THE two visions in Dan. 2-7, to which our attention is challenged, are as strong evidence as need be asked to the falsehood of the post-millennial theory of the advent.
First, as to Dan. 2, it is manifest that the stone cut out without hands—symbolizing the kingdom of God introduced by Christ—falls with destructive effect on the image in its final stage (i.e., the feet of iron and clay);, and that only after this execution of judgment does the stone become a great mountain and fill the earth. The stone smiting the symbol of this world's power is, according to the mysticists, “the Kingdom of Grace", (p. 315). “As Kingdoms, simply—as a mere succession of civil monarchies—the vision has nothing to do with them, and the kingdom of Christ has no quarrel with them; for civil government, as such, whatever be the form of it, is a Divine ordinance. The mission of the Church is not to supplant, but to impregnate and pervade it with a religious character, and to render it subservient to the glory of God” (pp. 319-420). Is this a fair intelligent interpretation of God's kingdom breaking in pieces and consuming the great Imperial powers of this world? Is it a reasonable explanation that the blow of the stone which breaks and disperses utterly the iron and clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, means the Church impregnating and pervading civil government with a religious character? Is it possible that a man should be so blinded by a false system as to put Matt. 13:31-33 along with Nebuchadnezzar's dream, as if they were akin? What! a woman hiding leaven in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened, analogous to a stone crushing the image of imperial power, and then expanding into a great mountain, that fills the whole earth!
The truth is that neither Nebuchadnezzar's dream, nor Daniel's explanation, alludes to the kingdom of grace. When Christ came in grace, the Roman empire smote Him, not He it. Afterward that empire became nominally Christian, and established Christianity, instead of being destroyed by it. All this is entirely outside the statements of the chapter, for the feet and toes were not even formed till afterward. What the prophet gives is the wholly distinct picture, first, of an aggressive act which destroys the Gentile power; and secondly, of the growth and supremacy of the kingdom, when that judgment is executed. This, and not grace, is the first act of the stone, which is, therefore, altogether unfulfilled. Necessarily, then, the Kingdom as here portrayed, belongs to the future. The image, down to the toes, was already formed before the stone fell on them, and destroyed the entire statue, after which it expands and fills all the earth. It is as kingdoms rebellious against the God who ordained them that the vision has everything to do with; and the stone has nothing to say to them pregnating and pervading with a religious character, but to supplanting and sweeping powers off the face of the earth, that the kingdom of God in Christ may become paramount. Christianity is not the point here, nor Christendom, as in Matt. 13, but the judgment of Gentile imperial power by God's kingdom in Christ, which thereon spreads over the earth as the waters cover the sea. It is not a mere difference of prosperity or extent, but of character as contrasted as judgment with grace—of administration as different as Jesus displayed in power and glory is from that same Jesus hid in God. The weapons are wholly new, the change of dispensation complete.
Dan. 7 is substantially similar. The kingdom of the Son of Man over all people, nations, and languages, is after the fourth beast is destroyed in consequence of the blasphemies of the little horn. Dr. B. misquotes ver. 25, which means that the times and laws (not the saints) are given into the hands of the little horn. But this is the error of most divines. What has this to do with “the kingdom of grace,” so called? Is it not divine judgment in the strictest sense—not the eternal judgment of the dead before the great white throne of Rev. 20, but that of Rev. 19? It is an absurd begging of the question, and even opposition to the plainest Scripture, to ask “who does not see that this has nothing to do with the second personal advent of Christ” (p. 329)? Dr. B. is quite right in joining Psa. 2 with this scene; but does he really believe that Christ's breaking the nations with a rod of iron, and dashing them in pieces like a potter's vessel, is the kingdom of grace, and not the execution of judgment on the quick? Does he want us to believe that grace and judgment, even to consigning the beast and the false prophet to the lake of fire, are the same thing, and not irreconcilably opposite? Now the Lord works by the Holy Ghost through the Gospel on souls; then He will destroy nations. Is this no change of constitution, form, or dispensation, but merely its latent energies set free, and its internal resources developed, for the benediction of a miserable world? Can lusion be more complete or plain? Destruction of earthly power, according to this teaching, is the full blow of heavenly grace. “The whole is there from the first, not a new element is added Expansion and development, growth and maturity, are all the difference” (p. 332). Post-millennialism has its “development,” no less than Popery.
It is not correct that Dan. 7:26, any more than 2 Thess. 2:8, intimates the gradual nature of the destruction to fall on the Lord's enemies. It means that the effect of the judgment will be thorough, not a slow process, nor repeated acts of vengeance. And to insinuate that an outpouring of wrath from above on the gathered hosts of the west is “carnal warfare” is to my mind bolder than becomes a man with God's word.
Ben Ezra (i.e., Lacuna) seems to think almost all interpreters of Scripture regard the prophecy of the little stone as fully accomplished in Christ's incarnation and cross, and the mountain in the Christian Church (vol. I., pp. 146-147). But this is not so. Probably most Latins follow Jerome, who was himself led away by Origen's allegorizing; and beyond doubt a more decidedly non-natural explanation can hardly be conceived. But Hippolytus applies the fall of the stone to Christ's judgment at his second advent; and so does even Theodoret (in Dan. 7). The latter reasons elaborately against the supposition that the fifth empire is in progress. “But if they say that the former presence of the Lord is signified by these words, let them show the empire of the Romans destroyed immediately after the appearing of our Savior; for quite contrariwise, one may find it in full vigor, not subverted, at the birth of the Savior.... If, therefore, that former event, the Lord's nativity, did not destroy the Roman empire, it remains that we should understand His second appearing.” There appears to be some confusion in what follows from the good Bishop of Cyrus; for it is evident that the expansion of the stone into a mountain that filled the whole earth was after the execution of judgment on the Roman empire in its final divided state. Crushing and destroying, too, not saving, is the character of the stone's action from the first, as here depicted; and that is not grace, but judgment. To call judgment “carnal” is a sin as well as an error.
