(Revelation 11:1, 2)

DIFFICULTIES OF THE CURRENT METHOD OF INTERPRETING THE APOCALYPSE—CONNECTION OF THIS CHAPTER WITH THE PRECEDING—THE SAINTS IN HEAVEN MUST PROPHESY AGAIN—MEASURING OF THE TEMPLE—"THE HOLY CITY"—THE JEWS AGAIN IN THE FOREGROUND—A NEW ORDER AND CANON—CASTING OUT OF THE GENTILES—ZION REDEEMED WITH JUDGMENT—THE FORTY-TWO MONTHS.

Rev. 11:1, 2. (Revised Text.) And there was given to me a reed like to a rod, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and those who worship in it. And the court which is outside the temple, cast out, and measure it not; for it is given to the Gentiles; and they shall trample the holy city forty and two months.

We here come upon ground which has been very trying to expositors—the great battleground of conflicting systems, and the burial-ground of many a fond conceit and learned fancy. Alford has given it as his opinion that the chapter on which we now enter "is undoubtedly one of the most difficult in the whole Apocalypse." On all the prevalent theories for interpreting this Book, he is certainly right in this opinion, and the difficulties of which he complains must remain till those theories are abandoned, and another departure taken.

If we were to take a description of a horse-mill, and insist on expounding it as a description of a mill-horse, no matter what qualifications we might bring to the task, we would find ourselves continually beset with difficulties and embarrassments which we never could fully overcome. And just so it is with nearly all our commentaries on the Apocalypse. It is not learning, ability, research or ingenuity that is at fault, but an underlying misapprehension of the nature and intention of the record. It is a description of one thing, and they are all the while trying to make it quite another thing. It is an account of the wonders of "The Lord's Day"—the day of Judgment, and they propose to explain it of "man's day"—the day of the present dispensation. God gave it as "The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ," and they seek to interpret it as an apocalypse of human history. This is the great trouble. Nor is it to be wondered that the skin of the lion will not fit the ass, and that the ears of the inferior animal will stick out notwithstanding the most ingenious efforts to cover them.

It would, indeed, be affectation to pretend that there are no difficulties in the way of a satisfactory exposition of this Book, but I am well persuaded that the most of those encountered by our commentators, and which hinder thinking readers from seriously embracing their theories, are imported by themselves, in the primary mistake which wrests the record from its own proper subject, and applies it to another which is at best only remotely and inchoately embraced. Let it be fixed and settled that we here have to do with the scenes of miracle and judgment, and that this chapter relates to those grand and mysterious administrations by which Christ is to take possession of the earth and clear it of usurpers and enemies, and the way is open to understand all, so far as it is possible to comprehend such wonders beforehand.

It is evident that the events here narrated are of a piece with what was described in the preceding chapter, and follow directly from it. Concerning the relation between these two chapters, Dr. Elliott justly says, "The connection between what concludes the one, and what begins the other, appears to be as close as it well could be: seeing that the Angel who before addressed St. John still continues here to address him; and the new injunction, Rise and measure, is but a sequel to His previous injunction. Thou must prophesy again." We there saw the glorious Angel, which is Christ Himself, in the sublime attitude of taking possession of the earth, by setting His feet upon it, displaying in His hand the title-deed to it, and swearing that there should be no more delay. And what now comes before us must, therefore, relate to the same transaction, and to the time and occurrences in which the same is to be carried into effect. In other words, it describes to us the ongoing of the judgment, now rapidly moving to its climax.

The first thing in the process of this taking possession of the redeemed inheritance is indicated in the change made in the attitude of John. Having beheld the Angel, he is withdrawn from the position of a mere seer and made an actor. A voice from heaven directs him to take the document from the Angel's hand, to eat it, and so to make it his own by incorporating it with his very being; whilst it is further announced to him: "Thou must prophesy again upon peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings many." What did this mean? John is not the only one who is to obtain the title to the inheritance. All the meek have it promised to them. Every true Christian is to share it. When the blessed Goel comes to give it to His redeemed ones, there will be many besides John to receive it. In what capacity then are we to contemplate this calling of John to take, eat, and have vested in him the title-deed to the inheritance? Certainly not in his individual capacity; for then none are ever to inherit but himself, as in him that title finds final lodgment.

