8. What will Russia be planning at this or a later time?

9. In what chapter of Ezekiel is that people brought before us?

10. Name some of the reasons for identifying Russia in this case.

11. What kind of a prophecy concerning Russia have we here?

12. What nations are allied with her?

13. With what modern nations are they identified?

14. What time will this prophecy be fulfilled?

15. What proof of this can you present?

16. Have you read Ezekiel 38 and 39?

17. What inferences are deducible from the foregoing? 18. May we expect an unending peace to follow the present war?

19. What then is our hope?

XXII

JERUSALEM'S CAPTURE IN THE LIGHT OF

T

PROPHECY

I

HE Christian's pulse beats high these days, and his gaze is upward. Will the clouds soon part and the Lord appear? is the anxious thought of his heart. Some have ventured the opinion that His second coming that will bring this war to the end. would effect in the battling armies, if the members of the Body of Christ were caught up out of their ranks and no dead bodies be left behind!

may be the event What surprise it

The capture of Jerusalem by the British and their allies has greatly stimulated this feeling just now. So much has been said about the Jews returning to their own land, and so commonly is it related up to the second coming of our Lord, that the two events have come to be associated as one in the popular mind. But nevertheless they are distinct and separate.

In the first place, the capture of Jerusalem may precede, by quite a period, any return of the Jews to Palestine on a large scale. The war must end first and the terms of peace be agreed upon, including the setting aside of that land for the people to

whom it really belongs. Of course, this is going to be done sooner or later, but just when it will be done who can say!

We might take this occasion, however, to speak of a mysterious prophecy in the sixteenth chapter of Revelation which points to it, in the judgment of some. It is the pouring out of the sixth vial "upon the great river Euphrates," whose water is dried up "that the way of the kings of the East might be prepared." The Euphrates is regarded as the symbol of the Turkish power, and its drying up is the receding of that empire from the extensive boundaries of its European and Asiatic domain into the narrower compass of its birthplace, a receding which really began at the rebellion of Ali Pasha in 1820, and has been continuing to the present hour.

"The kings of the East," or "the kings that come from the sunrising" (R. V.), and mentioned in the prophecy, are taken to mean the Jews. F. C. Jennings, in "The World Conflict in the Light of the Prophetic Word," translates the phrase, "that the way of the kings of the rising again of the sun might be prepared." The text is confessedly difficult, and we are unable to say that Mr. Jennings is justified in this rendering; but his observations upon it are interesting at least.

The "sun" in his judgment is here used symbolically of Christ, whose rising again refers to His coming to deliver Israel from her oppressors and to set up His Kingdom on the earth. Malachi's words come into mind, where Christ in His future relationship to Israel is described as "the Sun of

righteousness" Who shall "arise with healing in his wings." But to quote Mr. Jennings:

"I take it, then, that in harmony with these Old Testament promises, as well as with the tenor or very atmosphere of this book, the Supreme Ruler's-the Sun's-the King's-earthly people Israel is surely to be seen under the term, the kings of the rising again of the sun.' It is their way that is prepared by the drying up of the water of the Euphrates; it is for their return to their land that the Gentile that has his foot on Jerusalem is to be pushed back whence he

came.

"Now, make of it what you will; say, if you please, that it is but a coincidence, or a series of coincidences; yet it is an evident fact that, as Turkey has been pushed back, so has the Jew gained a footing again in his land. A century ago he could not own a foot of it, or hardly set his foot on it, save under extremely humiliating conditions; to-day there are more than double the number of Jews in Palestine than returned there from Babylon in the days of Ezra."

II

In the second place, while the return of the Jews to Palestine-the budding of the fig-tree-may be a sign of the Lord's second coming, it is not necessarily a forerunner of it. The reference now is to that first stage of His coming coincident with the translation of His Church.

In other words, as the writer understands the prophecies, Christ's coming for His Church does not await that return or any other happening. The

capture of Jerusalem sends a thrill through our souls as though He were very near; it makes us feel His nearness as before we did not feel it; and yet if the capture had not been made, it would still be our duty to be looking for His coming at any time.

In other words, the second coming of Christ, as previous chapters have pointed out, is an event of two stages, or a grand drama of two acts: There is a coming in the air for the Church which is His body, and which will be translated to meet Him there (1 Thess. 4:13-18); and then, after an interval, a coming with His saints and His mighty angels in judgment, and for the deliverance of His people Israel from their persecutors.

As this deliverance is to take place in the Holy Land, it is evident that ere that time Israel must have returned there in increasing numbers, and have rebuilt "the waste places" as the prophets have foretold, and even reëstablished their temple worship. But there is time for this between the translation of the Church and the date of its occurrence.

Especially is this true if the Jews continue to return there more and more before the translation takes place, and then complete the repopulation of the land after that event.

It is this thought really that gives the intense interest to the capture of Jerusalem. And yet we would not speculate or contribute to false hopes. Especially would we cultivate the spirit of sobriety, and quietude of heart, and that patient waiting for Christ which James, the brother of our Lord, urges with such fervency upon the sojourners of the dis