have seemed as though possessed with a spirit of
antagonism to God and His people. It is as though it were the earthly
headquarters of the blasphemous unseen evil forces.

This is a simple bit of geography lesson in the Old Testament. This is
the map that lies ever open in these older pages, with its two capital
cities marked large. And this indicates the area of the storm, and the
two central points where its outburst will centre.

Studying the Weather Forecast.

It is interesting to find a weather forecast of this storm. The old
Hebrew prophets were close students of national and world-wide weather
conditions, and much given to making forecasts of impending storms. Even
in the New Testament there is this distinct prophetic or foretelling
strain running throughout. The father of John the Baptist is told of his
son's birth; and Mary, of the unusual birth of her divine Son. The
disciples are told of the coming of the Holy Spirit. And Agabus tells of
a great famine coming. In these instances the fulfilment follows soon
after the event is foretold.

The destruction of Jerusalem, foretold by Christ, had at least a part of
its fulfilment in the terrible Titus siege of 70 A.D. Our Lord said that
He would return to earth in great glory, and that there would come a
great tribulation to all the earth, and repeated the old prophecy of a
restoration of the Hebrew kingdom. These have not yet occurred.

But the book of the Revelation is distinctively the prophetic book of
the New Testament. It deals almost entirely with events that are yet to
come. It would be natural that it would fit into the prophetic parts of
the Old Testament. So that one who is somewhat familiar with the
prophetic books of the Old naturally comes more intelligently to this
prophetic book of the New.

It is true that most of us have a sense of bewilderment about prophecy.
We seem to feel that it requires great scholarship and profound study,
and that an understanding of it is not possible to the common run of
Christians. And so we largely leave it out as not understandable.

Yet prophecy is simply God's plans for the future, together with a
revelation of other events which are not in His plan, but which He sees
will happen in the future. In it He tells us what He means us to
understand. And more than this, our understanding will have practical
bearing on our attitude toward evil and compromise. It will affect our
faith, making it steadier, especially w