Page:Studies in the Scriptures - Series I - The Plan of the Ages (1909).djvu/260

 254 2%* -Wfe* of the Ages.

image. The clay element "blended with the iion in the feet represents the mixture of church and state. Thfe mixture is in the Scriptures termed "Babylon" confusion. As we shall presently see, stone is the symbol of the true Kingdom of God, and Babylon substituted an imitation of stone clay which it has united with the fragmentary remains of the [iron] Roman empire. And this mixed sys- tem church and state the Church Nominal wedded to the kingdoms of this world, which the Lord calls Babylon, con- fusion, presumes to call itself Christendom Christ's King- dom. Daniel explains : "Whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men [church and world blend Babylon],but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay." They cannot thoroughly amalgamate. "And in the days of these kings [the kingdoms represented by the toes, the so-called "Christian kingdoms" or "Christendom,"] shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms; and it shall stand forever." Dan. 2:43, 44.

Daniel does not here state the time for the end of these Gentile governments: that we find elsewhere; but evory foretold circumstance indicates that to-day the end is nigh, even at the doors. The Papal system has long claimed that it is the kingdom which the God of heaven here promised to set up, and that, in fulfilment of this prophecy, it did break in pieces and consume all other kingdoms. The truth, however, is that the nominal Church merely united with earthly empires as the clay with the iron, and that Papacy never was the true Kingdom of God, but merely a counterfeit of it. One of the best evidences that Papacy did not destroy and consume these earthly kingdoms is that they still exist And now that the miry clay has become dry and " brittle/*

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