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<h2> An Urgent Call to Christian Perfection </h2>
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<strong>An Exposition of the Doctrine of Christian Perfection </strong><br>
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<p><strong>NOTE D <br>
<p>'''by Tom Stewart''' </p>
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<p>&quot;Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; For I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light&quot;&nbsp; (Matthew 11:28-30). </p>
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  </strong><em>THE TEN KINGDOMS <br>
<p><strong>Preface </strong></p>
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<p>The things which we both have seen and known from the beginning about the LORD Jesus Christ are the things which I must share with you. Even as we&nbsp; &quot;have tasted that the LORD is gracious&quot; &nbsp;(1Peter 2:3) and&nbsp; &quot;our hands have handled, of the Word of life&quot; &nbsp;(1John 1:1), even so these things that I am writing, I write because I desire to have fellowship with you:&nbsp; &quot;and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ&quot; &nbsp;(1John 1:3). <br>
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  Why am I writing to you about the doctrine of Christian perfection?&nbsp; <br>
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First, because I desire to be like the Master. I do not wish to be superior to my Master, but I want to be like Him.&nbsp; &quot;The disciple is not above his master: but every one that is perfect shall be as his master&quot; &nbsp;(Luke 6:40).&nbsp; <br>
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  </em>"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. <br>
 
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Second, because Christ prayed for our unity.&nbsp; &quot;I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfect in One&quot; &nbsp;(John 17:23).&nbsp; <br>
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  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 <em>ten </em>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. <br>
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Third, because if you are reading this, you have, most likely, demonstrated faith in Christ. I write to you, not as though you have not demonstrated saving faith, but &quot;we speak wisdom among them that are perfect&quot;&nbsp; (1Corinthians 2:6).&nbsp; <br>
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Fourth, because I desire to promote the unity of our faith unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. Likewise, with whatever degree of gift that I can minister, I am writing this&nbsp; &quot;for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ&quot; &nbsp;(Ephesians 4:12-13).&nbsp; <br>
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Fifth, because I desire to present you perfect in Christ Jesus. Unapologetically, I must preach to you Christ, The Hope of Glory,&nbsp; &quot;warning every man in all wisdom that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus&quot; &nbsp;(Colossians 1:28).&nbsp; <br>
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  The principal clew which Scripture affords upon the subject is the connection between these kingdoms and the Roman Empire. <div id=""return 18-25"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#18-25"><strong>25 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>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, <div id=""return 18-26"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#18-26"><strong>26 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>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? <br>
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Sixth, because I desire that you may know the Word of God more perfectly, that you may do all the will of God. I encourage you to search the Scriptures to see whether the things I write to you are so (Acts 17:11), because&nbsp; &quot;all Scripture is given by inspiration of God... That the man of God may be perfect&quot; &nbsp;(2Timothy 3:16,17). Not only may he be perfect, but he will be perfect. The place of his perfection is not simply in Heaven, but on earth where Christ prayed for it:&nbsp; &quot;Thy will be done&nbsp; <strong>in earth </strong>, as it is in Heaven&quot; &nbsp;(Matthew 6:10).&nbsp; <br>
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And finally, I write this because Christ insists upon our perfection here and now. After all, the only reason why we ought to insist upon any doctrine is because our LORD and Teacher insists upon it.&nbsp; &quot;Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect&quot;&nbsp; (Matthew 5:48). <br>
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  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. <br>
 
