Establishment of the Law
Thou shalt not take the name of God in vain.
1. FEAR not, little flock, for your Father, in his good pleasure, hath given you the Kingdom; the dominion is yours forever; ye shall smite the nations with a continual stroke; for the Lord your God hath spoken it: ye shall break them in pieces, and destroy them; for the day of his vengeance has come.
55 words,
234 letters.
2. He hath judged the nations that are near, and decreed destruction upon them, and their day continueth not: the nations far away are covered with their abominations as with a garment: their iniquities are not hid: he will not spare them.
41 words,
190 letters.
3. The Saints of the former days have sat in judgment upon them; they have judged the earth, and the nations thereof shall not be spared: fire goeth before: famine followeth after; and the pestilence shall waste them.
37 words,
172 letters.
4. Arise and smite them, 0 Daughter of Zion; and thou, 0 Tower of the Flock, whose power is above the clouds, possess thy do-
[Page 204]
minion, and be thou a refuge: for Judah shall be bent, in his strength; as an arrow, Ephraim shall fill him: Manasseh shall be his barb; and Jacob shall be in the midst of the Gentiles, in the empire of nations, as a Lion among the beasts of the forest; as a young Lion in the flocks of sheep, who, when he goeth through, treadeth down and teareth in pieces, and none shall deliver.
97 words,
387 letters.
5. Let your fear be upon all men; and the terrour of you upon your enemies; for this is the day of vengeance of the Lord, and of your recompense upon your enemies. Joseph shall possess his land again; for the throne of David is established as the days of the sun; his Kingdom is everlasting.
55 words,
227 letters.
6. And now, 0 Daughter of Zion, the land of robbers, the empire of many nations, shall gather her troops against thee, to look upon thee, and to defile thy dominion: but they have not known the thought of the Lord; neither have they understood his counsel; for he shall gather them as sheaves of the floor.
56 words,
238 letters.
7. Arise and thrash, for I will make thy power iron: the tread of thy foot shall crush: thou shalt break in pieces many people, and shalt consecrate their spoil unto God, and
[Page 205]
their dominion to the Lord of the whole earth.
41 words,
172 letters.
8. Babylon the Great shall perish before thee; for thou shalt do unto her as she hath done unto thee: thou shalt render unto her as she hath rendered to thee, and reward her double for all her sins. Her cities shall be given to the flames, and the inhabitants to the sword: her government shall be broken in pieces, and her dominion taken away.
64 words,
270 letters.
9. For in her is found the blood of Saints and Prophets; and the spoil of the children of God in the midst of her: and she hath drank of the cup of the indignation, and of the fury of God, with all the nations of the Gentiles.
47 words,
172 letters.
10. Against her, Apostles have washed their feet on earth, and borne witness in heaven; and by the testimony and the blood of Prophets have her sins been made known in heaven: the great Prince, whose throne is as burning fire, hath judged her, saying, Let not her days be prolonged.
50 words,
220 letters.
11. For by this law shall men be judged in the portion of Joseph: God will give it to you, that you may possess it for an everlasting dominion. In the midst of the Gentiles shall
[Page 206]
ye establish your Synagogues, and gather out the just while ye wait for the judgments of God.
52 words,
212 letters.
12. Ye shall, therefore, read in it all the days of your lives. Ye shall read it in your solemn assemblies, and in your joyous meetings; with the shout of triumph when your enemies flee before you; and in the voice of mourning when you have sinned against God, and have fled before them; ye shall read it in the gathering of your neighbours, and in the household with your children.
70 words,
299 letters.
13. Ye shall talk of it in the house, and in the field, and by the wayside, and in the forest, and on the waters; in the camp, and on the march: when ye labour, and when ye rest shall ye speak of this Law to your neighbours, and to your wives, and to your children, and to your servants.
59 words,
213 letters.
14. And ye shall think upon it in your joy, and in your sorrow; when upon the land which the Lord your God giveth you, and when far away; both in the midst of the multitude, and in your loneliness; all the days of your lives shall ye read it, and talk of it, and think upon it; and it shall be inscribed upon your hearts continually.
66 words,
254 letters.
