By James H. Brookes
POWER OF THE DOCTRINE.
The prominence of the position assigned to the
doctrine of our Lord’s second coming in the Sacred Scriptures at once
establishes its practical value. One verse in thirty of the New Testament, let
it be remembered, points with eager gesture to His promised and expected return
as the radiant object of Christian hope. As previously shown, it is constantly
held forth to arm the believer for the conflicts of life, to strengthen him for
its toils, to cheer him in its trials, and to comfort him amid its sorrows. It
forms the foundation of the most solemn warnings, it gives point to the most
earnest exhortations, and it is interwoven with the most tender encouragements
addressed to us in the word of God. If we tear it away from that word by the
rude hand of a violent criticism, it is like despoiling a beautiful edifice of
all its adornments, and making it rather a silent memorial of the past than a
furnished habitation for the future. If we even forget that it is in the word,
and that it is there to attract our daily contemplation, we lose much of the joy
which our Father has provided for His children while tarrying in the earthly
house of this tabernacle; and we are sure to have our attention called to
passing scenes and worldly prospects, that are unsuited to our peculiar
character as strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
“The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of
mercies, and the God of all comfort,” who has made such ample provision, not
only for our present and assured salvation through the perfect and finished work
of His dear Son, but for our constant refreshment by the way, knows what is best
adapted to our wants along the journey; and those who have carefully read what
goes before, and who maintain a posture of humble and intelligent subjection to
His revealed will, can not doubt that the truth to which He continually directs
our thoughts In the future is the second coming of our Saviour. This truth,
however, may be perceived distantly and intellectually, as Lord Bolingbroke is
said to have seen, in the darkness of his infidelity, certain doctrines clearly
stated in the Bible, when he gallantly offered the services of his pen to Lady
Huntingdon in defence of her assailed system of faith; and we must remember that
there is an immense difference between believing with the mind and believing
with the heart. Perhaps by none has “that blessed hope” been more obscured than
by those who have recognized it as taught in the Bible, but have failed to
receive its transforming power into their own souls. They have made it the
starting-place for wild speculations, and have succeeded too often in diverting
the gaze of the believer from the coming of the Lord to signs and wonders that
have invariably disappointed the expectations of their dupes. It is impossible
to sum up the manifold evils that have resulted from the dangerous artifice of
Satan in turning so many of God’s people from the sober and sound exposition of
prophecy, to loose predictions that have no other basis than the vagaries of a
distempered imagination.
It should be enough to excite the suspicion of
Christians who are walking in the light, to discover that the views of many
writers on the second advent call them away from the calm and joyful
consideration of the person and work of their Lord to the decrees of emperors,
the decisions of cabinets, the discoveries of science, the exploits of warriors,
and the vicissitudes of nations. That surely is a hazardous theory which
projects anything, even to the thickness of the thinnest tissue-paper, between
the soul and the Saviour; and precisely the same objection which can be brought
with tremendous force against post-millennialists, who separate the waiting
Bridegioom a thousand years from the expecting bride, may be urged against
pre-millennialists who separate Him by the interval of intervening events, which
they fancy must necessarily occur previous to His coming. In both cases, the
attention is summoned away from the Son of God to something earthly, and this
can never be done without flattening and weakening the tone of the spiritual
life. The name of Jesus is the key that unlocks the mysteries of the Scriptures,
and imparts light and significance to the dullest details of Old Testament
history, and of Jewish ceremonies, and of genealogical tables. With that most
precious and worthy name kept perpetually and prominently before the mind, we
are pursuing a safe line of interpretation; but if the eye is removed from Him,
although it may be to that which concerns His kingdom, we are instantly exposed
to the peril of being lured, by the false fires that gleam all around us to
uncertain ground.
It should also excite the suspicion of Christians
when they discover that according to the views of a certain class of
pre-millennial as well as post-millennial writers, who call our attention from
the hope of Christ’s coming to the events which they imagine will precede His
coming, one must acquire a vast amount of human learning, before he is prepared
to form an intelligent opinion of the second advent. He must be familiar with
the history of the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Grecian, and Roman empires, and
with the changes that have occurred in Europe and Western Asia for more than
eighteen hundred years. He must keep pace with the rapid march of the
discoveries and revolutions of the age by a diligent perusal of the daily
journals, and by plunging into the wilderness of a purely secular literature,
which, however it may enhance his reputation as a man of varied information, and
win the applause of the world, is almost sure to bring upon him leanness and
barrenness of soul.
It is a fundamental principle of Protestantism that
the Bible is God’s book intended for all His children alike; and that with the
anointing which we have received of Him, and which abideth with us, we need not
that any man teach us, but each may know for himself, if really subject to the
authority of His word, all the duties and doctrines it reveals, and all that
pertains to life and godliness. It is difficult, therefore, to determine whether
there is more dangerous error in the oft-repeated statement, “Science is the
handmaid of Religion,” or in the constant reference that is made to the
“Teachings of the Church.” Many Christians, for example, browbeaten by the very
impudence of Geology, make haste to admit in the face of God’s word that the
days of creation, which were plainly days of twenty-four hours, made up of the
evening and morning, and hence formed by the revolution of the earth upon its
axis, were vast indefinite periods extending through millions of years; and they
further admit that during these periods death held high carnival, in the face of
God’s word which clearly states that “by one man sin entered into the world,
and death by sin” They seem to fear that without these admissions they
themselves will be considered ignorant by somebody, and that men of science will
become infidels; forgetting that if men of science are such fools as to become
infidels, they will neither hurt God, nor His word that liveth and abideth
forever, but the loss will be entirely their own, since they will certainly go
to hell.