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I am well aware that our beloved brother Paul plainly warns us as he did Timothy:&nbsp; &quot;If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our LORD Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; he is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmising, perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness; from such withdraw thyself&quot; &nbsp;(1Timothy 6:3-5). I, too, desire to consent to wholesome words and to the doctrine which is according to godliness. <br>
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  But there is no doubt that Egypt, Turkey, and Greece will be numbered among the ten kingdoms; <div id=""return 18-27"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#18-27"><strong>27 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>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, <em>three </em>of the ten will be brought into subjection by force of arms (Daniel 7:24.) <br>
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  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. <br>
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  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 <em>silence </em>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. <br>
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  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 <em>prima facie </em>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:-- </p>
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1st. D aniel 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. <br>
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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 <em>the fall </em>of the Babylonian empire. <div id=""return 18-28"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#18-28"><strong>28 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>How then could the <em>rise </em>of that empire be the subject of the prophecy? Verse 17 appears definite that the rise of all these kingdoms was future. <br>
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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. <br>
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4th. N either 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," <div id=""return 18-29"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#18-29"><strong>29 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>instead of" It raised up itself on one side." <br>
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5th. W hile 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 <em>at its advent </em>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. <br>
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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). <br>
 
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For this reason, I am writing to you to set forth the doctrine of Christian perfection (or, entire sanctification). Simply put, Christian perfection is to appropriate Christ by faith in all of His offices, capacities, and relations to meet our every need in life...&nbsp; &quot;Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith&quot; &nbsp;(Hebrews 12:20, Who &quot;shall supply all&nbsp; [our]&nbsp; need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus&quot; &nbsp;(Philippians 4:19), Who is our&nbsp; &quot;Jehovah Jireh&quot; &nbsp;(Genesis 22:14) (literally, the LORD will provide). </p>
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7th. W hile 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.
<p><a name="Unrealistic"></a>&nbsp; </p>
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<p>All this — and more might be added <div id=""return 18-30"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#18-30"><strong>30 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>— 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." <br>
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    <td valign="top"><p>I. </p></td>
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    <td valign="top"><p>Unrealistic Idea of Perfection? or, Are We Compassed About With So Great a Cloud of Witnesses? </p></td>
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<p>&nbsp; </p>
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    <td width="31" valign="top"><p>&nbsp; </p></td>
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    <td width="19" valign="top"><p>A. </p></td>
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    <td valign="top"><p>Andrew Murray:&nbsp; <em>Be Perfect: A Devotional Study of Christ's Command </em>&nbsp;(1893) </p></td>
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In 1893, Andrew Murray wrote a devotional study of Christ's command for Christian perfection. Appropriately, he entitled it&nbsp; <em>Be Perfect. </em>&nbsp;Listen to the heart of this man of God (p.8): <br>
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&quot;Jesus said,&nbsp; 'If any will do &nbsp;[His will] ... he shall know' &nbsp;[John 7:17]. The same principle holds good in all human attainment. It is only he who has accepted in adoring submission and obedience the command&nbsp; 'Be perfect'&nbsp; [Matthew 5:48] who can hope to know what the perfection is that God asks and gives. Until the Church is prostrate before God, seeking this blessing as her highest good, it will be no wonder if the very Word, instead of being an attraction and a joy, is a cause of apprehension and anxiety, of division and offense.&quot; <br>
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  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 <em>ad captandum </em>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. </p>
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    <a href="file:///C|/Users/Pops/AppData/Roaming/Macromedia/Dreamweaver MX 2004/OfficeImageTemp/diagram.gif"><strong>CHRONOLOGICAL DIAGRAM OF THE HISTORY OF JUDAH </strong></a><strong></strong>(784 x 1068 pixels) <strong></strong>--- <a href="file:///C|/Users/Pops/AppData/Roaming/Macromedia/Dreamweaver MX 2004/OfficeImageTemp/diagram.gif">New Window </a></p>
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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). <br>
    <td width="31" valign="top"><p>&nbsp; </p></td>
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    <td width="19" valign="top"><p>B. </p></td>
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    <td valign="top"><p>John Wesley:&nbsp; <em>A Plain Account of Christian Perfection </em>&nbsp;(1767) </p></td>
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APPENDIX 2. </strong><strong>FOOTNOTES </strong><br>
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<div id=""18-1"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-1"><strong>1 </strong></a><strong>] </strong><em>Encyc. Brit., </em>9th ed., title "Artaxerxes." <br>
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You can see that nothing we discuss about Christian perfection is&nbsp; &quot;done in a corner&quot;&nbsp; (Acts 26:26) when we can reach back into church history and find so eminent a testimony as that of John Wesley. Truly we are&nbsp; &quot;compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses&quot; &nbsp;(Hebrews 12:1) who affirm the doctrine of Christian perfection. Read Wesley's&nbsp; <em>A Plain Account of Christian Perfection </em>&nbsp;(p.106): <br>
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<div id=""18-2"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-2"><strong>2 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>W. K. Loftus, <em>"Chaldea and Susiana," </em>p. 341. <br>
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<div id=""18-3"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-3"><strong>3 </strong></a><strong>] </strong><em>Daniel, </em>p. 160. <br>
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<div id=""18-4"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-4"><strong>4 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>On this point I have consulted the author of <em>The Five Great Monarchies, </em>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." <br>