15. For by this Law hath the Lord your
[Page 207]
God sanctified you, and given you judgment, and justice, and dominion. Remember that ye stood before him; your King, and your Princes, and your Nobles, the men of you, with your wives and your children, and your little ones, and entered into covenant with the Lord your God, to be a people unto him, and to obey his Commandments, and to keep this Law; and that he covenanted with you to be your God, and to make you a nation of Kings and Priests to the nations of the earth.
98 words,
395 letters.
16. Keep, therefore, this Law, and obey these Commandments; for so doth God sanctify you, and so will he establish you, and prosper you, more abundantly than in former days. The land of Joseph shall ye possess forever, and Israel and Judah shall dwell again upon their own mountains.
48 words,
222 letters.
17. Your vineyards, your gardens, and your orchards, ye shall plant again, and they shall flourish, and ye shall eat the fruit thereof: ye shall build houses, and shall inhabit them; and children’s children shall be in them, for a crown of glory to you, if ye remember the Lord your God, whose name is great and glorious, and keep his statutes.
61 words,
266 letters.
[Page 208]
18. And now if there be among you a man whose heart turneth away from the Lord your God, to serve the god of Babylon, and to honour the names of the nations; if there be a root that beareth gall and wormwood; and when he heareth the curse in this Law, he bless himself, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of my heart, the Lord will not spare him.
74 words,
285 letters.
19. But the anger of the Lord, and his jealousy, and his fierce wrath, shall smoke against that man: and all the curses that are written in this book shall be upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven.
43 words,
172 letters.
20. At the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year, when all the children of the Kingdom are gathered together before the Lord in Temples, and in Tabernacles, and all the people are assembled, Princes and Nobles, men, and women, and children, and the stranger that dwelleth in your gates, ye shall read this Law before them all, in their hearing, and shall make it known in the midst of them.
74 words,
317 letters.
21. And your children, and the strangers dwelling in your gates, that have not heard it, shall learn this Law, and ye shall all re-
[Page 209]
member it again, and shall all lift up your hands, and shall enter into covenant with the Lord your God to keep this Law, and to obey his statutes, that he may prolong your days upon the land.
61 words,
249 letters.
Total—21 sec., 1,249 words, 5,166 letters.
1. The pseudo philanthropy of the present time rejects the destruction of the wicked as one of the means of establishing righteousness. With some, philanthropy has got so far in advance of Godliness as to seek, pray for, and expect the salvation, everlasting life and unalloyed happiness of those who delight in sin, and take no pleasure in righteousness; believing that, in some mysterious way, God can make those happy whose chief delight is in wickedness.
2. But the common sentiment in Christian countries is, that irreligious and wicked men and nations ought not to be destroyed; and that the most corrupt and abject races and men have the same right to live and to exercise government as the most Godlike.
3. With Christian men this sentiment is entertained, with divers exceptions. They have little repugnance to the killing of those who keep the Commandments of God. They are quite satisfied that the destruction of the Canaanites was really by Commandment of God; but as certain that he will never command the destruction of any other corrupt nation.
4. The destruction of the Canaanites by the Commandment of God can only be justified on good and cogent reasons. It is not enough that they were creatures of God, made by him, and that therefore he had the right to destroy them. They were living, conscious beings, having a right to the life to which they were born, till they diminished it by
[Page 210]
violating the laws of life, or forfeited the right by such con-duct as rendered their existence dangerous to better men.
5. The right to destroy the life of any man grows out of such conduct as renders his existence on the whole, a curse; and not in any capricious idea of absolute power. And the same rule applies to the extermination of races.
6. The old world was destroyed by the flood, in consequence of universal corruption; not merely corruption of manners, but hereditary corruption of the flesh. (Jasher iv, 16-18. Gen. vi, 5.) Sodom and the cities of the plain were destroyed for a similar reason. (Gen. xviii, 20, 21, 26, 32. xix, 4, 5, 9.)
7. In the long list of crimes recorded against Sodom, as the guilty cause of its utter destruction, the first is the custom of the whole population going out four times a year to a certain valley, with musick and dancing; when every man seized whatsoever woman he would, and they all enjoyed the wives and daughters of their neighbours in their sight, and no man objected a word; (Jasher xviii, 13-15;) a custom which has its counterpart in the Free Love societies of the present day. The natural consequence of this want of chastity was that beastiality, which has given the name of Sodom to the most loathsome of all human crimes.