It is a very common thing, in the delivery of sacred prophecies, for the individual prophet to act in himself what is meant to be understood of those whom he represents. "As remarked long since by Irenæus, the ancient prophets fulfilled their office of predicting, not merely in the verbal delivery of predictions, but by themselves seeing, hearing, or acting out the things in type, which were afterwards to be seen, heard, or acted out by others in reality—and this whether in real life, or perchance in vision. In all which cases they were to be considered, as they are called in Isaiah and in Zechariah, mophthim; that is, figurative or representative persons." And such a representative is St. John in the case before us. He acts the part in the apocalyptic scenes which pertains to the whole body to which he belongs. What is given him in the vision is to be understood as given them, and what he does and experiences is to be understood as done and experienced by them, when the vision becomes reality.

Nor can we be in any doubt as to the persons of whom he is thus the representative. He is an Apostle, and hence a divinely constituted representative of the Church. He is in heaven at the time, and so a representative of the Church thus shown to be in heaven at the time the vision is fulfilled, that is, of the resurrected, translated, and glorified saints. To the whole body of redeemed ones are we therefore to understand this giving of the title-deed of the inheritance to be; in whom also it forever after inheres.

But as John receives and eats the little book as the representative of glorified saints, it is as the selfsame representative of the selfsame saints, that it is said to him: "Thou must prophesy again," and that it is further commanded him to "Rise and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and those who worship in it." And if so, then we have the key to the whole case, and there breaks in upon us a glorious light for the right interpretation of this otherwise very difficult passage.

To prophesy is not simply to foretell future events; but to exercise the functions of a witness for God. In the verses following, the Two Witnesses get their name from their work, and that work is called prophesying. To declare the will and purpose of God, or to act as His ambassador and mouthpiece, is to fill the office of a prophet. Aaron was to be Moses' prophet, which is explained to mean that he should be a spokesman and a mouth for Moses. And so, to be the agent or instrument through which God utters Himself to men, whatever may be the nature or the subject of the utterance, is to prophesy. Such witnesses and mouth-pieces Jehovah has always upon earth. The whole Church is such a witness and prophet. In and through it the word of God ever sounds, and the mind and purpose of God ring out into the ears of the world; and even principalities and powers in the heavenly places are being instructed by the Church. Every individual Christian is a confessor of the true God, in whose confession the will and purpose of God in Christ Jesus is testified and proclaimed. No one can become or continue a faithful Christian without this. In so far, then, every genuine Christian is a real prophet. Through him God speaks continually. His whole career on earth as a Christian confessor is a continuous prophesying against the wickedness of the world, of the necessity of godliness, and of the way of salvation in Christ. But even after the saints have gone from this world, they are still not yet done prophesying. As here said to John, they must prophesy again. After they have been "caught up together to meet the Lord in the air," and have "put on immortality," and the day of judgment has progressed to the second woe-trumpet, the Mighty Redeemer having delivered to them the recovered deed to the inheritance, new commissions issue; and from being mere spectators of the ongoing judgment, they become actors in its administrations, and once more assume the office of witnesses for God. And what is involved in this prophesying again, together with its attendants and results, it is the object and intent of this chapter to set before us. Let us, therefore, approach it with due reverence and prayerfulness.

"And there was given to me a reed like to a rod, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and those who worship in it. And the court which is outside cast out, and measure it not; for it is given to the Gentiles: and they shall trample the holy city forty and two months."

These words set forth the initial processes of the actual taking possession of the earth by our triumphant Redeemer. Like the judgment-administrations as a whole, it is not a summary, but a gradual work. It certainly extends through years, and involves various particulars and stages. How, and where, and in what, the commencement is to be made, we may here learn.

A remarkable feature in the case is, that the glorified saints are the chief actors. It is John who receives the equipment and the commission, but in him, as was said, the glorified saints in general are included. This is true in every instance in which he is taken out of the position of a mere spectator and made an actor in what is narrated. His call and transfer to heaven, described in the fourth chapter, set forth the catching up into the aerial spaces all God's ready and waiting saints when once the time for the fulfilment of these wonders has come. And so his reception and eating of the little book, from the nature of the case, must be understood of the whole Church in heaven at the time these scenic representations become reality. So then likewise must we understand the prophesying again, and hence also the equipment and commission in the words in hand; for they all necessarily go together as parts of each other, and must be accepted in one and the same way throughout. The giving and the command are to John, but only for the convenience of the description, whilst in the fulfilment they are to the whole body of glorified saints, for John here stands in place of the saints.

