IN ITS FIRST application the book of Lamentations expresses Jeremiah's grief over the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, and the taking of the latter's vessels and furniture, and of Israel, into captivity in Babylon. This application is, of course, that of the type. But it has two antitypical applications. The first of these is the grief of the Interim's star-members, those who officiated between the Harvests, over the overthrow of the true Church as Jesus' sphere of rulership, and as God's temple, and of the captivity, in symbolic Babylon, of the Lord's people as such, and in its various capacities as such (the temple's furniture), and of the Bible (laver), and of the Truth teachings (vessels), together with their defiling during such captivity. Jeremiah, from this standpoint, represents the Interim's star-members. Its second antitypical application is the grief of the Epiphany Messenger over the Levites' desolating the Lord's Harvest people as the sphere of Jesus' rulership and as God's temple and their making captives of God's Harvest people as such in Little symbolic Babylon, and in their various capacities (furniture), and the Bible (laver), and the Truth teachings (vessels), together with their defiling during such captivity. It is not our intention to discuss here the type as such, nor the second antitype as such. Rather we will here discuss the first antitypical application of the book's contents. The comments will be brief and in the nature of a paraphrase, rather than extended explanations. The line of thought in this book is epitomized in Ps. 137, with this difference, that this book describes the grief-experiences of the star-members, and the Epiphany messenger, while Ps. 137 describes the grief-experiences of the whole Israel of God during the Interim 

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and Epiphany. We will, therefore, begin our exposition with a paraphrase of Ps. 137. 

Besides the teachings of Great and Little Babylon, God's real people were seated respectively in the two above-mentioned periods, and were in grief as they respectively thought of the Lord's people in the Jewish Harvest and in the Parousia (1). They respectively let the earth-tending leaders in Great and Little Babylon have the Old and New Testaments in charge respectively (2). Their respective captors required them to declare the respective Truth messages, even their respective devastators required them to be joyful in declaring a teaching of their respective reaping times (3); but how could they declare their respective truths in a strange sphere of teaching and spirit (4)? Nevertheless, they respectively vowed not to forget the respective spheres of Jesus' rulership over His people; rather would they forget their chief power and work, than so to do (5); and rather would they be speechless in their respective times, if they did not prefer their respective spheres of Jesus' rulership over His people to their greatest joy (6). Their respective attitudes were prayers that God might keep in mind the civil powers' course toward the respective spheres of Jesus' rulership over His people, as they urged its respective complete overthrow (7). Their respective attitude toward Great and Little Babylon, which are to be annihilated, was that they who would treat them as they treated God's true people would be favored by God (8); and that they who would dash the little sects of both Babylons against the doctrines of the Truth would be favored by God (9). 

Now for Lamentations proper. Jesus' sphere of rulership over God's people, once having many subjects, was in the Interim solitary, which was the case during the ascendancy of the Greek Catholic Church during the Smyrna period, of the Roman Catholic Church during the Pergamos, Thyatira and Sardis periods and of each sect of Protestantism after its 

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respective Little Flock movement was perverted into a sect. It became as a widow, when God seemingly withdrew from it. Despite the fact that it had been great among non-Christian nations and the chief sphere of God's work, it had become a serving subject in her people (1:1). Deeply did her captive people weep because of the errors in which they were involved; distress showed itself over their present teachings; among former lovers none comforted them; for their friends had betrayed them and become their enemies (2). God's more favored people were captives in Babylon, because of being overcome by temptations and service of evil. They abode among the heathen without peace. All their persecutors, those in state, church, aristocracy and Inquisition, overtook them amid great difficulties (3). The concourses of the Church as the light-giver were 'distressed, because clear traveling as to justification, sanctification, class standing, peace of justification and tribal growths in the 12 graces were lacking. Those who had led into the Church no more did so; the star-members and their special helpers grieved; their consecrated ones were in trouble and the Church as sphere of Jesus' rulership over God's people was in deepest sorrow (4). The Church's, especially the star-members' attackers, like Anicetus against Polycarp, Dionesius against Hippolytus, Athanasius against Arius, Jerome against Jovinian, Theodemir against Claudius of Turin, Radbertus against Ratramnus, Lanfranc against Berengar of Tours, Bernard against Peter Abelard, Rome's Innocent IV against Grosseteste, Alvarus Pelagius against Marsiglio, Courtenay against Wyclif, D'Ailly against Huss, and the main opponents of the twelve star-members of Philadelphia, were counted leaders in Babylon. Its enemies were prospered in state, church and aristocracy; for God had afflicted it for the many wrongs committed in it by its faultful members; and its members went into Babylonian captivity through her enemy, the nominal church (5). Of course, under such conditions, the 

