This is tape two of Preterism Refuted, excerpts from E.B. Eliot's Horae Apocalypticae, or a commentary on the Apocalypse, the four-volume set available from Stillwater's Revival Books at www.swrb.com, by email at swrb at swrb.com, or by phone at 780-450-3730. Please note that these tapes are not copyrighted, and we therefore encourage you to copy and distribute them to whomever you deem would benefit. We resume our reading of Israel's being represented as a nation by the figure of a woman, and accordingly how the age of the nation was represented metaphorically by the age of a woman. And Eliot says in a footnote, a similar chronological proportion of scale, if I may so say, between the personifying symbol and nation symbolized is observable in Isaiah 54, verses 4 and 6, Jeremiah 2, verse 2, and 48, 11, Ezekiel 23, 3, Hosea 2, verse 15, and so forth. Even where the representative symbol is not a person or animal, it may yet have its own scale of time appropriate to the mutations figuratively ascribed to it in the picture or poem. And if so, this is observed and applied. So, for example, in symbolizations under the figure of a flower or a longer-lived tree in their state of growth and decline. Indeed, even in symbolizations by wholly inanimate objects, a similar observance of the fit scale of time may be often seen. So, for example, in Horace's symbolization of the Roman nation and its civil wars, under the figure of a storm-tossed ship returning into port, where the briefer storm represents the longer civil commotions. Returning to the text, bearing this in mind, when we turn to a prophecy like that of the ten-horned beast under consideration, and find from the parallel vision in Daniel that it represents the last of the four great empires of the world, each of long duration, in its last and most largely described and most remarkable form, the simple fact of the miniature proportion of time attaching to Ezekiel's symbol, in the example of miniature symbolization just referred to, might reasonably, I think, have induced suspicion, even a priori, I mean previous to the time of the fourth empire passing into the form to which the chronological period of the 1260 days had referenced. that these 1260 days, a term in its literal sense, not inappropriate as predicated of a symbolic beast's time of chief vigor, might yet be intended to figure some much longer time as that of the empire symbolized. And concerning Daniel's vision, Eliot says in the footnote, Daniel 7, verse 17 and 23, quoting them, these great beasts are four kings which shall arise out of the earth. Then again, verse 23, the fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth. We may observe here the interchange of kings and kingdoms in the angel's explanation. Both Dr. Maitland and Dr. Berg are somewhat indignant at the year-day interpreters expounding the ten horns of the apocalyptic beast as ten kingdoms, whereas the angel says, these are ten kings that shall arise. The precedent above given might have satisfied them. In Daniel 7.17 says Jesenius, Kings stands for kingdoms. Moving down a bit then, besides which prophetic precedent, in the section just omitted, there was the famous parallel case of the prophet Ezekiel's symbolic representation of years by days during the selfsame Babylonish captivity in which Daniel's prophecies were delivered. We read that in the fifth year of Jehoiachin's captivity, B.C. 594, Having been solemnly instituted to the prophetic office, Ezekiel was directed to make known to his fellow exiles by the river Khebar, near the Euphrates, both the impending fate of Jerusalem, then soon about to be besieged, together with its last king Zedekiah by the forces of the king of Babylon, and also God's reason for the judgment. With which object he was to exhibit, sketched on a tile, a picture of Jerusalem as besieged by the enemy. himself lying prostrate with his face toward the pictured city, first three hundred ninety days on his left side, then forty days upon his right side, and being restricted all the while to what was almost a famine diet, like the poor Jews whom he thus represented, shut up under the straightness of the siege in Jerusalem. But wherefore this abandonment of them by God to sufferings such as he exhibited in the character of their representative, and wherefore these particular and prolonged periods of his prostrate attitude, Thou shalt lie upon my left side, it was said, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it. For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred ninety days. So shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And when thou hast accomplished them, thou shalt lie again on my right side, and shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days. I have appointed thee each day for a year. It seems a little doubtful what the Prophet's prostrate posture was to designate, whether Israel's long previous debasement and idolatry, or its then present and long future prostration of helplessness, distress, and punishment. But however that might be, this is expressly stated that the number of days he was to lie signified the number of years of Israel's sin or punishment, a day on the symbolic man's part, a year on the part of the nation symbolized. This was surely a very remarkable example of the year-day principle in an act of symbolization by God's prophet, and all in accordance with my primary argument drawn from the propriety of a miniature measure of time in case of a miniature type or symbol as of an individual for a nation. How indeed could Ezekiel have lain 390 years recumbent? Add to this the principle observed in the divinely ordained Jewish institutions of parallelizing certain periodical festivals of days by similar periodical festivals of years. For example, the seventh Sabbath day by the seventh Sabbath year in Leviticus 25.3. Besides other more particular analogies, and he says in the footnote, especially in the case of the spies, Numbers 14.34, after the number of the days in which she searched the land, even forty days Each day for a year shall you bear your iniquities, even forty years, the days having reference to the representative individuals, the years to the nation. This case is, of course, not a direct or complete one to our point. Presuming the ten spies to have indulged in unbelief all the forty days of their travelling through Canaan, a supposition not improbable, and the body of the Israelites to have maintained the same murmuring, unbelieving spirit during the forty years in the wilderness, so as indeed is stated in the passage, forty years long was I grieved, and so forth, then the forty days' sin of the representatives might perhaps be said to have figured the forty years' sin of the people represented. But according to the account in Scripture, it seems rather a proportion between the times of the sin and of the punishment. Israel, by assenting to the spies' unbelief, took on itself their forty days' sin, and was sentenced in consequence to forty years' punishment. Let me take occasion to allude to a prophecy generally overlooked, that in Isaiah chapter 20, verses 2 and 3, as perhaps involving the year-day principle. The Lord spake to Isaiah, Go, loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from my foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot. And the Lord said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign, On Egypt and on Ethiopia, so shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians and Ethiopians captives. Now it appears that it was in three years that the Assyrians were to conquer and enslave Egypt. And if the reader will consult Vetringa or other critics, for example some in the Criticae Sacrae, on the passage, he will find that the meaning of verse three may be that Isaiah walked barefoot for a sign of three years, or of what was to happen in or for three years to Egypt. And Betringa makes the suggestion, in which Dr. A. Clark follows him, that Isaiah may probably have walked three days on the year-day principle in symbol of the three years. An example of a different kind occurs in Amos 4, verse 4, a passage thus translated in our authorized version, Bring your tithes after three years, compare Deuteronomy 14, 28, but in which the original is, After three of days. We return to the text, and I'll read the first part of that sentence again. Add to this the principle observed in the divinely ordained Jewish institutions of parallelizing certain periodical festivals of days by similar periodical festivals of years, for example, the seventh Sabbath day by the seventh Sabbath year, in Leviticus 25.3. Besides other more particular analogies, And we shall see how natural it must have been for the Jews to suppose that Daniel's period of the 70 Hebdomads meant Hebdomads of years if they did not mean Hebdomads of days. The same, of course, as regards his other great prophetic periods reaching to the consummation. More especially those with which we are here more immediately concerned of the 1260 days. They too might seem similarly susceptible of explanation in the sense of a day for a year. and skipping just a bit to Roman numeral two, objections to the year-day principle as applied to the prophecies in question. Of these objections, some are more direct, some, indeed the chief part, indirect. They may, with advantage, be considered separately. And of the direct, let me first mention Dr. S. R. Maitland's general objection to arguments such as I have urged primarily, drawn from the propriety of a lesser time in a miniature symbol, being made figurative of a larger time in the real thing symbolized. The objection, which seemed not a little obscure and enigmatic in the first instance, and indeed still seems so, was in fine thus elaborated by its author. Quote, quoting