Nor need we be surprised at this, as if it were something foreign to the teachings of the Scriptures in general. Paul, in a plain and didactic epistle, says: "Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?" (1 Cor. 6:2.) So also says the Psalmist: "Let the saints be joyful in glory: let them sing aloud upon their couches: let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand; to execute vengeance upon the heathen and punishments upon the people; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; to execute upon them the judgment written. This honour have all the saints." (Ps. 149:5-9.)

The office assigned in this particular instance, is the measuring of the temple and altar of God, and those who worship therein. Measuring is a judicial act—the laying down of lines and borders which are to mark and determine dimensions and boundaries. It is the sign of appropriation. When it is proposed to take possession, and to have things put to their purpose, men begin to measure. In the settlement of some new order, as beheld by Ezekiel, there is a great deal of measuring and marking out of portions and possessions. And so when the triumphant Redeemer is about to enter upon the inheritance, he gives command to measure. What is measured is from that moment His, and so designated by the measuring. What the lines of the measurement include, He acknowledges and claims; and any indignity rendered toward it becomes a heinous sin against High Heaven. And what is outside of those lines, and not measured, is not acknowledged by Him, but is rejected, and held and treated as denied.

The first things thus measured are the temple, the altar, and the worshippers in that temple. Peter says, "Judgment must begin at the house of God." The only house of God now on earth is the Church, the mystic temple, the spiritual house, constituted of all believers. At this house judgment begins by the sudden and miraculous catching away of God's waiting people to the sky, as we saw in the earlier chapters of this book.

But the Judgment-administrations have two sides. They consist of two series, and exhibit, so to speak, two different currents: the one the upward current, in which good and its representatives pass out of the world as if abandoning everything to utter perdition; and the other the downward current, in which good and its representatives come again in victorious power to possess and hold everything. Each of these currents has its own particular beginning; and, in both instances, the point of beginning is the most sacred point—the house or temple of God. But it is not the same house or temple in both instances. It is the mystic temple in the first, and it is a more literal temple in the second. When Christ once catches away to the heavenly spaces His ready and waiting saints, as described by St. Paul, the present Church ends. Fractions and inferior fragments of it may still float in the waves of the great tribulation and subsequently land on the shores of salvation, but without crowns, and only as the after-born, not as the firstborn. And by the time the downward current of which I spoke sets in, the present Church, as such, will have been quite transferred to the regions above, and will constitute the measurers in the text, and not the object measured.

The measuring here commanded implies that what is measured had not, up to that time, been acknowledged on the part of Christ. This could not be true of the Church. The language is peculiarly Jewish. There is a fane, an altar, and a court of the Gentiles spoken of; which accords with the ceremonial economy, but not with the Christian. There is a "holy city" alluded to, which is given to the Gentiles to trample for a time, which carries us directly to Jerusalem, and indicates that we are here unmistakably on Jewish ground. There is no other city on earth so called in the Scriptures. In the account of the return from Babylon we read: "The people also cast lots to bring one of ten to dwell in Jerusalem, the holy city." (Neh. 11:1, 18.) Isaiah (52:1) calls out: "Put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city." In the account of the temptation it is recorded: "Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple." (Matt. 4:5.) And even after its inhabitants had made themselves guilty of the innocent blood of Christ, the same language is still used; for we read that "many of the saints which slept arose and came out of their graves after His resurrection and went into the holy city, and appeared to many." (Matt. 27:52, 53.) There is only one other "holy city" spoken of in all the Bible, to wit, the New Jerusalem; but that never has been and never will be given to be trampled by the Gentiles. Some other "holy city" must then be meant. Many make it the Church; but the Church has not only been measured, appropriated, acknowledged from the very beginning, but its untrue members have likewise been all the while rejected and unacknowledged, and just as really and conspicuously so before the Reformation as then or since. Inchoately and secondarily, as a sort of shadow of the great substance, we may see some resemblances between these visions and the past history of the Church; for the course of things conducting to the consummation takes the general outlines of that consummation; but we have abundantly seen that this Book will not interpret on the mystical method, without most damaging prejudice to what belongs to a divine revelation, assuming to itself the preeminent importance and solemnity which this Book assumes. And so true and palpable is this, that the common Christian mind under its teachings, and the sorry acknowledgment of many of its most candid defenders, is, that this is a book of riddles and mysteries which it is not in the power of man to understand, and that nothing clear or solid is to be derived from it;—nay, that Christians may now learn as much if not more, on the same subjects, by reading the infidel Gibbon, and a few writers on mediæval and subsequent history, than from the whole Apocalypse! This is so damaging a confession for a Christian to make, that it wears the evidence on its face of some deep and radical mistake in the method of treatment which necessitates it. We cannot, therefore, take "the holy city" here as denoting the Church, but understand by it what the Scriptures always mean by the phrase, and interpret it with confidence of Jerusalem, to which alone the temple, with its altar and court of the Gentiles pertains.