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beauties of holiness were lost by its members; her leaders, having become weak because of lacking spiritual food, were easily overtaken by their pursuers (6). When the Church's members came into the power of the nominal church and had no helpers, then, in the days of their trouble and woes, they remembered the great privileges of grace, knowledge and service that the brethren of the Jewish Harvest had. Her attackers, seeing her miseries, mocked at her rests of faith (7). 

The Church, which embraced crown-retainers and crown-losers, the latter greatly predominating, had transgressed much; therefore, it was removed from the sphere of Jesus' rulership over His people, and fell into dishonor of the entire class that had honored it, because they saw her shameful sinfulness; it sorrowed and retrograded (8). In its qualities was seen her sinfulness; it considered not the results of its course; hence it marvelously sank lower in wrong. None comforted it; the star-members brought its afflictions before the Lord; for the nominal church magnified itself (9). It, by its theologians, used its powers against all the Church's goodly powers, privileges and possessions; for it saw that the unregenerate entered into the Church, though God forbade them so to do (10). All its members sighed, for they sought spiritual food. To preserve their beings they had given up all their favors, privileges and possessions. The star-members of the Interim pleaded with God to take note of, and give attention to these things, recognizing that they had become vile in Babylon's, sight (11). Their plight was an indifferent thing to passersby. Considering, they would recognize that none had such grief as they, done to them by their opponents, e.g., those named in the preceding paragraph, but arranged for by the Lord's wrath for sin (12). God, from on high, sent destruction into the very beings of the Interim's star-members, and overcame them. He had manipulated them into traps; He had conditioned matters for their defeat, making them desolate and weak (13). Their 

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faultful habits were, by God's power, bound upon them; in combinations they enslaved their wills, weakening them, and delivered them to enemies (14). 

He allowed to be subdued in conflict all the able men that supported the star-members, and arranged for the companies of nominal-church theologians to suppress their warrior supporters; He allowed the faithful to be greatly oppressed by trials (15). These things greatly saddened the star-members, and that because a comforter was nowhere at hand for their relief. Those whom they begat for the Lord were made desolate, because Babylon was victorious (16). The true Church longed for mercy; but none comforted her. The Lord arranged, as to His people, that her enemies surround her. The Church was avoided as defiled with heresy and evil deeds (17), yet the star-members vindicated God's justice in this, since even they were more or less rebellious as to His Truth; for successive generations of them imbibed errors that previous ones had controverted. They, by their attitude, called upon all their hearers to witness their grief at the consecrated and warriors being captured by the errors and wrong practices of their disseminators (18). They called upon friends, e.g., Berengar of Tours upon his friend Hildebrand, but were by these deceived. Their main and subordinate leaders perished as such while seeking for the bread of life in the doomed and erring Church (19). Their attitude told the Lord their sorrows, disturbed sympathies and great discouragement, because of their having endorsed grievous error in Babylon. Controversy that they waged with outsiders took away supporters, and among their supporters deadly errors cut down their espousers (20). All, including their opponents, knew of their sorrows and troubles; but none offered comfort to them. They rejoiced that God had consented to their sufferings. But they knew that God would bring the day of wrath upon their class, when they will have sorrows like the Interim's star-members (21). Their attitude was that

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God would, in due time, cause all their oppressors' wrongs to come up for punishment before Him and render to them as He had consented to their rendering to them for their errors of doctrine and practice, because their sorrows discouraged their hearts (22). 