Maitland, you take, if I may so speak, the word goat to mean the thing goat, and the thing goat to represent the thing king. But you take the word day not to represent the thing day, but at once to represent the thing year. And this is precisely the point which distinguishes the case from that of Ezekiel." But this representation rests altogether on misapprehension. Our reasoning in explaining the prophecies under consideration is in fact not different, but precisely the same as in explaining Ezekiel's precedents, alike the general one first cited by me, and that too to which Dr. M. alludes in particular. For just as, on the woman symbolizing Israel, the woman's youth of short duration was used to symbolize the nation's youth of long duration, and as, on Ezekiel symbolizing Israel, his 390 days of prostration figured Israel's 390 years of prostration, whether in sin or punishment, so, on the hypothesis of the beast symbolizing Antichrist and Antichristendom, we contend that the 1260 days predicated of the beasts being in power were meant to figure 1260 years as the duration in supremacy and power of the empire of Antichrist. And skipping a bit, he says again, As to Ezekiel's precedent also, I must add that it has been objected that it was a symbolic representation of the past, not of the future. But this we have seen as doubtful. nor even admitting it to be so, can I see how this affects our inference from the example as marking out the use of the year-day principle by God's prophets in symbolizations of time. Skipping a bit again, next, as to the indirect objections of objectors, more especially those set forth by Dr. S. R. Maitland, these have reference to the novelty of the system, to the differences and the unsatisfactoriness of apocalyptic expositions based on it, and to certain insuperable difficulties with regard to historical facts which he asserts to be necessarily involved in it. First, the novelty of the year-day principle of interpretation has won altogether unknown in the Christian Church from the days of Daniel to those of Wycliffe. The statement thus broadly made was a little, though but little, qualified in a later publication by Dr. Maitland. with the which, however, I was unacquainted till after I had made my own researches to ascertain the correctness of his assertion. This qualification, and the modified yet still strong assertion of the novelty of the year-day principle in Dr. M's latest publication on the subject, shall in due course be noticed. For the present, I think it best to lay the facts of the case, as they presented themselves in the course of my inquiry, before the reader. And it is, I believe, the fact that, for the first four centuries, The days of Antichrist's duration, given in Daniel and the apocalyptic prophecies, were interpreted literally as days and not as years by the fathers of the Christian Church. This was, however, as a little while since intimated, only according to the Lord's declared intention that, not knowing the times and the seasons, the disciples might so, even whilst his advent was far off, watch as in near expectation of it. And I've omitted the sections that he's referring to where he explains this more fully. as I believe his interpretation, that is, the idea that Christ's disciples in all times and all ages and all places must always have in mind and be ready for his imminent second coming, arises from his erroneous premillennial view, and are not so much derived from but foisted upon the text. And thus, just as down to the fall of Jerusalem the early Christians, perhaps viewing the Jewish false Christs as the initiatory fulfillment of the prophecies of Antichrist, anticipated that catastrophe as what would immediately precede their Lord's coming. So their successors in the Church looked perpetually for the disruption of the Roman Empire into ten kingdoms as a sign of its near approach, that disruption being looked to by them as what would mark the time of Antichrist's revelation, and in accordance with the literal interpretation of the prophetic periods as the forerunner at only three and a half years' interval of the coming of the Son of Man. Such was the expectation of Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius, Cyril, Chrysostom, Jerome, in fine of the fathers generally, until Augustine. But just when the breaking up of the Roman Empire had begun, Augustine, though not differing from his predecessors in the expectation of a personal Antichrist, destined to continue in power for three and a half literal years, did yet apply to the ten-horned apocalyptic anti-Christian beast another and secondary meaning, which involved an interpretation of the three-and-a-half years predicated of that beast's duration quite different from the literal, and on a scale greatly enlarged. For he expounded it to symbolize the whole body of unbelievers, whether in open profession or in heart, who, under the guidance of many antichrists or anti-Christian teachers, constituted that impious state and kingdom which ever has been, and ever will be, opposed to Christ's people and kingdom in this world, that which in his time had already lasted near four hundred years reckoned from the time of Christ's ministry and death, and would comprehend also, as he expounded, within its period of duration all that remained of time to the world's end. This his view of the apocalyptic beast was perpetuated in after ages, and chiefly by those who followed him as their master. Thus Tychonius, or else his interpolator in the fifth century, in one passage repeats, unless indeed it was the original of, Augustine's exposition of the beast, in another expounds the twelve hundred sixty days to signify the whole period from Christ's sufferings to the end of the world, in another, and with regard to the time times and half a time, suggests that by a time may be understood either a year or a hundred years. The latter scale of measurement being so adjusted probably as to bring down the ending to near his own days. Again, Primacius, an Augustinian of the 6th century, explains the 42 months, 1260 days, and time times and half a time as specially designating the time of Antichrist's last persecution, yet generally signifying also the whole time of the duration of the Church. The same is the mystical as well as literal interpretation given of the 1260 days or its equivalent periods by Andreas, Bishop of Caesarea, probably of the middle of the 6th century, by the venerable Bede of the 8th century, by Ambrose Ansberth of the 9th century, and by Baron Gogh, the Benedictine monk, and Bruno Estensis in the 11th and 12th. So that in fact we have almost a catena of expositors from the 5th to the 12th century advocating a certain mystical meaning, though not the one we contend for, as well as a literal meaning to the beast's period of the 1260 days. And moreover, very remarkably, though they did not in regard of this particular period suggest the mystical meaning that we argue for, and apply to the 1260 days the year-day scale of enlargement, yet with regard to another smaller apocalyptic period, that is, the three-and-a-half days of Revelation 11.8, they did nearly all, and after them sundry others also, both apply and argue for it. Alike Tychonius and his near-contemporary Prosper, Primacius and Ambrose Ansberg, Hamo, and Baringo, and Bruno Avasti." And he gives a bunch of citations below. In which citations it will be seen that Tychonius supports this view of the three-and-a-half days of the apocalyptic witnesses lying dead, meaning three-and-a-half years, from considerations of the improbability of that being done within the city in three-and-a-half days, which is said to have been done during the time of these witnesses lying dead, that is, its inhabitants sending gratulatory gifts to each other, and so forth, when, almost before the gifts could be sent, the witnesses would have risen. That Primacius and Ambrose Ansbert refer, by way of corroboration, to the case of the forty years judgment on Israel in the matter of the spies, a year for a day, as it was said, and that Haimo and Bruno Avasti justify it by the parallel case of Ezekiel lying on his side three hundred ninety days to signify three hundred ninety years, that is, a day for a year. besides whom both Cyprian and his biographer Pontius, apparently in the third century, and Theodoret, unquestionably about the middle of the fifth century, adopted and applied the year-day principle to quite other prophetic periods. The former, in reference to a day's respite of Cyprian's martyrdom, promised to the saint in vision, which he interpreted, rightly interpreted, as the event proved, to signify a year. The latter, one of the most learned of all the Greek fathers, with reference to Daniel's prophecy of the 70 Hebdomads. For these Hebdomads, Deodorant assumes to mean primarily and literally Hebdomads of days, but on the year-day principle explains them to signify Hebdomads of years, that is, the 490 years that the Jewish law would continue in force from the time of the decree going forth for the rebuilding of Jerusalem to the abrogation of the law by Messiah. I have only to add that the famous Joachim Abbas, near the close of the twelfth century in his apocalyptic commentary, applies the principle to another apocalyptic period, that is, that predicated of the scorpion locusts, explaining their 150 days to mean very possibly 150 years. Also, the 42 months of the witnesses prophesying in sackcloth he explains as so many generations, which on his defined scale of 30 years to a generation makes 1260 years, answering to the symbolic witness's 1260 days, a calculation evidently applied by him also to the 1260 days of the woman's wilderness sojourning and the beast's 1260 days of power. Thus, instead of the novelty