Rom. 8:19-25 clearly leads us to the same conclusion. It is a question neither of this age nor of eternity, but of the intervening millennium. Preaching, profession, or even the real faith of saints, will not deliver the creature from that vanity to which it has been made subject since the fall. The outpouring of the Pentecostal Spirit left it as a whole groaning and travailing in pain together as before. Even the Christians who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan as they wait, not for more of the same kind to meet their need, but for the redemption of the body, when the longing of the creature shall be gratified with the revelation of the sons of God; thereon follows its own deliverance from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. We, a new creation in Christ, stand in the liberty of grace now; then the creature itself, the still captive earth, shall enjoy the liberty of glory. How will this be brought about? If the deliverance of the creature depends on the manifestation of God's sons, the answer is certain. It is not in this age; for, all through, our life is hid with Christ in God. It cannot be in eternity; for this will not be till the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up. It is between the two, as we have said already. “When Christ our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear in glory.” Then and thus shall the millennium be brought about.
“Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?... Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” (1 Cor. 6). Assuredly this, too, can only refer to the millennium, not to the present time, nor to eternity. Not to the present; because we are called to suffer now, not to reign. Not to eternity; because there will be no world to judge then. “The Kingdom,” i.e., the special kingdom, whether of Christ or of those who, having suffered with Him, shall also reign together with Him, will have terminated; though in another sense all saints, millennial or ante-millennial, shall forever reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.
Again, God has made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure, which He hath purposed in Himself for the administration of the fullness of the time. And what is this purpose of His? To gather together (or head up) in one all things in Christ, both those in heaven and those in earth; in Him in whom we have also obtained an inheritance (Eph. 1:9-11.) This is millennial, and as distinctly marked off from the present time as from eternity. The eternal state will be no such display of Christ's headship, with His associated bride over all things, but the delivery to the Father of that displayed supremacy, that God—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—may be all in all. And as to the present, what can be in more evident contrast, whether in good or evil? Judaism, Heathenism, Mahometanism, Popery, sectarianism, worldliness, ritualism, rationalism, rampant in Christendom: is all this God's purpose? Is this the heading up of all things in Christ? Even if we look only at that which is good, it is a good of quite another complexion and aim; for God is now gathering out a people for His name, forming His elect from Jews and Gentiles into one body, not gathering all the universe under the headship of Christ. Clearly, therefore, as it falls in with the characteristics neither of this age nor of eternity, the Scripture cited must refer to the blessed millennial days, when Jehovah-Jesus shall be not only king over all the earth, but head of all things heavenly and earthly, the Church being united and reigning over all with Him.
Observe, too, that the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks both of the time and of the sphere of the millennium as “to come,” and manifestly is the mark of distinction both from the present and from eternity. For the inspired writer designates the miraculous displays which were signs to unbelievers in the earthly days of the Gospel, as “powers of the age to come,” i.e., partial testimonies of that energy which will characterize the future age, when Jehovah shall not more truly forgive all iniquities than heal all diseases, and the creature shall be set free and joyful (Psa. 96-97), instead of groaning in bondage as now. And as this is a defined future age (μέλλων αἰῶν) so the theater of it is designated in Heb. 2:5, the world, or the habitable earth to come (ήάἰκουμένη ή μέλλουσα), a description which, as it is expressly not the present, so it is inapplicable to eternity. It is not heaven but the earth, and the earth not dissolved but placed under the rule of the glorified Son of Man, when all things shall be seen to be put under Him. Another remark, too, it may be well to make, that of the three Scriptures which speak of universal blessedness and glory for the earth, none connects it with the preached Gospel, all with divine judgment. Thus in Num. 14:21 is the first mention of this purpose of the Lord, after Israel had betrayed the apostasy of their hearts, when the Lord pardoned according to the intercession of Moses, but pronounced judgment on all that provoked Him by their unbelief. A remnant was saved then, and so it will be at the end of this age. Isa. 11 is the second, where the picture of millennial blessedness; and in this the earth is full of the knowledge of Jehovah, is prefaced by the Lord smiting the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips slaying the wicked. The judicial act the Apostle Paul (2 Thess. 2:8) explains to be the manifestation of Christ's presence, which does not convert sinners but destroys the man of sin, in order to His millennial reign. The third and last case is Hab. 2:14, where it is evident that the filling of the earth with the knowledge of Jehovah's glory is in no way the fruit of people laboring for love or vanity, but of God's mighty intervention for His own glory, when the proud head of nations shall be brought to naught.
Thus all is uniform in Scripture, and as no passage attributes the great change for the world to that which is now entrusted to man, so all Scripture show that the saints will be taken to heaven, that men on earth will be judged, and that the days of heaven on earth will follow to the praise of the Lord alone.