Bookshelf/ Vol.I / Vol. IV. Part VI. Contents. Chapter I. 1. 2. 3. II. 1. 2. 3. III. 1. 2. 3. IV. 1. 2. V. 1. 2. Appendix I. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. II. 1a. 1b. 2a. 2b. 2c. 3. 4. III 1. 2a. 2b.

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CHAPTER IV.

SUGGESTIONS AS TO THE PROBABLE ORDER OF EVENTS INTRODUCTORY TO, AND STATE OF THINGS DURING, AND CONSEQUENT ON, THE MILLENNIUM.

IN the Apocalyptic prophecy of chap. xix., the scene depicted as immediately preceding Christ’s destruction of Antichrist, and the introduction of the Millennium, was that of a battle-field, to which both Antichrist and his confederate powers had been gathered, under the invisible guidance of three associated spirits of evil; there specially to conflict (though but as part of a universal war) against Christ’s cause and people. ^[1] It also appeared from other prophetic notices, that the voice of gospel-preaching wonderfully revived on the sounding of the 7th Trumpet, and voice of protest against Antichrist’s deadly errors, and the warning-voice finally of a tremendous destruction by fire impending on Babylon and Antichrist, would be going forth previously far and wide; and make itself heard not in professing Christendom only, but throughout the whole habitable world. ^[2] - And this seemed also to be foreshown, that the destruction of Babylon by fire would precede (by however short an interval) that of Antichrist. - There was intimation given further, in the prefiguration of Babylon’s overthrow, of the state of mind that would just at that time characterize its inhabitants, as if one of complete carnal security: ^[3] - an intimation well agreeing with Ezekiel’s notice of the state of those in the isles of Chittim on whom destruction by fire would fall, nearly contemporarily with that of his antichristian God and Magog, - viz. as “dwelling carelessly in the isles:” ^[4] and agreeing also exactly with Christ’s description of the state of those on whom judgment will fall at his coming; “As it was in the days before the flood, - they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the floods came, and took them all away, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.” ^[5] To which St. Peter adds the further prophecy of open skepticism prevailing to a vast extent on the subject of the nearness of Christ’s advent: “There shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for, since the fathers, fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” ^[6] - It would seem therefore that in this state of things and of feeling in professing Christendom, all suddenly and unexpectedly, and conspicuous over the world as the lightning that shineth from the East even to the West, ^[7] the second advent and appearing of Christ will take place: that, at the accompanying voice of

“Being demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, He answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. Neither shall they say, Lo here! or Lo there! for behold the kingdom of God is within you.”

Ouk ercetai h basileia tou qeou meta parathrhsewv. Oude erousin, Idou wde h, Idou ekei edou gar h basileia tou qeou entov umwn estin.

1. According to the usual interpretation of this passage, it was our Lord’s meaning, that the kingdom of God was simply a spiritual kingdom: - its seat the heart; its rise and progress therein indiscernible. So Campbell, Scott, &c.

To this there occurs the decisive objection, that the observation was addressed, not to Christ’s disciples, but to the Pharisees; - i.e. to his enemies.

Moreover, it is obvious, from our Lord’s connecting the subject in the verses following with his own second advent, that he was answering the Pharisees according to the real intent of their question; and speaking not of any preparatory spiritual reign of Messiah over men’s hearts, but of the glorious establishment of his reign on earth, such as will be seen at his appearing and kingdom.

2. Sensible of the force of the first objection noted, Beza, Grotius, Raphelius, Doddridge, Whitby, and others, have adopted the marginal rendering. Instead of within you, they translate the entov umwn among you; and explain the passage of the Messiah’s kingdom already beginning to be preached among the Jews.

But to this the objection remains in full force, that the subject-matter of discourses was the kingdom as it is to be manifested at Christ’s second advent. Besides which it has been reasonably objected, “that the entov never has the meaning they give it in Scripture, and scarce ever in the Greek writers.” So Scott, after Campbell.

