1. CHRONOLOGICAL TREATISE AND TABLES

2. MISCELLANEOUS: WHO AND WHEN

A. ARTAXERXES LONGIMANUS & THE CHRONOLOGY OF HIS REIGN

B. DATE OF THE NATIVITY

C. CONTINUOUS HISTORICAL SYSTEM OF PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION

D. THE TEN KINGDOMS

E. CHRONOLOGICAL DIAGRAM OF THE HISTORY OF JUDAH

3. A RETROSPECT AND A REPLY

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APPENDIX 1.

CHRONOLOGICAL TREATISE AND TABLES

THE point of contact between sacred and profane chronology, and therefore the first certain date, in biblical history, is the accession of Nebuchadnezzar to the throne of Babylon (cf. Daniel 1:1 and Jeremiah 25:1). From this date we reckon on to Christ and back to Adam. The agreement of leading chronologers is a sufficient guarantee that David began to reign in B.C. l056-5, and therefore that all dates subsequent to that event can be definitely fixed. But beyond this epoch, certainty vanishes.. The marginal dates of our English Bible represent: in the main Archbishop Ussher's chronology, [*] and notwithstanding his eminence as a chronologer some of these dates are doubtful, and others entirely wrong.

Of the doubtful dates in Ussher's scheme the reigns of Belshazzar and "Ahasuerus" may serve as examples. Belshazzar's case is specially interesting. Scripture plainly states that he was King of Babylon at its conquest by the Medo-Persians, and that he was slain the night Darius entered the city. On the other hand, not only does no ancient historian mention Belshazzar, but all agree that the last king of Babylon was Nabonidus, who was absent from the city when the Persians captured it, and who afterwards submitted to the conquerors at Borsippa. Thus the contradiction between history and Scripture appeared to be absolute. Skeptics appealed to history to discredit the book of Daniel; and commentators solved or shirked the difficulty by rejecting history. The cuneiform inscriptions, however, have now settled the controversy in a manner as satisfactory as it was unexpected. On clay cylinders discovered by Sir H. Rawlinson at Mughier and other Chaldean sites, Belshazzar (Belsaruzur) is named by Nabonidus as his eldest son. The inference is obvious, that during the latter years of his father's reign, Belshazzar was King-Regent in Babylon. According to Ptolemy's canon Nabonidus reigned seventeen years (from s. c. 555 to B.C. 538), and Ussher gives these years to Belshazzar.

In common with many other writers, Ussher has assumed that the King of the book of Esther was Darius Hystaspes, but it is now generally agreed that it is the son and successor of Darius who is there mentioned as Ahasuerus — "a name which orthographically corresponds with the Greek Xerxes." [1]

The great durbar of the first chapter of Esther, held in his third year (ver. 3), was presumably with a view to his expedition against Greece (B.C. 483); and the marriage of Esther was in his seventh year (2:16), having been delayed till then on account of his absence during the campaign. The marginal dates of the book of Esther should therefore begin with B.C. 486, instead of B.C. 521, as given in our English Bibles.

But these are comparatively trivial points, whereas the principal error of Ussher's chronology is of real importance. According to 1 Kings 6:1, Solomon began to build the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt." The mystic character of this era of 480 years has been noticed in an earlier chapter. Ussher assumed that it represented a strictly chronological period, and reckoning back from the third year of Solomon, he fixed the date of the Exodus as B.C. 1491, — an error which vitiates his entire system.

Acts 13:18-21, St. Paul, in treating of the interval between the Exodus and the end of Saul's reign, specifies three several periods; viz., 40 years, about 450 years, and 40 years = 530 years. From the accession of David to the third year of Solomon, when the temple was founded, was forty-three years. According to this enumeration therefore, the period between the Exodus and the temple was 530 + 43 years = 573 years. Clinton, however, whose chronology has been very generally adopted, conjectures that there was an interval of twenty-seven years between the death of Moses and the first servitude, and an interval of twelve years between "Samuel the prophet" (1 Samuel 7) and the election of Saul. Accordingly he estimates the period between the Exodus and the temple as 573 + 27 + 12 years = 612 years. [2]

Clinton's leading dates, therefore, are as follows:--

B.C. 4138. — Adam.
B.C. 2482. — The Deluge.
B.C. 2055. — The Call of Abraham.
B.C. 1625. — The Exodus.
B.C. 1096. — The Election of Saul.
B.C. 1056. — David.
B.C. 1016. — Solomon.
B.C.. 976. — Rehoboam.
B.C. 606. — The Captivity (i.e., the Servitude to Babylon).

In this chronology Browne proposes three corrections (Ordo Sec., Ch. 10, 13); viz., he rejects the two conjectural terms of twenty-seven years and twelve years above noticed; and he adds two years to the period between the Deluge and the Exodus. If this last correction be adopted (and it is perfectly legitimate, considering that approximate accuracy is all that the ablest chronologer can claim to have attained for this era), let three years be added to the period between the Deluge and the Covenant with Abraham, and the latter event becomes exactly, as it is in any case approximately, the central epoch between the Creation and the Crucifixion. The date of the Deluge will thus be put back to B.C. 2485, and therefore the Creation will be B.C. 4141.

The following most striking features appear in the chronology as thus settled:--

From Adam to the Covenant with Abraham (B.C. 4141 to B.C. 2055) is 2086 years.

From Abraham to the Crucifixion of Christ (B.C. 2055 to A.D. 32) is 2086 years.

From Adam to the Deluge (B.C. 4141 to B.C. 2485) is 1656 years.

From the Deluge to the Covenant (B.C. 2485 to B.C. 2055) is 430 years.

From the Covenant to the Exodus (B.C. 2055 to B.C. 1625) is 430 years.

From the Exodus to the Crucifixion (B.C. 1625 to A.D. 32) is 1656 years. [3]

The Covenant here mentioned is that recorded in Genesis 12 in connection with the call of Abraham. The statements of Scripture relating to this part of the chronology may seem to need explanation in two respects.

Stephen declares in Acts 7:4 that Abraham's removal from Haran (or Charran) took place after the death of his father. But Abraham was only seventy-five years of age when he entered Canaan; whereas if we assume from Genesis 11:26 that Abraham was born when Terah was but seventy, he must have been one hundred and thirty at the call, for Terah died at two hundred and five. (Compare Genesis 11:26, 31, 32; 12:4.) The fact however is obvious from these statement that though named first among the sons of Terah, Abraham was not the firstborn, but the youngest: Terah was seventy when his eldest son was born, and he had three sons, Haran, Nahor, and Abraham. To ascertain his age at Abraham's birth we must needs turn to the history, and there we learn it was one hundred and thirty years. [4] And this will account for the deference Abraham paid to Lot, who, though his nephew, was nevertheless his equal in years, possibly his senior; and moreover, as the son of Abraham's eldest brother, the nominal head of the family. (Genesis 13:8, 9.)

Again. According to Exodus 12:40 "the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was 430 years." If this be taken to mean (as the statement in Genesis 15:13, quoted by Stephen in Acts 7:6, might also seem to imply) that the Israelites were four centuries in Egypt, the entire chronology must be changed. But, as St. Paul explains in Galatians 3:17, these 430 years are to be computed from the call of Abraham, and not from the going down of Israel into Egypt. The statement in Genesis 15:13 is explained and qualified by the words which follow in ver. 16. The entire period of Israel's wanderings was to be four centuries, but when the passage speaks definitely of their sojourn in Egypt it says' "In the fourth generation they shall come hither again" — a word which was accurately fulfilled, for Moses was the fourth in descent from Jacob. [5]

It was not till 470 years after the covenant with Abraham that his descendants took their place as one of the nations of the earth. They were slaves in Egypt, and in the wilderness they were wanderers; but under Joshua they entered the land of promise and became a nation. And with this last event begins a series of cycles of "seventy weeks" of years.

From the entrance into Canaan (B.C. 1586-5) to the establishment of the kingdom under Saul (B.C. 1096) was 490 years.

From the kingdom (B.C. 1096) to the servitude to Babylon (B.C. 606) was 490 years.

From the epoch of the servitude (B.C. 606) until the royal edict of the twentieth year of Artaxerxes Longimanus, the national independence of Judah was in abeyance, and with that date began the mystic era of 490 years, which form the "seventy weeks" of the prophecy of Daniel.

Again the period Between the dedication of the first temple in the eleventh year of Solomon (B.C. 1066-5) and the dedication of the second temple in the sixth year of Darius Hystaspes of Persia (B.C. 515), was 490 years. [6]

Are we to conclude that these results are purely accidental? No thoughtful person will hesitate to accept the more reasonable alternative that the chronology of the world is part of a Divine plan or "economy of times and seasons."

The chronological inquiry suggested by the data afforded by the books of 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, is of principal importance, not only as establishing the absolute accuracy of Scripture, but also because it throws light upon the main question of the several eras of the captivity, which again are closely allied with the era of the seventy weeks.

The student of the book of Daniel finds every step beset with difficulties, raised either by avowed enemies, or quasi expositors of Holy Writ. Even the opening statement of the book has been assailed on all sides. That Daniel was made captive in the third year of Jehoiakim "is simply an invention of late Christian days," declares the author of Messiah the Prince (p. 42), in keeping with the style in which this writer disposes of history sacred and profane, in order to support his own theories.

In Dean Milman's History of the Jews, the page which treats of this epoch is full of inaccuracies. First he confounds the seventy years of the desolations, predicted in Jeremiah 25., with the seventy years of the servitude, which had already begun. Then as the prophecy of Jeremiah 25: was given in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, he fixes the first capture of Jerusalem in that year, whereas Scripture expressly states it took place in Jehoiakim's third year (Daniel 1:1). He proceeds to specify B.C. 601 as the year of Nebuchadnezzar's invasion; and here the confusion is hopeless, as he mentions two periods of three years each between that date and the king's death, which nevertheless he rightly assigns to the year B.C. 598.

Again, Dr. F. W. Newman's article on the Captivities, in Kitto's Cyclopaedia, well deserves notice as a specimen of the kind of criticism to be found in standard books ostensibly designed to aid the study of Scripture.

"The statement with which the book of Daniel opens is" (he maintains) "in direct collision with the books of Kings and Chronicles, which assign to Jehoiakim an eleven years' reign, as also with Jeremiah 25:1. It partially rests on 2 Chronicles 36:6, which is itself not in perfect accordance with 2 Kings 24. In the earlier history the war broke out during the reign of Jehoiakim, who died before its close; and when his son and successor Jehoiachin had reigned three months, the city and its king were captured. But in the Chronicles the same event is made to happen twice over at an interval of three months and ten days (2 Chronicles 36:6 and 9); and even so we do not obtain accordance with the received interpretation of Daniel 1:1-3."

This writer's conclusions are adopted by Dean Stanley in his Jewish Church (vol. 2., p. 459), wherein he enumerates among the captives taken with Jehoiachin in the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar, the prophet Daniel, who had gained a position at the court of Babylon six years before Jehoiachin came to the throne! (Compare 2 Kings 24:12 with Daniel 2:1.)

A reference to the Five Great Monarchies (vol. 3., pp. 488-494), and the Fasti Hellenici, will show how thoroughly consistent the sacred history of this period appears to the mind of a historian or a chronologer; and moreover how completely it harmonizes with the extant fragments of the history of Berosus.

Jehoiakim did in fact reign eleven years. In his third year he became the vassal of the King of Babylon. For three years he paid tribute, and in his sixth year he revolted. There is not a shadow of reason for believing that the first verse of Daniel is spurious; and apart from all claim to Divine sanction for the book, the idea that such a writer — a man of princely rank and of the highest culture, (Daniel 1:3, 4.) and raised to the foremost place among the wise and noble of Babylonia — was ignorant of the date and circumstances of his own exile, is simply preposterous. But according to Dr. Newman, he needed to refer to the book of Chronicles for the information, and was deceived thereby! A comparison of the statements in Kings, Chronicles, and Daniel clearly establishes that the narratives are independent, each giving details omitted in the other books. The second verse of Daniel appears inconsistent with the rest only to a mind capable of supposing that the living king of Judah was placed as an ornament in the temple of Belus along with the holy vessels; for so Dr. Newman has read it. And the apparent inconsistency in 2 Chronicles 36:6 disappears when read with the context, for the eighth verse shows the writer's knowledge that Jehoiakim completed his reign in Jerusalem. Moreover the correctness of the entire history is signally established by fixing the chronology of the events, a crucial test of accuracy.

