Review of Dr. Brown
Unknown Author
Table of Contents
Review of Dr. Brown: 1. How the Millennium Is Brought About
When God was converting souls as He never did for extent in real quickening power, either before or since, the apostolic preacher told his hearers to repent and be converted, that their sins might be blotted out, so that seasons of refreshing might come from the face of the Lord, and He might send Christ Jesus that was fore-appointed to them, whom heaven must receive till the times of restoring all things, of which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets since time began (Acts 3). This is plain and conclusive.
It is impossible more definitely to connect the sending of Jesus from heaven, not with the destruction, but with the restoration of all things—the subject of the bright visions of the prophets, in contradistinction to the work of the gospel. The ungrieved power of the Spirit was the operating largely and profoundly; but this had for its effect on Peter’s mind to urge repentance on Israel, that so might come from Jehovah’s face that which really brings about the millennium. There is no thought of a “continued effusion of the Spirit,” still less of a professing world, as the adequate answer. It is that which is elsewhere styled “the regeneration” (Matt. 19), when the Son of man shall sit (not on the Father’s throne as now, Rev. 3, but) on the throne of His glory; and His once suffering apostles shall sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve thrones of Israel. If no such state of things consists with this age, or with eternity, when can it be save in the millennium? Manifestly, therefore, that good age which succeeds “the present evil age,” and which precedes eternity when national distinctions shall have forever passed away, supposes the Son of Man to come again and to reign over the world.
Thus the nobleman, according to the parable, will have returned, having received the kingdom; and the kingdom He delivers up to Him who is God and Father at “the end,” not of this age, but of the age to come—i.e., the millennium, when He shall have put down all rule and authority and power; for He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. This is not what occupies Christ now. He is calling out those who were enemies, and gaining them as His friends, yea, His body and bride, to reign with Him when the world-kingdom of the Lord and of His Christ is come (Rev. 11). He is not in this age dealing righteously but in long suffering with His enemies; in that age He shall put them under His feet, not ill title only, but in fact. And when all things shall be subdued unto Him (which will be the work and issue of the millennium, not of this age), then shall the Son also Himself be subject to Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28). This is disclosed in Rev. 21:1-8; not in what goes before or after.
The common post-millennial system of Christendom ignores and opposes all this clear, positive teaching of Scripture, It is in effect a denial of the Bible millennium altogether. Dr. B.’s view, even if true, would make it simply an extension of what is going on now throughout the world. He excludes Christ, he includes Satan, he maintains the mixture of tares with wheat in his scheme. Thus it is not a new age but the last stage of this present evil age, conceived to be an exceptional period which shall surpass in brightness all the world has yet beheld. It is a visionary millennium of man without a shred of divine evidence, nay, in hopeless antagonism to the word of God. The root of it is unbelief as to the central place of Christ in the ways of God, and the substitution for Him of salvation or the saved. Hence, habitually all is viewed from present experience, and tends to magnify man as he is or hopes to be — not the Lord. Instead of calling the Christian to self-judgment, because of our miserable fall from primitive power, purity, and love, this scheme directly fosters the proudest and wholly baseless hope of doing that by the gospel which God receives for Christ sent from heaven in judgment of the world and especially of Christendom. “When Thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.” It is perfectly true that the earth in the millennium is to be the scene of universal blessing; it is utterly false that this is ever once attributed in Scripture to a preached gospel. The delusion would not stand an hour’s examination of Scripture, if it did not flatter man to the dishonor of Christ — the common source of all error even among children of God. And what (can the reader believe it?) is the Scripture, the one Scripture adduced to support the scheme? “All power,” &c., Matt. 28:18-20. The late Cardinal Wiseman, like many a Romish controversialist before him, cited the same passage with quite as much reason to support the fabric of Papal infallibility. It need hardly be said that there is not a syllable which supports either the claims of the Pope, invested with all power in heaven and on earth, or the hopes of missionary societies. The Lord pledges His presence with His servants in their making disciples of all the Gentiles; but far from hinting at the conversion of the world in the age to come as the effect of their work, He expressly speaks of being with them all the days until the completion of the age. He himself would come in power and glory for that age, using His angels to clear out of His kingdom all offenses and those that practice lawlessness; and then should the righteous shine in their heavenly sphere, as He had taught them already according to a previous chapter of this gospel, which explicitly shows us the separating judgment that will distinguish the end of this age, and thus prepare the way for the peculiar features of the age to come, that follows before the eternal state.