What, then, is the implication, but that when this period is once reached, Jerusalem will have been largely repopulated by the children of its ancient inhabitants, its temple rebuilt, and its ancient worship restored. God is not yet done with the Jews as a distinct people. In their half-faith and "blindness in part," they will seek and find their way back to a revival of their ancient metropolis, temple, and ritual. Some of the most striking passages of holy Scripture assert this with a clearness and positiveness which no fair exegesis can ever set aside. The New Testament constantly assumes it. And when it is accomplished, as it certainly will be, Jerusalem will still be "the holy city," because of the consecration it of old received. The temple will also be in some sort God's temple, though at first unacknowledged and unappropriated by Christ. And among the worshippers will also be many true servants of God; for already under the sixth seal we were called to contemplate a movement among the tribes of Israel by which 144,000 were marked as the Lord's, and singled out as the objects of His gracious protection. These still live on earth among men at the time to which the text refers; for it is only as late as the transactions noted in the fourteenth chapter that they are found with the Lamb in glory. Nor will there be at that period a holier place or service on earth than this restored Jerusalem and temple. But with all, it will not till then receive the acknowledgment and appropriation of the glorious Messiah; nor then entirely, nor at all without a strict resurvey, and the putting down of new lines, measurements, and boundaries from heaven.

Important changes are likewise indicated by this measuring. Where there is a new laying out of lines, the old is cast away, and things take a new shape. The same is indicated in the character of the rule or instrument of the measurement. In measuring the New Jerusalem, the instrument is a "golden reed." Here it is "a reed like to a rod"—a measuring implement, but having the prevailing aspect of an instrument of chastisement—hence indicative of an afflictive, revolutionizing, measurement. There will, therefore, be rejections of some things, and additions of others. In other words, there will be a purging of the temple after the style of the proceeding of the Saviour when he took a scourge in his hand, and somewhat disturbed the business of the money-changers and them that sold doves. It is a measuring which is to proceed according to a rule which operates as a rod.

But the changes indicated are not arbitrary. The lines are all drawn by a fixed and heavenly rule, given for the purpose. It is called "a reed." The original (κάλαμος) is the word which the Septuagint uses for the Hebrew word Kaneh, from which comes our ecclesiastical word Canon, both meaning a rule, particularly a rule of religious belief and duty. Hence the books of the Old and New Testaments are called The Canon, or the canonical books, seeing that they are the infallible Rule of all true faith and practice. This κάλαμος, therefore, is not to be associated so much with the idea of a frail reed shaken by every wind, as with the idea of a canon law, an inflexible rule, a divinely constituted directory. It does not mean our present Scriptures, as some expositors have represented; for it is not the canon, but a canon—not the Rule, but a Rule. For all the offices and duties pertaining to this life, the sacred Scriptures are the exclusive and supreme Rule; but for the offices and duties of the "world to come," there will be other Rules, and another canon. The Scriptures have already been given to the saints. We have them complete, and our fathers have had the same for ages. The canon here in question is a new thing, first given at this stage in the ongoing Judgment, and given first to the glorified saints in heaven. The germs of it may indeed be embraced in our present Scriptures, as the germs of the New Testament were all contained in the Old, particularly as the Psalmist says the saints are "to execute the Judgment written;" but still the new commission has also its new canon, not yet given, according to which this judicial measuring is to be done, and to which all the changes it brings will be conformed. The ancient Jews "received the law by the disposition of angels" (Acts 7:53); and it would seem that their descendants in the judgment time are to receive another canon "by the disposition of "glorified saints, in connection with the final fulfilment of that promise quoted by St. Paul: "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah:... for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people; and they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for all shall know me from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." (Heb. 8:8-12. See Jer. 30 and 31, and Ezekiel 36.)

It appears, therefore, that, from the time of the measuring here described, there is again to be a true and divinely acknowledged temple of God upon earth, with an altar and worshippers set apart and marked off as the Lord's.