Nor, again, can we well say of our Lord’s ministry, by which He was then laying the foundations of his kingdom, that it “came not with observation.” Was it not by observation, and very careful observation too, of the evidences which Jesus offered, that men were then to be convinced that he was the Christ? Were they not to search the old prophecies with this view, and compare them with his life, character, doctrine, miracles? Were they not to look into, and so discern the signs of the times? Compare Matt. xi. 3-5, “And said unto him, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another? 4: Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: 5: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.”; xvi. 3, “And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?”, John v. 39, “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.”. It was unquestionably with observation that its foundations were then laid.

3. My persuasion is that the clause we speak of has been hitherto totally misapprehended. It has been taken and commented on, as a part of Christ’s address to the bystanders. I conceive that it should be connected with the “Lo here! or, Lo there!” as a part of the exclamation of those men whom Christ speaks of, thus reporting to one another respecting the conjectured fact of Messiah’s advent.

Then the sense will be: “Neither shall there be anything so partially revealed, or secret, in the ultimate establishment and revelation of God’s kingdom, as that there shall be occasion for any doubtful rumors on the point: such as, “Look here! for the King is to be found within our city! or, Look there; for the King is within your city!”^* “For, as the lightning that shineth out of the one part under the heaven shineth even unto the other, so shall also the Son of Man be in his day!”

It must be remembered that the Jews had their minds full of prophecies that spoke of the Messiah fixing his kingdom within their borders: though in what part of Judea He might first manifest himself, whether in Bethlehem, Jerusalem, or Galilee, they might doubt; each of those districts being mentioned in connection with it in prophecy. Hence the current but mistaken notion, that when he came to take the kingdom, He might possibly be concealed for a while, and have to be inquired after and sought out.^† And as the king so the kingdom: the one including and being put for the other, as often elsewhere in Hebrew; the abstract for the concrete.^‡

This interpretation seems to me simple, agreeable to the tenor of prophecy, and altogether in accordance with Christ’s subsequent remarks on this occasion; also with the “cometh not with observation,” of the verse preceding.

I cannot think with Abdiel,^± that Christ’s glorious advent and kingdom may be said to come with observation, because signs of its being near will be observable. The signs of proximity are one thing; the coming or manifestation quite another. Observation is that fixed and attentive regard which we can direct to those objects and events only, that remain a certain length of time before the eyes: and to such objects and events it is then most specially directed, when they have enough of obscurity about them to leave us in a degree of doubt respecting their true character, and enough of interest to excite an anxious eagerness for the development. But so it will not be with the coming and manifestation of the King and Kingdom. It will not come with observation. It will be instantaneous and irresistible in its light of evidence, as the flash of lightning.

The rendering proposed of entov umwn, it will be seen, is within you, in the sense of within your city, or country. This is in strict conformity with the frequent use of the preposition by Greek writers to designate a position within some local division or boundary, and also with their use, in topographical descriptions, of the occupiers of a locality for the locality itself, after prepositions like en, ek, dia, &c., or adverbs like entov, &c. - Thus, for example, Ek Matihnwn reei, is said by Herodotus, i. 202, of a river flowing from the country of Matiene: IIar Aqhnaiouv, wv bebaion on, anecwroun, by Thucydides, i. 2, of Athens. - And so, after adverbs, in the examples following. II W 199; Keiv ienai epi nhov idw sraton eurmn Acaiwn within the locality of their encampment. Xen Anab. vi. 5. 7; Elambanon ta epithdeia entov thv fmlaggov. “citra aciem,” as Zeunius renders the word, behind it. Cyrop. vi, 3, 14; Entov twn skopwn of one advancing from the enemies’ side within the piquets. Cyrop. viii. 3, 9; Wn entov oudeni estin eisienai twn mh tetimhmenwn within  the ranks of guards that lined either side of the road. Anab. i. 10. 3; IIanta osa entov autwn, kai crhmata kai anqrwpouv, eswsan said of Greeks in the camp preserving from the invaders all that was locally within their station.^» (Zeun, intrd ipsos, in ipsorum castris.) So too the Latin; “Ea intra se consumunt Arabes:” Plin. ii. 21: i.e. within their own borders.

Hence, to designate a locality, it is perfectly legitimate to use entov, with a genitive of the inhabitants: e.g. entov twn Galelaewn, for entov thv Gallelaiav; entov umwn, for entov thv cwrav umwn.