of the year-day principle, as at first in the strongest and most unqualified terms asserted by Dr. Maitland, or even as afterwards asserted by him in terms somewhat modified yet still very strong, I mean subsequently to his controversy with the Morning Watch, which was a periodical, evidently, we find the following to have been the facts of the case, that from Cyprian's time, near the middle of the third century, even to the times of Joachim and the Waldenses in the twelfth century, there was kept up by a succession of expositors in the Church a recognition of the precise year-day principle of interpretation, and its application made, not without consideration and argument, to one and another of the chronological prophetic periods of days, including the shorter one of those that were involved in the prophecies respecting Antichrist, though not so far to that of the 1260 predicted days of Antichrist's duration. I must not forget to add that, in illustration of the asserted novelty of the year-day principle of prophetic explanation, the authority of Jewish rabbis has been appealed to, as well as that of Christian patristic and middle-aged writers. And Dr. Todd has expressed himself as to the non-existence of any such Jewish rabbinical authority with as much confidence as Dr. Maitland about patristic and middle-aged Christian authority. He says, where, I may ask, is the evidence that the Jews or anybody else in the 12th century believed the days in Daniel's prophecy to mean years? But the reply of historic fact is as much against Dr. Todd on this point as against Dr. Maitland on the other. Mr. Faber has urged, and not without much reason for his opinion, that there is probable evidence in a Talmudic comment on Micah 5, verses 2 and 3, to show that certain rabbis of the Talmud as early as the second and third centuries of the Christian era recognized the year-day principle as one applicable to symbolic prophecies in Scripture. And if we pass from them to the more learned Jewish rabbis of the twelfth, thirteenth, and following centuries, we shall find the same principle distinctly adopted and affirmed first by the famous Sa'edia Gaon and Solomon Yarchai, next by Abarbanel, and a complete succession of other Jewish doctors down even to our own times." And he gives a number of details in another footnote. Thus the charge of novelty of interpretation proves on examination to apply to the anti-yearday critics rather than to those who advocate the yearday principle in prophecy such as those under consideration. And the question which has been urged with so much air of triumph against the latter may, with but a little change of expression, be urged against the former. Where, for fourteen centuries, down even to the Reformation among Christian interpreters, and also, with scarce an exception among Jewish, can there be shown a single protest against the year-day principle, though thus from earliest antiquity applied to certain Scripture prophecies as we have seen, both by the one and the other? 2. I turn to Dr. Maitland's second class of objections, such as have reference to the discrepancies and the unsatisfactoriness of apocalyptic expositions based on the year-day principle of interpretation. In illustration of the greatness of these discrepancies, Dr. M. contrasts in particular the very different solutions proposed by some of the more popular expositors of the year-day school, both of the six first seals and of the prophecy of the two witnesses' death and resurrection. in the which Mr. Berg follows him, and enlarges further on the discrepancy and variety of the lists of ten papal kingdoms alleged by them to answer to the beast's ten horns. And undoubtedly, on the two former points, the differences are great. But is it clear that the year-day principle is the real cause of the difference, or that the day-day principle of interpretation contains within itself a preservative against such differences and a guarantee, on main points at least, of uniformity of sentiment? why the differences between interpreters on the day-day principle are so mighty and so fundamental that it seems perfectly amazing how a writer of the acuteness and learning of Dr. S. R. Maitland should have ever put forward a criterion of interpretive truth that so recoils against his statement and his theory. First, there will strike the inquirer, as he considers the matter in this point of view, the primary and grand division of the day-dayists into those of the preterist and those of the futurist schools. The one declaring confidently that the whole of the apocalyptic prophecy, or nearly all, was fulfilled ages ago. The others, as confidently, that it all waits its fulfillment in the events of a yet unrealized future. A difference, of course, affecting the views of seals, witnesses, beasts, everything. Nor can the disciples of either day school agree among themselves. Of the Preterists, for example, there is one large subdivision represented by those who suppose a special reference to the times of Nero or Domitian and of Jerusalem's destruction by Titus, a class comprehending the chief of the most noted modern German expositors as Eichhorn, Ewald, Heinrichs, Hug, Moses Stuart, while another large subdivision of which Boswe is the chief representative and to which Bishop Wiseman, I believe, thinks it safest for the Romanists to entrust themselves in their cause refers to the chronology of that part of the apocalyptic prophecy which concerns Rome to the era of Diocletian and Julian, and of that which is thought to concern Jerusalem to the wars of Trajan and Hadrian against the Jews. The same, too, as regards the Futurists, with whom I am more particularly concerned in this present discussion. Thus, to exemplify from four of the most eminent among them, Doctors Maitland, Berg, Todd, and the Oxford Tractator on Antichrist, Let us compare their several views respecting the beast Antichrist and his empire, the saints noted as the object of his persecution, and the fated territorial scene of the dominion. And behold, first, whereas the Oxford Tractator and Berg, in accordance with all the old fathers, agree that Daniel's fourth beast out of which Antichrist was to rise, or his equivalent, the apocalyptic beast, is most assuredly the Roman Empire. but that its decoupled division, answering to the ten toes of the iron legs of the symbolic image and ten horns of the beast, has not yet taken place. The beast itself, however, or Roman Empire, being still perpetuated and in existence, doctors Maitland and Todd, on the other hand, contend that the fourth great prophetic empire, answering to the iron legs of the quadripartite image and the fourth of the four prefigurative beasts, is yet to come. Dr. Maitland, moreover, affirming that it is as clear as a thing can be clear that the Roman Empire has long ceased to exist, and that nothing but, quote, the exigency of system can make, quote, writers of commentaries on the prophecies affirm gravely the contrary. Also, that he expects the Antichrist to arise not out of the geographical platform of the Roman Empire proper, but out of one of the four divisions of Alexander's Greek kingdom. Whereas the Oxford Tractarian, agreeably with the general voice of the fathers, would have the saints against whom Antichrist would direct his persecutions, that is, the Antichrist prefigured by Daniels and the apocalyptic beast, to signify the faithful of the Christian Church without any reference to the Jewish nation. Messrs. Maitland and Berg unite in explaining them to mean preeminently and primarily the converted Jews. 3. Whereas Dr. Maitland observes sarcastically on, quote, the little world that has been made on purpose, close quote, that is, by the year-day expositors, for the scene of Antichrist's reign and so forth, that is, quote, the Roman Western imperial papal habitable earth, close quote, he himself regarding it as the whole mundane globe, Mr. Berg supposes the prophetic earth spoken of in the visions of the trumpet and the two witnesses, to be the yet smaller land of Judea. Nay, and Dr. M. himself suicidally explains the self-same phrase, all the earth, in Daniel 2.39 as the Roman world. Indeed, even as regards Daniel's Hebdomads, they are at the antipodes of each other. For, while Drs. Maitland, McCall, and others consider this prophetic period to have been fulfilled in the sense of seventy-sevens of years at Christ's first coming and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem, Dr. Todd regards it as a prophecy of seventy-sevens of days, and as yet to be fulfilled, near the time of Christ's second coming. Among later novelties of difference we find Mr. C. Maitland, the day-deist, affirming the apocalyptic Babylon to be papal Rome as it has been, while Mr. Berg and others affirm that it means Rome only as it has not been, and Mr. J. Kelly declaring that the rider of the white horse in the first seal is Antichrist, Mr. W. Kelly that it certainly is not Christ, while nearly all the rest of their brethren declare it, as certainly, to be Christ. But it is quite needless to enlarge further. What has been said will, I think, suffice to show that although the differences may have been great among year-day interpreters, the day-day system has proved, to say the least, a principle of union no whit more successful. As to the alleged unsatisfactoriness of former year-day commentaries, both on the points alluded to and many others, a view of them in which I of course more or less agree, the objection does not affect the present commentary. It must be judged of its own merits. I have certainly myself no fear of defectiveness of evidence being fairly proved against it. In a subsequent chapter, I shall have to present a general summary of its evidence. For the present, let me only observe