Chapter 2 gives a more intense description of the overthrow of the true Church by Babylonians than does chapter 1. God caused trouble to engulf His Church, as the light of the world, in His displeasure, He cast her, the adornment of His people, down from spiritual to earthly things; and remembered her not in the time of His displeasure (2:1). He has consumed all abodes of His people without pity. He consented to the overthrow of the strong teaching of His favored people in His wrath and abased them to the earth, and has consented to the pollution of the leaders and their leadership (2). In His sore displeasure He cut off the strength of His people. He drew back Jesus, His chief Favorite and Power, from the conflict with Babylonian theologians in the Interim, and consented to destructive injuries working against and devouring His people on all sides (3). He consented to their enemies' using deadly controversial weapons against them; and with power consented, as an enemy, to the overthrow of every goodly privilege, power and possession of His people by the errors and wrong practices of Babylonians, and thus destructively poured out His wrath (4). God Himself acted as though He was turned into an enemy; He consumed His people; He consented to all their main teachings being devoured, to the destruction of their strong teachings, and to the increase of His people's grief and distress (5). He consented to enemies destroying His Church as a compact company, as one plows up a garden. As to the assembly of His people as a distinct company, He had consented to its destruction. He has consented to it that the teachings of justification by faith, sanctification of Spirit, taking ones' standing before the Lord and the rest of faith be forgotten in His Church, 

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and has consented to make little the favored movement and the main leader (6). He has acted as if He had cast off His Church in its capacity of encouraging, etc., the brethren, as if He had hated it as His meeting place with His people, as if He had surrendered the power of its main teachings to the enemy, who have defiled it by their agitations, even as to its special blessings (7). His determination was to destroy the power, the Truth, of His people. He measured out the course of attack upon them, and did not withdraw His destroying power. Therefore, under the blows of Babylonian theologians in the Interim, He consented to the weakening of her special and ordinary powers, which in their defenders lament and grow weak together (8). Those who led others into the sphere of Jesus' rulership over God's people became immersed in secular things. He consented to the destruction of the teachings and practices that held them in place. The favored movements and their leaders were scattered among heathen. The Truth as one whole was nonexistent in the faith of believers. Its expounders no more saw God's plan (9). The leaders of God's people were in the deepest mourning over these evils. The consecrated of Jesus' sphere of rulership of His people were in the deepest shame (10). The star-members lost their insight into the Truth because of their grief; their sympathies were greatly disturbed, their analytic powers had sunk to earthly subjects, because of the overthrow of God's people, and because they were but slightly developed, and the beginners fainted away in the ways of God's religious government (11). They cried out to their developers for solid and liquid spiritual food, while they fainted, as sin-wounded ones, in the ways of God's religious government, or as they died on the bosom of their developers (12). 

The Interim star-members wondered as to what witness they should give the Church or as to what they might compare her; and as to what they could lay hold on as sufficient to comfort it as God's light-shiner, 

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since as wide as the ocean was her breach, and it was incurable (13). Its teachers had imagined fruitless and senseless things for it, but as flatterers had not pointed out its faults, to prevent its becoming a captive in Babylon, but had seen false views and things that brought exile to it (14). All passersby make signs of derision, despising and disapproval at the Church, saying, Is this the religious government that men call the perfection of holiness, and the joy of all society (15)? Inimical theologians and ecclesiastics spoke against the Church; they uttered despising and hatred. They boasted that they had completely swallowed it, that this was the time that they had expected, that they had overtaken it and witnessed its defeat (16). For the wrongs of His people the Lord had fulfilled His anciently foretold Plan and Word as to them. He caused them to be cast down without pitying them. He made their enemy, the nominal church, triumph over them, and had given them power as their opponents (17). Their hearts cried out unto the Lord as the Defense of His people as light-shiners. They entreated Him to grieve with them ceaselessly, pleading with Him not to permit His most favored people to cease to be (18). The Interim star-members exhorted the Lord's people to cry out in the night time, which the Interim was, from the beginning of each watch of the night onward, and freely to pour out their hearts before God, and to do this emphatically for the lives of the beginners in the way of God, who fainted for spiritual hunger in prominent places in the concourses of God's religious government (19). These star-members pleaded with God to think of what those were to whom He had done such things. They asked whether those who had developed the babes should in the distress consume them, even the youngest? Should the main leaders and the teachers be cut off in the Church of God (20)? Warriors and the ancients lie amid earthly things, cut off in the concourses of God's religious government. Their consecrated and their warriors are defeated by