Others have their minds diverted from the teachings
of the Sacred Scriptures by that vague and undefined expression, “the teachings
of the Church” when it would probably puzzle them sorely to tell what they mean
by the Church, whether the Pope, or the Councils, or the Bishops, or the
Priests, or the Preachers, or the people. But he who is taught by the Spirit to
know the things that are freely given to us of God needs neither Science nor the
Church to instruct him concerning the origin and the destiny of the earth, to
inform him what it was that brought all this woe upon us, and what is to be the
end of it all. The humble artisan or the unpretending peasant who toils from
sunrise to sunset in his shop or field, having neither capacity nor leisure for
heaping together knowledge as riches, may, nevertheless, in his morning and
evening hours and on the Lord’s day, learn more real truth than the most erudite
scholar or the most accomplished ecclesiastic; and he may certainly receive the
precious truth of Christ’s second coming, to animate him in his round of
wearisome labor, without reading one line outside of the inspired writings. He
is not called to rummage through human history or the decrees of religious
bodies before he can understand the meaning of the language, “Be ye also
patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh,” (James
v: 8); and before being led by it and by scores of similar declarations to turn
away from every thing beside in order to watch daily for Jesus, in happy
ignorance of all that is transpiring in the busy world.
The first illustration, then, of the power of the
doctrine concerning our Lord’s second advent is suggested by the fact that, when
believed not only with the mind but with the heart, its necessary effect is to
keep the attention continually directed to the Saviour. It is for this reason,
doubtless, the subject is so prominently set forth by the Holy Ghost in the
word. God saw that it was good for His children, according to the mental and
moral constitution with which He had endowed them, and the new nature which He
had bestowed, that there should be an object of hope constantly before them, a
goal upon which they might fasten their steadfast gaze, a point in the future to
which they should hasten with undivided purpose; and hence, as already proved.
He taught them from the beginning of the Christian dispensation' “to wait for
his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered
us from the wrath to come,” (1 Thess. i: 10). It did not please Him to reveal
the time of His Son’s return from heaven, even to the angels, much less to men,
because this would have deprived the doctrine of all power except with those
living at the very close of the present dispensation, but He instructed the
Apostles to lift up their eyes for it in their day, and through them He
instructed each succeeding generation, and every Christian of each generation,
to stand in an attitude of habitual expectancy and of ardent longing for this
great event as possible, and not improbable, any hour.
He did not wish His elect, whom He chose in Christ
before the foundation of the world,, to substitute in place of the truth which
He set fully in their view, the progress of mankind in the arts and sciences,
and in the attainment of good government, nor yet the varying triumphs of the
Church along the track of its checkered career; but to have their loins girded
about, and their lights burning, and to be like unto men that wait for their
Lord, when He will return from the wedding, that when He cometh and knocketh,
they may open unto Him immediately. The power and value of a doctrine which
leads the soul to an easy and established posture of waiting and watching for
Jesus Himself can hardly be overestimated. An old proverb, often heard, it is
said, in many portions of Asia, declares that, “If you think of Buddha, and pray
to Buddha, you will become Buddha”; and surely that which necessitates a
constant thought of Christ, and fervent desire for Christ, and as a consequence,
close communion with Christ, can not be otherwise than in the highest degree
beneficial to the believer. Such must always be the result, to some extent at
least, when the truth of our Lord's pre-millennial advent is intelligently and
sincerely received, as thousands can testify from their own experience.
Dr. Chalmers says, as recorded in his Memoirs, “On
Friday, among other visitors, there came to us Mr. Cunningham, of Lainshaw,
whose visit has greatly interested and impressed me. He has been reading
Irving’s work on ‘Prophecy’; and though he has some systematic objections to it,
yet, on the whole, is highly pleased. At dinner we introduced the topic, and had
during the whole of his stay, a deal of Christian conversation, which the
company at large not only tolerated, but I believe enjoyed. I must say thal
there appears to me something very enviable in Mr. Cunningham’s state, living,
as he does, in constant spirituality; and he affirms the connection to be such
between this and the study of prophecy, and that himself has profited so
exceedingly as to the state of his own heart, by the attention which he has
given to it, that I feel strongly inclined, and indeed promised to Mr.
Cunningham that I would make more particular effort both of his books and Mr.
Irving’s. He promises me a world of enlargement and enjoyment from the study,
and says that I have been wasting my efforts upon political economy. I do not
yet altogether agree with him; but, oh! that I had the devotedness of that man!
I am sure it is the way to be happy here as well as hereafter. I trust that I
have received an impulse from his conversation,” (Vol. Ill, p. 135).