Jerusalem was first taken by the Chaldeans in the third year of Jehoiakim (Daniel 1:1). His fourth year was current with the first of Nebuchadnezzar (Jeremiah 25:1). This accords with the deft, the statement of Berosus that Nebuchadnezzar's first expedition took place before his actual accession (Jos., Apion, 1. 19). According to the canon of Ptolemy, the accuracy of which has been fully established, the reign of Nebuchadnezzar dates from B.C. 604, i.e., his accession was in the year beginning the first Thoth (which fell in January) B.C. 604, and the history leaves no doubt it was early in that year. But the captivity, according to the era of Ezekiel, began in Nebuchadnezzar's eighth year (comp. Ezekiel 1:2 and 2 Kings 24:12); and in the thirty-seventh year of the captivity, Nebuchadnezzar's successor was on the throne (2 Kings 25:27). This would give Nebuchadnezzar a reign of at least: forty-four years, whereas according to the Canon (and Berosus confirms it) he reigned only forty-three years, and was succeeded by Evil-Merodach (the Iluoradam of the Canon), in B.C. 561.

It follows therefore that Scripture antedates the years of Nebuchadnezzar, computing his reign from B.C. 605. [7] This would be sufficiently accounted for by the fact that, from the conquest of Jerusalem in the third year of Jehoiakim, the Jews acknowledged Nebuchadnezzar as their suzerain. It has been overlooked, however, that it is in accordance with the ordinary principle on which they reckoned regnal years, computing them from Nisan to Nisan. In B.C. 604 the 1st Nisan fell on or about the 1st April, [8] and according to Jewish reckoning, the King's second year would begin on that day, no matter how recently he had ascended the throne. Therefore "the fourth year of Jehoiakim that was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar" (Jeremiah 25:1), was the year beginning Nisan B.C. 605; and the third of Jehoiakim, in which Jerusalem was taken and the servitude began, was the year beginning Nisan B.C. 606.

This result is most remarkably confirmed by Clinton, who fixes the summer of B.C. 606 as the date of Nebuchadnezzar's first expedition. [9]

It is further confirmed by, and affords the explanation of a statement of Daniel, which has been triumphantly appealed to in depreciation of the value of his book. If, it is urged, the King of Babylon kept Daniel three years in training before admitting him to his presence, how could the prophet have interpreted the King's dream in his second year? (Daniel 1:5, 18; 2:1). Daniel, a citizen of Babylon, and a courtier withal, naturally and of course computed his sovereign's reign according to the common era in use around him (as Nehemiah afterwards did in like circumstances.) But as the prophet was exiled in B.C. 606, his three years' probation terminated at the close of B.C. 603, whereas the second year of Nebuchadnezzar, computed from his actual accession, extended to some date in the early months of B.C. 602.

Again. The epoch of Jehoiachin's captivity was in the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 24:12), i.e., his eighth year as reckoned from Nisan.

But the ninth year of the captivity was still current on the tenth Tebeth in the ninth year of Zedekiah and seventeenth of Nebuchadnezzar (comp. Ezekiel 24:1, 2, with 2 Kings 25:1-8).

And the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar and eleventh of Zedekiah, in which Jerusalem was destroyed, was in part concurrent with the twelfth year of the captivity (comp. 2 Kings 25:2-8 with Ezekiel 33:21).

It follows therefore that Jehoiachin (Jeconiah) must have been taken at the close of the Jewish year ("when the year was expired," 2 Chronicles 36:10), that is the year preceding 1st Nisan, B.C. 597; and Zedekiah was made king (after a brief interregnum) early in the year beginning on that day. [10] And it also follows that whether computed according to the era of Nebuchadnezzar, of Zedekiah, or of the captivity, B.C. 587 was the year in which "the city was smitten." [11]

The first link in this chain of dates is the third year of Jehoiakim, and every new link confirms the proof of the correctness and importance of that date. It has been justly termed the point of contact between sacred and profane history; and its importance in the sacred chronology is immense on account of its being the epoch of the servitude of Judah to the King of Babylon.

The servitude must not be confounded with the captivity, as it generally is. It was rebellion against the Divine decree which entrusted the imperial scepter to Nebuchadnezzar, that brought on the Jews the further judgment of a national deportation, and the still more terrible chastisement of the "desolations." The language of Jeremiah is most definite in this respect. "I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant." "The nation which will not serve the same Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, that nation will I punish, saith the Lord, with the sword, and with the famine, and with the pestilence, until I have consumed them by his hand." But the nations that bring their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, and serve him, those will I let remain still in their own land, saith the Lord, and they shall till it and dwell therein" (Jeremiah 27:6, 8 11; and comp. chap.38:17-21).

The appointed era of this servitude was seventy years, and the twenty-ninth chapter of Jeremiah was a message of hope to the captivity, that at the expiration of that period they should return to Jerusalem (ver. 10). The twenty-fifth chapter, oil the oilier hand, was a prediction for the rebellious Jews who remained in Jerusalem after the servitude had commenced, warning them that their stubborn disobedience would bring on them utter destruction, and that for seventy years the whole land should be "a desolation."

To recapitulate. The thirty-seventh year of the captivity was current on the accession of Evil-Merodach (2 Kings 25:27), and the epoch of that king's reign was B.C. 561. Therefore the captivity dated from the year beginning Nisan 598 and ending Adar 597. But this was the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar according to Scripture reckoning. Therefore his first year was Nisan 605 to Nisan 604. The first capture of Jerusalem and the beginning of the servitude was during the preceding year, 606-605. The final destruction of the city was in Nebuchadnezzar's nineteenth year, i.e., 587, and the siege began 10th Tebeth (or about 25th December), 589, which was the epoch of the desolations. The burning of Jerusalem cannot have been B.C. 588, as given by Ussher, Prideaux, etc., for in that case [12] the captivity would have begun B.C. 599, and the thirty-seventh year would have ended before the accession of Evil-Merodach. Nor can it have been B.C. 586, as given by Jackson, Hales, etc., for then the thirty-seventh year would not have begun during Evil-Merodach's first year. [13]

This scheme is practically the same as Clinton's, [14] and the sanction of his name may be claimed for it, for it differs from his only in that he dates Jehoiakim's reign from August B.C. 609, and Zedekiah's from June B.C. 598, his attention not having been called to the Jewish practice of computing reigns from Nisan; whereas I have fixed Nisan B.C. 608 as the epoch of Jehoiakim's reign, and Nisan B.C. 597 for Zedekiah's. Not of course that Nisan was in fact the month-date of the accession, but that, according to the rule of the Mishna and the practice of the nation, the reign was so reckoned. Jehoiakim's date could not be Nisan B.C. 609, because his fourth year was also the first of Nebuchadnezzar, and the thirty-seventh year, reckoned from the eighth of Nebuchadnezzar, was the first of Evil-Merodach, i.e., B.C. 561, which date fixes the whole chronology as Clinton himself conclusively argues. [15] It follows from this also that: Zedekiah's date must be B.C. 597, and not 598.

The chronology adopted by Dr. Pusey [16] is essentially the same as Clinton's. The scheme here proposed differs from it only to the extent and on the grounds above indicated. His suggestion: that the fast proclaimed in the fifth year of Jehoiakim (Jeremiah 36:9.) referred to the capture of Jerusalem in his third year, is not improbable, and points to Chisleu (Nov.) B.C. 606 as the date of that event. For the reasons above stated, it could not have been B.C. 607, as Dr. Pusey supposes, and the same argument proves that Canon Rawlinson's date for Nebuchadnezzar's expedition (B.C. 605) is a year too late. [17]

The correctness of this scheme will, I presume, be admitted, as regards the cardinal point of difference between it and Clinton's chronology, namely, that the reigns of the Jewish kings are reckoned from Nisan. It remains to notice the points of difference between the results here offered and Browne's hypotheses (Orda Saec., Ch. 162-169). He arbitrarily assumes that Jehoiachin's captivity and Zedekiah's reign began on the same day. This leads him to assume further (1) that they were reckoned from the same day, viz., the 1st Nisan, and (2) that Nebuchadnezzar's royal years dated from some date between 1st Nisan and 10 Ab 606 (Ch. 166). Both these positions are untenable. (1) The Jews certainly reckoned the reigns of their kings from 1st Nisan, but there is no proof that they so reckoned the years of ordinary periods or eras such as the captivity. (2) The presumption is strong, confirmed by all the synchronisms of the chronology, that they computed Nebuchadnezzar's royal era either according to the Chaldean reckoning, as in Daniel, or according to their own system, as in the other books.

TABLE #1-- CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

The following table will show at a glance the several eras of the servitude to Babylon, king Jehoiachin's captivity, and the desolations of Jerusalem.

In using the table it is essential to bear in mind two points already stated.

1. The year given in the first column is the Jewish year beginning the 1st Nisan (March — April). For example, B.C. 604 is the year beginning the 1st April, 604; and B.C. 589 is the year beginning the 15th March, 589 According to the Mishna, [18] "On the 1st of Nisan is a new year for the computation of the reign of kings, and for festivals." To which the editors of the English translation add this note:" The reign of Jewish kings, whatever the period of accession might be, was always reckoned from the preceding Nisan; so that if, for instance, a Jewish king began to reign in Adar, the following month (Nisan) would be considered as the commencement of the second year of his reign. This rule was observed in all legal contracts, in which the reign of kings was always mentioned."

2. The years of the different eras are only in part concurrent. For example the first year of the desolations dates from the tenth day of Tebeth (25th December), B.C. 589, and the tenth year of the captivity begins even later, while the ninth year of Zedekiah and seventeenth of Nebuchadnezzar dates from the 1St Nisan (15th March) B.C. 589.

If these points be kept in view the chronology of the table will be found to harmonize every chronological statement relating to the period embraced in it, contained in the Books of Kings, Chronicles, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel.

 

TABLE #2-- TABLE OF CHRONOLOGICAL PARALLELISMS
SHOWING THAT THE CALL OF ABRAHAM WAS THE CENTRAL POINT BETWEEN THE CREATION AND THE CRUCIFIXION

the key--

* These dates differ from Clinton's chronology by three years. See p. 223, ante.

** Galatians 3:17 "And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect."

*** See pp. 97 and 122, ante.

TABLE #3-- CERTAIN LEADING DATES IN HISTORY, SACRED AND PROFANE [19]

BC

• 2055. The Covenant with Abraham.
  
   
• 1625. The Exodus. The giving of the Law.
  
   
• 1585. The entrance into Canaan under Joshua.
  
   
• 1096. Saul. The kingdom established.
  
   
• 1056. David.
  
   
• 1016. Solomon
  
   
• 1014. The Temple founded.
  
   
• 1006. The Temple dedicated.
  
   
• 976. Rehoboam. Israel revolts from Judah, and becomes a separate kingdom under Jeroboam.
  
   
• 776. Era of the Olympiads begins.
  
   
• 753. Era of Rome (A.U.C.) begins.
  
   
• 747. Era of Nabonassar begins.
  
   
• 726. Hezekiah king of Judah (reigned 29 years).
  
   
• 721. Israel (the ten tribes) carried captive to Assyria.
  
   
• 697. Manasseh (55 years).
  
   
• 642. Amon (2 years).
  
   
• 640. Josiah (31 years).
  
   
• 627. Jeremiah began to prophesy.
  
   
• 608. Jehoiakim (11 years).
  
   
• 606. Babylon.-- Jerusalem taken by Nebuchadnezzar. Servitude began.
  
   
• 598. Jerusalem taken the second time by the Babylonians. King Jehoiachin's captivity.
  
   
• 589. Jerusalem besieged the third time by the Babylonians. The Desolations.
  
   
• 587. Jerusalem taken and destroyed.
  
   
• 561. Death of Nebuchadnezzar and accession of Evil-Merodach.
  
   
• 559. Cyrus begins to reign in Persia.
  
   
• 538. Persia. — Babylon taken by the Medes and Persians.
  
   
• 536. Cyrus succeeds Darius in the empire. Decree to build the temple.
  
   
• 521. Darius Hystaspes of Persia.
  
   
• 520. Foundation of the 2nd Temple. Haggai and Zechariah prophesied.
  
   
• 515. Dedication of the second temple.
  
   
• 490. Battle of Marathon.
  
   
• 485. Xerxes succeeds Darius; the Ahasuerus of the book of Esther.
  
   
• 484. Herodotus the historian born.
  
   
• 480. Battles of Thermopylae and Salamis.
  
   
• 471. Themistocles banished by ostracism. Thucydides (historian) born.
  
   
• 468. Socrates born (died 399).
  
   
• 466. Flight of Themistocles to Persia.
  
   
• 465. Artaxerxes Longimanus of Persia.
  
   
• 458. Decree of Artaxerxes to beautify the temple (Ezra 7.)
  
   
• 449. Persians defeated by the Athenians at Salamis in Cyprus.
  
   
• 445. Era of the 70 weeks begins. Twentieth year of Artaxerxes: Jerusalem restored. Herodotus, aet. 39, engaged on his history.
  
   
• 429. Plato born (died 347).
  
   
• 424. Darius Nothus of Persia (Nehemiah 12:22).
  
   
• 405. Artaxerxes Mnemon of Persia.
  
   
• 397. Malachi. The dispensation of "the Prophets" closes. End of the first week of Daniel's 70 weeks.
  
   
• 359. Ochus of Persia.
  
   
• 336. Darius Codomanus of Persia.
  