Review of Dr. Brown: 2. Nature of the Millennium
The remarks already made on the parable of the tares preclude the need of much argument here. Only, it is an exaggeration and mistake if people have taught such that the millennium is a perfect state, or that there can be such till eternity. Isa. 65 is clear that sin and death are still possible within its course; and Rev. 20:7-10 demonstrates, that after its expiration there will be a vast muster of the distant nations, Gog and Magog, under the guidance of Satan, once more deceiving men. These have been all born within the thousand years, and may have rendered a feigned obedience throughout; but not being renewed, they fall under Satan’s snares as soon as he is loosed and goes out to deceive them. The reign of the Lord in visible glory over the earth will not change the heart nor deliver from temptation when the enemy appears.
But this has nothing in common with the wheat field, among which tares were sown. Tares do not mean men as merely evil by nature, but the result of Satan’s special sowing in Christendom—heretics and other corrupt persons mingled with the confessors of Christ. In that field the servants are forbidden to take in hand the extermination of the tares from among the wheat. Care for the true, not judgment of the false, is their business. Others—the angels—will deal with the children of the wicked one in the time of harvest (i.e., in the completion of the age). Patient grace becomes the servants, not earthly judgment, which in their hands might work, as indeed it always has wrought, mischief to the children of the kingdom.
At the present there reigns grace; in the millennium righteousness will reign; in eternity righteousness will dwell. The thousand years will not be without evil, but the earth will be happy and perfectly governed, till Satan, during the short space that succeeds, is allowed to marshal the distant nations against the camp of the saints and the beloved city (earthly Jerusalem); but those nations who fall under Satan’s last deceit are never called “tares.” They were no produce of Satan’s seed, for they existed in an unregenerate state before he was let loose. It is not the fact that any intelligent premillenialists describes the millennium “just as other people do” (p. 310); for post-millennialism by extending such a parable as that of the tares to that day, simply destroys the millennium. The clearance of tares from the kingdom of the Son of man will not hinder the birth of men throughout the thousand years, multitudes of whom will be unrenewed, and thus exposed to the enemy at the close. The popular system is infidelity as to the millennium; it denies the introduction of a new age after this age, and the co-existence and display of the kingdom of God in both its parts—heavenly and earthly. The end of the age is not the end of the world, but the completion of the present course of time, when, the Lord will not have His servants exercise judgment by rooting the evil out of the field. In the end, judgment will be applied to purge out all scandals for the reign of Christ and those who are glorified along with Him. The making disciples of all nations cannot contradict the Lord’s word, that the gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations. It is the grossest begging of the question to say there is no millennium to come after this. Preaching for a witness suits the actual time, but not the millennium. Jehovah shall be king over all the earth; in that day there shall be one Jehovah and His name one.
Review of Dr. Brown: 3. The Millennium - Display of the Kingdom in Judgment
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.
Review of Dr. Brown: 4. Millennial Revival of Jewish Peculiarities
It is thought strange that any Christians should agree with Jews in their views of Old Testament prophecies, and look for a rebuilt temple, a re-established priesthood, restored sacrifices, and an Israelitish supremacy. But Dr. Brown misstates both Scripture and ecclesiastical history in his zeal against such convictions.