That this impulse was not temporary but permanent
we may judge from his clearly expressed pre-millennial sentiments in subsequent
years, and from the increased fervor of his own devotedness to the close of his
earthly pilgrimage. Thus we find him writing to Dr. Horace Bonar, the well-known
advocate of Christ’s coming before the Millennium, in commendation of the
doctrines and progress of the South Country School, and saying, “It is not of
your prophetical, but of your theological views, that I now speak, though to the
former, also, I approximate much nearer than I did in my younger days,”
(Correspondence, p. 306). Again on Ps. l: 1-6, he writes, “This is a remarkable
Psalm, and the subject of it seems to lie within the domain of unfulfilled
prophecy. There has been no appearance yet from Mt. Zion at all corresponding
with that made from Mt. Sinai. And I am far more inclined to the literal
interpretation of this Psalm than to that which would restrict it to the mere
preaching of the gospel in the days of the Apostles. It looks far more like
the descent of the Son of Man on the Mount of Olives, with all the
accompaniments of a Jewish conversion, and a first resurrection, and a
destruction of the assembled hosts of Anti-Christ (Posth. Works, Vol. Ill,
p. 51). Again on Ps? lxviii: 18-35, says, “There is every likelihood of
allusions here to the great contest of the Book of Revelation. . . . But God has
in reserve for His people still another restoration. He will bring them again,
as of old, from Bashan and the Red Sea, to their own land. His people will ‘see
Him whom they pierced,’ perhaps when His feet stand on the Mount of Olives,
and Jerusalem will again become the great central sanctuary by becoming the
metropolis of the Christian world,” (Vol. Ill, p. 69). Surely it is very
interesting and suggestive to observe how this honored servant of the Lord, as
he became more familiar with the Sacred Scriptures, and more and more
consecrated to Christ, became more and more pre-millennial in his faith and
hope.
Of course it is not meant that this must always be
the experience of those who merely study the doctrine of the second advent; for
none can receive it except it be given to them of our Father; but when cordially
embraced, it works a marvellous transformation in the believer’s character and
conduct, because it brings him daily, as it were, into the immediate presence of
Jesus. From that time he lives under the very eye of his coming Lord. He rises
in the morning with the inspiring thought stirring his soul that he may hear the
shout of His descending Saviour before night; and with such a thought attending
the following hours of labor and relaxation, it is impossible that he should be
self-seeking in his aims, or excessively concerned about his reputation among
men, or harassed with the cares of life, or adopt human expedients to achieve
success, or sink into the insensibility of spiritual slumber. He has neither
taste nor time for personal and inferior objects, because he has heard the sweet
promise, “Surely, I come quickly”; and having entered into the meaning of it, he
stands gazing through the surrounding gloom, to catch the first rays of the
morning star, engrossed with the person of his expected Redeemer. Like Enoch,
the seventh from Adam, of whose ministry we know nothing, save that he preached
the doctrine of the second and pre- millennial advent of Christ, his walk will
be with God in the energy of this precious faith, because he knows that at any
time it may be said of him, “He- was not; for God took him.”
In the second place, of this faith pre-eminently it
may be affirmed, “This is the victory that overcometh the world.” In nothing,
probably, has the evil of the post-millennial heresy been more abundantly
exhibited than in blinding the Church to the essential and unchangeable
characteristics of the world, that not only eighteen hundred years ago, but that
still, and that to the end, lieth in the wicked one. He is as truly the god of
this world, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in
the children of disobedience, as he was at the beginning; and yet he has deluded
the children of obedience to a fearful extent into the dangerous fancy that the
world is growing better, that it is ceasing from its enmity to the cross of
Christ, that it is rapidly attaining a higher and yet higher Christian
civilization, until, under the combined influence of science and religion, it is
supposed the nations will enter upon a long period of millennial blessedness.
What meanwhile is the relation of the Church to Christ.? That of a bride to a
bridegroom; for “we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For
this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his
wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery; but I speak
concerning Christ and the Church,” (Eph. v: 30-32). What place had the
Bridegroom in the world? It furnished him a manger among the beasts of the stall
for his cradle, a cross on which to die, a borrowed tomb in which His mangled
body was buried; and during the interval it so thoroughly rejected Him that He
had not where to lay His head. What too is His own testimony concerning the
emotions appropriate to the bride after His cruel rejection and brutal murder.?
“Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with
them? but the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and
then shall they fast,” (Matt, ix: 15).
Least of all did He intimate that His Church, the
elect assembly, the “little flock,” would win the approval and love of the
world, and exchange pledges of mutual affection, and conform to its ways, and
receive its maxims, and act on its principles, and follow its fashions, and keep
even with it in the mad race for earthly gain and good. Among his parting words
He said, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.
If ye were of the world, the world would love His own: but because ye are not of
the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth
you. Remember the word that I said unto you. The servant is not greater than his
lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have
kept my saying, they will keep yours also,” (John xv; 18-20). “These things I
have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have
tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world,” (John xvi: 33).
So in His last beautiful, intercessory prayer before His agony in the garden. He
addressed His Father in behalf of His disciples to the end of the dispensation,
saying, “I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they
are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou
shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the
evil [or evil one]. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world,”
(John xvii: 14-16).
After His departure, the Holy Ghost takes up the
testimony, and repeats it in the most solemn and emphatic language. “Be not
conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,
that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God,”
(Rom. xii: 2). Christ “gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from
this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father,” (Gal. i:
4). “Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity against God?
Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God,” (James
iv: 4). “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any
man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him,” (1 John ii: 15).
