“And in their days, even of those kings, the God of heaven shall set up A KINGDOM which shall never perish, and A DOMINION that shall not be left to another people. It shall grind to powder and bring to an end all these kingdoms, and itself shall stand for ever.”—DANIEL.

JOHN THOMAS, Editor. NEW YORK, APRIL, 1854—

Volume 4—No. 4

The purpose of God in fitting up the earth, as described by Moses, and in bringing the world to its present political constitution, by checking and restraining the full manifestation of the evil that exists, is that he may found a kingdom and empire, literally “universal,”—Daniel 2: 44; 7: 14, under the government of which, all nations may be blessed—Genesis 12: 3; Psalm 72: 11. The Hebrew nation established in the Holy Land will be the kingdom—Exodus 19: 5-6; Micah 4: 6-8; 5: 2; Ezekiel 37: 21-28, — and all other nations the empire attached to that kingdom. The Jewish and other nations will constitute a family of nations, of which Israel will be the firstborn; Abraham, the federal patriarch; and Christ, his seed, the King. This divine family of nations will be so highly civilised, that the present state of society will be regarded as intensely dark and barbarous; for then “the knowledge of the glory of the Lord shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea.” The blessedness of this divine civilisation is detailed in “the gospel,” which is therefore styled “the glad tidings,” or “gospel of the kingdom of God,”—Matthew 4: 23 while the divine civilisation itself is “The economy of the fulness of the appointed times,”—Ephesians 1: 10, 21) or “world to come;” styled also “The Age to Come.” The Bible is full of the glorious things pertaining to this, the real “golden age” of the world.

The government of the nations in that period, which will continue a thousand years without change, will be such as their necessities demand—just laws and institutions, civil and ecclesiastical; and perfect and righteous men to administer them. To fulfil these requirements, the government of mankind will be committed to Christ, and to those whom he may account worthy of association with him. The Bible expressly declares that the rulers of the world shall then be immortal kings and priests, —Revelation 1: 5-6; 5: 9-10; 2: 26-27; 22: 5; and however sectarian or religious infidelity may cry out against the idea of mortal and immortal men living contemporaneously upon the earth, no truth is more plainly and abundantly revealed in the Bible. This family of “many nations,” of which God has constituted Abraham the “father,”—Genesis 17: 5; Romans 4: 13—will continue under one and the same constitution a thousand years, at the expiration of which there will be a change—Revelation 20: 6-7; 1 Corinthians 15: 24-26. SIN, and, by consequence, religion, priesthood, and death, will be universally abolished; and the earth will be inhabited by immortals only; for, it is written, “THE WICKED SHALL NOT INHABIT THE EARTH;” but, on the contrary, “The meek shall inherit the earth.” Hence, the final state of things upon our planet will be a divine monarchy of everlasting continuance, under which there will be but one nation, —Jeremiah 46: 28— and that nation holy, immortal, and comprehensive of all redeemed from among the descendants of the First Human Pair. When this consummation obtains, the purpose of God in terrestrial creation will be accomplished, even the peopling of the earth with an immortal race which shall have attained to immortality on the principle of believing what God hath promised, and doing what he hath commanded.

In the gospel there is an invitation to all who believe what God has promised, to share with Christ in his kingdom, glory, and joy, on certain conditions well defined. —1 Thessalonians 2: 12; 1 Corinthians 6: 9-11; Matthew 25: 21. These are, faith in the things covenanted to Abraham and David, and in those taught concerning Jesus, in the Old and New Testaments; immersion into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and thenceforth a life of “holiness to the Lord,” without which none will be approved and promoted to the honour and glory of the kingdom—Colossians 1: 21-23.

Now, it is evident, that the establishment of this divine civilisation among the nations necessitates the abolition of the present civil, ecclesiastical, and social constitution of the world. The nations and the earth to its utmost bounds are “deeded” to Christ; they are an inheritance and possession made his, by a deed registered in the Bible—Psalm 2: 8, but, for the time being, in the hands of regal, imperial, republican, and ecclesiastical thieves and robbers. This patent fact and Bible truth makes a contest between Christ and “the Powers that be,” variously symbolised in the Scriptures by Beasts, Horns, Frogs, Dragon, Rivers, &c., the heraldry of the Bible—an unavoidable necessity. The divine oracle is, “These shall make war upon the Lamb, and THE LAMB (Jesus, ‘the Lamb of God’) SHALL OVERCOME THEM;” in other words, “He shall destroy them that destroy the earth.”—Revelation 17: 12-14; 19: 11-16, 19, 21; 11: 15, 18. This is the doom of the world’s tyrants—destruction, not by popular fury, which is merely an embarrassment, but by the military power of Jehovah’s Servant, even of Jesus, the future Lord of armies, whom he has prepared, and whom he will send into the world again for this very purpose. He will take possession of the kingdoms, empires, and republics of the nations “under the whole heaven,” and blend them into one universal empire, which will constitute the secondary dominion, “the first dominion” consisting of the “kingdom restored again to Israel,” in the Holy Land. —Micah 4: 8; Acts 1: 6.