   
• 333. Greece. — Battle of Issus. (Battle of Granicus, 334; & of Arbela, 331)
  
   
• 323. Death of Alexander the Great.
  
   
• 312. Era of the Seleucidae begins.
  
   
• 301. Battle of Ipsus.
  
   
• 170. Jerusalem taken by Antiochus Epiphanes.
  
   
• 168. The temple defiled by Antiochus.
  
   
• 165. Jerusalem retaken by Judas Maccabeus. The temple cleansed, and the Feast of the Dedication appointed. (1 Maccabees. 4:52-59; John 10:22).
  
   
• 63. Rome.. — Pompey takes Jerusalem.
  
   
• 40. Herod the Great appointed king of Judea by the Romans.
  
   
• 37. Herod takes Jerusalem, and is acknowledged as king by the Jews.
  
   
• 31. Battle of Actium.
  
   
• 12. Augustus Emperor of Rome.
  
   
• 4. The Nativity.
  
   
• 3. Death of Herod. Archelaus made Ethnarch of Judea, and Herod Antipas set over Galilee.
  
   

A.D.

• 14. Tiberius Emperor of Rome (from 19th August).
  
   
• 28. 15th year of Tiberius, from 19th Aug. A.D. 28, to 19th Aug. 29. The Lord's ministry began in this year, Luke 3.
  
   
• 32. The crucifixion (at the fourth Passover of the Lord's ministry).

.
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TABLE #4-- THE JEWISH MONTHS

Nisan, or Abib ... March — April.

Zif, or Iyar ... April — May.

Sivan ... May — June.

Tammuz ... June — July.

Ab ... July — August.

Elul ... August — September.

Tisri, or Ethanim ... September — October.

Bul, or Marchesvan ... October — November.

Chisleu ... November — December

Tebeth ... December — January

Sebat ... January — February

Adar ... February — March

Ve-Adar (the intercalary month).

Full information on the subject of the present "Hebrew Calendar" will be found in an article so entitled in Encyc. Brit. (9th ed.), and also in Lindo's Jewish Calendar, a Jewish work. The Mishna is the earliest work relating to it.

APPENDIX 1. FOOTNOTES

[*] Bishop Lloyd, to whom was entrusted the task of editing the A. V., in this respect made a few alterations, as ex. gr., in the book of Nehemiah he rejected Ussher's chronology, and inserted the true historical date of the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus.

[1] Rawlinson's Herodotus, 4., p. 212. Xerxes (old Persian Khshayarsha) is derived by Sir H. Rawlinson from Khshaya, 'a King'" (Ibid. 3., 446, App. Book 6. note A).

[2] Josephus appears to confirm this in Ant. 20:10 Ch. 1, where he specifies 612 years between the Exodus and the temple, but in Ant. 8:3 Ch. 1, he fixes the same period at 592 years. It is supposed that in the longer era he included the twenty years during which both the temple and the palace were building.

[3] Cf. Browne Ordo Saec. Ch. 13. His system, however, compels him to specify the destruction of Jerusalem (A. D. 70) as the close of the Mosaic economy, which is certainly wrong. The crucifixion was the great crisis in the history of Judah and of the world.

[4] Clinton, F. H., vol. 1., p. 299. Alford's supercilious comments on this (Gr. Test., Acts 7:4) could be easily disposed of were the occasion opportune for the discussion this would involve. Indeed a passing reference to Genesis 25:1, 2, would have modified his statements.

[5] His mother was a daughter of Levi (Exodus 2:1).

[6] It is a remarkable coincidence that the era of the second temple was so nearly this same period of 490 years, B. C. 515 to about B. C. 18 when Herod rebuilt it.

[7] Clinton, F. H., vol. 1., p. 367.

[8] The Paschal new moon, in B. C. 604, was on the 31st of March.

[9] F. H., vol. 1., p. 328.

[10] This is confirmed by Ezekiel 40:1, compared with 2 Kings 25:8, for the twenty-fifth year of the captivity was the fourteenth year after the destruction of Jerusalem (viz., the nineteenth of Nebuchadnezzar), reckoned inclusively according to the ordinary practice of the Jews.

[11] These results will appear at a glance by reference to the table appended.

[12] As this event was in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 25:8), and the captivity began in his eighth year (2 Kings 24:12).

[13] Clinton, F. H.. , vol. 1., p. 319.

[14] Ibid., pp. 328-329.

[15] Fasti H., vol. 1., p. 319.

[16] Daniel, p. 401.

[17] Five Great Mon., 4. 488.

[18] Treatise, Rosh Hashanah, 1. 1.

[19] These dates are Clinton's, subject to remarks in App. 1., ante. They are selected mainly to throw light on Daniel's visions. The names of historians, etc., are introduced in the fifth century B. C. to indicate the character of the age in which the prophetic era of the seventy weeks began.

APPENDIX 2. Back to Top

MISCELLANEOUS: WHO AND WHEN

NOTE A

ARTAXERXES LONGIMANUS AND THE CHRONOLOGY OF HIS REIGN

So thorough is the unanimity with which the Artaxerxes of Nehemiah is now admitted to be Longimanus, that it is no longer necessary to offer proof of it. Josephus indeed attributes these events to Xerxes, but his history of the reigns of Xerxes and Artaxerxes is so hopelessly in error as to be utterly worthless. In fact he transposes the events of these respective reigns (see, Ant. 11., caps 5: and 7.) Nehemiah's master reigned not less than thirty-two years (Nehemiah 13:6); and his reign was subsequent to that of Darius Hystaspes (comp. Ezra 6:1 and 7:1), and prior to that of Darius Nothus (Nehemiah 12:22). He must, therefore, be either Longimanus or Mnemon, for no other king after Darius Hystaspes reigned thirty-two years, and it is certain Nehemiah's mission was not so late as the twentieth of Artaxerxes Mnemon, viz., B.C. 385.

This appears, first, from the general tenor of the history; second, because this date is later than that of Malachi, whose prophecy must have been considerably later than the time of Nehemiah; and third, because Eliashib, who was high priest when Nehemiah came to Jerusalem, was grandson of Jeshua, who was high priest in the first year of Cyrus (Nehemiah 3:1; 12:10; Ezra 2:2; 3:2); and from the first year of Cyrus (B.C. 536), to the twentieth of Artaxerxes Longimanus (B.C. 445), was ninety-one years, leaving room for precisely three generations. [1]

Moreover, the eleventh chapter of Daniel, if read aright, affords conclusive proof that the prophetic era dated from the time of Longimanus. The second verse is generally interpreted as though it were but a disconnected fragment of history, leaving a gap of over 130 years between it and the third verse, whereas the chapter is a consecutive prediction of events within the period of the seventy weeks. There were to be yet (i.e., after the issuing of the decree to build Jerusalem) "three kings in Persia." These were Darius Nothus (mentioned in Nehemiah 12:22), Artaxerxes Mnemon, and Ochus; the brief reigns of Xerxes II., Sogdianus, and Arogus being overlooked as being, what in fact they were, utterly unimportant. and indeed two of them are omitted in the Canon of Ptolemy. "The fourth" (and last) king was Darius Codomanus, whose fabulous wealth — the accumulated horde of two centuries — attracted the cupidity of the Greeks. What sums of money Alexander found in Susa is unknown, but the silver ingots and Hermione purple he seized after the battle of Arbela were worth over [2] £ 20, 000, 000. Verse 2 thus reaches to the close of the Persian Empire; verse 3 predicts the rise of Alexander the Great; and verse 4 refers to the division of his kingdom among his four generals.

According to Clinton (F. H., vol. 2., p. 380) the death of Xerxes was in July B.C. 465, and the accession of Artaxerxes was in February B.C. 464. Artaxerxes of course ignored the usurper's reign, which intervened, and reckoned his own reign from the day of his father's death. Again, of course, Nehemiah, being an officer of the court, followed the same reckoning. Had he computed his master's reign from February 464, Chisleu and Nisan could not have fallen in the same regnal year (Nehemiah 1:1; 2:1). No more could they, had be, according to the Jewish practice, computed it from Nisan.

Dr. Pusey here remarks, [3]

"The accession of Artaxerxes after the seven months of the assassin Artabanus would fall in the middle of 464. For it is clear from the sequel of the months in Nehemiah 1:2., and Ezra 7:7- 9, that Chisleu fell earlier in the year of his reign than Nisan, and Nisan than Ab. Then the reign of Artaxerxes must have begun between Ab and Chisleu B.C. 464."

This is altogether a mistake. As already mentioned, Chisleu and Nisan fell in the same regnal year; and so also did Nisan and the first day of Ab (Ezra 7:8, 9). But the 1st Ab of B.C. 459 (the seventh year of Artaxerxes) fell on or about the 16th July, and therefore the passages quoted are perfectly consistent with the received chronology, and serve merely to enable us to fix the dates more accurately still, and to decide that the death of Xerxes and the epoch of the reign of Artaxerxes should be assigned to the latter part of July B.C. 465.

Those who are not versed in what writers on prophecy have written on this subject, will be surprised to learn that this date is assailed as being nine years too late. All chronologers are agreed that Xerxes began to reign in B.C. 485, and that the death of Artaxerxes was in B.C. 423; and so far as I know, no writer of repute, unbiased by prophetic study, assigns as the epoch of the latter king's reign any other date than B.C. 465 [4] (or 464; see ante). This is the date according to the Canon of Ptolemy, which has been followed by all historians; and it is confirmed by the independent testimony of Julius Africanus, who, in his Chronagraphy, [5] describes the twentieth year of Artaxerxes as the 115th year of the Persian Empire [reckoned from Cyrus, B.C. 559] and the fourth year of the eighty-third Olympiad. This fixes B.C. 464 as the first year of that king, as it was in fact the year of his actual accession.

It was Archbishop Ussher who first raised a doubt upon the point. Lecturing on "Daniel's Seventies" [6] in Trinity College, Dublin, in the year 1613, difficulties connected with his subject suggested an inquiry which led him ultimately to put back the reign of Longimanus to B.C. 474, which is the date given in his Annales Vet. Test. The same date was afterwards adopted by Vitringa, and a century later by Kruger. But Hengstenberg is regarded as the champion of this view, and the treatise thereon in his Chronology [7] omits nothing that can be urged in its favor.

The objections raised to the received chronology depend mainly on the statement of Thucydides, that Artaxerxes was on the throne when Themistocles reached the Persian Court; for it is urged that the flight of Themistocles could not have been so late as B.C. 464. [8] But, as Dr. Pusey remarks, t "they have not made any impression on our English writers who have treated of Grecian history." [9] In common with the German writers, Dr. Pusey ignores Ussher altogether in the controversy, though Dr. Tregelles [10] . rightly claims for him the foremost place for scholarship among those who have advocated the earlier date. The apparent difficulty of making the prophecy and the chronology agree has led Dr. Pusey, following Prideaux, in opposition to Scripture, to fix the seventh year of Artaxerxes as the epoch of the seventy weeks, while it induced Dr. Tregelles [11] sheltering behind Ussher's name, to adopt the B.C. 455 date for the twentieth year of that king's reign. Bishop Lloyd when affixing Ussher's dates to our English Bible reverted to the received chronology when dealing with the book of Nehemiah.

It is unnecessary to enter here upon a discussion of this question. Nothing short of a reproduction of the entire argument in favor of the new chronology would satisfy its advocates; and for my present purpose it is a sufficient answer to that argument, that although everything has been urged which ingenuity and erudition can suggest in support of it, it has been rejected by all secular writers. Unfulfilled prophecy is only for the believer, but prophecy fulfilled has a voice for all. It is fortunate, therefore, that the proof of the fulfillment of this prophecy of the seventy weeks does not depend on an elaborate disquisition, like that of Hengstenberg's, to disturb the received chronologies.

One point only I will notice. It is urged in favor of limiting the reign of Xerxes to eleven years, that no event is mentioned in connection with his reign after his eleventh year. The answer is obvious: first, that it is to Greek historians, writing after his time, that we are mainly indebted for our knowledge of Persian history; and secondly, the battles of Thermopylae and Salamis may well have induced a king of the temperament and character of Xerxes to give himself up to a life of indolent ease and sensual enjoyment.

But further, the twelfth year of Xerxes is expressly mentioned in the book of Esther (3:7), and the narrative proves that his reign continued to the twelfth (Jewish) month of his thirteenth year. [12] Hengstenberg answers this by asserting that it was customary with Hebrew writers to include in a regnal era the years of a co-regency where it existed, and he appeals to the case of Nebuchadnezzar as a proof of such a custom. [13] If Nebuchadnezzar's reign was in fact reckoned thus, this solitary instance would establish no such custom, for it would prove nothing more than that the Jews in Jerusalem, knowing nothing of the politics or customs of Babylon, reckoned Nebuchadnezzar's reign upon a system of their own. But I believe this theory about Nebuchadnezzar's reign is a thorough blunder. If in the sacred history he is called King of Babylon, in connection with his first invasion of Judea, it is because the writers were his contemporaries. "Lord Beaconsfield was Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Derby's administrations" is a statement which will be rightly condemned as an anachronism if made by the historian of the future, but it is precisely the language which would have been used by a contemporary writer acquainted with the living statesman. I have shown elsewhere (App. 1., ante) that the Jews reckoned Nebuchadnezzar's reign according to their own custom, as dating from the Nisan preceding his accession. Unless, therefore, some entirely new case can be made in support of the co-regency theory of Xerxes's reign, it remains that the book of Esther is absolutely conclusive against Ussher's date, and in favor of the received chronology.


