day in a revived form, and my friend's conclusion that therefore much, if not all the prophecy has been fulfilled-for this simple reason all the actions attributed to and related of the career of the beast belong to the eighth head; in fact, the prophecy is a history of his proceedings, and does not go at all into the history of the other heads, except to indicate their number, and the order of their succession-the beast represented to John being the eighth, following the seventh, and being still "of the seven."

If the eighth be a revival of the seventh, there is some ground for the peculiarly sensational exposition which at the present day fixes upon the Emperor of France as that embodiment of all badness, the personal antichrist of the last times; and if it can be shown, from the text, that such is the case, that the seventh and the eighth are the same, with only a brief space of time between them, it will go a long

June 1, 1868.

way towards convincing me that that interpretation may turn out to be the true one, notwithstanding the evidences of weak counsels, and fatuous conclusions that have occasionally marked the recent conduct of Louis Napoleon. Let it be shown that the words, "of the seven (Rev. xvii. 11), mean "the seventh," as I have seen it sometimes rendered, and it will no longer seem to be a mere assumption.

The statement that the eighth head is the seventh revived, requires the further assumption that it is the seventh head that is wounded to death, and that it became the eighth on its deadly wound being healed; and accordingly we find it so assumed in the writings of those who believe in what they call the seventh-eighth head.

Yet this has but slight warrant from the text. It is admitted on all hands that the beast whose actions are described, who kills the witnesses, who overcomes the saints, who is worshipped, and to whom an image is made by the second beast, is in the eighth-head form when all these things come to pass. It follows very clearly that it is while the beast is existing in his eighth-head form that the deadly wound was given, and did not kill him, for he yet " did live," (Rev. xiii. 14). The phraseology used could hardly be more definite as to the two points here involved, namely, that it is the eighth head that is wounded, and that the wound did not kill him. 1. The second beast is the minister only of the eighth head, not of any other; it is the eighth head, and no other that he causes to be worshipped, "whose deadly wound was healed" (Rev. xiii. 12); and it was "to the beast which had the wound by a sword, and did live" (Rev. xiii. 14), that he required the people to make an image, and no other. 2. That the deadly wound did not kill the beast, is equally clear; for John saw the head, "as it were, wounded to death"-not slain, not killed-wounded "by a sword," with so powerful a stroke, and in so deadly and fatal a manner, that a mere human being would have been killed outright by such a wound; but he only was, as it were, wounded to death;" he still "did live," and "his deadly wound was healed;" therefore "all the world wondered after the beast," and said, "Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?" "And they worshipped the beast," and made "an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.' ·

66

An ingenious mode of exposition may spiritualise much of this description, or turn the various parts of it to symbolic uses; I receive it just as it is, and wait the fulfilment.

If then it is the eighth head that receives the deadly wound without being killed, it follows that the phrase used by the interpreting angel, xvii. 8, was, is not, and yet is," must have a totally distinct and different meaning to any which can be attached to the phrase, “which had the wound by a sword and did live." Yet some have supposed these phrases to be, if not strictly synonymous, illustrative and explanatory of each other-another assumption calculated by its plausibility to hinder thorough critical inquiry.

It appears to me, however, that the most fruitful source of illusive exposition is the arbitrary adoption of variable stand-points, from which to view different portions of the prophecy. Those who do this seem to be not content to receive the book pure and simple, as presented to us by the Apostle in the first century of the Christian dispensation, ap