MY DEAR FRIEND,
I SEND you a few thoughts suggested by a paper in the first number of the Quarterly Journal of Prophecy. It is the fifth article of the series, and the subject is the general scope of the Apocalypse. While the writer has evinced a measure of penetration in detecting the mistakes of others, he appears to me mistaken himself in reference to the general subject of the book of Revelation, the character of the Church, and the way in which the Gentiles have succeeded to the Jews. I would first observe, that I have no sympathy with the expositors of what I may call the extreme Futurist school. One at least has, I consider, presented a caricature rather than a fair picture of the sound theory of interpretation, and thus afforded the writer of Art. V. an obvious advantage. But, passing over points of less importance, I would hasten to expose what I conceive is a defective view of the very principle of prophetic revelation, into which principle a species of Futurism necessarily enters. What would an infidel wish more as a comment on, "I come quickly," "The coming of the Lord draweth nigh," and other parallel expressions, than the following passage (See bottom of page 39:) "It is the unhappy distinction of the Futurist system, that it compels us to regard the prophecy hitherto as an ignis fatuns, and not a beacon light, which has served only to delude the Church with a perpetual series of false hopes, unreal fulfillments, and expositions as utterly baseless and untrue as the oracles of the heathen." Is not this the very echo of the reasonings employed against the second advent as the hope of the Church? Are we not told that it is capable of mathematical demonstration, that an event which God has Himself delayed eighteen hundred years He could not have designed without intentional deception of the minds of his people, to be the next object of their continuous hope from generation to generation? Yet, such is the principle on which the Futurist scheme has been condemned. That there may be good reasons for rejecting it, we may, for the sake of argument, allow. I only contend that this is a bad one.
As the advocate of a limited Futurism, I am not so committed to the opinions of Mr. J. K. as that my theory must stand or fall with his. He is, I believe, seriously in error—in error is confounding "the things that are" with” the things that are to be hereafter"—in error as to his interpretation of κυριακὴἠμέρα;and having thus erred with regard to the past, in error as to the application of the Apocalypse to the present time.
I confess nothing has simplified the Revelation, to my own mind, so much as the conviction that it is an earthly, rather than a heavenly, book. This is not said in disparagement of it. I am aware that whatever is inspired is divine, and in that sense the Apocalypse is as much heavenly as any other portion of the 'Word of God. But the subject is, with few exceptions, earthly, even on Mr. Elliott's scheme, whose error, if I understand him aright, consists rather in denying the heavenly dignity of the Church than in unduly exalting the parties who figure in the scenes of the Apocalypse.
The question conies practically to this: Is the Church a heavenly or an earthly body? 'What is the nature of the heavenly calling? I may present my own view in the following words. In Eccles. 5:22Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few. (Ecclesiastes 5:2), we read: “God is in heaven, and thou upon earth." In the days of our Lord's flesh, he taught his disciples to say " Our Father which art in heaven." Though they were to say, “Our Father," the Spirit of adoption was not yet given; the relation was a filial one, but the distance was preserved. God was in heaven; they upon earth. But their Savior and Teacher has now gone within the veil. They have gone in Him they are one with Him. God is indeed their Father; but He is not their heavenly Father in that sense that they should feel themselves worshippers at the footstool rather than round about the throne. He is now their Father, and has taught them to say Abba in the Spirit of adoption. Spiritually, they are now what they will be manifestly hereafter, the children of God being the children of the resurrection. And blessedly do God's children keep their birth-day, when not forsaking the assembling of themselves together, on the first day of the week, they meet round the table of the Lord, looking back to the time when the risen Jesus said: “I ascend unto my Father and your Father." I know well the saints, as regards their bodies, buried alive in a prison of sinful flesh, are on earth;—none but a madman could deny it; yet are they spiritually and mystically within the veil. And this, I conceive, supplies the reason why, in the apostolic epistles, we never find the writers either praying themselves, or directing others to pray, to “their Father which is in heaven." This would be to bring them, in a measure, down to earth again. Now, it is remarkable that union with Christ, son-ship, and the Spirit of adoption, do not appear in the Revelation, But especially the place of the Holy Ghost is different. In the epistles, the benedictions come from the Father and the Son, never from the Spirit; but at the commencement of the Apocalypse, we read: “Grace be unto you, and peace from Him which is, and which was, and which is to come, and from the seven spirits which are before His throne." That is, the Spirit here is not contemplated as in the Church, the body of Christ, but simply in His place before the throne.
