PROPHECIES THAT FAILED

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 111, 13 May 1933, Page 17

PROPHECIES THAT FAILED

CUMMING AND OTHERS

(By-Ajax.) The End; of the World. By Geoffrey Dennis. London: Eyre and Spottiswoodo. 1930. Apocalyptic Sketches, or Lectures on the Book of Eevelation. By John Cumming, D.D. London: Hall' and Co. 1848. • ■ Mr. Dennis's detailed account of' the (calculations by which William Miller Sought to put an end to the world in 1843, and again in 1844, is followed up by a very rapid review of tho subsequent attempts of the same kind. Of one in 1917 which was based on fresh researches in Eevelation and connected up with the marks of the Beast (the Kaiser) he says that it . appears to have left the nation quite unmoved; -\Vhich cared less about the end of the world than about the end of the War. • * * The disaster that threatened the world on December 17, 1917, and happons to be the only one of which I have an accessible note, is not mentioned by Mr. Dennis. On that, occasion six of the planets "grouped together in tho greatest leagno of planets ever known in the history of astronomy," and personally.:conducted by a Michigan., professor, Mr. Albert B. Po'rta, was guaranteed to pull the planet to bits. But the infallible figures of astronomy proved to be just as delusive as those of Daniel and the Apocalypse. The world went on its way rojoicing, and tookj its Christmas dinner about a week later as though nothing had happened. .Mr. Dennis, disposes.of the next three .prophecies, of doom, in a single .sentence. ' •"',,' -..'V ■ ' Not morfc" successful, he writes; this last decadefs,.,fatal ,;choicesrr-'2l r (April), '2i, '28—culled by new desperate subtlety with the Book of Daniel and the Great Pyramid, and grounded on calculations' connected with the final overthrow, of the Pope's temporal power, which was not perhaps quite so final as its enemies fancied, the subversion of Borne, which Jnay mean whatever you like, and the conversion of the Jews which is still proceeding rather slowly. . \. ♦ *. •' * .■••'•■ Writing.in 1930,, Mr. Donnisi.was feble to contemplate with calm courage ,the event which tho Prophetical So-v ciety of Dallas, Texas, had fixed for the following year. "The most.powerful catastrophic organisation in the ;world," whose influence extended throughout the Bible Belt of. the United j-ftates and "even far beyond that intemperate zone" Wad assembled the jfaets and left no room for doubts. Every sign has indeed been accom|>lishedi famines and pestilences and earthquakes, nation rising up against nation £nd kingdom against kingdom, the Gospel preached at last in ALL the world for v witness, and the abomination of desola■£on standing in the holy ; place—though Whether Dux' or Pontifex be the abomination is left doubtful, and even diplomatists ire not sure for which of the two the Jjateran trumpets Bounded victory). Every prophecy concords: Apocalypse with Apocrypha, the Pyramid corridors with l)aniel's chronology; -Kemal's inauguration is Antichrist's World Coronation,, Ismet's number (count it) the number of the Beast, the Bed Tsar the 'f Scarlet ■ [Woman. -<-- ■>"< •:>^<,- ■'-■■:-'- •; ' **?= "■ ■* .■'*...■■• ..• .;. .-i , This conclusively demonstrated defetruction also the world has escaped, and the only two others that Mr. Dennis mentions concern our children and children's children in 2000 and 1998. iThe second of those dates is supported J>y some strange figures. One is the thousand years [Eev. xx] twice told, the pre-ordinate and decretory termination of the 6000 years of this Vision; the other both the magical three times the magical number of a Man (3 x 666=1908) and the' Passionate numeral of the Son of Man Himself, Who was crucified in the 1998 th week of His human life. ♦ * • The second of the volumes mentioned at the head of this article—the, Eev. John Cumming's "Apocalyptic Sketches"—is- one of the most beautifully bound books in my library. It i 3 a stout little 12mo of 500 pages, toound in crusher! chocolate morocco, edges gilt, sides ruled with two oblongs of double gold lines, and on the almost flat back the panels between the' ribs —both terms are my very own^-are also decorated with an abundancp bf gold lines and not too obtrusive gold ornaments. About twelve years'ago this treasure cost mo sixpence in Church Street, Kensington. It is a delightful book to look at or to handle, yet'l have often wondered whethor, except for these purposes, I have got- -my moneys worth out of it. But nry.rei. cont reading of it in connection with William Miller's prophecies arid', Mri Dennis's review of tho whole... tribe • —among whom, by the way, he: does not even mention Cumming—-iaS removed these doubts. . . , * ' * - .* -~.. Cumming's "Apocalyptic Sketches'! is a reprint of a series of Sunday evpnt ing lectures on tho Book of Eevelation ■which he delivered to audiences' of. about 5000 in Exeter Hall during six months of 1847-48, The faith, the earnestness, the research,, and the «lot quence displayed in the book must command the respect of any candi.d reader-. «yon though ho may smilo at the ab? surdity of the.methods and the wreck that time has made of the conclusions. |Tlio mention of tho Turks in one of jtny quotations from Mr. Dennis sugfeests :*bat Dr, Cumming's treatment of th>/ same nation may servo as an: illustration of his methods and of tho faay in which these prophets, in defiance of all the canons of rational interpretation, resort to conjecture, imagination, and the accidents of their times in 4brder to wrest conclusions from tho fecripturea which are plainly arbitrary, Irrelevant, and absurd. * * # The text of Dr. Cumming's lecture fopon "The Sixth Vial" is Eev. xvi, 12-14. The first of theso verses is as follows: — And the sixth angel poured his vial tapon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the |Way of the kings of the east might be prepared. Speaking broadly, tho reference is to ■ ffio weakening of the eastern frontier Of tho Eoman Empire by the drying tip of tho Euphrates and tho consequent exposure of Eomo to attacks from that quarter. But Anderson Scott speaks for modern scholarship when he finds in "the kings that come from the sunrising" (R.V.I) a special reference to {hose Parthian rulers in alliance with whom Nero was to return from the East {o destroy Rome, and challengo the forces of God to a final conflict. ♦ # * But Dr. Cumming jumps"eighteen centuries in order to identify tho Euphrates with the Turks. His twonHeth lecture opens as follows: —; The great river Euphrates, as I have e ready shown, denotes the Turkish or ahometan power. , , , The evapora-

tion -of this Euphrates was fixed by Daniel, viii, 15-25. Bicheno, in A.D. 1707,. fixed the commencement of the'2ooo years at B.C. 480,' predicted the commencement1 of its'decline to be 1819. Mr. Elliott calculates that 1849 will finish the Turkish power,; and break up and scatter all its national cohesion. On the same' data he determines Daniel's prophecy, xii, 11. ."And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken awny, and the abomination that mnketh desolate set up, there shall be 1290 days. Blessed is he that -\vaitcth and cometh to the 1335 days." The first portion of the 1335 days expired at the French Revolution, A.D. 1793; the second expired at the beginning of the decline of the Turko-Mahometan power—or drying up of the Euphrates, A.D. 1820. The laßt portion will expire A.D. 1865, at which, or soon after, will be tho advent of Christ, and the first resurrection and . beginning of the Millennium. # • • As tho Turk was regarded even in 1820 and 1848 as "the sick man of Europe," his languishing power was identified by Elliott and Cumming with the drying Euphrates. But since 1923, when the recovery of the Turk was consummated by the Treaty of Lausanne, the Euphrates may be: said to have been running bank%igh. Kemal is accordingly found by the Prophetical Society,of Dallas to represent Antichrist's World-Coronation/and j Ismct is identified with the'~.Beast,.' i