Notes on Important Eras of Fulfilling Prophecy by William Ambrose Spicer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · Aug 1, 1912

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 89, No. 31.

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Notes on Important Eras of Fulfilling Prophecy

By William Ambrose Spicer

The Hand of God in History — No. 17

Notes on Important Eras of Fulfilling Prophecy

The Triumph of the Two Witnesses

THE prophecy of Revelation 11 had said:—

"And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. . . . And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. . . . And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell."

The symbolism of the prophecy gives surely a striking picture of an attack to be made upon the two witnesses—the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. It was to come just as the great prophetic period of 1260 years of papal supremacy was ending. And at the same time one of the ten parts of the mystical city of prophecy, spiritually like Sodom and Egypt, is overturned as by earthquake.

The end of the long prophetic period, we know, touches the years of the French Revolution. And the French monarchy that fell in the political and social earthquake of that time was one of the ten kingdoms of divided Rome, a "tenth part" of "that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth." Rev. 17:18.

That was "a great earthquake" truly. Hardly a historian dealing with the period fails to bring into use the phrase, "the earthquake of the French Revolution," to describe the events of that unparalleled upheaval. Lamartine wrote:—

The Revolution had lasted five years. These five years are five centuries for France. Never perhaps on this earth, at any period since the commencement of the Christian era, did any country produce, in so short a space of time, such an eruption of ideas, men, natures, characters, geniuses, talents, catastrophes, crimes, and virtues.—"History of the Girondists," Vol. II, page 129.

And amid the frightful scenes of this time of overturning came the onslaught upon the two witnesses as portrayed in

the figurative language of the prophecy.

It is of interest to note that even generations before these events, early students of prophecy saw France pointed out in this prophecy; and looking forward from amid trials and persecutions, they hoped fondly that the events foretold meant the ending of the Papacy.

Dr. Thomas Goodwin, of England, so wrote in 1639. Inasmuch as the earliest of the Protestant witnesses "underwent the great heat of that morning of persecution" in the valleys of France, he felt it divinely appropriate that from the French kingdom, formerly the Papacy's chief supporter, should come "the last great stroke in the ruin of Rome."

Peter Jurieu, minister of the French church at Rotterdam, writing some time before 1687, said:—

Now what is this tenth part of the city, which shall fall? In my opinion, we can not doubt that 'tis France. This kingdom is the most considerable part, or piece, of the ten horns, or states, which once made up the great Babylonian city. . . . This tenth part of the city shall fall, with respect to the Papacy; it shall break with Rome and the Roman religion.—"The Accomplishment of the Prophecies," Vol. I, page 265 (London, 1687).

In 1742, another Bible student, John Willison, of England, saw in this prophecy the foreshadowing of a "marvelous revolution" in France, adding:—

However unlikely this and other prophesied evils may appear at the time, yet the almighty hand of the only wise God can soon bring them about when least expected.

Now, looking back upon those times, we can see how closely events followed the course outlined in the prophecy. As the 1260 years were drawing to a close, during which the two witnesses were to bear their testimony clothed in sackcloth, a new attack was made upon them. All along, the satanic power of apostasy had perverted the Scriptures and sought to keep them from the people. But now arose, as never before in the world and never since, an organized atheism, "out of the bottomless pit," the very abyss; and (in intent and purpose) it set about to slay the divine witnesses outright in this French portion or "street of the great city." Goaded to madness by the despotic rule of apostate religion, the French revolutionists sought to annihilate religion itself. It is not to be wondered at that this complete unmasking of Satan's fierce enmity to the Holy Scriptures should be noted in prophecy as one of the landmarks in the closing history of the 1260 years.

Speaking of this outbreak of atheism against all religion, an observer and Bible student who lived at the time wrote:—

If we search the annals of the world, we shall not find even a private society or sect, much less civil community and state, which, before our day, has in the most public manner proclaimed to all nations around it that there is no God, and made that position the basis of the constitution of its government: but in our day we not only read of it, but see it with our eyes; and that in a manner so perfectly consonant with all its various prophetic marks that the unprejudiced infidel (if there be such a being) can not mistake it.—"Commentaries on Prophecies Referring to the Present Time," by Joseph Galloway (London, 1802).

French writers of the period who describe the outburst from beneath, unconsciously use almost the identical phrases of the prophecy. Lamartine speaks of "the boundless and bottomless abyss of atheism," and the Abbe Burruel wrote (in 1797) of "the dark recesses from whence it burst into being."

W. A. S.

(To be concluded)