8. Of a different character was another of their cherished customs; that of confiscating the goods of such strangers as unfortunately fell into their hands, and distributing them among themselves, and pretending to receive each man’s share as a gift. (Jasher xviii, 16, 17.)
9. But the fountains of justice were equally corrupted, so that the chief business of the Judges was to go through the necessary forms to give legal validity to acts of fraud and violence, (Jasher xix,) much as many Judges and nearly all
[Page 211]
Attorneys occupy their time nowadays, in Christian cities.
10. Thus corruption and wickedness pervaded society in all conditions, and prevailed in every act of men. There was no purity, no truth, as a foundation for reform. Every successive generation was raised up to incurable corruption and wickedness.
11. The end of such a people could be nothing but overwhelming destruction, and utter extermination. The only possible object in prolonging their decay, was to contaminate the surrounding nations, and bring them eventually to the same end. The destruction of Sodom was mercy to the human race.
12. The case of the nations of Canaan was like it. Corruptions similar to those of Sodom were national characteristicks. They had doomed themselves to extermination, just as various races and nations have since done. To them the judgment of God was but a matter of time. To other nations it was a matter of defence from contagion.
13. But in the case of the Canaanites there was an especial mercy in the Law which preserved the female children alive, and gave them for wives to the conquerors.
14. An important purpose, to be kept in view, in a wise administration of national affairs, is the increase of population. This increase does not depend on the number of the men, but of the women. For, with polygamy, it is apparent that a given number of women will produce the same number of children, whether the men are many or few.
15. According to the Commandment under which most of the land of Canaan was overrun, all the virgin females were kept as wives to the men of Israel. These were taken into Hebrew families, and educated in their institutions. They became the wives of a brave and prevailing race of men, who
[Page 212]
would suffer no relapse into the customs of their country.
16. By the natural operation of the law of hybridity, the children of such crosses partake most of the blood of the prevailing race, and a few generations, under proper management, where one race continually rules with a uniform and rigid system, will obliterate all signs of the subjugated race, with scarcely any, perhaps no, diminution of the human race.
17. Thus in the conquest of Canaan, if the whole work had been accomplished according to the Command of God, the next generation would have exhibited about the same number of children of Canaanite maternity, but they would have been Israelites, instead of Canaanites. As corruption generally begins with men, and but slowly extends to women, these women would have raised a righteous seed; who, educated as Israelites, would have been very little inferiour to the pure bloods.
18. The activity and energy developed in these great undertakings, would have made the whole race superiour to what the Israelites were in the beginning; as it was, the land was not depopulated, but its population greatly increased, and the Israelite stock not in any degree deteriorated by the mixture.
19. At the present time several nations, and some larger races, have come to a point in corruption where they are incapable of keeping themselves up. Without invasions or the impinging of any external force against them, they are slowly disappearing from the earth, and making steady strides to a certain extermination.
20. Among the converted or Christian Kanackers, the evil is past remedy. The vices introduced and sown broadcast among them by Christian residents and sailors, have taken such deadly effect that the women are generally barren. The
[Page 213]
population is diminishing several thousand annually. The Sandwich Islands, which, when first visited by Christian Missionaries, contained a half million of these people, have not now sixty thousand.
21. Several nations of old Christian stock, are going in the same way. If left to themselves, they will disappear from the earth. In their prolonged decay, they may contaminate many others. It would be a mercy could they be overrun by a righteous race, and the women children alone preserved, and made wives to men of moral and healthy habits.
22. The whole course of prophecy indicates that the nations of the earth will not be converted to Godliness; but that they will increase in wickedness, and be destroyed. The day has not yet come, but is in the future, which “shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble,” and shall be burnt up, leaving neither root nor branch; when they that fear the Lord shall tread down the wicked, as ashes beneath their feet. (Mal. iv, 1, 3.)
23. Paul assures us that the coming of Christ shall be “in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord.” (2d Thess. i, 8, 9.) Isaiah says, the earth shall be made empty, and few men left. (Isa. xxiv, 1, 3, 6.) Those days are days of vengeance, when Christ shall tread the wine press of the wrath of God, and the blood shall flow unto the horses’ bridles. (Rev. xiv, 20.) As those times are approaching, the judgment is pronounced on Babylon, “Reward her as she hath rewarded you, and double unto her double, according to her works.” (id. xviii, 6.) Then shall the Saints execute vengeance on the heathen. (Ps. cxlix, 6, 7.)
