The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 4
III. Kinne-Anticipates Millennium About 1866
Mention must also be made of AARON KINNE, 24 Congregational clergyman and legislator, who wrote A Display, of Scriptural Prophecies (1813), Explanation of the Types,, Prophecies, etc. (1814), and an Essay on the New Heaven and Earth (1821). He was respected as a scholar and as a man of prayer. PFF4 188.2
1. STANDARD POSITIONS ON OUTLINE PROPHECIES
Remarking that Daniel is the first of the prophets “to detail events in a regular order and chronological succession,” Kinne presents the standard view of Daniel 2 and 7, “the four great empires of Babylon, Media and Persia, Greece, and Rome,” and the usual position on Daniel 8 and 11. The dragon of Revelation 12 is the Roman emperors; the Beast from the sea would seem to be the idolatrous empire, both pagan and medieval; and the two-horned beast, the Little Horn of Daniel 7, and the Man of Sin all seem to refer to the Roman church, or Papacy, although Kinne is not too explicit on this point. The Little Horn and the two-horned beast apparently embraced what others called the Eastern and Western Antichrists, for he speaks of troubles of both branches of Christendom; yet does not mention Antichrist by name, but he states clearly that Babylon is the “popish” church.” 25 The desolating Little Horn of Daniel 8 he applies to Mohammedanism. PFF4 188.3
2. FOLLOWS MEDE ON SEALS AND TRUMPETS
In interpreting the seven seals and seven trumpets Kinne makes them consecutive, one group following the other, and so spanning the Christian Era, thus harking back to the old Joseph Mede theory of 1627 26 -with the seals confined to the first three centuries, from the destruction of Jerusalem on to the convulsions of the Roman Empire, when it was converted from paganism to Christianity. The trumpets are then made to begin with the invasion of the northern barbarians (about A.D. 400), followed by Genseric with his Vandals, and Odoacer and the Heruli. Under the fifth trumpet, soon after the Gothickings heal the “deadly wound” by restoring pagan idolatry, the Little Horn of Daniel 8 appears as Mohammedanism, which is to introduce (about 606) the 1260 years of the witnessing in sackcloth, and is to hurt men 150 years, from 612 to 772. The sixth, or Turkish, trumpet follows, with its 391 years from 1281 to 1672. 27 PFF4 189.1
3. PARALLEL WOES AND VIALS
The seven vials Kinne interprets as the punishments tailing on the “idolatrous Christians of the West,” contemporary with the woes of the fifth and sixth vials poured on the Eastern church. He takes them to be wars within the empire, between the Christians and the infidels, or Mohammedans, and then between the emperor s and the popes and among the popes. The Reformation is involved in the fifth vial, poured upon the seat of the Beast, denoting “the infraction upon the idolatrous power of the empire”; the sixth predicts the drying up of the papal revenues, the froglike spirits are the spirit of infidelity currently pervading Europe, which will destroy Babylon, or the Catholic Church. The third woe and the seventh vial he sees as current or future, and the 1260 years, beginning at 606, will end in 1866, which date would mark the beginning of the millennium, followed by the end of the world. 28 Kinne’s outline was really a synthesis of various earlier expositions, and somewhat behind many of his contemporaries. PFF4 189.2