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<div id=""18-5"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-5"><strong>5 </strong></a><strong>] </strong><em>Ante-Nicene Christian Library, </em>vol. 9., second part, p 184. <br>
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<div id=""18-6"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-6"><strong>6 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>Works, vol. 15., p. 108. <br>
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<div id=""18-7"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-7"><strong>7 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>Arnold's trans., pp. 443-454. <br>
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<div id=""18-7-2"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-7-2"><strong>7-2 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>Kruger's arguments are reviewed by Clinton in F. H., 2., p. 217. <br>
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<div id=""18-8"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-8"><strong>8 </strong></a><strong>] </strong><em>Daniel, </em>p. 171, <em>note. <br>
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<div id=""18-9"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-9"><strong>9 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>See <em>ex. gr </em>. Mitford, 2., 226; Thirlwall, 2., 428; Grote, 5., 379; and of Germans <em>see </em>Niebuhr, <em>Lec </em>t. <em>Anc. Hist. </em>(Schmitz ed.), 2., 180-181. <br>
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<div id=""18-10"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-10"><strong>10 </strong></a><strong>] </strong><em>Daniel, </em>p. 266. <br>
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<div id=""18-11"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-11"><strong>11 </strong></a><strong>] </strong><em>Ibid. </em>p. 99, <em>note. <br>
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<div id=""18-12"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-12"><strong>12 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>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 <em>(ibid. </em>3:12). The decree in their favor was granted two months later <em>(ibid. </em>8:9), and the king is mentioned in connection with the execution of that decree in the twelfth month of that year <em>(ibid. </em>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. <br>
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<div id=""18-13"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-13"><strong>13 </strong></a><strong>] </strong><em>Christology </em>(Arnold's <em>trans.), </em>Ch. 737. <br>
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<div id=""18-14"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-14"><strong>14 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>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 <em>(see </em>Clinton, <em>Fasti Rom., </em>A. D. 29), and that Josephus does <em>not </em>always reckon reigns in the manner indicated. <br>
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<div id=""18-15"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-15"><strong>15 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>Matthew 27:63, 64; comp. 2 Chronicles 10:5-12. "He said unto them, Come again unto me <em>after three </em>days…so Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam <em>on the third day?" <br>
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<div id=""18-16"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-16"><strong>16 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>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 <em>part </em>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 <em>habitues </em>of our police courts. <br>
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<div id=""18-17"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-17"><strong>17 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>"When the people were come in great crowds to the feast of unleavened bread on the eighth day of the month Xanthicus" <em>(i. e., </em>Nisan) (Jos., <em>Wars, </em>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." <br>
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<br>
 +
<div id=""18-18"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-18"><strong>18 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>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, <em>Eclipses Past and Future). </em>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 <em>(Life of Christ, </em>6th ed., p. 150), and notably by the late Mr. Bosanquet, who argues the question in his <em>Messiah the Prince, </em>and more concisely in a paper read before the Society of Biblical Archaeology on 6th June, 1871. <br>
 +
<br>
 +
<div id=""18-19"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-19"><strong>19 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>This is the year specified by Dion Cassius for the Ethnarch's banishment. Clinton, F. H., A. D. 6. <br>
 +
<br>
 +
<div id=""18-20"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-20"><strong>20 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>Farrar, <em>Life of Christ, </em>App. Exc. 1. <br>
 +
<br>
 +
<div id=""18-21"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-21"><strong>21 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>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. <em>Cf </em>Lewin's <em>Fasti Sacri, </em>pp. 56: and 92. <br>
 +
<br>
 +
<div id=""18-22"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-22"><strong>22 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>Josephus, <em>Ant., </em>15. 11, 27. <br>
 +
<br>
 +
<div id=""18-23"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-23"><strong>23 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>See p. 39, <em>ante. </em>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. <br>
 +
<br>
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<div id=""18-24"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-24"><strong>24 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>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. <em>Exodus gr., </em>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 <em>the harlot </em>makes fire to descend from heaven," "And <em>the harlot </em>requires all to receive her mark." (Comp. Revelation 13:13, 16) <br>
 +
<br>
 +
<div id=""18-25"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-25"><strong>25 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>"The ten horns <em>out of this kingdom" </em>(Daniel 7:24). <br>
 +
<br>
 +
<div id=""18-26"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-26"><strong>26 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>Ireland was entirely, and Scotland was in part, outside the territorial limits of the Roman Empire. <br>
 +
<br>
 +
<div id=""18-27"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-27"><strong>27 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>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. <br>
 +
<br>
 +
<div id=""18-28"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-28"><strong>28 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>See Chron. Table, App. 1, <em>ante. <br>
 +
</em><br>
 +
<div id=""18-29"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-29"><strong>29 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>Tregelles, <em>Daniel, </em>p. 34. <br>
 +
<br>
 +
<div id=""18-30"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-30"><strong>30 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>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.
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<p align="CENTER"><br>
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    <div id=""APPENDIX 3"></a><br>
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    <img src="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Graphics.Jehovah/silver.bar2.widesm.GOLD.GIF" width="191" height="4"></p>
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<p align="CENTER">APPENDIX 3. <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#Table of Contents">Back to Top </a><br>
 
