The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-01-10 00:00:00

likely to produce such a result, but because it is given in
The Scriptures as a sign of the end. Thus, iv answer to
the question of the disciples, " When shall these things
be, and what shall be the sign of Thy coming ?" our Lord
said in the 2tth of Matt. (and let it be observed that,
though this chapter refers, primarily, to Christ's coming,
to the destruction of Jerusalem, it refers principally to.
His coming, to the extinction of the apostacy, just as
the 40th and subsequent chapters of Isaiah were spoken
first in allusion to the deliverance of God's people from
Babylon, and yet are now universally applied to the
gospel deliverance), "And this gospel of the kingdom
shall be preached in all the world for a witness to all
nations, and then shall the end come." And then, again,
in the 14th of Revelations, before the pouring out of the
seven last vials of God's wrath upon the earth, the prophet
" Saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having
the everlasting gospel to preach to them that dwell upon
the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue,
and people, saying with a loud voice, fear God and give glory
to him, for the hour of his judgment is come ;" and then in
the very next verse, another angel follows, and proclaims,
"Babylon is fallen, is fallen" (v. 6-8). So much for the sign
as given. Now for the fulfilment. Preaching is specially cha-
racteristic of the Reformation. Popery does not encourage
it. She commands her votaries to hear, believe, and obey.
No examination or judgment beyond the voice of the
church. That is not all. The present century is em-
phatically the missionary age. Better than eighteen
hundred years ago, our Lord gave the command to " go
unto all the world and preach the gospel unto every crea-
ture." Nobly did the Apostles fulfil their mission ; but
almost with them the missionary spirit died, and for
seventeen hundred years the history of the church on this
point is a blank. The oldest missionary society in exist-
ence is little more than half a century. Now every church
has its missions. To be without them would be to be
deficient in the one great end for which a church exists.
Why did they not see this before, and why do they see it
so clear now ? God's word says it is to be, and then shall
the end come, and therefore it cannot but be regarded as a

marked sign of the times.
The third sign is false Christs and false prophets, which
were to precede the coming of our Lord, with signs so
plausible as to deceive, if it were possible, the very elect.
In illustration of this, we need only mention Joe Smith and
Mormonism, with the Salt Lake Valley Settlement, their
miracles, the book of Mormon, &c., all stated so plausibly
that no less than 14,000 persons in the last ten years have
been induced to sell all they bad in this conntry and go

