FRIDAY MORNING MANNA
March 13, 2015
Nathaniel Fajardo
Email:[email protected]
Biblical Numerology: NUMBER TWO – Part XXVII
THE TWO WITNESSES REVIVED AND RESTORED – Part VIII
After three days and a half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them. Revelation 11: 10, K.J.V.
The historian George Storrs, quoted in Daniel and the Revelation, Uriah Smith, says that:
“But ‘the triumphing of the wicked is short;’ so was it in France, for their war on the Bible and Christianity had well-nigh swallowed them all up. The set out to destroy Christ’s ‘two witnesses,’ but they filled Franc with blood and horror, so that they were horror-struck at the result of their wicked deeds, and were glad to remove their impious hands from the Bible.’ – Midnight Cry, May 14, 1843, Vol. IX, Nos. 5, 6, p. 47.
“In 1793 the decree passed the French Assembly suppressing the Bible. Just three years after, a resolution was introduced in the Assembly going to supersede the decree, and giving toleration to the Scriptures. The resolution lay on the table six months, when it was taken up, and passed without a dissenting vote. Thus, in just three years and a half, the witnesses ‘stood upon their feet, and great fear fell upon them which saw them.’ Nothing but the appalling result of the rejection of the Bible could have induced France to take their hands off these witnesses.’ – Ibid.
“’On the 17th of June, Camille Jourdan, in the ‘Council of the Five Hundred,’ brought up the memorable report on the ‘Revision of the laws relative to religious worship.’ It consisted of a number of propositions, abolishing alike the Republican restrictions on Popish worship, and Popish restrictions on Protestant.
“1. That all citizens might buy or hire edifices for the free exercise of religious worship.
“2. That all congregations might assemble by the sound of the bells.
“3.That no test or promise of any sort unrequired from other citizens should be required of the ministers of those congregations.
“4. The any individual attempting to impede, or in any way interrupt the public should be fined, up to 500 livres, and not less than 50; and that if the interruption proceeded from the constituted authorities, such authorities should be fined double the sum. .
“5. That entrance to assemblies for the purpose of religious worship should be free for all citizens.
“6. That all other laws concerning religious worship should be repealed.
“Those regulations, in comprehending the whole state of worship in France, were, in fact, a peculiar boon to Protestantism. Popery was already in full sight of restoration [“healing,” from the Rev. 13: 3 prophecy of “one of his heads as it were woundeth to death” with the arrest of Pope Pius VI by Napoleon’s French Republican army in Feb. 10, 1798, and his death the next year in France]. But Protestantism, crushed under the burden of the laws of Louis XIV, and unsupported by the popular belief, required the direct support of the state ‘to stand on its feet.’ The Report seems to have had an especial view to the grievances of the Church; the old prohibitions to hold public worship, to possess places of worship, to have ingress, etc.’
“From the period the Church had been free in France. . . .
“The Church and the Bible had been slain in France from November, 1793 till June, 1797. The three years and a half were expended, and the Bible, so long and so sternly repressed before, was placed in honor, and was openly the book of free Protestantism.’ – George Croly, The Apocalypse of St. John, pp. 181-183./ D & R 540.
And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them. Rev. 11: 12.
“ ‘Ascended up to heaven.’ — To understand this expression, see Daniel 4: 22; ‘Thy greatness is grown, and reacheth unto heaven.’ Here we see that the expression signifies great exaltation. Have the Scriptures attained such a state of exaltation as here indicated, since France made war upon them? – They have. Shortly after, the British Bible Society was organized [1804]; then followed the American Bible Society [1816]; and these, with their almost innumerable auxiliaries, are scattering the Bible everywhere.’ – George Storrs, Midnight Cry, May 4, 1843, Vol. IV, Nos. 5, 6, p. 47. Before 1804 the Bible had been printed and circulated in fifty languages.