For a man, though a Divine Man, to take possession of the civil, military, naval, and ecclesiastical power, commerce and riches of the world, implies cooperation. The Bible teaches emphatically that this cooperation for the wresting of Christ’s inheritance from “the Powers that be,” appropriately and summarily styled by Jesus, “The Devil and his Angels,” will consist of “the called, and chosen, and faithful,”—Revelation 17: 14; 19: 14; 14: 4—raised from the dead, or, if living at the crisis, “transformed in the twinkling of an eye;” these will be “with him” as his “joint-heirs,” and companions in arms, commanding the operations of the armies of Israel, whose mission will be, like that of their fathers under Joshua, to subdue “the Powers” combined to prevent their restoration, and the establishing of the new and divine order of things.—Jeremiah 51: 19-20; Isaiah 41: 8-16.

The accomplishment of this mission is the Bible solution of “THE GREAT EASTERN QUESTION” now pending, and which causes so much anxiety to the Powers, and excites so much hope in the revolutionary heart of the world. I have proved in Elpis Israel, that the “secret diplomacy” which has, contrary to its own wish, created an imbroglio from which there is no issue but a war that shall change the face of the world—that the Diplomatic Imbroglio is the apparent “sign of the Son of Man in the heaven,” which indicates to the intelligent believer that he is about to “come as a thief”—Matthew 24: 30; Revelation 16: 13-15. Before it came to pass, even five years before, I showed by the interpretation of the remarkable prophecy of the Eastern Question contained in the prediction of the “Three unclean Spirits like Frogs,” that a policy emanating from the Frog-Power, or Imperial Military Democracy of France, would operate upon the Constantinopolitan “Dragon,” whose present “mouth” is the Sultan; upon the Germano-Roman “Beast,” whose mouth is the Austrian Emperor; and upon the papal Pseudo-Prophet, whose mouth is the Pope—and cause to issue forth from each of them an unclean spirit, a belligerent spirit—which three spirits, in their combined working upon the governments of the whole Romanised world, should involve them in a general war, which shall continue, with dreadful and truly wonderful effect, till the furtive incoming of the much-to-be-desired of all nations—Haggai 2: 6-7, who will roll back the tide of devastation and death from the Holy Land upon the peoples of the papal west. Now, as far as this sign has manifested it self, it has come to pass according to my interpretation. The policy of Napoleon III with respect to the Holy Places in Jerusalem, originated the present Eastern Question. The Sultan granted the firman he sought for, by which France and the Papacy gained, as was thought, an advantage in the Holy Land over the Hellenistic superstition, that excited the jealousy of Russia and the Greeks. This brought the audacious Menschikoff against the Sultan, with all his demands incompatible with the sovereignty of the Porte. The issue is war between the Sultan and the Czar. The next stage of the matter, into which diplomacy has already entered, is the excitation of a belligerent spirit in the Daemon of Austria. This power professes a neutrality, which is believed to be dishonest; and doubtless it is, for honesty has never been an element of Austrian policy. The French ruler has initiated an endeavour to make the Austrian Horn declare itself definitively on the side of the West, as now most exceptionally, and but provisionally constituted. The result is not yet manifested. The end, however, is certain. Between France and Russia, Austria will be forced to abandon her “armed neutrality,” and ultimately declare war on the side of Russia. French imperial policy will stir up the False Prophet-power to the same result. The Pope will preach war, and so all Europe will be in flames.