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Babylonian arguments. God, these star-members said, had cut them off in the time of His displeasure, refuted and not pitied (21). While God's people were engaged in various stages of their experiences, God called them to experience terrors on all sides, resulting in none escaping nor remaining in the day of God's anger. Yea, those whom these star-members gave the first ministries after their begettal of the Spirit as a reckoned birth, the Babylonian church consumed (22). 

In chapter 3 more details of the Interim's star-members' sufferings are set forth. They recognize, e.g., Wyclif, Huss, Hubmaier, Cranmer, Servetus, in fact, all of them, that they were a class that had experienced tribulations by God's chastening wrath (3:1). Providentially their ministry, from the outstart until the Sardis period, was accompanied increasingly with much error away from the Truth (2). This made them successively feel that God had turned against them; increasingly His power seemed to do this to them continually (3). God had worn out their internal and external substance; and every one of them seemed wrecked by their tribulations (4). Through the power of their adversaries He seemed to work against them, and surrounded them with the saddest of experiences and sufferings (5). They were set amid Greek, Roman and Protestant errors; as ancient dead ones (6). He made them prisoners in inescapable conditions, chained by hard conditions (7). He seemed to refuse to answer their loud supplications (8). He made their teachings come into close contact with the most subtilely developed errors; and their consequent courses of argument seem unclear (9). He seemed to place them in positions where strong enemies lurked for them; and powerful adversaries hid to pounce upon them (10). His course seemed to lead them away into the errors of the Dark Ages and to make divisions amid their members, e.g., Luther and Zwingli; Zwingli and Hubmaier, Cranmer and Servetus, etc., making each one stand alone in desolation (11). He seemed to turn 

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parts of the Bible as a propelling weapon against them, and to shoot sharp sayings against them in many of their debates (12). He seemed to cause many of His sharp Bible sayings to enter their very vitals (13). Throughout the entire Interim they have been objects of ridicule and mockery to all nominal Christians, e.g., Polycarp, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Arius, Claudius of Turin, Berengar of Tours, Abelard, etc. (14). He arranged for them experiences that were the keenest disappointments, and made them think unclearly with bitterest woe (15). Their powers to masticate their teachings were made inappropriate to the task, and they were covered with mourning (16). Their course became one of unrest and seeming failure (17). They feared that their strength and expectation were doomed to despair as to the Lord's help (18), as they kept in mind their tribulations and sorrows-full of the bitterness of wormwood and gall (19). They still kept them in memory and were humiliated (20). Nevertheless they kept in mind as a thing that gave them hope (21) that it was of the Lord's unfailing compassions that they were not devoured (22). 

Yea, God's compassions were in every time of need new, since He was great in faithfulness (23); for God was their possession; hence their hope was fixed in Him (24). God is good to those who hope in Him, even to those who seek Him whole-heartedly (25). It is a blessing both to hope and in peace to wait for God to deliver (26), and to learn from youth up to accept and do God's will (27). In the star-members' isolation they held their peace, because they believed that their burdens were given them by the Lord to bear (28). They humbled their utterances in the hope of deliverance (29). They permitted, unresistingly, others to smite them, and received their fill of blame (30); for the Lord will not cast off His own forever (31). Though He give a cup of sorrow to His own to drink, yet He will be merciful in the abundance of His compassion (32). He takes no pleasure in striping and 

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tribulating the people (33). God does not approve of oppressing any earthly captive (34), of taking away a man's rights in matters pertinent to the Lord (35), and of undoing a man in his cause (36). What one can make a thing occur when God refuses to command its happening (37)? God does not speak both right and wrong (38). Why should any one murmur against punishment that comes to him for his sin (39)? The Interim's star-members exhorted to self-examination and self-proving, and then to return to God from wandering from Him (40), to prayer to the Lord above from the heart (41), to confession of sin and rebellion, which He had not forgiven (42). God was much displeased with His people and pursued them with punishment. He had cut them off from Him and not shown them pity (43); yea, He hid Himself from them that their prayers might not reach Him (44). They have been made as reprobates and off casts from among the people (45). False religionists have caused their mouthpieces to speak against God's people, especially against the star-members (46). Fear and traps, ruin and overthrow have been their portion (47). The star-members deeply grieved for the overthrow of God's people (48). Unremittingly and unceasingly they experienced sorrow (49). 