“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be
called the sons of God [and we are, add all the ancient MSS.]: therefore
the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not,” (1 John iii: 1); but, alas!
the world does know us too well as the consequence of an intimate and unhallowed
association with its aims and purposes. “Marvel not, my brethren, if the world
hate you,” (1 John iii: 13). “We know that we are of God, and the whole world
lieth in wickedness,” [or the wicked one]. “Woe unto you, when all men shall
speak well of you,” (Luke vi: 26). “For if I yet pleased men, I should not be
the servant of Christ,” (Gal. i: 10). It is impossible, then, to draw the line
of distinction and separation between the Church and the world more clearly and
sharply than has been done by Christ and to the Holy Ghost. But what do we see?
That line trampled out as the bride of the King of kings rushes across it to be
caught to the embrace of His unchanging foe by arms that are lifted in defiance
of His authority, and by hands yet red with His blood. We witness on every side
indications of the last days when perilous times shall come; when many in the
Church shall be “lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of
godliness, but denying the power thereof”; and when Christendom with its proud
boast that it is rich, and increased with goods, and has need of nothing, is
ready to be spewed out of the mouth of our insulted Lord.
No Christian can doubt that a doctrine specially
adapted to break the Circean spell which the world has cast upon the Church to
her deep degradation and dishonor, must be of divine power and unspeakable
value. Such a doctrine, it is obvious, is found in the statements of God’s word
concerning the second coming of Christ, not as an event that can be of personal
interest only to those living more than a thousand years after the present, but
as an event which our own eyes may behold this very hour, in all its peerless
magnificence and with all its momentous consequences. If we really believed this
to be both possible and probable, and therefore turned to it with souls
lightened by the beams of its approaching glory and thrilled by the solemnities
of its results, worldliness would be checked, and killed, and extirpated from
our hearts. We could not then make provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts
thereof. We could not then look at the things which are seen and temporal, as of
chief importance in our esteem, but at the things which are not seen and
eternal. We could not then fret, and plan, and scheme, and pursue the winding
paths of human policy to accomplish our ends; but we would be instantly lifted
by this sublime truth above the crooked ways of nature into a higher, clearer,
purer region, “waiting for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ,” (1 Cor. i: 7).
History informs us that toward the close of the
tenth century, the most intense excitement prevailed throughout a large part of
Europe, owing to a belief which extensively prevailed, that at the end of the
first thousand years of the Christian era, Christ would return to the earth.
Multitudes sold their estates to unbelievers and gave away the proceeds in
charities, business was neglected, the fields were left uncultivated, and for
some years the wildest confusion and terror reigned. It is humiliating to
discover that eminent writers, professing to know the gospel of the grace of
God, can use this fact as an argument against the doctrine of our Lord’s
pre-millennial advent. They do not remember that at that time darkness covered
the earth, and gross darkness the people. They do not reflect that the
trepidation which shook the continent of Europe was the legitimate result of the
views now commonly held of the relation of Christ’s second coming to His
millennial reign; for in those ages of ignorance, and superstition, and
legalism, it was generally believed that the thousand years commenced with the
birth of the Saviour, and hence the fanatical crowds that were so alarmed Were
not pre- millennialists, but post-millennialists. They do not consider the proof
which their argument furnishes of the low and lamentable state of the Church,
when they endeavor to show that the appropriate and unavoidable effect of
teaching the doctrine of our Lord’s second coming is to produce the greatest
agitation and fear.
If such is the effect, it is high time to
arouse those who are made afraid; for it is exceedingly questionable whether
their hope of heaven is not a horrible delusion. It was a leading characteristic
of the early Christians that they loved His appearing; and if any who now
profess to be Christians do not love it, they ought to be made to understand
that there is no promise of a crown of righteousness for them at that day. What
would you think of an exile, if he were to exhibit the deepest distress and
grief at the summons to return home after years of lonely wandering in distant
lands? What would you think of a citizen, if he were to turn pale on hearing
that the court will soon convene, and the judge will ascend the tribunal? What
would you think of a wife, if she shuddered and trembled at the announcement
that she might expect her absent husband any hour? There is a conscious guilt
there that makes them cowards; and when those who claim to be Christians cry out
that they can not bear the doctrine of our Lord’s second advent, they give
melancholy evidence of knowing that there is an unsettled controversy between
them and God. They can not think without terror of Christ’s coming, because they
are not prepared for it; as persons often speak of trying to be prepared for
death, thereby showing their utter ignorance of the gospel. It is not by trying
we are prepared, but by believing; it is not by doing, but by resting on that
which is already done; it is not by baptism administered in the way of
immersion, or in any other manner; it is not by confirmation, though received at
the hands of all the bishops on the face of the earth; it is not by ceremonies
and sacraments, but through faith in the precious blood of Christ alone, as
cleansing us here, and now, and forevermore, from
all sin, we are made ready either for a dying bed, or to be manifested
before the judgment seat.
The doctrine of the second advent, when rightly
understood, produces no terror nor disquietude, but comfort, and peace, and a
joyful separation from evil. It instantly adjusts the relation between heavenly
and earthly things, but it does not lead to the neglect of any present duty, nor
to the abandonment of any proper employment. It only exercises the believer to
be a man of the tent and the altar here below, as faithful Abraham was; to stand
aloof from entangling alliance with the scene about him that will drag his
spirit into the dust; and to act in the consciousness that the Lord is at hand,
before whom we must all be manifested, that every one may receive the things
done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. It
forces us to remember that “our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we
look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body,
that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body,” (Phil, iii: 20, 21); and
hence It bids us, as we move across the face of the earth, to be
“Like ships in seas, while
in, above the world.”
