The Stone and the Mountain

But there was yet another incident beheld by Zechariah. He saw Joshua and his associate priests, whom he styles "men of sign," as were Isaiah and the children Jehovah had given him--8:18; Heb. 2:13. HE saw A STONE laid before Joshua, upon which were Seven Eyes, which are declared to be the Eyes of Jehovah; therefore that Stone represented Jehovah the High Priest; the servant of his Father Jehovah, and named the BRANCH. Concerning this Stone, the reader can consult the following texts:--Ps. 118:22; Isai. 28:16; 8:14; Gen. 49:24, Dan. 2: 34. This Stone is Jehovah's signet, the inscription upon which is "HOLINESS TO JEHOVAH," an engraving inwrought by the workmanship of Jehovah himself, as Zechariah was informed; and through which he will remove the iniquity of the land of Israel in one day; upon which every man therein shall call to his neighbor under the vine and under the fig-tree, emblems of the kingdom of the heavens.

But the mission of the Stone is not exclusively to take away the iniquity of Israel. He has to level the "Great Mountain," which, at his apocalypse, will be found "destroying the earth." The Chaldean Babylonish empire is styled by Jeremiah "the destroying mountain which destroyed all the earth"--51: 25. Zerubbabel was contemporary with it, but it did not become a plain before him; he died without witnessing such a result. Nevertheless, it is written, "Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain; and he shall bring forth the Head Stone with shoutings of Grace, grace unto it." Here, then, is a work still to be accomplished. A great mountain to be levelled in the presence of Zerubbabel; and consequently, to be levelled after his resurrection, when he shall have awakened out of his sleep: for then, as we have seen in Haggai, "Jehovah will shake the heavens and the earth, and overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the nations." These make up the great mountains to be levelled, or abolished, as symbolized in Apoc. 16:20.

The Four Carpenters, of which Zerubbabel is an element, are "to cast out the horns of the Gentiles;" and are therefore to level this great political mountain. Now the resurrection of the dead is as necessary for their development as for his. This being so, their resurrection is dramatically foreshadowed by Zechariah, another constituent of the Four, being awaked by the Angel. He says, "The angel that talked with me came again, and waked me, as a man that is wakened out of his sleep"--c. 4: 1. This is the resurrection of the prophet; so that what he saw after he awoke is to be referred to the time after the resurrection for its accomplishment.