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&quot;There is such a thing as perfection; for it is again and again mentioned in Scripture... It is not absolute. Absolute perfection belongs not to man, nor to angels, but to God alone... It does not make a man infallible; none is infallible while he remains in the body... Is it sinless? It is not worth while to contend for a term. It is 'salvation from sin'... It is&nbsp; 'perfect love' &nbsp;(1John 4:18). This is the essence of it: its properties, or inseparable fruits, are, rejoicing evermore, praying without ceasing, and in everything giving thanks (1Thessalonians 5:16,etc.)... It is improvable. It is far from lying in an indivisible point, from being incapable of increase... It is amissible, capable of being lost.&quot; <br>
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    <strong>A RETROSPECT AND A REPLY </strong></p>
</p>
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<p>"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 declar ed, "the Father hath put in His own power," (Acts 1:7) be discovered by astronomical researc h or flights of higher mathematics. <br>
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    <td width="31" valign="top"><p>&nbsp; </p></td>
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    <td width="19" valign="top"><p>C. </p></td>
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    <td valign="top"><p>Charles G. Finney:&nbsp; <em>Finney's Systematic Theology </em>&nbsp;(1846) </p></td>
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<p><br>
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Another man of God, Charles G. Finney, recorded in his book (1846),&nbsp; <em>Finney's Systematic Theology </em>&nbsp;(pp.355-356): <br>
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   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. <br>
&quot;It has been common for Christians to suppose, that a state of entire consecration is attainable; but while they believe in the sinfulness of their natures, they would not of course call even entire sanctification, entire sanctification... Call it what you please, Christian perfection, heavenly mindedness, the full assurance of faith or hope, or a state of entire consecration; by all these I understand the same thing. And it is certain, that by whatever name it is called, the thing must be aimed at to be attained. The practicability of its attainment must be admitted, or it cannot be aimed at. And now I humbly inquire, whether to preach any thing short of this is not to give countenance to sin?&quot; <br>
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   <br>
 