What our risen Lord corrected (Acts 1) was not the expectation of the restoration of the kingdom to Israel, but the expectation of it “at this time.” Rather does He confirm the apostles in it, while intimating that it was not theirs to know times and seasons which the Father put in His own power. That element was not expelled from their minds wholly or in part, but shown to be reserved in the Father’s hands. Another work was about to proceed, not Israelitish supremacy yet, but a witness to the dead and risen Jesus in the power of the spirit both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. Their error was not so much in the thing itself as in the time, just as on the last journey He added a parable because He was near Jerusalem, and they thought the king would immediately appear. The parable, then, like the answer before the ascension, corrects their haste, but maintains instead of combating their expectancy of the kingdom. “He said, therefore, A certain nobleman went into a fin. country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return.” Then we have the immediate work, not the kingdom received, and his return; but the servants entrusted with the money began then to trade with it meanwhile till he came. And lastly he comes back, having received the kingdom. They were only premature, not wholly wrong, and the Lord did not set aside, but only postponed the expectation derived from the prophets, which He never denied, though He did ‘reveal what would intervene between His glory on high and His return. The popular view of Christendom, as usual, is ignorance, even of the New Testament, which it employs to set aside the hopes of the Old Testament. Again, it is quite incorrect that any question of restoring the kingdom to Israel agitated the saints in Galatia or at Colosse. It was a wholly contrary principle, and decidedly akin to the ordinary view of Christendom, viz., bringing Christians now under the law or Jewish ordinances. To hold fast Jewish expectations for Israel to be restored at Christ’s second advent is a main means of preserving Christianity distinct and uncontaminated by Judaism; and thus the apostle ever fought against those who would Judaize now. The heresies of Cerinthus or others who grossly Judaized in early days were the result of carrying out these errors to the full. None of them held Christianity pure and simple for the church now, the restored kingdom for Israel by and by, but jumbled all together to the degradation of our own position and hopes, and the defrauding of Israel; and Christendom, in general, is fallen into the same error ill principle, though less offensively in form, and with better views (thank God) of Christ and His work. Even the orthodox pre-millenialists of the second and third centuries missed heavenly truth, as they failed to see the future restoration of Israel to their land, and the promises then to be accomplished in them nationally. The overwhelming majority of Christians (or at least of professing Christians) rejects not only premillennialism but the restoration of Israel to their land, as to which Dr. B., strange to say, agrees with us against the mass alike of ancients and moderns.
There is no ground to expect new revelations, but the fulfillment of old prophecies is another matter. According to these predictions, the world to come will be blessed under Messiah and the new covenant. Christians will then be on high, and the gospel, as it is or ought to be now preached, will have done its work here below. Where lies the difficulty? It is hard to see. That all nations shall flow to the religious center of the millennial age, the mountain of Jehovah’s house in Jerusalem, that the Canaanites shall no more be in His house, that no uncircumcised stranger shall enter into His sanctuary, are all true and consistent. So in Mal. 1:11, Jehovah’s name shall be great among the Gentiles, &c. If they contradict each other, to take them figuratively would not really reconcile them; but there is no discrepancy whatever. Objections of this sort are hardly better than cavil, which, even if we could not solve them at all, cannot and ought not to bring to naught the overwhelming force of the positive evidence.
Review of Dr. Brown: 5 & 6. Millennial Coexistence of Earthly and Heavenly Things
The great defect of Dr. Brown’s reasoning here, as elsewhere, is the assumption that things are to abide essentially as they are now till the eternal state closes the present. This is unequivocally to ignore Scripture, which speaks of the age to come in contra-distinction to that which now is, as of course before eternity. It is in vain to take advantage of those who ignorantly mix up the heavenly and the earthly, and to break forth into the exaggerated cry— “What a mongrel state! What an abhorred mixture of things totally inconsistent with each other!” The millennium differs from all that has been. The transfiguration was but a partial and passing sample. Joshua Perry’s desertion of his friends for the opposite view here will avail little against Scripture. Take John 17:22-23, and compare with it Eph. 1:10-12, and Rev. 21:9-27. Are not the glorified saints, made perfect in one, to be a proof to the world that the Father sent the Son, and loved the saints as He loved Christ? How deny it when they appear in the same glory? In what condition will “the world” be? Is not this the display of the glorified to men in flesh? And when can this be save in the millennium? Will there be “the world” in the eternal state to know anything of the sort?
The effort to make the millennium a mere extension of present blessing, more converts, &c., with “not one(!)” element in it that has not been already realized, needs no refutation to those who accept what has been before us. The question is not one of salvation but of God’s ways in the government of the world. The end of the age is when the Son of Man takes (not, gives up) the kingdom, and, having received it, returns. He will then judge the habitable earth (τὴν οἰκουμέην, Acts 17), as He will judge the dead before He gives up the kingdom.
Eph. 2:14-19, and John 4:21-23 apply solely to Christians now since redemption, and neither to believers before Christ, nor to those of the millennium. Isa. 2:2.3, Mic. 4, and Zech. 14 are equally explicit as to a wholly different order, accompanied by marks which are certainly not seen under Christianity. When the prophets are fulfilled, Christ will be judging among the peoples, not as now gathering out a people for His name by the gospel; and nations shall learn war no more; and Israel shall be restored to their land, and the Gentiles shall be thoroughly humbled. You cannot safely Christianize Judaism any more than Judaize Christianity. Distinguish this age from that which is to come, as Scripture does, and those objections vanish; confound them, and you have the main source of Christendom’s ruin, and the chief mischief of Dr. Brown’s work, because it denies the distinction, place, and responsibility, both of the Christian now, and of the Jew by-and-by.