NOTE B

DATE OF THE NATIVITY

IN treating of the date of the birth of our Lord, the arguments in favor of an earlier date than that which is here adopted are too well known to be left unnoticed. Dr. Farrar states the question thus in his Life of Christ (Excursus 1.):--

"Our one most certain datum is obtained from the tact that Christ was born before the death of Herod the Great. The date of that event is known with absolute certainty, for (2) Josephus tells us that he died thirty-seven years after he had been declared king by the Romans. Now it is known that he was declared King A. U. C. 714; and, therefore, since Josephus always reckons his years from Nisan to Nisan, and counts the initial and terminal fractions of Nisan as complete years, Herod must have died between Nisan A. U. C. 750 and Nisan A. U. C. 751, i.e., between B.C. 4 and B.C. 3 of our era. (2.) Josephus says that on the night in which Herod ordered Judas, Matthias, and their abettors to be burnt, there was an eclipse of the moon. Now this eclipse took place on the night of March 12th, B.C. 4, and Herod was dead at least seven days before the Passover, which, if we accept the Jewish reckoning, fell in that year on April 12th. But according to the clear indication of the Gospels, Jesus must have been born at least forty days before Herod's death. It is clear, therefore, that under no circumstances can the nativity have taken place later than February B.C. 4." [14]

This passage is a typical illustration of the relative value attached to the statements of sacred and profane historians. In the histories of Josephus an incidental mention of an eclipse or of the length of a king's reign suffices to give "absolute certainty," before which the clearest and most definite statements of Holy Writ must give place, albeit they relate to matters of such transcendent interest to the writers that even if the Evangelists be dismissed to the category of mere historians, no mistake was possible.

The following is a more temperate statement of the question, by the Archbishop of York, in an article (Jesus Christ) contributed to Smith's Bible Dictionary. —

"Herod the Great died, according to Josephus, in the thirty-seventh year after he was appointed king. His elevation coincides with the consulship of Cn Domitius Calvinus and C. Asinius Pollio, and this determines the date A. U. C. 714. There is reason to think that in such calculations Josephus reckons the years from the month Nisan to the same month, and also that the death of Herod took place in the beginning of the thirty-seventh year, or just before the Passover; if then thirty-six complete years are added, they give the year of Herod's death, A. U. C. 750."

According to this, the commonly received view, Herod's death took place within the first six days of a Jewish year, and these days are reckoned as a complete year in his regnal era. Now it is admitted that in computing time the Jews generally included both the terminal units of a given period. A signal and well-known instance of this is afforded by the words of the Lord Himself, when He declared He would lie in death for three days and nights. What meaning did these words convey to Jews? Four-and-twenty hours after His burial they came to Pilate and said, "We remember that that deceiver said, while He was yet alive, 'After three days I will rise again;' command, therefore, that the sepulcher be made sure until the third day." [15] Had that Sunday passed leaving the seal upon the tomb unbroken, the Pharisees would boldly have proclaimed their triumph; whereas, by our modes of reckoning, the resurrection ought to have been deferred till Monday night, or Tuesday morning. [16]

Again, it may be assumed that Herod's accession dated in fact from B.C. 40, and, therefore, that B.C. 4 was the thirty-seventh and last year of his reign. Further it is probable he died shortly before a Passover. The question remains whether his death occurred at the beginning or toward the close of the Jewish year.

Josephus relates that when the event took place Archelaus remained in seclusion during seven days, and then presented himself publicly to the people. His first reception was not unfavorable, though he had to yield to many a popular demand then pressed on him; and after the ceremonial, he "went and offered sacrifice to God, and then betook himself to feast with his friends." Soon, however, discontent and disaffection began to smolder and spread, and fresh demands were made upon the king. To these again he yielded, though with less grace, instructing his general to remonstrate with the people, and persuade them to defer their petitions till his return from Rome. These appeals only increased the prevailing dissatisfaction, and a riot ensued. The king still continued to parley with the seditious, but, "upon the approach of the feast of unleavened bread," when the capital became thronged with the Jews from the country, the state of things became so alarming that Archelaus determined; to suppress the rioters by force of arms. This was "upon the approach of the feast," and the Jews considered the Passover was "nigh at hand" upon the eighth day of Nisan, when they repaired to Jerusalem for the festival. [17]

The Passover began the 14th Nisan. This final riot took place during the preceding week. The earlier riot occurred before that again, £e., before the date of the incursion of Jews for the festival, the 8th Nisan. This again was preceded by some interval, measured from the day following the court mourning for Herod, which had lasted seven days. The history, therefore, establishes conclusively that Herod's death was more than fourteen days before the Passover, and therefore at the close and not at the beginning of a Jewish year.

But which year? His death must have been after the eclipse of 13th March, B.C. 4 [18] But the eclipse was only a month before the Passover of that year, and his death was fourteen days at least before the Passover, could then the events recorded by Josephus as occurring in the interval between the eclipse and the king's death have taken place in a fortnight? Let the reader turn to the Antiquities and judge for himself whether it be possible. The natural inference from the history is that the death was not weeks but months after the eclipse, and therefore, again, at the close of the year.

The correctness of this conclusion can be established by the application of the strictest of all tests, that of referring to the historian's chronological statements.

In his Wars (2:7, 3), Josephus assigns the banishment of Archelaus to the ninth year of his government; in his later work (Ant., 17, 13, 3), he states it was in his tenth year. And these dates are given with a definiteness and in a manner which preclude the idea of a blunder. They are connected with the narration of a dream in which Archelaus saw a number of ears of corn (nine in the Wars, ten in the Antiquities), devoured by oxen, — presaging that the years of his rule were about to be brought abruptly to an end. Now whether a ruler be Christian, Jew, or Turk, his ninth year is the year beginning with the eighth anniversary of his government, and his tenth year that beginning with the ninth anniversary; and it is mere casuistry to pretend that there is either mystery or difficulty in the matter. It is evident that the difference between the two statements of the historian is intentional, and that in his two histories he computed the Ethnarch's government from two different epochs. But if Herod died in the first week of the Jewish year, as these writers maintain, this would be impossible, for Archelaus's actual accession would have synchronized with his accession according to Jewish reckoning. Whereas if his government dated from the close of a Jewish year, A.D. 6 [19] would be his ninth year in fact, but his tenth year according to Mishna rule of computing reigns from Nisan.

In numerous treatises on this subject will be found an argument based on John 2:20, "Forty and six years was this temple in building." According to Josephus (it is urged), "Herod's reconstruction of the temple began in the eighteenth year of his reign," [20] and forty-six years from that date would fix A.D. 26 as the year in which these words were spoken, and therefore as the first year of our Lord's ministry. That writers of repute should have written thus may be described as a literary phenomenon. Not only does Josephus not say what is thus attributed to him, but his narrative disproves it. The foundation for the statement is that either in his eighteenth or nineteenth year [21] Herod made a speech proposing to rebuild the temple. But the historian adds, that finding his intentions and promises thoroughly distrusted by the people, "the king encouraged them, and told them he would not pull down their temple till all things were gotten ready for building it up entirely again. And as he promised them this beforehand, so he did not break his word with them, but got ready a thousand wagons, that were to bring stones for the building, and chose out ten thousand of the most skillful workmen, and bought a thousand sacerdotal garments for the priests, and had some of them taught the art of stone-cutters, and others of carpenters, and then began to build; but this was not till everything was well prepared for the work." [22] What length of time these preparations occupied, it is of course impossible to decide, but if, as Lewin supposes, the work was begun at the Passover of B.C. 18, then forty-six years would bring us exactly to A.D. 29 — the first Passover of the Lord's ministry.


NOTE C

CONTINUOUS HISTORICAL SYSTEM OF PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION

THE historical interpreters of prophecy have grasped a principle the importance of which is abundantly proved by the striking parallelisms between the visions of the Apocalypse and the events of the history of Christendom. But not content with this, they have on the one hand brought discredit on prophetic study by wild and arrogant predictions about the end of the world, and on the other, they have reduced their principle of interpretation to a system, and then degraded it to a hobby. The result is fortunate in this respect, that the evil cannot fail to cure itself, and the time cannot be far distant when the "continuous historical interpretation," in the form and manner in which its champions have propounded it, will be regarded as a vagary of the past. The events of the first half of the present century produced on the minds of Christians such an impression in its favor, that it bid fair to gain general acceptance. But the late Mr. Elliott's great work has thoroughly exposed its weaknesses. A perusal of the first five chapters of the Horae Apocalypticae cannot fail to impress the reader with a sense of the genuineness and importance of the writer's scheme, nor will he fail to appreciate the erudition displayed, and the sobriety with which it is used. But when he passes from the commentary upon the first five seals, to the account of the sixth seal, he must experience a revulsion of feeling which will be strong just in proportion to his apprehension of the trueness and solemnity of Holy Writ. Let any one read the last six verses of the sixth chapter of Revelation, a passage the awful solemnity of which has scarcely a parallel in Scripture, and with what feelings will he turn to Mr. Elliott's book to find that the words are nothing more than a prediction of the downfall of paganism in the fourth century!

The words of the Apocalyptic vision in relation to the great day of Divine wrath (Revelation 6:17), are the language of Isaiah (13:9, 10) respecting "the day of the Lord," and again of Joel's prophecy (Joel 2:1, 30, 31, quoted by St. Peter on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:16-20). Nor is this all. The twenty-fourth chapter of St. Matthew is a Divine commentary upon the visions of the sixth chapter of Revelation, and each of the seals has its counterpart in the Lord's predictions of events preceding His second advent:, ending with the mention of these same terrible convulsions of nature here described. Therefore, even if the mind be "educated" up to the point of accepting such an interpretation of the vision of the sixth seal, these other Scriptures remain to be accounted for.

Many other points in Mr. Elliott's scheme might be cited as equally faulty. Take for example the labored essay on the subject of the two witnesses, culminating in the amazing and-climax that their ascent to heaven (Revelation 11:12) was fulfilled when Protestants obtained "an advancement to political dignity and power." (Horae. Ap., 2., 410). Still more wild and reckless is his exposition of Revelation 12:5. "It seems clear" (he says) "that whatever the woman's hope in her travail, the lesser consummation was the one figured in the man child's birth and assumption, viz., the elevation of the Christians, first to recognition as a body politic, then very quickly to the supremacy of the throne in the Roman Empire" (vol. 3., 12). The reference to Wilberforce in connection with Revelation 15: is almost grotesque (vol. 3., 430). And finally he drifts upon the rock on which every man who follows this false system must inevitably be wrecked — the chronology of prophecy: proving by cumulative evidence that the year 1865 would usher in the millennium, or if not 1865, then 1877 or 1882 (vol. 3., 256-266).

"An apocalyptic commentary which explains everything is self-convicted of error." This dictum of Dan. Alford's (Gr. Test.. Revelation 11:2) applies with full force to Mr. Elliott's book. Maintaining as he does that these visions have received their absolute and final fulfillment, he is bound to explain everything;" and as the result these lucubrations mar a work which if recast by some intelligent student of prophecy would be of the highest value. In days like these, when we have to contend for the very words of Scripture, we cannot afford to dismiss them as harmless puerilities. They have given an impetus to the skepticism of the age, and have encouraged Christian men to treat the most solemn warnings of coming wrath as mere stage thunder.

Mr. Elliott's mantle appears now to have fallen upon the author of the Approaching End of t/re Age. Mr. Grattan Guinness's treatise upon lunisolar cycles and epacts will be deemed by many the most interesting and valuable portion of the work. The study of it has confirmed an impression I have long entertained, that in some mystic interpretation of the prophetic periods of Daniel, the chronology of Gentile supremacy and of the Christian dispensation lies concealed. Professor Birks, however, justly remarks, that it is "very doubtful whether much of the specialty on which Mr. Guinness founds this part of his theory is not due to a partial selection unconsciously made of some epact numbers out of many, and that the special relations of the epacts to the numbers 6, 7, 8, 13, would probably disappear on a comprehensive examination of all the epact numbers" (Thoughts on Sacred Prophecy, p. 64).