Until the Lord took note, looking down from His throne (50), their knowledge distressed their disposition on account of all God's people (51). Their theological enemies pursued them very hard, e.g., Athanasius did so to Arius; Bernard to Abelard; Eck to Luther; Toplady to Wesley, etc., even as hunters hunt birds (52). They had shortened their lives by their restraints and hurled their teachings at them (53). Their afflictions became so severe that they sank almost to despair (54). But they called upon the Lord out of their degraded restraint, e.g., ten of the star-members of the Philadelphia Epoch, from Luther to Miller, in their blindness and restraint, bringing out the things of the Word for sectarians (55). The Lord responded 

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to their prayer; they pleaded that God turn not a deaf ear to their pantings and supplications (56). The Lord mercifully drew near to them when they called upon Him, and bade them not to be afraid (57). They were enabled, by God's answers, to acknowledge that God took their side as new creatures, and delivered them as such (58). They saw that God took note of the wrongs done them; therefore they prayed that He vindicate their cause (59). They recognized that God had taken note of all the acts of vengeance wrought by their opponents, and of all the latter's evil surmises against the star-members (60). They recognized that God had given attention to their many reproaches against them and all the charges that their minds surmised against them (61), even the doctrines of those who arose as opponents against them and their plots against them throughout the Interim (62). They asked God to take note of their ceasing and of their beginning to oppose the star-members; since these were the subjects of their discussions (63). The hard labors of the Interim's star-members, occasioned by their enemies' attacks and errors, appealed to God to give these adversaries a punishment commensurate with the evil deeds that they wrought (64). Their sufferings also appealed to God to mete out their opponents' deep grief; and as the bulk of these were wilful sinners, the star-members' sufferings appealed to God to devote them to condign punishment, (65). These sufferings appealed to God to follow these evil-doers to a completion, and in God's displeasure to cut them off from life, since most of them were second-deathers (66). 

In chapter 4 the star-members again take up the sad plight of God's captive people at the hands of the Babylonians during the Interim. The Divine things given by Jesus and the Apostles became darkened in the Interim, even those of the Most Holy. The members of the Church were scattered at the beginning of every concourse of the Church as a religious government, and thus the brethren were separated among the

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sects (4:1). God's children, new-creaturely Divine vessels of grace, were disesteemed as but humans, those of human origins (2). Even the most beastly of antichrists nourished their babes; but God's people in this respect became cruelly treated, as the loveless and careless clerics forsook their young in isolation (3). The babes were allowed to starve from lack of spiritual milk; and the but slightly developed longed for the bread of life, which none broke for them (4). Those who once had the most luxurious spiritual food are deprived of food in the concourses of God's religious government; and those robed in the precious robe of Christ's righteousness partake of refuse as spiritual food (5). God's people in the long Interim were treated worse for their errors than the punishment of the sins of Christendom, overthrown quickly in the time of trouble; and none leaned on them for support (6). The star-members were of pure character in their righteousness. They were full of justice in their sacrifice and were therein developed in love (7). But their teachings were regarded as the darkest of error. They were not recognized as travelers over the concourses of God's religious government. They were regarded as starvelings, dried up and lifeless as to grace (8). Those refuted were more favored than those starved for lack of spiritual food; for these gradually weaken unto spiritual death for lack of the bread of life (9). Sects that pitied their young had, in the spiritual famine, arranged to devour their babes in grace, who became the food of the sects as God's people went to ruin under Babylonian blows (10). The Lord worked out His punishments for wrong; He meted out the stripes of His displeasure. He set destruction into operation in His Church as light-shiner, and had consented by Babylonian theologians to the overthrow of its Apostles and Prophets as its foundation (11). Worldly movements and people would not have believed it possible that an inimical state and nominal church could have passed through those who admitted people into 

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God's religious government (12). This was due to the sins of its alleged teachers and the errors of its alleged leaders, murderers of prominent saints (13). 