To the whole of the passage, thus interpreted, the 24th of Matthew (verse 26, 27) offers so exact a parallel, both as regards the lightning-like coming of Christ, and the incongruity with such a manifestation of surmisings and doubtful rumors on the subject, as both to illustrate and confirm what has been advanced. “If they say to you, Behold He is in the desert; go not forth! Behold He is in the secret chambers; believe it not!” Why? Not because his kingdom was spiritual, within the hearts, and so not to come with observation: but because, “as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be.”

the archangel and trump of God, 1 the departed saints of either dispensation will rise from their graves to meet him, - alike patriarchs, and prophets, and apostles, and martyrs, and confessors, - all at once and in the twinkling of an eye: and that then instantly the saints living at the time will be also caught up to meet Him in the air; these latter being separated from out of the ungodly nations, as when a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats, 1a and all, both dead and living saints, changed at the moment from corruption to incorruption, from dishonor

1. 1 Thess. iv. 16, “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:” and 1 Cor. xv. 52, “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”.

1a. Matt. xxv. 31; “When the Son of Man shall have come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the nations (ta eqnh); and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.”

I conceive this to be primarily a judgment on the living in Christendom; the same as that mentioned in Joel iii. 11, “Assemble yourselves, all ye heathen: . . . and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: (Heb. God’s judgment:) for there will I sit to judge all the heathen (eqnh) round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe,” &c. ^[8] - For 1st, the term “all the nations,” here used by our Lord, can scarce be construed naturally otherwise then as Christ used it before in the same discourse, Matt. xxiv. 14, “This gospel shall be preached to all nations,” or all the Gentiles: (pasi toiv eqnesi;) Luke xxi 24, “Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles (upo eqnwn,) till the times of the Gentiles (kairoi eqnwn) be fulfilled,” or ended: ^[9] i.e., I presume, either the times of the four great Gentile kingdoms; or the parenthetic times of the Jews’ exclusion, and committal of the gospel to the Gentiles. - 2. The nature of the judicial process implies the fact of the gospel having been made known to all the parties judged, and of Christ’s disciples having been among them, and opportunities existed of showing them kindness or unkindness: the which could by no possibility be predicated of the great mass of the dead, or indeed of the living, - I mean of those living or dead in heathen lands; but might fitly be predicated (compare Apoc. xviii. 24, “And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.”)-- of the people of Christendom. - 3. The judgment here past on the wicked appears, on comparison, to include at least that described Apoc. xix. 20; which says, “The Beast and False Prophet were both cast alive into a lake of fire and burning with brimstone.” For in Apoc. xx. 10 St. John declares, “And the devil was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the Beast and False Prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever;” thereby identifying the lake of fire into which Antichrist and his adherents were cast alive, with that intended for the devil’s place of punishment: just as the penal fire adjudged to the wicked of the nations is identified with the same in Matt. xxv. 41, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” ^[10]

At the same time, though there may be a primary reference to the judgment on the living at Christ’s coming, yet secondarily a more extensive judgment on the dead too. - on all the dead, - may also very possibly be included in the parable. How so will be seen in my next Chapter; ^[11]

2. Matt. xxiv. 40, 41, “Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. 41: Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.”

to glory, though with very different degrees of glory; 3 and all alike welcomed (the faithful receiver of a prophet, as well as the prophet himself 4) to enter on the inheritance and kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world; and so, in a new angelic nature, 5 to take part in the judging and ruling of the world. 6  - Meanwhile it would also appear that with a tremendous earthquake accompanying, of violence unknown since the revolutions of primeval chaos, 7 (an earthquake under which the Roman world 8 at least is to reel to and fro like a drunken man, 9 the solid crust of this earth shall be broken, and foundations burst forth from its inner deep, not as once of water, but of liquid fire; of fire now pent up within it as in a treasure-house, 10 and intended as the final habitation of devils: ^[12] 11, that this, I say, shall then burst forth and engulf the vast territory of the Papal Babylon, and the godless of its inhabitants; 12 thence spreading even to

3. 1 Cor. xv. 41, 42, “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory. 42: So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:”.