The churches are represented as on earth amenable to the judgment of the Son of man, liable to failure, (in several cases as having actually failed,) and reminded of the individual responsibility of the members. “He that hath ears to ear, let him hear." I am aware the question may be asked, If there is such a thing in Scripture as the earthly aspect of the Church, why may not Mr. E.'s scheme be, after all, the right one? May we not see the Church on earth, in the Apocalypse, without disturbing the doctrine maintained in other places of its higher privileges and heavenly calling? And to this, we must admit, no sound of priori objection can be raised; the principle is found in Scripture, nay, in the first chapters of this very book, and therefore will not, as a matter of course, be excluded from the other parts. And I must confess, had this been the only question under discussion, I should have felt little inclined to notice, at least for the present, what has been said on either side. But, as is often the case, a subject of greater importance than the matter immediately in debate is introduced by the way, and, under cover of some well sustained attacks on the weak points of Mr. J. K.'s theory, an attempt has been made to lower the Church to the level, or nearly to the level, of the Jewish nation. The ground of the controversy is now shifted from Revelation to Deuteronomy, Matthew and Romans, and the eleventh chapter of that precious epistle is claimed by the advocates of this system as the pillar and ground of their own theory. It is quite true that the Gentiles, in some respects, have come into the place of the Jews. Jew and Gentile are the two letters with which God would spell out His own character on earth. To prove each in turn worthless, to provoke to jealousy with them who were no people, those who had provoked God with their vanities, this was worthy of God, either as regards his justice, His mercy, or the sovereignty of His will. But the Church is not the whole of the olive tree, neither does the olive tree contain the whole of the Church. It is a low and beggarly view of the Church of God, the highest expression of God's wisdom and love, to represent it as simply coincident with the engrafted branches, or even with the olive tree itself. The engrafted branches are the fullness of the Gentiles, (at least in one sense of that expression, Rom. 11:2525For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. (Romans 11:25),) but the Church is the fullness of Christ, the πλήρωμα, or complement of Him that filleth all in all. (Eph. 1:2323Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. (Ephesians 1:23).)
The writer of the article in question appears to me to see no difference between the olive tree of Rom. 11. and the " new man " of Eph. 2:1515Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; (Ephesians 2:15). In the olive tree, the distinction between the old and the new branches is preserved, that the new may provoke the old to jealousy. Though the Spirit of God cannot "lust to envy," and cannot lead a repentant Jew to wish evil to a Gentile, yet a kind of holy rivalry is so far permitted, that the very happiness of the Gentile is intended to provoke the Jew. In the new man, the distinction of Jew and Gentile, male and female, is obliterated, never to be resumed. The breaking off of an olive branch, as the nature of the parable obviously requires, has occurred, may occur, and will occur again. To break off a member of the “now man," where there is neither Greek nor Jew, male nor female, is a monstrous thought, and unknown to the Scriptures of the New Testament.
Again, the writer has confounded two very different things. The grand object of hope to believing Israel of old was Messiah's first coming, but it was not the proximate object. To interpose an event between the present time and the Lord's second advent, is to say, " My Lord delayeth His coming; " but for a Jew to say, " Messias delays his (first) coming," was not the language of unbelief. If the central chapters of Revelation were to be received as a history certainly unrolling the fortunes of the Roman world before Christ came, what harm would there have been in saying, " My Lord delayeth his coming? " Would it not have been reasonable and just, on this hypothesis, to say, My Lord delayeth His coming, that the Scriptures may be fulfilled?
A grand effort of the enemy, from the first, has been to establish that poisonous, soul-lulling doctrine, "the Lord is not at hand." First, by interposing a fixed period of one thousand years; (and hence the importance of showing that the advent was pre-millennial;) secondly, by teaching, through the instrumentality even of many pre-millennialists, that the whole series of seals, trumpets, woes and vials, must run its course before the promised event could take place. Between the advocates of the two views, respectively, there may be a wide difference as regards their measure of spiritual intelligence, but in both cases there is one and the same danger, that of secularizing the Church by depriving it of its proper hope.
Yours sincerely,
My Dear Friend,
I AM glad of your remarks on the paper which defends the protracted application of the Apocalypse, and thrusts so fiercely at the excessive and exclusive Futurism of Mr. J. K. We are quite agreed that the arguments drawn by the latter, from the title in Rev. 1:11The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John: (Revelation 1:1), compared with Gal. 1:12-1712For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. 13For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it: 14And profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers. 15But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, 16To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood: 17Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus. (Galatians 1:12‑17), from the supposed motto-Rev. 1:77Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen. (Revelation 1:7)—from the meaning attributed to διάτόνλ. in Rev. 1:99I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. (Revelation 1:9), and to "the Lord's day " in Rev. 1: 10, as well as the criticisms on Luke 2:3232A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel. (Luke 2:32), Ephes. 3:55Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; (Ephesians 3:5), &c., and 1 Peter 1:1111Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. (1 Peter 1:11), are fallacious, and would be rejected by many even of the ultra-futurist school. In this respect, I cannot regard the article on the General Scope of the Apocalypse as strictly fair, unless it be considered merely as a rejoinder to a particular pamphlet which attacked Mr. Elliott's book. By some it was understood to be a blow aimed at many Christians in our day, who agree in looking for a future accomplishment of the Apocalyptic prophecy; whereas, in fact, the greater part of it affects only Mr. J. K., and the very few who share similar ideas. More than one half, so far from striking, is in substance the echo of sentiments which, for instance, you and I hold; indeed, what is equivalent to much of the paper has been already propounded, though not reasoned out, in "The Prospect." (See vol. 1., pages 2, 5, 16, 71, 184-186.) But the earlier part (for example, the heads 1. and 3.) appears to me to contain misstatements of facts, contradictions of the known opinions of the writer, unsound reasoning, and an entire oversight, if not denial, of the scriptural doctrine of the Church, which latter is a far more momentous thing than ignorance of the scope of the Apocalypse, though this be its invariable accompaniment. The proofs are subjoined as demanding larger limits than those of an ordinary letter.
Believe me to be, faithfully yours in the Lord,