It brings an end to anxious thought about our life,
what we shall eat, or what we shall drink; and about our body, what we shall put
on; it lays the check of a high principle upon the folly of heaping up riches
for a name or for posterity, when we know not who shall gather them, or whether
they will be swept away by the fires of an approaching judgment; and the
ordinary aims and ambitions of men it dismisses as the paltry baubles of a past
childhood, while our believing contemplation is fixed upon crowns of unfading
glory flashing just above our heads.
Oh! if Christians would only walk in the might of
this precious faith, it could be said of them, though in a truer and nobler
sense, as Macaulay has said of the English Puritans, “Instead of catching
occasional glimpses of the deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze
full on the intolerable brightness, and to commune with Him face to face. Hence
originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference between
the greatest and meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with the
boundless interval which separated the whole race from Him on whom their own
eyes were constantly fixed. They recognized no title to superiority but His
favor; and, confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and
all the dignities of the world. . . . The intensity of their feelings on one
subject made them tranquil on every other. One overpowering sentiment had
subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its
terrors and pleasure its charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their
raptures and their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm had
made them stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar passion and
prejudice, and raised them above the influence of danger and corruption.”
In the third place, the doctrine of our Lord’s
pre-millennial advent is intimately related to other precious truths of His
word, and conducts us by the logic of necessity to their reception. Dr. David
Brown, so often quoted as the leading post-millennial authority, has well said
of pre-millennialism, “It is a school of Scripture interpretation; it impinges
upon and affects some of the most commanding points of the Christian faith; and,
when suffered to work its unimpeded way, it stops not till it has pervaded with
its own genius the entire system of one’s theology and the whole tone of his
spiritual character, constructing, I had almost said, a world of its own; so
that, holding the same faith and cherishing the same fundamental hopes as other
Christians, he yet sees things through a medium of his own, and finds everything
instinct with the life which this doctrine has generated within him,” (p. 6). A
moment’s glance at the subject will confirm the correctness of this statement,
and show that a heart-felt belief of Christ’s second coming as pre-millennial,
as near at hand, and as not improbable to-day, must carry with it a class of
truths of the greatest practical power and value.
(1). No man with this belief wrought in his soul by
the Holy Ghost can remain in the bondage of legalism, or in the gloom of
uncertainty concerning his state in the sight of God. It drives him at once to
examine the ground on which he stands, and it must issue in breaking the
shackles of doubt and fear with which his soul was manacled, perhaps, for years.
He sees that Christ may come before the morrow, and therefore he can not be sure
of sufficient time to make himself fit for heaven, by attending upon the
ordinances of the Church, or by forming good resolutions only to break them, or
by waiting for the slow process of sanctification, as it is commonly understood,
to find in such things the foundation of his peace, but he is brought, like the
dying thief, to look to Jesus, and to Jesus alone, as all his trust and all his
salvation. He dare not postpone to a future period the effort to attain unto
full assurance of hope, but in the light of the coming glory perceives that
assurance of hope k obtained without effort, by simply receiving as true, and
true for himself, the word of the Saviour who says, “He that heareth my word,
and believeth on him that sent me HATH everlasting life, and shall not come into
condemnation [judgment]; but is passed from death unto life,” (John v: 24); and
“By him
all that believe ARE justified from all things,” (Acts
xiii: 39).
Then instead of struggling and weeping to be made
meet for the heavenly inheritance by vowing and fasting, in weariness and
painfulness, be is found “giving thanks unto the Father, which HATH made us meet
to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: who hath delivered us
from the power of darkness, and HATH translated us into the kingdom of his dear
Son: in whom we have redemption through his blood,” (Col. i: 12-14). Then
instead of striving to settle the question of his salvation, he learns to his
unspeakable joy that it has been settled for him by the blood of Christ, and
resting upon the finished work accomplished on the cross, and accepted according
to the value which the Father places upon that work, he no longer dreads the
thought of his Lord’s return, because he already stands complete in Him “who of
God is made unto US wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and
redemption,” (1 Cor. i: 30). Then he can share in the gladness of one described
by “an honest and warm-hearted pre-millennialist of the Commonwealth time,” as
Dr. Brown calls him, when he says, “I have heard of a poor man who, it seems,
loved and longed for Christ’s appearance, that when there was a great
earthquake, and when many cried out the day of judgment was come, and one cried,
‘Alas! alas! what shall I do’ and a third, ‘How shall I hide myself.?’ &c., that
poor man only said, ‘Ah! is it so.? Is the day come.? Where shall I go? Upon
what mountain shall I stand to see my Saviour.?’”
