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and occupying their ancient city Jerusalem, to fast and pray that they may be delivered from the hand of their enemies. Their petition will eventually be successful; though, as we learn from Daniel and Zecharialı, Antichrist will first be permitted to make himself master of Jerusalem. In due time, the Lord will hear the cry of his people, and will no longer suffer them to be a reproach and a proverb among the nations. He will remove far from them the northern tyrant, that fierce leader of the great Roman confederacy; who, prevented by the decided naval superiority of the faithful maritime power from attempting an expedition by sea, will invade Palestine by land, and will therefore necessarily enter it from the north: and he will drive him into the land which his own merciless extortions have made desolate, and will there destroy him between the two seas of Judeà, the Dead sea on the east, and the Mediterranean sca on the west. After the destruction of Antichrist and his rebellious host, the land shall again bring forth her increase with ten-fold fertility: and God will abundantly restore to his people the produce of those years, which that great army of symbo

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We are not to suppose, that, because God styles the symbolical locusts and their fellows his great army, they are therefore his favoured and chosen people. The expression is only used to intimate, that they are a scourge in his hand, well adapted to punish the wickedness of surrounding papal na

lical locusts and caterpillers had devoured. In addition to the blessings of temporal prosperity, he will bestow upon them the yet greater blessings of pure religion. He will pour out, in a manner unknown in former ages, his Holy Spirit upon all flesh; insomuch that the day of Pentecost itself shall be only a type of this yet greater and more extensive effusion. Nevertheless, before the great and terrible day of the Lord shall come, the world shall be convulsed with unexampled political changes and revolutions. But, wonderful as the success of Antichrist shall be during his permitted hour *,

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tions, and to discipline with wholesome though severe chastisement his church both protestant and Judaical. Precisely in the same manner God calls Nebuchadnezzar his servant (Jerem. xliii. 10.); because, however unconscious of it, and however bent only upon executing his own schemes of aggrandisement, he was the instrument of accomplishing the divine purposes. The idea in fact is so obvious, that Attila king of the Huns actually styled himself the scourge of God; and boasted that his commission, as the executioner of the just anger of the Almighty, was to fill the earth with all kind of evils. There is however a peculiar propriety in denominating the symbolical locusts God's army, because, as Bochart observes, the Arabs were wont to distinguish natural locusts by that very title.

* "He shall prosper," says the prophet Daniel, "till the "defiance be finished" (Dan. xi. 36.). That is, he shall in the main prosper, though perhaps with some occasional checks, until the period of the defiance, by which I understand the period of the 1260 years in the course of which the majesty of heaven is so eminently defied, shall expire.

the believer will only infer from these predicted signs that his redemption draweth near. Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall surely be delivered; for he will save both the remnant of his people Israel, and his spiritually wise children of the uncircumcision.

The prophet now proceeds to give a more full account of the great and terrible day of the Lord. He declares, that, when God shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, he will likewise gather all the nations into the valley of his judgment, and will plead with them on account of the unjust violence with which they have scattered Israel. These nations, as we are taught by Daniel and St. John, are those which will compose the great Antichristian Roman confederacy. Joel, like Ezekiel, typically terms one branch of the confederacy Tyre and Zidon*. He also, like St. John, terms it Egypt; and, like many of the ancient prophets, he denominates the whole confederacy Edom f. With an awful and sublime inversion of

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* Chandler, agreeably to his scheme, understands the literal Tyre and Zidon, and supposes that they might have bought some of the Jewish prisoners from the Edomites. But, if the prophecy relate to the final restoration of Judah, as I think it must, Tyre and Zidon will mean the corrupt church of Rome, as in Ezek. xxvii. and xxviii.

Egypt and Edom are literally understood by Chandler, though he acknowledges that it is impossible from history to fix the particular event by which the prophecy was accomplished.

a prediction of Isaiah, he calls upon the nations, which arrange themselves under the banners of Antichrist, to beat their plough-shares into swords, and their pruning-hooks into spears. He calls upon them to wake up the mighty men, and to sanctify war*; to proclaim a miscalled holy cru

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Kimchi comes much nearer the truth, and speaks a language much more accordant with many other ancient predictions, in supposing that Egypt means the Mohammedans, and Edom the Romans. I am rather inclined however to think, that both Egypt and Edom equally typify the Antichristian confederacy of the Roman beast and his vassals. Egypt is used by St. John as a type of the Roman empire (Rev. xi. 8.) along with Sodom; whence it is not unnatural to conclude, that it here likewise along with Edom means the same. As for the Mohammedans, although their superstition will be broken without hand at this period (Dan. viii. 25.), I cannot find that we have any warrant for supposing that they will nationally be engaged in the last war of the beast. One great branch of them, Turkey, will be destroyed previous to that era; and the other branch, Persia, is situated without the limits of the Roman empire. I will not however positively deny, that the Mohammedans may be intended by Egypt. They certainly answer, no less than the Papists, to the prophetic description of committing violence against the children of Judah, and shedding innocent blood; innocent at least, so far as they were concerned. Gibbon, though by no means unfriendly to Mohammed, states, that that impostor "commanded or approved the assassination of "the Jews and idolaters, who had escaped from the field of "battle."

The sanctification of this war, and the destroying anathema, with which Daniel's wilful king goes out to his work of devastation, equally, I think, relate to the apocalyptic junction

sade against those, whom the infidel and papal tyrants have devoted with an anathema to utter destruction: and he declares, that in such a cause even the weak shall think themselves strong. Yet, when the nations are roused, when they have assembled themselves together in the valley of judgment, in the valley of the cursing of Megiddo; then will the Lord sit as a judge in the day of his great controversy with the Gentiles. The harvest of the rank vine of the Roman earth is now fully ripe: and the Almighty Word of God begins to tread the winepress of Bozrah, and to sprinkle his garments with the blood of Edom*. The sun and the moon of the Latin firmament shall then be darkened, and the

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of the false prophet with the Roman beast under his last head and the confederated kings of the Latin earth. We seem to gather from these parallel passages, that the last war will be undertaken by the Antichristian faction as a sort of crusade or holy

war.

* The vintage, here spoken of, is the great vintage of Armageddon under the last vial. Compare Isaiah Ixiii. 1–6. and Rev. xiv. 17-20. xix. 15. This studied uniformity of metaphor, for I can consider it in no other light, affords an argument to prove, that we ought to refer the prophecy of Joel to the second advent, and not to the period which Chandler imagines.

+ I understand by this imagery, which occurs in Chap. iii. 15, the final overthrow of Antichrist. It may perhaps be said, that, while I shortly after object to Chandler because he affixes such various meanings to the phrase of the great day of the Lord as used by Joel, I myself apply differently he signs in the political

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