REPLY.

(Continued)

THE REMNANT OF A PRE-ADVENTUAL JEWISH COLONY, THE REFINED THIRD PART ADVENTUALLY DELIVERED.

“Two parts in the land shall be cut off and die, but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The Lord (Jesus) my God!”—Zechariah.

            The remarks in the preceding article are offered, the writer says, “in the spirit of kindness, and for the sake of eliciting light.” I accept them in the same spirit; for I am sure the editor of that Harbinger (I wish I could say the same of the conductors of all Harbingers) is too honest a student of the word, too sincere a lover of truth, and too much imbued with the benevolence of “the gospel of the kingdom,” to find it in his heart to be ill-natured towards a fellow-student, who does not see eye to eye with him in all things, nor occupy the same position as he. I am satisfied he wants to be convinced if in error. The progress he has already made from mere anti-creedism to the belief of the gospel of the kingdom, proves this. —He has found himself on the wrong side of a question more than once, and when aware of it, has honestly confessed that the position was untenable, and magnanimously abandoned it. This is the sort of a man I like to talk with; because his object is to get at the truth; and so is mine. Neither he nor I is infallible; for I have made a “confession and abjuration” of errors as well as he: so that we can meet upon an equal footing in this respect, and endeavour to enlighten one another.

            Now, at present he firmly believes that I am in error upon a certain point connected with the restoration of Israel, which leaks out in the aforesaid article; which, however, was not written, as he supposes, “in view of what had been published in the Harbinger on the subject;” but as corrective of the notion of a general restoration of the Jews, and a rebuilding of the temple before the eternal king of Israel shall appear; as well as by way of comment on the latest news from the east. My friend’s idea is, that there will be no return of Jews at all (save as they have journeyed thither as pilgrims for ages) before the Lord appears. We agree that the Twelve Tribes will be restored to the land promised to their fathers; but he considers it entirely post-adventual, and immediately subsequent to the battle of Armageddon. I differ from him in believing, that there will be a pre-adventual limited colonisation of the country by Jews, under the protectorate of Britain; and that the prosperity of this colony, together with a desire to cripple or subvert the British power in the east, will be the cause of the country’s invasion by the Russian ‘Clay,’ styled Gog, &c., by Ezekiel. I consider that this colonisation is going on while Russia is engaged in the conquest of the west—while it is mixing with a fragile union the iron leg and toes there with the ‘miry clay.’ The invasion of Israel’s land, and conquest of Jerusalem, is the end of the formative process; for then the eastern and western legs and the ten toes are fashioned into feet, being combined together by Russo-Assyrian Clay.

            This is the crisis to which things are now working out, and by which a necessity is created for the appearing of the Lord. The Anglo Jewish colony is just ‘an element in the situation.’ It is planted in Palestine in the interests of Britain, providentially as an ingredient in the bait to tempt the Gog-nations to come up to battle against Jerusalem, that the Lord may “plead with them for his heritage Israel.” The invasion will be a time of great trouble to the colony; for ‘two parts in the land will be cut off and die; but the third part shall be left therein’—Zechariah 13: 8. It is this third part that calls upon Jehovah’s name for help. The Lord says, ‘I will hear them;’ and in consequence of so doing, descends, and smites the assembled host; and, by Michael, their great prince, delivers them—Daniel 12: 1. Then comes the resurrection. They who cry for help are in the land; to be there they must have previously returned; they cry because of the oppressor; they cry of necessity before they are heard; and the oppressor is broken in pieces in answer to their cry.

            In the battle of Armageddon, which breaks the feet, the Jews fight ‘because the Lord is with them’—Zechariah 10: 5; 14: 14. These combatant Jews must therefore have returned to Judea before the battle; and consequently before the coming of the Lord, as our friend admits that his advent and the battle are contemporary.

            The post-adventual restoration of the Twelve Tribes is a work of time. It will not be consummated till the end of forty years after the battle of Armageddon. I have shown this in an article soon to appear in the Herald. This forty years occupies the space between the advent and the commencement of the thousand years; and affords scope for Elijah to ‘restore all things,’ and for Jesus and his brethren to torment ‘the devil and his angels.’ These things may sound strange in unpractised ears; but let such wait till they have examined what I have to publish on the subject before they presume to judge. There is more in the divine testimony than Gentiles of this age have thought of yet.

            From what is now presented the reader may gather some of the points at issue. I need not, therefore, dilate upon them more just now.

