In prophecy there is an absence of perspective; as in Japanese pictures the near and the far appear equally distant; as in dissolving views, the immediate future melts into a future immeasurably far away. The candle that shines through a narrow aperture sends out its light through an ever-increasing area; sections of the triangle correspond to each other, but the more distant are far greater than the near. The châlet on the mountain-side may turn out to be only a black cat on the woodpile, or a speck upon the window pane. “A hill which appears to rise close behind another is found on nearer approach to have receded a great way from it.” The painter, by foreshortening, brings together things or parts that are relatively distant from each other. The prophet is a painter whose foreshortenings are supernatural; he seems freed from the law of space and time, and, rapt into the timelessness of God, he views the events of history “sub specie eternitatis.” Prophecy was the sketching of an outline-map. Even the prophet could not fill up the outline. The absence of perspective in prophecy may account for Paul’s being misunderstood by the Thessalonians, and for the necessity of his explanations in _2 Thess. 2:1, 2_. In _Isaiah 10_ and _11_, the fall of Lebanon (the Assyrian) is immediately connected with the rise of the Branch (Christ); in _Jeremiah 51:41_, the first capture and the complete destruction of Babylon are connected with each other, without notice of the interval of a thousand years between them.