The perfect reign of the Messiah, and his love in the soul, is to succeed the dark day of party confusion. The two are not compatible with each other. "And I will make with them a covenant of peace" (v. 25). Their own land, and this covenant-union with God, is simply entire sanctification. See Jer. 23.... In Ezekiel 35 we have the judgment of mount Seir. Seir--=rough=, =shaggy=--we presume is used [in the typical sense] to denote the Catholic power. It was inhabited by the Edomites, the descendants of Esau, who were therefore brothers with Israel, the descendants of Jacob; but the Edomites had a deep-rooted and perpetual enmity against Israel, they harassed and distressed them by all possible means, (See A. Clark.) "Behold, O mount Seir, I am against thee, and I will stretch out mine hand against thee, and I will make thee most desolate ... because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end." (vs. 3-5). Does not this look like the record of the "beast that sits upon the seven hills"? Martyrdom, it appears, is confined to such times when God's people have reached an "end of sin." As the spirit of prophesy uses mount Seir to represent Catholicism in chapter 35, and the Caucasian mountains [Gog and Magog, see Bible dictionary] to represent sectism in chapters 38 and 39, so in chapter 36:1 the "mountains of Israel" are used to represent the true conscientious Christians. The Lord says, "Set thy face against mount Seir," "against Gog," and "prophesy against him;" but in reference to the mountains of Israel, the order is changed to "prophesy unto," showing that the former were rejected, but the latter accepted of the Lord; to these very precious promises are made. In the latter part of the chapter we have associated together salvation "from all uncleanness," the gift of the Holy Spirit, and "bringing into the land," i. e., the land of perfect holiness....