It might also be remarked that with the latitude obtained by reckoning sometimes in lunar years, sometimes in lunisolar years, and sometimes in ordinary Julian years, the list of seeming chronological coincidences and parallelisms might be still further increased. The period from the Council of Nice (A.D. 325) to the death of Gregory XIII. (1585) was 1, 260 years. From the edict of Justinian (533) to the French Revolution was 1, 260 years; and again from A.D. 606, when the Emperor Phocas conferred the title of Pope on Boniface III., to the overthrow of the temporal power (1866-1870), was also 1, 260 years. If these facts prove anything, they prove, not that the periods mentioned are the fulfillment of Daniel's visions, for Daniel's visions relate to the history of Judah, with which these events have nothing to do, but that the chronology of such events is marked by cycles composed of multiples of seventy. Therefore, they greatly strengthen the a priori presumption that this is a general characteristic of "the tithes and seasons" as divinely planned, and that the visions will, hereafter, be literally fulfilled. In a word, such proofs prove far too much for the cause they are intended to support.

I have already noticed the transparent fallacy of sup posing that the ten-horned beast and the Babylon of the Apocalypse can both be typical of Rome (p. 134, ante). In the, Approaching End of the Age this fallacy is accepted apparently without suspicion or misgiving, for the writer neither adopts nor improves upon the pleasing romance by which Mr. Elliott attempts to conceal the absurdity of such a view.

As the Harlot comes to her doom by the agency of the Beast, it is absolutely certain that they are not identical; and every proof these writers urge to establish that the Church of Rome is Babylon, is equally conclusive to prove that the Papacy is not the Beast, the Man of Sin. Their whole system is like a house of cards which falls to pieces the moment it is tried. As such books are read by many who are unversed in history it may be well to repeat once more, that the division of the Roman earth into ten kingdoms has never yet taken place. That it has been partitioned is plain matter of history and of fact' that it has ever been divided into ten is a mere conceit of writers of this school. [23]

Of Daniel 9:24-27 Mr. Guinness writes, "From the then approaching command to restore and to build again Jerusalem, to the coming of Messiah the Prince, was to be seventy weeks" (p. 417). This is a typical instance of the looseness of the historical school in dealing with Scripture. The words of the prophecy are, "From the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks and threescore and two weeks." [24] As this error underlies his entire exposition of the prophecy which forms the special subject of these pages, it is needless to discuss it. He follows Prideaux in computing the weeks from the seventh year of Artaxerxes.

Again, in common with almost all commentators he confounds the seventy years of Judah's servitude with the seventy years of the desolations of Jerusalem. The prophecy he quotes from Jeremiah 25 (p. 414) was given in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, whereas the servitude began in his third year; and it foretold a judgment which fell seventeen years; later It would seem ungracious to notice'. minor inaccuracies, such as that of confounding Belshazzar with Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon.

Such a book is useful in so far as it deals positively with the historical fulfillment as a primary and partial realization of the prophecies; and as a full and fearless indictment of the Church of Rome it is most valuable. But in the dogmatic negation of a literal fulfillment, in the blind and obstinate determination to establish, no matter at what cost to Scripture, that the Apocalypse has been "FULFILLED in the events of the Christian era," such a work cannot fail to be dangerous and mischievous. The real question at issue here is the character and value of the Bible. If the views of these writers be just, the language of Holy Writ in such passages as the close of the sixth chapter of Revelation is the most utter bombast. And if wild exaggeration characterize one portion of the Scriptures, what confidence can we have in any part? If the Great Day of Divine wrath, described in terms of unsurpassed solemnity, were nothing but a brief crisis in the history of a campaign now long past, the words which tell of the joy of the blessed and the doom of the impenitent may after all be mere hyperbole, and the Christian's faith may be mere credulity.


NOTE D

THE TEN KINGDOMS

"PROPHECY is not given to enable us to prophesy," and no one who has worthily pursued the study will fail to feel misgivings at venturing out upon the tempting field of forecasting "things to come." By patient contemplation we may clearly discern the main outlines of the landscape of the future; but "until the day dawn," our apprehension of distances and details must be inadequate, if not wholly false. The great facts of the future, so plainly revealed in Scripture, have been touched on in preceding pages. For what follows here no deference is claimed save what may be accorded to a "pious opinion" based on earnest and careful inquiry.

Next to the restoration of the Jews, the most prominent political feature of the future, according to Scripture, is the tenfold partition of the Roman earth. The emphasis and definiteness with which ten kingdoms are specified, not only in Daniel, but in the Revelation, forbid our interpreting the words as describing merely a division of power such as has existed ever since the disruption of the Roman Empire, though this is undoubtedly a feature of the prophecy. Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome in turn sought to grasp universal dominion. That there should be a commonwealth of nations living side by side at peace, was a conception that nothing in the history of the world could have suggested.

The principal clew which Scripture affords upon the subject is the connection between these kingdoms and the Roman Empire. [25] But some latitude must probably be allowed as to boundaries, otherwise we should have to choose between two equally improbable alternatives, namely, either that our own nation shall have sunk to the position of a province, not even Ireland remaining under her sway, [26] or else that the England which is to be numbered among the ten kingdoms will include the vast empire of which this island is the heart and center. May we not indulge the hope that however far our nation may lapse in evil days to come from the high place which, with all her faults, she has held as the champion of freedom and of truth, she will be saved from the degradation of participating in the vile confederacy of the latter days?

These considerations as to boundaries apply also to Germany, though in a lower degree; and Russia is clearly out of the reckoning altogether. The special interest and importance of these conclusions depend upon the fact that the antichrist is to be at first a patron and supporter of the religious apostasy of Christendom, and that England, Germany, and Russia are precisely the three first-rate Powers who are outside the pale of Rome.

But there is no doubt that Egypt, Turkey, and Greece will be numbered among the ten kingdoms; [27] and is it not improbable in the extreme that these nations will ever accept the leadership of a man who is to appear as the champion and patron of the Latin Church? A striking solution of this difficulty will probably be found in the definite prediction, that while the ten kingdoms will ultimately own his suzerainty, three of the ten will be brought into subjection by force of arms (Daniel 7:24.)

Turning again to the West, the names of France, Austria, Italy, and Spain present themselves; and seven of the kingdoms are thus accounted for. Can the list be completed? Belgium, Switzerland, and Portugal remain, and these too would claim a place were we dealing with the Europe of today; but as it is the future we are treating of, any attempt to press the matter further seems futile. It has been confidently urged by some that as the ten kingdoms were symbolized by the ten toes of Nebuchadnezzar's image, — five on either foot, — five of these kingdoms must be developed in the East, and five in the West. The argument is plausible, and possibly just; but its chief force depends upon forgetting that in the prophet's view the Levant and not the Adriatic, Jerusalem and not Rome, is the center of the world.

To the scheme here indicated the objection may naturally be raised: Is it possible that the most powerful nations of the world, England, Germany, and Russia, are to have no part in the great drama of the last days? But it must be remembered, first, that the relative importance of the great Powers may be different at the time when these events shall be fulfilled, and secondly, that difficulties of this kind may depend entirely on the silence of Scripture, or, in other words, on our own ignorance. I feel bound to notice, however, that doubts which have been raised in my mind regarding the soundness of the received interpretation of the seventh chapter of Daniel point to a more satisfactory answer to the difficulties in question.

As the vision of the second chapter specifies the four empires which were successively to rule the world, and as the seventh chapter also enumerates four "kingdoms," and expressly identifies the fourth of these with the fourth - kingdom of the earlier vision, the inference appears legitimate that the scope of both visions is the same throughout. And this conclusion is apparently confirmed by some of the details afforded of the kingdoms typified by the lion, the bear, and the leopard. So strong indeed is the prima facie case in support of this view, that I have not felt at liberty to depart from it in the foregoing pages. At the same time I am constrained to own that this case is less complete than it appears to be, and that grave difficulties arise in connection with it; and the following observations are put forward tentatively to promote inquiry in the matter:--

1st. Daniel 2 and 7 are both in the Chaldee portion of the Book, and are therefore bracketed together, and separated from what follows. This strengthens the presumption, therefore, which would obtain in any case, that the later vision is not a repetition of the earlier one. Repetition is very rare in Scripture.

2nd. The date of the vision of the seventh chapter was the first year of Belshazzar, and therefore only some two or three years before the fall of the Babylonian empire. [28] How then could the rise of that empire be the subject of the prophecy? Verse 17 appears definite that the rise of all these kingdoms was future.

3rd. In the history of Babylonia there is nothing to correspond with the predicted course of the first Beast, for it is scarcely legitimate to suppose that the vision was a prophecy of the career of Nebuchadnezzar, whose death had taken place upwards of twenty years before the vision was given. Moreover, the transition from the lion with eagle's wings to the human condition, though it may betoken decline in power, plainly typifies a signal rise morally and intellectually.

4th. Neither is there in the history of Persia anything answering to the bear-like beast with that precision and fullness which prophecy demands. The language of the English version suggests a reference to Persia and Media; but the true rendering appears to be: "It made for itself one dominion," [29] instead of" It raised up itself on one side."

5th. While the symbolism of the sixth verse seems at first sight to point definitely to the Grecian Empire, it will appear upon a closer examination that at its advent the leopard had four wings and four heads. This was its primary and normal condition, and it was in this condition that "dominion was given to it." This surely is very different from what Daniel 8:8 describes, and what the history of Alexander's Empire realized, viz., the rise of a single power, which in its decadence continued to exist in a divided state.

6th. Each of the three first empires of the second chapter (Babylon, Persia, and Greece) was in turn destroyed and engulfed by its successor; but the kingdoms of the seventh chapter all continued together upon the scene, though "the dominion," was with the fourth (Daniel 7:12). Verse 3 seems to imply that the four beasts came up together, and at all events there is nothing to suggest a series of empires, each destroying its predecessor, though the symbolism of the vision was (in contrast with that of chap. 2.) admirably adapted to represent this. Compare the language of the next vision (Daniel 8:3-6).

7th. While the fourth beast is unquestionably Rome, the language of the seventh and twenty-third verses leaves no doubt that it is the Roman Empire in its revived and future phase. Without endorsing the views of Maitland, Browne, etc., it must be owned that there was nothing in the history of ancient Rome to correspond with the main characteristic of this beast unless the symbolism used is to be very loosely interpreted. To "devour the earth," "tread it down and break it in pieces," is fairly descriptive of other empires, but Ancient Rome was precisely the one power which added government to conquest, and instead of treading down and breaking in pieces the nations it subdued, sought rather to mold them to its own civilization and polity.

All this — and more might be added [30] — suggests that the entire vision of the seventh chapter may have a future reference. We have already seen that sovereign power is to be with a confederacy of ten nations ultimately heading up in one great Kaiser, and that several of what are now the first-rate Powers are to be outside that confederacy: it is in the last degree improbable, therefore, that such a supremacy will be attained save after a tremendous struggle. At this moment the international politics of the old world center in the Eastern Question, which is after all merely a question of the balance of power in the Mediterranean. Now Daniel 7:2 expressly names the Mediterranean ("the Great Sea") as the scene of the conflict between the four beasts. May not the opening portion of the vision then refer to the gigantic struggle which must come some day for supremacy in the Mediterranean, which will doubtless carry with it the sovereignty of the world? The lion may possibly typify England, whose vast naval power may be symbolized by the eagle's wings. The plucking of the wings may represent the loss of her position as mistress of the seas. And if such should be the result of the impending struggle, we would be eager to believe that her after course shall be characterized by moral and mental pre-eminence: the beast, we read, was "made to stand upon the feet as a man, and a man's heart was given to it."

If the British lion have a place in the vision, the Muscovite bear can scarcely be omitted; and it may confidently be averred that the bear of the prophecy may represent the Russia of today fully as well as the Persia of Cyrus and Darius. The definiteness of the symbolism used in respect of the leopard (or panther) of the vision makes it more difficult to refer this portion of the prophecy to Germany or any oilier nation in particular. It would be easy to make out an ad captandum case in support of such a view, but it may suffice to remark that if the prophecy be still unfulfilled, its meaning will be incontestable when the time arrives.

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CHRONOLOGICAL DIAGRAM OF THE HISTORY OF JUDAH (784 x 1068 pixels) ---New Window

Anderson's "Chronological Diagram of the History of Judah" is a panoramic view of both history and prophecy in relation to Daniel's people (Judah) and city (Jerusalem), i.e., "Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy" (Daniel 9:24). Anderson chronologically integrates secular history, Jewish history, the history of Jerusalem and the Temple, Daniel's vision of the "great image" (2:31), and the ministry of the prophets, with a view toward the consummation of God's program of judgment during the Seventieth Week (9:27). Simply studying the diagram to catch Anderson's meaning is enough to provoke greater understanding of a subject that even the "angels desire to look into" (1Peter 1:12).


APPENDIX 2. FOOTNOTES

[1] Encyc. Brit., 9th ed., title "Artaxerxes."

[2] W. K. Loftus, "Chaldea and Susiana," p. 341.

[3] Daniel, p. 160.

