A MEMORY REVIEW OF P. S. G. WATSON'S PROPHETIC PRETATION I. A REVIEW FROM MEMORY OF MR. P. S. G. WATSON'S BOOK ON "PRO PHETIC INTERPRETATION.” Mr. Watson in the year 1880 published a few copies of "Prophetic Interpretations," having been compelled for financial reasons to secure advance subscriptions for the same. It was my privilege to have one of these books, and also to have heard seven illustrated lectures bearing on the same subject. Mr. Watson died a short while after his book was published and I've been unable to secure another copy of it and was so unfortunate as to lend mine where it was lost sight of so that I now shall try to set down a few of the lessons that so far as I have been able to find are without a parallel. Mr. Watson was a Baptist minister-a Greek and Hebrew scholar, and had read the Bible through "on his knees." He said that he believed every word it contained from the initial "In" of Genesis to the final word "Amen" of Revelation. He thought that it should be read as any other book and that the context would in a great measure explain if it should be taken as literal, figurative, symbolic or spiritual. That all prophecy has direct reference to the Jews, and that there are seven years of unfilled prophecy-the last week of Daniel's seventy weeks. That the time from Jesus' ascension till the Jews (some of them at least) return to Palestine and re-establish their daily worship in the re-dedicated temple at Jerusalem is the "times of the Gentiles," in which we now live. That a king will make a seven years' covenant with the Jews in "the fullness of (this) time" but that in the midst of this seven years, or three and one-half years after it is made, he will violate this covenant and cause his own image to be set up. (See II Thes., 2:4.) "So that he as God sitteth in the temple of God showing himself that he is God" which constitutes the "abomination of desolation" referred to and stressed by Jesus as having been "spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place." He said that there was only one holy place recognized in the Bible and that was the Jewish temple at Jerusalem, and he showed by many parallel passages that "the abomination" was without doubt an idol made to be worshiped that the devil is yet to become incarnate (Rev. 12:3-9.) In Rev. 13:15 this king, the false prophet, or beast (Rev. 13:11) gives life unto the image of the beast (that is the "abomination of desolation") which is of the king who makes the covenant of seven years. This king is the beast described in Rev. 13:1 and 17:3 and is Daniel's "little horn" king (Dan. 7:8), who overcomes three kings and thereby becomes the eighth king (see Rev. 17:11) and is also Paul's "Man of sin," (II Thess. 2:3-4) see also 8th verse "That wicked" and who is further identified in Rev. 13:17-18 by the "number of his name '666'." Mr. Watson here gave the numerical value of the letters of the Greek alphabet, so that any student, might by "wisdom" and "understanding," count the number, which he thinks is to be taken literally. The Greek letters X E 5 was the equivalent of 666, but this number is only one of the many attributes of this vile king, who will be destroyed at the second coming. Mr. Watson did not think that what so many now call the rapture of the saints will precede the "time of trouble"-as so many at the present day seem to believe. Paul in I Cor. 15:51 says: "Behold I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trump, for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible and we shall be changed." And in I Thess. 4:16: "For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep, for the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” In Matthew 24:29-31, "And then" follows the tribulation, as also in Luke 21:27-28, we are told to look for our redemption after all "these things" begin to come to pass, and after in both gospels the sign of the Son of Man is seen "coming in a cloud of great glory." And all other passages quoted should be accepted according to the order or context in which they occur. The passage in Revelation 3:10, "Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of tribulation, which shall come upon all the world to try them that dwell upon the earth'-does not say how he will keep this one of all the seven churches, from the hour of temptation, but we know that Jesus will keep his word in his own good time. Concerning the times of the Gentiles if we read Luke 21:24, we see that Jesus seems to have placed the beginning of the Gentile times at the destruction of Jerusalem, which was accomplished under Titus, A. D., 70. And in Hosea 3:4 we are told that Israel will be without a king many days-that afterwards, in the latter days, "shall they return and seek the Lord their God and David their king"; which was also again foretold by Paul in Romans 12:10. The great trouble, according to Mr. Watson's view (and I was unable at any time to find the slightest divergence from Scriptures in all his teaching) is that Bible students have not been sufficiently careful to note when Daniel, Jesus, Paul and John, as well as others, spoke in definite terms, and when in a general manner. Jesus in his last communion with his disciples in the upper room was trying to bring comfort to them concerning the definite statement he had previously made in Matthew 24, and Luke 21, and Mark 13, in answer to their two questions, when shall "these things" (the destruction of Jerusalem) and the end of the age and of his coming again be accomplished? It is difficult to determine exactly where one answer ended and the other began, but we know that the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel as standing in the holy place has not been fulfilled, because in the first place there has been no "holy place" recognized by Jesus since the destruction of Jerusalem and consequently no idol image has been set up thus far for man to worship; neither has there been the "falling away" and the revelation of Paul's "Man of Sin," whose image Jesus signifies is to be the sign of the fig tree. In the 24th verse of Luke 21, Jesus says: "And they shall fall by the edge of the sword and shall be led away captive into all nations and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." After which the paragraph points to the second, and we know |