deliver you from
your oppressors and trample on the Gentiles. Your minds are
clouded with errors. The Father hath sent me to found the kingdom
of peace and righteousness, and hath given me all power to reward
and punish. By my word shall the nations of the earth be honored
and blessed, or be overwhelmed with fire; and every man must stand
before my judgment seat. The end of the world is at the doors. The
Mosaic dispensation is about to be closed in the fearful
tribulations of the day of the Lord, and my dispensation to be set
up. When you see Jerusalem encompassed with armies, know that the
day is at hand, and flee to the mountains; for not one stone shall
be left upon another. Then the power of God will be shown on my
behalf, and the sign of the Son of Man be seen in heaven. My
truths shall prevail, and shall be owned as the criteria of Divine
judgment. According to them, all the righteous shall be
distinguished as my subjects, and all the iniquitous shall be
separated from my kingdom. Some of those standing here shall not
taste death till all these things be fulfilled. Then it will be
seen that I am the Messiah, and that through the eternal
principles of truth which I have proclaimed I shall sit upon a
throne of glory, not literally, in person, as you thought,
blessing the Jews and cursing the Gentiles, but spiritually, in
the truth, dispensing joy to good men and woe to bad men,
according to their deserts." Such we believe to be the meaning of
Christ's own predictions of his second coming. He figuratively
identifies himself with his religion according to that idiom by
which it is written, "Moses hath in every city them that read him,
being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day." His figure of
himself as the universal judge is a bold personification; for he
elsewhere says, "He that believeth in me believeth not in me, but
in Him that sent me." And again, "He that rejecteth me, I judge
him not: the word that I have spoken, that shall judge him." His
coming in the clouds of heaven with great power and glory was
when, at the destruction of Jerusalem, the old age closed and the
new began, the obstacles to his religion were removed and his
throne established on the earth.2 The apostles undoubtedly
understood the doctrine differently; but that such was his own
thought we conclude, because he did sometimes undeniably use
figurative language in that way, and because the other meaning is
an error, not in harmony either w