Inquiry as to Authorship of “Notes on the Apocalypse.”
YES, the book is J. N. D.’s. They are notes taken at some of his first lectures on the subject, about 1848. They were given in French, before he was thoroughly at home in the language, which accounts for their somewhat fragmentary style.
Most valuable they are, but in later years his thoughts became clearer, and upon this point I have a note taken at the Torquay Conference in 1868.
In the footnote to page 53, he leads you to think that the two witnesses prophesied during the first half of the week. But my notes (twenty-eight years afterward) say, “Forty-two months is only half a week; also, the third verse would have to come before the second if it were a whole week. The first half-week he flatters, &c. —for us, the half-week has passed with Christ, His ministry — Antichrist will make out that it has not. In the first half-week the remnant received Christ, and the nation didn’t — in the spurious half-week the nation will receive Antichrist, and the remnant won’t.”
This seems clear, and says all that need or can be said on the point.