We have seen how shallow is the view of Mr. Sitwell as to Christianity, that is to say, our standing and privilege individually considered, even where it is not plainly erroneous. It is no better as to the church, that is, our corporate place, even Christ's body here below. The entire scheme is faulty from first to last. Thus his “first part” is the calling of the church (pp. 1-36); but in it not a true trace of that calling occurs even accidentally. He confounds the church absolutely with the kingdom; whereas the latter is another relationship of no small moment, as distinct from the former as power is from grace. As Christians, we are now after a special way in the kingdom; but we also compose the church, being members of Christ. Following Him in His rejection, we are not mere subjects like Israel by-and-by, but become kings and priests, and shall reign with Him in that day. This is the kingdom, not the church, His body; and the effect of the confusion is inevitably and in every respect mischievous. In this pseudo-apostolic volume the mystery concerning Christ and concerning the church, great as it is declared to be, is not at all understood. The exclusive topic throughout is “the gospel of the kingdom.” The immense and eternal purpose of God revealed in Eph. 1, etc. does not enter his mind, the heading up in Christ of all things in heaven and all things on earth, and our association with Christ in both the calling and the inheritance.
Mr. S. does not look above man on the earth. “And the habitation, the dwelling-place of man is the earth—forever” (p. 5). We may praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and exult in His glory, no less than own the riches of His grace, that it is far otherwise for the saints, even now blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ. How sad not to have the eyes of our heart enlightened to discern our incomparably higher blessedness! The Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians, to say nothing of others, are ignored for this. Not that one would depreciate “the kingdom” for a moment. It is meet that the scene of our Savior's infinite humiliation should shine in the day of His manifested glory. But it is only a part, and an inferior one, bright as are the visions which prophecy opens about the earth, Israel, and the nations, to the eye of faith. But the New Testament, on the accomplishment of an everlasting redemption in Christ's cross, discloses what had been kept hid from ages and generations—hid in God till Christ ascended and the Holy Ghost came down to dwell in us. This mystery makes known the church in union with the Head; yet as to it all Mr. S.'s book is a complete blank. Surely as one of the new apostles he ought to have been an adequate exponent, when his task was to explain the calling of the church; he seems from his book to have known nothing about it.
Mr. Irving, boldly astray as to the object which ought to be dearest to us, Christ's person, rose far beyond this poverty. Indeed the “part first” unwittingly proved what is justly enough laid to the door of Christendom in his “part second” (pp. 37-129), that not only most people, but Mr. S. himself, forgot the church's calling and became earthly. His doctrine, as we saw, makes all who receive it earthly in principle. Amiable approval of certain traits in Rome, Greece, Anglicanism, Presbyterianism, and Dissent, shows how all he can say is incompatible with the feeblest faith in the church's calling. He divides the past course into six periods of declension: the apostolic, the episcopal, the imperial, the papal, the reformed, and the revolutionary; but on this we need not dwell now.
The third part is the church recalled to her true standing (pp. 130-254). Here again the same judaizing pursues us. Hos. 2 is said to be fulfilled, which is certainly untrue; as the prayer for the outpouring of the Spirit denies the distinctive abiding privilege of the church. It is a lapse into Israel's need. Tongues and powers, even if true, could have in no measure availed before the ruin of the church: nothing but humiliation, and obedience, sure of blessing in the grace of the Lord. Apostles and prophets constituted the foundation; and such they were in divine power and grace. How out of place and season to have this over again? or, to meet the objection, by talking of a John Baptist ministry? For Christ's forerunner was no apostle. No! The setting up of apostles was presumption, and as far from God's mind as can be conceived. It was the work of a spirit. All is simply an apology for Irvingism, with its vain misinterpretation of the Tabernacle, the Cherubim, and the Seraphim. Of doctrine we have spoken, but left other points.
