"in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and "fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be "turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, "before the great and the terrible day of the Lord "L come. And it shall come to pass, that, whoso66 ever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be "delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem "shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and "in the remnant whom the Lord shall call. For,

behold, in those days, and at that time, when I "shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Je"rusalem, I will also gather all the nations, and "will bring them down into the valley of the "Lord's judgment, and will plead with them "there for my people, and for my heritage Israef, "whom they have scattered among the nations, "and they have divided my land. The children "also of Judah, and the children of Jerusalem, "have ye sold unto the sons of the Ionim †, that

Psalm with the description of the Word of God routing his congre gated enemies in the nineteenth chapter of the Apocalypse, he will be convinced, that it does not receive its ultimate accomplishment till the second advent, whether literal or spiritual, at the commencement of the Millennium.

Or the valley of Jehoshaphat.

↑ By these Tonim seem to be meant all the various worshippers of the Ionah, or Noetic dove, both in the East and in the West; not the Ionians of Greece exclusively. The dispersion of the Jews extends nearly to the whole world: and so widely, in old times, did the worship of the Ionah also extend. I have already considered the subject in a Dissertation on the Mysteries of the Cabiri.

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ye might remove them far from their border. "Behold, I will raise them out of the place whi"ther ye have sold them, and will return your recompence upon your own head: and I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of "the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the Lord "hath spoken it. Proclaim ye this among the na "tions: sanctify* war, wake up the mighty men; "let all the men of war draw near; let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords, and

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your pruning hooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong. Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye nations, and gather yourselves together round "about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come

τι

down, O Lord. Let the nations be awakened, "and come up to the valley of the Lord's judg

ment: for there will I the Lord sit to judge all "the nations round about. Put ye in the sickle, "for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down, for "the press is full, the fats overflow; for their "wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes, in "the valley of cutting off: for the day of the Lord "is near in the valley of cutting off. The sun and "the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall "withdraw their shining. The Lord also shall " roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jeru"salem; and the heavens and the earth shall

* So the word is properly rendered in the margin of our translation of the Bible.

"shake:

1

"shake but the Lord will be the hope of his

people, and the strength of the children of Is"rael. So shall ye know, that I am the Lord your God dwelling in Zion my holy mountain: "then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her any more *."

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III. Such are the four most remarkable prophecies, which treat of the events that are to take place at the close of the 1260 years t. Those of Daniel and St. John are strictly chronological ones, and are therefore in some measure their own interpreters: and, as for those of Zechariah and Joel, although they be not marked by the chronological numbers and the long-continued and connected series of events which form so striking a feature of the other predictions, yet they contain within them facts which are amply sufficient to shew at what era they will be accomplished. They both foretell the restoration of the Jews: consequently all the matters, of which they speak as connected with that restoration, must be the same matters as those of which Daniel speaks as being similarly connected with it. Hence it will follow, that the destruction of

#Joel ii. iii.

+ To discuss all the prophecies relative to those events would occupy too large a portion of a Work like the present, which professes to treat peculiarly of the events comprehended within the 1260 years. The restoration of Israel and the overthrow of Antichrist, which are here very briefly noticed, are considered at large in my Work which is professedly dedicated to that purpose.

the nations in the vicinity of Jerusalem, predicted by Zechariah as contemporary with the restoration of the Jews, must be the same as the overthrow of the Infidel king in Palestine, predicted by Daniel as likewise contemporary with the restoration of the Jews. Hence also it will follow, that the fierce people symbolized by a flight of locusts, so accurately described at the beginning of the prediction of Joel, as spreading desolation wherever they come, as wonderfully succeeding in all their enterprizes, as running to and fro in the great city, as scaling the walls of fenced cities with open violence, as entering insidiously in at the windows like a thief, as causing tremendous revolutions in the political heavens; that this fierce people can be no other than the people of Daniel's infidel king, who are to begin their reign of havock and plunder under the third woe-trumpet, during the comparatively short time which the devil hath before the termination of the 1260 years, before the commencement of the restoration of the Jews*. It will likewise follow, that the invasion of Palestine

Since the first edition of this work was published, I have read Chandler's Paraphrase of Joel, and am more convinced than ever I was, that this locust-army cannot mean a flight of mere literal locusts as he supposes, but must denote, like the parallel prophecy in Rev. ix. a flight of symbolical locusts: which symbolical locusts the whole context of the prediction teaches us must mean the desolating armies of Antichrist. This point is fully discussed in my Work on the Restoration of Israel.

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by the northern army, or the army of Antichrist entering it by way of the north, is the same as the similar expedition of the infidel king: and that the destruction of this northern army with its face to the eastern sea, and its kinder part toward the utmost sea, is the same event as the destruction of the infidel king, after he has planted the curtains of his pavilions between the seas in the glorious holy mountain; for in both cases, the scene is equally laid in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem between the eastern or dead sea, and the western or mediterranean sea. It will lastly follow, that the great battle of the nations, in the valley of the Lord's judgment, is the same as the great battle of the beast, the false prophet, and the kings, at Armageddon; and as the conclusion of the time of unexampled trouble, during which Daniel, like Joel, predicts that the restoration of the Jews will take place.

1. It appears then from these concurring prophecies, that the final war of the beast and the false prophet against the Gospel, though probably first raging with great violence in Europe, during the earthquake by which the Latin city is divided into three parts, and by which the islands and mountains or smaller states of the empire are swallowed up in some grand scheme of iniquitous partition; or, in the language of Joel, during the time that wonders are shewn in the heavens and in the earth; blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke: the