find that it is written, "And it came to pass when men began to multiply upon the earth and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose."

And what was the result? The Lord said, “My spirit shall not always strive with men, for that he also is flesh; yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." The antediluvian world was divided into two classes of men, as distinct as Jew and Gentile; namely the vagabond posterity of Cain, simply called men, and the posterity of Seth, who was born and took the place of Abel, whom Cain slew, whose posterity were called the sons of God. And when the sons of God had so far apostatized and corrupted God's way upon the earth that they began to mingle indiscriminately with the vagabond posterity of the godless Cainites, to eat and drink with them, and to marry and give in marriage with them, there was no more hope, and God destroyed them with a flood. So it will be when the stone falls upon the image; they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men, intermarry among the Gentiles, and worship their gods, until the stone of Israel falls upon them and grinds them to powder with the unbelieving nations which forget God.

The Toes of the Image

The ten toes of the image are the same as the ten horns of the beast in Daniel's vision, and of the beast and the dragon of the Revelation. And they consist chiefly of those little nations who dwelled as squatters on the outskirts of Israel's land that the Lord gave his people by deed of covenant, but which the house of Israel never occupied but in part, for they early showed signs of revolt and traits of a rebellious character; therefore the Lord left these nations as thorns and briers in their sides. And the Lord speaks of them as "his evil neighbors, which touch the inheritance," by the hand of Jeremiah, saying, "Thus saith the Lord, against all mine evil neighbors that touch the inheritance which I have caused my people of Israel to inherit. Behold I will pluck them out of their land, and pluck out the house of Judah from among them. And it shall come to pass after that I have plucked them out, I will return and have compassion, and I will bring them again every man to his inheritance, and every man to his land. And it shall come to pass, they will diligently learn the ways of my people, to sware by my name, The Lord liveth, as they taught my people to swear by Baal, then shall they be built in the midst of my people. But if they will not obey, I will utterly pluck and destroy that nation, saith the Lord" (Jer. 12: 14-17).

The Stone of Israel

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And the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth" (verse 35). This is interpreted as follows:

And in the days of these kings (that compose this great confederation of nations), shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever" (that is, for a thousand years, which fills the cycle forever).

The kingdom of God which is elsewhere called "the new heavens and new

earth," as it will be visible to men and the nations of the earth in the flesh, will consist of the remnant of Israel who, though few in numbers at the beginning, consisting chiefly of the hundred and forty and four thousand, will soon be reinforced by a multitude from among all nations, kindreds, and tongues, and peoples, who, for the truth's sake in the dark and cloudy day were driven out of their own country by the evil shepherds of Israel, and who will speedily return to their own land after the wicked are consumed out of the earth, and who are spoken of in the Revelation as follows: "These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."

This multitude of refugees will add to the numbers whom the Lord will have spared in Israel in the day of his anger. The Man Child, one of David's descendants according to the flesh, will reign over them and will also rule the nations with a rod of iron. And although this people will be small at first, they will soon become great, even as the Lord himself says by the mouth of Isaiah the prophet (Isa. 60:22), "A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation, I the Lord will hasten it in his time." And in this same chapter (verse 12) the Lord says of this people, The nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall utterly perish, yea those nations shall be utterly wasted."

This nation will for the last time rebuild the Temple and re-establish the service of the sanctuary according to the plans and specifications that the Lord by his angel furnished to the Prophet Ezekiel, as they are found recorded in the end of his book. This house will then constitute a house of prayer for all nations, when "they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord, and all the nations shall be gathered into it, to the name of the Lord, to Jerusalem; neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart" (Jer. 3: 15-18).

While this visible condition of things will exist in the earth among mortal men, Jew and Gentile, Christ and his brethren, having been made perfect by resurrection or translation, will constitute a kingdom invisible to men in the flesh, seen only by immortal men like themselves; as Jesus said to Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." That is, a mortal man has no power in himself to see immortal men as angels, but his eyes may be opened so that he may see their persons.

Christ will reign as the Lord God of Israel in the holy of holies in the Temple, in the thick darkness, where he will "reign in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem and before his ancients gloriously," while his brethren, immortal like himself, will reign with him, and run to and fro throughout all the earth, as the eyes of the Lord, beholding the evil and the good, and causing God's will to be done in the earth, as it is done in heaven. Christ and his body will constitute an angelic and invisible body of people, called "the third heaven" to which is accorded no earth. There is the first heaven and the first earth, and the second heaven and the second earth, but the third heaven hath no earth connected with it. They compose the heaven of heavens, or in other figurative language, "the waters which be above the heavens."

(Verse 45) "Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the

mountain without hands, and that it break in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold, the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter, and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure." And again Daniel said to the king, “Thou sawest till that a stone was cut without hands, which smote the image upon his feet, that were of iron and clay. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors."

The important point which I wish to call attention to here, is the fact that when the image is destroyed by the stone cut out of the mountain without hands, at that time the image is complete in all its parts and stands erect upon its feet, when its brightness is excellent, and the form thereof terrible. Then all its different parts are broken to pieces together. This did rot occur in the former days, because then there was but one section of the image in existence at a time; one passed away as the other came in its place. But in the latter days the image will be complete in all its parts at the time when it will be destroyed. That is, all the nations dwelling upon the lands occupied by those mighty empires of the olden time, and much more, will be organized under one head and will constitute one vast confederacy of the greater and smaller nations of the earth; and the mighty armies of all these countries will be gathered together and concentrated and encamped upon the mountains of Israel in the holy land, where they will be taught a lesson that they will not forget, or will not be allowed to forget for a thousand years. The Lord said, It shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues, and they shall come and see my glory; and I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the isles afar off that have not seen my glory and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles" (Isa. 66: 18-19).