in reference to those two selfsame particular prophecies on which Dr. Maitland has dwelt as furnishing the most characteristic specimens of the unsatisfactoriness of the year-day expositions, I mean the six first seals and the death and resurrection of the witnesses, that I am perfectly content they should be made the primary tests of my own, as well as that, too, of the beast Antichrist and his adjuncts as described in the Apocalypse, on which Dr. M. also insists as exhibiting the failure of year-day expositors. I would only desire, in order to the more thorough completeness of the trial, that a double testing process should be applied to my historical expositions of the three prophecies, and that the examiner should not only look to detect flaws, if such there be, in the proposed solutions, but further consider if he could himself devise symbolic pictures that would so exactly figure what I have referred them to. At least let this second process be followed in testing the interpretation of the six first seals, it being that on which all the rest follows. I have myself tried it in the way I speak of, and I cannot but think that others like me will find, on doing so, that to devise a succession of symbolic representations so brief and simple, yet so complete and correct, alike in regard of historic fact and historic philosophy, chronological and national appropriateness of symbol, dramatic consignity, and the requirements of scriptural analogy in relation to the great subject which I assert them to have prefigured, is quite beyond their power. Thirdly, there are two historical difficulties that have been urged with great effect by Dr. Maitland against all explanation of the apocalyptic beast as symbolizing the Popedom, an explanation so essentially connected with the year-day system advocated by Protestants that it may be deemed part and parcel of it. The one has reference to the fact of many who are yet considered to have been Saints of Christ living and dying during the earlier centuries of the papacy in ignorance of the Popes being the predicted Antichrist. The other to the alleged necessary participation of all such, according to the same year-day interpretation, in the tremendous curse and perdition of Babylon itself. But with regard to the first, I would beg to ask, where is the declaration to be found in Scripture prophecy that so soon as Antichrist appeared, so soon he would be known and recognized by all Christ's saints as the predicted Antichrist? Or where is the statement made of his adopting from the very beginning of the 1260 days, so as Dr. Maitland asserts, such a course of violence and persecution of the saints as must necessarily and at once have forced upon them the recognition of him in his true character. The declaration in the Apocalypse is simply that power was given to him to prosper 42 months. The declaration in Daniel that the saints would be given into his hand for the equivalent period of a time, times, and half a time. Which last declaration implies indeed his authorized rule and domination over the saints, as well as over others, through all that period, and so the recognition by them of their political or ecclesiastical subjection to him, but it does not imply the exercise of his authority and power all the while against them in the way of active persecution and war. And he says in a footnote, Compare the force of the same expression in Daniel 2.38. Quote, Where soever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler of them all. Close quote. Returning to the text. On the contrary, from the prophetic account of the two witnesses, it might rather be inferred that, whereas the Gentiles or paganized Christians would tread the holy city throughout all the 1260 days, and consequently caused the testimony of the witnesses to be rendered by them all that time in sackcloth, yet it would not be till the period had considerably advanced that the beast, that is, Antichrist, would make war on them and their gospel-witnessing, and so force upon their notice this crowning feature of his anti-Christian character. Not unaccordant with which is the tenor of that other prediction that, quote, the image of the beast caused that as many as would not worship the beast's image should be killed. Four, the image being of course subsequent in time to the lamb-like beast that formed it, and the lamb-like beast's own rising subsequent in time to that of the first beast, the dicta and the acts of the image must a fortiori have been later than the commencement of the 1260 days of that first beast's reign. In fact, if my view be correct, that papal general counsels were meant by the image, nor do I fear anyone's disproving it, For as much as these were first formed only in the 12th century, they could not have embraced in their persecuting enactments any one of those three centuries, the 6th, 7th, and 8th, to which Dr. M. has most particularly referred as a period to which the absurdity applied of Christ's saints being persecuted even to death by Antichrist, yet not knowing him. This varying state of the saints during the 1260 years has been illustrated by comparison with that of Abraham's seed in the 400 predicted years of trial from Isaac to the Exodus. during all of which these latter were to be strangers, I might perhaps say dependents, in the land of their pilgrimage, but during a part only persecuted and oppressed, so as to have the bondage enter into their soul. Again, as to the temporary ignorance of the Pope's real character as Antichrist, we may perhaps not inappropriately compare it with the temporary ignorance of Jewish saints before them in regard of the character of Jesus as the Christ. For we know that for many years after Christ's birth, and for some even after his proclamation by John the Baptist in the opening of his ministry, there were sincere Israelites who so far failed to recognize him. In the one case, as in the other, the development of the evidence was to be gradual. Only it must be remembered that this temporary ignorance of the Pope's being the predicted Antichrist would not involve the reception of his anti-Christian doctrine insofar as regarded the essentials of the Christian faith. This, we know, could not be with the elect. And, in fact, we have seen reason to believe, on good historical evidence, that throughout the earlier, as well as later half of the 1260 years of papal domination, there were those who faithfully witnessed for Christ's doctrine, in contradistinction to that of him whom yet they knew not to be the predicted Antichrist. And also others, weaker in discernment, faith, and courage, such, for example, as the Carthusian monk mentioned at my page 68 above, who, like the seven thousand of the Lord's secret ones of old, were known to God, though not to man, as not bowing the knee to Baal. The second historical objection, one urged with even yet more force by Dr. Maitland against the year-day anti-papal view of the prophecy, is derived from that awful denunciation by the angel of Apocalypse 14. Quote, If any man worship the beast in his image, and receive his mark in his forehead or his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone, and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever. For he justly supposes that no year-day interpreter will be prepared to contend that among all that were visibly connected with Rome through the twelve hundred sixty years, there were none of God's saints. And then, after urging me in credibility, that when God had pronounced so heavy a curse on all that might worship the beast, or receive his mark, he should actually have concealed from his church that most important that the person or power whom they religiously believed to be their spiritual head, and the very vicar of Christ upon earth, whom under this view they received with reverent honour and worship, and whose mark they took upon them in simple faith that it was the seal of the living God, that this personage was indeed the beast, the great enemy of their God and Saviour." He states it as a necessary corollary of the year-day system, that all in past ages who did thus act must be supposed, a supposition doubtless incredible, to have received the beast's mark, and so, according to the prophecy, to have passed into perdition. I consider this to have been probably the most effective and influential of all Dr. Maitland's arguments. Yet how simple and complete the answer! It needs but to remember that the vision of that third angel and his warning voice has, of course, its proper chronological position in the prophecy, just as all the other prefigurative visions. and that this its position is at the very end of the predicted twelve hundred sixty years. For it follows after a declaration of the close impending fall of Babylon, and only a little before the sign of the coming of the Son of Man to judgment. Whence the inference that it prefigures a warning voice, probably even yet future, a warning to be given to such of God's saints as may be then in Babylon, and that such there will be even then appears from the parallel warning voice of another apocalyptic angel crying out come out of her my people that is in chapter 18 verse 4 precisely like what was given to Lot on the night before the destruction of Sodom and we might just as well argue that the anti-sodomitic angels implied denunciation against all who afterwards remained in Sodom that they would be consumed in the iniquity of the city It had reference to residents within it during the whole previous period of its flagrant wickedness, thus involving God's servant Lot himself in the tremendous catastrophe that followed, as to make the apocalyptic angels' curse embrace such as might have been residents in Babylon and non-recusant subjects of the papal beast, before ever