            The latest news from the east is but a shadow of coming events. What I have written concerning it was hypothetical. I said, ‘it is probable that the financial scheme of the Turkish government may be the initiative of the preadventual colonisation of the Holy Land.’ ‘If the proposal become an accomplished fact, that fact will speak in unmistakable and infallible terms to the believer.’ The initiative result of the Turkish policy has been to unsettle the whole question; and to stir up the Autocrat. The interference of the latter only affects the present aspect of the case. When he gets his hands full in strengthening Austria and the Pope, with the ulterior view of restoring the Bourbons, Britain will have something to say that will be pre-eminently anti-Russian, and promotive of her own policy in the east. There are several Rothschilds. The London Rothschild is the alleged purchaser; not he of Frankfort on the Maine, who is said to be dying. However the colonisation be brought about, it will be the sign of the time indicative of the speedy coming. There are signs that the practiced eye can already see; but that will be a sign, which, if men were not stone-blind, no one could fail to discern aright.

            It is just because the colony I speak of, will not possess the land by faith, (which is what, I suppose, my friend means by ‘right of inheritance,’) that they are so terribly disturbed in their possession by Gog. There can be no continued peace and prosperity there for Jew or Gentile, till the land is inherited by right of the Covenant dedicated by the blood of its future king.

            I have but little confidence in the idea of settling the land as the result of a money transaction with the Porte. It may, and it may not. Britain may subsidise the Turk against Austria and Russia, and assume the protectorate of Egypt and the Holy Land, as she does the Ionian Islands, in return. I do not see the details off the affair in prophecy; but the colonisation itself I perceive without obscurity. This is the great thing; the measures leading thereto, are merely matters of interesting speculation as they arise.

            I do not adduce the text in the thirtieth of Isaiah to prove that the settlement of a colony is to be the being ‘as an ensign on a hill,’ referred to there; but to show that a small number of Israel as compared with the whole nation, is in scripture language likened to ‘an ensign on a hill,’ or ‘a beacon on the top of a mountain.’ To be ‘left as an ensign,’ and to be ‘lifted up as an ensign,’ are different ideas. I speak off the colony being as a pre-adventual ensign. This will be composed of the remnant left, (which our friend admits is as a deserted ensign, abandoned by the power that had sustained it,) and of the new colonists, whose aggregation to the old remnant does not at all affect its ensign, or beacon, resemblance. Now before the Lord appears, the fair ensign, so gaily wafting in the breeze under the shadowing wings of Britain, is torn down, and trampled under foot by the Prince of Ros. The silver and gold, cattle and goods, unwalled villages and peaceful dwellings, become a prey to the spoiler. The ‘merchants of Tarshish, and the young lions thereof,’ that is, the British power, as I have proved in Elpis Israel, threaten and oppose the destroyer in vain. There is none can save, or lift it up, but the Lord God of Israel. He comes to do this; and when he comes, ‘all the men that are upon the face of the land shall shake at his presence’—Ezekiel 38: 20. The result is the destruction of the army of the Gog-nations, of which only ‘a sixth part’ escapes; and the setting up of the ensign erect again, no more to be trampled under feet of the Gentiles. Thus, ‘the Lord their God shall save them in that day as the flock of his people; for they shall be as the stones of a crown, LIFTED UP as an ensign upon his land. For how great is his goodness and how great is his beauty! Corn shall make the young men glad, and new wine the maids’—Zechariah 9: 16. The colonisation I termed, ‘a lifting up of an ensign,’ (a phrase of comparison of course, ‘as’ being understood,) to distinguish it from the lifting up of the Lord, and by the Lord—an ensign lifted up by the British power; itself, however, unconscious that the colonisation was a sign.

            The passage quoted from Ezekiel by our friend, proves a settlement of the land to some extent before the advent by implication. The battle of Armageddon, which breaks the Image, is at the Lord’s coming; the war, which reduces its fragments to chaff, is after his return. Ezekiel speaks of the battle in particular; and in the conclusion of his prophecy announces the result of the general war, which is not only the comminution of the whole image, but the full accomplishment of the work of restoration, as expressed in the words, ‘I have gathered them unto their own land, and have left none of them any more there’ in the enemy’s country. ‘They that dwell in the cities of Israel,’ who go forth to burn the weapons and bury the slain, are precisely the survivors of that colony residing in the land at the time of the battle, to save whom the Lord strikes the blow. The salvation of this third part by the Advent victory is the beginning of deliverance to the whole nation. It must have been pre-adventually settled in the land, or it could not be there to witness the fight. It would be very incongruous for there to be so great a carnage, and all the survivors fled, and no Israelites at hand to put Gog’s multitude under ground. The circumstances of the case evidently necessitate a pre-adventual settlement to some extent.

