The Closing Days of Christendom (J.N. Darby)

Collective Restoration or Individual Faith?

I have just been thinking how the great apostate systems, whether civil or ecclesiastical, are destined to advance in strength and magnificence, as their day of doom and judgment approaches. Witness the condition of the WOMAN in Revelation 18, and ... morethat of the BEAST in Revelation 18 and 19. And I ask, Is not this present moment through which we are passing giving pledges of this? Do we not see the great apostate ecclesiastical system advancing to occupy itself of the world with something of giant strides? And is not the world, as a civil or secular thing, spreading itself out in improvements and attainments, and cultivation of all desirable and proud things, beyond all precedent? Are not these things so, beyond the question of even the very least observant? And are they not pledges that all is now on the high road to the full display of the Woman and of the Beast in their several forms of greatness and grandeur, which are thus, according to God’s word, destined to precede their judgment?