“Up to the end of December, 1942, the Bible in whole or in part has been translated into 1,058 languages and dialects. No other book approaches the Bible in inexpensiveness and the number of copies circulated. The American Bible Society reported having printed and circulated. In whole or in part, 7, 696, 739 portions in 1940; 8,096,069, in 1941; and 6,254,642, in 1942. The British and Foreign Bible Society reported for the year ending in the middle of 1941 a circulation of 11,017,334 copies; and in 1942, 7,120,000 copies.
“A conservative estimate places the number of Bible printed annually by commercial houses at 6 million. Hence the annual output of Bibles and portions has reached the enormous total of from twenty-five to thirty million copies per year.
“From its organization up to and including 1942, the American Bible Society has issued 321,951,266 copies; and the British and Foreign Bible Society up to March, 1942, had issued 538,664,024 copies, making a total of 861,600,000 copies put out by these two societies alone. The American Bible Society said in May, 1940: ‘It is estimated that nine tenths of the 2,000,000,000 people in the world right now [written in 1944], if they turned to the Bible, hear it in a language they can understand.’”
“The Bible is exalted as above all price, as, next to His Son, the most invaluable blessing of God to man, and as the glorious testimony concerning that Son. Yes; the Scriptures may truly be said to be exalted ‘to heaven in a cloud,’ a cloud being [also] an emblem of heavenly elevation. [Clouds are also used to describe hosts of angels at a far distance from human eyes. See Matt 24: 30, 31: 2 Thess. 1; 7; Heb. 12: 22, etc].”
NOTE: The Biblical term for the act of speaking; utterance in words, a language, especially. a spoken language, is “tongues.” When the 120 disciples received the promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, 50 days after the resurrection of Christ, also called the “former rain “or “first rain,” the mostly unlearned Galileans, including Mary the mother of Jesus (last mention of her in the Bible), spoke with unwonted power and fluency in all the major world languages represented at Jerusalem, then fully vested for their annual Passover. “Every man heard them speak in his own language.” “We do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.” Acts 2: 6, 11, K.J.V. The antithesis of Biblical “speaking in tongues” is gibberish where no one understands what is being said. Recently, while I was quietly studying my Bible as I waited for my car to be serviced, a tall man walked up to me and said he was a Christian, adding that he was a prophet. Then he began speaking to me in “tongues.” Try as hard as I could, I couldn’t make out what he was saying. When he was done I asked him what he just said. He replied, “I don’t know. The Holy Spirit gave me the words.”
VERSE 13 And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.
“What city? (See Rev. 17: 18). ‘The woman which thou sawest is that great city which reigneth over the kings [kingdoms] of the earth.’) That city is the papal Roman power. France is one of the ‘ten horns’ that gave ‘their power and strength unto the [papal] beast;’ or is one of the ten kingdoms that rose out of the Western Empire of Rome, as indicated by the ten toes of Nebuchadnezzar’s image, Daniel’s ten-horned beast [Dan. 7: 24], and john’s ten-horned dragon. [Revelation 12: 3]. France, then, was ‘a tenth part of the city,’ and was one of the strongest ministers of papal vengeance; but in this revolution it ‘fell,’ and with it fell the last civil messenger of papal fury.
“And in the earthquake were slain of men [margin, names of men] seven thousand.” France made war, in her revolution of 1798 [1789] and onward, on all titles and nobility.
“And the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.” Their God-dishonoring and Heaven-defying work filled France with such scenes of blood, carnage, and horror, as made even the infidels themselves to tremble, and stand aghast; and the ‘remnant’ that escaped the horrors of that hour ‘gave glory to God’—not willingly, but the God of heaven caused this ‘wrath of man to praise Him,’ by giving all the world to see that those who make war on heaven makes graves for themselves; thus glory redounded to God by the very means that wicked men employed to tarnish that glory.’”- Ibid., p. 48, quoted in Daniel and the Revelation, Uriah Smith, p. 542.
The world population was 7.244 billion as of July 2014, according to the Medium Fertility estimate by the UN Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division and it is projected to reach 7. 325 billion in July 2015. According to the UN, the 6 billion figure was reached on Oct. 12, 1999 (celebrated as the Day of the 6 Billion). Let us do all we can to spread the Bible like the leaves of autumn so Jesus can come sooner! (Concluded next week)