            True; the Jews were to be ‘led away captive into all the nations,’ (ta ethnee,) but it does not say that they were all to continue captives in exile, without remission, till the times of the Gentiles were fulfilled. They were led away by the Roman power into all the nations of that dominion; but not into ‘all nations,’ and ‘all the world,’ in the modern Gentile sense of those phrases. It is Jerusalem that is to be trodden down of the Gentiles until the fulfilment of their times. A little transient good fortune to the city in no way affects the verity of this. Jerusalem, in the days of the Saracens and Crusaders, became the throne of a kingdom which continued many years. ‘King of Jerusalem,’ is one of his Austrian Apostolic Majesty’s titles, derived from his ancestral relation to that Kingdom. Hence, as in the days of Pontius Pilate, the Jews acknowledged ‘no other king but Caesar;’ so now, Caesar, the imperial chief of ‘the Holy Roman Empire,’ claims the same sovereignty. His ‘rights’ will in due time be assumed by the Russo-Assyrian Gog, whence comes his present sensitiveness in regard to the eastern question; so that none, be he Jew, Turk, or infidel, can become Emir, Bey, or King, of Judea without having the Autocrat for his inveterate foe. But Britain will see to this in due time. I refer to Jerusalem’s middle-age royalty here to show that her transient independence is quite compatible with a continuance of the Gentile times. But a colony, with Jerusalem for its provincial capital, is still a Gentile dependency. A Jewish colony surrounded by the Ottoman, the Russian, the Persian, the Arab, and the Egyptian, could not sustain itself unless protected by a strong maritime power. It must therefore be like Judea under the Persians of old, a province of a Gentile dominion until the Lord shall come. But its prosperity under the power shadowing with wings—Isaiah 18: 1—will soon pass away. The Assyrian river will overflow it even to the neck, and breach the very walls of the Holy City, which Sennacherib could not do; for ‘the city shall be taken’—Zechariah 14: 2. The worst of the Gentiles then trample it in the dust. Its brief colonial well-being will have vanished like a dream; and have given place to a barbaric degradation, evincing that the ‘wickedness’ of her captors is indeed ‘great’—Joel 3: 13; for ‘the houses shall be rifled, and the women ravished,’ and half of its inhabitants sent off as prisoners by the enemy. This semi-deportation of the people by the chief of the ‘all nations’ assembled at the siege, characterises the future capture of the city. Zechariah prophesied after its Chaldean overthrow, and during is restoration under the Persians. He must, therefore, have referred to a future overthrow. His prediction could not have been fulfilled under Titus, because all the people who remained were led away captive; and the city was wholly destroyed: whereas the prophet intimates, that the city will not be destroyed, in saying that ‘the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.’ The city therefore remains, and half the Jews with it, earnestly desiring their Messiah to appear, and deliver them if ever they did. There has been no siege since the Roman armies (who were the Lord’s hosts for the destruction—Daniel 9: 26, explained by Matthew 22: 7) destroyed it, in which the Jews withstood a Gentile assault; it can therefore only be a future event, and contemporary with the going forth of the Lord to ‘fight against those nations.’ He did not fight against the Romans; but on the contrary, fought against Judah and Jerusalem until they were destroyed utterly: but in the future siege he will fight against the Gog-armies of the nations ‘as when he fought in the day of battle’—Joshua 10: 11, in victorious defence of Jerusalem and the Jews of the third part. It is ‘then’—after the coming capture of the city garrisoned by Jews and their protectors—that the Lord goes forth with his mighty ones—Joel 3: 11; 2 Thessalonians 1: 7, and stands with his feet on the Mount of Olives, the place from which he ascended to ‘the right hand of power.’ His electric tread evokes an earthquake that divides the Mount, as a mountain was divided on the west of the city by the earthquake in Uzziah’s reign. All these things characterise the siege and capture as one unexampled in the history of the world. The deliverance of Jerusalem and the fall of Rome are the glorious incidents that mark the fulfilment off the Gentile times; and until they happen no arithmetical calculation of the 1335 days can be admitted which does not stretch forward to that desirable consummation.

