"'For He shall reign whose right it is, and of His kingdom of peace, and joy, and love there shall be no end.' For nearly two thousand years men have prayed 'Thy kingdom come.' It is coming soon, but before He begins His reign, He shall put down all enemies under His feet. None will be able to hide from Him for His eyes will be as a flame of fire.
"Those who will now seek Him, accept Him as their king, whether He comes in their life-time, or whether they lay down their lives as faithful witnesses to His coming, all such we proclaim, shall live the glorious life which He has for such."
The crowd numbered a hundred thousand now, and the majority of them kept up a sullen murmur against the preaching.
A native prince of a notable eastern realm, plucked a javelin-type of weapon from his cumberband and hurled it full into the face of the preacher. It never reached its mark, but, boomerang like, it returned to the thrower and shattered and entered his right temple.
But for the density of the crowd, the eastern would have dropped to the earth like a stone—for he was dead.
A way was made for a few to drag the body clear of the mob, then, once clear, those who dragged it thence returned to the crowd. "Without natural affection,"—a trait of the Times—had degenerated into "without common humanity."
For half-an-hour longer THE TWO WITNESSES preached, warned, pleaded with the multitude. Then they stepped from the pile of marble blocks, and passed quietly away.
As was customary after every such session of testimony, the crowd split up into many groups and discussed the whole situation.
On this occasion some five hundred men and women, mostly Jews, who had received the testimony,[1] were moving off in a body, when an unlocked for incident occurred.
Through all the witnessing of God's two prophets, there had stood among the listening crowd, a tall, swarthy-faced man, richly attired, a Jew by race, (that was evident from the marked Hebrew lines of his face). The expression of his face, during the WITNESSING, had alternated between mocking and rage. Now his eyes followed the departing band of men and women who were loyal to the Gospel of the Kingdom.