We have learned also from prophecy, that the members of this same apostacy, whatever local changes may have taken place under its leaders, "the beast," and "the false prophet," are hereafter actually to be betrayed into an attempt upon Jerusalem itself, when first restored: "He shall plant the tabernacle of his palaces between the seas in the glorious holy mountain." This is a further advance to the complete fulfilment of the prediction : but when this Gog of the land of Magog makes his attack, the walls of Jerusalem are not yet built, the mountain of the Lord's house is not yet exalted above the mountains; the Divine presence has not yet "entered from the east," nor "the holy and heavenly Jerusalem," "descended from God out of heaven;" that the holy city should be, as it were, "a house of many mansions," extending from earth to heaven. Jerusalem, at this period, is only "inhabited as villages." Her complaint is: "She has no wall," not even a hedge of thorns !" The leader of this expedition to the campaigns of Armageddon is contending, we plainly see, for the empire of the world already in his grasp; but the immediate object of his ambition in the holy land is : " I will go up to the land of unwalled villages, I will go up to them that are at rest and dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, having neither bars, nor gates, -to take a spoil and to take a prey: to turn thine hand upon the desolate places, that are now inhabited, and upon the people that are gathered out of the nations, that have got cattle and goods, and dwell in the midst of the land." If, indeed, you take into consideration God's declared protection of this Jerusalem, "inhabited like villages," it is indeed a mad defiance against "him that is to come." But the enemy believes not the prophecies :-" and none of the wicked shall understand:"-and, therefore, they are ignorant, that God, after using them as the rod of his correction, has assembled all their multitude " as sheaves on the corn floor." They know not that Michael is about to stand up for the children of his people,the Lord of Hosts to come forth at Jerusalem; and that he will consume them "with the spirit of his mouth, and destroy them with the brightness of his coming!" But when the second Gog, or the last Agag, comes, antitype of Amalek and his people, against whom the Lord has sworn, that he will have war from generation to generation, * Satan, released from his millennial confinement, who has gathered his possest multitude, he finds the beloved city upon the earth adorned with her glories; Jerusalem is "the throne of Jehovah," who is the "King over all the earth." His object is, that as he had succeeded by his antichristian delusions, to destroy with "the abomination of desolation" the Church of Christ in his absence; so now, by means of the deceived nations in the four corners of the earth, to attempt the dethronement of the Son of David. He knew not "the mystery of Christ," when he tempted the Holy child Jesus upon earth, * Exodus xvii. 16. nor knows he the mystery of that King that now sitteth upon his holy hill of Zion. Though fallen from his high estate, among the heavenly hosts, where he shone as the morning star, and prostrate among the nations, no more admitted into the angelic world, but only for a little while let loose upon earth; he sees there an object of his incurable ambition. It is the throne of Messiah! in opposition to the erection of which, he had to his cost, laboured so much, both by deceit and violence, under the former dispensations. He contemplates from his earthly position the heavenly city, where-according to the descriptions of Ezekiel and St. John compared together-founded upon the holy hills, it raises its magnificent structure; to speak of it " in the tongues of men"-as it were a city of precious stones built up unto the skies. The eye of Satan's ambition, perhaps, regards it as a means whereby he may scale the heavens from which he fell, or, at any rate, as "prince of the power of the air," recover his lost dominion over this lower world: so at least we may reason from analogy, in the types and symbols shewn to us by the Prophetic Spirit. "Thou saidst in thine heart, I will ascend the heavens ; Above the stars of El, I will raise my throne; I will sit on the mount of the testimony, And be like the Most High." X 66 He contemplates, on the holy "mount of the congregation," the "place of their sanctuary," as a glorious high throne." It is, even its most glorious mansions, in the possession of those, who are exalted from the earth: one reigns indeed before his elders, who is "Lord of all," to whom every knee "doth bow, and every tongue confess;" he appears in the "likeness of the Most High," "the image of the invisible God," but at the same time as "the first-born among many brethren." Not to be less than this, seems to be the aim of Satan: ill brooking it, perhaps, that the "Son of Man" should be "exalted above every name that is named, angels and principalities and powers being made subject unto him!" Satan cannot be an avowed atheist, he knows, and has felt too much of the power of the Great Unseen, to disbelieve the existence of the Deity, although he has taught some few fools upon earth to say in their hearts, "There is no God!" His enmity is against that manifestation of Deity which is made in the mysterious person of the Son-the seed of the woman, who, after all his partially successful opposition, is to bruise his head.-It is the Spirit of ANTICHRIST that has its fountain in his breast! Unchanged in malice or in desperate hardihood, by his long confinement in the abyss, "he goes out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to the battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea." Revelation xx. 9, 10. "And they went up on the breadth of the earth, 'or' land, and compassed the camp, 'or' station came of the saints about, and the beloved city : and fire down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. And the Devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” In the great judgment of the vintage, before the Millennium, at the battle of Armageddon, we shall remember, there was a distinction made in the doom of the deceivers, and of the deceived : Chap. xix. 19. "And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army. And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone. And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which proceeded out of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh." So in this attack, attempted against the Holy City, after the thousand years, the first period of the everlasting reign, are ended, the Devil, the deceiver, is cast into this same "lake of fire that burneth with brimstone." The nations, also, whom he has deceived, are " consumed with fire from heaven;" by the shaft of the lightning, which is the usual meaning of the expression. This, however, is a different judgment; amounting, I should suppose, to no more than temporal death: for their final judgment, they must stand with the "rest of the dead," before the last tribunal of Christ. That, with the devil his angels also lay under the same curse, we may well believe; because "the Judge of quick and dead," |