            It is readily agreed, that there are but two gatherings of Judah from captivity, and one of the Ten Tribes, which is subsequent to Judah’s second; for ‘I will save the tents of Judah first,’ saith the Lord. But the colonisation, I speak of, will not be a gathering of the tribe of Judah. The great bulk of the tribe will be shut up in the nations subject to Gog—the north and the south, which ‘keep back,’ and refuse to ‘give up.’ But there will be sufficient for British policy forthcoming from other parts. The Lord saves the Tribe of Judah, while Elijah is fulfilling his mission with the Ten; which will be perfected by the reunion of the Twelve into one stick in Messiah’s hand, by the Lord himself—Ezekiel 37: 16-28.

            When I spoke of M. Rothschild adorning his brows with the diadem of Judah’s kings, on the hypothesis of the news being true that he might assume the title of emir, bey, or king, in the event of the purchase being made; I did not refer to the crown of David, which none can wear but one of David’s lineage, and that one will not be Zedekiah, but Jesus, the only living descendant of David, who is both David’s Son and Lord. Judah has had Kings not of David’s lineage. For 129 years Judah was governed by Jewish Kings of the tribe of Levi, the Asmoneans; whose race gave place to the Gentile dynasty of Herod. These were Kings of Judah, that is reigning over Judah’s commonwealth until the sceptre departed from it; but who wore not the crown or diadem of David. My remark therefore does not at all clash with Ezekiel’s celebrated prophecy of the abasement of David’s crown and kingdom until the appearing of the Lord to restore, and take possession of them. If Rothschild, or any other Jew or Gentile, were to become governor of a colony of Jews in Palestine with the title of King, he would be either adorning his own brows, or some power would have done it for him, with the diadem of Judah’s king, in the sense in which I used the phrase. Jerusalem is traditionally, as I have shown, a precious stone in the diadem or crown of “His Apostolic Majesty” of Austria; which would be plucked from thence by any one who should assume the title and possess the power. It would be an earnest as it were of returning royalty to the Jews; and be very far from shaking the faith of any one who regarded the present but as shadows of the substance which is of Christ.

            The colonisation of Judea by Jews under the protection of a Gentile government, is neither “restitution,” “restoration,” nor “regeneration.” Nothing short of a national establishment in the land, under Messiah and his brethren, constitutes either of them in the scriptural sense. The settlement of a colony there has no more to do with restitution than Meshullams farming in Artor’s valley. A hundred thousand Meshullams in Judea would be no restoration. Restitution is not simply a return of the race, but the setting up again of institutions that once existed there—the restitution or restoration of the kingdom again to the Twelve Tribes; this is the re-institution, or restitution spoken of by all the prophets from Moses to the revealer of the Apocalypse to John. No Gentile powers can accomplish this, though aided by all the Jews on earth: for the Restored Kingdom exists under an amended Mosaic code, whose emendation (diorthrosis) can only be defined, administered, and adapted to the exigencies of the world, by the King of Israel himself, and his associate priests and kings. Our worthy friend of the Advent Harbinger is, no doubt, very anxious for the appearing of the King in power and great glory. So am I, and for more reasons than need be expressed. But we must take care not to allow our wishes, or desires, to lead us to conclusions not in harmony with the testimony and sound reason. I would have no delay; but I am compelled to confess that there will yet be some. The working out of the approaching judgment upon principles illustrated in God’s past dealings with nations, and empires, requires time—a dozen years at least; and in these days of steam and electricity how much may be accomplished in that period! This brief delay will, perhaps, be the salvation of many; for, how numerous are they who are praying for the appearing of the Lord, who have not even began to prepare for his appearance. Let us not therefore be impatient of arguments that do not confirm us in our wishes. “Thy will, O Lord, not mine be done!” should be pre-eminently the disposition of the student of the prophetic word. I see a war among the powers resulting from an antagonism to French ambition, which must precede the battle of Armageddon; the Great City has also to be divided into three parts; and the Feet of Nebuchadnezzar’s Image have to be fashioned into shape out of the materials that exist. This requires time; and during this time the colony is forming and prospering to tempt the spoiler to his destruction by the stone power, on the mountains of Israel. But I need add no more at present, than to say, that these explanations of points of difficulty are submitted to my friend and his readers in the same frank and benevolent spirit, so graciously manifested on his part, by his sincere well-wisher the

EDITOR.

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