(2). The coming of Christ being no longer an object
of terror, but an object of hope, the believer can enter into the meaning of the
Apostle’s language, “Beloved, NOW ARE we the sons of God, and it doth not yet
appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be
like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in
[or, on] him purifieth himself, even as he is pure,” (1 John iii: 2, 3). He
comes under the purifying power of “that blessed hope,” because he
knows he is even now a child of God by faith in Christ Jesus, being made
a new creation, and having received a new nature, and rejoicing in a new life,
and stimulated by new affections to reach out with ardent desire for that
glorious appearing when he
knows he shall be like the Saviour. When he was born again, the cord that
bound him to earth as the centre of his affections, the object of attraction,
was severed; and when taught by the Spirit to look and long for the coming of
the Lord, he discovered that he was a dead and risen man, crucified together
with Christ, quickened together with Him, seated together with Him in the
heavenlies, having his place and portion with Him and in Him in resurrection
life, and resurrection security, and resurrection blessedness. Hence he is
prepared to lay to heart the tender exhortation, “If ye then be risen with
Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right
hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For
ye are dead [or ye died], and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ,
who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory,”
(Col. iii: 1-4).
There are other important truths with which the
doctrine of the pre-millennial advent is directly connected, such as the abiding
presence of the Holy Ghost with His people during the entire period of their
Lord’s personal absence; the nature, calling, and hope of the Church; the
restoration of Israel; the manifestation of the Antichrist; the doom of the
world that is yet to answer for shedding the blood of God’s dear Son; the rising
from among the dead of those who sleep through Jesus; the rapture of the living
who love His appearing to meet Him in the air; the dignity and blessedness of
the saints in reigning with Him for a thousand years over the earth; and the
inherent and unchangeable malignity of sin as exhibited for “a little season” at
the close of the millennium; but want of space forbids enlargement.
It only remains, therefore, in the fourth place, to
say that the doctrine shows its peculiar power and its special value in the
solace it affords in times of affliction and sorrow, as many can testify to. the
praise of God’s sustaining grace. That it is often employed in this sweet
service by the Holy Spirit no one at all familiar with the Scriptures will deny.
Look where we may through the New Testament, we find that when the early
disciples were weighed down by trouble, the Saviour and the inspired Apostles
lightened the burden by pointing to His second coming. It was like conveying to
a despairing prisoner in his dungeon the assurance of a speedy release. It was
like directing a lost child the way home, where a gentle hand would wipe away
the tears, and the exhibitions of love would be the more tender because of the
former dangers and sufferings of the wanderer. To the vision of the first
believers, the battlements of the celestial city were already gleaming upon the
horizon, and in the anticipation of entering it soon, privations could be
cheerfully endured, and persecutions gave speed to their steps along the
heavenly road.
Even when death was inflicted, sometimes by the
ordinary stroke of divine providence, and sometimes by the agency of man, the
soul of the happy believer took its departure from the bed of disease, or
‘through the flames, to be with Christ, which is very far better; while the
surviving friends heard such cheering words as these in the stillness of their
grief: “I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are
asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe
that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in [through] Jesus
will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that
we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent
[outstrip, precede] them, which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend
from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of
God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain
shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the
air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with
these words,” (1 Thess. iv: 13- 18). And they did comfort one another, even as
we who look for Jesus comfort one another when our hearts’ tenderest affections
are sorely smitten by the stroke of death; for in the light of the blessed hope
of His coming, we know that our beloved ones may not remain in the place of
burial one day longer, before His voice may awake them from their sleep, and
change the body of humiliation, which we also carry, into the likeness of His
own glorious body, and gather us with those we miss from our homes into His
presence where there is fulness of joy, and to His right hand where there are
pleasures forevermore. Hence, as we follow the precious remains to the tomb, we
can catch the prelude of the song which will roll in a tide of melody across our
groaning earth when Jesus comes again, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave,
where is thy victory?” (1 Cor. xv: 55).
The foregoing statements are written to meet, to
some extent, the objections that are urged against the doctrine of our Lord’s
pre-millennial advent, on the ground of its practical tendencies and results.
There can be no doubt that it works mischief, if studied and proclaimed merely
as a speculation to gratify the curiosity of those who are naturally prone to
pry into the future, or if made the basis of rash predictions instead of sober
exposition of God’s prophetic word. But if presented simply as the only proper
object of hope, thus turning the thoughts and expectations of the believer off
and away from all else unto Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, nothing can
be of greater benefit to the soul, and nothing can be more untrue than the
charge brought against it, that it exercises an injurious influence over the
character and conduct. It is often said, for example, that it disparages the
gospel, but how, it is difficult to see, since those who are looking for the
Lord to inaugurate His kingdom claim that the gospel accomplishes all it was
designed to achieve. They hold that Christ only intended that “This gospel of
the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness [[not for the
conversion, but for a witness] unto all nations; and then shall the end come,”
(Matt, xxiv. 14) 5 and that God is now visiting the Gentiles, not to save them
all, but “to take out of them a people for his name,” (Acts xv: 14), They
believe, therefore, that every one without exception, who has been given to
Christ in eternal covenant before the foundation of the world, shall be brought
to His blessed feet through the instrumentality of the gospel, and that we have
no right to expect any other means of salvation, unless with infants and idiots,
that are regenerated, so far as we know, without the agency of the word by the
Holy Spirit, “who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth.”
