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(115-116) 7:30 p. m., in Bible House Chapel. Friends will be cordially welcomed; but we advise that on such occasions each should so far as possible avoid absence from his usual meeting. If unfermented wine eannot be procured, “fruit of the vine” can be made by stewing raisins. If regular unleavened bread can ZION’S WATCH TOWER ALLEGIEENY, Pa not be secured from some Jewish baker or family, biscuit would be the best substitute. We hope that each little gathering will appoint one of its members to send us a postal card report of the number attending and the interest manifested. Vou. XXII ALLEGHENY, PA., APRIL 15, 1902 No. 8 GREAT VOICES IN HEAVEN “And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdom of this world ig become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.”—Rev. 11:15. We are not surprised that it is difficult for the Lord’s people, and impossibie for the world, to recognize clearly and distinctly the fulfilment of prophecy at the time of its fulfilment. It has ever been thus. Looking back to the first advent of our Lord, where many prophecies converged and met fulfilment, we notice with what difficulty even the “Israelites indeed” were then enabled to grasp the reality of their fulfilment. We remember how the Lord’s brethren and his disciples, although in close contact with the Master, hearing him who “spake as never man spake,” and seeing miracles performed such as had never been performed betore, were, nevertheless, “slow to believe all the things written [concerning the Messiah] in the law and the prophets”--slow to realize the fulfilment of these predictions. Tiven John the Baptist, who realized that he had been specially commissioned of God to do the work of a forerunner, to introduce Messiah, and who had been given the token that the one upon whom he should see the dove descend, he might know to be the real Messiah,—after he had borne this witness to Jesus, saying, “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world”—after all this, was not thoroughly convinced of the fulfilment of either his own prophecies or the prophecies of others; and while languishing in prison sent messengers to our Lord inquiring, “Art thou he that should come, or look we for another?” Jesus offered him no new demonstration, but merely pointed out that the Scriptures were being fulfilled by him day by day,— demonstrating that he was the very Christ. Indeed, we see clearly that all prophecies were written with the divine intention that they should be so obseured as to be unintelligible except to a particular class for whom their information was intended; and to be made known to these only through the guidance and interpretation of the holy Spirit. It is in perfect accord with this that we find that our Lord’s teachings at his first advent were spoken in parables and dark sayings; that hearing, his hearers might not understand—except the few, the “Israelites indeed,” the chosen, the elect. ‘Tio these our Lord so explained his course; saying, “Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but unto them that are without [to outsiders] all these things are done in parables [and dark sayings]; .... that hearing they may hear and not understand.” (Mark 4:11, 12) And these chosen ‘“Tsraelites indeed” needed special in-truction even after his resurrection; for we read that he explained unto them the Scriptures; saying, ‘Thus it is written and thus it behooved the Son of Man to suffer and to énter into lis glory.” Similarly it was with difficulty, and only under the guimance of the specially instructed apostles, thar the primitive chureh learned of the partial fulfilment of Juels prophecy im the Pentecostal blessing; and, later on, were taught respecting the fulfilment of other prophecies through the widening of the message of reconcilation and jot heirship in the kingdom, so as to inelude such Gentiles as would eome unto the Lord through faith and obedience. These things heing obviously true, we are not to wonder that the fulfilment of prophecies now, in the end of the (Gospel ave, in its harvest time, should be similarly obscure, and 1equire elucidation, and then be comprehensible only to the true spiritual Israelites, now keenly awake, and seeking to know and to do the Lord’s good pleasure. In the Mullennial Dawn series, we have called attention to many of these prophetic fulfilments now transpiring;—to the end of the 6,000 years of the reign of evil, and to the opening of the seventh thousand, or period of rest and blessing;—-to the great antitypical Jubilee, a thousand years long, in whose beginning we are now living, and whose trumpets of Jubilee announcement are now antitypically being blown in the proclamation of the restitution of all things which God hath spoken by the mouths of all the holy prophets (Acts 3:21); —-to the “Times of the Gentiles” whose full end will be with a great time of trouble, political, ecclesiastical, social, witnessing the full establishment of Christ’s kingdom upon the R.V. ruins of present institutions;—to the close of the 2,300 days of Daniel’s prophecy, and the cleansing of God’s antitypical temple, the true church, from the defilement of the dark ages, as now being due;—to the end of the 1,335 days of Daniel’s prophecy which were to bring in the present “harvest” time, which, as foretold, has brought, and is bringing to God’s people great joy and blessings through an expanded view of the divine plan of salvation, enabling them to appreciate better the heights and depths and lengths and breadths of the love of God, which manifests itself in the divine plan;—to the completion of the parallels between fleshly Israel, the type, and spiritual Israel, the antitype, by which we see that we are now in the “harvest” of the present age, and can know what to expect in its remaining years if we look back at the closing years of the Jewish harvest, the type. As our Lord Jesus said to some of his faithful ones when explaining the prophecies due at the first advent, so, also, might now be applied, to some of God’s people, the Master’s words,—"Oh, slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.” Our text is another prophecy which we believe applies in this harvest time, and which, consequently, has a beginning of its fulfilment now. As already pointed out in these columns, we, in common with almost all expositors, recognize that the seven trumpets of Revelation are symbolical and not literali—indeed that this entire book is a book of symbols, and that so far it has been symbolically fulfilled. Christian people in general understand that five of these trumpets have already “sounded” and are in the past;—we would say six, It is admitted that those that have already “sounded” have not been literal blasts of a bugle on the air, but divine decrees and their fulfilments; and we esteem that it is reasonable to expect that the seventh trumpet will be similar in this respect to the preceding six. But literal things are so much more easily received by the natural man that, even though absurd, they commend themselves as instead of the truth,—until our minds are guided of the holy spirit into the proper channel by “comparing spiritual things with spiritual”’—by comparing the seventh trumpet with the preceeding six trumpets, and not with a natural blast upon the air, So firmly entrenched is the error that many advanced Christians, Bible students and ministers are really expeeting some day to hear what 13 sometimes denominated “Gabricl s horn.” shrill enough and loud enough to awaken the dead. It as hoth proper and necessary that we exercise great putience with Christian brethren, who thus display their imfantile development of knowledge in respect to spiritual thinys, while we point out to them that this seventh trumpet-——‘The Last Trumpet’——"The Trump of God,” is as much symbole as were ifs predecessors and marks a much larger and moe mpportant fulfilment than anv of them. 11s fulfilment extends through a period of 1,000 years; its events mark and coincide with all the various features of the Millennial reign of Christ. its beginning, we understand, was in 1578, and its termination will be a thousand years future from that date. It will be “sounding” for all that time—during which its events will be im process of accomplishment. What the events represented by this Seventh Trumpet are, is briefly explained in the verses following our text (17, 18). The first feature of this Trumpet is the announccment of Christ’s kingdom in the earth—the assumption of his great office, the beginning of his reign. This, as we have already shown from other Scriptures, was chronologically due to begin in 1878. The results of this assumption of authority by Messiah follow in due course as narrated. (1) “The nations were angry and thy wrath is come.” The laying of judgment to the line and justice to the plummet, and the sweeping away of the refuge of lies, an early feature in our Lord’s reign, as described in the prophecy of Isaiah (Isa. 28:17), will necessarily result in great commotion in the affairs of the “present evil world;” because its social, financial, political and religious conditions and arrangements will not square with the Lord’s line and plummet of righteousness. [2992]