the warning voice was uttered, and during the whole previous period of the beast's domination. The very basis of Dr. Maitland's argument seems to me to be nothing more nor less than an Besides that, as may be easily shown, his own futurist prophetic theory is just as liable to the objection as the historical. I have now, as I trust, either in the observations of the present section or in critical notices in other parts of my work, replied to almost every objection of consequence that has been urged either by Dr. Maitland or others against the year-day anti-papal scheme of apocalyptic interpretation. And assuming the aggressive, I might further abundantly corroborate the truth of my views on this subject by showing the essential inconsistency and unsoundness of that counter view of apocalyptic interpretation advocated by them, which would construe the 1260 days predicated of antichrist dominancy as simply so many days literally taken. But it would detain us too long. I must reserve it for the appendix in my last volume. Having seen, then, the irrecoverable blows dealt to preterism by showing the necessary date of Revelation's authorship and the scriptural year-day principle of prophetic interpretation, we now witness the climax of Eliot's victory against his tottering opponent in his critique of major points of the system itself. And so we now turn to the aforementioned appendix in Volume 4. This is the end of Side 1. Please turn the cassette over to continue listening. critical examination and refutation of the chief counter-schemes of apocalyptic interpretation, and also of Dr. Arnold's general prophetic counter-theory. It was stated at the conclusion of my sketch of the history of apocalyptic interpretation that there are at present two, and but two, grand general counter-schemes to what may be called the historic Protestant view of the apocalypse. that view which regards the prophecy as a prefiguration of the great events that were to happen in the church and world connected with it from Saint John's time to the consummation, including specially the establishment of the Popedom and reign of papal Rome as in some way or other the fulfillment of the types of the apocalyptic beast in Babylon. This view is also called historicism. The first of these two counter-schemes is the Preterists, which would have the prophecy stop altogether short of the Popedom explaining it of the catastrophes, one or both, of the Jewish nation and pagan Rome, and of which there are two sufficiently distinct varieties. The second, the Futurists, which in its original form would have it all shoot over the head of the Popedom into times yet future, and refer simply to the events that are immediately to precede or to accompany Christ's second advent, or, in its various modified forms, have them for its chief subject. I shall, in this second part of my appendix, proceed successively to examine these two, or rather four, anti-Protestant counter-schemes, and show, if I mistake not, the palpable untenableness alike of one and all. And as indicated, we'll here only be considering the reputation of Preterism. Skipping down a bit. Now, with regard to the Preterist scheme, on the review of which we are first to enter, it may be remembered that I stated it to have had its origin with the Jesuit Alcazar, and that it was subsequently, and after Grotius and Hammond's prior adoption of it, adopted and improved by Bossuet, the great papal champion, under one form and modification, then afterwards under another modification by Herrn Schneider, Eichhorn, and others of the German critical and generally infidel school of the last half-century, followed in our own era by Heinrichs and by Moses Stuart of the United States of America. The two modifications appear to have arisen mainly out of the differences of date assigned to the apocalypse, whether about the end of Nero's reign or Domitian's. I shall, I think, pretty well exhaust whatever can be thought to call for examination in the system by considering separately, first, the neurotic, or favorite, German form and modification of the Preterist scheme, as propounded by Eichhorn, Hug, Heinrichs, and Moses Stuart. Secondly, Boswe's Domitianic form, the one most generally approved, I believe, by Roman Catholics. First, then, examination and refutation of the German neurotic preterist apocalyptic counter-scheme. The reader has already been made acquainted with the main common features of this German form of the preterist apocalyptic scheme. Differing on points of detail, yet, with the exception that Hartwig and Herder pretty much confine themselves to the Jewish catastrophe, and Ewald, Bleeck, and DeWitt to that of a heathen Rome, it may generally be described as embracing both catastrophes, the fall of Judaism being signified under that of Jerusalem, the fall of heathenism under that of Rome. The one is drawn out in symbol from Apocalypse 6 to 11, inclusive, the other from Apocalypse 12 to 19, whereupon comes thirdly, in Apocalypse 20, a figuration of the triumph of Christianity. So, with certain differences, Herrn Schneider, Eichhorn, Hug, Heinrichs, and so forth in Germany, Moses Stewart in America, and in England, Dr. Davidson, In my review of the scheme, each of these two historic catastrophes, as supposed apocalyptically figured, will of course furnish matter for critical examination, not without reference to the apocalyptic date also, as in fact essentially mixed up with the historic question. But before entering on them, I think it may be well to premise a notice. First, on the generally vague, loose principle of prophetic interpretation professedly followed by the preterists. Considering the self-sufficient dogmatism which preeminently characterizes the school in question, even as if a priori to examination, all other schemes were to be deemed totally wrong, and the preterist scheme alone conformable to the discoveries and requirements of modern exegesis, a dogmatism the more remarkable when exhibited by a man of calm temperament and unimpassioned style like Professor Stewart, and which to certain weaker minds may seem imposing, the question is sure to arise What the grounds of this strange presumptuousness of tone? What the new and overpowering evidence in favor of the modern preterists? What the discovery of such unthought-of coincidence between the prophecy on the one hand and certain facts of their chosen neurotic era on the other as to settle the apocalyptic controversy in their favor at once and forever? And then the surprise is increased by finding that not only has no such discovery been made, not only no such discovery been even pretended to, but that in fact they put it forward as the very boast of the preterist system that coincidences exact in particular are not to be sought or thought of, that the three main ideas about the three cities, or three antagonist religions represented by them, so as above mentioned, are pretty much all that there is of fact to be unfolded, and that with certain exceptions, of which exceptions more in a later part of this review, all else is to be regarded as but the poetic drapery and ornament. Now in mere rationalists of the school, like Eichhorn and many others, men professedly disbelieving the inspiration of the apocalypse, all this is quite natural and consistent, seeing that its author wrote, they take for granted, as a mere dramatist and poet, and as to the details, what the limit ever assigned to a poet's fancy, except as his own taste or critical judgment might impose one. But that Christian expositors, like Professor Stewart and Dr. Davidson, men professing to believe in St. John's inspiration as a prophet, and to these I here chiefly refer, should deliberately so pronounce on the matter, so resolve even what seems most specific into generalizations, and what seems stated as fact into mere poetic drapery, will appear probably to my readers, as to myself, most astonishing. It is of course due to these writers to mark by what process of thought they arrive at this conclusion, and on what principle or by what reasons they have justified it to themselves. And, passing by the negative argument from the discrepancy and unsatisfactoriness of the historic detailed interpretations given by expositors who seek in the Apocalypse a prophetic epitome of the civil and ecclesiastical history of Christendom, as to which, wherever justly objected to, the remark was obvious that further research might very possibly supply what was wanting and rectify what was unsatisfactory, so as I hope has been done on various points in the present commentary, passing this, I say, The intended use and object of the Apocalypse, at the presumed time of its writing, will be found to have been that which mainly guided the learned American professor to the true principle of exegesis, as he designates it, whereby to interpret the book. For, argues he, during a persecution like Nero's, this being his supposed date of the Apocalypse, when the church was bleeding at every pore, and then he notes in a footnote that this was a favorite expression of Professor Stewart, And then he asks, but how does this idea square with what is intimated of the then state of the Laodicean church, thou sayest I am rich and increased with goods, and so forth? How could it take interest in information as to what was to happen in distant ages, excepting, of course, the final triumph of Christianity, or indeed as to anything but what concerned their own immediate age and pressure, whether in Judea or at Rome? Hence, then, to this the subject matter of the apocalypse must be regarded as confined. And whereas, on this exegetic hypothesis, scarce anything appears in the actual historic facts of the particular period or catastrophe in question, which can be considered as answering