On the other hand, the theory of the Arian Whitby,
now so commonly held in the Christian Church, seems to be a far greater
disparagement of the gospel, because it makes the end which it claims the gospel
was designed to accomplish a terrible failure. It insists that the gospel was
intended to bring all men, or at least nearly all, to the knowledge of Christ as
their Saviour, but it is forced to confess that this intention has been defeated
for more than eighteen hundred years. The real Christians on the earth
constitute indeed but “a little flock,” as compared with the unnumbered millions
who are still “dead in trespasses and sins.” Perhaps it would be safe to assert
that more persons are living to-day who never heard of Jesus than were found
throughout the world at the close of the second century, and it is surely safe
to assert that His true followers are relatively fewer now than then. In other
words the Church, as meaning those who are really born again, has not kept pace
with the growth of the world, nor even of heathenism. Powerful congregations of
believers that once flourished in a large part of Asia, Africa, and
south-eastern Europe, many of them founded by apostolic labors, and some of them
tenderly addressed in inspired epistles, have long since ceased to exist.
In other portions of the old world and in America,
genuine Christianity, not the Christianity of a Pharisaical ecclesiasticism, and
of forms and ceremonies and shams, but the Christianity of the Bible, marked by
sound doctrine and holy living, is certainly making little, if any, advance. The
men of education and science are. to a fearful extent the busy promoters of
infidelity, and the popular system of our Christless public schools directly
tends, it is too apparent, in the same direction. Romanism is manifestly on the
increase in Protestant countries, and although it has given way here and there
in its ancient strongholds, as in Austria, Spain, Italy, and France, it has not
yielded to the power of the truth as it is in Jesus, but to the triumph of
Rationalism, Pantheism, Materialism, Deism, and Atheism, making the last state
worse than the first. If the Confessions of the Reformed Church were blotted
out, it is questionable whether it would be possible to reproduce their clear,
concise, and scriptural statements of doctrine; and it is beyond question that
the modern Reformers, as Hyacinthe and Dollinger, the one timidly protesting
against the stern conservatism of the Roman Catholic Church in refusing to cast
herself upon the sunny but treacherous current of the world’s boasted progress,
and the other beating the air about the empty nonsense of papal infallibility,
dwindle into pitiful pygmies compared with the intellectual and spiritual giants
of the sixteenth century, whose trumpet gave no uncertain sound.
In the Protestant city of Berlin containing a
population of about eight hundred thousand, it is said that less than four
thousand attend public worship on the morning of the Lord’s day, while the
afternoon and evening of the sacred day are almost universally given up to
frivolity and amusement. In the Protestant city of London, it Is stated that at
least two millions five hundred thousand persons never enter a place where the
gospel is proclaimed. In the Protestant city of Glasgow, according to a
statement recently published by its leading ministers, after making large
allowance for the aged, the infirm, and the very young, it is shown that one
hundred and twenty-five thousand souls never hear the word of God. After
generations, and in some instances, centuries of Christian labor, the gospel has
not reached vast multitudes who live and die unsaved within the sound of the
church bells. The same astounding and humiliating results are seen in all of our
American cities. In Saint Louis, for example, it is said that scarcely fifteen
thousand persons, large and small, out of a population of more than four hundred
thousand, are found in all the Protestant places of worship put together, and in
some of those numbered as evangelical, it is to be feared that the preaching
does not contain the slightest flavour of the truth as it is in Jesus. The same
enormous proportion of those who do not attend the worship of God is no doubt
found in other places, and the religious statistics of every leading city will
show that those who really believe in Christ are not gaining ground, and that
they are not holding their own, because not increasing in the ratio of the
world’s lost and ruined population around them.
But this Is not all, nor the worst. The laboring
classes, as they are called, are scarcely reached at all by the gospel. Look
into our city churches particularly, and you will find fashionable. well-dressed
congregations, but where are the hardy sons of toil who fill our factories and
founderies and workshops, and where are their wives and children? In the public
parks, or places of amusement, or dram shops, or at home scoffing at the Church.
The respectable people who attend preaching do not seem to know that they are
sauntering in their gay clothing to the house of God over a slumbering volcano.
If they felt sufficient interest, and took the slightest pains to inquire into
the moral condition of the rough-clad and rough-handed working men, who
constitute the overwhelming majority of the population, they would be astounded
and perhaps alarmed to discover how fierce and sullen is the infidelity which
sleeps like a tiger in the bosom of thousands around them, and how rapid has
been the spread throughout Christendom of Communism that may burst forth at any
moment in a wilder conflagration than that which destroyed Paris. Add to this
the appalling progress of Sabbath desecration even in the Church, the fearful
increase of corruption among officials of every grade, the boundless
extravagance exhibited in private life, the mad race for wealth that stops not
to consider the means of its attainment, the brazen effrontery of sin in what is
termed the best society, the frequency and shocking nature of the crimes whose
record crowds the columns of our daily journals, and, judging the future by the
past, which is the only ground of judgment apart from the prophecies of God’s
word, it must be confessed that the world is as far as ever from conversion. It
is humbly submitted, therefore, that the pre- millennial view of the second
advent, instead of disparaging the gospel, honors the gospel by showing that its
teachings are in accordance with apparent and admitted facts.
