strength and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction; the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth, and shall say,

THE GENTILES' CONFESSION IN THAT DAY

Surely, our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit" (Jer. 16: 19). This confession will be made by what are known in the world as pious, devout, and religious people, such as Protestants, Catholics, and other religious bodies of people scattered throughout the earth, and we may say that it will be well for devout, religious, and zealous people in these times who have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge, such as is in our time manifest in the Catholic churches, and also among the Protestant churches, the Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Baptists, Congregationalists, Angelicans, and others, if they can now be brought to make this confession and say, as people of their kind will be brought to say in the latter days, "Our fathers have inherited lies, vanity and things wherein there is no profit "; and after repudiating the lying vanities which they have inherited from those who have gone before them, if they will then profess the truth and abide therein to the end, they will be entitled to rise in the resurrection of the just, and participate in the honors and glories of those who rise to reign with Christ in the earth.

One of the most egregious lies which these pious and misguided people will have to confess and abandon, one which is of universal acceptance among them and which is so clearly expressed in the Presbyterian creed, is this which says, "The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory." This spurious hope which is begotten of the heathen doctrine of immortality of human souls, together with a multitude of other errors and false views of God the Father, of Jesus Christ the Lord, of angels and fallen angels, and of the Devil and devils, and hell, and false views of the kingdom of God, and the manner of the reign of Christ and the saints on the earth,- all these and kindred lying vanities and things wherein there is no profit must be confessed and abandoned by them, before they can have any part in the hope set before us. And the object which we have in view in writing this book is to aid all persons in whose hands it may come, who are of good and honest hearts, to repudiate the errors of this wicked and adulterous generation and to embrace the truth as it is in Jesus Christ, that they may be saved. However, we look for very little good fruit in these evil times while the great mass of the religious and misguided people under the leadership of blind guides rush along and crowd the broad way to destruction, while but few can be influenced to stem the downward current and turn aside to seek the narrow way of life that they may live when the wicked perish and cease to be.

It is written, "When thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness" (Isa. 26:9); and again in the Revelation (15:4), "Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy, for all nations shall come and worship before thee, for thy judgments are made manifest." Therefore not until God's judgments are poured out upon the rebellious house of Israel, as set forth in Moses and the prophets, and upon the nations of the earth, upon the moun

tains of Israel, will those that are left of Israel and the nations learn righteousness. The wicked of the house of Israel and of the nations must be destroyed by millions in the judgment, first in the land of Israel, and after that, among the nations afar off and near at hand before those that are left will learn righteousness.

THE REMNANT OF THE NATIONS

We have already pointed out what the prophets have testified of the remnant of Israel which will be spared in the day of judgment and who will constitute the beginning of a new and righteous nation in the holy land when the scorners are consumed out of the land. We will now point out some of the things that are affirmed of the remnant of the mighty nations that the Lord brings into the land of Israel from the four corners of the earth to execute judgment upon his own sinful nation. When the Lord by their hand hath performed his whole work of judgment upon Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, then the Lord declares that he will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks. "Therefore shall the Lord, the Lord of hosts send among his fat ones leanness; and under his glory he shall kindle a burning like the burning of a fire, And the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame; and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briers in one day; and shall consume the glory of his forest, and of his fruitful field, both soul and body; and they shall be as when a standard bearer fainteth, And the rest of the trees of his forest shall be few, that a child may write them" (Isa. 10: 16-19).

That is, a child instructed in the prophecies who has learned from the book of Ezekiel's prophecies where he speaks of the Assyrian under the title of Gog and all his multitude,- a child may write down one-sixth as the number which will be left when these mighty nations fall upon the mountains of Israel, as it is written, "Therefore, thou son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee, and will cause thee to come up from the north parts, and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel; and I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand. Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou and all thy bands, and the people that is with thee; I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field to be devoured; thou shalt fall upon the open field, for I have spoken it saith the Lord God" (Ezek. 39:1-5). Now if five-sixths of this vast concourse of human beings are to be destroyed at one time upon the mountains of Israel, and only onesixth part of their numbers left, then what may the whole number be? for if we can determine the whole number, then it will be an easy matter to estimate the sixth part thereof.

Description of Gog's Army Before Destruction

Now in the visions of John as recorded in the Book of the Revelation under the soundings of the fifth and sixth trumpets, the mighty armies of Gog are

symbolized by locusts and Gog himself is called the angel of the bottomless pit (of nations), whence the locusts come forth. These locusts are symbols of soldiers, who are also called horses, as it is contained in this vision, saying, "And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle," and their officers are called horsemen, who by means of bridles direct the horses where they must go.

These locusts which will cover the land of mystical Egypt will be very numerous; the magnitude of this mighty army may be imagined when we consider the locusts of ancient Egypt and read what is spoken of them by Moses, saying, "And Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt, and the Lord brought an east wind upon the land all that day and all that night; and when it was morning the east wind brought the locusts. And the locusts went up over all the land of Egypt; very grievous were they; before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such, for they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened" (Exod. 10: 13-14).

So also of Gog and his multitudes, they shall be as a cloud to cover the land (Ezek. 38:9). Joel also employs the same language in speaking of the armies that the locusts represent in the latter days as Moses employs speaking of the locusts of Egypt, saying, "As the morning spread upon the mountains, a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it even to the years of many generations (Joel 2:2).

Joel continues saying, "A fire devoureth before them, and behind them a flame burneth; the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them. The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses, and as horsemen so shall they

run.