   <br>
   As I read Brother Finney's statement above, I noticed a passage directly preceding it (p.355) where he quotes&nbsp; <em>Barnes' Notes </em>&nbsp;on 2Corinthians 8:1. Brother Finney begins: <br>
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   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. <br>
 
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&quot;It has long been maintained by orthodox divines, that a person is not a Christian who does not aim at living without sin- that unless he aims at perfection, he manifestly consents to live in sin; and is therefore impenitent. It has been said, and I think truly, that if a man does not, in the fixed purpose of his heart, aim at total abstinence from sin, and at being wholly conformed to the will of God, he is not yet regenerated, and does not so much as mean to cease from abusing God.&nbsp; <em>Barnes' Notes </em>&nbsp;upon 2Corinthians viii.1, we have the following: 'The unceasing and steady aim of every Christian should be perfection- perfection in all things- in the love of God, of Christ, of man; perfection of heart, and feeling, and emotion; perfection in his words, and plans, and dealings with men; perfection in his prayer, and in his submission to the will of God. No man can be a Christian who does not sincerely desire to be perfect as God is, and who does not make it his daily and constant aim to be as perfect as God, may set it down as demonstrably certain that he has&nbsp; <strong>no </strong>&nbsp; <strong>true religion </strong>.'&quot; <br>
+
  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 <em>The Coming Prince </em>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. <br>
 