1. FEAR not, little flock, for your Father, in his good pleasure, hath given you the Kingdom; the dominion is yours forever; ye shall smite the nations with a continual stroke; for the Lord your God hath spoken it: ye shall break them in pieces, and destroy them; for the day of his vengeance has come.
55 words,
234 letters.
2. He hath judged the nations that are near, and decreed destruction upon them, and their day continueth not: the nations far away are covered with their abominations as with a garment: their iniquities are not hid: he will not spare them.
41 words,
190 letters.
3. The Saints of the former days have sat in judgment upon them; they have judged the earth, and the nations thereof shall not be spared: fire goeth before: famine followeth after; and the pestilence shall waste them.
37 words,
172 letters.
4. Arise and smite them, 0 Daughter of Zion; and thou, 0 Tower of the Flock, whose power is above the clouds, possess thy do-
[Page 204]
minion, and be thou a refuge: for Judah shall be bent, in his strength; as an arrow, Ephraim shall fill him: Manasseh shall be his barb; and Jacob shall be in the midst of the Gentiles, in the empire of nations, as a Lion among the beasts of the forest; as a young Lion in the flocks of sheep, who, when he goeth through, treadeth down and teareth in pieces, and none shall deliver.
97 words,
387 letters.
5. Let your fear be upon all men; and the terrour of you upon your enemies; for this is the day of vengeance of the Lord, and of your recompense upon your enemies. Joseph shall possess his land again; for the throne of David is established as the days of the sun; his Kingdom is everlasting.
55 words,
227 letters.
6. And now, 0 Daughter of Zion, the land of robbers, the empire of many nations, shall gather her troops against thee, to look upon thee, and to defile thy dominion: but they have not known the thought of the Lord; neither have they understood his counsel; for he shall gather them as sheaves of the floor.
56 words,
238 letters.
7. Arise and thrash, for I will make thy power iron: the tread of thy foot shall crush: thou shalt break in pieces many people, and shalt consecrate their spoil unto God, and
[Page 205]
their dominion to the Lord of the whole earth.
41 words,
172 letters.
8. Babylon the Great shall perish before thee; for thou shalt do unto her as she hath done unto thee: thou shalt render unto her as she hath rendered to thee, and reward her double for all her sins. Her cities shall be given to the flames, and the inhabitants to the sword: her government shall be broken in pieces, and her dominion taken away.
64 words,
270 letters.
9. For in her is found the blood of Saints and Prophets; and the spoil of the children of God in the midst of her: and she hath drank of the cup of the indignation, and of the fury of God, with all the nations of the Gentiles.
47 words,
172 letters.
10. Against her, Apostles have washed their feet on earth, and borne witness in heaven; and by the testimony and the blood of Prophets have her sins been made known in heaven: the great Prince, whose throne is as burning fire, hath judged her, saying, Let not her days be prolonged.
50 words,
220 letters.
11. For by this law shall men be judged in the portion of Joseph: God will give it to you, that you may possess it for an everlasting dominion. In the midst of the Gentiles shall
[Page 206]
ye establish your Synagogues, and gather out the just while ye wait for the judgments of God.
52 words,
212 letters.
12. Ye shall, therefore, read in it all the days of your lives. Ye shall read it in your solemn assemblies, and in your joyous meetings; with the shout of triumph when your enemies flee before you; and in the voice of mourning when you have sinned against God, and have fled before them; ye shall read it in the gathering of your neighbours, and in the household with your children.
70 words,
299 letters.
13. Ye shall talk of it in the house, and in the field, and by the wayside, and in the forest, and on the waters; in the camp, and on the march: when ye labour, and when ye rest shall ye speak of this Law to your neighbours, and to your wives, and to your children, and to your servants.
59 words,
213 letters.
14. And ye shall think upon it in your joy, and in your sorrow; when upon the land which the Lord your God giveth you, and when far away; both in the midst of the multitude, and in your loneliness; all the days of your lives shall ye read it, and talk of it, and think upon it; and it shall be inscribed upon your hearts continually.
66 words,
254 letters.
15. For by this Law hath the Lord your
[Page 207]
God sanctified you, and given you judgment, and justice, and dominion. Remember that ye stood before him; your King, and your Princes, and your Nobles, the men of you, with your wives and your children, and your little ones, and entered into covenant with the Lord your God, to be a people unto him, and to obey his Commandments, and to keep this Law; and that he covenanted with you to be your God, and to make you a nation of Kings and Priests to the nations of the earth.
