The time of trouble

With reference to Daniel 12:1—But the consummation of the seventh trumpet will woefully surpass the Reign of Terror. This was limited to a single nation, of which the mighty were hurled from their seats into the lowest depths, and the rest sent empty away. But the terminal epoch of the seventh trumpet now upon us, will make the ears to tingle only to hear the report of its terrors. Daniel was informed that it would be "a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation to that same time" (xii. 1). "The time of the end" of the third woe trumpet is a time of unsurpassed calamity, and will extend to all nations in all parts of the earth. Their trade and commerce will be ruinously perturbed; their countries devastated by war; their hundreds of thousands prostrated by famine, pestilence and sword; their armies scattered like chaff before the wind; their "religions" abolished as "abominations" and blasphemies; their priests, clergies and ministers punished as sorcerers, murderers, impostors, hypocrites, and plunderers of the poor; and their kings, nobles and gentry destroyed as "the destroyers of the earth."The Spirit of the Eternal in Jesus and his Brethren is "the Lord and his Christ," by whom this world-wide revolution will be developed and directed. The political witnesses of Jesus developed and directed the great French Revolution. Theirs was a great and mighty, as well as a terrible work; but it is the witnesses of the Holy City, the One Body, who will constitute the Revolutionary Government, and to whom the higher and nobler, mightier and more terrible mission is assigned, of breaking in pieces the political fabric of the world; of emancipating the nations from the reign of ignorance and strong delusion, and of blessing them in Abraham and his Seed. This is the work that is before them, and which, when accomplished, will introduce them to the reign of the aions of the aions, or THE THOUSAND YEARS.And when this Millennial Sabbatism shall be duly established by the Eternal Spirit, the One Body, in glorious manifestation, and symbolized by the Four and Twenty Elders before the Deity, and "on their thrones," "fall upon their faces and do homage to the Deity, saying, We give thanks to thee, O Lord, the Almighty Deity, who is, and who was, and who art the Coming One, because thou hast assumed thy great power, and reignest."But this is all in the future. It is the grand apocalyptic consummation of the gospel of the kingdom. It is the Divine purpose of the seventh trumpet first stated, but the last accomplished. The Spirit’s Body cannot be the Who is, and the Who was, and the Coming One reigning, so long as the saints are sleeping in the dust, and those who corrupt the earth are undestroyed. The resurrection of the holy generation is therefore indispensable to the denouement of the plot. The resurrection first comes in a time of trouble -- a trouble which has doubtless begun, and which will not diminish, but increase, until there be great wrath among the nations. And so it is written in the eighteenth verse of this chapter, saying:"And the nations were made angry, and thy wrath came; and the time of the dead to be judged, and to give the reward to thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, even to those who fear thy name, to the small and to the great; and to destroy those who corrupt the earth."The nations of this prophecy are those of "the earth and of the whole habitable" (Apoc. xvi. 14).