Appendix

This is the final section of The Last Prophecy: An Abridgment of Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae.

I. Postscript to Preface of Fifth Edition of the “Horae Apocalypticae;” on the Pope’s own published Testimony to the Fact of the completed Expiration in 1867 of the 1260 Predicted Years of Papal Spiritual Dominancy in the Kingdoms of Western Christendom.

THE YEAR 1867 having passed, it seems fit that a postscript should be added to this book, in reference to any light that may have been reflected at its close on my exposition of that part of the Apocalyptic prophecy which I suppose refers to the present time; whether as confirmatory, or the contrary.

Very naturally there was kept watch both by men who felt reverentially about divine prophecy, and by others who thought of it only with contempt, to see if the years 1866, 1867, which had been so long looked forward to as years of crisis to the Papacy by Protestant prophetic expositors of the old school (this being the supposed ending epoch of the great prophetic period of the 1260 years), should really develop any such events of crisis. What then has occurred to justify such view?

It was in July 1868 that there was issued the Pope’s Bull for the Convocation of an Ecumenical Council to assemble at Rome in the December of next year. And in the terms of its address there appeared on one point a most remarkable variation from the terms of address which had been used in all former Bulls of the same character. The difference was this, that whereas in those former Bulls the secular princes of Western Christendom were always summoned to attend, either in person or by deputy, as well as Roman Catholic bishops and certain other high ecclesiastics of that Church, in the present Bull it was Papal ecclesiastics alone.

The omission was too remarkable to escape notice. It was remarked on, for example, by the editor of a well-known Popish journal at Paris, L’Univers, in the passage following: “The Bull does not invite sovereigns to sit in the Council. The omission is remarkable. It implies that there are no longer Catholic crowns; that is to say, that the order in which society has lived for the last 1000 years no longer exists. What has been called the Middle Age has come to an end. The date of the Bull is the date of its death, its last sigh. Another era begins. The Church [Romish Church] and State [that is, of Roman Catholic kingdoms] are separated.”

There are some little inexactnesses (errors) in this passage; for he speaks of the regime of Roman Catholic crowns spiritually subject to the Pope as if begun only 1000 years ago, whereas it had existed above 1200 or 1300 years. Nor, again, does he refer to the temporary interruption of that régime which was suddenly and violently introduced by the French Revolution; an event, I am persuaded, not unnoticed in the Apocalyptic prophecy. But the main fact that he refers to is justly observed on by him as a very remarkable sign of the times, — remarkable, as holding out before the world, under the Pope’s own sign manual, an admission of the full ending of the predicted period of the kings of Western Christendom spiritually subjecting the power of their kingdoms to him; that is, of the completed ending of the 1260 years. For thus it had been declared in the Divine prophecy, Apoc. 17:17: “God hath put into the hearts of the ten kings to fulfill his will, and to agree and give their kingdom unto the Beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled:” in other words (compare Dan. 7:25, 26), until the end of God’s appointed period of the 1260 years.

When was it that this period may be considered as begun? What the terminus a quo from which it is to be measured? It was during the course of the sixth century, as I have shown from history, that the then newly established Romano-Gothic kings of Western Christendom, one after another, recognized the Roman Pope as Christ’s Vicar on earth, and so subjected their kingdoms, in matters of religion, to him; the three last, viz., the AngloSaxons, Lombards, and Bavarians, so doing near about or soon after 600 A.D.2 And if, following the precedent of the Old Testament prophecies respecting Judah’s seventy years’ captivity in Babylon, and consequent return,3 we suppose (as I have done in the Horae Apocalypticae) a primary imperfect commencing epoch, with a correspondently primary imperfect ending epoch, and a secondary and more perfect epoch of commencement, with its own correspondent and more perfect epoch of ending — and, moreover, that royal decrees (like those of Cyrus and Darius, Ezra 1:1, 6:1) may have been had respect to by the Holy Spirit as epochal signs in his predictions respecting the great New Testament prophetic period of the 1260 years — then we have, for our primary solution of this period, the 1260 years from Justinian’s Pope-recognizing decree, about A.D. 530, to the French Revolution, about A.D. 1790; and for our secondary solution the 1260 years from Phocas’ decree, A.D. 606, according to the best modern chronologists, A.D. 607, to A.D. 1867.

