Synthetic Bible Studies by James Gray
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witnesses spoken of in Revelation 11 that shall appear and do wonders in Jerusalem during the period of the reign of the Antichrist.
It is particularly to be noted in this day when false Elijahs are boasting of themselves, that the true Elijah, when he comes, will be a Jew, that his mission will be entirely to Jews, and that his place of operations will not be in the United States, for example, but in Jerusalem and Judea. He will be a prophet, moreover, and not engaged in business transactions either commercial or industrial. Neither will he be interested in the purchase or sale of real estate. There is only one Zion and that is in Jerusalem, and Jehovah will never commission any of His people to purchase that with earthly gold from the hand of His enemies. It belongs to Him and by Him was given in trust to Israel long ago. Through their disobedience they have lost its possession temporarily, but when on their repentance they shall be prepared to receive it again at His hands, He will wrest it from the nations now trampling it under foot, and give it back to them again.
Matthew
About four hundred years, more or less, have elapsed since the period of Malachi with whose book we have just finished, during which time no prophet had arisen in Israel. The people had remained in their land with varying fortunes, as the world would say, but with God’s purposes being carried out in them as foretold in their Scriptures. We left them under the dominion of the Persians, which was soon followed by that of the Grecians including the Syrian period in which Antiochus Epiphanes flourished as their chief enemy and the Maccabees as their deliverers, some where about one hundred and fifty to one hundred and seventy years before Christ. Then came the Roman regime in which period it was that the Messiah appeared.
At the outset let us remember that the Old Testament promised an earthly kingdom to Israel to be set up on this earth when the Messiah came, and for which the faithful were ever looking. Jesus was the Messiah though they knew Him not, and He had come to set up that kingdom. Moreover, from the beginning of His public ministry down to a certain point to be named later, He proceeds on the assumption that the kingdom has come in Him if the nation will receive Him. He is not received, however, but rejected, whereupon He changes the character of His teaching and begins to
