But this deliverance should resemble many similar crises in its general characteristics. It should not be immediate. On the contrary, it should be preceded by days of unparalleled disorder and catastrophe--"a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time." We may, for instance, compare with this the similar prophecy of Jeremiah (xxx. 4-11): "And these are the words which the Lord spake concerning Israel and concerning Judah. For thus saith the Lord; We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace.... Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord, that I will burst thy bonds.... Therefore fear thou not, O Jacob, My servant, saith the Lord; neither be dismayed, O Israel.... For I am with thee, saith the Lord, to save thee. For I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have scattered thee, but I will not make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee with judgment, and will in nowise leave thee unpunished."[716] The general conception is so common as even to have found expression in proverbs,--such as, "The night is darkest just before the dawn"; and, "When the tale of bricks is doubled, Moses comes." Some shadow of similar individual and historic experiences is found also among the Greeks and Romans. It lies in the expression θεὸς ἀπὸ μηχανῆς, and also in the lines of Horace,-- "Nec Deus intersit nisi _dignus vindice nodus_ Intersit." We find the same expectation in the apocryphal Book of Enoch,[717] and we find it reflected in the Revelation of St. John,[718] where he describes the devil as let loose and the powers of evil as gathering themselves together for the great final battle of Armageddon before the eternal triumph of the Lamb and of His saints. In Rabbinic literature there was a fixed anticipation that the coming of the Messiah must inevitably be preceded by "pangs" or "birth-throes," of which they spoke as the משיח בלי.[719] These views may partly have been founded on individual and national experience, but they were doubtless deepened by the vision of Zechariah (xii.).