The fourth part is the end—its progress and consummation (pp. 255-336). Here they have a little more truth, because there is less of the church and more prophecy. Bat antichrist, the man of sin, is confounded, as usually, with the last Roman emperor, whereas he is the prophet-king in the land; and also with the king of the north, or Assyrian, the enemy of both! And though the two Witnesses (Rev. 11) are allowed to be future, Rev. 14:1-4 as well as 7:1-5 are applied to the Irvingites, as well as the manchild! Of these puerilities enough has been said before.
The fifth is the conclusion, which still lingers over the society, as the sixth part consists of answering objections to their work, and especially to apostles. Mr. S. was only like others occupied with themselves, not with the Christ of God; so that the true calling of the church, and the blessed hope, were lost in earthly things.
As to the Irvingite interpretation of Rev. 12 can anything be more out of the way? It is self-evident that, lacking intelligence of the book as a whole, they of course cannot be trusted for any particular part. The woman is seized on for the church, the twelve stars for the new apostolate, and the catching up of the manchild for the party rapture to heaven.
Now in the prophetic visions three women appear with marked differences. The first is the mother, the second the harlot, and the third the bride, the Lamb's wife. This the new Jerusalem is beyond just dispute, the glorified church, as the harlot is the corrupt counterfeit, Babylon. The first needs more care, but is distinct from either, and points to Israel, of whom Christ the Son and Heir was born. The chief difficulty is to account for introducing what was past in a revelation of the future; but this is far from inexplicable.
Rev. 12 (or more strictly 11:19) begins the second part of the prophecy, the first bringing us to the seventh trumpet which unmistakably carries us on in general terms to the end of all. The second part therefore, which explains much in detail and with more precision, must go back; and in the manner of the O. T. prophecy it gives us a mystic view which identifies Christ and the church. It goes indeed beyond Rev. 4, 5 where are the heavenly saints in peaceful session on their thrones round God and the Lamb. Here they are wrapt up as it were in a Son of glory, the Manchild caught up to God and to His throne. The translation of Christ (long before) omits His life and death, and passing over all the intervening times joins with itself those who are to share with Him the rule of all the nations. This, we know, is the promised portion of Christ and the church (Rev. 2:26, 27; 3:21); so that scripture confirms fully what is here advanced. But there can be no favored party: what more abhorrent to the mind of Christ? For “we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.” The entire church are concerned. Isaiah 1 shows how the Christian is lost in Christ like a binary star (cf. Rom. 8); as Isaiah passes at once to the Second Advent from the First. Indeed both are not uncommon; and the Revelation recurs to the prophetic style. There is this characteristic difference, however, that while O.T. prophecy skips clean over the Christian or church parenthesis, from the Lord's birth and rejection to His taking His great power and reigning publicly, the Apocalyptic view here is rather to show us in an enigmatic way God's purpose in Christ and the translation of the heavenly saints found in Him caught up to the throne of God. This, it will be observed, is absolutely dateless: a token not without moment. It is in virtue of the rejected Christ on Clod's throne that the saints can be caught up and thus seen mystically in Him.
But what of the vision as a whole? “The temple of God that is in heaven was opened.” On earth His temple was to be the scene of the most daring rebellion of man and triumph of Satan, the man of sin worshipped there as God. But God's purpose is declared on high before judgment effects it here below. “And there was seen the ark of His covenant in His temple.” Israel the covenant people is to be the theater of His plans for blessing, the church having been proved irreparably guilty and ruined, and no promise of restoration for her, as for the Jews beyond controversy and in mercy that endures forever. The accompanying signs of divine judgment (“lightnings and voices, and thunders,”) etc. still mark that actually it is a time when God's hand is on men in displeasure, the harbinger of wrath to come yet more terribly. It is not yet His day, any more than it is properly the day of grace, but of special judicial dealings in providence. “And a great sign was seen in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon underneath her feet, and on her head a crown [or chaplet] of twelve stars.” It is the chosen people of God as in God's purpose, invested therefore with supreme authority, lifted quite above their old servitude to the reflected light of legal ordinances, and adorned with the evidently complete instrumentality of administrative rule in man for the earth. So it will surely be when the Lord reigns in Zion; and this is Apocalyptic intimation of God's purpose in heaven before the conflict with Satan is described. His opposition immediately follows, and this foremost against Christ in every way. But there is this added, “And being with child she crieth, travailing and in pain to bring forth.” It is not millennial joy, but the hour of sorrow yet. “And there was seen another sign in heaven; and behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his heads seven diadems. And his tail draweth the third of the stars of heaven and did cast them unto the earth.” Christ, and those one with Him must be in their place first, whatever the dragon's enmity. For though he is seen, not as of old but with characteristics of the Roman Empire and casting them down from God's light and order in the west, as I suppose, and with destructive hostility against God's counsels in Christ, all is vain. “And the dragon stood before the woman that was about to bring forth, that when. She brought forth he might devour her child. And she brought forth a son a male, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up to God and to His throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God that there they should nourish her a thousand two hundred and sixty days.” Rev. 11:19-12:6.
