10 And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.

The end of all things hath approached—Peter.

The Times to Which Peter Referred

Seeing then, that part of the mission of the apostleship of the circumcision was to convince the Mosaic order of men, (kosmos as applied to thinkers) of coming judgment, because their administration of the Mosaic order of things (kosmos as applied to things ordained) had been condemned. We find Peter and the rest quoting the words of Joel concerning what was to

"come to pass in the last days."

Having referred to the Pentecostian rain of the spirit, the prophet says by the same spirit,

"I will give wonders in the heaven above, and signs upon the earth beneath, blood and fire, and vapour of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that the great and terrible day of the Lord come. And it shall be that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." Acts. 2:19–21.

The heaven was the aggregate of Judah's "high" or official "places"; the wonders, the

"casting down of the host and of the stars to the ground," the "taking away of the daily"

and so forth, by the little horn of the goat; the signs upon the land, those already enumerated by Jesus in Mat. 24.; blood, slaughter by the sword; fire, the burning of the towns, villages, homesteads, mansions of Judah, with its metropolis and temple; and vapor of smoke, the symbol of utter and complete destruction; the sun turned into darkness was the putting out of the supreme power of the state in the abolition of its principalities and powers; and the turning of the moon into blood, expressed by the words of Amos, saying,

"the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith Yahweh Elohim; there shall be many dead bodies in every place, and I will turn your tears into mourning, and all your songs into lamentations, and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head, and I will make it as the mourning for an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day"—ch. 8:3, 9, 10.

All these things were to come upon Judah

"before that the great and terrible day of the Lord come."

The Jews had slain, or rather the chief priests and pharisees had moved the little horn of the goat's procurator, Pontius Pilate, to crucify in their presence "an only son"; and the people by drawing back after they had acknowledged him, and by "turning the grace of God into lasciviousness," had "crucified to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame;" so that when wrath came upon them at length, the son of man, or Yahweh Elohim made their howling and lamentation as the mourning for him they had crucified and put to shame. He made their

"sun to go down at noon, and darkened their land in the clear day;"

that is, the Mosaic order was dissolved by judgment in the midst of meridian brightness of holy spirit, shining in all the land from the seven branched lampstand,

"pillar and support of the truth,"

which had been planted therein to enlighten the house. This was an evil and perverse generation, therefore "with many other words" than those reported

"did Peter testify and exhort, saying, save yourselves from this "untoward generation."—Acts. 2:40.

Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, Aug 1859