They wandered in error in the concourses of God's people without insight into the Word; they defiled themselves with the murder of God's saints, resulting in men refusing to be contaminated with their defiled characteristics (14). These cried out to others of them to avoid such unclean persons, urgently pressing their charge, lest they become contaminated by the contact. These evil ones betook themselves in their flight into error to the heathen, who said among one another that such depraved characters should not be allowed in their midst (15). God's displeasure at these evil ones scattered them from one another. He held them in high disfavor; for they regarded not the true main leaders of God's people, nor favored their minor leaders (16). But as for the Lord's people, their powers of perception failed because of their delusive hope of help. They looked for help from the civil powers of the present evil world as antitypical Egypt, which could give them no assistance (17). Instead, under the lead of the apostate church, they hunted with persecuting intent God's people, so that they dared not show themselves among the concourses of God's nominal people. Their destruction approached nearer and nearer; their lives were drawing to a close; and their exit from life was at hand (18). With great speed did the persecutors of God's people go about their persecuting work, going with speed after them in the kingdoms of Satan's empire and in their isolation (19). Their teachers who ministered life to them, as the especially anointed of the Lord, the star-members, were the special objects of their false slanders, the class of whom God's people said that under their protecting ministries they would continue, even God's nominal people (20). God's people did not begrudge the joy and gladness of those in harmony with Christendom, who were protected by the secular power (Uz, strength). They knew that in 

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due time these would have to drink of the cup of God's wrath, stupefied in error and exposed as evildoers (21). In due time the Lord would complete the punishment of the sins of His people. It came gradually and progressively, having a small beginning in the Sardis period by the reformation through individuals, a large increase during the Philadelphia period through its twelve Little Flock movements and its completion during the Parousia. God would never again allow them to become captives in Great Babylon; but He would punish the errors of Christendom by permitted publicity and exposure of its sins by pertinent secular and religious truths, and by the troubles of the time of wrath would complete the exposure of its wickedness unto its standing stark naked as an evildoer (22). 

Chapter 5 particularizes the chief woes of God's people at Babylon's hands during the Interim. Mindful of the blessed conditions of the Apostolic period, they, during the Interim, prayed God to consider their experiences after the Apostolic times, pleading that He give it His special attention, especially the reproaches that fell to them (1). Their Truth and their Spirit became the property of strangers who turned them into counterfeits, and their condition of justification as the Court was trodden down by aliens (2). They were motherless and fatherless, and their nourishers were bereaved of their supporters and leaders (3). They had to serve sorely for whatever refreshment they got, and for whatever warmth became theirs in a cold world of indifference to them (4). Their wills were persecuted; they were ground down by weighty burdens, and enjoyed no peace (5). They had to pledge fealty to the secular and papal and sectarian powers to be given sustenance (6). Their predecessors did evil and ceased to be; and they, their descendants, had to suffer for their errors (7). Even the lowliest tyrannized over them; and none delivered them out of their power (8). To get some of the Truth could only be at peril to life and limb, because of the controversial 

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arguments that the errorists made against them in their isolation (9). Their view of things was dark with error because of the frightful spiritual famine (10). They humbled the ecclesias of the Church and the consecrated in the sects of the nominal church (11). Their main leaders, by the power of their adversaries, were publicly set forth as evildoers, and their subordinate leaders were dishonored (12). The warriors were made to grind out the spiritual wheat for sectarians; and the undeveloped were given burdens too heavy for them to bear (13). The leaders had to hide away from the public and the warriors from controversial messages (14). The joys of the Truth had ceased, and conduct harmonious with it gave way to sadness, inconducive to the flourishing of the graces (15). Movements favored by God as the sign of the royalty of God's people had fallen away from them; and wretchedness became theirs for their errors (16). Therefore, their courage was weak and their perception was darkened (17). Because the Church as the light-shining embryo Kingdom was a desolation, error and wrong stalked amid their ruins (18). Yet they recognized God's eternal existence, and His royal authority perpetually (19). They asked why God had so perpetually given them no favorable attention, and had so long left them desolate (20). They prayed throughout the Interim, especially in the Philadelphia Epoch, for Him to return to them His favor, which would make them favored indeed, pleading that He might restore to them the experiences of the Apostolic Age (21). But throughout the Interim they recognized that He had quite rejected them, and was displeased with them for their predecessors and their errors and sins (22). 

