"And that, dear Cohen, will be the end of your beautiful temple—it will be destroyed in Judgment, and soon—all too soon—it will be cursed and defiled by the abomination of desolation of which your beloved prophet Daniel speaks, in the twelfth chapter and the eleventh verse."
With a sudden new eagerness, but as sad as he was eager, he said: "In your extremity, and in your desire to be established in the land of your fathers, you talk of making a seven years covenant with Lucien Apleon, Emperor of the European confederacy?"
Cohen, evidently impressed by Ralph's manner, nodded an assent, but did not speak.
"Oh, Cohen, my friend, my friend!" Ralph went on. "Would to God you and your people had your eyes open to the true character of that man, Lucien Apleon! If you had, you would see from your own prophets that he was prophesied to be your foe. Remember Daniel nine, twenty-seven (according to the modern chaptering and verses) "He shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: (a week of years, of seven years) and in the midst of the week (at the end of the first three and a half years) he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and on the battlements shall be the idols of the desolator."
Cohen's face was a picture of wondering amaze. Twice his lips parted as though he would speak, but no sound came from them, and Ralph went on:
"I could weep with very anguish of soul, dear friend, at all that you, and every truly pious Jew will suffer; when, at the end of the three years and a half ('the midst of the week') the foul fiend whom you are all trusting so implicitly, will suddenly abolish your daily sacrifice of the morning and evening lamb, and will set up an image of himself, which you, and all the Godly of your race, will refuse to worship. Then will begin your awful tribulation, 'the time of Jacob's deadly sorrow.'
"It is in your own Scriptures, dear friend, if you would but see it. And in our New Testament, in Matthew twenty-four, which is all Jewish in its teaching, our Lord and Saviour, foretold all this as to come upon your people. He even showed them to be in their own land, saying, 'let them which are in Judea flee into the mountains … and pray that your flight be not on the Sabbath day:' (for you Godly Jews would not go beyond Moses' 'Sabbath day's journey,' and Anti-christ's myrmidons would then soon overtake you.)"
As if to jerk the talk into a new channel, Cohen said, almost abruptly:
"Why do you say, my friend, that our temple, the temple which we shall dedicate on the tenth of this month, has probably so few mentions in the Scriptures, and those in judgment. When we say that the whole of the nine last chapters of our prophet Ezekiel are taken up with it. Nearly all our plans have followed the directions, the picture of Ezekiel's Temple?"
"That temple, sketched in Ezekiel," replied Ralph, "is the millennial temple. There was no temple in the nineteen hundred odd years between the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, and the translation of 'The church,' a few months ago. There could be no temple as regards God's people—The Church—because all that nineteen hundred years was a spiritual dispensation. God's Temple then was composed of living stones, wherein a spiritual priesthood offered up spiritual sacrifices.