   <br>
 
   <br>
   Thus far we have only the testimony of men-&nbsp; &quot;so great a cloud of witnesses&quot; - concerning the doctrine of Christian perfection. They are...&nbsp; &quot;being dead yet speaketh&quot; (Hebrews 11:4). We, however, as those who are&nbsp; &quot;of full age&quot; &nbsp;(literally, perfect) (Hebrews 5:14) require the testimony of the&nbsp; &quot;strong meat&quot; &nbsp;of the Word of God, because only then can we by&nbsp; &quot;reason of use have &nbsp;[our]&nbsp; senses exercised to discern both good and evil&quot;&nbsp; (Hebrews 5:14).&nbsp; &quot;To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them&quot; &nbsp;(Isaiah 8:20). Beware what you believe! Take care to build your doctrine ONLY upon&nbsp; &quot;What saith the Scripture?&quot; &nbsp;(Romans 4:3). </p>
+
   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, <div id=""return 19-1"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-1"><strong>1 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>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. <br>
<p align="center"><br>
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"http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Fellowship/Exposition.Perf.II.html"><br>
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  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. <br>
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  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.) <br>
http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Fellowship/Exposition.Perfection.html#Table"><strong>Table of Contents </strong></a></p>
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  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." <div id=""return 19-2"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-2"><strong>2 </strong></a><strong>] </strong><br>
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"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. <div id=""return 19-3"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-3"><strong>3 </strong></a><strong>] </strong><br>
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  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. <br>
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  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. <em>See also </em>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 <em>necessary </em>that the word of God should first have been spoken to you," he said to them at Antioch. (Acts 13:46; <em>c </em>f. 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.) <br>
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  And <em>the next book of the Canon is addressed to believing Gentiles. </em>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." <div id=""return 19-4"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-4"><strong>4 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>. 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. <br>
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  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: </p>
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"This same Jesus shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven"; (Acts 1:1-19.) <br>
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<br>
 +
"His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east." (Zechariah 14:4.)
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<p>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. <br>
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  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 <em>Irsrael's </em>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. <div id=""return 19-5"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-5"><strong>5 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>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. <div id=""return 19-6"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-6"><strong>6 </strong></a><strong>] </strong><br>
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  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" <em>before </em>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. <br>
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  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. <div id=""return 19-7"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-7"><strong>7 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>And further, the definite article must be omitted: </p>
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"Insomuch as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh judgment, so Christ also, having been once <em>[i.e </em>., 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.)
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<p>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. <br>
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  The passage therefore cannot be appealed to in support of the dogma that never again but <em>once </em>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. <br>
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  The only adverse criticism I have seen of <em>The Coming Prince </em>has appeared in later editions of <em>The Approaching End of the Age. </em>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 <em>in a single point </em>the main conclusions here established is a signal proof that they are irrefutable. <br>
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  <br>
 +
  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; <div id=""return 19-8"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-8"><strong>8 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>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 <em>they </em>should teach <em>grace. </em>On similar grounds the task I here set myself was to deal with the <em>fulfillment </em>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 <em>The Coming Prince </em>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 <em>fulfilled </em>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?" <br>
 +
  <br>
 +
  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. <em>(Cf. </em>Isaiah 13:9, 10, and Joel 2:31, 3:15; <em>see also </em>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 <div id=""return 19-9"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-9"><strong>9 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>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 <em>me </em>n, and seize upon the <em>system </em>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? <br>
 +
  <br>
 +
  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 <em>fulfilled, </em>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, <em>for in them is finished the wrath of God," </em>(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! <div id=""return 19-10"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-10"><strong>10 </strong></a><strong>] </strong><br>
 +
  <br>
 +
  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 <em>seventy </em>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 <em>for brevity's sake </em>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 <em>sixty-nine weeks, </em>leaving the seventieth week to be accounted for <em>after </em>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. <br>
 +
  <br>
 +
  When the language of Scripture is treated so loosely by this writer, no one need be surprised if <em>my </em>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 <em>The Coming Prince </em>on almost every point on which he refers to it. <div id=""return 19-11"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-11"><strong>11 </strong></a><strong>] </strong><br>
 +
  <br>
 +
  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. <br>
 +
  <br>
 +
  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." <br>
 +
  <br>
 +
"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 <em>in the territory west of Greece." </em>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 <em>the least important moiety of the Roman earth, </em>"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." <em>"Averaged about ten," </em>mark, though the prophecy specifies <em>ten </em>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. <br>
 +
  <br>
 +
  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.) W hat 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 <em>"the </em>fulfillment of the prediction." He calls this "explaining" Scripture. Most people would call it <em>explaining it away! <br>
 +
  </em><br>
 +
  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 <em>follows </em>the destruction of Babylon by the ten horns." <br>
 +
  <br>
 +
  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 <em>The Coming Prince </em>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. <br>
 +
  <br>
 +
  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." <br>
 +
  <br>
 +
  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? <br>
 +
  <br>
 +
  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. <br>
 +
  <br>
 +
  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:-- <br>
 +
  <br>
 +
"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." <br>
 +
  <br>
 +
  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. <br>
 +
  <br>
 +
  My protest is made, not in defense of the Papacy, but of the Bible. If any one can point <em>to a single passage of Scripture </em>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 <em>fulfillment </em>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. <div id=""return 19-12"></div><strong>[[#19-12|'''12''']] </strong><br>
 +
  <br>
 +
  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. <br>
 +
  <br>
 +
  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 <em>these </em>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." <br>
 +
  <br>
 +
  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. </p>
 +
<strong><br>
 +
APPENDIX 3. </strong><strong>FOOTNOTES </strong><br>
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<br>
 +
<div id=""19-1"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-1"><strong>1 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>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. <br>
 +
<br>
 +
<div id=""19-2"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-2"><strong>2 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>2 Thes salonians 2:1, 2, R. V. "The day of Christ" in A. V. is a wrong reading. <br>
 +
<br>
 +
<div id=""19-3"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-3"><strong>3 </strong></a><strong>] </strong><em>See </em>1 Corinthians 11:26: "As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death <em>till He come." </em>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. <br>
 +
<br>
 +
<div id=""19-4"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-4"><strong>4 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>Romans 11; <em>see </em>vv. 1, 2, 9, 12, 15-26. Note that "all Israel" is not = <em>every Israelite, </em>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. <br>
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<br>
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<div id=""19-5"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-5"><strong>5 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>2 Thessalonians 1:7, 8. The "mighty angels" of the prophecy are, I presume, the "holy ones" of Zechariah 14:5. <br>
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<br>
 +
<div id=""19-6"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-6"><strong>6 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>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. <br>
 +
<br>
 +
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 <em>assert </em>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 <em>mystic </em>periods, like the 480 years of 1 Kings 6:1. <br>
 +
<br>
 +
<div id=""19-7"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-7"><strong>7 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>It occurs four times in 1 Corinthians 15:5-8. <br>
 +
<br>
 +
<div id=""19-8"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-8"><strong>8 </strong></a><strong>] </strong><em>Se </em>e, <em>e. g., </em>Chap. 9. and App., note C. <br>
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<br>
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<div id=""19-9"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-9"><strong>9 </strong></a><strong>] </strong><em>See </em>especially the quotation from Dean Alford. <br>
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<br>
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<div id=""19-10"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-10"><strong>10 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>It is only by reason of its almost inconceivable silliness that such. teaching can escape the charge of profanity. <br>
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<br>
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<div id=""19-11"></a><strong>[ </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-11"><strong>11 </strong></a><strong>] </strong>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 <em>fall </em>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). <br>
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<br>
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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 <em>The Coming Prince </em>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 <em>"Messiah </em>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 <em>his </em>people. Yet Mr. Guinness believes that Titus is referred to! Really the day is past for discussing such a suggestion. <br>
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<br>
 +
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 <em>"for half of the week." <br>
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</em><br>
 +
<div id=""19-12"></div>[[#return 19-12|'''12'''] </strong>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 <em>the Temple of God. </em>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. <br>
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<br>
 +
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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<p align="CENTER">. <br>
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    <img src="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Graphics.Jehovah/silver.bar2.widesm.GOLD.GIF" width="191" height="4"><br>
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    <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.html">CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTORY on page 1 </a>--- <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.html">New Window </a><strong><br>
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    </strong><a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.2.html">CHAPTERS 2-3 on page 2 </a>--- <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.2.html">New Window </a><br>
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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.