Since Ps. 74 and 80, as well as Ps. 137, treat of much of the same matter as Lamentations, we will close our exposition of it with a brief paraphrase of them, as we began it with a brief paraphrase of Ps. 137, paraphrasing Ps. 80 first. Both Psalms apply to the Interim first and then to the Epiphany. We will 

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give only the Interim applications. The Lord's people in the Interim invoked God to cause the Truth to go forth in enlightenment as their Caretaker, as the One that led the Apostolic Church in Little Flockship, and as the One who worked in wisdom, power, justice and love, as typed by the Shekinah light, the cherubim and the mercy seat (1). They prayed that God exercise His power in the Truth before His Sardis Church, before His Philadelphia Church and before the approaching Laodicean Church, that He might give them His saving power (2). They pleaded that He return to them and grant them His favor, whereby they would be saved (3). They begged to know how long it would be that God would not be displeased with His people's prayer (4). He gave them only sorrows for food and drink in large measure (5). They recognized that God made them an object of strife among those near them and that their adversaries laughed at them among one another (6). Repeating the thoughts, yea, almost the very words of v. 3, they pleaded with God to return to them, and to grant them His favor, whereby He might give them His saving power (7). Like a vine to bear fruit, God brought His people out of the present evil world and drove out sin, error, selfishness and worldliness from their minds, hearts and wills, and firmly put them into the sphere of the Truth and its Spirit (8). He gave them a sufficient condition for them as New Creatures to live and prosper, developed them deeply in the Truth and in its Spirit; and they spread out over the entire sphere of the Truth and its Spirit (9). They spread over the countries of the world as a protection to them as the salt of the earth, and in each one became multiplied as developed out of the justified class (10). They became active among those sinners who restlessly developed rebellion against God and His principles and among the more orderly of the peoples (11). 

They asked God for an explanation as to why the Spirit, Word and providences of God as protectors of 

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His people have been broken down from being such protectors, with the result that all passersby do them injury (12). They declare that the lawless man of sin, coming out from among the great ones of earth, had trampled them down to utter waste, and that the ferocious civil power of Christendom consumed them (13). They prayed earnestly to God to return to them, and to give close attention and renew His favor to His people (14) and to the sphere of the Truth and its Spirit, which by Christ He filled with God's people, and to every member of them once made by God strong for Himself (15). By Babylon had God's people been ruined in destruction; they were cut down as God's people by the Babylonian theologians, hierarchy and clergy, supported by their followers. By the withdrawal of God's favor as a rebuke, God's people perish (16). They pray that God's chief power rest upon Jesus for Second Advent purposes, as the One of His chief favor, even upon Him as Adam's chief descendant whom God exalted as His Vicegerent (17). This would result in God's people no more apostatizing from Him. Then they pleaded that He might energize them, that they might pray to God and be to His glory (18). For a third time in the language of vs. 3 and 7 they entreated God to return to them, to grant them His favor, whereby He might give them His saving power. In v. 3 they address Him as God, in v. 7 as God of hosts and in v. 19 as Jehovah God of hosts, the emphasis on God being thus increased each time, but otherwise the three verses read just alike, and the repetition serves to emphasize the requests, as is also done in the progressive additions that they make as to God, v. 3 applying to the pre-Sardis, 7, to the Sardis and v. 19 to the Philadelphia period of the Interim. As we think over Ps. 137 and 80 and Lamentations in the light of the foregoing expositions, we cannot but recognize how deeply our dear Interim brethren and star-members suffered; and when we realize the small fulfilment of these three Scriptures in the Epiphany we

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can also recognize the same of God's Epiphany Little Flock and the Epiphany star-member. 