DANIEL'S VISION OF THE FOUR BEASTS (DAN. 7)

The four beasts brought to view in Daniel's vision answer to the four divisions of the image. This vision presents before us the same great combination of nations, kindreds, and tongues, and peoples, their destiny and what succeeds them, as is shown by the image that the king of Babylon saw. But this vision presents some very important features of the latter days, which the other does not. The Israelitish element is brought to view in this vision in the person of the little horn of the fourth beast. The ten horns, it is said in the Revelation, are ten kings. So this little horn also is a king. He will be a famous king in Israel, and some of his remarkable works are pointed out in this place.

The vision runs as follows (Dan. 7):

"Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and behold the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea. And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from the other." The heavens are employed to symbolize persons, as well as are the waters and the beasts that rise up out of the sea, of which we may speak again.

"The first was like a lion, and had eagles' wings, I beheld till the wings

thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man's heart was given to it.

'And behold another beast, a second, like to a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth of it, and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh.

"After this I beheld, and lo, another like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast also had four heads, and dominion was given to it.

"After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly, and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and break in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it, and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns."

THE TEN HORNS

Daniel adds, "I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots, and behold, in this horn there were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things." The great things foreshadowed by these symbols, like those of the image, have in the past had but a partial fulfillment. Many of the chief features set forth in them have not as

yet appeared at all.

But what has not already been manifest in the past will certainly be seen in the future.

Those great empires and cities which flourished in the earlier ages of the world in the east, in the Asiatic countries and especially in the great valley of the river Euphrates, the cradle of mankind, have so completely passed away as almost to leave doubts upon the minds of some as to whether they ever existed or not. But recent explorations have brought to light the ruins of ancient cities that have been buried from human sight for centuries. And their reappearance now proves their former existence and greatness, and establishes beyond all doubt the truth of the Holy Scriptures, the word of the living God. And it effectually rebukes those feeble-minded people who live and die under that sin which doth so easily beset us, the sin of unbelief.

But the great human tide has gone down upon those countries, insomuch that it has passed into a proverb that "Westward the star of empire takes its way." And when in the course of time, as mankind unconsciously are employed in carrying out God's original decree, to "be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it" (not a part of it, but the whole of it), when the great West is filled up, and the human tide begins again to rise in those eastern countries, far higher than ever before in the past, then will again appear in the north and east from Jerusalem, the city of the great King, those great and terrible nations of the latter days that the prophets saw in vision, and in which will be fulfilled all that the Lord has said of them by the mouths of his prophets in ancient times.

When the twelve tribes of Israel are again planted in their own land, and when they, under God's blessing, grow and multiply and become as the sand of the sea shore for multitude, and Jerusalem becomes the mart of nations, the princess among the provinces, then again will grow up round about her, and in more remote parts of the earth, those nations, great and powerful as

well as brutish; skilful to destroy, whom the Lord will bring against his rebellious people, when they fall away into idolatry and the iniquities of their

ancestors.

In those days also will again appear and grow up around them those lesser nations whom the Lord speaks of as "mine evil neighbors that touch the inheritance, which I have caused my people Israel to inherit." These were evil neighbors to Israel in the former days, such as the Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, Midianites, Amalakites, Philistines, and others who in the olden times were left as thorns and briers in the sides of Israel, and who will again in the latter days be "dogs to tear," and who will enter into the confederation of nations, and become horns upon the head of the great Assyrian, or beast, to thrust at Israel in the day of calamity, to satisfy their old grudges, which did tear perpetually. They, the Scriptures declare, will eat up her flesh and burn her with fire, and leave her naked and bare. For it is written, "God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled" (Rev. 17: 16-17). Daniel says that the fourth beast which he saw in the night visions was "dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly, . . . and it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them, another little horn."

Now we call attention to the fact that the little horn comes up among the ten, and upon the head of the beast that has the ten horns. As to these ten horns, we have already proved what they are, and what their names are called, in the eighty-third Psalm,- that they are the evil neighbors of the house of Israel.

THE LITTLE HORN

The little horn that comes up among them is the king of the rebellious house of Israel. The ten little nations that dwell round about Israel's land are called horns of the beast because they have joined the great confederation of nations, for it is said of them that they have one heart or mind, and agree, and give their power and strength unto the beast. And they will be employed by the Assyrian when the proper time is reached, to thrust sore at Israel to destroy her, for they will be supported and backed up by all the power of the Assyrian to destroy Jerusalem and her people when the time arrives for that to be done.

The king of Israel is also a horn upon the head of the beast because he has made a covenant with the Assyrians that they should help him. Being therefore sustained and supported by the Assyrians, the Israelitish harlot of the Revelation is represented to John in vision as riding upon the scarlet colored beast, and as sitting upon many waters, also, as sitting upon seven mountains, or as it is stated in plain language by the prophet Isaiah, as "staying upon the Assyrian," for he speaks of the remnant of the house of Israel who escape in that day as follows (Isa. 10: 20), “ And it shall come to pass in that day that the remnant of Israel, and such as are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more again stay upon him that smote them," that is, upon the Assyrian. But upon whom will they stay, and depend upon for support after that? The prophet continues, "But they shall stay upon the Lord, the holy one of Israel