For further developments on this point, the reader is referred to “The Returning King,” pp. 25–29 (Morgan and Scott, 1/- net.) R.V. “He.” Hume, ii. 67. According to the census of 1911, the population of the British Isles was 45,365,599, of which number five millions were Romanists, so that clearly the proportion is still diminishing. But it must be borne in mind that her leading false doctrines and non-Scriptural claims are being increasingly taught in this country. Thirty-six years have elapsed since these words were penned, and although Turkey has been upheld by the European Powers, and has herself made one or two brave efforts on the battlefield and in the matter of constitutional reform, the process of decay has been rapidly advancing; yet even so who, at the beginning of the year 1912, could have foreseen the catastrophe which in a few short weeks has almost wiped Turkey from the Map of Europe? And actually the very walls of Vienna. Now in April, 1913, the four Balkan States and Greece in a brief but bloody campaign have brought Turkey apparently to her last gasp, and it is still a matter of speculation whether she will be allowed to retain possession of Constantinople and with it the merest thread of the littoral of Europe. This has now taken place, and The Times of May 30, in a leader upon the signing of the Treaty of London, uses these epoch-making words—“The Ottoman Empire in Europe has now ceased to exist.” June, 1913. The word “almost” may be removed, as Turkey in Africa has ceased to exist. The war with Italy in 1912 deprived Turkey of Tripoli, and thus the very last spot in Northern Africa emerged from the once overflowing waters of Mahommedan power by which it had been overwhelmed many centuries ago. The number is rapidly diminishing, and day by day streams of Turkish refugees are pouring across the Bosphorus to the Asiatic side. If the faithful preacher whose clear foresight is recorded here were to witness what we now see, would he not say, like St. Paul—“as we also forewarned you and testified?”
When this book was published, Spiritualism, then recently imported from America, was only beginning to make itself felt, the destructive Higher Criticism, whose dry rot has now spread its subtle influence on all sides, had not landed on our coasts from Germany; the very names of Modernism, New Theology, and its offspring the Liberal Christian League, were non-existent; Christian Science had not then been imported to America from its Eastern home; and several other heresies and imitations (2 Timothy iii. 8), which under the guise of deep spiritual teaching are now crippling true spirituality and doing the Devil’s work, were still unborn. But they are with us now, and they have come to stay. Let us recognize their source and their significance. The significance of this clarion note of warning in connection with the events now taking place is of the greatest possible importance. It would be simply impossible in a brief note even to enumerate all the recent amazing changes in Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Since the fulfilment of a prophetic epoch a few years ago, pointed out at the time by the writer as an indication that the “Times of the Gentiles” had virtually ceased, Jerusalem has for the first time in her history been “inhabited as towns without walls” (Zechariah ii. 4), the dwellings having spread outside in rapidly increasing suburbs, which make it more like a modern city than the Jerusalem of old.
Jews are permitted to hold magistracies and to perform civic functions; they are also allowed to practice in medicine and in the legal profession. Elementary and secondary schools are established in which only the Hebrew language is used; banks and various institutions are flourishing, and a new Hebrew university is about to be founded. Jewish agricultural and manufacturing colonies in large numbers are at work in different parts of the land, and a recent number of the Jewish World gives a long account of a visit a few weeks ago to these colonies by the newly appointed Governor of Jerusalem. The visit was an official inspection, and the result one of the greatest possible importance to the Jewish nation. Amongst many other things, the Governor (himself an Albanian) stated that he was directed by the authorities in Constantinople to grant to these colonies the right of electing their own councils and appointing their own mayors, fixing rates, retaining some of the Government taxes for their own use, enrolling their own police, whose uniform and ammunition should be supplied by the Turkish Government, granting title deeds for land, permits for building, besides other privileges of considerable importance. I submit that it can no longer be said of the city or of the land that it is “trodden down of the Gentiles.”
How startlingly significant are these facts in connection with our Lord’s words regarding His Return!
