Daily Inspiration Quote by George Gillespie

Apocalyptic confidence is doing double duty here: it’s theology as timetable, and polemic as prophecy. George Gillespie, a hard-edged Scottish Presbyterian writing in the furnace of the British civil wars, doesn’t just anticipate Christ’s “revelation”; he frames imminent upheaval as proof that history is bending toward his side’s victory. The phrase “will make bare his holy Arm” borrows the muscular imagery of Isaiah, a scriptural callback that turns divine action into something almost militarily legible: God rolling up his sleeve, ready to act in public.

The line’s architecture matters. Gillespie pairs “the confusion of Antichrist” with “the conversion of the Jews” as twin signs before “the last judgment.” In 17th-century Protestant discourse, “Antichrist” typically functioned as shorthand for Rome and its institutional power. Calling for its “confusion” isn’t a neutral eschatological note; it’s a battle plan dressed as destiny, a way to sanctify contemporary anti-Catholic politics and the Presbyterian campaign for a reformed church settlement.

Then comes the “conversion of the Jews,” a common millenarian expectation among Protestants that loaded Jewish existence with symbolic utility: their future faith becomes a scheduled milestone in Christian triumphal history. Subtextually, Jews are positioned less as a people in the present than as a prophetic instrument for validating the end-times narrative.

The final clause, “before the last judgment, and the end of all things,” seals the persuasion tactic: urgency. If events are not merely turbulent but eschatological, dissent stops looking like disagreement and starts looking like resistance to God’s revealed choreography.