create upon every dwelling-place of Mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night:  for upon all the glory shall be a defence” (ver. 4, 5).  Here we have, in a certain sense, an indication of time, but it is wholly indefinite.  No date is given for the fulfilment of the prophecy, nor any exact chronological order of succession.  The prophet began with the judgments that impended over his countrymen.  He ends with the full glory of the Messiah’s reign, without any indication of the intervening interval of time.

Another striking example is furnished by the eleventh chapter of Isaiah in connection with the preceding context.  The tenth chapter of Isaiah contains an account of the Assyrian monarch’s progress through the land of Judea, ending with a figurative account of his overthrow:  “Behold the Lord, the Lord of hosts, shall lop the bough with terror; and the high ones of stature shall be hewn down, and the haughty shall be humbled.  And he shall cut down the thickets of the forest with iron, and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one” (ver. 33, 34).  Immediately upon this prediction, and with reference to the Assyrian bough and the thickets of Lebanon—­Sennacherib with his host—­that have been hewn down, follows a prophecy of the Messiah’s advent:  “And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.”  Chap. 11:1.  The prophet represents these two events, the overthrow of the Assyrian and the advent of the Messiah, as so connected that the latter follows as a natural sequel to the former, passing over in silence the many intervening centuries.  He represents, again, the Messiah’s kingdom as one of continuous victorious progress, till “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea,” without pausing to indicate any intervening period of darkness and depression.

Still a third pure specimen of this form of prophecy occurs in the fifty-ninth and sixtieth chapters of Isaiah.  The former of these two chapters is occupied with a description in very dark lines of the sins of God’s covenant people (ver. 1-15), and of God’s interposition in awful majesty to vindicate his own cause (ver. 16-21).  Immediately upon this follows, in the sixtieth chapter, a vision of the latter-day glory that has no parallel in the Old Testament for brightness, extending down to the full establishment of the millennial age.  But when shall these things be?  How long shall the present age of iniquity endure?  And when Jehovah appears to save the cause of truth and righteousness, shall it be by a single interposition or a series of interpositions?  If by the latter, how widely shall they be separated, and what dark scenes shall intervene?  When shall the promised Redeemer appear, and how long shall his work be in progress before that blessed consummation contained in the promise:  “Thy sun shall no more