Review of The Prophetic Key
We have received two numbers of “The Prophetic Key,” a monthly magazine, edited and published by P. S. G. Watson and A. F. Baker, Versailles, Ky. The object of the publication seems to be to show that the Abomination of Desolation, or, the Antichrist, the apostasy, and the Man of Sin (all meaning the same thing), is yet future, to be fulfilled in a single person, and be continued 1260 literal days. We may presume the proprietors have embodied their ideas in the illustration on the cover, which shows us the interior of a domed temple, a giant standing on a pedestal, and receiving the admiration of the crowd, the table of show bread at the right, the altar of incense and golden candlestick at the left, and in beyond a partition curtain, the ark of God’s testament. But how is this? Is the Jewish temple and sanctuary to be rebuilt on this earth, and the abomination of desolation to consist of what is here represented? Of course to adopt such views would be to give up all the more prominent fulfillments of prophecy in the past, and surrender every principle of interpretation which has heretofore been considered sound and reliable. It would be an attempt to see how far the Bible could be made to appear to mean what it does not mean, or how far that could be made to appear reasonable which has no foundation in reason. We think the language of an exchange is applicable here. Speaking of the strange views now promulgated, it says that these things would “a few years since have startled sober people out of their propriety—only now-a-days we are so used to outrageousness that the faculty of wonder is worn threadbare.”