shall participate in His glorious reign in heaven, when they shall be completely delivered from all the power of the enemy and be with Him forever and ever. They shall be given to know His work with regard to the final realization of the Kingdom of God, even as He knows the Father's counsel and is found worthy to open the book with its seven seals. They shall perfectly know the mind of Christ and He shall have no secrets for them. They shall concur in His judgments of the world and thus shall partake in them. And they shall rejoice in the full realization of His perfect victory. And, fi­nally, this reign of Christ and His saints with respect to the world is such, that almost until the very end the devil shall be bound with respect to Gog and Magog, so that he cannot deceive them and gather them for battle against the camp of the saints.

3. But this is not the end. For: "when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his pris­on, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to ga­ther them together to battle; the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about the beloved city; and fire came down from God out of heaven and destroyed them. And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tor­mented day and night forever and ever."

What is here presented in a separate vision had partly been pictured in a different setting in preceding chap­ters. We may gather from chapter 16:12-16 that this deception of the nations that live on the four quarters of the earth by the devil, to gather them together for battle, will he realized in the period of the sixth vial. This is also in harmony with the statement in Rev. 20:3 that "he must be loosed for a little season." Shortly be­fore the end of this world this final deception of the na­tions shall take place. In ch. 16 we read this: "And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Eu­phrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared. And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Al­mighty. Behold I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame. And he gathered them toget­her into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armaged­don". In this passage the reference is, evidently, to the same going forth of the devils to the nations that live


on the four quarters of the earth, the kings of the whole world, to deceive them and gather them for bat­tle. And we learn besides, that this deception of the nations through the devil shall proceed immediately from the antichristian kingdom. Unclean spirits shall pro­ceed from the center of the antichristian world, and they shall have their influence upon the nations that live on the four quarters of the earth. It matters not now what is presented by these unclean spirits. They certain­ly signify a threefold influence of the antichristian civil­ization. And the final result of this threefold antichris­tian influence will be that the nations thus affected will unite their forces for war, the last war that shall ever be fought on earth.

Again, a similar presentation of the same period of history we find in ch. 17:12-17. There mention is made of ten kings, that as yet have received no kingdom, but shall receive power as kings one hour with the beast. The fact that they are kings in distinction from the an­tichristian power proper, as well as the fact that their dominion shall last but for one hour with the beast, that is, "a little season", suggests that these ten kings are again the same as the power of Gog and Magog in Rev. 20, and as the kings of the whole world, and the kings of the east that are mentioned in Rev. 16. If this is correct, then we learn from the passage in ch. 17, that the first result of the deceptive influence of the devil, through the medium of the threefold antichristian in­fluence, will be that the heathen nations of Gog and Ma­gog shall join into one great world-power with the cen­tral antichristian dominion. For one hour, for a little season, the world-power shall realize its greatest ambi­tion and a strictly universal empire shall be established. of which also the heathen, but civilized nations form an integral part. However, this cannot last. For, ultimate­ly the ten kings shall hate the whore and shall make her desolate and naked and shall eat her flesh and burn her with fire, 17:16. The ultimate result therefore, of the deception of the devil through the antichristian influences upon the heathen nations shall be, that they shall be gathered for battle against the very center of the an­tichristian dominion.

If we combine all these different elements, which have bearing undoubtedly upon the same historic event of the future, we may come to the following conception. In the nominally Christian world shall ultimately be realized the final consummation of the antichristian world-power, the power of the beast and the false prophet. It will be an empire in which shall be represented the highest am­bitions of man, and they shall be realized to the utmost. From a purely humanistic viewpoint it will be a glorious kingdom. And thoroughly humanistic it will surely be, religiously, scientifically, socially, industrially, politically. But it will be anti-God, anti-Christ, and anti-Church. The

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