Some have given out the strange fancy that it is in heaven, and not on earth, and that it is only the outer court that is on earth. This is meant to avoid the difficulty created by the erroneous assumption that what is measured can never thereafter be defiled. But it is evidently a mistake. There is indeed a temple in heaven, as shown all through the Apocalypse; but the temple, altar, and worshippers there, have all the while been acknowledged and appropriated as the Lord's, and required no new measurement to that effect at this late period; and to apply the rod to people and things in heaven, argues a rather sorry appreciation of the holiness and happiness of that region. When the New Jerusalem is about to be entered and set apart as the glorious city of God and His saints, it is measured too, but with "a golden reed," not with one "like to a rod." Besides, the outer court is rejected, and hence not acknowledged of God, which would leave us no temple of God at all upon earth for "the captain of the robbers" to defile. And how can that be sacrilegiously desecrated which God refuses to acknowledge and positively disowns? The great aggravation of the sin of Antichrist is, that he sets up an idol in Jehovah's place, and turns God's true and acknowledged temple into a house of murderous idolatry. There must, therefore, be a true temple of God on earth, one which God acknowledges and claims as His, during the time of Antichrist, which is immediately subsequent to this measuring.

The outer court of this temple is ordered to be rejected, and cast entirely out of the measurement. The outer court is the court of the Gentiles, and this fact is given as the reason for the rejection. The present dispensation began with Jews exclusively; and "in the regeneration" the new order on earth is likewise to begin with Jews exclusively. And this casting out of the court of the Gentiles because it is the court of the Gentiles, proves the present dispensation then at an end. Now Gentiles and Jews stand on the same level. The one has no prerogatives or rights above the other. In the Church there is neither Greek nor Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but all nationalities and conditions in life yield to one common brotherhood and heirship. The text, therefore, tells of a new order of things. New commissions issue, a new canon comes into force, and the Jew is again in the foreground for the fathers' sakes, and the Gentiles are thrust back. The mere presence of them in the outer part of the temple causes it to be rejected and cast out of God's acknowledgment.

From the very beginning of the admission of the Gentiles to fellow-heirship with the seed of Jacob, the admonition of "the Apostle of the Gentiles" to them was, and still is: "Be not highminded, but fear; for if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. Behold, therefore, the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. And they also, if they abide not in unbelief, shall be graffed in; for God is able to graff them in again. For if thou wert cut out of the olive-tree which is wild by nature, and wert graffed contrary to nature into a good olive-tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be graffed into their own olive-tree? For I would not, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits, that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in." (Rom. 11:21-25.) This is very remarkable language. It implies a precariousness of our high calling in Christ Jesus which we would hardly suspect, and which it is dangerous to overlook. It foreshows an end to the favours now enjoyed by the Gentiles, and for the same causes that cast down the Jews from their ancient preeminence in the Divine economy. It sets forth that the existing depression of the Jew, and the exaltation of the Gentile to equality with him, is only temporary, and must terminate. Yea, and in all the Scriptures, there is a time contemplated, when the πληρωμα—the full complement—of the Gentiles shall have come in, and things shall begin again with the Jew at the head. And it is to the fulfilment of this mystery that the text relates. The measurement of the temple, its altar, and its worshippers, is the receiving again of the Jew, his regrafting upon the old theocratic root and native olive-tree, and his re-establishment as the chosen of God among the nations of the earth; and the casting out of the court of the Gentiles, is the diminishing, cutting off, and casting away of the Gentiles from their present rank and privileges.

And when we consider the corruption, deterioration, and ever-increasing apostasy of the present Church, from the time of the Apostles onward;—when we read in holy writ that in the last days the form of godliness shall be found lingering over the utmost excesses of unrighteousness, the pure truth of God be no longer tolerated by professed Christendom in its eagerness for religious novelties and sensations, and faith have almost entirely evanished from the earth;—when we contemplate the prophetic pictures of the consummate heathenism and perversion of everything sacred and true which is to mark the closing periods of this dispensation;—there is no room for wonder at the final command to cast out the unclean thing, whilst what follows begins again with the children of God's ancient people. It is the eternal law of things, that unfaithfulness brings judgment, and that if people do not appreciate and improve their privileges they must lose them. The Gentile Church apostatizes, and it dissolves, just as the Jewish Church before it.

But though God be again choosing Jerusalem and its temple as the place of His manifestation, and Israel for His earthly people, he does not yet defend cither from all further disturbance and disaster. "Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and they that return of her with righteousness." (Isa. 1:27.)