Like the noise of chariots on the tops of mountains shall they leap, like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble, as a strong people set in battle array. Before their face the people shall be much pained; all faces shall gather blackness. They shall run like mighty men: they shall climb the wall like men of war; and they shall march every one on his ways, and they shall not break their ranks, neither shall one thrust another; they shall walk every one in his path: and when they fall upon the sword, they shall not be wounded. They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall; they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief. The earth shall quake before them, the heavens (of Israel) shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark (kings, princes, priests, and prophets of Israel) and the stars shall withdraw their shining. And the Lord shall utter his voice before his army; for his camp is very great: for he is strong that executeth his word: for the day of the Lord is great and very terrible; and who can abide it?" (Joel 2: 3-11).

The Number of the Army

The number of this great and mighty army of the latter days was revealed to John in his visions in the Isle of Patmos, saying, "And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand." And John declares saying, "and I heard the number of them." Thus the number of the

army as it is here stated is two hundred millions. This number was given to John by revelation of Jesus Christ, the Faithful Witness, and therefore it must be accepted as being thoroughly reliable and correct.

To gather together an army of such magnitude as this in Israel's land may appear to many as an impossible undertaking. But we must not forget what the angel of the Lord said to Abraham when Sarah his wife seemed to doubt his ability to perform what he had promised, saying, "Is there anything too hard for the Lord?" And again when Mary seemed perplexed at what the Angel Gabriel told, he replied, "With God nothing is impossible."

The Lord himself is the Creator of the nations and said to man in the beginning, “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it.” To fill the earth with inhabitants and to thoroughly subdue the whole earth, and to bring it into subjection unto the will of man, to yield its strength, will require many thousands of years yet. About six thousand years have already rolled by since the beginning, and although the inhabitants of the earth have multiplied to the extent of about one billion and a half, yet the great work of subduing the earth is but just fairly begun.

The Lord himself has given us an intimation in the rough so that we may form some idea of the times that must go over the children of men before the latter days will come in, to which we have already made reference. The covenant made with Abraham was confirmed by the oath of God, and brought into force by the death of Christ, so that not one jot or tittle of its terms and conditions will fail of being accomplished, and it is three times stated in the Holy Scriptures that that covenant is to continue for a thousand generations, and the work of God through Jesus Christ will not be finished in the earth until all these generations pass away.

Matthew informs us that 42 generations had lapsed from Abraham to Christ, but some of the generations were more than 100 years long; since those days, generations have been greatly shortened. Therefore if we were to estimate in a general way that 150 generations of 1000 were now past, as against about 4000 years from Abraham's time to the present age of the world. and if we allow 50 generations for the latter days including the 1000 years of the reign of Christ on the earth, that would leave something like 800 generations yet to come and go between the present time and the latter days, so that we may state our proposition thus: If 150 generations cover a period of about 4000 years, at that rate 800 generations will require about 20,000 years to cover them. Therefore we conclude that about 20,000 years, more or less, must yet pass away before the second exodus of the whole house of Israel will usher in the latter days of the house of Israel, and the latter days also of the nations.

Commencing, therefore, with a billion and a half as the number of the present population of the earth, it would be no great stretch of the fancy to suppose that in 20,000 years the population of the earth would reach to the number of ten billions or more. Now from such a vast population, two hundred millions of men, the number of the army as stated by John could easily be gathered together, especially when he who created the earth and man upon it mustereth the hosts for the battle, even as the Lord speaketh by the mouth of the Prophet Isaiah, saying, "I have commanded my sanctified ones, I have

also called my mighty ones for mine anger, even them which rejoice in my highness. The noise of a multitude in the mountains, like as of a great people; a tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations gathered together. The Lord of hosts mustereth the host of the battle" (Isa. 13:3-4).

Now when we are shown in the Holy Scriptures that this vast army is the Lord's army, and that he musters them and goes before them as he went before the armies of Israel when he brought them up out of the land of Egypt when there was not one feeble person among their tribes, so the Lord will strengthen every individual of this vast host so that they will be strong and of good courage to march on to the place of rendezvous, which is at Jerusalem in the holy land.

The Lord will go with Gog and his great army as he spake by the mouth of his prophet Isaiah, saying concerning Cyrus, "He is my shepherd and shall perform all my pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid "; and again, "I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight; I will break in pieces. the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron; I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I... am the God of Israel" (44:28; 45: 1-3). Even so will the Lord go before and direct the movements of this great latter day army by an invisible and almighty power, so that not one jot or tittle of all that the prophets have testified of the work and doings of this great army will fail of being fully accomplished.

The Escaped of Israel

When God destroyed the old world by a flood, he spared the righteous, Noah and his family. When he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, he saved the righteous, Lot and his family. And we are informed by the prophets that when the Lord will destroy his rebellious nation in the latter days, he will spare the remnant, who will be sealed out of all the tribes of Israel, who will be the righteous of that day, and they are spoken of in the prophets as the escaped of Israel, saying, “In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel" (Isa. 4:2). Again (10: 20) it is written. of them saying, "And it shall come to pass in that day that the remnant of Israel, and such as are escaped of the house of Jacob shall no more again stay upon him that smote them, but shall stay upon the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth."

THE ESCAPED OF THE NATIONS INSTRUCTED IN THE TRUTH

When the nations assembled in Israel's land have finished the work of judgment upon Jerusalem and upon Mount Zion, then the great Assyrian will fall by the hand of a mighty one. But a sixth part will be left of these mighty armies. The sixth part of two hundred millions would be more than thirty millions; these are they that are left when the armies of the great Assyrian fall upon the mountains of Israel by the hand of the Holy One of Israel and these are called also "The escaped of the Nations." Now the Lord hath declared his purpose saying, "It shall come that I will gather all