testimony was finished. No, the dispensation must be changed, ere God's witnesses can rightly act in the spirit, or perform the deeds, attributed to the two witnesses in the chapter before us.

The subject of the chapter is the coming crisis, when the church has been removed, and the present dispensation of perfect grace has come to a close. God will not yet, indeed, have taken to him his great power to reign-but he is about to do so and, before he does, he raises up these two witnesses to testify in sackcloth at Jerusalem. It is the time of final Jewish and final Gentile apostacy, when the rulers of the Jewish nation will have made a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell; when "the prince" of Dan. ix, 27 shall have confirmed a covenant with the Jews for the one reserved week of Daniel's seventy weeks-a covenant which, in the midst of the week, as shewn in a previous paper, he violates, and sets up the abomination that maketh desolation. During the first half of this week, that is, for three years and a half, the temple, the altar, and the worshippers thereat, are preserved, while the city and the outer court are trodden underfoot of the Gentiles. During this first half of the week the two witnesses prophecy; and God endows them with power to do so, and makes them invincible till their testimony is completed. When it is finished, they are permitted to be slain. "And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them and kill them." The identity of this beast with the little horn of Dan. vii, we have seen in previous papers. The connexion of the two witnesses with the Jewish Remnant is too obvious to need pointing out. They are at least a part of that remnant, and of the martyred portion of it. The Beast slays them. The dwellers upon earth rejoice to have got rid of them. For three days and an half their dead bodies lie unburied in the streets of Jerusalem, while festivities and merry-making and sending gifts one to another evince the delight men have in their death. But the triumphing of the wicked is short. "After three days and an half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them. And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them.' Thus we have, as to a part at least, of the Martyred Remnant, the explicit assurance of God's word,

that resurrection from the dead and ascension to heaven, are the destiny that awaits them.

66

Nor is this all. The beast has other victims of his persecuting rage, whose death is noticed in the book of Revelation. Chs. xii, 11, and xiii, 7, 15, apprize us that there will be such; and in ch. xv, 2, they are seen as a distinct company, standing on the sea of glass mingled with fire, having the harps of God, and singing the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb. These are the remainder, for whose death the martyrs under the fifth seal were told they must wait. What a victory is theirs! a victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name." But not only are they presented as a distinct company of victors in ch. xv,-in ch. xx, 4, we find them associated with Christ and his co-heirs, and with their brethren, the martyrs of the fifth seal, in the glories of the millennial reign. "And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them." The "they" and "them" in this clause, doubtless refer to the great body of the faithful, the saints of all ages, including "the church," and all the Old Testament saintsall, in short, who are raised or changed at the descent of Christ into the air. But the martyrs of the crisis are not excluded; and lest we should suppose they were, both classes of them are mentioned. "And I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God." Compare this with what is said of the martyrs of the fifth seal, and you can scarcely fail to perceive that they are the same. But what of those for whom they were to wait. Ah! the number

is now complete. "And (they) which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.'

Our space will only allow us to present to our readers this interpretation of the passages which have just passed under review. Let it be weighed in the balances of the sanctuary, and the Lord give us understanding of his ways. Considerations, confirmatory of the view here presented, will naturally find their place in our next, which we hope may be devoted to the question of the interpretation of the Apocalypse as a whole.

LONDON PARTRIDGE AND OAKEY, Paternoster-Row.
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No. 18.] Plain Papers on Prophetic [June 1854.

and other Subjects.

APOCALYPTIC INTERPRETATION.

That which could only be made known to us by revelation from God, can only, when revealed, be understood by us through the teaching of the Holy Ghost. This is true of all that scripture contains-emphatically so of its prophetic parts. But if so, it follows of necessity, that our study of prophecy must be regulated by what scripture declares as to the office and work of the Holy Ghost. Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private (or self *) interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 2 Pet. i, 20, 21. Here we have a divine canon for the interpretation of prophecy. As the will of man had no part in its communication at the first, so it has no part in the correct apprehension or use of it now. Then, holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost:-now, believers in Christ learn as they are taught by the Holy Ghost. But if he be the teacher, no prophecy can be of any self-interpretation-it cannot be understood apart from the entire scope of that which it is the office of the Holy Ghost to reveal and to teach. What the scope and design of his communications are, we are expressly told by Christ himself. "Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak and he will shew you things to come. He shall glorify me; for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you." John xvi, 13, 14. To glorify Christ, then, is the great office of the Spirit.

