This was a great thing, and a new thing, such as never had been before. All nations but the Jews, and a few who had at one time and another joined with them, had been rejected from about Moses's time. The Gentile world had been covered over with the thick darkness of idolatry; but now, at the joyful glorious sound of the gospel, they began in all parts to forsake their old idols, and to abhor them, and to cast them to the moles and to the bats, and to learn to worship the true God, and to trust in his Son Jesus Christ; and God owned them for his people; those who had so long been afar off, were made nigh by the blood of Christ. Men were changed from being Heathenish & brutish, to be the children of God; were called out of Satan's kingdom of darkness, and brought into God's marvellous light and in almost all countries through' out the known world were assemblies of the people of God; joyful praises were sung to the true God, and Jesus Christ the glorious Redeemer. Now that great building which God began soon after the fall of man, rises gloriously, not in the same manner that it had done in former ages, but in quite a new manner; now Daniel's prophecies concerning the last kingdom, which should succeed the four Heathenish monarchies, begins to be fulfilled; now the stone cut out of the mountains without hands, began to smite the image on its •eet, and to break it in pieces, and to grow great, and to make great advances towards filling the earth; and now God gathers together the elect from the four winds of heaven, by the preaching of the apostles and other ministers, the angels of the Christian church sent forth with the great sound of the gospel-trumpet, before the destruction of Jerusalem, agreeable to what Christ foretold, Matth. xxiv.31.
This was a great thing, and a new thing, such as never had been before. All nations but the Jews, and a few who had at one time and another joined with them, had been rejected from about Moses's time. The Gentile world had been covered over with the thick darkness of idolatry; but now, at the joyful glorious sound of the gospel, they began in all parts to forsake their old idols, and to abhor them, and to cast them to the moles and to the bats, and to learn to worship the true God, and to trust in his Son Jesus Christ; and God owned them for his people; those who had so long been afar off, were made nigh by the blood of Christ. Men were changed from being Heathenish & brutish, to be the children of God; were called out of Satan's kingdom of darkness, and bro't into God's marvelous light and in almost all countries thro' out the known world were assemblies of the people of God; joyful praises were sung to the true God, and Jesus Christ the glorious Redeemer. Now that great building which God began soon after the fall of man, rises gloriously, not in the same manner that it had done in former ages, but in quite a new manner; now Daniel's prophecies concerning the last kingdom, which should succeed the four Heathenish monarchies, begins to be fulfilled; now the stone cut out of the mountains without hands, began to smite the image on its •eet, and to break it in pieces, and to grow great, and to make great advances towards filling the earth; and now God gathers together the elect from the four winds of heaven, by the preaching of the apostles and other ministers, the angels of the Christian church sent forth with the great sound of the gospel-trumpet, before the destruction of Jerusalem, agreeable to what Christ foretold, Matth. xxiv.31.