One evident consequence is, that those who deny the revival of Jewish pre-eminence in the millennium find themselves hopelessly dumb in presence of such scriptures as the closing chapters of Ezekiel; and the efforts after the figurative makes the late Duke of Manchester the ally, so far, of Dr. Brown, blending thus in one vague company the upholders and the deniers of Israel’s national hope. Such is the effect of error. The strongest evidence has been already adduced to prove that the condition which the prophet depicts is the most striking contrast with the Christian state. If it was only the absence of Pentecost, when the feasts shall be once more celebrated by restored Israel, how distinctive of their future, as compared with their past (or with our present) of which that feast is the standing type!
Review of Dr. Brown: 7. Millennial Binding of Satan
This popular scheme not only eliminates the presence of the Lord from the coming age, but explains away the exclusion of Satan. It is asked, “If the expectation of an entire cessation of Satanic influence be indeed Scriptural, how came it to pass that no mention is made of it—not so much as a hint given of it in all Scripture, but in this solitary passage (Rev. 21:3, 7), in a book, the import of whose symbols has divided the Church to this day?” I answer, first, that the unbelief seems to me deplorable which would reject a truth if it be but clearly revealed in this book of Scripture; and there are as plain revelations here as in any other part of the Bible, as is manifest from the hold which numerous portions take of the simplest believers throughout Christendom. But, secondly, it is a mistake that no hint is given elsewhere of the same truth.
Isa. 13:6 declares the humiliation in the day of Jehovah, which awaits the powers that govern men, both unseen and seen. He shall punish the host of the high ones on high, and the kings of the earth on the earth (for this is the true sense, which the authorized version obscures and enfeebles). The next verse intimates that it is not their final judgment, but a setting aside from their mischievous influence “in that day,” after which they shall be dealt with (and as we know from the Revelation, not for a limited time, but for eternity). “And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited.” Thus all are in due season and place. The Jewish prophet reveals what was bound up with the deliverance of earth and Israel with the nations. The final Christian prophecy lets us into the link of the future age with eternity. Even Dr. B. confesses as perfectly possible that the general idea expressed by Isaiah is symbolically developed by John. It is a superficial thought that this is no part of the putting aside of Satan’s power, or a shift to which he who believes it is reduced.
Isa. 27:1 may be compared, “In that day the LORD, with his sore, and great, and strong sword, shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.” Granted that the language is figurative; but what do the figures mean but the destruction of Satan’s power among men in a way quite unprecedented? Only, of course, the latest revelation must be heard, explaining the figures supplied in the earlier communication.
It is only the New Testament, which, revealing the Trinity, also develops the truth as to the world, the flesh, and the devil. In the Old Testament the full character of them is comparatively in the dark, Nevertheless enough is revealed from the first to indicate their presence and action, though not yet detected as they were when Christ manifested them in the power of His Spirit. The Old Testament shows him (save in the earliest temptation, as the Serpent) rather as an adversary, an accuser in nature, &c. (1 Chron. 21; Job 1; 2 Psa. 109; Zech. 3). The New Testament shows this enemy as the Prince of the power of the air, and lord of this world, and everywhere supposes their approaching downfall, “Art thou come to destroy us?” says the man with an unclean spirit (Mark 1) “Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?” say the two demoniacs from the country of the Gergesenes (Matt. 8) “And they besought him (says Luke 8:31) that he would not command them to go out into the deep” (τὴν ἄβνσσου, the bottomless pit). The time was not yet come; but the demons had the presentiment before them. The word of God had sentenced them long ago. Christianity, as such, had yet to be brought in; and in appearance Satan acquired greater power than ever by the death of Him who in that death really broke his power in God’s sight, however slowly and by stages the results of the victory may be manifested among men, and against the powers of evil. But Rom. 16 declared that the God of peace would bruise Satan under the feet of the saints shortly. That this does not take in each stage of his defeat, but only the final act, is more than any man should say. The casting out of demons by the disciples was to our Lord the keynote of the last triumphal song (Luke 10:17-19). But Eph. 6:12 is explicit that, whatever the victory before God which faith even now knows in the cross (Heb. 2:14), the Christian has still to struggle against principalities, against powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual [hosts] of wickedness in the heavenlies. Other allusions in the Epistles are familiar. And most appropriately, in the last book of the New Testament, which presents the wind-up of time and the eternal scene, the Spirit indicates the successive applications of power to the overthrow of the devil. First, he and his angels are cast down from heaven to earth—not by spiritual energy of faith in the heart, but by angelic ministration (Rev. 12). Next, he is effectually shut out, even from the earth, in the abyss, or bottomless pit, by angelic power, just before the millennium (Rev. 20:1-3). Lastly, though allowed for a short space to emerge after the thousand years, and to deceive the nations then living in the four corners of the earth, it is but the eve of his final and everlasting perdition; for he is thereon cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where there is but torment unceasingly, and whence no being ever escapes (Rev. 20:10).
