The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 3

I. A Preview of Things to Come

With the passing of the French Revolution, and the ending of the 1260 years in the episodes of 1798, as set forth in the closing chapters of Volume 2 of The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, we enter upon a new epoch in prophecy, with a new center of prophetic interest and study. As evidenced by Volumes 1 and 2, whenever a major epoch or event of prophecy is reached, always there are reverent students whose minds are led by the Spirit of God to special study and recognition of the fulfillment. This is ever contemporaneous with the event. God never leaves the great fulfillments of prophecy to be acclaimed by only one or two witnesses. Rather, a whole cluster of witnesses, usually in different lands and employing different languages, announce to the world the fact that another major milepost of prophetic fulfillment has been, is being, or is about to be passed. PFF3 9.3

Note the process through the centuries. Observe the major epochs thus far traversed. When Rome, the fourth prophetic world power, ruled the world, men knew it and left the explicit record, not merely in one language but in five or six. ¹ Then when Rome was in the process of division, another cluster of men attested it as a major fulfillment of prophecy actually taking place before their eyes—Rome’s breakdown, the mingling of the predicted clay and iron of division—as they awaited with deep concern the appearance of the prophesied but as yet unidentified Antichrist. PFF3 10.1

Next, when the variously specified but nevertheless identical Antichrist—Beast, Babylon, Harlot, or Little Horn—had developed its full powers to the point of identification, another great chorus of voices broke out in pre-Reformation and Reformation times declaring that the Papacy had been and then was fulfilling this startling prophecy. PFF3 10.2

Finally, in the century preceding the French Revolution and culminating in the captivity of Pope Pius VI in 1798, a score or more of men on both sides of the Atlantic pointed the finger to France as the coming instrument—the predicted “tenth part” of the ecclesiastical “city,” Babylon—and to the approaching close of the allotted 1260—year era of the Little Horn. And at last, when the pope was taken captive and the symbolic Beast received his deadly wound, still another group of voices, in the Old World and the New, proclaimed the ending of the period and the entry upon the final epoch in mankind’s prophesied history. PFF3 10.3

Note particularly that following the French Revolution and the ending of the 1260 years, the greatest shift in the center of prophetic interest and emphasis recorded in history is to be found. This was from Daniel 7—with the fourth empire, the subsequent divisions, the emergence of the Little Horn, and now the ending of that allotted period—over to Daniel 8:14, with the ending of the 2300 year-days and the cleansing of the “sanctuary” about 1843, 1844, or 1847. And with it came to be coupled the warning of the great judgment hour impending. Nothing like it had ever been proclaimed before. Simultaneously, in England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, France, Switzerland, Scandinavia, America, India, Northern Africa, and the Near East, a growing chorus of voices were heard, springing up independently but proclaiming the same message and prophetic time period. It bore all the earmarks of a true advance in contemporary recognition of a currently fulfilling epoch in the grand prophetic outline. PFF3 10.4