forth into " the desert," as it were, that they may meet
the coming Messiah. The revival of Popish miracles in this
age of intelligence occurring so frequently, and advocated
by such men as the late Lord Shrewsbury and Dr. New-
man, does seem to us so utterly out of place in these times,
as to be explicable only on the ground of being the " signs
and wonders" of "the false Christs and prophets" of the
last days.
The fourth sign is the increase of knowledge and the
facilities of communication which the present day presents.
Daniel xii. 4.—" Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge
shall be greatly increased." This refers to the time of
the end, which an examination of the passage will show,
though time will not permit that we should stop to prove
it. First, then, look at the vast increase of know-
ledge. Look at the rapid spread of books and papers,
good and bad. How old are they ? The flood of lite-
rature that is thrown broadcast over the lands is but
.ef yesterday. Education throughout the three kingdoms
is one of the chief questionaef the day, aid such is the
'change, that a mere child knows more now than a wise
man did 100 years ago. Then look at the extraordinary
facilities of communication, our steam-boats, our railways,
and the electric telegraph—the lightning is God's mes-
senger—but this has new become a medium of everyday
communication between man and man. A journey :from
Edinburgh or Glasgow, or even Liverpool to London,
some years ago, woUld have taken some weeks, now it is
done in hours, whast'campeting steamers actually contend
about minutes in their voyages across the Atlantic. Shall
we give a description of a railway ? The hollows banked
up, the heghts levelled or tunnelled through, the:angles cut
off, and the line made as straight as possible, said then
the rails laid dot's, or, in the words of Scripture, " Every
valley shall be e:Yelted, and every mountaireend hill shall
be made low, glia the crooked shall be made-straight, and
the rough places plain ;" and then mark what fellows, " and
the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, andall flesh shall
see it together."
The fifth eeeen of the times is the trodliled and excited
state of the world, wars and rumnars of wars. As this is
an important point, we shall be a little-more full upon it.
Haggai says, " Yet a little while, and I will shake the
heavens aed the earth, and the -sea-and the dry land, and
I will -shnke all nations, and 'the &elm of all nations
shall come." This was priniarilyaccoreelished in the wars
of Alexander before the birth of Christ, but will have, we
believe, its chief fulfilment in :thelfte of the world
prior to his second appearing. In:the 24th of Matthew
we are told there shall be wars acid rumours of wars,'
"nation shall rise against nation, end kingdom against
kingdom, and there shall be famine and pestilences, and
earthquakes in divers places." ' There shall be great
tribeilation such as was sot since 'the beginning of the
world to this time, no; nor ever •sivied be, and except Those
days should be shortened, there--should no flesh be caved."
Almost identical with the word` of the first verse •tif
tire 12th chapter of Daniel, "And at that time shall
Michael (i. e. Christ) stand -op 'that great Prince that
standeth for the children of Thy people, and there -.Shall
ben time of trouble, such as-never was since there -was. a
'station to that same timesund at that time shall Thy
,people be delivered." Wheethe Word of '" who
treads the wine-press of 'the 'fierceness and wrath -,of
.Almighty God," i.e., ;pours. oar` the last vials of 'Gad?'
:anger upon an apostate 'church and world, we are •in-
;formed " the blood 'came out a the wine-press even unto
the horseebridles by the -spaeeeof a thousand and six Inn-
• dred furlongs," Rev. niv.:2oeeetnpared with xix..ls. Under
the sixth vial which is poured out upon the Euphrates,
and is at this moment fulfilling in the state Tuike-s,
three unclean spirits, like frogs, "go forth Unto -the kings
of the earth and of the whale world to gather -them to
the battle- of that great day of God Almighty," Rev.
xvi. 14; and in the :nineteenth chapter, w-hiclu .gives in
detail this last great battle .and the contending .parties,
the prophet saw "an angel -standing in the sun, and le
cried with a loud voice to all the fowls that fly inehe
midst of heaven, come and gather yourselves Tinto the
supper of the great God, that ye may eat the -flail of
kings, and the flesh of ,captains, and the flesh ,of -Mighty
mere and the flesh 'of hones, and of them thatesit 'on
them, and the flesh of -alit men, both bond and free, both
small and great;" and then:follows the battle of the kings
of the earth, and the Wced of God and the armies of
heaven, and the capture and punishment of The beast and
the false prophet. These details are literal quotations from
God's Word, and therefore, however terrible, weelare not
withhold them. Now look at the application of- these
signs to the present times. It would seem .aslif Ike
seventh vial was aireadypoured out on the air. Wehare
had famines and pestilence's, and we may have them again.
We have not yet forgottentlie horrifying details -of A 84,7,
in Ireland, nor the potato. disease which preceded it. .That
.disease was not in the-wail, for then it would have gone
;from the root to the stem.and the leaf. The leaf wentfirst,
and that often in a night, and fhen the stock, and then the
.root and the tuber. 'Meanest eminent scientific meirand
~chemists were employed ,by government to investigate
'the cause and prescribe the remedy ; but 0, how • God
tan confound the wisdom of the wise. After ..all
'their experiments, they discovered what every :one
'knew before —it was do the air, and That % was
nearly all they could tell concerning the disease.
It was much the same with the cholera. Medical Jaen
all agreed that it was net contagious, it was in • the
:air. Look also at the present state of Europe. Who will
venture to say there is no impending danger, distrust, and
jealousy universally prevailicg. France and England are
none-agreed, but will any- assert that even they mayseet
failete understand each other; and even though they did,
if God had a purpose to serve„seauld they prevent it? :.Has
he not taught England a lessen already, and by the very
commonest of plants confounded her men of scienceepro
ducecl acommercial panic -Ruches has had few equalse and
with Ler gold and credit without count, absolutely starved
to death thousands of her subjects in the midst of her.
See Frame with 1,250,000 of an army, Austria with her
700,000,men, Prussia, a small 'kingdom, with half a million
of soldiers, Russia with untold resources, England adding
to her fleet thirteen sail of theqine, and every country in
Europe-preparing for war. And look again at the deadly
methodseof conducting war; notethe bows, and spears, and
shields of the ancients, but our artillery and long-ranges
vomiting forth death and destruction at every encounter.
Only let the apple of discord bethrown in, and we are
fully prepared, awful though the thought be, to realise the
predictionjust recited. May God'prepare us for that try-
ing hour.
The sixth sign of the times is, theestate of the Ottoman
Empire. The sounding of the sixth trumpet was the
loosing of the fem. angels from the banks of the Euphrates
for an hour, a day, anionth,and a year, and that is the rise
of the Turkish power, which rose about:the year 1057, and
settled in Constsatinople in the year 1453, the very time
predicted, i. e. -390 years. Now, the pouring out of the
sixth vial is upon this same Euphrates, .drying it up to
make a way for the Kings of the East, i. e. the Jews to
pass over. If we interpret the year, and 'month, and hour,
,and day, i. e. 396, to refer, not to the period that should
elapse between the origin and settlement of the Turkish
power, but to that which should exist between their
settlement in Constantinople and their dissolution as a
power, it would bring us to 1849, the time when the re-
fugee question stirred up the wrath of Russia end Austria
against it. In connexion with this, we must not forget
that tee 2,300 years dated from the invasion of Greece by
Xerxes, 480 fee., and the 1,290 years, both of which refer
to the removal of the abomination of desolation which
occupies the place where the daily sacrifice was once
offered, meet in 1820, when the drying up of the Euphrates
began. Till then Turkey was a powerful and prosperous
kingdom, but then her troubles began; Greece revolted,
Egypt and Syria became independent, whilst in the north
Russia has wrested from her seine of the best ports and
fairest provinces, and placed others under an independent
protectorate.
Whether Turkey shall still have the name
of a power, though stripped of all influence, or her very
name be blotted out of the map of nations, a few years
will tell; meantime, though France, and England, and the
world uphold her, she is destined to fall. God has said it,
man cannot prevent it.
And, finally, we have the tripartite division of the great
city. The Roman empire should give birth to ten king-
doms, " the woman sat on a beast with ten horns," a. e.,
ten kingdoms, which, with small changes, still mark the
powers of Europe. But immediately before the end and
the fall of Babylon the city shall be " divided into three
parts." Rev. xvi. 19. And at this moment there are but •
three powers in Europe that are able to exercise indepen-
dent action. Austria is the mere creature of Russia.
Prussia would be independent, but dare not. The shadow
of Russian. influence has already passed over Sweden and
Denmark, whilst a very short time may see France give
laws once more to Spain, Italy, and Belgium. But what-
ever be the result, present appearances indicate no ordi-
nary changes in the national boundaries of the continent,
and thus give another striking sign of' the times. Tie
manifestation of so many and extraordinary signs, and thewhich,
agreement of so many periods of prophetic history
by prophetic interpreters for more than a century back,
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circumstances, urging more of personal preparation, of
Protestant and Christian unity, both amongst Churchmen
and dissenters; a careful avoidance or patronage of Po-