How do people meet this distinct testimony of God? On the plea that, as the fall of Satan in Rev. 12 meant paganism losing its influence in the Roman empire under Constantine, so the binding of Satan in the abyss for a thousand years meant the cause of Christ carrying it everywhere, and the Church never permitting the devil to gain an inch of ground over the world for that time (Brown, pp. 379-386). The grand mistake which vitiates the popular theory is that the work of grace is made everything, and thus the Scriptures that speak of the divine government of the world in the millennium are confounded with those that relate to the salvation of souls—the coming age, with this age. It is not meant that God will cease to save man by grace on earth during the millennium; but the distinctive character and prime object of that age will be, not the gathering God’s children into one by the Spirit sent down from heaven, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, but divine power displayed in the Son of man’s putting down Satan, and reigning over the earth till all be subjected to Him, after which He surrenders the kingdom, that God may be all in all throughout eternity.
The principles Dr. B. here lays down are mistaken, and his reasoning of no force. He argues from 1 John 3:8-16, Heb. 2:14-15, and Rom. 16:20, that Satan’s presence and action are inseparably connected with man in his fallen state—consequently, as Hengstenberg puts it, that death, sin, and Satan reign during the thousand years! Certainly the apostles, as well as the prophet Isaiah (11, 32, 35, 36) have taken pains to teach us the very reverse—the prophet dwelling on earthly things, the apostles chiefly on the heavenly side.
I do not deny analogies to the past and present in the Apocalyptic visions; but the moment you insist on the punctual fulfillment of such a prophecy as Rev. 12 in the Christianizing the empire under Constantine, the failure becomes manifest. It was not the spiritual victory of the saints, but Michael and his angels, that ejected the dragon and his angels from heaven. The brethren overcame him thus, while he was not cast down, and this is the warfare the Christian has to wage (Eph. 6). But a quite different war casts him out of heaven, not saints by faith, but angelic, by virtue of divine power, exercised judicially. When Rev. 12:8-9 is accomplished, the Christian warfare will have no more place here than Satan and his angels will have place on high. A total change will have occurred, and another testimony will be in progress on earth, Christians having been caught up on high. It would have been a strange issue of Constantine’s victory that the woman (who in this scheme means the Church) should thereon flee into the wilderness to escape the enemy’s rage. We could better understand triumph than flight, and that the high place, rather than the wilderness, should protect the people of God, as the fruit of such a victory, if here intended. It was a singular crisis to bring persecution on the woman when the Gospel had triumphed over Satan in his pagan tools. Dr. B. speaks of error flying before the truth; but his text shows us the woman flying from the face of the serpent. Is this the interpretation of ch. 12 which is to inspire confidence in his view of ch. 20?
Review of Dr. Brown: 8. Millennial Features and the Little Season That Follows
Dr. B. concedes somewhat more than the mass of post-millennialists; for he allows that the millennium will be characterized not only by the universal diffusion of revealed truth, by unlimited subjection to Christ, by universal peace, by much spiritual power and glory, by the ascendancy of truth and righteousness in human affairs, by great temporal prosperity, but by the territorial restoration of the natural Israel then converted, So far there is nothing to contest, though there is much to desire, especially as to Christ Himself. The main divergence is the answer to the question how the millennium is to be brought in. The common notion is that it will be by means at present in operation, indefinitely increased, but not, as we believe, by the appearing and personal reign of Christ, judging the quick first, and finally the dead. The difference is immense in itself and in its results. A mistake here, though not fatal to faith in Christ, confuses all truth as to the ways of God, flatters Christendom instead of warning it, and lowers Christ as unduly as it exalts the Church while it is on earth. The moral effects are thus as disastrous for the soul as the error in interpretation darkens the mind to almost every part of the Bible. Nothing more directly tends to put new wine into old skins, to the ruin of both.
