Elias Part 16

10--571. **My Friend.** Abraham, the friend of G.o.d, and father of the faithful.

11--572. **Idumea.** The World--here used as a synonym for Earth.

12--589. **This Wandering Planet Bring.** "This earth will be rolled back into the presence of G.o.d and crowned with celestial glory."--Joseph Smith (Compendium, p. 288).

13--613. **The Hour of Noon.** The Meridian Dispensation.

14--615. **Light's Sun and Moon.** Christ, the light of the sun, moon and stars, and the power by which they were made. (D. and C. 88:7, 8, 9.)

15--619. **Elias? Yea and Nay.** John the Baptist, forerunner of the Christ, was an Elias, a restorer; but, according to Joseph Smith, not the Elias who is to restore all things. There are many Eliases, Joseph says: "When G.o.d sends a man into the world to prepare for a greater work, holding the keys of the power of Elias, it was called the doctrine of Elias even from the early ages of the world."

(Compendium, p. 281.)

16--621. **Learned to Shine.** Before the Twelve Apostles were chosen, John the Baptist proclaimed the Lamb of G.o.d, and said concerning Him: "He must increase, and I must decrease." John was therefore as the waning Moon in the presence of the rising Sun.

17--640. **A City Doomed.** Jerusalem, over which the Saviour wept, prophesying its downfall. (Matthew 23:37-39.)

18--656. **Gloom-Wrapt Gethsemane.** The Saviour's agony in the Garden of Gethsemane is an incident familiar to every reader of the New Testament.

19--675. **Immanuel.** One of the t.i.tles of the Saviour, meaning "G.o.d with us."

CANTO FOUR

1--t.i.tle: **Night and the Wilderness.** This part of the poem is an allegory of the Christian or Meridian Dispensation, following the death of Jesus and his forerunner; portraying the mission of the Comforter, and showing the departure from the primitive Faith, after the pa.s.sing of the apostolic Twelve, one of whom--the Church having gone into the Wilderness--remains to testify of things to come. The "Night" is the spiritual night that followed the setting of the Sun of Righteousness--a night lit by Moon and Stars, with lesser lights twinkling through the Dark Ages and onward into modern times. The "Wilderness" is the world invisible. (D. and C. 88:66.)

2--688. **An Eagle's Wings.** The Roman Empire, emblemized by the Eagle, dominated the then known world.

3--696. **Peace to Flow.** "(I) The immense field covered by the conquests of Alexander gave to the civilized world a unity of language, without which it would have been, humanly speaking, impossible for the earliest preachers to have made known the good tidings in every land which they traversed. (II) The rise of the Roman Empire created a political unity which reflected in every direction the doctrines of the new faith. (III) The dispersion of the Jews prepared vast mult.i.tudes of Greeks and Romans for the unity of a pure morality and a monotheistic faith. The Gospel emanated from the capital of Judea; it was preached in the tongue of Athens; it was diffused through the empire of Rome; the feet of its earliest missionaries traversed the solid structure of undeviating roads by which the Roman legionaries--'those ma.s.sive hammers of the whole earth'--had made straight in the desert a highway for our G.o.d.

Semite and Aryan had been unconscious instruments in the hands of G.o.d for the spread of a religion which, in its first beginnings, both alike detested and despised. The letters of Hebrew and Greek and Latin inscribed above the cross were the prophetic and unconscious testimony of three of the world's n.o.blest languages to the undying claims of Him who suffered to obliterate the animosities of the nations which spoke them, and to unite them all together in the one great Family of G.o.d."--Dean Farrar, in "The Life and Work of St.

Paul," abridged edition, Book II, pp. 61, 62.

4--706. **She-Wolf's Might.** The She-Wolf, traditionally the nurse of Romulus and Remus, who founded Rome, was also an emblem of that world-conquering power, which, though eventually it persecuted the Christians, at first protected them from their Jewish oppressors.

Judah's emblem was the Lion. As for the remaining figure in the allusion, it is written that the Saviour said to his disciples: "I send you forth as lambs among wolves."

5--707. **Iron-Limbed.** The phrases "iron-limbed," "brazen-loin,"

"silver-breasted," "golden Babylon," characterize respectively the Roman, Graeco-Macedonian, Medo-Persian, and Babylonian empires, which, in reverse order, ruled successively the ancient world.

Beginning with Babylon, the "head of gold," these four universal powers figure in the Prophet Daniel's interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream (Daniel 2).