[4] On this point I have consulted the author of The Five Great Monarchies, a book to which frequent reference is made in these pages, and I am indebted to Canon Rawlinson's courtesy and kindness for the following reply: "I think you may safely say that chronologers are now agreed that Xerxes died in the year B. C. 465. The Canon of Ptolemy, Thucydides, Diodorus, and Manetho are agreed; the only counter authority being Ctesias, who is quite untrustworthy."

[5] Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. 9., second part, p 184.

[6] Works, vol. 15., p. 108.

[7] Arnold's trans., pp. 443-454.

[7-2] Kruger's arguments are reviewed by Clinton in F. H., 2., p. 217.

[8] Daniel, p. 171, note.

[9] See ex. gr. Mitford, 2., 226; Thirlwall, 2., 428; Grote, 5., 379; and of Germans see Niebuhr, Lect. Anc. Hist. (Schmitz ed.), 2., 180-181.

[10] Daniel, p. 266.

[11] Ibid. p. 99, note.

[12] The Feast of Purim derives its name from the fact that when Haman planned the destruction of the people of Mordecai, he cast lots day by day to find "a lucky day "for the execution of his scheme. A whole year – the twelfth year of Xerxes – was thus consumed (Esther 3:7); and the decree for the slaughter of the Jews was made on the 13th Nisan in the following year (ibid. 3:12). The decree in their favor was granted two months later (ibid. 8:9), and the king is mentioned in connection with the execution of that decree in the twelfth month of that year (ibid. 9: l, 13-17). The reign of Xerxes therefore certainly continued to the last month of his thirteenth year. The last chapter of Esther, moreover, clearly shows that his reign did not end with the events recorded in the book, but that his promotion of Mordecai was the beginning of a new era in his career.

[13] Christology (Arnold's trans.), Ch. 737.

[14] Dr. Farrar's book has done much to popularize a controversy which hitherto has interested only the few. It may be well to notice, therefore, that his sweeping statement as to the date of Herod's death is doubtful (see Clinton, Fasti Rom., A. D. 29), and that Josephus does not always reckon reigns in the manner indicated.

[15] Matthew 27:63, 64; comp. 2 Chronicles 10:5-12. "He said unto them, Come again unto me after three days…so Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam on the third day?"

[16] Whether such a system of reckoning appears strange or natural depends on the habit of thought of the individual. A professor of theology might have trouble in defending it in class, but a prison chaplain would have no difficulty in explaining it to his congregation! Our own civil day is a nuchthameron, beginning at midnight, and the law takes no cognizance of a part of a day. Therefore in a sentence of three days' imprisonment, the prescribed term is equal to seventy-two hours; but though the prisoner seldom reaches the gaol till evening, the law holds him to have completed a day's imprisonment the moment midnight strikes, and the gaoler may lawfully release him the moment the prison is opened the second morning after. As a matter of fact a prisoner committed for three days is seldom more than forty hours in gaol. This mode of reckoning and speaking was as familiar to the Jew as it is to the habitues of our police courts.

[17] "When the people were come in great crowds to the feast of unleavened bread on the eighth day of the month Xanthicus" (i. e., Nisan) (Jos., Wars, 6. 5, 3. Comp. John 11:55; 12:1). "The Jews' Passover was nigh at hand, and many went out of the country up to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. Then Jesus six days before the Passover came to Bethany."

[18] There was no lunar eclipse visible at Jerusalem between that of the 13th March B. C. 4 and that of 9th January B. C. 1. Many writers take the latter to be the eclipse of Herod, and assign his death to that year. That of B. C. 1 was a fine total eclipse, totality coming on at fifteen minutes past midnight, whereas that of B. C. 4 was but a partial eclipse, and the greatest magnitude was not till 2 h. 34 m. a. m. (Johnson, Eclipses Past and Future). But though every consideration of this character points to B. C. 1 as the (late of Herod's death, the weight of evidence generally is in favor of B. C. 4. Of recent writers, the former year is adopted by Dr. Geikie (Life of Christ, 6th ed., p. 150), and notably by the late Mr. Bosanquet, who argues the question in his Messiah the Prince, and more concisely in a paper read before the Society of Biblical Archaeology on 6th June, 1871.

[19] This is the year specified by Dion Cassius for the Ethnarch's banishment. Clinton, F. H., A. D. 6.

[20] Farrar, Life of Christ, App. Exc. 1.

[21] It depends on the meaning of the word gegonotos in the passage, whether the eighteenth or nineteenth year be intended. The narrative, as a whole, points to the nineteenth year. Cf Lewin's Fasti Sacri, pp. 56: and 92.

[22] Josephus, Ant., 15. 11, 27.

[23] See p. 39, ante. Elliott's list of the ten kingdoms is the following: The Anglo-Saxons, Franks, Allmans, Burgundians, Visigoths, Suevi, Vandals, Ostrogoths, Bavarians, and Lombards. If any one can read the seventh chapter of Daniel and the thirteenth chapter of Revelation and accept such an interpretation, there is really no common ground on which to discuss the matter.

[24] I deprecate the idea that my object is to review this or any other book. Were such my intention I could point out other similar errors. Exodus gr., in Pt. III., chap. l, the writer enumerates five points of identity between the Harlot and the Church of Rome, and of these five the two last are sheer blunders, viz., "The minister of the harlot makes fire to descend from heaven," "And the harlot requires all to receive her mark." (Comp. Revelation 13:13, 16)

[25] "The ten horns out of this kingdom" (Daniel 7:24).

[26] Ireland was entirely, and Scotland was in part, outside the territorial limits of the Roman Empire.

[27] In Daniel 11:40, Egypt and Turkey (or the Power which shall then possess Asia Millor) are expressly mentioned by their prophetic titles as separate kingdoms at this very time.

[28] See Chron. Table, App. 1, ante.

[29] Tregelles, Daniel, p. 34.

[30] The beasts of Daniel 7 are those named in Revelation 13:2, to represent the Antichrist. Though this admits of the explanation given, it may also be used a strong argument in favor of the view above set forth.

APPENDIX 3. Back to Top

A RETROSPECT AND A REPLY

"TAKE heed that no man deceive you." Such were the first words of our Lord's reply to the inquiry, "What shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the age?" And the warning is needed still. "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons," was almost His last utterance on earth, before He was taken up. And if this knowledge was denied to His holy apostles and prophets, we may be sure it has not been disclosed to us today. Nor can a secret which, as the Lord declared, "the Father hath put in His own power," (Acts 1:7) be discovered by astronomical research or flights of higher mathematics.

But, on the other hand, no thoughtful Christian can ignore the signs and portents which mark the days we live in. I little thought as I penned the introductory chapter of this book that the advance of infidelity would be with such terribly rapid strides. In the few brief years that have since elapsed the growth of skepticism within the Churches has exceeded even the gloomiest forecast. And side by side with this, again, the spread of spiritualism and demon-worship has been appalling. Its rotaries are reckoned by tens of thousands; and in America it has already been systematized into a religion, with a recognized creed and cult.

But these dark features of our times, striking and solemn though they be, are not the most significant. While the warned-against apostasy of the last days thus seems to be drawing near, we are gladdened by signal triumphs of the Cross. It is not merely that at home and abroad the Gospel is being preached by such multitudes with a freedom never known before, but that, in a way unprecedented since the days of the Apostles, the Jews are coming to the faith of Christ. The fact is but little known that during the last few years more than a quarter of a million copies of the New Testament in Hebrew have been circulated among the Jews in Eastern Europe, and the result has been their conversion to Christianity, not by ones and twos, as in the past, but in large and increasing numbers. Entire communities in some places have, through reading the word of God, accepted the despised Nazarene as the true Messiah. This is wholly without parallel since Pentecostal times.

Then again, the return of the Jews to Palestine is one of the strangest facts of the day. There is scarcely a country in the world that does not offer more attractions to the settler, be he agriculturist or trader; and yet, since The Coming Prince was written, more Jews have migrated to the land of their fathers than returned with Ezra when the decree of Cyrus brought the servitude to a close. But yesterday the prophecy that Jerusalem should be inhabited "as towns without walls" seemed to belong to a future far remote. The houses beyond the gates were few in number, and no one ventured abroad there after nightfall. Today the existence of a large and growing Jewish town outside the walls is a fact within the knowledge of every tourist, and year by year the immigration and the building still go on.

If I venture to touch upon the international politics of Europe, it will be but briefly, in connection with the prophecy of the seventh chapter of Daniel. I have given in detail my reasons for suggesting that the "historical" interpretation of that vision does not exhaust its meaning, [1] and I own to a deepening conviction that every part of it awaits its fulfillment. There, as elsewhere in the Scriptures, "the great sea" must surely mean the Mediterranean; and a terrible struggle for supremacy in the Levant appears to be the burden of the earlier portion of the vision. The nearness of such a struggle is now being anxiously discussed in every capital in Europe, and nowhere more anxiously than here at home. Never indeed since the days of Pitt has there been such cause for national anxiety; and the question of the balance of power in the Mediterranean has recently gained a prominence and interest greater and more acute than ever before attached to it.

I will not notice topics of a more doubtful character, but confine myself to these; nor will I attempt by word-painting to exaggerate their significance. But here we are face to face with great public facts. On the one hand, there is this spread of infidelity and demon-worship, preparing the way for the great infidel and devil-inspired apostasy of the last days; and, on the other hand, there are these spiritual and national movements among the Jews, wholly without precedent during all the eighteen centuries which have elapsed since their dispersion. And, finally, the Cabinets of Europe are watching anxiously for the beginning of a struggle such as prophecy warns us will ultimately herald the rise of the last great monarch of Christendom. Is all this to be ignored? Is there not here enough on which to base, I will not say the belief, but an earnest hope, that the end may be drawing near? If its nearness be presented as a hope, I cherish and rejoice in it; if it be urged as a dogma, or an article of faith, I utterly repudiate and condemn it.

As we dwell on these things a double caution will be opportune. These events and movements are not in themselves the fulfillment of the prophecies, but merely indications on which to found the hope that the time for their fulfillment is approaching. Any who searched their Bibles amidst the strange, and startling, and solemn events of a century ago must surely have concluded that the crisis; was then at hand; and it may be that once more the tide: which now seems so rapidly advancing may again recede:. and generations of Christians now unborn may still be: waiting and watching upon earth. Who will dare to set a limit to the long-suffering of God? and this is His own explanation of His seeming "slackness." (2 Peter 3:9.)

We need further to be warned against the error into which the Thessalonian Christians were betrayed. Their conversion was described as a turning from idols to serve the true God and "to wait for His Son from heaven." And the coming of the Lord was presented to them as a practical and present hope, to comfort and gladden them as they mourned their dead. (1 Thessalonians 1:9, 10, and 4:13-18.) But when the Apostle passed on to speak of "the times and seasons" and "the day of Jehovah," (1 Thessalonians 5:1-3.) they misunderstood the teaching; and, supposing that the coming of the Lord was immediately connected with the day of Jehovah, they concluded that that awful day was breaking. On both points they were wholly wrong. In the Second Epistle the Apostle wrote, "Now we beseech you, brethren, in behalf of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto Him, to the end that ye be not quickly shaken from your mind, nor yet be troubled, either by spirit, or by word, or by epistle as from us [referring of course to the First Epistle], as that the day of the Lord is now present." [2]

"The times and seasons" are connected with Israel's hope and the events which will precede the realization of it. (Acts 1:6, 7.) The Church's hope is wholly independent of them. And if the Christians of the early days were taught to "live looking for that blessed hope," how much more may we! Not a line of prophecy must first be fulfilled; not a single event need intervene. And any system of interpretation-or of doctrine which clashes with this, and thus falsities the teaching of the Apostles of our Lord, stands thereby condemned. [3]

Let us then beware lest we fall into the common error of exaggerating the importance of contemporary movements and events, great and solemn though they be; and let the Christian take heed lest the contemplation of these things should lead him to forget his heavenly citizenship and his heavenly hope. The realization of that hope will but clear the stage for the display of the last great drama of earth's history as foretold in prophecy.

If the digression may be pardoned, it may be well to amplify this, and explain' my meaning more fully. That Israel will again be restored to the place of privilege and blessing upon earth is not a matter of opinion, but of faith; and no one who accepts the Scriptures as Divine can question it. Here the language of the Hebrew prophets is unusually explicit. Still more emphatic, by reason of the time when it was given, is the testimony of the Epistle to the Romans. The very position of that Epistle in the sacred Canon gives prominence to the fact that the Jew had then been set aside. The New Testament opens by chronicling the birth of Him who was Son of Abraham and Son of David, (Matthew 1:1.) the seed to whom the promises were made and the rightful Heir to the scepter once entrusted to Judah; and the Gospels record His death at the hands of the favored people. Following the Gospels comes the narrative of the renewed offer of mercy to that people, and of their rejection of it. "To the Jew first" is stamped upon every page of the Acts of the Apostles; and it characterized the transitional Pentecostal dispensation of which that book is the record. The Pentecostal Church was essentially Jewish. Not only were the Gentiles in a minority, but their position was one of comparative tutelage, as the record of the Council of Jerusalem gives proof. (Acts 15. See also chap. 11:19.) Even the Apostle of the Gentiles, in the whole course of his ministry, brought the Gospel first to the Jews. "It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you," he said to them at Antioch. (Acts 13:46; cf. 17:2, 18:4.) "The salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and they will hear it," was his final word to them at Rome when they rejected his testimony and "departed." (Acts 28:29.)