In this wide-spread conflagration, Europe and Asia, from the German and Atlantic oceans to the eastern confines of Persia, will be Russianised—Ezekiel 38: 2-7. The Russian empire will become a colossus, and bestride the world. Its head will be of gold, its breasts and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of brass, its two legs of iron, and its feet and toes part of iron and part of clay. When it attains to the magnitude of this image, its last Czar will be the last representative of the power styled “The king of a fierce countenance, doing according to his will”—Daniel 8: 9, 23; 11: 36-39, hence autocratic. The last object of his ambition in the extension of his dominion, will be the conquest of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, which will be the last field of battle for “the Powers,” among themselves, for the dominion of the Old World. The invasion of Palestine will bring Russia and Britain face to face, as the last principals in the war. Ere this, the French empire will have vanished, and France Bourbonised under Russia. In the end, Russia will overrun Egypt and Syria, and take Jerusalem. —Daniel 11: 42; Zechariah 14: 2. The Holy City will be her last conquest. She will have acquired the Holy Places her ambition veiled by her superstition now prompts her to covet, while Britain will still hold the countries anciently styled “Edom, Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon,” on the west and south of Jordan, and the Dead Sea. The relative position of Russia and Britain in the Holy Land forms the prepared situation of affairs recorded in the Bible by Moses and the Prophets. The crisis soon follows. This crisis is the destruction of the Russian and British hosts, which “cover the land as a cloud,” by pestilence, hail, fire, and sword, after the example of Sennacherib’s; so that of the Russian forces only “one-sixth part” escapes to proclaim its mysterious disaster. This extraordinary overthrow is the shattering of the colossus by the stone of Israel, as set forth in Daniel 2: 34, 44-45. Jerusalem and the Holy Land being thus delivered by the breaking of the military power of the Dragon, Christ and his associates proceed with the work before them, of setting up the kingdom of God in the restoration of Israel, the annihilation of the Papacy, and the subversion of “the Powers that be.”

The things presented in this outline will be regarded with incredulity by those who know not the gospel of the kingdom, or who imagine that nothing can be known of the future till it has become the past. In other words, as this notion has taken such deep root in the theological mind as to be almost universal, and the gospel is known to so very few, scarcely any will believe what is herein exhibited. Who is there believes that the Bible contains a revelation of God’s purposes to mankind? That it is a sure word of prophecy to which we do well to take heed, as to a light shining in a dark place? Let him examine the references and see if any thing else can be fairly and reasonably made to shine out of the prophetic word. If this word be unintelligible till after the events predicted, it cannot be “a light,” neither can any one “take heed” by its assistance. But the “gospel” is itself a great prophecy of what shall be in the Age to Come. To deny the intelligibility of prophecy is therefore to deny the possibility of understanding the gospel. God says, “My purpose is;” “I will do;” “It shall come to pass that.” This is his mode of speech; yet mankind are so stupid, that when he says what he will do, in the plainest language, they say they cannot understand him! The fact is, that they do understand the words, and the ideas the words convey, but they treat God as if he were like themselves, who speak so as to conceal their thoughts. If God were to speak according to this rule, it would be absurd to say that the Bible contains a revelation of things to come; for there is no concealment in revelation. I hope my readers are not of this class, but that they have faith in God, and in his word, and will take heed thereto. The sign of the appearing of the Son of Man in power is in the heaven, and may be discerned by every one not blinded by the foolishness of the worldly-wise. It is the sign of the Sixth Vial, concurrent with the drying up of the Euphratean power, preparatory to Christ’s coming as a thief. Look then to your garments. If you have upon you only the filthy old rags of immersed sectarianism—baptised human tradition—get quit of it, I beseech you. Faith in College Divinity, or in Millerism, or in Campbellism, is not justifying. No matter how much they talk about Jesus, they do not believe what Jesus preached, and he predicates justification, or salvation, on the belief of his word and immersion—and the word he preached for three years and a half was “THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD.” If you would invest yourself with “the wedding-garment,” you must be immersed in the belief of this. A gospel that delivers a tradition which makes the kingdom impossible, such as that it is beyond the skies; or that the Lord has cast away his people Israel, and will therefore never restore them; or that the nations are to be wholly destroyed at Christ’s coming; or that the earth is to be burned up, is a gospel not worth a pinch of snuff, because it nullifies and stultifies the truth. There is a harmony and consistency in the truth, which makes it the truth; and where these are wanting, it reduces it to an error which is neither purifying nor justifying. The marriage ceremony will not unite two men or two women in the bonds of matrimony. And why? Because one of the parties is an unfit subject, not answering the requirements of the law and institution. Now, immersion into the Divine Name (pouring and sprinkling, the subterfuges of ignorance and disobedience, are out of the question) is the marriage rite which unites a constituent of the Bride to Christ. But it does not unite a Latin, or a Greek, or a Mohammedan, or a Protestant to him, though all these may be immersed, and the Divine Name invoked over them. And why? The Latin, Greek, and Protestant all profess to believe that he is the Son of God! Because Christ does not dwell in their hearts by faith in what he preached. They are unfit subjects, not answering the requirements of the baptismal institution. This demands and will be satisfied with nothing short of a believer of the gospel of the kingdom of God. Christ was sent to preach to Israel. Be honest, then, in your practice, O ye who accept the theory of the kingdom’s gospel as the truth—be honest to yourselves, and do honour to God in obeying from the heart that mould of doctrine into which the apostles delivered those whom they enlightened. There is no other way of putting on the wedding-garment. Adorn yourselves with this, and then “watch and keep your garments, lest you walk naked, and you be exposed to shame,” for he that cometh is certainly at the door.

EDITOR.

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