We must remember that in the prophecies before our Lord came, we do not read of the judgment before the great white throne. It is never the judgment of the soul and body in a risen state. I am not aware of any Old Testament prophecies which bring in the eternal judgment of man raised and consigned to the lake of fire as the second death. This is as characteristic of Christianity as the judgment of the world, as living men on the earth—of nations, tribes and tongues—is the proper subject of Old Testament prophecy. The Revelation of John, which is as peculiar in its themes as in its style, and in Hebrew-Greek phraseology, most appropriately sets both fully before us.
Herein we may see that traditional teaching is extremely defective and doubly misleading, because men try to bring in mere providential judgments into the New Testament state of things, as they would also graft eternal judgment upon the Old Testament predictions. The consequence is that a strain is put upon both Testaments, and confusion ensues; for the true way to understand the Bible is not to confound things that differ, but to accept divine revelation as discharging, in each of its two distinct parts, the functions for which God inspired those raised up to communicate His mind.
The Old and New Testaments are perfectly harmonious! and there is not a line or word of one that contradicts the other. But they are very far from being or saying the same things. God takes particular pains to mark the difference, in fact, writing each in a different tongue—the one Hebrew, having its groundwork in the family of Abraham after the flesh—the other Greek, used when God was sending the gospel to the Gentiles as such. Thus the Greek was just as much a representative of Gentile objects, as the Hebrew found its fitting object in Israel. But, for all that, God shows His mind in both. Only the distinctive feature of the Old Testament is His government, while the distinctive feature of the New Testament is His grace. Government and grace are totally distinct. Government is always a dealing with man: whereas grace is the revelation of what God is and does. Consequently the one invariably supposes judgment, and the other is the full display of mercy and goodness; and both find their meeting point in Christ. As He is the King, He consequently is the head of the government. As He is the Son of God, full of grace and truth, He consequently is the one channel for all the blessing peculiar to the New Testament. His glory—now that the mighty work of redemption is done—accounts for all our characteristic privileges.
W. K.