It is evident also that Dr. B.’s adherence to his former convictions, in the matter of Israel’s restoration nationally to their land, fits ill with his adoption of Whitby’s (or the common) hypothesis. For national conversion and restoration to a particular land does not savor of the gospel any more than temporal prosperity and universal peace or mere profession of the truth. And in fact the Apostle Paul contrasts, in Rom. 11 the future destiny of Israel with their lot now, while the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles. “As touching the gospel, they [the Jews] are enemies for your sakes [i.e., the Gentiles now grafted in], but, as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sakes.” When the fullness of the Gentiles is come in, their partial blindness will cease, and so all Israel shall be saved, not by their believing the gospel now preached and thus merging in Christianity, but by the coming of the Deliverer out of Sion, who shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob. And if their casting away was the reconciling of the world [as now under the gospel], what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead? There the Lord, “reversing all His former methods,” will not merely deal with a chosen people, calling out the Church to the faith of His cross and heavenly glory, in spite of Satan seemingly more than ever paramount, but He, with His glorified saints, will come and expel the enemy, and not without judgments establish His ancient and now repentant people, filling the glad earth, which as yet groans, with the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea. All Scripture, of Old and New Testament alike, looks on to this mighty change, while it attests the faithfulness of God in the meantime, whatever the sorrow and shame through the allowed power of Satan till that day. But manifestly the distinction from the Gentile of the Jew, blessed as a nation in their own land, is precisely what cannot be under the gospel, which shows it now blotted out entirely, for God is making Jew and Gentile who believe one new man, and building them together for His habitation through the Spirit. The millennium will behold wholly different conditions.
It is easy to see that almost all his proofs point to another system, not the gospel. Thus Isa. 11 supposes a divine smiting of the wicked or lawless one; and this Paul binds indissolubly with the appearing of Christ’s presence, not a mere providential event in His absence (2 Thess. 2:8). So Isa. 25:7 is surrounded by divine judgment, and the resurrection of the saints (compare 1 Cor. 15.) as the circumstances and means of “that day’s” deliverance. Again, Psa. 2 supposes the execution of judgment by our Lord, and (according to Rev. 2:26-27) by the glorified saints with Him Isa. 2 is in contrast with the gospel, which goes out to all nations, not all nations flocking to Jerusalem, verse 4 being the very reverse of what the Lord declares shall be in this age till the end come (Matt. 24:7-14). So blinding is this scheme, that the gospel is regarded as “the rod of Christ’s strength!” Now, if any intelligent Christian will only examine Psa. 110, he cannot but see that the first verse, Christ’s session at Jehovah’s right hand, is while the gospel goes forth; whereas, in verse 2, the sending forth of Christ’s rod out of Zion is when the time comes to rule in, the midst of His enemies, not converting them into His friends and forming them for heaven. Being a priest forever after the order of Melchizedec, He will of course be of that order then, as He is now: indeed then He will exercise it fully, and be displayed as such. But then only, and not now, He will strike through kings, because it will be the day of His wrath; whereas now it is the day of His grace, when the gospel is being preached to every creature. It is extraordinary that a sensible man should cite Isa. 66 and Zech. 14 for a similar purpose, seeing that both open with the execution of unprecedented judgments when the Lord shall come with His saints and plead with all flesh by fire and sword, and cleave Mount Olivet as the standing witness that the returning King of Israel is Jehovah the Creator. The blessing here is after this: but is the gospel?