And the next book of the Canon is addressed to believing Gentiles. But in that very Epistle the Gentiles are warned that "God has not cast away His people." Through unbelief the branches are broken off, but the root remains, and "God is able to graft them in again." "And so all Israel shall be saved, as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and He shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob." [4] . Judgment will in that day mingle with mercy, for He "whose fan is in His hand" will then gather His wheat into the garner, but burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. The true remnant of the covenant people will become the "all Israel" of days of future blessedness.

That remnant was typified by the "men of Galilee" who stood around Him on the Mount of Olives as "He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight." And as with straining eyes they watched Him, two angel messengers appeared to renew the promise which God had given centuries before through Zechariah the prophet:

"This same Jesus shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven"; (Acts 1:1-19.)

"His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east." (Zechariah 14:4.)

A glance at the prophecy will suffice to show that the event it speaks of is wholly different from the Coming of the First Epistle to the Thessalonians. It is the same Lord Jesus, truly, who is coming for His Church of this dispensation and coming to His earthly people gathered in Jerusalem in a dispensation to follow; but otherwise these "Comings" have absolutely nothing in common. The later manifestation — His return to the Mount of Olives — is an event as definitely localized as was His ascension from that same Mount of Olives; and its purpose is declared to be to bring deliverance to His people on earth in the hour of their supreme peril. Tim earlier Coming will have no relation to locality at all. All the wide world over, wherever His dead have been laid to rest, "the trump of God" shall call them back to life, in "spiritual bodies" like His own; and wherever living "saints" are found, they "will be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," and all shall be caught up together to meet Him in the air. While the profane skeptic ridicules all this, and the religious skeptic ignores it, the believer remembers that his Lord was thus caught up to heaven; and as he ponders the promise, his wonder leads to worship, not to unbelief.

And this event, which is the Church's proper hope, is as independent of the chronology, as it is of the geography, of earth. It is with the fulfillment of Irsrael's hope that the "times and seasons" have to do, and the signs and portents that belong to them. The Lord's public manifestation to the world is a further event distinct from both. Our Jehovah-God will come with all His holy ones; (Zechariah 14:5.) the Lord Jesus will be revealed in flaming fire, taking vengeance. [5] What interval of time will separate these successive stages of "the Second Advent," we cannot tell. It is a secret not revealed. All that concerns us is, "rightly dividing the word of truth," to mark that they are in all respects distinct. [6]

I use the expression "Second Advent" merely as a concession to popular theology, for it has no Scriptural warrant. It would be better to discard it altogether, for it is the cause of much confusion of thought and not a little positive error. It is a purely theological term, and it belongs properly to the great and final Coming to judge the world. But while many refuse to believe that there will be any revelation of Christ to His people upon earth until the epoch of that great crisis, the more careful student of Scripture finds there the clearest proof that there will be a "Coming" before the era popularly called "the millennium." Here again there are those who, while clearly recognizing a "pre-millennial advent," have failed to notice the difference, so plainly marked in Scripture, between the Coming for the Church of the present dispensation, the Coming to the earthly people in Jerusalem, and the Coming to destroy the Lawless One and to set up the kingdom.

But, it may be urged, Is not the expression justified by the closing verse of the ninth chapter of Hebrews? It is only the superficial reader of the passage, I reply, who can use it thus. "Unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time," our Authorized Version renders it. And the words are taken as though they were equivalent to "His second appearing," "the Appearing" being a recognized synonym for "the Coming." But this is merely: trading on the language of our English version. The word actually employed is wholly different. It is a general word, and it is the very word used with reference to His manifestation to His disciples after the Resurrection. [7] And further, the definite article must be omitted:

"Insomuch as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh judgment, so Christ also, having been once [i.e., once for all] offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time, apart from sin, to them that wait for Him, unto salvation." (Hebrews 9:27, 28.)

The statement is not prophetic, but doctrinal; and the doctrine in question is not the Advent, but the priesthood. It is not the prediction of an event to be realized by those who shall be alive on earth at the time of the end, but the declaration of a truth and a fact to be realized by every believer, no matter in what dispensation his sojourn upon earth may fall.

The passage therefore cannot be appealed to in support of the dogma that never again but once will Christ appear to His people upon earth. And as the expression "Second Advent" is so intimately connected with that dogma, it would be well that all intelligent students of Scripture should unite in discarding it. The Coming of Christ is the hope of His people in every age.

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The only adverse criticism I have seen of The Coming Prince has appeared in later editions of The Approaching End of the Age. Feelings of esteem and friendship for the author influenced my notice of that work, but no considerations of this kind have restrained his pen in replying to my strictures; and the fact that a writer so able and so bitterly hostile has not ventured to question in a single point the main conclusions here established is a signal proof that they are irrefutable.

Dr. Grattan Guinness complains that I have made no attempt to "reply" to his book. My only reference to it has been made incidentally in an appendix note; and in so far as it deals with the "primary and partial realization of the prophecies" I have taken the liberty of praising it. Why then should I "reply "to a treatise in respect of that in it which I value and adopt? These pages give proof how thoroughly I accept a historical interpretation of prophecy; [8] and if any one demands why then I have not given it greater prominence, I recall St. James's answer when the Apostles were accused of neglecting in their teaching the writings of Moses. "Moses," he declared, "hath in every city them that teach him. "What was needed, therefore, if the equilibrium of doctrine was to be maintained, was that they should teach grace. On similar grounds the task I here set myself was to deal with the fulfillment of the prophecies. But I have no controversy with those who use their every talent in unfolding the "historical" interpretation of them. My quarrel is only with men who practically deny the Divine authorship of the sacred word, by asserting that their apprehension of it is the limit of its scope, and exhausts its meaning. And The Coming Prince is a crushing reply to the system which dares to write". Fulfilled" across the prophetic page. "The real question at issue here," I again repeat, "is the character and value of the Bible." Dr. Guinness asserts that the apocalyptic visions have been fulfilled in the events of the Christian era. I hold him to that issue, and I test it by a reference to the vision of the sixth chapter. Has this been fulfilled, as in fact he dares to assert it has? The question is vital, for if this vision still awaits fulfillment, so also do all the prophecies which follow it. Let the reader decide this question for himself, after studying the closing verses of the chapter, ending with the words, "For THE GREAT DAY OF HIS WRATH IS COME, and who shall be able to stand?"

The old Hebrew prophets were inspired of God to describe the terrors of "the great day of His wrath," and the Holy Spirit has here reproduced their very words. (Cf. Isaiah 13:9, 10, and Joel 2:31, 3:15; see also Zephaniah 1:14, 15.) The Bible contains no warnings more awful in their solemnity and definiteness. But just as the lawyer writes "Spent" across a statute of which the purpose has been satisfied, so these men would teach us to write "Fulfilled" across the sacred page. They tell us, forsooth, that the vision meant nothing more than to predict the rout of pagan hordes by Constantine [9] To speak thus is to come perilously near the warned-against sin of those who "take away from the words of the book of this prophecy." But when our thoughts turn to these teachers themselves we are restrained by remembering their piety and zeal, for "their praise is in all the Churches." Let us then banish from our minds all thoughts of the men, and seize upon the system which they advocate and support. No appeal to honored names should here be listened to. Names as honorable, and a hundred times more numerous, can be cited in defense of some of the crassest errors which corrupt the faith of Christendom. What then, I ask, shall be our judgment on a system of interpretation which thus blasphemes the God of truth by representing the most awful warnings of Scripture as wild exaggeration of a sort but little removed from falsehood?

If it be urged that the events of fifteen centuries ago, or of some other epoch in the Christian dispensation, were within the scope of the prophecy, we can consider the suggestion on its merits; but when we are told that the prophecy was thus fulfilled, we can hold no parley with the teaching. It is the merest trifling with Scripture. And more than this, it clashes with the great charter truth of Christianity. If the day of wrath has come, the day of grace is past, and the Gospel of grace is no longer a Divine message to mankind. To suppose that the day of wrath can be an episode in the dispensation of grace is to betray ignorance of grace and to bring Divine wrath into contempt. The grace of God in this day of grace surpasses human thought; His wrath in the day of wrath will be no less Divine. The, breaking of the sixth seal heralds the dawning of that awful day; the visions of the seventh seal unfold its unutterable terrors. But, we are told, the pouring out of the vials, the "seven plagues which are the last, for in them is finished the wrath of God," (Revelation 15:1, R.V.) is being now accomplished. The sinner, therefore, may comfort himself with the knowledge that Divine wrath is but stage thunder, which, in a practical and busy world, may safely be ignored! [10]

I called attention to Dr. Guinness's statement that "from the then approaching command to restore and to build again Jerusalem to the coming of Messiah the Prince was to be seventy weeks"; and I added," This is a typical instance of the looseness of the historical school in dealing with Scripture." Of this, and of some other errors which I noticed, the only defense he offers is that "expressions not strictly correct, yet perfectly legitimate, because evidently elliptical, are for brevity's sake employed." How brevity is attained by writing "seventy" instead of "sixty-nine" I cannot conceive. The statement is a sheer perversion of Scripture, unconsciously made, no doubt, to suit the exigencies of a false system of interpretation. The prophecy plainly declares the period "unto Messiah the Prince" to be sixty-nine weeks, leaving the seventieth week to be accounted for after the specified epoch; but Dr. Guinness's system can give no reasonable account of the seventieth week, and so, unconsciously, I repeat, he shirks the difficulty by misreading the passage. Insist on his reading it aright and accounting for the last seven years of the prophetic period, and his interpretation of the vision at once stands refuted and exposed.

When the language of Scripture is treated so loosely by this writer, no one need be surprised if my words fare badly at his hands. He is wholly incapable of deliberate misrepresentation, and yet his inveterate habit of inaccuracy has led him to misread The Coming Prince on almost every point on which he refers to it. [11]

The fact is, he only knows two schools of prophetic interpretation, the Futurist and his own; and therefore he seems unable even to understand a book which is throughout a protest against the narrowness of the one and the mingled narrowness and wildness of the other. But his personal references are unworthy of the writer and of the subject. I pass on to deal with the only points on which his criticisms are of any general interest or importance; I mean the predicted division of the Roman earth, and the relations between Antichrist and the apostate Church.

My statement was: "The division of the Roman earth into ten kingdoms has never yet taken place. That it has been partitioned is plain matter of history and of fact; that it has ever been divided into ten is a mere conceit of writers of this school."

"An astonishingly reckless assertion" Dr. Guinness declares this to be; and yet we have but to turn the page to obtain from his own pen the plainest admission of its truth. It must be borne in mind, he says, that the ten kingdoms are to be sought "only in the territory west of Greece." And if we are prepared to accept this theory, we shall find, after making large allowances as to boundaries, that in this, which is prophetically the least important moiety of the Roman earth, "the number of the kingdoms of the European commonwealth has, as a rule, averaged ten." Mr. Guinness gives a dozen lists — and he tells us he has a hundred more in reserve — to prove that, with kaleidoscopic instability and vagueness, or, to quote his words, "amidst increasing and almost countless fluctuations, the kingdoms of modern Europe have from their birth to the present day always averaged about ten in number." "Averaged about ten," mark, though the prophecy specifies ten with a definiteness which becomes absolute by its mention of an eleventh rising up and subduing three of them. And "modern Europe," too! Zeal for the Protestant cause seems to blind these men to the plainest teaching of Scripture. Jerusalem, and not Rome, is the center of the Divine prophecies and of God's dealings with His people; and the attempt to explain Daniel's visions upon a system which ignores Daniel's city and people does violence to the very rudiments of prophetic teaching. This vaunted canon of interpretation, which reads "modern Europe" instead of the prophetic earth, is, I repeat, "a mere conceit of writers of this school." First they minimize and tamper with the language of prophecy, and then they exaggerate and distort the facts of history to suit their garbled reading of it. "Can they," Dr. Guinness demands of us, "alter or add to this tenfold list of the great kingdoms now occupying the sphere of old Rome? — Italy, Austria, Switzerland, France, Germany, England, Holland, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal. Ten, and no more! ten, and no less!" I answer, Yes, we can both alter it and add to it. The list includes territory which was never within "the sphere of old Rome" at all, and it omits altogether nearly half of the Roman earth.

