On these words Box well remarks: “The times and periods of the course of the world’s history have been predetermined by God. The numbers of the years have been exactly fixed. This was a fundamental postulate of the Apocalyptists, who devoted much of their energy to calculations, based upon a close study of prophecy, as to the exact period when history should reach its consummation ... the underlying idea is predestinarian.”[132] But all these things are secrets; they can only be known to certain God-fearing men who have the faculty, divinely accorded, of peering into the hidden things of God, and who are thus able to reveal them to their fellow-creatures; hence the name given to these seers, viz., “revealers,” or Apocalyptists, because they wrote apocalypses, “revelations.” It was because the Apocalyptists believed so firmly in this power that they possessed of looking into the deep things of God that they claimed to be able to measure the significance of what had happened in the past and of what was happening in the present; more especially they believed that upon the basis of this knowledge they had the power of foreseeing things to come, and the time of their coming, and here above all things those which they regarded as the end of all, to which the whole history of the world had been tending from the beginning. But with all their mysticism and other-worldliness, with all their eager looking forward to the passing of the present order, the Apocalyptists were not blind to the necessity of religious life in its practical aspect. They were _loyal to the Law_, though not in the Pharisaic sense, laying stress rather on the spirit of its observance than on carrying it out literally. The frequent reproaches levelled against those who do not observe the ordinances of the Law shows their attitude; for example, in 1 Enoch v. 4 it is said: But ye—ye have not been steadfast, nor done the commandments of the Lord, But ye have turned away and have spoken proud and hard words With your impure mouths against His greatness. O ye hard-hearted, ye shall find no peace. And again, in xcix. 2 of the same apocalypse: Woe to them that pervert the words of uprightness, And transgress the eternal law (cp. also xcix. 14, Sib. Orac. iii. 276 ff.).