to the prophetic figurations in detail, therefore all idea of any such detailed and particular intent and meaning in these prophetic figurations must be set aside, and they must be regarded as the mere drapery and ornament of a poetic epopee, albeit by one inspired. As a scriptural precedent and justification for this generalizing view of the apocalyptic imagery, Psalm 18, which was David's song after his deliverance from Saul, and Isaiah 13, 14, on the fall of Babylon, the former more especially, are referred to and insisted on by the learned professor. But, reserving the subject of the apocalyptic date for a remark or two presently under my next head of argument, Let me beg here to ask, with reference to the very limited use and objects so assigned to the apocalyptic prophecy, as if only or chiefly meant for the Christians then living, by them to be understood, and by them applied in the way of encouragement and comfort, as announcing the issue of the trials in which they were then personally engaged, what right has Professor Stewart thus delimited? Was it not accordant with the character of God's revelations as communicated previously in scripture? especially in Daniel's prophecies, which are, of all others, the most nearly parallel with the Apocalypse, to foreshow the future in its continuity from the time when the prophecy was given, even to the consummation, and this not with the mere present object of comforting his servants then living, but for a perpetual witness to his truth, to be understood only partially, it might be, for generations, but fully in God's own appointed time? So, for example, in the Old Testament prophecies concerning Christ's first advent, prophecies which not only the Old Testament Jews, but even the disciples of Christ, understood most imperfectly, till Christ himself, after he had actually come, explained them. And so again in Daniel's prophecies, extending to the time of the end, which, until that time of the end, were expressly ordered to be sealed up. He says in a footnote, Daniel 12, 9, the sealing was evidently with reference to that part of prophecy which concerned the distant future. And then, next, What historic evidence have we of Christians of Nero's time having so understood the apocalypse as the American professor would have it that they must have done? Not a vestige of testimony exists to the fact of such an understanding, albeit quite general according to him among the more intelligent in the Christian body. On the contrary, the early testimony of Irenaeus, disciple to Polycarp, who was himself disciple to St. John, indicates a then totally different view of the apocalyptic beast from Professor Stewart's. as if the only one ever known to have been received, a view referring it, not to any previous persecution by Nero and the Roman Empire under him, but to an Antichrist even then future, one that was to arise and persecute the Church, not till the breaking up and reconstruction in another form of the old empire. Moreover, the whole that our professor would have to be shown by the Apocalypse, that is, the assured triumph of Christianity over both Judaism and paganism, I say this instead of being any new revelation specially suited to cheer Christians of the time, had been communicated in part by Daniel, in part by Christ himself, much more fully and particularly long before. And he says in a footnote, The only new point communicated, I believe, according to Stuart and Davidson, is the enigma about Nero as a head of the Roman beast, answering to a certain mystic number, and this indeed no discovery of the future about him, but only a riddle for the time then present. As to the Professor's grand precedent of Psalm 18, urged again and again in justification of his explaining away nearly all the more particular symbolizations of the Apocalypse, as if mere poetic drapery and ornament, is the parallel a real one, or the argument from it valid? Says the Professor, see, though the subject of the Psalm be at the heading declared to be David's deliverance from Saul, yet under what varied imagery this is set forth, How, in depicting them, David makes the earth to shake and tremble, and the smoke to go forth from God's nostrils, and his thunderings to be heard in the heaven, and his lightning shot forth to discomfort the enemy. All mere poetical ornament, not particularly circumstantial fact, much less fact in chronological order and development. But, let me ask, does the psalmist profess as his very object to tell the facts that had occurred in the period of David's suffering from Saul? so as the apocalyptic revealing angel does to tell the things of the coming future? Or with any such orderly division and arrangement for chronological development of facts, as in the singularly artificial apocalyptic division into its three septenaries of seals, trumpets, and vials, each of the latter subordinate evidently to the former, and the various chronological periods so carefully interwoven? Again, as to the symbolizations in the psalm, is Professor Stewart quite sure that they refer only to David and Saul, and that David is not carried forward in the Spirit beyond his own times and his own experience, to picture forth the future triumphs of a greater David over a greater Saul, triumphs not to be accomplished in fine without very awful elemental convulsions and the visible and glorious interposition of the Almighty? Surely what is said in verse 43 of his, the chief intended David's, quote, being made the head of the heathen, close quote, tells with sufficient clearness that such is indeed the true exegesis of the psalm. And so most expositors of repute, I believe, explain it. If the testing is to be by a real parallel, let Daniel's orderly prophecies of the quadripartite image and the four beasts be resorted to, to settle the question of exegesis. Is all there figured relative only to Daniel's own time, and all else mere poetic ornament and drapery? So much on the general exegetic principles of the German Preterist school. Let me now proceed, secondly, to consider these preterists' historical solution, including especially the two grand catastrophes laid down by them as the two main particulars unfolded in the apocalypse, and show as I trust, both in respect of the one and the other, the many and indubitable marks of error stamped upon it. Of course, the neurotic date is an essential preliminary to this scheme in the minds of all preterist expositors who, like M. Stewart and Dr. Davidson, admit the apostolicity and inspiration of the book, and as I venture to think that I have in my first volume completely proved that the true date is Domitianic, agreeably with Irenaeus' testimony, not Neuronic or Galbaic, that single fact may in such case be of itself deemed conclusive against the theory. Nor, let me add, in case of non-infidel Preterists only, For the very strong opinion as to the sublimity and surpassing aesthetic beauty of the Apocalypse admitted by the German neologians, Eichhorn inclusive, as the result of the similarian controversy, compared with the utter inferiority of all Church writers of the nearest later date, does, even on rationalistic principles, almost involve the inference of St. John's authorship, especially as coupled with the fact of the apocalyptic writer's assumption of authority over the Asiatic bishops he addressed, and the air of truth, holiness, and honesty that all through mark his character. Which admitted, and also as by Icorn, the Domitianic as the true date, even a rationalist like him must, I think, be prepared to admit the high improbability of such a writer making pretense to prophesy a certain catastrophe about Nero and Rome, and another certain catastrophe about Jerusalem, as if things then future, when in fact the one had happened thirty the other twenty-five years before. whence the baselessness, even on rationalistic principles, of the whole neurotic-preterist scheme. But we will now proceed more in detail to the examination of the two catastrophes separately. And first, as to the catastrophe of Judaism and Jerusalem, depicted in the figurations from Apocalypse 6 to 11, inclusive. Argues Professor Stewart, as abstracted in brief, thus, It is for some considerable time not unfolded who the enemy is against whom the rider of the white horse in the first seal has gone forth conquering, followed by his agencies of war, famine, and pestilence, him against whom the cry is raised of the Christian martyrs slain under the fifth seal, and the revolution of whose political state is evidently the subject of seal the sixth. But in Apocalypse 7 the enemy meant is intimated. For when it is stated that 144,000 are sealed by way of protection out of all the tribes of Israel, meaning evidently those that have been converted from among the Jews to Christianity, it follows clearly that it is the unsealed ones of those tribes, or unconverted Jews, forming the great body of Israel that are the destined objects of destruction. A view this quite confirmed in Apocalypse 11, where the inner temple is measured as that which is not to be ejected, this meaning that whatever was spiritual in the Jewish religion was to be preserved in Christianity. while the rest, or mere external parts of the system, as well as the holy city Jerusalem itself, was to be abandoned and trodden down." So substantially, Professor Stewart, and so too his prototype, Icorn, and his English follower, Dr. Davidson. This is the strength of their first part, the details of seals and trumpets being of course little more in this system than intimations of something awful attending or impending, altogether general, or indeed perhaps mere poetic drapery and costume. Let us then try its strength where it professes to be strongest. The enemy to be destroyed, it is said, was