This is bad enough, but it is not all. For if we accept his statements, and seek to interpret the thirteenth chapter of Revelation by them, he at once changes his ground and protests against our numbering "Protestant nations "among the ten horns at all. They are "chronologically out of the question," he tells us. Here is the language of this vision about Antichrist. "And there was given to him authority over every tribe, and people, and tongue, and nation. And all that dwell on the earth shall worship him, every one whose name hath not been written in the book of life." (Revelation 13:7, 8, R.V.) What mean these most definite and solemn words? Nothing, he tells us, but that "throughout the Dark Ages," and "prior to the rise of Protestantism," the Roman Catholic religion should prevail in the western moiety of the Roman earth. This, he declares, is "the fulfillment of the prediction." He calls this "explaining" Scripture. Most people would call it explaining it away!

I now come to the last point. "Our critics maintain," Dr. Guinness writes, "that Babylon runs her career, and is destroyed by the ten horns, who then agree and give their power to Antichrist, or the Beast. That is, they hold that the reign of Antichrist follows the destruction of Babylon by the ten horns."

The foundation of this statement must be sought in the author's own lucubrations, for nothing to account for it will be found in the pages he criticizes; and a similar remark applies to his references to The Coming Prince in the paragraphs which follow. I will not allude to them in detail, but in a few sentences dispose of the position he is seeking to defend.

We have now got to the seventeenth chapter of Revelation. His argument is this. The eighth head of the Beast must be a dynasty; the Beast carries the Woman; the Woman is the Church of Rome. Therefore the dynasty symbolized by the eighth head must have lasted as long as the Church of Rome; and thus the Protestant interpretation is settled "on a foundation not to be removed."

It is not really worth while pausing to show how gratuitous are some of the assumptions here implied. Let us, for the sake of argument, accept them all, and what comes of it? In the first place, Dr. Guinness is hopelessly involved in the transparent fallacy I warned him against in this volume. The Woman is destroyed by the agency of the Beast. How then is he going to separate the Pope from the apostate Church of which he is the head, and which, according to the "Protestant interpretation," would cease to be the apostate Church if he were no longer owned as head?

The historicist must here make choice between the Woman and the Beast. They are distinct throughout the vision, and in direct antagonism at the close. If the Harlot represents the Church of Rome, his system gives no account whatever of the Beast; it ignores altogether the foremost figure in the prophecy, and the vaunted "foundation" of the so-called "Protestant interpretation" vanishes into air. Or if he takes refuge upon the other horn of the dilemma, and maintains that the Beast symbolizes the apostate.. Church, the Harlot remains to be accounted for. He, forgets, moreover, that the Beast appears in Daniel's visions; in relation to Jerusalem and Judah. Suppose, therefore,. we should admit everything he says, what would it amount to? Merely a contention that "the springing and germinant accomplishment" of these prophecies "throughout many' ages" (I quote Lord Bacon's words once more) is fuller, and clearer than his critics can admit, or the facts of history' will warrant. The truth still stands out plainly that "the height or fullness of them" belongs to an age to come:, when Judah shall once more be gathered in the Promised Land, and the light of prophecy which now rests dimly' upon Rome shall again be focused on Jerusalem.

The popularity of the historical system lies no doubt in the appeal it makes to the "Protestant spirit." But surely we can afford to be sensible and fair in our denunciation of the Church of Rome. Who can fail to perceive the growth of an antichristian movement that may soon lead [ us to hail the devout Romanist as an ally? With such, the Bible, neglected though it be, is still held sacred as the inspired word of God; and our Divine Lord is reverenced and worshipped, albeit the truth of His Divinity is obscured by error and superstition. I appeal here to the Pope's Encyclical Letter of the 18th November, 1893, on the study of the Holy Scriptures. The following is an extract from it:--

"We fervently desire that a greater number of the faithful should undertake the defense of the holy writings, and attach themselves to it with constancy; and, above all, we desire that those who have been admitted to Holy Orders by the grace of God should daily apply themselves more strictly and zealously to read, meditate upon, and explain the Scriptures. Nothing can be better suited to their state. In addition to the excellence of such knowledge and the obedience due to the word of God, another motive impels us to believe that the study of the Scriptures should be counseled. That motive is the abundance of advantages which follow from it, and of which we have the guarantee in the words of Holy Writ: 'All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. It is with this design that God gave man the Scriptures; the examples of our Lord Jesus Christ and His apostles show it. Jesus Himself was accustomed to appeal to the holy writings in testimony of His Divine mission."

There is here surely, in some sense at least, the ground for a common faith, which might, as regards individual Christians, be owned as a bond of brotherhood; but an impassable gulf divides us from the ever-increasing host of so-called Protestants who deny the Divinity of Christ and the inspiration of the Scriptures. These have their true place in the great army of infidelity which will muster at last around the banner of the Antichrist.

My protest is made, not in defense of the Papacy, but of the Bible. If any one can point to a single passage of Scripture relating to Antichrist, whether in the Old Testament or in the New, which can, without whittling it down, and frittering away the meaning of the words, find its fulfillment in Popery, I will publicly retract, and confess my error. Take 2 Thessalonians 2:4 as a sample of the rest. The "man of sin" "opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God or that is worshipped [Greek, that is an object of worship], so that he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God." This means merely, forsooth, that on certain occasions the Pope's seat in St. Peter's is raised above the level of the altar on which the "consecrated wafer" lies! Such statements — I care not what names may be cited in support of them — are an insult to our intelligence and an outrage upon the word of God. [12]

Then, again, in the ninth verse, the coming of the "Lawless One" is said to be "according to the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders." These words are explained by the vision of the Beast in the thirteenth chapter of the Revelation, which declares that "the Dragon gave him his power, and his throne, and great authority." And we have from the lips of our blessed Lord Himself the warning, that the "great signs and wonders," thus to be wrought by Satanic power, shall be such that, "if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect." (Matthew 24:24.) In a word, the awful and mysterious power of Satan will be brought to bear upon Christendom with such terrible effect, that human intellect will be utterly confounded. Agnosticism and infidelity will capitulate in presence of overwhelming proof that supernatural agencies are at work. And if faith itself, divinely given, shall stand the test, it is only because it is impossible for God to allow His own elect to perish.

When we demand the meaning of all this, we get answer "Popery." But where, we ask, are the "great signs and wonders" of the Popish system? And, in reply, we are told of its millinery, and its mummery, and all the well-known artifices of priestcraft, which constitute its special stock-in-trade. As though there were anything in these to deceive the elect of God! To take the low ground of mere Protestantism, it is notorious that here in England none become entangled in the toils of Rome save such as have already become enervated and corrupted by sacerdotalism and superstition within the communion they abandon. And it is no less notorious that, in Roman Catholic countries, the majority of men maintain towards it an attitude of either benevolent or contemptuous indifference. Remembering, moreover, that the followers of the Beast are doomed to endless and hopeless destruction, we go on to inquire whether this is to be the fate of every Roman Catholic. By no means, we are assured; for, in spite of the evils and errors of the Romish Church, some within its pale are reckoned among the number of "God's elect."

What conclusion, then, are we to come to? Are we to accept it as a canon of interpretation that Scripture never means what it says? Are we to hold that its language is so loose and unreliable as to be practically false? We repudiate the profane suggestion; and, adopting the only possible alternative, we boldly assert that all these solemn words still await their fulfillment. In a word, we are shut up to the conclusion that THE ANTICHRIST IS YET TO COME.

APPENDIX 3. FOOTNOTES

[1] Were I now writing that note in the light of passing events, I should specify France where I have named Germany, and I should allude to the efforts now making by Russia to acquire a naval station in the Mediterranean.

[2] 2 Thessalonians 2:1, 2, R. V. "The day of Christ" in A. V. is a wrong reading.

[3] See 1 Corinthians 11:26: "As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till He come." No past but the Cross; no future but the Coming. To separate the believer from the Coming is as great an outrage upon Christianity as to separate him from the Cross.

[4] Romans 11; see vv. 1, 2, 9, 12, 15-26. Note that "all Israel" is not = every Israelite, for in the Greek there is no such ambiguity as in English; and the seeming contradictions in the chapter are explained by the fact that the "cast away" of vv. 1, 2, is a wholly different word from the "casting away" of ver. 15, and the "fall" of ver. 11 from the "fall" of ver. 12.

[5] 2 Thessalonians 1:7, 8. The "mighty angels" of the prophecy are, I presume, the "holy ones" of Zechariah 14:5.

[6] Between the first of these and the second, there will no doubt intervene a period at least as long as that which elapsed between His coming to Bethlehem and His manifestation to Israel at His first advent, and probably a period very much more prolonged. Whether the interval between the second and third will be measured by days or years, we are wholly unable to decide. The only certain indication of its length is that the Antichrist, whose power will be broken by the one, will be actually destroyed by the other.

I am here assuming that all the events which are yet to be fulfilled will occur in a comparatively brief period. But I wish to guard myself against the idea that I assert this. I deprecate in the strongest way the idea, now so common, that students of astronomy and mathematics have solved the mystery which God has expressly kept in His own power. Could any student of the Old Testament have dreamed that nearly two thousand years would intervene between the sufferings of Christ and His return in glory? Would the early Christians have tolerated such a suggestion? And if another thousand years should yet run their course before the Church is taken up, or if a thousand years should intervene between that event and the Coming to the Mount of Olives, not a single word of Scripture would be broken. As, I have said, "it is only in so far as prophecy falls within the seventy weeks that it comes within the range of human chronology." Much is made of supposed eras of 1, 260 and 2, 520 years. But even if we could certainly fix the epoch of any such era, the question would remain whether they may not be mystic periods, like the 480 years of 1 Kings 6:1.

[7] It occurs four times in 1 Corinthians 15:5-8.

[8] See, e. g., Chap. 9. and App., note C.

[9] See especially the quotation from Dean Alford.

[10] It is only by reason of its almost inconceivable silliness that such. teaching can escape the charge of profanity.

[11] For instance, he becomes vehement in denouncing my statement that "all Christian interpreters are agreed" in recognizing a parenthesis in Daniel's prophetic vision of the beasts. No doubt he read the passage as though I had there spoken of the fall of the Roman empire, and not its "rise"; for the statement is indisputably true, and he himself is numbered among the "Christian interpreters" who endorse it. Here is another specimen. With reference to the question of the ten kingdoms, he says, "Dr. Anderson and other Futurist writers…teach – (1) that the ten horns are not yet risen; (2) that when they do rise five will be found in Greek territory, and five only in Roman; and that when at last developed, (3) after a gap of 1, 400 years of which the prophecy takes no notice at all, (4) they will last for three and a half years" (p. 737).

I have numbered these sentences to enable me briefly to remind the intelligent reader that, excepting No. I, everything here attributed to me is in flat opposition to some of the plainest statements in my book. In the same way he attributes to me the figment that the career of Antichrist will be limited to three and a half years. I have sometimes wondered whether he ever read The Coming Prince at all! A word as to his strictures on my title. I am aware of course that in the Hebrew of Daniel 9:26, there is not the article, but I am not misled by the inference he draws from its omission. Had the article been used, the prince intended would clearly have been "Messiah the Prince" of ver. 25. In English the article has not this force, and therefore it is rightly inserted, as both the Translators and the Revisers have recognized. Dr. Tregelles here remarks, "This destruction is here said to be wrought by a certain people, not by the prince who shall come, but by his people: this refers us, I believe, to the Romans as the last holders of undivided Gentile power; they wrought the destruction long ages ago. The prince who shall come is the last head of the Roman power, the person concerning whom Daniel had received so much previous instruction." Such is the pre-eminence of this great leader that he is bracketed with our Lord Himself in this prophecy, and the people of the Roman empire are described as being his people. Yet Mr. Guinness believes that Titus is referred to! Really the day is past for discussing such a suggestion.

I may here remark that the rendering of Daniel 9:27 in the Revised Version disposes of the figment that it was Messiah who made a seven years' covenant with the Jews. The causing the sacrifice to cease is not an incident in the midst of the "week," but a violation of the treaty "for half of the week."

[12] The reference to the Temple is explained by Daniel 9:27, 12:11, and Matthew 24:15. These teachers ask us to believe that while the Church of Rome is the Beast and the Harlot and everything that is corrupt and infamous in apostate Christianity, yet St. Peter's, the great central shrine of this apostasy, is owned by God as being the Temple of God. The sacrifice of the Mass they denounce as idolatrous and blasphemous, and yet we are t6 suppose that Holy Scripture refers to it as representing all that is Divine on earth! The sacred words admit of only one meaning, viz., that the Antichrist, claiming to be himself Divine, will suppress all worship rendered to any other god.

Such are the wild extravagances and puerilities of interpretation and of forecast which mar the writings of these interpreters, that men have come to regard these visions, which ought to inspire reverence and awe, as "principal subjects of ridicule" – the specialty of mystics and faddists. How great the need, then, for a united and sustained effort to rescue the study from the contempt into which it has fallen! Each of the recognized schools of interpretation has truth which the rival schools deny. A new era would begin if Christians would turn from all these schools – Preterist, Historical, and Futurist – and learn to read the prophecies as they read the other Scriptures: as being the word of Him who is, and was, and is to come, our Jehovah-God, with whom present, past, and future are but one "eternal now."

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