98 words,
395 letters.
16. Keep, therefore, this Law, and obey these Commandments; for so doth God sanctify you, and so will he establish you, and prosper you, more abundantly than in former days. The land of Joseph shall ye possess forever, and Israel and Judah shall dwell again upon their own mountains.
48 words,
222 letters.
17. Your vineyards, your gardens, and your orchards, ye shall plant again, and they shall flourish, and ye shall eat the fruit thereof: ye shall build houses, and shall inhabit them; and children’s children shall be in them, for a crown of glory to you, if ye remember the Lord your God, whose name is great and glorious, and keep his statutes.
61 words,
266 letters.
[Page 208]
18. And now if there be among you a man whose heart turneth away from the Lord your God, to serve the god of Babylon, and to honour the names of the nations; if there be a root that beareth gall and wormwood; and when he heareth the curse in this Law, he bless himself, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of my heart, the Lord will not spare him.
74 words,
285 letters.
19. But the anger of the Lord, and his jealousy, and his fierce wrath, shall smoke against that man: and all the curses that are written in this book shall be upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven.
43 words,
172 letters.
20. At the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year, when all the children of the Kingdom are gathered together before the Lord in Temples, and in Tabernacles, and all the people are assembled, Princes and Nobles, men, and women, and children, and the stranger that dwelleth in your gates, ye shall read this Law before them all, in their hearing, and shall make it known in the midst of them.
74 words,
317 letters.
21. And your children, and the strangers dwelling in your gates, that have not heard it, shall learn this Law, and ye shall all re-
[Page 209]
member it again, and shall all lift up your hands, and shall enter into covenant with the Lord your God to keep this Law, and to obey his statutes, that he may prolong your days upon the land.
61 words,
249 letters.
Total—21 sec., 1,249 words, 5,166 letters.
1. The pseudo philanthropy of the present time rejects the destruction of the wicked as one of the means of establishing righteousness. With some, philanthropy has got so far in advance of Godliness as to seek, pray for, and expect the salvation, everlasting life and unalloyed happiness of those who delight in sin, and take no pleasure in righteousness; believing that, in some mysterious way, God can make those happy whose chief delight is in wickedness.
2. But the common sentiment in Christian countries is, that irreligious and wicked men and nations ought not to be destroyed; and that the most corrupt and abject races and men have the same right to live and to exercise government as the most Godlike.
3. With Christian men this sentiment is entertained, with divers exceptions. They have little repugnance to the killing of those who keep the Commandments of God. They are quite satisfied that the destruction of the Canaanites was really by Commandment of God; but as certain that he will never command the destruction of any other corrupt nation.
4. The destruction of the Canaanites by the Commandment of God can only be justified on good and cogent reasons. It is not enough that they were creatures of God, made by him, and that therefore he had the right to destroy them. They were living, conscious beings, having a right to the life to which they were born, till they diminished it by
[Page 210]
violating the laws of life, or forfeited the right by such con-duct as rendered their existence dangerous to better men.
5. The right to destroy the life of any man grows out of such conduct as renders his existence on the whole, a curse; and not in any capricious idea of absolute power. And the same rule applies to the extermination of races.
6. The old world was destroyed by the flood, in consequence of universal corruption; not merely corruption of manners, but hereditary corruption of the flesh. (Jasher iv, 16-18. Gen. vi, 5.) Sodom and the cities of the plain were destroyed for a similar reason. (Gen. xviii, 20, 21, 26, 32. xix, 4, 5, 9.)
7. In the long list of crimes recorded against Sodom, as the guilty cause of its utter destruction, the first is the custom of the whole population going out four times a year to a certain valley, with musick and dancing; when every man seized whatsoever woman he would, and they all enjoyed the wives and daughters of their neighbours in their sight, and no man objected a word; (Jasher xviii, 13-15;) a custom which has its counterpart in the Free Love societies of the present day. The natural consequence of this want of chastity was that beastiality, which has given the name of Sodom to the most loathsome of all human crimes.
8. Of a different character was another of their cherished customs; that of confiscating the goods of such strangers as unfortunately fell into their hands, and distributing them among themselves, and pretending to receive each man’s share as a gift. (Jasher xviii, 16, 17.)
