go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself:  for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended?” On all these points which involve the element of time the prophecy maintains a majestic silence.  The closing promise indeed is:  “I the Lord will hasten it in his time;” but with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.  The time for the consummation of God’s plan to rescue this apostate world from the dominion of Satan—­how many slowly revolving centuries may it include, and what fierce and bloody assaults of the adversary, compelling God’s suffering people to cry out:  “O Lord, how long!”

The whole of the prophecy of Joel belongs to the class now under consideration.  It begins with impending judgments, and closes with the conflict and triumph of the last times:  “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision:  for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.  The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining.  The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake; but the Lord shall be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel.  So shall ye know that I am the Lord your God dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain; then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her any more.”  Chap. 3:14-17.

    Many more examples might be adduced from the other prophets, but
    the above will be sufficient.

6.  But let no one infer, from this absence of dates and of the exact succession of events, that the view which the prophet gives of the future is loose and confused.  Times and successions belong rather to the outward machinery of God’s providential government.  They are, so to speak, the wheels and bands and shafts which connect the different movements.  But the perpetual living power that dwells in the church is above all time and succession.  In this lies the guarantee of her final triumph, and with this the prophets are mainly occupied.  They take the deepest view of the progress of God’s kingdom, for they unfold to our view the indestructible divine life and power which animate it throughout, and which are steadily bearing it onward towards its final destiny—­victory complete and eternal over all the powers of darkness.  If we examine more particularly the manner in which the prophets of the Old Testament represent the future of the kingdom of heaven, we shall find that it has its foundation in the unity of the plan of redemption, the end towards which it is tending, the indications of that end which are perpetually given in its progress, and the fact that the end itself is the chief object of interest in prophetic vision.