ered together against it. In that day, saith the Lord, I will smite every horse with astonishment, and his rider with madness and I will open mine eyes upon the house of Judah, and will smite every horse of the people with blindness. And the governors of Judah shall say in their heart, The inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be my strength in the Lord of hosts their God. In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf; and they shall devour all the people round about, on the right hand and on the left and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem. The Lord also shall save the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David, and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem do not magnify themselves against Judah. In that day shall the Lord defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he, that is feeble among them, at that day shall be as David; and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of the Lord before them. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one that mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born. that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of the vintage shouting of Rimmon in the valley of Megiddon. And the land shall mourn every family apart-All the families that remain, every family apart, and their wives apart. In that day there. shall be a fountain opened to the house of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness -And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends-In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, Holiness unto the Lord; and the pots in the Lord's house shall be like the bowls before the altar. Yea, every pot in Jerusa lem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the Lord of hosts: In and all they, that sacrifice, shall come and take of them, and seethe therein and in that day there shall be no more a trafficker in the house of the Lord of hosts."* 4. "Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain : let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand a day of darkness, and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall there be any more after it, even to the years of many generations.† A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them-Before their faces the people shall be much pained: all faces shall gather blackness-They shall run to and fro in the city: they shall run upon the wall; they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief. The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. And the Lord shall utter his voice before his army for his camp is very great for he is strong, that executeth his word: for the day of the Lord is great and very terrible; and who can abide it-Then will the Lord be jealous for his land, and pity his people. Yea, the Lord will answer, and say unto his people, Behold, I will send you corn, and wine, and oil; and ye * Zechar. xii. xiii. xiv. I apprehend, that by this expression we must understand the last attempt of Satam against the Lamb at the close of the Millennium; when, after "the years of many generations" subsequent to the outrages of "the great and strong people" here predicted, he shall stir up from the four quarters of the earth the nations styled by St. John Gog and Magog. Meanwhile, during the millennian rest, there shall be none like that strong people, till the years of its many generations shall have fully elapsed. The Gog and Magog, mentioned by St. John, are evidently the same as the Gog and Magog, predicted by Ezekiel. The expedition of these nations against Palestine bears a strong resemblance in many points to the expedition of the infidel king and the false prophet. Yet it certainly cannot be the same, both because St. John informs us that it shall take place at the end of the Millennium; and because Ezekiel, in strict correspondence with him, asserts that it shall be directed against the Jews so long after their restoration to their own land, that they should be dwelling there in all the confidence of unsuspecting security. (See Ezek. xxxviii. 8, 11, 12, 14.) The war of Geg and Magog is fully discussed in my unpublished Work on the Restoration of Israsi and the overthrow of Antichrist shall be satisfied therewith: and I will no more make you a reproach among the heathen. But I will remove far off from you the northern army, and will drive him into a land barren and desolate, with his face toward the east sea, and his hinder part toward the utmost sea: and his stink shall come up, and his ill savour shall come up, because he hath done great things-Be glad then ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God-And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God, and none else : and my people shall never be ashamed. And it shall come to pass afterwards, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come. And it shall come to pass, that, whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call. For, behold, in those days, and at that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people, and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land. The children also of Judah, and the children of Jerusalem, have ye sold unto the sons of the Ionim,† that ye might remove them This is applied by St. Peter to the effusion of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, though strictly relating to the era of the restoration of the Jews and the glorious period of the millennium. The first advent of Christ is frequently considered by the inspired writers as a sort of type of his second advent: whence we find, that predictions, which properly belong to the one period, are often applied by anticipation to the other. Thus, in a similar manner, the apostles apply the prophecy of David, in the second Psalm, to the conspiracy of the chief priests with Herod and Pontius Pilate against our Lord: yet, if any one will compare that second Psalm with the description of the Word of God routing bis congregated enemies in the nineteenth chapter of the Apocalypse, he will be convinced, that it does not receive its ultimate accomplishment till the second advent, whether literal or spiritual, at the commencement of the millennium. + By these Ionim seem to be meant all the various worshippers of the Ionah, or Noetic dove, both in the East and in the West; not the lonians of Greece exclusively. The far from their border. Behold, I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold them, and will return your recompence upon your own head: and will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the Lord hath spoken it. Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles: Sanctify war, wake up the mighty men; let all the men of war draw near; let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears : let the weak say, I am strong. Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye nations, and gather yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord. Let the nations be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat for there will I sit to judge all the nations round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe come, get you down, for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of concision. The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the Lord will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel. So shall ye know, that I am the Lord your God dwelling in Zion my holy mountain: then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her any more."† Such are the four most remarkable prophecies, which treat of the events that are to take place at the close of the 1260 years. Those of Daniel and St. John are strictly chronological ones, and are therefore in some measure their own interpreters: and, as for those of Zechariah and Joel, although they be not marked by the chronolog dispersion of the Jews extends nearly to the whole world: and so widely, in old times, did the worship of the Ionab also extend. I have already considered the subject in a Dissertation on the Mysteries of the Cabiri. So the word is properly rendered in the margin of our translation of the Bible. ↑ Joel ii. iii. To discuss all the prophecies relative to those events would occupy too large portion of a Work like the present, which professes to treat peculiarly of the events comprehended within the 1260 years. The restoration of Israel and the overthrow of Antichrist, which are here very briefly noticed, are considered at large in my unpublished Work, which is professedly dedicated to that purpose Hence ical numbers and the long-continued and connected series of events which form so striking a feature of the other predictions, yet they contain within them facts which are amply sufficient to shew at what era they will be accomplished. They both foretell the restoration of the Jews: consequently all the matters, of which they speak as connected with that restoration, must be the same matters as those of which Daniel speaks as being similarly connected with it. Hence it will follow, that the destruction of the nations in the vicinity of Jerusalem, predicted by Zechariah as contemporary with the restoration of the Jews, must be the same as the overthrow of the infidel king in Palestine, predicted by Daniel as likewise contemporary with the restoration of the Jews. also it will follow, that the fierce people symbolized by a flight of locusts, so accurately described at the beginning of the prediction of Joel, as spreading desolation. wherever they come, as wonderfully succeeding in all their enterprizes, as running to and fro in the great city, as scaling the walls of fenced cities with open violence, as entering insidiously in at the windows like a thief, as causing tremendous revolutions in the political heavens; that this fierce people can be no other than the people of Daniel's infidel king, who are to commence their reign of havock and plunder under the third woe-trumpet, during the comparatively short time which the devil hath before the termination of the 1260 years, before the commencement of the restoration of the Jews.* It will likewise follow, that the invasion of Palestine by the northern army, or the army of Antichrist entering it by way of the north, is the same as the similar expedition of the infidel king and that the destruction of this northern army with its face to the eastern sea, and its hinder part toward the ulmost sea, is the same event as the destruction of the infidel king, after he has planted the curtains of his pavilions between the seas in the glorious holy mountain; for Since the first edition of this work was published, I have read Chandler's Paraphrase of Joel, and am more convinced than ever I was, that this locust-army cannot mean a flight of mere literal locusts as he supposes, but must denote, like the parallel prophecy in Rev. ix. a flight of symbolical locusts; which symbolical locusts the whole context of the prediction teaches us must mean the desolating armies of Antichrist. This point is fully discussed in my unpublished Werk on the Restoration of Israel, |