THE EPOCH BETWEEN OUR AGE AND THE GREAT TRIBULATION
By D. M. PANTON, B.A.
It
is of intense interest to enquire how the Most High will act in the years
probably nearly ahead, when the Day of Grace is dying, and yet when full
judgment has not yet burst upon the world; and we discover that He adopts a
process unique in the history of the world. Definite judgments are launched, of the most
warning character; but they are attached, apparently solely, to two men; and
these men are themselves so unique in their history, and so amply empowered of
God, that they expound and explain the ominous miracles they are working, on a
stage watched by the whole world: so that the last appeal of love could not be
more forcible or convincing. It is a
tremendous fulfilment of the divine work - "At the
mouth of TWO WITNESSES shall every word be established" (2 Cor. 13: 1).
WITNESSES
We
find that two startling figures are suddenly on the earth. Exactly as Elijah appeared of old, without genealogy,
without record, suddenly stepping out of the unknown, so these two Witnesses -
universally acclaimed as Enoch* and Elijah in
the Early Church - are sent, without warning, on to the earth. They are a Jew and a Gentile, to witness to
the whole world; the only two men that have never died, and who come charged
with the Oil of the Spirit out of the heavenlies; prophets, that "prophesy a thousand two hundred and three score days"
- that is, for forty-two months they expound to mankind the reason of the
judgments they are inflicting on the world - and they do so "clothed in sackcloth" (Rev.
11: 3); for as white is the colour of the robes for
victors with Christ in the Kingdom, so black-sackcloth, the
ritual of judgment - is the clothing of God’s representatives in and before the
awful Kingdom of the Antichrist.
[* Some
believe Moses (on account of his
appearance on the Mount of Transfiguration - a type of the coming millennial
kingdom, [Matt. 16: 28]) - will
accompany Elijah.]
FIRE
The
first proof of their power is an extraordinarily vivid revelation of our modern
age, and how they meet it. These are two
men who, never having died, are therefore still liable to death; and they are
sent to face a world armed with all modern science-bombs, poison gas, the Black
Death dropped in cans, and every rank of society soaked with spies. Therefore, most remarkably, their first power
is purely protective, and absolutely unique. "If
any man desireth to hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth
their enemies" (Rev. 11: 5). Without such power they would not survive for
a week; and it is purely supernatural, for it even destroys a plot,
ere its attempted fulfilment. "And if any man
shall desire to hurt them" - even plotting in
a concealed cellar - "in this manner must
he be killed": the lightnings find
them out. Here at once we are off Gospel
ground. This, the first
record of restored miracle, by its very nature could not be in the
DROUGHT
Next,
the nature of their mission is revealed. It is, as throughout all the past ages of
human history, judgment with a view to rouse repentance, when the sin borders
on the hopeless; and it is judgment so manifestly supernatural as to be
indisputably from God. Both were formerly prophets of judgment.
Enoch, the Gentile, warned the whole
world of the Flood, and prepared a godly seed to re-people the earth; and Elijah,
the Jew, while he called down fire on the enemies of
PLAGUE
A
further fact reveals the power of these two Prophets as wholly unique in the
history of mankind, as we should expect in the last, supreme crisis of the
world. "And
they have power over the waters to turn them into blood, and to smite the earth
with every plague, as often as they shall desire." Such power has never before been committed to
men in the history of the world: so far from being themselves killed, they can
plague whomsoever they will throughout the whole earth, as often as they
choose. The thousands of years spent in
the heavens - Enoch, four to five thousand, Elijah, two to three thousand -
together with a possession of the Holy Ghost so ample as to make them Olive
Trees, Lamps of Oil, make their wills so conformed to the Divine, will that thev can be entrusted with these unparalleled powers.
ASSASSINATION
Next
follows, in one of the most astounding facts ever recorded,
the greatest miracle an evil man will ever work. The coming of the Lawless One, we read, is "according to the
working of Satan with ALL power and signs and wonders [wrought on behalf] of falsehood" (2 Thess. 2: 9). "The Wild Beast
shall make war with them and overcome them, AND KILL THEM."