* ἰδίας.

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He was to shew us "things to come;" but whether past, present, or future things constitute the matter of his communications, they are the things of Christ: "he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you." And as they are the things of Christ which he reveals, so also is the glory of Christ the end for which he makes them known: "he shall glorify me." The mention by our Lord of "things to come," which the Holy Ghost had still to reveal, is the more important to our present subject, inasmuch as it can only be to the Apocalypse, and the prophetic portions of the epistles, that these words can refer. We have thus the authority of Christ himself, that they are his things with which the Holy Ghost is occupied in these later prophetic scriptures, and that it is for his glory that they are revealed. What a key to unlock the treasures these scriptures contain !

To glorify Himself in Christ is the great end of all God's dispensations. To glorify Christ in the revelation of that which is his, we have just seen to be the office of the Holy Ghost; an office he does not fail to fulfil in the communication of prophetic truth, as well as of every other branch of truth. 66 Hence," as has been remarked, "though Jerusalem, or Israel, or even the Church, may be that in connection with which Christ may be glorified, it is only as connected with him that they acquire this importance. If Jerusalem is connected with Christ, with his affections and glory, Jerusalem becomes important; and we have in its connection with Christ, so far as we understand his glory, the key to interpret all that is said of it. Neither the church, nor Jerusalem, nor the Gentiles are in themselves the objects of prophecy, still less Babylon, Antichrist, or the like, but Christ. Christ is the centre in which all things in heaven and earth are to be united; various subjects become the sphere of his glory, as connected with him; and it is by this connection that we obtain the means of understanding what scripture contains on these subjects. The importance of this principle cannot well be overrated. It is not merely that it unfolds to us the only way of understanding prophecy aright, but it renders the study of prophecy sanctifying instead of speculative. What is learned becomes with the soul a part of Christ's glory, the contemplation of which by the believer is the true secret of his practical sanctification.”

Two most important results flow from the facts and

principles just considered. First, the value of prophetic truth does not depend upon its application to ourselves. All scripture is God's gracious gift to the church, for its instruction and profit; but the church is not the subject of which all scripture treats. Abraham was instructed as to what was about to befall Sodom and Gomorrah; but did he prize this instruction the less, because he himself, and his own affairs were not the subject of it? All scripture is given to the church-to the believer: but if we find in it the history of God's dealings in the past, and predictions of his dealings in the future, with others than ourselves, are we on this account to value these communications the less? God forbid! Christ, not oneself, is the great object throughout: and shall we not prize that which displays his glory, even though it may not be in immediate connection with our poor worthless selves. Secondly, if the glory of Christ be the object, the things of Christ the subject, and the Holy Ghost himself the communicator of prophetic instruction, the christian cannot be dependent for the possession of it on human learning. A man might possess vast stores of erudition, and be able with ease to quote every page of this world's dark history, and not be in the least better prepared for the study of God's prophetic word. * The humble christian, unable to read the scriptures in any language but his own, and entirely unacquainted with the details of profane history, may, nevertheless, prayerfully study the prophetic scrip

tures.

Equally with the most learned, he may count on his Father's faithful love to enable him by the teaching of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, to understand and receive what these scriptures unfold of the diverse glories of

"History was not written in heaven; and the attempt to interpret prophecy by history has been most injurious to the ascertaining of its real meaning. When we have ascertained, by the aid of the Spirit of Christ, the mind of God, we have, as far as it be history, God's estimate of events and their explanation. But history gives man's estimate of events, and he has no right to assume that the events he deems important have a place in prophecy at all; and it is clear that he must understand prophecy before he can apply it to any. When he understands it, he has what God meant to give him without going farther. Of course, where any prophecy does apply to facts, it is a true history of those facts; but it is much more. It is the connection of those facts with the purposes of God in Christ; and whenever any isolated fact, however important in the eyes of man, is taken as the fulfilment of a prophecy, that prophecy is made of private interpretation."