"For then shall be great tribulation such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be" (Matthew 24:21). In presenting this theme I shall divide it into four simple parts: 1. The Cause of the Great Tribulation. 2. The Character of the Great Tribulation. 3. The Dramatic Ending of the Great Tribulation. 4. The Beginning of the Great Tribulation. Moral. Satanic. Judicial. It is moral. The moral cause is found in the failure of the Gentile nations to fulfill the commission granted to them of God. God granted this commission in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. He granted it to them because of the failure of the Jews to fulfill the commission He had originally given to them. He had called the children of Israel to be His peculiar people. He had separated them from all other nations unto Himself. He had by an outstretched arm and mighty power planted them in the land of Palestine. He ordained this land to be the geographical center of the earth and His chosen people to be the political and governmental center. He purposed to send them His own Son to be their incarnate King and through Him and them rule the world in righteousness and peace, bringing blessing and benefaction to every creature. The nation had utterly failed. Ten tribes had gone into idolatry. The Assyrians came and carried them captives into Adiabene, into the East, and for twenty-five hundred years they have been nationally and historically lost. The remaining two tribes likewise turned to idolatry. Then Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, besieged Jerusalem, took it and carried the people captive to Babylon, the golden city. The Lord at once proposed to transfer the rulership of the world officially from the hand. of the Jew to the Gentile. He would put an end to Jewish time and bring in Gentile time-"The times of the Gentiles." He now purposed to rule the world through four successive Gentile world powers. These powers He indicated in the different materials of the statue or image which Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream and forgot, and which Daniel, one of the Hebrew captives in Babylon, under the inspiration of God interpreted. There were four metals in the image: Gold. Silver. Brass. Iron. The iron was mixed with brittle, incohesive clay. The gold set forth Babylon. Silver-Medo-Persia. Brass-Greece. Iron in the two legs the Roman empire under its first political division into Western and Eastern Empire. The iron and clay mixed in the ten toes, the ten-fold confederation or the second and final division of the fourth or Roman empire. These four empires or kingdoms are corroborated and further illustrated by a vision which later on God gave to Daniel himself in which he saw four wild beasts rise up out of the Mediterranean Sea. The first was a lion. The second—a bear. The third-a leopard. The fourth-a monster with ten horns. The bear-Medo-Persia. The leopard-Greece. The monster-Rome. Two of these kingdoms were precised and named in a still later vision given to Daniel. He saw a ram pushing toward the west. He saw a he goat rushing to the east to meet him, overthrow him and trample him under foot. The ram is Medo-Persia, the he goat Greece, and the symbolic prophecy concerning Greece comes on down to our day. The Lord warned that this rulership in the hands of the Gentiles would prove a failure as everything which God has ever entrusted to man. This announced failure is to be seen in the deterioration or descent in the character of the metals as named in their order in the image. First, gold, then silver, then brass, after that iron, and last of all clay which is corrupt, disintegrated stone, is brittle, incohesive, may be massed together, but is never united. Gold sets forth rulership directly from the hand of God and is the symbol and seal of "the divine right of kings." The clay stands for the people, for man in the mass. This may be seen in the statement of Saint Paul: "O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? "Hath not the potter power over the clay, of |