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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Like Israel in the wilderness, we should realize that we are pilgrims and strangers, seeking a Land, a City, and a King, which are beyond our Jordan of death and resurrection.
At the Rapture, Christ comes into the air for His saints.4 At the Revelation, He comes to the earth with them.5 He certainly must come for them before He can come with them.
The Revelation ushers in the day, the Day of the Lord.15
He had told them that the Day of the Lord should come as a thief in the night (1 Thes. 5:2), but that they were not of the night, and therefore He exhorts them to watch and be sober. (See also Lu. 21:36.16)
Enoch, a type of the Church, by his rapture,—that is by being caught away or translated (Heb. 11:5)—escaped the flood. Christ says, in Luke 21:36, “Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.”
The elect,17 a portion of Israel,18 will be gathered back to Jerusalem,19 and pass through the fire, or great trial.20 Like Enoch, the Church escapes from it. Like Noah, Israel passes through it.
There is a Judgment day coming, not a day of twentyfour hours, but a long series of years. Day is used to designate such a period in 2 Cor. 6:2; Eph. 6:13, and Heb. 3:8.19 The “Hour” in John 5:25, has been over eighteen centuries long. So “the hour” in John 5:28 may be centuries of years.
We would call special attention to the fact that antichrist denies the Father and the Son,23 and that the Greek words in 2 Thes. 2:7-8 should be rendered “the mystery of lawlessness”—”the lawless one.” This, we think, gives an alarming significance to the atheistic and lawless trio of socialism, nihilism and anarchy, so rapidly spreading in our day, and which seeks to wipe out all law relating to marriage, property, etc.
Well, first of all we answer that Civilization and Refinement are not the Source of Holiness. They may elevate the head, while the heart is untouched. The gilded palace of sin is as certainly the gateway to hell as the darkest den of vice.
The Parables. “The parable of the Sower shows the varied and imperfect reception of the Word. The parable of the Tares shows the early and continued effects of Satan’s presence among the saints. The parable of the Mustard-seed shows outward growth sheltering evil. The parable of the Leaven shows the gradual and utter corruption of the truth. The parable of the Treasure hid in a field shows what Israel is to be in the world. The parable of the Pearl of great price shows what the Church is to Christ. And the parable of the Dragnet shows the cleansing of the kingdom at His second coming.”
And now let us remember that this world DIES every thirty-three years. The average of human life is even a little less than this.
Wow! 33 years
“The saints shall judge the world.”
Sequence of judgements
Two events must precede the Revelation, which will indicate its proximity, to-wit: the Restoration (partial at least) of Israel,5 and the rise of Antichrist.6
Antichrist will not be revealed—as we understand from 2 Thes. 2:7,—until after the Rapture. Neither is it probable that the restoration of Israel (except partially in unbelief, Zeph. 2:1-2), will take place until after that event.
This is one thing he got wrong as Israel was restored in 1948.
“At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Porte allowed no more than three hundred of the hated people to live in the city. Forty years later that restriction was removed, but another still remained, by virtue of which they were permitted only to reside in a particular quarter of the town, which was much too small for them.
Account of restoration of Israel during the 19th century.
The anti-semitic agitations in Germany, Austria and France, and the fierce persecutions in Russia and Roumania, have stirred up the Jews of the world as the eagle doth her nest. Deut. 32:11.