6--713. **Asian Kin.** Alexander the Great extended his conquests as far eastward as India, whose native inhabitants claim kinship with European peoples through a common Aryan ancestry. If this claim be true, then the Hindoos, like the Europeans, are descended from j.a.pheth, the eldest son of Noah, and consequently are "Gentiles"--a word springing from "Gentilis," meaning "of a nation," that is, a nation not of Israel.

7--718. **Kurush.** Cyrus, founder of the Medo-Persian empire.

8--730. **Lofty Vineyards.** D. and C. 88:51-61.

9--731. **Spirit Moon and Speaking Stars.** The Holy Ghost and the Apostolic Twelve.

10--732. **The Woman Wonderful.** The Church of Christ, represented by a Woman (Revelation 12), and referred to in other places as the Bride, the Lamb's Wife.

11--736. **Glory's Symboling.** Sun, moon and stars, symbolizing celestial, terrestrial, and telestial glories. (D. and C. 76:96-98.)

12--742. **Vicegerent.** The Comforter, concerning whom Jesus said, "It is needful that I go, or He will not come unto you." In other words, the greater Light had to depart, before the lesser could shine in its fulness.

13--743. **The Unembodied One.** Says Joseph the Seer: "The Father has a body of flesh and bones, as tangible as man's; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit." (D. and C. 130:22.)

14--748. **After and Ere.** G.o.d and Christ, the Father and the Son, by the power of the Holy Ghost created all things, and by that power will raise all from the dead.

15--756. **Prophet Still Pleading.** The Spirit of Prophecy, typified by John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness.

16--774. **Those Fluent Stars.** The Twelve Apostles, oracles of G.o.d and crown of the Church of Christ. (Rev. 12:1.)

17--781. **Save Haply One.** John the Beloved. (John 21:20-23; D.

and C. 7 and 77.)

18--789. **Leading the Lost.** It is believed that John the Revelator will lead the Lost Tribes from "The Land of the North." (D. and C.

77:14; Rev. 10:8-11.)

19--806. **The Man-Child.** The Man-Child of the Apocalypse (Rev.

12:5) represents the Priesthood--divine authority--which was taken from the Earth, with the fulness of the Gospel, after the pa.s.sing of the Apostles.

20--815. **j.a.pheth Sways.** Gentile domination over Israel, particularly in those nations where the Jews have been and are still oppressed.

21--820. **Antaeus-Like.** Antaeus was a fabled giant, vanquished by Hercules. Each time that Hercules threw him the giant gained fresh strength from coming in contact with the ground.

22--822. **Conquering His Dust-Adoring Conqueror.** The modern Jew is said to hold the purse-strings of the world.

23--831. **That Gentile Hosts Might See.** Saul of Tarsus, afterwards Paul the Apostle, persecuted the Church of Christ before his conversion (Acts 9:1-19). Thus was typified the spiritual blindness of Israel, which caused the Gospel to be carried to the Gentiles.

Paul, the princ.i.p.al agent for their illumination, declares: "Blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in." (Rom. 11:25.)

24--832. **Martyred, Immolate.** Israel's dispersion, like Adam's fall and Christ's crucifixion, was part of a mighty plan for the promotion of the human race. Adam fell that mortal man might be.

Christ died to burst the bands of death and make the fall effectual unto the higher ends ordained. The children of Israel were scattered over the world, in order that the Gospel might make its way more readily among all peoples. The history of Israel is the history of a martyred nation, suffering for the welfare of other nations, whatever may be said of the transgressions of the chosen people, which occasioned and justified the calamities that came upon them.

25--841. **From 'Neath the Yoke.** The future redemption of the Negro race.

26--843. **See and Hear His Risen Lord.** The House of Israel is privileged to receive the personal ministrations of the Saviour, while the Gentiles are ministered to by the Holy Ghost. (III Nephi 15:23.)

27--847. **In the Mire.** Beginning of the Christian departure from the true Faith.

28--850. **The Heaven-Lit Torch.** The Light of the Gospel, enjoyed by the primitive Christians, though compelled to hide from their Roman persecutors and worship G.o.d on mountain tops and in the catacombs.

29--852. **Incense * * * Diana's Shrine.** Diana was a deity worshiped by the Romans. "Incense"--metaphorically the vain philosophies, traditions and customs, adopted by the false Church that came up in the place of the true Church and paganized itself in order to be popular with the world.

30--855. **Shearing Compromise.** The result, spiritually, of the enthronement of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire, A. D. 324.

31--861. **East from West.** The pseudo Church, as well as the Empire of the Caesars, divided itself into East and West, with Constantinople and Rome as the capital cities.

32--874. **She Was Wont.** "She" stands for the true Church of Christ.