Ps. 74, treating of the experiences of God's people during the Interim, also gives the same general lines of thought as Ps. 137 and 80, viewed, however, from a somewhat different angle. Its divisions are the following: Vs. 1-11 treat of their, mistreatment during the Interim; vs. 12-17 speak of God's works on behalf of His people during the Jewish Harvest, as the basis of their plea for deliverance, and vs. 18-23 contain a prayer for their deliverance. They asked whether God was going to cast them off in Babylon endlessly, and why His displeasure continued against them as His people, who had fed upon His Word (1). They pleaded that He remember in mercy His Church, bought by Christ's precious blood long before, His heritage that He delivered from the present evil world, His embryo religious government as the light of the world, and God's own dwelling (2). They desired that He make His delivering acts turn to His long desolated Church, even all the desolations of His sanctuary wrought wickedly by God's and His people's opponents (3). These opponents agitated fiercely in His ecclesias, and set up their creeds as teachings victorious over God's people (4). Babylon's theologians, e.g., Cerinthus who opposed John, Athanasius who opposed Arius, Theodemir who opposed Claudius of Turin, Alvarus Pelagius who opposed Marsiglio, the Cologne inquisitors who opposed John Wessel, the ones here mentioned as being opposed being the five principal men of the Interim, got themselves great reputations in Babylonian church circles for using their controversial weapons against the Interim star-members and their special helpers (5). These devastated the ornaments of teaching and practice belonging to the true Church by their refutational and constructive teachings (6). They were destructive against the true Church, and with their errors defiled it, and by their misrepresentations degraded it (7). They, with

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all the power of their affections and volitions, determined to destroy it, and did destroy all the true Church's ecclesias everywhere (8). The true brethren saw no more their teachings; nor for long intervals did they have general teachers; nor did they have in their midst any one understanding time prophecy (9). With deep feeling, they sought from the Lord to know how long inimical controversialists would, by their errors, reproach God, the Truth and the brethren. Especially did they plead with God over the matter of how long such foes would continue victoriously to teach things vilifying God's character. Would it last forever (10)? They were filled with questions as to why God withdrew His power, yea, even Christ Himself, from delivering them. They pleaded with God actively to send Him to work for their rescue (11). Vs. 12-17 contain statements revelatory of the Church's calling to mind God's Jewish-harvest dealings with His people ("We wept when we remembered Zion"). Then God was Zion's king, doing works of salvation everywhere in society (12). He then made a breach in the curse, so that, by justification through faith God's people passed through unscathed (13). Satan's thoughts God then utterly overthrew, and made him to be spoil for His people in their isolation (14). God then overthrew Jewish hierarchism and its effects, devastated its errors and traditions, and also those of heathen Rome (15). That was a time given over to God, even as the Interim also was in His power; for God had then given the Truth and the New Testament (16). Then God arranged the conditions of society, and used the reaping time and the trouble time of that Harvest for His purposes (17). Vs. 18-23 show that God's Interim people pleaded for deliverance, expressing in v. 18 the same thoughts as in v. 10, except that in v. 18 the nominal-church laity are also included among the blasphemers of God's character. They pleaded that, as God's guileless beloved One, their being be not given up to the many wicked ones, and 

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asked that God forget not His humble Church (19), pleading that He give attention to His covenant; for the erroneous and sinful parts of society were full of cruel institutions and individuals, like persecuting governments and rulers, inquisitions and inquisitors, monasticism and monks, and universities and professors (20). They prayed that God's oppressed people do not return from Babylonian captivity in shame, so that the humble and necessitous of God's people might reflect credit upon Him by explaining His plan of wisdom, power, justice and love (21). They pleaded with God to become active in defense of His own person, character, plan and work, and while so doing, to keep in mind how the man of sin misrepresented Him continually (22), pleading with Him not to forget the teachings of His opponents; for the lawlessnesses and outbreaks of His opponents against Him kept increasing always (23). Surely this Psalm describes some of the Interim's untoward experiences of God's people, and has an application to the Epiphany.