</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#18-25">25 </a>] 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,
</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#18-26">26 </a>] 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;
</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#18-27">27 </a>] 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:-- </p>

1st. D aniel 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.
</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#18-28">28 </a>] 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. N either 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,"
</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#18-29">29 </a>] instead of" It raised up itself on one side."


5th. W hile 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. W hile 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.

<p>All this — and more might be added
</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#18-30">30 </a>] — 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. </p>

<p align="CENTER">.

   <a href="file:///C|/Users/Pops/AppData/Roaming/Macromedia/Dreamweaver MX 2004/OfficeImageTemp/diagram.gif">CHRONOLOGICAL DIAGRAM OF THE HISTORY OF JUDAH </a>(784 x 1068 pixels) --- <a href="file:///C|/Users/Pops/AppData/Roaming/Macromedia/Dreamweaver MX 2004/OfficeImageTemp/diagram.gif">New Window </a></p>

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

</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-1">1 </a>] Encyc. Brit., 9th ed., title "Artaxerxes."


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-2">2 </a>] W. K. Loftus, "Chaldea and Susiana," p. 341.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-3">3 </a>] Daniel, p. 160.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-4">4 </a>] 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."


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-5">5 </a>] Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. 9., second part, p 184.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-6">6 </a>] Works, vol. 15., p. 108.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-7">7 </a>] Arnold's trans., pp. 443-454.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-7-2">7-2 </a>] Kruger's arguments are reviewed by Clinton in F. H., 2., p. 217.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-8">8 </a>] Daniel, p. 171, note.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-9">9 </a>] See ex. gr . Mitford, 2., 226; Thirlwall, 2., 428; Grote, 5., 379; and of Germans see Niebuhr, Lec t. Anc. Hist. (Schmitz ed.), 2., 180-181.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-10">10 </a>] Daniel, p. 266.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-11">11 </a>] Ibid. p. 99, note.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-12">12 </a>] 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.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-13">13 </a>] Christology (Arnold's trans.), Ch. 737.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-14">14 </a>] 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.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-15">15 </a>] 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?"