Dr. B. thinks there will be declension in the millennium. Though there be no distinct proof, analogy is certainly in favor of the thought, which appears to be confirmed by the typical teaching in Numbers. But there is no real support of the notion that this “little season” may extend through one, two, or three centuries. However, this is so purely speculation as not to deserve further notice. But the last gathering to war of Gog and Magog has nothing in common with Luke 18 and 17:20-30, Thess. 5:2-3, and 2 Peter 3, 5:3-4. Good and evil are entirely apart in Rev. 20, whereas in the other passages they are mingled as now till judgment falls. Nor is there any coming of Christ in their case; but “that day” spans over the millennium and the space beyond, so as to embrace all judgment of quick and dead within the kingdom. There is no coming for the great white throne, because the Lord had come to reign more than a thousand years before. All the dead who had not shared in the first resurrection go and stand before Him to be judged according to their works, and are accordingly consigned to the lake of fire. On the other hand, the righteous enjoy the new heavens and new earth forever, reigning in life by one, Jesus Christ, spite of the surrender of the kingdom to God as we are told in 1 Cor. 15:24.
Review of Dr. Brown: 9. Objections
2 Thess. 2:1-8. An effort is made to parry this witness, which the late M. Faber, followed by Dr. B., regard, as in their judgment, “the only apparent evidence for the pre-millennial advent.” The statement of the case is very inexact. It is not true that what excited and unsettled the Thessalonians was the time of Christ’s second personal advent, but the false representation that the day of the Lord was come ένἐστηκεν. Nor is the express subject of discourse the second personal “coming” of our Lord, but a disproof of the error about the “day” which had alarmed them.
The apostle beseeches them, by a motive drawn from their bright hope of Christ’s presence and their gathering to Him, not to be shaken by the rumor about the day of the Lord. Then he proceeds to show the impossibility of that day arriving before the well-known apostasy was developed, and the manifestation of the man of sin, which evils are to be judged in the day of the Lord. The παρουσία and the ἡμέρα of the Lord are not only not identified as by Dr. B., but they are in contra-distinction; for the former is used as a comfort to the Thessalonians, as well as a disproof of the rumor that the terrible day of the Lord was then present. The Thessalonians were persuaded by some (and the authority of a letter of the apostle was falsely alleged in support of it), that the day of the Lord was (not at hand or imminent, but) arrived, as pointed out in an early part of this book. They, teachers and taught, must have meant some such figurative sense as Dr. B. contends for; and there is no doubt that the Old Testament not infrequently uses the phrase in this way, as for Babylon, Egypt, &c., an earnest, it would seem, of its full force at the end of the age.
Now the apostle meets the error by showing them in chap. 1, that the day is not figurative but a real personal revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with His mighty angels, taking vengeance in flaming fire on them that know not God, and on them that obey not the gospel. It is not His party triumphing by the gospel, nor a political overthrow of their adversaries, but a solemn retribution—to the troubled saints “rest with us,” and to the troublers tribulation. Then he assumes their remembrance of his first epistle, in which he had taught them both about the presence of the Lord to translate the saints to Himself on high, and about the day of the Lord with its sudden blow on the careless world. Hence he beseeches them by that joyful hope, not to be troubled by the pretended revelation that the day of the Lord was there; for this (not the presence of the Lord) could not be till the ripening of the predicted horrors which that day is to avenge. When the Lord does appear, the saints appear with Him, instead of being then caught up to Him. Hence the apostle discriminates, and as he was inspired to connect our gathering together to the Lord with His presence, so he links the judgment of the man of sin with the manifestation of His presence. Compare 2 Thess. 2:1 with verse 8. The result is, then, that while all agree that the presence of the Lord in verse 1 is personal, verse 8, far from being some previous and preparatory figure, is a subsequent stage of His advent, and means, not merely His presence in order to gather to Himself above those who look for Him, but the appearing or epiphany of His presence, when He destroys the lawless enemy or Antichrist of the last days of this age. Nowhere does Daniel attribute his destruction to the church, nor does any Scripture attribute it to the truth, as Dr. B. alleges without the smallest reason.
Matt. 24:29-31. The assertion is, that the direct and primary sense of the prophecy is Christ’s coming in judgment against Jerusalem; and that this is decided by verse 34. I ask Dr. B. to compare with this Luke 21, where he will see that the Lord, as there represented, brings in the times of the Gentiles not yet run out after the destruction by the Romans, and His own, advent after those times, and not till then says, This generation shall not pass away till all be fulfilled. Will any man stand to such a sense of the prophecy, and to claim for it our Lord’s decision? Joel 2 refers to the same great event, but, though accomplished in part, it is not fulfilled yet any more than Mal. 4.