shown to be the Jews, because it was the Jewish tribes, all but the sealed few from out of them, that were to have the tempest of the four winds let loose on them, and because it was the Jewish temple, all but the inner and measured part of it, that was to be abandoned to the Gentiles. Let us test this conclusion by the threefold test of what is shown. First, as to the intent of the Jewish symbolic scenery elsewhere in the apocalypse. Secondly, as to the religious profession of the people actually destroyed in the trumpet judgments. Thirdly, as to the intended people's previous murder of Christ's two witnesses in their thereupon doomed city. As to the first, already in the opening vision a chamber as of the Jewish temple had been revealed, where seven candlesticks like those in the old Jewish temple, and one in the high priest's robing that walked among them. Was its signification then Jewish or Christian? Of Judaism or Christianity? We are not left to conjecture. The high priest was distinctively the Christian high priest, Christ Jesus, the seven candlesticks, the seven Christian churches. This explanation at the outset is most important to Mark, being the fittest key surely to the intent of all that occurs on the scene afterwards of similar imagery. In seal 5, a temple like the Jewish, at least the temple court with its great brazen altar, is again noted as figured on the scene. Now we might anticipate pretty confidently from the previous given key just alluded to, that the temple was here too symbolic of the Christian worship and religion, not the Jewish. But there is, over and above this, independent internal evidence to affix to it the same meaning. For the souls under the altar, who confessedly depict Christian martyrs, appear there, of course, as sacrifices offered on that altar, their place being where the ashes of the Jewish altar sacrifices were gathered. Which being so, could the altar mean that of the literal Judaism, and the vision signify that the Jews, zealous for their law and thinking to do God's service, had there slain the Christian martyrs as if heretics? Certainly not, because on their altar the Jews never offered human sacrifices, and would indeed have esteemed it a pollution. Therefore we have independent internal evidence that the Jewish temple and altar, figured on the apocalyptic scene, had here too a Christian meaning, depicting, as both Saint Paul and Polycarp after him so beautifully applied the figure, the Christian's willing sacrifice of himself and his life for Christ. Further, in Apocalypse 8, the temple is again spoken of as apparent, with its brazen sacrificial altar in the altar court, its golden incense altar within the temple proper, and one, too, habited as a priest who received and offered incense according to the ceremony of the Jewish ritual. Was this meant literally of Jewish incense and Jewish worship? Assuredly not, for the incense of the offering priest is declared to be the prayers of all the saints, that is, as all admit, of Christians distinctively from literal Jews. Again, with reference even to the temple figuration in Apocalypse 11, too, which furnishes his chief Jewish proof-text A professor himself admits, nay argues, that the inner and most characteristic part of it, the same that was measured by St. John, signified that spiritual part of Judaism which was to be preserved in Christianity, as contrasted with the mere externals of Jewish ritualism. Thus construing it, not literally with reference to the worship of the national Israel, but symbolically with reference to that of the Christian Israel, albeit with no little mixture of what is erroneous and consequently confused and inconsistent in his reasoning. And he says in the footnote, For he makes the Jewish temple proper to figure Christianity simply as being the inner part, at the same time that its outer part, as the outer, figure Judaism. That is, he makes the connected part of the same temple to symbolize two professedly different and opposed religions, and moreover makes that part of it which contained all that was visibly and by use ritualistic, the sacrificial altar, the laver, the incense altar, the showbread, the candlesticks, and so forth, to symbolize the unritualistic religion of the two, while the other part, which had none of the ritualistic material, was to symbolize the religion of ritualism. Surely St. Paul might have taught the professor a very different and more consistent mode of interpreting the symbol. According to this apostolic teaching, the Jewish temple on the apocalyptic scene figured the Christian visible-worshipping church and its worship on the principle of construing the old Jewish types to mean their answerable spiritual antitypes. Which being so, the Gentile outer court figured naturally the professing proselytes of the same Christian worship and religion. Whether proselytes consistent in life and doctrine, and thus who worshipped in the altar worship, or proselytes false at heart and false to the altar, and so to be at length cast out as apostates and hypocrites. Returning to the text, all which being so, what, I ask, must by the plainest requirements of consistency and common sense follow, but that as the offerers of Jewish worship in the Jewish temple, depicted on the apocalyptic scene, meant in fact Christians, so they that are called Jews or Israelites in the apocalyptic context must mean Christians also, at least by profession. A conclusion clenched by the fact which I have elsewhere urged, that the twelve tribes of God's Israel in the New Jerusalem of Apocalypse 21 are on all hands admitted to designate Christians, mainly Gentile Christians, and so surely, in all fair reasoning, the twelve tribes of Israel mentioned in Apocalypse 7 also. Next, as to the religious profession or character of those that were to suffer through the plagues of the first great act of the drama, or rather epopee, as Stuart would prefer to call Their character is most distinctly laid down in Apocalypse 9.20 as actual idolaters. For it is there said that the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues, yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons and idols of gold and silver and brass and stone and wood, a description so diametrically opposed to the character of the Jews in Nero's time, and even afterwards, that one would have thought with Bossuet, and indeed Ewald too, that it settled the point, if anything could settle it, that Jews were not the party's men. And how, then, did the German preterists that take the Judaic view overcome the difficulty? Few and brief are the words of Eichhorn's paraphrase, quote, It means that they persevered in that same obstinate mind which once showed itself in the worship of idols, close quote. Says Moses Stewart, In the Old Testament, Jews that acted in a heathenish way were called heathens, and moreover, in the New Testament, covetousness is called idolatry. And moreover, in the time of Herod, theatres and other such like heathen customs had become common in Judea." But surely such observations, when put forward in explanation of the descriptive clause that spoke of men worshipping idols of gold and silver and brass and stone and wood, must be felt to be rather an appeal ad misericordium in the expositor's difficulty than an argument for the fitness of the descriptive clause to suit the Jews of the times of Nero and Vespasian, especially when coming from one who has led elsewhere in his comment to state, and state most truly, that the Jews were ready, one and all, rather to submit their necks to the Roman soldiers' swords than to admit an image that was to be worshipped within their city. He says in a footnote, When Pontius Pilate undertook to hoist the standard of Tiberius in the city of Jerusalem, the Jews, knowing the obligation that would follow to pay homage to it, one and all remonstrated, and offered their necks to the swords of his soldiers rather than to submit to its erection. Indeed, it is notorious that they regarded images altogether as abominations and that the Roman attempts at erecting them more than once nearly caused desperate rebellions. As for Dr. Davidson, he here exhibits more at least of discretion than the American professor. He passes over the difficulty as if re desperata, in dead silence. Try we thirdly the Judaic theory of our German preterists by the test of the witness-slaying prophecy, including the place, time, and author of their slaughter. This is put forth as one of the strongest points in the Judaic part of their view. it being stated to occur in the city, quote, where their Lord was crucified, close quote. That is, say the preterists, in Jerusalem. But first we ask, what witnesses? Quote, the Jewish chief priests Ananus and Jesus, close quote, answer Herder and Eichhorn, quote, mercilessly massacred, as Josephus tells us, by the zealots, close quote. But how so? Must they not rather be Christ's witnesses, exclaimed Stuart? Since it is said, I will give power to my witnesses, and therefore Christians? Of course they must. Which being so, the next question is, who then the notable Christians that Stuart considers to have been slain in Jerusalem in the witness character at this epoch, that is, during the Romans' invasion of Judea? Does he not himself repeat to us the well-known story on record that the Christians forthwith fled to Pella? agreeably with their Lord's warning and direction, so soon as they saw the Romans approach to beleaguered Jerusalem? But, say he in reply, can we imagine that all would be able to make their escape? Would there not be sick and aged and paupers to delay the flight, and faithful teachers, too, of Christianity that would choose to remain, to preach repentance and faith to their countrymen? These, I regard, as symbolized by