Rabbah’s being burned with fire and becoming a desolate heap had a past fulfillment, but in regard to the future fulfillment of Psalm 83, these terms indicate that Israel’s strike on its Arab neighbors will be decisive. Is there a suggestion here that nuclear power might be used?

In the antitype, Edom pictures Christendom. Just as Esau sold his birthright, the Abrahamic promise, so Catholicism was a golden cup in the hand of the Lord but lost the stewardship because of improper use. True spiritual Israelites inherit the stewardship. Esau (Christendom) will be stripped. In the type, the people tried to hide in rocks and caves, but they were searched out. “He is not” means extinction. Accordingly, the beast and the false prophet will go into Second Death (permanent extinction).

We can fancy the attention which would be given to the Prophet’s message by the people of Israel as they would hear fall from his lips words descriptive of the troubles coming upon surrounding nations which were their enemies. But as the circle grew narrower and narrower, and as the weight of the Prophet’s testimony was found to be especially against themselves, we may be sure that there was intense indignation. If at first they shouted, “A true Prophet!” probably they afterwards gnashed upon him with their teeth.

The point is that three overturnings had to be fulfilled before Jesus could assume the rulership at his Second Advent. At that time God would “give it [the Kingdom to] him [Jesus].” Jesus secured the right to rule at his First Advent, but the exercising of this right pertains to the Second Advent—to sometime after the end of Gentiles Times, hence 1914 or thereafter. The long period of void from AD 135 “until he come whose right it is” is likened to Gentile Times. It is also likened to the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, in which the rich man wanted a little water to cool his tongue, and to the Parable of the Pounds, in which Jesus said a nobleman went away “into a far country [heaven] to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return” (Luke 16:19–31; 19:12–27).