But again It is said that this view lays an arrest
upon labors for the salvation of men, and, as it is sometimes expressed, “cuts
the nerves of missionary efforts.” To test the truth of this charge it is
needless to go beyond the range of personal observation. Put in one class those
who are looking for the coming of the Lord before the Millennium, and in another
class those who are expecting the universal triumph of the Church, and let each
determine for himself which are the more earnest, the more faithful, the more
self- denying, the more intense in preaching the word, the more instant in
season, out of season. Ministers who are sleepily engaged on the Lord’s day in
imparting to a sleepy handful a confused mixture of darkness and light, and
perhaps witness the addition to the Church of scarcely two or three persons in
an entire year, frequently assert that, if they believed in the speedy appearing
of Christ, they would quit preaching. This is doubtless the very best thing they
could do, for if they are preaching with the expectation that their sermons will
convert men, they are manifesting a blasphemous conceit of their ability, and a
sad ignorance of the fundamental truth that it is the province of God alone to
give life to the dead, through the wonder-working power of the Holy Ghost.
As to the supposed discouraging effect of the view
upon missionary efforts, it is simply and notoriously untrue. While these pages
were passing through the press, a letter was received from Rev. J. Newton, D.
D., one of the oldest, and certainly one of the most devoted and honored of the
Presbyterian missionaries in India, in which he incidentally writes, “A large
proportion of the missionaries I am acquainted with, both American and English,
are looking forward to the advent of Christ, and the establishment of His
glorious kingdom on earth, as events which are to consummate our hopes both for
ourselves and the nations. It is sometimes said that these views of prophecy
have an anti-missionary tendency. But it so happens that many of the most
earnest and hard-working missionaries are just the men who are most widely known
as ‘millennarians.’” Other missionaries testify that perhaps four-fifths of the
young men, who leave this country to carry the tidings of salvation to the
heathen, embrace the doctrine of Christ’s pre-millennial advent, and that too in
the face of the powerful influence of their Theological training. They leave
their homes deeply prejudiced against the doctrine, or profoundly ignorant of
it, and yet as a rule they do not remain long in dark and distant lands before
they become, as was the case with Walter Lowrie and many others, its
enthusiastic advocates. So far from “cutting the nerves,” it is precisely the
truth that braces the nerves of missionary enterprise, and animates the
ambassadors of Christ to constant diligence by the inspiring hope of hastening
His return.
Those who deny this precious truth seem to think
that by bringing against it plausible objections, they establish their own
theory. But such a conclusion by no means follows. The pulling down of the one
does not necessarily build up the other. They seem to forget also that very
serious objections can be alleged against their own system. They might be asked,
for example, how the peoples of the earth are to live during the thousand, or as
some say, the three hundred and sixty-five thousand years of millennial
righteousness? It is claimed that owing to the temperate habits which will then
prevail, to the absence of war and crime, and to the wonderful advance of
medical science, human life will be greatly prolonged, and the human race vastly
increased in number, so that cities now having thousands will have millions, and
countries now having millions will have billions of inhabitants. But as they
will be compelled to earn their bread, as at present, in the sweat of the brow,
and it is not even pretended that the seasons will undergo any change, for
nature must not be interfered with, even though God be dethroned, where
are they all to find provisions, and clothing, and shelter from the pinching
cold? Where are they to obtain fuel and other necessaries that are already
becoming most perplexing questions in many parts of the old world.? If it be
said that the righteous are never forsaken nor their seed seen begging bread,
the reply is that this statement has no application to the Church age, and it
would never be quoted as appropriate to our own times, if it were not for the
wretched habit of thoughtlessly mixing up the Jewish with the Christian
dispensation. The righteous and their seed have no promise of exemption from
suffering during this dispensation, and they have often been seen begging bread
since Jesus had not where to lay His blessed head, and many of them have
starved, and many of them are frequently on the borders of starvation still, as
every city Pastor knows, or ought to know, and tens of thousands and millions of
people during the last few years have literally perished from famine in India
and Persia and Algeria and China. Why would it not be so when the mouths to be
fed are multiplied by countless multitudes, and each must dig the means of
living from the reluctant bosom of the earth? It would be so, and those who
prate of the mighty population, that will swarm on the globe during the thousand
years, ought to reflect that from the necessity of the case it would be an
unhappy population, and that they are predicting a millennium of woe.
The fact is the Church has become so entangled with
the world by the post-millennial heresy, that the former unconsciously adopts
the modes of thought and maxims, and principles of the latter. Hence so many
Christian ministers delight to preach about the progress of the age, without
stopping to inquire what direction the progress is taking, whether from Christ
or towards Christ. Hence too, it is no uncommon thing to hear from the pulpit
idle talk affirming the inalienable rights of man to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness, to trial by jury, to vote, and to other fancied
privileges. Such language may sound very well from the lips of politicians, but
surely the child of God ought to know that man has no inalienable rights, except
the right to be damned, and that there is nothing good in him except as it is
wrought by sovereign grace. Instead, therefore, of being governed by what the
world thinks, and following what the world does, we should never forget that the
whole world lieth in the wicked one, and that we, as strangers and pilgrims
here, must beware of driving our tent pins too deeply in the earth, but sit
loosely to all its interests, and stand aloof from all its purposes and plans,
“waiting for the coming of Christ.” His word contains plain directions to guide
His disciples in every relation which He calls them to sustain; and by keeping
the eye steadily and singly fixed upon HIM the whole body will be full of light,
and there will be no occasion of stumbling in us. Looking back to His finished
work on the cross, and forward to the glory that is to be revealed at His
appearing, we shall be peaceful amid all the confusions of the unbelieving, and
happy even while listening to the voice of His rod.
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