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-16">16 </a>] 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.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-17">17 </a>] "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."


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-18">18 </a>] 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.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-19">19 </a>] This is the year specified by Dion Cassius for the Ethnarch's banishment. Clinton, F. H., A. D. 6.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-20">20 </a>] Farrar, Life of Christ, App. Exc. 1.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-21">21 </a>] 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.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-22">22 </a>] Josephus, Ant., 15. 11, 27.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-23">23 </a>] 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.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-24">24 </a>] 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)


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-25">25 </a>] "The ten horns out of this kingdom" (Daniel 7:24).


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-26">26 </a>] Ireland was entirely, and Scotland was in part, outside the territorial limits of the Roman Empire.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-27">27 </a>] 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.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-28">28 </a>] See Chron. Table, App. 1, ante.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-29">29 </a>] Tregelles, Daniel, p. 34.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 18-30">30 </a>] 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.

<p align="CENTER">

</a>
   <img src="silver.bar2.widesm.GOLD.GIF" width="191" height="4"></p>

<p align="CENTER">APPENDIX 3. <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#Table of Contents">Back to Top </a>

   
A RETROSPECT AND A REPLY </p>

<p>"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 declar ed, "the Father hath put in His own power," (Acts 1:7) be discovered by astronomical researc h 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,
</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-1">1 </a>] 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."
</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-2">2 </a>]
 
"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.
</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-3">3 </a>]
 
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; c f. 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."
</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-4">4 </a>] . 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: </p>

"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.) <p>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.
</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-5">5 </a>] 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.
</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-6">6 </a>]
 
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.
</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-7">7 </a>] And further, the definite article must be omitted: </p>

"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.) <p>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.

------------------------------

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;
</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-8">8 </a>] 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
</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-9">9 </a>] 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 me n, 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!
</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-10">10 </a>]
 
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.
</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#19-11">11 </a>]
 
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.) W hat 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. </p>


APPENDIX 3.
FOOTNOTES

</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-1">1 </a>] 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.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-2">2 </a>] 2 Thes salonians 2:1, 2, R. V. "The day of Christ" in A. V. is a wrong reading.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-3">3 </a>] 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.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-4">4 </a>] 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.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-5">5 </a>] 2 Thessalonians 1:7, 8. The "mighty angels" of the prophecy are, I presume, the "holy ones" of Zechariah 14:5.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-6">6 </a>] 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.

</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-7">7 </a>] It occurs four times in 1 Corinthians 15:5-8.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-8">8 </a>] Se e, e. g., Chap. 9. and App., note C.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-9">9 </a>] See especially the quotation from Dean Alford.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-10">10 </a>] It is only by reason of its almost inconceivable silliness that such. teaching can escape the charge of profanity.


</a>[ <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Appendix.html#return 19-11">11 </a>] 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."

[[#return 19-12|12] </strong>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." <p align="CENTER">.

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<a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.html">CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTORY on page 1 </a>--- <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.html">New Window </a>

<a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.2.html">CHAPTERS 2-3 on page 2 </a>--- <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.2.html">New Window </a>

<a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.3.html">CHAPTERS 4-6 on page 3 </a>--- <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.3.html">New Window </a>

<a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.4.html">CHAPTERS 7-9 on page 4 </a>--- <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.4.html">New Window </a>

<a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.5.html">CHAPTERS 10-12 on page 5 </a>--- <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.5.html">New Window </a>

<a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.6.html">CHAPTERS 13-15 on page 6 </a>--- <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.6.html">New Window </a>

<a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Prefaces.html">PREFACES on page 7 </a>--- <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Voice/The.Coming.Prince.Prefaces.html">New Window </a>

APPENDICES on page 8 (this page)
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For more about the author, read:
<a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Fellowship/Edit_Sir.Robert.Anderson.html">Sir Robert Anderson and the Seventy Weeks of Daniel </a>--- <a href="http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Fellowship/Edit_Sir.Robert.Anderson.html">New Window </a>



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Section Index for Voices of Philadelphia </p>

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