Treading Down the Holy City;
By R. F. COTTRELL
“And the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.” Rev xi, 2. *THE language of this text is highly figurative. The treading under foot of the holy city signifies the oppression and persecution of those that are the children or citizens of that city. It is also evident that as this is a prophecy of the present dispensation, the city is not the Jerusalem of the former dispensation, but the Jerusalem of which Christians are children. “Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.” The children of the heavenly Jerusalem were to be persecuted. To use another and similar figure, they were to be ground under the iron heel of the Papacy for a long period of time. And as this was to be the ruling power among the nations, or Gentiles, it is said that the Gentiles shall tread the holy city under foot. Forty-two months, reckoning thirty days to a month, are twelve hundred and sixty days. These days are to be taken as so many years, and thus we find it fulfilled. From the plucking up of the third horn, or the overthrow of the last power that stood opposed to, and hindered the exaltation of, the Pope of Rome, in A. D. 538, to the overthrow of that power in 1798, are just twelve hundred and sixty years. This is the period of the persecution of the church, during the reign of that beast that was to continue forty-two months. Rev. xiii, 5.