The reason is given: "when they have finished their testimony":
"man is immortal till his work is done",
and now their death can produce more fruit than their life. But the enormousness of the miracle remains. In his personal combat with them on the
streets of
TELEVISION
One
detail in the drama is one of the most striking proofs of prophecy ever given. For three and a half days "they suffer not their dead bodies to be laid in a tomb";
exactly as, a few years ago, when a youth attempted the life of Mussolini, his
corpse was left in the city streets for three days, for the rancour of the
crowds; and "THEY THAT DWELL ON THE EARTH"
- the population of the whole world - "rejoice,
over them".* But how could the world know the fact within
three and a half days, before the Prophets are risen and gone? Early commentators felt the difficulty
acutely: to-day, the telegraph in a few minutes tells the whole world the
facts; and television will reproduce the corpses to the ends of the earth.
[*
It is remarkable that an identical degradation occurred just before the Roman
storming of
RESURRECTION
But
now we get a more enormous miracle by which the Most High instantly
out-balances what He has allowed the Lawless One to do. He grants the godless a momentary victory only
to reveal their enmity and folly to the whole universe. "The breath of
life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and they went
up into heaven in the cloud." For the first time in the history of the world
the godless crowd sees dead bodies coming to life, and actually watches a rapture: "they went up into
heaven, and their enemies beheld them". Doubt is for ever buried in sight, so that
absence of repentance now proves sin beyond hope, and the earth-shock which, as
in our Lord’s case, accompanies their resurrection, wrecks a tenth of the city,
and slaughters "seven thousand men of name",
that is, persons known and distinguished (Bp. Wordsworth) - how many of the
ordinary population is not stated * -
and so proves to the crowds that they are dealing with the Lord of earth
as well as with the God of heaven, when they killed Prophets who "stand before the Lord of the earth"
**.
[*
Again proving that we are off Gospel ground; for none was slain at the
earthquake of Calvary, nor the earth-shock of the empty Tomb; and an earthquake
that shook Paul’s prison to its foundations (Acts
16: 26) actually saved.
**
Plurality of rapture is thus proved beyond contradiction. (1) Our Lord, and probably those who broke out
of the tombs accompanying Him, has been rapt, and as the ‘first-fruits’ (1 Cor. 15: 20) of the one harvest; (2) a body of
saints, specifically named ‘firstfruits’,
are on high before the Tribulation (Rev. 14: 4);
(3) here are two prophets visibly taken up in a separate rapture; and (4) the
martyrs under Antichrist, on high (Rev. 20: 4),
could not have been rapt before the close of the Tribulation. The disappearance of the Witnesses, removing
by far his greatest obstacle, appears to date the commencement of Antichrist’s
reign of three and a half years.]
FEAR
The
tragedy closes for the world in terror only. "The rest were
affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven." So it was with the Roman soldiers when they
saw the Angel at the Lord’s tomb. "For fear of him the watchers did quake, and become as dead
men" (Matt. 28: 4). The world. suddenly realizes that
judgment is at the doors. But their prayer of terror is no prayer to God. "They say to
the mountains and to the rocks, Fall on
us, and hide us from the wrath of the Lamb" (Rev. 6: 16).
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"Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of the prophecy of this book" (Rev.
1: 3). He who has mastered the Apocalypse - or rather whom the
Apocalypse has mastered lives in another world: his outlook has been
revolutionized for ever.
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THE RETURN OF ENOCH AND ELIJAH
By
J. A. SEISS, D,D.
The
apocryphal Gospels, Acts, etc., which, though we go not to them for doctrine,
belong to the early literature of the Church, and hence are competent witnesses
as to the opinions current among Christians at the time they were written, are
also very positive and clear in the assertion that Enoch, with Elijah, is to
witness again upon the earth. In the History
of Joseph the Carpenter, Jesus is represented as saying: "Enoch and Elijah must, toward the end of time, return into
the world and die, namely, in the day of commotion, terror, perplexity, and
affliction; for Antichrist will slay them" (Chap. 31.). So in the Gospel
of Nicodemus, two old men are found living in their bodies in
Paradise, one of whom says :- "I am Enoch, who
was well-pleasing to God, and who was translated hither by Him; and this is
Elijah the Tishbite; and we are also to live until
the end of the world; and then we are to be sent by God to withstand
Antichrist, and to be slain by him, and after three, days to rise again, and to
be snatched up in clouds to meet the Lord" (Chap. 9. alias 25.).