Once the Christ thus mystically regarded (see 1 Cor. 12:12) is caught up, we find ourselves in the latter day; and the rage of Satan under the form of the Roman power is directed against the Jewish people, the tree mother of Christ; and set times come into reckoning. They have to do with the earth and the earthly people, not with the church of the heavenlies. This is not agreeable to those who are pre-occupied with Christendom, which tends to make the practical question one between Romanism and Protestantism.
This was not Mr. S.'s snare, who thought as cheaply as any could, either of the Popish dream about the Virgin Mary in the same woman, or of the historical fancy that the rapture of the Manchild to God's throne means the political elevation of the Christian profession under Constantine and his successors. If this were true, the woman might rather have been worshipped, or seated on a throne, than driven into the wilderness: an absurd result of the christening of the empire.
Now we can readily understand that, when God has His heavenly ones with Christ above, His purpose for the earth comes into view; and that a mighty change occurs in the true seat of power-heaven, when those who are Christ's for His glory there are in their place. As long as the church is here below, -wrestling with spiritual wickednesses in heavenly places goes on. But after the translation, there is war in heaven; Satan loses his bad eminence and is cast to the earth (Rev. 12:7-12), which fires his wrath the more against those destined to inherit the earth under Christ's reign, the Jews especially. These accordingly have nothing to do with such wrestling as Eph. 6:12 describes. It is thenceforth a dispute for the earth; God forbid it should be so for the church. Satan accordingly is seen, not only in his efforts against the woman and the rest of her seed, the godly Jewish remnant of this transitional time before the millennium (Rev. 12:13-17), but bringing forward his final instruments of blasphemous power and deceit against the Lord and His Anointed (Rev. 13). Matt. 24, &c., and above all the Revelation, furnish N. T. light on this future remnant.
The attempt to make party capital out of Rev. 12 is altogether inferior to what is called the Protestant interpretation, unsatisfactory and even absurd as this has been shown to be, one evil effect of which is the direct countenance it lends to consecrating worldliness in the church. The Popish idea is as childish and profane as their peculiar opinions usually are in divine things. But the Irvingite fancy is a vain essay to catch at symbols in a random way and with gross inconsistency in order to flatter their “Twelve” as well as their adherents. The truth gives all the glory to Christ in Whom the church, not some members but all, is regarded as hidden, its regular place in the prophetic word, its happiest place morally—the joy and boast of hearts true to the Bridegroom Who alone is worthy, whatever His grace to all that are His The mystic man, Christ and the church, being out of reach, the hatred and last efforts of Satan against God's earthly purpose in Israel ensile without delay, with the measured times which connect all with O. T. prophecy. Daniel in particular, is the prophet of Gentile supremacy on the total failure of the Jews, as John is of the world's judgment on the proved and irreparable ruin of Christendom. The church, normally, belongs to heaven which does not like the earth come under times and seasons.
Courtesy of BibleTruthPublishers.com. Most likely this text has not been proofread. Any suggestions for spelling or punctuation corrections would be warmly received. Please email them to: BTPmail@bibletruthpublishers.com.