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ion signify, but the very place of Judgment?) "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 Jerusalem, and the Heavens and the earth shall shake." See also, Joel Ii, 28, 32. Matth.. Xxiv, 29, 30, "Immediately after the tribulation of those days, shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from Heaven, and the powers of the Heavens shall be shaken. And then shall appear the sign of the son of man in Heaven, and they shall see the son of man coming in the clouds of Heaven with power and great glory." Verse 34, "Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfiled. 2. PETER III, 10, "But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the Heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up." As I know that this last quoted passage is generally understood literally, it will readily be shown by the two following quotations, that this text in Peter, speaks of the same things which all the other passages in this last class of quotations speak of, viz. the overthrow of political and religious establishments: HAGGAI II, 6, 7, "For thus s ith the Lord of hosts; yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the Heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the day, and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come." "The following is a quotation of this, and explains that in 2. PETER 111, 10. Heb. XII, 26, 66 27, But now he hath promised, saying, yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also the Heaven- And this yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.

It must now be obvious to every candid reader that the day of Judgment, so often mentioned in Scripture, is the time of the Kingdom, or reign, of Christ, and that those passages of Scripture which have generally been understood to mean a certain day of Judgment, at the end of time, alluded to the time of which I have been speaking, viz. :— The beginning of the reign of Christ, which is now in being.

I thought it best to follow up this one point while I was quoting ancient prophecies of it, that I need not have to take room to attend it hereaf ter. However, lest I should have to attend to it again, I will notice one more passage, which shows, according to what I have already stated, that when Christ was so revealed from Heaven, at his second coming, as to give the Christians who were looking for him such glory and consolation as was never before enjoyed by man; that then the wicked world who did not believe in Christ, and of course were not looking for his coming, were punished with such destruction from the Almighty as had never before been inflicted on the family of man, which corresponds precisely with a number of passages which I have already quot ed from the Scriptures of both Testaments; (and there are many more passages in both Testaments which prophesied of that same awful event, which has been one cause of so many people mistaking them to mean a terrible destruction of the literal world, and a tremendous day of Judgment which they think is yet future; but I am of the opinion that when the Holy Scriptures are properly understood, it will be found that they do not contain any prediction that this material world will ever be destroyed literally: no, so far from that, I expect that the restoring government, or reign, of Christ, will, in its process, gradually bring lost creation to a glorious state.) But the passage which I was to quote to show that the Apostles

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Fooked for that terrible destruction upon the wicked, is in 2. Thess. I, 6, on to 10, "Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you, and to you who are troubled, rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven with his mighty Angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power."— This is figurative language, and by the term, mighty Angels," is meant, (as Angel means messenger,) not only the ministers of Christ's gospel, but also dispensations of calamity, which are properly called "evil Angels," or Angels of destruction, which were sent to punish the wicked, as also the testimony of gospel messengers, or Angels, torments those who oppose it. As their testimony is to such like flaming fire. And as fire is used as a figure (in many Scriptures) of God's work in punishing sinners to destroy. sin, so we see that calamity, and the testimony of gospel preachers both unite as mighty Angels in flaming fire to punish sinners, and destroy sin, as flaming fire burns up combustibles, I have stated elsewhere that "everlasting" is from an original word which does not necessarily mean eternal, and therefore the "everlasting destruction" with which they are punished, means that destruction of sin and iniquity which continues through all the ages of the reign of Christ, upon every generation of those who rebel against his government, as such rebels are always punished. with the "everlasting destruction" of sin which is in them, and when sin is destroyed in any individual, the punishment of that individual ceases. I now return to the main point.

When our first parents had transgressed, the woman being first in the transgression, the Lord said

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unto the man, Gen. in, 17, 19, "Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee say. ing, thou shalt not eat of it: cursed the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat it all the days of thy life. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken, for dust thou, and unto dust shalt thou return." This was the awful, judicial sentence of God which condemned man to dust for the first offence, and in him all his posterity, as it is written, Rom. V, 18, "Therefore as by the offence of one upon all men to condemnation."

Under this sentence of death, God, (who looks on all futurity the same as if it were present,) saw all the family of Adam, from the first to the last generation, dead, turned to dust, and locked up in the gloomy prison of Hell, (for I would have it distinctly understood, that the word Hell, which is from the Hebrew, Sheol, and from the Greek, Hades, signifies the state of the dead, as hidden, unknown, concealed, and has no reference to a state of misery in another world, as has generally been understood, from which it may readily be. seen that if God had taken no method to redeem man from death and Hell, he must have laid eternally in a hidden, unknown, concealed and insensible state of non-existence, which is called in. Holy Scripture, Hell.) For the idea which has long existed, that the soul and body of man are such distinct parts, that the body may be dead, and the soul still alive in another world, it appears to me must be erroneous. For, what is it short of considering a man two beings; such that when one is dead, and knoweth not any thing, the other is still alive, and knoweth every thing?

It appears to the that the general tenure of Holy Scripture, represents man dead, when he is dead, and not still alive, unless he be raised from

the dead. And some passages I think are positive to this point. Psalms Cxlvi. 4, "His breath goeth, he returneth to his earth, in that very day his thoughts perish." Now, if his thoughts perish the day he dies, I cannot see how he can still live, and think, unless he obtain a resurrection, see Eccl. ix, 5, 6, "But the dead know not any thing. Also, their love, and their hatred, and their envy is now perished."

But if it is said, that it is the body that knows nothing, but the soul still knows much, then I answer, as I said before, that is making a man two beings, which must be absurd. But that which most of all proves this point is, that the holy Apostles universally consider all their future eternal life in Christ, to depend on a resurrection from the dead, so that St. Paul shows that to be the object of his faith, PHILIPPIANS III, 11, "If by any means I may attain unto the resurrection of the dead." And he says, "if Christ is not risen, and if there is no resurrection of the dead," 1, Cor. xv, 18, 19, "Then they also which are fallen' asleep in Christ are perished, for if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." But if the soul went immediately to Heaven along with Christ when their bodies died, without any resurrection, there could be no propriety in this language, and therefore it is obvious that when man dies, he is dead, and would remain an eternal prisoner in hell, if it had not been for the resurrection of Christ. "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept." And as soon as he rose, many dead bodies of the Saints which slept, arose, Matth. Xxvii, 52, 53, but not all of them.

But at his second, or spiritual coming, which was not long after, A. D. 70, which he prophesied of, and which the Apostles in their Epistles prophesied of, and often mentioned as an event which they were looking for. At that time, I say,

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