Nahum saw Israel oppressed by Nineveh; and predicted its overthrow, because its monarch was wicked, and imagined evil against Jehovah. But Israel’s deliverance from the Assyrian by the fall of Nineveh was only the type of a greater deliverance at the apocalypse of Messiah.
Micah was contemporary with the times of Amos and Isaiah.
Edom, in the prophecies concerning the restoration of Israel’s kingdom in “the latter days,” is representative of the enemies of Jacob, banded together under the guardianship of Gog, who is then the Chief of the House of Esau. Obadiah had a vision of this Confederacy, occupying a similar relationship to Israel hereafter, that Edom did in the typical times of the prophet.
Amos, who was contemporary with Isaiah, adds his testimony to a like effect. He says that Jehovah will roar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; but that he will do nothing without first revealing it unto his servants the prophets.
Joel, though brief, is very explicit, and coincident with the above. After predicting terrible calamities upon Israel and their country by the lions of Assyria, and others, he consoles the nation with the assurance that after the Gentiles had filled up the measure of their abominations, Jehovah will be jealous for his land and will pity his people; and that they shall no more be made a reproach among the nations.
Hosea declares that Judah shall be saved by Jehovah their Elohim; that is, by Messiah; that in the countries where it is now said to them, “Ye are not the people of Jehovah,” there they shall be called, “The sons of the living God.” He says also, that at that time Judah and Israel shall become a united nation, and agree to place themselves under One Chief; that he shall betroth the nation to himself for the Aion; that they shall
Daniel foretold the establishment of a kingdom which shall be a great military power in its beginning, and of perpetual continuance: that it should conquer all kingdoms extant in the Latter Days; that until then “the
Ezekiel prophesies that the Dry Tree of Israel, which now bears no fruit, shall be made to flourish in the mountain of the heights of Israel; where it shall shoot forth boughs, and bear fruit; and that under its branching foliage shall dwell all fowl of every wing—ch. 17 : 22-24.
In treating of the causes which operated the rapid progress of the gospel in the first two hundred years of our era, the historian of the '‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” thus expresses himself with reference to the great subject matter of the Apocalypse. “The ancient and popular doctrine of the Millennium,” says Gibbon, “was intimately connected with the second coming of Christ.
CONCERNING the time when the Apocalypse was written there have been various opinions among the learned. Irenaeus, who flourished ec¬clesiastically A.D. 169, that is, about seventy years after the death of the apostle John, is said to have introduced an opinion that the Apocalypse was written in the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian, brother to Titus who destroyed Jerusalem, and who occupied the throne of the Caesars from A.D. 80 to A.D. 96, when he was assassinated.