¥ Charred wreckage of what was once a thriving
retail business district at the corner of King and
McCully streets, Honolulu. Here the bombs
destroyed; and here men died. Mr. Stevens
speaks of a group who will nol die; but let him
tell you about that.
ANN Al
rr ANN
rere NN THE disciples’ questions,
eg “When shall these things be?
And what shall be the sign of
“>= Thy coming, and of the end of
the world?” two events were blended;
namely, the end of the Jewish nation, and
the end of the world, as was pointed out in
article Number One of this series. For they
not only asked, *“ When shall these things
be?” but also, ““ What shall be the sign of
Thy coming, and of the end of the world?”
Jesus, in answering their questions, forged
a chain of prophecy, reaching link by link
from the generation in which He lived, and
in which came the fall of Jerusalem, to the
last generation, which would be the active
generation at the end of the world.
Having brought the disciples up to the
end of the Jewish nation, Jesus then pro-
ceeded to answer the second question,
“What shall be the sign of Thy coming,
and of the end of the world?’ He spoke of
a period of the most terrible tribulation in
the history of the world, and then said,
“Immediately after the tribulation of those
days shall the sun be darkened, and the
moon shall not give her light, and the stars
shall fall from heaven, and the powers of
heaven shall be shaken: and then shall
appear the sign of the Son of man in hea-
ven: and then shall all the tribes of the
earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of
man coming in the clouds of heaven with
power and great glory. And He shall send
His angels with a great sound of a trumpet,
and they shall gather together His elect
from the four winds, from one end of heaven
to the other.” Matthew 24: 29-31.
The dreadful tribulation which was to
precede these signs, Christ described in
these words: “For then shall be great
tribulation, such as was not since the be-
ginning of the world to this time, no, nor
ever shall be.” Matthew 24:21. The
casual reader might conclude that Jesus
here refers to the tribulation which was
connected with the fall of Jerusalem, but
that would hardly meet the prophecy’s
specifications. That tribulation came upon
those who had rejected Christ as the
Messiah, and upon a nation in revolt
against God, having filled up its cup of
iniquity. God’s elect were delivered out of
all this; but the great tribulation of which
Christ speaks was to be upon the elect,
His church.
In centuries later there came a long
period of persecution upon those whose
only offense was the keeping of “the com-
mandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.”
Christ's prophetic cye looked down the
long period of time covered by the ecclesi-
astical domination of the papacy, which
began in A.D. 538 and ended in 1798, when
France dealt the papacy a stroke which
was thought to be a death blow; for “all
Page FOUR
MEN WHU DIE NU1
By Jesse C. Stevens
Europe believed the papacy was dead.”
In the terrible centuries which preceded
1798, commonly called the Dark Ages,
millions went to martyrs’ graves for main-
taining their profession of the gospel and
opposing what they believed to be the cor-
ruptions of an apostate and fallen church.
The prophecies of Daniel to which Christ
referred in His discourse foretold this
period of papal supremacy of 1260 years,
and here Christ plainly follows Daniel's
prophecy. See Daniel 7:25; 11: 3).
But Christ foretold a shortening of the
time of tribulation, showing that should
the persecution continue until the end of
the years of papal supremacy, the wearing
out of the saints in persecution would be
complete. The tribulation was shortened
for the elect’s sake. The infiuence of the
Reformation in the sixteenth century, the
suppression of the Jesuits in 1773, the edicts
of toleration by Maria Theresa of Austria
in 1776, and by Emperor Joseph II of Aus-
tria, and the growing sentiment in I'rance
of antagonism to religious intolerance, all
contributed toward causing the persecu-
tion to cease about twenty-five years be-
fore the end of papal supremacy in 1798.
Now in beginning to give the signs of
His second coming, Jesus said, *Immedi-
ately after the tribulation of those days
shall the sun be darkened,” that 1s, the
signs would begin then. Mark puts it this
way: “In those days, after that tribula-
tion, the sun shall be darkened.” Mark
13:24. So the prophecy points out fairly
definitely the time of the first sign, the
darkening of the sun. This event would
occur within the period of about twenty-
five years before 1798. The Dark Day of
May 19, 1780, came at the time appointed,
and 1t was so remarkable a phenomenon
that it has gone down in history. Almost
one hundred years after this event,
Webster's Dictionary said, ‘Dark Day,
The, May 19, 1780, so called on account of
a remarkable darkness on that day.
The true cause of this remarkable phe-
nomenon is not known.” Scores of similar
testimonies might be cited.
“The moon shall not give her light,”
was the next sign. Historians, speaking of
the night following the Dark Day, tell us
that the moon had the appearance of blood,
that the darkness was so dense it was well-
nigh impenetrable, that a sheet of white
paper held within a few inches of the eyes
became equally invisible with the blackest
velvet, and that the horses could not be
compelled to leave their stables when
wanted for service.
Next there came, in fulfillment of Christ's
prophecy, the majestic meteoric shower of
November 13, 1833. Various writers have
thus described this stupendous phenome-
non: ‘The most remarkable one ever ob-
served’; “the greatest display of celestial
fireworks ever seen within the annals
covered by history”; “the scene could not
be compared more aptly than to a shower
of fire”; “their numbers compared to the
(Continued on page 17)
The WATCHMAN MAGAZINE