From that very time to the present--One thousand eight hundred and fifty-one of the Christian era, the voice of a Prophet has not been heard among the Jews. Angels have not ministered unto them. There has been no vision from the Lord. No dream or interpretation. No answer by Urim or Thummim. No Prophet. No voice. No sound. No reproof. No comforting whisper. All is silence--stillness--solemn blackness of despair. All is as the similitude and shadow of death. Oh the weariness, the painful suspense, the watchings, the wanderings, the anxieties, the pains and sorrows of eighteen centuries! Oh the mist of ages which has shrouded a nation as it were in the gloom of an endless night! When--O when, will their day dawn, and the day star of their ancient science appear above the horizon, disperse the cloud, and usher in the morning of a brighter day? _When the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled_. When they shall welcome a messenger in the name of the Lord. CHAPTER III. PROGRESS, DECLINE, AND FINAL LOSS OF THE SCIENCE OF THEOLOGY AMONG THE GENTILES--FORESHADOWINGS OF ITS RESTORATION FOR THE USHERING IN OF THE MILLENNIUM. Oh Mystic Babel, long has been thy reign! What direful evils follow in thy train! The veil is rent--thy mystery revealed, Angels cry wo! and God thy doom has sealed. The nations, from thy long and dreary night, Are waking now to everlasting light. Returning to the Gentile Church, we find the science of Theology, with all its miraculous powers of visions, dreams, angels, revelations, prophecy, healings, &c., everywhere enjoyed. It had abated none of its powers, in its transition from Jew to Gentile. The wild branches, being engrafted into the good old stock, immediately partook of the root and fatness of the tame olive tree, and thus was produced the natural fruit. But Paul, the great Apostle of the Gentiles, in his writings to the Romans, cautioned them to beware lest they should fall away after the same example as the Jews had done before them. Said he--"_If God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee_." John the Apostle also predicted the rise and universal sway of a certain mystical power, a Babel of spiritual or religious confusion, in short--"_Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth_." This power should bear rule among all nations. The kings and rulers of the earth should be drunken with the wine of her fornication. The merchants of the earth should become rich through the abundance of her delicacies. This power should, according to the Prophet Daniel and the Apostle John, "_wear out the Saints of the Most High_;" "_change times and laws_;" "_be drunken with the blood of the Saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus_;" "_destroy the mighty and the holy people_;" "_make war with the Saints, and overcome them_" until a set time.