by the explicit declarations of other prophecies, we should be in danger of fancying, as some actually have fancied, that the general conversion of the whole house of Judah would succeed their restoration. What proportion indeed the converted Jews restored by the maritime power will bear to the unconverted Jews restored by Antichrist, it is impossible, and therefore it would be absurd, to attempt to determine: but we may venture to say, arguing at least from probabilities, that a very large body will be brought back by each; and that the goats, or unconverted Jews, will attempt, in conjunction with the armies of Antichrist, to prevent the return of the rams, or the unconverted Jews. • The prophet having foretold the restoration of Judah partly in a converted and partly in an unconverted state, is now directed to set his face against Edom and mount Seir, as he had been commanded in the beginning of his prediction to set his face against the tyrannical shepherds who had scattered and oppressed God's flock. We have already seen, that Edom is used as a type of the Roman empire; and, from his immediate connection in the present instance with the restoration of Judah, we are obliged to conclude that he typifies that empire here also. Edom then is the same as the shepherds; who scattered the Jews while Pagan, and who will be destroyed in the act of fighting against them while papal. Against this Roman Edom God will stretch out his hand, and will make him a desolation and a desolation; because he has

had

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had a perpetual hatred against the children of Israel, and has shed their blood by the force of the sword, in the time of their iniquity in the end, or during the period of their last (that is, their present) apostasy and dispersion. The Jews indeed were evidently objects of the divine wrath; they were scattered throughout all countries; and were a proverb and a by-word among the nations: but that circumstance afforded no warrant for the atrocities of popish persecutors, nor did the wickedness of Judah exculpate them from blood-guiltiness. Edom therefore is prepared for blood. Since, in every period of his history from his first rise to the formation of his last Antichristian confederacy he hath not hated blood, even blood shall pursue him*. In the pride of his political speculations

he

* Behold Edom in his pagan days of conquest and ambitious affectation of universal empire. "After this I saw in the night"visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible and "strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured, "and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of "it"-View him next while under the influence of his little apostate horn. "It was given unto him to make war with the "saints, and to overcome them". Consider the adulterous church, for whose polluted communion he exchanged his ancient pagan abominations, and to whom he hath ever lent himself an indefatigable tool of persecution. "I saw the woman drunken "with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the 46 martyrs of Jesus"-See him lastly, under the united influence of Antichrist and the false prophet, introducing, as yet unsated with slaughter, new scenes of havock, blood, and desolation.

H 3

His

he had said, The land of these two nations Israel and Judah shall be mine: I will possess it: I will make it a province of my empire, conveniently subservient from its central situation, to my future schemes of yet more extensive aggrandisement. Thus he whereas the Lord was there. The Lord, who hath heard all his contemptuous speeches against Israel, and all his words which he hath multiplied even against the Lord, will suddenly go forth in his great wrath to judge him. As he rejoiced at the desolation of Jacob, so shall he become a desolation of desolations while the whole earth rejoiceth.

The fall of Edom shall be the rise of the house of Israel. They, who had long been scattered through all the lands, monuments of God's vengeance; they, who had profaned his holy name by

His leader, the infidel king, "shall go forth with great fury to "destroy, and with a bitter religious anathema to devote many "to

to utter destruction. He shall plant the curtains of his "pavilion between the seas in the glorious holy mountain: and "the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the (c women ravished. And I saw the beast," and the false prophet, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered "together to make war against him that sat on the earth, and "against his army."

After such multiplied deeds of violence and bloodshed, can we wonder, that vengeance, however slow-footed, should at length overtake him? He, that killeth with the sword, must "be killed with the sword." Edom hath not hated blood, therefore blood shall pursue him.

calling

calling themselves his people, when they were manifestly rejected of him: shall now be restored, though not for their own sakes; and shall be admitted into a new and spiritual covenant with the Lord. Judah and Israel shall both be brought back; but the house of Judah first. Although they have so long been politically and nationally dead, that they may be compared, not merely to putrid corpses, but to dry bones: yet they shall assuredly rise again, bone to his bone; shall resume their rank among the nations; and shall become, in the highest sense of the words, God's own people, a peculiar people zealous of good works, a people constantly living under the gracious influences of the Holy Spirit. Judah and Israel however shall be no longer, as formerly, two kingdoms. As the two sticks became one in the hand of Ezekiel; so shall the two kindred nations become one in the hand of the Lord. And, as the literal David reigned first over Judah separately, and afterwards over Judah and Israel jointly *; so shall the mystical David first reign over the House of Judah for a short time separately, and afterwards over Judah and Israel now for ever united. When Judah is restored and converted, and when the confederacy of Antichrist is broken; "then shall come all the tribes of Israel unto David, and shall speak, saying; Thou wast he that leddest

"out and broughtest in Israel; thou shalt hence"forth therefore feed the Lord's people; thou "shalt be a captain over Israel; thou art the "anointed king, the Messiah of God *." With this united kingdom the Lord will make an everlasting covenant of peace. He will establish them, and set his sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore. He will be their God, and they shall be his people.

We have seen the restoration of Judah partly in a converted and partly in an unconverted state, the destruction of the mystic Edom or the Roman Antichristian faction, the political resurrection of Judah and Israel after their long national extinction, their coalition into one people under one king the Messiah, and their unexampled prosperity and happiness in the land of their fathers while living in covenant with God and beholding his sanctuary in the midst of them: we have seen, in short, the commencement of that season of blessedness, which is usually denominated the Millennium. The prophet now directs our attention to a new enemy of the Church, whom he styles Gog and Magog. That this new enemy cannot be the same as Edom or the Roman confederacy, is plain, both from the time when he makes his appearance, nainely at some indefinite period after the commencement of the Millennium; from the countries.

1

whence