After the ending of the great revolutionary and Napoleonic wars at the Peace of Paris, there had been a return on the part of certain of the kingdoms of Western Christendom to their old spiritual allegiance to the Pope, e.g., of the Italian kingdoms of Sardinia and Naples, those of Spain, Portugal, Bavaria, Austria, and indeed partially that too of France. This allegiance involved to a considerable extent the same intolerance of Protestantism, designated as heresy, and enforcement by the arm of secular power of the Pope’s decrees and laws of the Romish Church — especially with regard to Divine worship, marriage, education, and freedom of conscience and of the press4 — as had more fully characterized all the kingdoms of Western Christendom, excepting North Germany and England, in the times previous to the great French Revolution — all, in those earlier times, in fulfillment of the obligations to which the kings had subscribed by their deputies in the great Papal OEcumenical Councils.5 But within the last few years the Sardinian kingdom (not to speak of others of the re-Papalized States), after absorbing into itself Lombardy, Tuscany, Naples, Sicily, the larger part of the Pope’s own territorial domain (called Patrimony of St. Peter), and, finally, Venetia, and having so become the kingdom of Italy, dissolved everywhere tho old ties that had bound those several polities in religious subjection to the enforcement of the decrees of the Papacy. Then (the war which ended in the battle of Sadowa having, in 1866, prepared the way), Austria, so long the Pope’s main prop, found itself forced, in 1867, to renounce its Concordat with the Papacy, and to establish throughout its dominions religious liberty.

Finally, in Spain, — after that, in the autumn of 1867, there had been unsuccessfully made the first attempt at overthrowing the Bourbon Queen and dynasty, and therewith the Papal all-domineering religious power — the attempt was renewed, and with entire success, in this present year 1868. Neither the Queen’s Ministry nor the Pope were ignorant of the impending revolutionary storm, and, consequently, that. Spain was no more to be reckoned on when the Bull of Convocation was issued than the other kingdoms of Western Christendom. Hence the Bull’s omission of the Spanish Queen as well as other sovereigns. As the editor expresses it, “There are now no longer Catholic crowns in Christendom.” God’s appointed period for this having been fulfilled, the kings no longer give the power of their kingdoms to the Beast. The Pope’s own published Bull testifies to that effect, and therewith to the fact of the completed expiration of the 1260 years.

What remains between us and the consummation but the supplemental period of the seventy-five years of Dan. 12? Our present position is at the close of the sixth vial — a vial of which the fitting to our own times has been so strikingly marked, both politically by the drying up of the waters of the Euphrates, or decay of the Turkish and Mohammedan powers, and religiously by the outgoing over England and the world of the three predicted deluding spirits of Infidelity, Popery, and Priestcraft, united in the one object of acting against the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ — I say, our present era being thus marked as at the close of the sixth vial, or commencement of the seventh, with its vial-outpouring into the aerial atmosphere, significant, I conceive, of the vitiation of the very elements of thought and principle, religious, moral, and political, what remains for fulfillment under this Vial, and during the course of Daniel’s seventy-five years of the “time of the end,” but the progress of the last great predicted war of Armageddon? Hence politically a revolution is indicated as ere long to follow, more mighty than any that has occurred since the first establishment of the Romano-Gothic kingdoms of the Popedom in Western Europe, and resulting in their tripartition: the Gospel-voice meantime sounding forth everywhere throughout the world antagonistically to the everywhere sped forth spirits of Antichristian delusion (Rev. 14:6-10); and so both the gathering out of God’s election of grace from every people and kindred and tongue and nation, as ordained under the present dispensation, and preparation too of the Jews for their predicted national restoration and conversion;6 after which is to follow the fall of the seven-hilled Babylon; and thereupon Christ’s glorious establishment of his kingdom. “Blessed is he that cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days,” or years.

Two final observations: —

[1] Let me observe that, though the kings may not any more give their kingdom to the Beast, yet this does not imply their rejection of Popery. At the moment before its sudden fall Babylon is represented in the Apocalypse as exulting, “I shall not be a widow, or see loss of children;” and, moreover, the kings of the earth are depicted as contemplating her fall with something of sympathy as well as awe. A prediction this very agreeable with what we now see of the state of Western Christendom, and what we might thence augur as to the probable future.

[2] Let me also observe, with reference to the remarkable fact of the interval between the primary and secondary endings of the 1260 years being very nearly seventy-five years (viz, from about 1790 to 1866-67), the same length as Daniel’s time of the end — that this may have been ordered by the Omniscient Spirit with a view to keeping alive throughout that interval the expectation of the Lord’s coming as imminent at the end of it. Similarly, when Christ’s first coming was drawing near, I conceive that the accomplished ending of the seventy weeks of Dan. 9 (= 490 years), about B.C. 46, if dated (as was natural) from Cyrus’s decree, instead of from Artaxerxes’s eighty years later, may have thenceforward served to excite and keep up that lively expectation of his coming as near at hand which we know from that time did prevail among the Jews.
Sept., 1868.

It seems almost needless to suggest how confirmatory of what was above written have been the extraordinary events that have since occurred on the theater of the European world: — France, “the eldest daughter of the Papal Church,” and chief final support of the Pope’s temporal power, humbled to the dust; its military supremacy transferred to Prussia, the great Protestant Continental power; the withdrawal of all the other secular European powers from support of the Papacy continued and confirmed; Rome itself ravished from the Pope by the King of Italy; yet the words of the Papal “great mouth” still boastful and blasphemous as ever! Advance seems surely to be making towards the predicted impartition of the kingdoms of the old Papal European Christendom under the seventh Apocalyptic vial, and the mighty concurrent revolution; also to the final and most awful destruction of the Papal Antichrist “by the brightness of the Lord’s coming,” after having been previously “consumed and wasted by the breath of His mouth.”