"They (the Gentiles) shall trample the holy city forty and two months;" not because of the superior holiness of these Gentiles, for in them wickedness comes to its highest earthly culmination, but God uses them for the chastisement of Israel, at the same time that he puts them in position to be themselves tormented and discomfited. He manifests their sin against His newly constituted people, that He may manifest the climax of His judgments against them, and require of them "the blood of all the prophets which was shed from the foundation of the world." They persecute the measured worshippers, desecrate the measured altar and temple, and set up an idol in the marked place of Jehovah, that the consummation of all plagues may fall upon them.

And here comes in a very important point to test the soundness of the spiritualistic interpretation; to wit, the relation, in point of time, between the measuring of the temple and these forty-two months of the trampling of the holy city. Is there not every reason in the record for regarding the measuring as first performed, and the trampling as a sequel to it? By no fair dealing with what is written can we put the trampling first and the measuring afterwards. But if the measuring precedes the trampling, or even synchronizes with it, then Popery and the Reformation cannot be the subject of the picture, as taught by our spiritualistic expositors. The Church cannot be at the same time both reclaimed from papal desecration and trodden down by it; neither can its reformation from popish defilement precede the dominancy of such defilement. Yet one or the other of these must be true, if the measuring denotes the work of the Reformers, and the trampling the evils inflicted by the papacy. But as in the nature of things neither can be true, it follows that the Papacy and the Reformation are not here the subject, and many a splendid chapter of historic learning must pass for nothing, as regards the exposition of this prophecy. It is what is measured that suffers under the trampling, and the purged temple is again briefly defiled by the Gentiles. Nay, the measuring itself involves chastisement and trouble to those who are the subjects of it, such as cannot well be predicated of the Reformed Church. The reed with which it is done, is "like to a rod;" and a rod (‘ράβδος) in the Apocalypse always denotes an instrument of chastisement. (See chapters 2:27; 12:5; 19:15.) It is likewise written of those then to be received into particular favour: "I will bring them through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried." (Zech. 13:9.) And the ordeal includes just such a spoliation of the holy city as is here described; for God says He "will gather all nations (Gentiles) against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half the city shall go forth into captivity." (Zech. 14:1, 2.)

But the trouble, though sharp and severe, will not be perpetual, nor long; for "then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against those nations (Gentiles) as when He fought in the day of battle. And his feet shall stand in that day on the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east" (Zech. 14:3, 4); and the great day of God Almighty will end it forever.

"Forty and two months" is the holy city to be trampled; that is, three years and a half, no more, and no less. It is a literal city that is trampled and defiled; it is a literal oppression and affliction that befalls it; and so the months which compute the duration of the trouble are also literal months. These great chronological scaffoldings which men build around prophetic dates, is mere fancy-work—"wood, hay, and stubble"—nothing but rubbish and obscurations of the truth of God. When it is meant that we should take numbers and dates in some other way than as they read, He gives us intimation of it; and in the absence of such divine hints, as in this case, there is no warrant for taking them any otherwise than as they stand written. "Forty and two months" are forty and two months, and not twelve hundred and sixty years.

The computation is given in "months," which is common in the Scriptures when troubles and afflictions are the subject. The beginning and duration of the flood is expressed in months. The ark was in the country of the Philistines seven months. The locusts torment men five months. And Jerusalem's last great trial is computed in months, as well as the term of the blasphemies of the Beast.

The number of the months is forty-two—six times the period that the ark was in captivity. Six is the number of evil, and seven of dispensational completion, and these are two marked factors of forty-two; which would seem to signify a fulness or completion of the evil in those months. Israel in the wilderness had forty-two stations; and the wicked youths slain by the bears for their mockery of Elisha were forty-two. The powerful monster who makes war with the saints, oppresses the nations, and blasphemes God, continues "forty-two months." And so the completion of Jerusalem's troubles is summed up in the same numbers and computation.

But ere the forty-two months are accomplished, there are yet many other things to come to pass, among the most marked of which is that crux interpretum, or rack of expositors—the history of The Two Witnesses. But what I have to say concerning these must be reserved for another occasion, when I hope to be able to identify them and their place in history without having to hunt up the obscure Waldenses, hidden away from the world like Chammoix in the Alps, or to lodge the true cause of God on earth for a dozen centuries with so variable, roving, and revolutionary a sect as the doubtful Paulikians, from whose history scarce a page survives which a true Christian can endorse as an untarnished testimony for God. Meanwhile, may the Lord add His blessing to what has been said, and cause it to be fruitful in bringing forth praises to His holy Name!

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