The general result of a pre-millenial coming of Christ to judgment, is enough to excite our intensest interest, even if we err in some of the minute details of that wonderful procedure.

That this day of judgment is not strictly and exclusively a short season of judicial investigations or trial; but itself a dispensation, running through centuries, and embracing the whole millenial reign of Christ and his saints ;—that this dispensation is to be introduced by the visible, personal coming of Jesus Christ;-that at his coming he will bring with him the myriads of his saints who had died in faith, and who will then receive their bodies, raised from the dead in the likeness of Christ's glorious body;-that the saints then living on the earth will also be changed, and caught up together with Christ in the air ;-that this coming of Christ will occur most suddenly, and, as it were, by stealth, like a thief in the night ;-that the one half, at least, of professing Christians being profoundly asleep, and totally unprepared, will never awake to the sense of their duty to look and watch for his coming, till the wonderful scenes of the coming of Christ, the first resurrection, and the rapture of the living saints, shall overwhelm them with horror and dismay;—that then the church will be judged, and while honors will be awarded to the raised and rapt saints, according to their works, the unprofitable, formal professors shall be utterly and eternally rejected, and perish in the overthrow of the Man of sin and of his adherents, and in the destruction of the anti-Christian nations;-that an end shall be made of all the nations that persecuted the Jews, and shed the blood of the saints;-that in the midst of these scenes of destruction, as they shall be going on within the territorial limits of the four great empires that swayed the world, the raised saints will be sent to

collect the scattered Jews who shall have repented and believed, at that time, that Jesus is their Messiah;—that the conversion of the Jews will be the occasion of the conversion of whole nations among the Gentilesthe remote heathen nations and others, among whom the Jews were scattered, and the gospel was preached for a witness, and that neither persecuted the Jews nor shed the blood of the saints, but had not, nevertheless, been Christianized; that the Jews will be re-established in their own land, the theocracy restored, Christ and his saints reign over them, and through them, over all the nations of the earth ;-that Satan will be cast into prison for one thousand years;—that thus the dominion of Heaven shall be established on the earth, and the millenial bliss and glory succeed ;and that the final judgment of Satan, and the promiscuous throng of the wicked dead, who shall be raised at the end of the thousand years, shall prepare the way to usher in the glorious and eternal state when the kingdom shall be delivered up into the hands of the Father, and God shall be all in all,

CHAPTER XIII.

THE SEASON AND SIGNS OF CHRIST'S COMING.

"THEY asked him saying, Master, but when shall these things be? And what SIGN shall there be, when these things shall come to pass. The question seems to have been suggested by the remarks, which the Saviour had made relative to the destruction of the temple and city of Jerusalem. It is obvious, from the terms in which Matthew proposes it, that it had an ulterior reference. The disciples inquired, not only with regard to the fate of their city, but also with regard to the period of the Saviour's second coming, and of the end of the dispensation. In this extended sense we understand the inquiry, and propose to collate, from the prophetical Scriptures, some of the more important and striking signs of the coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We shall thus be furnished with an additional argument in proof of that coming being pre-millenial.

The theme is one of vast moment. The event itself involves our eternal interests, and the destiny of the world. If it be the fact that the once despised Nazarene, the persecuted Galilean, who was crucified between two thieves, but, having risen from the dead, ascended to heaven, and received all power and authority in heaven and on earth, is there waiting till the

Luke, 21. 7.

† Matt. 24. 3.

appointed season of God's forbearance shall have been ended before he returns to earth to execute almighty and everlasting vengeance on his enemies, it behoves us to be on the watch, and to inquire diligently whether there shall be any, and if so, what will be the signs of his coming. Inattention and neglect here may prove fatal, as it has done, and will do yet, to multitudes.

It is but a poor excuse, though often made and extensively entertained, that the whole subject is involved in impenetrable mystery, and nothing definite or certain can be determined in relation to it. Enough is revealed to make us watchful, and to enable us to see when it is near at hand, although we may not be able to tell the hour or the year. Both the SEASON and the SIGNS of Christ's coming are accurately described.

I. THE SEASON OF HIS COMING.-It appears from the prophetical Scriptures that this is dated BEFORE THE MILLENIUM. The prediction of Daniel* with regard to the destruction of the fourth beast, or Roman empire, under the ascendant, despotic, and arrogant sway of the little horn, or the Man of sin, furnishes an irrefragable argument in proof of this. Let any man carefully read this prophecy, and compare it with the eleventh, nineteenth, and twentieth chapters of Revelations, and he will see that they all refer to the same season and to the same scenes. The coming of Christ takes place at the destruction of the fourth, or Roman despotism, before the Millenium. The only way to evade the force of this argument is to make the coming not a literal but symbolical coming. This, however, cannot be done without assuming things which have not been and cannot be proved, and without violat

*Daniel, 7. 9-27.

ing the fundamental principles of that only true and legitimate system of exegesis to be applied to the Sacred Scriptures.

To the same effect is the prediction of the apostle Paul, which determines the chronology of the Saviour's coming, and declares it to be at the time of the destruction of the Man of sin, "that lawless one," whom Jesus Christ shall "consume by the spirit of his mouth, and destroy by the brightness of his coming."

In like manner, the predictions concerning the conversion and restoration of the Jews, which, it is admitted, are to be fulfilled before the Millenium, are set forth as receiving their accomplishment in the same season, and by means of the coming of Jesus Christ. If the reader will compare Luke, 21. 24-27, with Matt. 24. 29, 30, and Mark, 13. 24-27, he will find that they all relate to the same coming, and describe the same scenes. "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles (or nations), until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled," at which period the Son of Man shall be seen coming in the clouds of heaven. But it appears from Romans, 11. 25, &c., that the conversion and restoration of the Jews do not take place "till the fulness of the Gentiles be come in," i. e. the completion of the times of the Gentiles.‡

The period during which the nations, in the exercise of their political sovereignty, should oppose a barrier to the kingdom of God, the time of the continuance of the great systems of political dominion which Daniel saw in vision, and described as the four empires successively to arise in the world, during which the kingdom of God would be delayed, and the saints be subjected to the control and tyranny of the man of the earth. The words are, ἄχρις οὗ τὸ πλήρωμα τῶν ἐθνῶν εἰσέλθῃ. Bloomfield says πλήρωμα is best explained as equivalent to πλῆθος τῶν ἐθνῶν (as opposed to