" To sum the whole into a sentence — with the fall of Jerusalem, the then existing age was ended, the dead were judged, the saints were raised to heaven, and a new dispensation of a world-wide order instituted, of which Christ is everlasting King, and ever present with His people, whether living here or dead beyond." (P. 257)

(On John 6:39)
"'The last day' is easily interpreted. It is the last day of the age, the Judaic age then running, and was a popular phrase for the time when the higher Messianic privileges would be given to the people of God." (p. 266)

On Matthew 25:31)
"The judgment scene must take its beginning in the period immediately succeeding the downfall of Jerusalem." (p. 319)

(On 1 Thessalouians 4:15-17)
""Ama (together) may express the idea of place as well as of time, and in the New Testament most frequently carries the idea of identity of quality, and might well be translated ' likewise.' The word is radically identical with the Sanscrit samd, Latin simul, Gothic sama, English same.   In this light, it is seen that Paul instructs the Thessalonians only to this effect, that they, though not dead at the second coming, will afterwards be caught up in similar manner to the dead, to meet them and be for ever in their blessed society." (p. 220)

(On Jerusalem)
"In Jerusalem, however, many dark and horrible deeds had been perpetrated. The pious people had often been strangely wicked. Idolatry had been cherished where there ought only to have been the worship of the living God. Heathen abominations had stalked unreproved by the side of the holy things of Jehovah; and interdicted marriages with the idolatrous nations around had been sanctioned in high quarters, and widely practised. Amid unblushing lawlessness in varied forms, the voice of the prophets was frequently heard, and almost as frequently unheeded or wickedly rejected. The call to reformation was often drowned in the blood of the faithful witnesses. The inhabitants of Jerusalem were notorious for the murder of their prophets (Matt. 23:34,35-37). Last of all they rejected their Messiah. They reverenced not the Son. They would have neither His teaching nor His rule. They killed the Holy and Just One.." (Beginning in Jerusalem)

(On the Millennial Reign)
"Let us not forget that once in the Church's history it was the common belief that John's 1000 years were gone. Dorner bears witness that the Church up to Constantine understood by Antichrist chiefly the heathen state, and to some extent unbelieving Judaism (System iv.,390). Victorinus, a bishop martyred in 303, reckoned the 1000 years from the birth of Christ.

Augustine wrote his magnum opus 'the City of God' with a sort of dim perception of the identity of the Christian Church with the new Jerusalem. Indeed we know that the 1000 years were held to be running by the generations previous to that date, and so intense was their faith that the universal Church was in a ferment of excitement about and shortly after 1000 A.D. in expectation of the outbreak of Satanic influence. Wickliff, the reformer, believed that Satan bad been unbound at the end of the 1000 years, and was intensely active in his day. That this period in Church history is past, or now runs its course, has been the belief of a roll of eminent men too long to be chronicled on our pages of Augustine, Luther, Bossuet, Cocceius, Grotius, Hammond, Hengstenberg, Keil, Moses Stuart, Philippi, Maurice." (Alexander Brown, Great Day of the Lord, p. 216.)

'What need to tell you again how it purified a society which was rotten through and through with lust and hate, how it rescued the gladiator, how it emancipated the slave, how it elevated manhood, how it flung over childhood the aegis of its protection, how it converted the wild, fierce tribes from the icy steppes and broad rivers of the North, how it built from the shattered fragments of the Roman Empire a new-created world, how it saved learning, how it baptized and recreated art, how it inspired music, how it placed the poor and sick under the angel-wings of mercy and entrusted to the two great archangels of reason and conscience the guidance of the young! ' " (Farrar Quoted by Alexander Brown, Great Day of the Lord. pp. 217,231.)

(On Genesis)
"The peculiar style in which the narrative is couched makes it somewhat difficult of interpretation. Gesenius has divided the different modes of interpretation into four—the historical, the figurative, the allegorical, and the mythical. We cannot rank ourselves with any of these schools. We take the narrative to be in the main historical, but with its more spiritual elements shrouded in the veils of symbol. In Semitic thought the supersensual and the metaphysical are almost of necessity expressed by metaphor; and if the narrative of the fall is invested with mystery or wonder, it arises from the sheer necessities of primitive thought, and the hieroglyphic forms in which early history was inscribed. Picture-symbol was the written language of the world's childhood ; and we have no reason to believe that it was otherwise with the aborigines of the Hebrew stock. " (Doctrine of Sin, p. 70)

WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID

Samuel Cox
"The book of Revelation still attracts commentators; and the Rev. Alexander Brown, of Aberdeen, has published a thoroughly sensible guide to its interpretation. Proceeding on the understanding that the encouragements of the book were intended for the writer's contemporaries, and that these contemporaries would understand the symbolic language used, Mr. Brown finds the fulfilment of its predictions in the generation that saw the fall of Jerusalem. In applying this key to the meaning of particular passages he is remarkably successful. Sobriety and sense characterize the interpretation throughout, and no one can read the small volume without feeling increased hopefulness about the understanding of a book which is virtually sealed to most readers. The Great Day of the Lord is published by Messrs. Hamilton, Adams & Co., and deserves to be widely read. " (The Expositor, p. 154)