E. B. E.
May, 1871.

II. The following paper by Mr. Bateman, affording a very striking posthumous corroboration of the truth of Mr. Elliott’s system, appeared (in the Rock, January 7, 1876) within six months of Mr. E.’s death: —

Scorpion-Men.

In his great work on the Apocalypse my lamented friend the Rev. E. B. Elliott thus explains the two principles on which his interpretation of that holy prophecy mainly depends: —

“In the divine foreshowing of its great subject I have felt,” he says, “persuaded, and have carried out my exposition on the persuasion, that the two following rules must have been observed: — First, that the epochs and events selected for prefiguration must have been such as are confessedly the most important and eventful; secondly, that the figuring emblems must have been, in some approved consistent sense, characteristic and distinctive.”

And there are few who will not agree with Mr. Elliott that —

“The direct evidence of truth hence arising will at once be felt by the intelligent reader, more especially when fixed by some local or geographical peculiarity strongly marked in the prefiguration” (Horae Apocalypticae, i. 112, 5th edition).

The latter principle may be illustrated from the Old Testament prophets, who borrowed the emblems under which Judah is represented, e.g., lion, vine, olive-tree, fig-tree, etc., from the plants or animals indigenous to the country in which he dwelt. According to the same rule, Pharaoh is likened to a dragon, Nebuchadnezzar to an eagle, “the Assyrian” to “a cedar in Lebanon,” etc., etc. But in the Apocalypse the local propriety of the symbols is still more striking. For not merely the animals, but the heraldic devices on the coins and other national monuments of the countries which fall within the scope of the prophecy, are all found to be marvelously appropriate, both in respect of time and place. The Roman “horse” of the first four seals, each with its peculiar badge; the Pagan “dragon” (12:3); Mohammed’s “key” (9:1); the Waldensian “candlestick” (11:4); the Roman harlot holding out the “cup” of her apostasy (17:4), or sitting on the seven hills (v. 9) — these are but a few of the multitude of objects which are figured in Mr. Elliott’s work, where they furnish characteristic vouchers for the truth of a system which they at once illustrate and confirm.

But amidst all this wealth of evidence one link was still missing. Like nearly all other commentators of repute, Mr. Elliott interpreted the “woe” of the fifth trumpet as that great irruption of Saracen hordes into some of the fairest parts of Christendom which formed the burden of the seventh century. They came from Arabia, and are therefore with strict propriety symbolized by swarms of “locusts,” which are bred in the countries watered by the Tigris and Euphrates. Here is the description of them as seen in vision by St. John: —

“And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions. And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle. And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails” (Rev. 9:7-10).

We must bear in mind that in this graphic picture of the strange battalions which appeared upon the Apocalyptic scene the symbol is a composite one — like the Nineveh man-headed lions and bulls now in the British Museum, and which accord so exactly with Daniel’s description (7:4) of the “great beast” under which the Assyrian empire is prefigured. But the Apocalyptic emblem is more complex, for it includes a general resemblance to “locusts,” combined with certain other peculiarities, animal and human. The locusts in the vision were “like unto ‘horses,’”they had the “teeth of lions,” the “tails of scorpions,” the “hair of women,” and the “faces of men;” they had also “iron breastplates” and “golden crowns” (or helmets), while the whirr of their “wings” was as the sound of battle hurtling in the air. But while there was an obvious general agreement between the chief features of the Saracen invasion and the emblems selected by the Holy Spirit to depict it, Mr. Elliott, unable to adduce any specific evidence in elucidation of the fact, was compelled to resort to what he styles (i. 432) “a sketch from imagination” to explain the possible combination of details in the Apocalyptic symbol. Judge, therefore, of my surprise and delight when in looking over the illustrations in Mr. L. Smith’s admirable volume (published shortly after Mr. E.’s death), “The Chaldean Account of Genesis,” I found the accompanying plate — described among the “List of Illustrations” as “Composite figures (scorpion-men) taken from an Assyrian cylinder!”

Here was the Apocalyptic emblem with marvellous exactitude! The wings and general form were those of the “locust” — itself likened by Joel (11:4), as by St. John to the “war-horse.”7 In the figures — especially if examined with a magnifying glass — the long “hair of women” is no less conspicuous than the “faces of men.” Still more extraordinary are the “scorpion-tails,” never before seen, I believe, in any similar configuration. The creatures have helmets,8 probably of gold, “on their heads,” while something like an iron girdle or steel breastplate appears on their chests. The “teeth of lions” are, it is true, not recognizable in the figure, but the “lion” element is represented in the legs and feet. With this slight modification the identification is perfect. And the “local appropriateness” or geographical propriety of the emblem is equally unmistakable. For in the famous “Legends of Izdubar” (Nimrod) that hero gives an account of his meeting with the “scorpion-men” in the desert of “Mas,”9 which stretches — at the foot of the mountain-chain of that name — from the Tigris to the Euphrates.

The End.