princes of the earth, of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks, all of them fatlings of Bashan. And ye shall eat fat till ye be full, and drink blood till ye be drunken, of my sacrifice which I have sacrificed for you. Thus ye shall be filled at my table with horses and chariots, with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord God."

The battle itself is briefly noted:-" And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against Him that sat on the horse, and against His army. And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone. And the remnant were slain with the sword of Him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of His mouth : and all the fowls were filled with their flesh" (Rev. xix. 19–21).

There are two parties here-1. The Beast; 2. The kings of the earth. Each have their armies. Although they are warring against each other, as we learn from Daniel xi. 40, yet both are warring against Christ. "The false prophet" has no armies, and therefore is not mentioned amongst the warriors, although he is included in the destruction. This beast is the King of the South of Daniel xi. 40; and is the Latin kingdoms, with France at their head. The kings of the earth are the King of the North of the same prediction in Daniel, and the confederate nations of Ezekiel xxxviii., with Gog at their head,

"The beast was taken" (émiáo On-was seized by human hands), "and with him the false prophet." This is the first catastrophe of that last contest. Their judgment is to be cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone. This part of it must be God's judgment: "Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." Of the nature of that fire we have no further revelation than that it is torment unutterable. We learn from "the rich man and Lazarus " that it is not necessary to interpret it of bodily torments, for the rich man's body was in the grave.

The kings of the earth and their armies are slain by the judgment of Christ. We learn from Isaiah ix. 4, 5, that they are to destroy each other, which is illustrated by Ezekiel xxxviii. 21, and Haggai ii. 22.

They are then left as a feast to the birds of prey, as is so graphically described in Ezekiel xxxix.

Isaiah gives us a brief declaration of the same scenes: -"And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth. And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited" (Isa. xxiv. 21, 22).

"The high ones that are on high" are the devil and his angels. "The kings of the earth upon the earth" are the two parties mentioned in the Apocalypse. All three parties are shut up in the pit (the New Testament abyss) for many days-i.e., the thousand years of Revelation xx., and the many days of Ezekiel xxxviii. 8.

Truly awful is this picture of the closing scenes of the times of the Gentiles. The destruction of Jerusalem was a terrible scene; but let us endeavour to picture to ourselves those innumerable hosts filling the Holy Land, first destroying the Latin armies and then each other, until the whole land becomes one charnel-house. After that,

Rome with her awful destruction, and then years of anarchy-the devil raging because his time is short—all ́constituting a time of trouble such as has never yet been seen. How little we realise the fact that it is so near to us! So many false guesses have been made, that it is no wonder that men should hesitate to accept any new dates. If I have not written in vain, I hope I have brought forward Scriptural evidence of the truth of what is here deduced from Scripture. Oh! how earnestly we should pray for the blessed period of peace! How earnestly should our hearts always say, "Lord Jesus, come quickly!"

RECAPITULATION.

Ir will not be unprofitable to condense into one view the dealings of God with the Gentiles as gathered from the Scriptures and illustrated by human history. That the Gentiles have a probationary season in which God is directly dealing with them, we have from our Lord himself. God's direct dealing with Gentiles in the way of direct revelation commenced with Nebuchadnezzar. His threefold confession to God and His truth was publicly proclaimed as the law of the empire. Belshazzar forfeited empire

because he praised the gods of gold. Darius made the worship of the God of heaven at Jerusalem the law of his empire. In both empires Daniel was prime minister, and in Babylon the head of the teachers of religion. For those times six chapters of Daniel were written in the Gentile language of religion and (probably) of literature. They formed a sort of Gentile Bible, revealing the coming of the Son of man and the persecution of the saints. They spoke also of the course and duration of Gentile empire, resulting in the kingdom of the Son of man.

During the Grecian times a farther revelation was made, for the whole Scriptures were translated into the universal language of literature, and if not all of them, certainly the Pentateuch was publicly placed in the Alexandrian library. Throughout the empire Jewish synagogues, planted in every city, preached Moses (Acts xv. 21).

The Roman Empire after no long time became Christian; the greater part of the New Testament was written for Gentiles. The Apocalypse is God's revelation to His Gentile servants for the things which were shortly to come to pass. I say, His Gentile servants, for when that revelation was given God had no recognised servants but Gentiles. In that wonderful revelation are sketched the outlines of Gentile history down to the second advent. From chap. viii. onwards we have in symbolic visions a clear view of the chastisements and fall of the Western Empire, and of the Saracenic and Turkish plagues on Eastern Christendom. In chap. xi., xii., and xiii., we have the paganised state of the whole visible Church, accompanied by the faithful testimony of God's witnesses, the per

secutions by Popery, and the united persecutions by Imperialism and the Papacy. We have then a sketch of our own times and of modern history, from the outburst of the French Revolution to the awful events which are now impending.

If it please God to give success to this attempt to set forth His truth, I shall follow up this tract with others upon the further revelation of the 1290 and 1335 days of the millennial kingdom and of the final glory.

Blessed Jesus! blessed Jesus! accept this effort to set Thee forth, and to bring men to the better knowledge of Thee. In Thy light make us to see light, and hasten the day when we shall be satisfied, awaked in Thy likeness.

OUTLINE OF CHRONOLOGICAL PERIODS.

GREAT PERIOD of 2520 Years-i.e., THE SEVEN TIMES OF

NEBUCHADNEZZAR.

First year of Nebuchadnezzar jointly with his father,* B.C. 623
Destruction of Gog,

A.D. 1896

(Including both those years), 2520

* Ezekiel, writing under the Babylonian monarchy, gives a double date, which makes the fifth year of Jehoiachin's captivity coincident with the thirtieth year of an era unnamed. That era must have been the date when Babylon became free from Nineveh.

Nebuchadnezzar ruled alone for seven years before Jehoiachin's captivity, for it was in his eighth year that Jehoiachin was taken to Babylon (2 Kings χείν. 12).

Nebuchadnezzar appears to have reigned jointly with his father Nabo. polassar for some years. His whole sole reign was forty-three years, and he probably ruled with his father for seventeen years. This I take to be the reason of dating from the first year of his joint-reign, which is the date given above.