9. But the fountains of justice were equally corrupted, so that the chief business of the Judges was to go through the necessary forms to give legal validity to acts of fraud and violence, (Jasher xix,) much as many Judges and nearly all
[Page 211]
Attorneys occupy their time nowadays, in Christian cities.
10. Thus corruption and wickedness pervaded society in all conditions, and prevailed in every act of men. There was no purity, no truth, as a foundation for reform. Every successive generation was raised up to incurable corruption and wickedness.
11. The end of such a people could be nothing but overwhelming destruction, and utter extermination. The only possible object in prolonging their decay, was to contaminate the surrounding nations, and bring them eventually to the same end. The destruction of Sodom was mercy to the human race.
12. The case of the nations of Canaan was like it. Corruptions similar to those of Sodom were national characteristicks. They had doomed themselves to extermination, just as various races and nations have since done. To them the judgment of God was but a matter of time. To other nations it was a matter of defence from contagion.
13. But in the case of the Canaanites there was an especial mercy in the Law which preserved the female children alive, and gave them for wives to the conquerors.
14. An important purpose, to be kept in view, in a wise administration of national affairs, is the increase of population. This increase does not depend on the number of the men, but of the women. For, with polygamy, it is apparent that a given number of women will produce the same number of children, whether the men are many or few.
15. According to the Commandment under which most of the land of Canaan was overrun, all the virgin females were kept as wives to the men of Israel. These were taken into Hebrew families, and educated in their institutions. They became the wives of a brave and prevailing race of men, who
[Page 212]
would suffer no relapse into the customs of their country.
16. By the natural operation of the law of hybridity, the children of such crosses partake most of the blood of the prevailing race, and a few generations, under proper management, where one race continually rules with a uniform and rigid system, will obliterate all signs of the subjugated race, with scarcely any, perhaps no, diminution of the human race.
17. Thus in the conquest of Canaan, if the whole work had been accomplished according to the Command of God, the next generation would have exhibited about the same number of children of Canaanite maternity, but they would have been Israelites, instead of Canaanites. As corruption generally begins with men, and but slowly extends to women, these women would have raised a righteous seed; who, educated as Israelites, would have been very little inferiour to the pure bloods.
18. The activity and energy developed in these great undertakings, would have made the whole race superiour to what the Israelites were in the beginning; as it was, the land was not depopulated, but its population greatly increased, and the Israelite stock not in any degree deteriorated by the mixture.
19. At the present time several nations, and some larger races, have come to a point in corruption where they are incapable of keeping themselves up. Without invasions or the impinging of any external force against them, they are slowly disappearing from the earth, and making steady strides to a certain extermination.
20. Among the converted or Christian Kanackers, the evil is past remedy. The vices introduced and sown broadcast among them by Christian residents and sailors, have taken such deadly effect that the women are generally barren. The
[Page 213]
population is diminishing several thousand annually. The Sandwich Islands, which, when first visited by Christian Missionaries, contained a half million of these people, have not now sixty thousand.
21. Several nations of old Christian stock, are going in the same way. If left to themselves, they will disappear from the earth. In their prolonged decay, they may contaminate many others. It would be a mercy could they be overrun by a righteous race, and the women children alone preserved, and made wives to men of moral and healthy habits.
22. The whole course of prophecy indicates that the nations of the earth will not be converted to Godliness; but that they will increase in wickedness, and be destroyed. The day has not yet come, but is in the future, which “shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble,” and shall be burnt up, leaving neither root nor branch; when they that fear the Lord shall tread down the wicked, as ashes beneath their feet. (Mal. iv, 1, 3.)
23. Paul assures us that the coming of Christ shall be “in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord.” (2d Thess. i, 8, 9.) Isaiah says, the earth shall be made empty, and few men left. (Isa. xxiv, 1, 3, 6.) Those days are days of vengeance, when Christ shall tread the wine press of the wrath of God, and the blood shall flow unto the horses’ bridles. (Rev. xiv, 20.) As those times are approaching, the judgment is pronounced on Babylon, “Reward her as she hath rewarded you, and double unto her double, according to her works.” (id. xviii, 6.) Then shall the Saints execute vengeance on the heathen. (Ps. cxlix, 6, 7.)