the two witnesses." And these, therefore, as answering in their history of this crisis to St. John's extraordinary and circumstantial prediction about the witness's testimony, miracles, death, resurrection, ascension. But what the historic testimony to support his view? Alas, none, absolutely none. In apology for this total and most unfortunate silence of history, he exclaims, quote, the Jew Josephus is not the historian of Christians, and early ecclesiastical historians have perished, close quote. Adding, however, as is sufficient to justify his hypothesis, But Christ intimates in his prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem that there would be a persecution of Christians at the period in question. A statement quite unjustified if he means persecution to death in Jerusalem and at the time of the siege by the passage he refers to. And in a footnote he gives us the passages Matthew 24 9-13 Mark 13 9-13 Luke 21 12-16 Does not Christ say, quote, not a hair of your head shall perish? At last he condescends to this, quote, at all events it is clear that the zealots and other Jews did not lose their disposition to persecute at this period, close quote. Such is the impotent conclusion of Professor Moses Stewart, such the best explanation he can devise on his hypothesis of the wonderful apocalyptic prophecy respecting the witnesses, nor is his need supplied by Dr. Davidson. Notwithstanding God's long-suffering mercy, says this latter, Dr. Davidson, the Jews continue to persecute the faithful witnesses." This, I can assure the reader, is the sum total of his observations on the point before us. Nor is it here only that the Judaic part of the Preterist scheme, applied to the witness story in the Apocalypse, breaks down. For, further, the city where the witness's corpse were to be exposed is declared to be the City the Great One, and he notes in a footnote, en te platea teis paleos teis megales. This is given as the best reading by many of the critical editions. That which is the emphatic title of the seven-hilled Babylon or Rome in the Apocalypse, never of Jerusalem. And again he says in a footnote, five or six times is the phrase used in the Apocalypse and always with reference to the great Babylon. See chapter 14 verse 8, 16, 19 17, 18, 18, verses 10, 16, 18, 19, and 21. So Jerome of old, remarking, moreover, that Jerusalem is never called Egypt, and so, too, Baswe. Returning to the text, how it might be Rome, and yet the city where the Lord Jesus had been crucified, the reader has long since seen. Nor this alone, for the beast that was to slay them was Ta-thareon, Ta-anabainon, Ek-tes-abasu, the beast that was to rise from the abyss, a beast which, especially with the distinctive article prefix so as here to it, cannot but mean one and the same with that which is mentioned under precisely the same designation in chapter 17, verse 8. And there, as all the preterists themselves allow, designates a power associated some way with Rome. And what stewards explanation? Why that it means in Apocalypse chapter 11 simply Satan? Indeed alike, the declared fact of the witness slaying, and of the great city as the place of their slaughter, and of the beast from the abyss as their slayer, as also, let me add, the period of the twelve hundred sixty days assigned alike to the witness's sackcloth prophesying first, and to the beast's reign afterwards, do so interweave the first half of the apocalyptic prophecy, from Apocalypse 6 to 11, with the part subsequent that as to any such total separation in respect to subject of the one from the other, as the Preterists urge on their hypothesis of a double catastrophe, it is, I am well persuaded, and will be so found by one and all who attempt to work it out, an absolute impossibility. I might add yet a word as to the ill-agreeing times of the supposed Jewish catastrophe and the Roman, the former being, in the Preterist scheme, first set forth, and the Roman figured afterwards. whereas the chronological order of the two events was in fact just the reverse, the Roman persecution of Christians and quickly consequent fall of Nero preceding the fall of Jerusalem. But the argument, which indeed might be spared ex abundanti, will occur again and somewhat more strikingly under our next head. To this let us then now pass onwards and consider as proposed, secondly, the German Preterists' second grand division of the Apocalypse, and second grand catastrophe, that is, that affecting pagan Rome. And here, as before, I shall not stop at minor points, but hasten rapidly to that which is considered by the Preterists as their strongest ground. It is to be understood that they generally make Apocalypse XII retrogressive in its chronology to Christ's birth and the Devil's primary attempts to destroy both him and his religion and his early church in Judea, though in vain. Then, after note of the dragon's dejection from his former eminence, and the song, Now is come salvation, and so forth, we arrive at the woman's flight into the wilderness, meaning, they say, the church's flight to Pella, on the Romans advancing to besiege Jerusalem. Some outbreak of Jewish persecution at the time, the same under which the witnesses were to fall within Jerusalem, answering, probably, to the floods from the dragon's mouth. And the three and a half years, said of the woman's time in the wilderness, answering also sufficiently well to the length not indeed of the siege, but of the Jewish war. Mark, in passing, how the symbolic woman, first made to be the theocratic church in its Jewish form, prevailing with and bringing forth Christ, and he asks in a footnote, is the church ever represented in scripture as Christ's mother, has now become not the church Catholic, which in Nero's time had indeed spread over the Roman world, but the little section of it which remains stationary in Judea. Then the dragon, being enraged at the woman, went away to make war with the remainder of her seed, who kept the commandments of God and hold fast the testimony of Jesus. That is, enraged that the Jews, his original instrument of persecution, should be destroyed and fail him, he leaves the Jewish scene of his former operations and goes elsewhere to stir up a new persecutor against Christians in Nero. But did not Nero's persecution occur before the Jews' destruction? No doubt. The anachronism is honestly admitted by Professor Stewart. an anachronism the more remarkable because he makes the vision of the 144,000 in Apocalypse 14 to be a vision of encouragement to Christians suffering under Nero's persecution, depicting as it did, according to him, the Christian Jews occupying Jerusalem as a now Christian city, an event this which could not have happened till Jerusalem's destruction, about four years after the commencement of Nero's persecution, and did not in fact take place till some years later. But in an epopee like the Apocalypse, says Stuart, we are surely not bound to the rigid rules of a book of annals." Thus then we come to consider Apocalypse 13, the chapter on the beast, and connectedly with it, for it does not need to dwell on the intervening chapters, the further explanatory symbolizations about the beast in Apocalypse 17. Behold us then now before the very citadel of the German preterists, and see, they say, how impregnable it is, For not only is the woman that rides the beast expressly stated to be the seven-hilled imperial city Rome, so that the beast ridden must be the persecuting Roman Empire, but the time intended is also fixed. For it is said that the beast's seven heads, besides figuring seven hills, figured also seven kings, or rather eight, of whom five had fallen at the time of the vision, which must mean the first five emperors, Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and one, the sixth, was, which of course must be the next after Claudius, that is, Nero. Nay, to make the thing clearer, the beast's name and number 666 are specified, or as some copies read, 616. And so it is that in Hebrew, Neron Caesar has the value in numbers of 666, which is one frequent rabbinical way of writing Nero's name. Or, quote, if the Hebrew be that of Nero Caesar, without the final N, then it gives the number 616, close quote. No doubt the numerical coincidence is worthy of note, and the whole case, so put, quite plausible enough to call for examination. It is indeed obvious to say, as to the name and numeral, that a Greek solution would be preferable to one in Hebrew, and a single name to a double one, principles these recognized, as we have seen, by Irenaeus and all the other early fathers that commented on the topic. But in this there is, of course, nothing decisive. A graver objection seems to me, however, to lie against the suggested numeral solution in that a part of the name being official, I mean the word Caesar, this Agamemnon, though fitly applicable to Nero while the reigning emperor, would hardly be applicable to him when resuscitated after his death wound, and so become the beast of Apocalypse 13, of whom the name was predicated. But this involves inquiry into the beast's heads, to which inquiry, as the decisive one, let us now therefore at once pass on. This is the end of tape two of Preterism Refuted, excerpts from E.B. Eliot's Horae Apocalypticae, or A Commentary on the Apocalypse. Please note that this four-volume work is available from Stillwaters Revival Books, along with a treasure trove of the finest Protestant, Reformed, and Puritan literature available anywhere in the world today. Stillwaters may be contacted via their website at www.swrv.com, by email at swrv at swrv.com, or by phone at area code 780-450-3730. Please note as well that these tapes are not copyrighted and we therefore encourage you to copy and distribute them to whomever you deem would benefit.