13. We read of the Lord's covenant with Israel? Unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob He declared that their descendants should be a people chosen for His special service among the nations. Through that lineage the Savior of mankind was to be born; in the posterity of Abraham all nations of the earth were to be blessed. Blessings beyond the heart of man to conceive, beyond the mind of man to comprehend, were promised on condition of loyal allegiance to Him who proclaimed Himself their God and their King. Moreover the Lord predicted calamity and suffering, and individual affliction and national disgrace, if Israel departed from the service of Jehovah and yielded to the enticements of their heathen neighbors who knew not God. Think you that the Lord was ignorant of the course His people would choose? Did He fail to foresee that Israel would follow the evil way, forfeiting the blessings and reaping the harvest of sorrow? Jehovah's plans failed not, though the realization of the blessings so abundantly promised has been long delayed. Equally forceful with the prediction of calamity in case of sin, was the promise of eventual restoration to favor. The dispersion of Israel already accomplished, was to be followed by the gathering of Israel now in progress.--(See the Author's "Articles of Faith," lectures 17 and 18.) 14. What would have been the world's verdict as to the success or failure of the mission of the Christ, had a vote been taken at the time of the crucifixion? Seemingly His enemies had triumphed; He who proclaimed Himself the Messiah, the Son of God, the resurrection and the life, over whom death could not prevail, had suffered the fate of malefactors, and His body was in the tomb. But the verdict of the centuries, which is the verdict of the eternities to come, acclaims that "failure" as the greatest triumph of the ages, the victory of victories. 15. Even so with the Church. For a season the powers of evil triumphed, and the spirit of apostasy ruled. But beyond the darkness of the spiritual night the glorious dawn of the restoration was seen in prophetic vision, and both the night with its horrors, and the awakening day with its splendor, were foreseen and foretold. 16. In our study of the predictions of the apostasy as embodied in scripture and of their realization as attested by later history, we shall recognize two distinct phases or stages of the progressive falling away as follows: (1) Apostasy _from_ the Church; and (2) The apostasy _of_ the Church.