So
also in an ancient book called Revelation
of John, a voice from heaven is represented as saying, - "Three years shall those times be. And then I shall send forth Enoch and Elijah
to convict him [Antichrist]; and they shall show
him to be a liar and deceiver; and he shall kill them at the altar, as said the
prophet." So also Tertullian (De Anima, 50):- "Enoch was translated, and so was Elijah; nor did they
experience death; it was deferred; they are reserved for the suffering of
death, that by their blood they may extinguish Antichrist." Arethas (on Rev. 11: 13)
declares the two Witnesses to be Enoch and Elijah, and claims that this was
held with one accord in his day - concorditer
affirmatur. Ephraem the Syrian, in quite another section
of the Church, speaking of the Antichrist and the great day of judgment, says:- "But, before these things,
the merciful Lord will send Elijah the Tishbite, and
with him Enoch, to teach religion to the human race; and they shall preach
boldly to all men the knowledge of God, exhorting them not to believe in the
tyrant through fear. They shall cry out
and say, ‘This is a deceiver, O ye men. Let none of
you in any way believe him: for in a little while he will be utterly abolished.
Behold, the Lord, the Holy One, cometh from heaven!’ "
So
also Ambrose, who reproves Victorinus for substituting the name of Jeremiah in the
place of Enoch as the companion of Elijah in the last years of this present world. And scarcely,
until after the first half of the Christian ages, do we hear of any other
testimony on the subject. Whenever we
hear of the last great Antichrist and the Witnesses who withstand him unto
death, Elijah and Enoch, Enoch and Elijah are the names we
hear from the lips of the most eminent teachers, bishops, apologists, and
martyrs, from the time of the Apostles onward. Modern Christendom has well nigh dropped these
names from all such connections, as it has also well nigh dropped most of the
characteristics of primitive Christianity itself; but nothing that it has
substituted in place of these names can claim even a moiety either of the
Scriptural or the traditional evidences, which still, in spite of everything,
continue to proclaim Enoch and Elijah the
Two Witnesses.
Of
all men that have ever lived, Enoch and Elijah are the judgment
prophets. We do not know of a single
other word that Enoch ever uttered save on this theme of "judgment from above". There is no evidence that he ever preached on
any other subject. The all-absorbing,
all-comprehending, as all-characterizing topic of his entire ministry, as
attested by the New Testament, was this, that he prophesied, saying, "Behold, the Lord cometh with ten
thousand of His saints to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all
that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly
committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken
against Him" (Jude 14, 15). He was, therefore, the great
prophet of judgment before the Flood, and hence one special witness of Christ
in the specific character of the strong Angel coming down from heaven in the
clouds to execute vengeance upon the guilty.
As
to Elijah, he was also pre-eminently a messenger and prophet of judgment. The Book
of Ecclesiasticus says of him, that he stood up
as fire, and his word burned like a lamp; he brought sore famine upon the
guilty, and by his zeal he diminished their number, and brought kings to
destruction, and anointed kings to take revenge (Eccles. 48: 1-8). Words and works of death and portent to the
wicked constituted the great outstanding characteristic of his whole prophetic
career, interspersed with the power of resurrection. His spirit was not the evangelic, but the
judgment, spirit.
That
wild figure, that stern voice, those deeds of blood, that vehemence of judicial
administration, which stand out in such startling relief from the pages of the
old records concerning him, have become somewhat silvered over in the
Christian’s thoughts with the light of the Mount of Transfiguration; but the
fiery zeal, and destructive wrath, and rugged outline of the old prophet of woe
and death to Ahab and Jezebel, Baal and Ashtaroth, is
still the true and characteristic picture of Elijah, identifying him, of all
others since his time, as a peculiar Witness and Messenger of the judgment
Angel. We search in vain for any other
two prophets so peculiarly, intensely, and characteristically judgment-prophets, or that so
specially take on the features of heralds and representatives of the coming of
the mighty judgment-Angel.
"Even after the lapse of eighteen centuries,"
says Herschell,
"the Jews at their marriage feasts always
place a chair and knife and fork for Elijah. In the celebration of the Passover two large
cups are filled with wine. After the
blessing, the second, ‘Elijah’s cup’ is placed before the master of the house;
the door is opened, and a solemn pause of expectation ensues. It is at this moment that the Jews expect that
the coming of Elijah will take place to announce the glad tidings that the
Messiah is at hand. Well do I remember
the interest with which, when a boy, I looked towards the door, hoping that
Elijah might really enter."
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