Rev. 19:11-21 (pp. 442-446). Dr. B. thinks the “detail” is the very thing which proves! it not to be the personal coming of Christ, and contrasts the passage with Matt. 16:27; Heb. 9:28; 2 Thess. 1; Col. 3; Titus 2; and even Rev. 1. Can reasoning be less solid? Doctrinal use or allusion in a few words proves that a prophetic book cannot mean the greatest event of prophecy, because this gives details, the other texts not Where could detail be revealed with such propriety as in Revelation, and surely in the visions rather than in the mere preface of the book It is in vain, I would add, to found an argument on ἡροσώπου (Rev. 20:11), as if it involved the idea of Christ’s presence then. The word which would warrant such an inference would be παρουσία. “From whose face” applies wherever Christ may be, whether He come again to the earth or the earth and the heaven flee away from before Him as is expressly said in this very clause. It remains then that post-millennialism is a dream, and that Christ’s appearing is blotted out from Rev. 19, where God reveals it, and put in where the nature of the case (Rev. 20:11) excludes it. Can there be more palpable insubjection to scripture or love of a tradition that makes void the word of God? Matt. 20 v. 31-36, with which the close of Rev. 20 is identified, is exclusively a judgment of the living nations when He comes again; Rev. 20:11-15 is the final judgment of the dead who did not rise to reign with Christ. Can contrast be more definite and certain?
Rev. 5:10. Dr. B. understands the future reign on (or over) the earth as relating to the ultimate triumphs of Christ’s cause upon earth during the present state (the vicious thought that everywhere pervades his book), more than to the glorified condition of the saints (pp. 446-447). Is refutation called for? The passage proves that not even the redeemed in heaven are yet (at the point of the Apocalypse referred to) reigning over the earth. They are to reign with Christ, as all scripture shows; and this, as the book elsewhere proves, is the result of His coming when they are risen, and He has received the kingdom. A triumph of the church on earth during the present state is contrary to scripture. The apostasy, not a reign of Christendom, and then the man of sin revealed, precede His presence in judgment or the day of the Lord.
Matt. 19:28. No wonder Dr. B. does not object to vague and incorrect statements of the case which confound the millennium with the eternal state of which Rev. 21:5 treats. But a little consideration suffices to demonstrate that the fulfillment of the Lord’s assurance to the apostles is in “the kingdom,” in the millennial age, and neither before nor after it. For “the regeneration” is expressly said to be when the Son of man shall sit on His throne of glory. Now assuredly this is when He comes, not before the second advent, nor when heaven and earth flee away before His face as He sits on a wholly different throne, the great white throne for judging the dead (not the twelve tribes of Israel). There are none said to be assessors with Christ in that eternal judgment of the dead. Not even Dr. B. contends that “the regeneration” is a picture applicable during the present state, when Christ is not come but seated on His Father’s throne (Rev. 3:21): will he argue that during the eternal state there can be an apostolic royal judgment of the twelve tribes of Israel? If it be neither, the millennium is the sole alternative that remains; and if it be so, in what condition but a glorified one can the apostles thus judge Israel? Or are the judges and the judged to be both explained away?
Heb. 4:9, the sabbath-keeping of glory is the last objection Dr. B. discusses at length. I have no care to interpose on behalf of the seventh millennary as the sabbatism of the apostle; but the notion of Calvin, which Dr. B. endorses, that it is a question of the present rest, which is the portion of believers in Jesus, seems to me clean contrary to the scope of the chapter. We are called to fear and to labor now; we are in the wilderness still, and are only on our way to the rest of God. We who have believed enter, but we are not yet entered into the rest. We have already entered into rest in Jesus, as to which we do not fear, nor do we labor. But we do fear settling down when we ought to be marching on, lest, a promise being left of entering into God’s rest (i.e. in glory), any of us should seem to have come short of it. It is not time yet for the believer to rest from his works, but to use diligence to enter into that blessed rest, which is not arrived but remains for the people of God. Post-millennialism, here as everywhere hinders intelligence of the scriptures.
My task is closed. I believe I have answered fairly and conclusively, if scripture be really our standard, the arguments of Dr. Brown. How far the answer is satisfactory to him or to those who share the popular view of a post-millennial advent of Christ must rest with their consciences now. The day hastens which will declare the truth to all who have not already ascertained it with certainty from the word of God. May He bless by the power of His spirit His own revelation to the praise of the name of Jesus.
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