4. Matt. x. 41, “He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward.”.

5. Luke xx. 36, “They are isaggeloe,  . . . being children of the resurrection.”

6. Compare Heb. ii. 5, “He hath not subjected to angels the world to come whereof we speak: “ (thn oikoumenhn thn mellousan) also Matt. xix. 28, “And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”, Luke xix. 17, “And he said unto him, Well, thou good servant: because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities.”, Apoc. iii. 21, “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.”, xx. 4, “And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.”.

7. The structure of the earth’s crust seems clearly to indicate violent previous revolutions: nor, I conceive, is there anything whatsoever in the Mosaic history of creation opposed to this view; as it only takes up our earth’s history from its preparation for man’s habitation. As regards the word ar;B;, created, in Gen. 1. 1, it will suffice to compare its use in Isa. lxv. 17, “For, behold, I create (ar;B;) new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.” to remove difficulties thence arising.

8. It is well know that the words gh and oikoumenh are often used in a limited sense of Judæa, or the Roman earth, (compare Matt. xxvii. 45, “Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.”, Mark xv. 33, “And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.”, Luke iv. 25, “But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land;”, Apoc. xi. 10, “And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth.”, Luke ii. 1, “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.”, &c.,) just as the Romans themselves called their world the orbis terrarum. And, after careful consideration of the various prophetic descriptions of the consummation, I incline to think that the meaning of the term, when used in these prophecies of the earth’s primary convulsions on Christ’s second advent, is thus limited, and that it refers to the Roman world alone: - with this modification, moreover, that the circumstance of the separation of the Eastern and Western Empire, and political destruction of the former by the Turkish invasion, having caused the phrase to be used in the later Apocalyptic prophecies of Western or Papal Christendom only, it may perhaps be so in those of the consummation also. - The idea of some other and more universal conflagration at the post-millennial judgment is not hereby excluded: this latter being the consummation, as it were, of the earlier. On which point I must again refer to my next Chapter.

How the thrill in such case, even were there no supernatural interposition, would be felt through the while habitable earth, might be partially imagined from the extensive vibration of great earthquakes. E.g. the noise and shock of the great earthquake connected with the eruption of the volcano at Sumbawa, in 1815, is said to have been felt and heard 970 miles off. Of course however the supernatural character of the earthquake at Christ’s second advent precludes all comparison with mere natural convulsions.

9. Isa. xxiv. 20, “The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again.” - In verse 22 of that chapter we read, “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.” With which compare Apoc. xx. 5, “But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.”

10. 2 Peter iii. 7, “The heavens and the earth which now are [i.e. contradistinctively to those that were overwhelmed by the flood] are by the same word stored with fire [teqhsaurismenoi puri, so I understand the phrase] being kept unto the day of judgment,” &c. It is only by this rendering of the teqhsaurismenoi puri that the apostle’s evidently intended antithesis can be expressed, between the old world stored with water, by which as the instrumentality it at its appointed time perished; and the present world stored with fire, by which it, in its time, is also to perish. Besides that, in the received sense, teqhsaurismenoi is a word not merely superfluous but inappropriate; “stored up” being a phrase used of things laid aside from present use, which certainly our present earth and atmosphere are not. ^[13] - Compare, as to the water, Psal. xxxiii. 7; (Sept.) tiqeiv en qhsauroiv abussouv and, as to the fire, Job xxviii. 5; rendered by the Chaldee, “Beneath the earth is Gehenna.” ^[14] Also Isaiah xxx. 33; “Tophet is ordained of old: for the king it is prepared: he hath made it deep and large: the pile thereof is fire and much wood: the breath of the Lord, as a stream of brimstones, doth kindle it.”

Similarly Turtullian, Apol. 47; “Gehennam, quæ est ignis areani subterranei ad poenam thesaurus.” In which view of the fiery interior of the earth, other Fathers agreed: as Jerome on Jonah ii.; “Infernus in medio terræ esse porhibetur.”

As to the suggestion of our earth being stored with fire, it seems a fact indubitable. - For, while the earth’s form of an oblate spheroid, the crystalline character of its primitive rocks, the evident action of heat on its earliest strata, and absence of organic remains from them, as if at that time from heat uninhabitable, and the proofs, alike in the animal and vegetable fossils of other subsequently formed strata, of a temperature once greatly higher than that of the earth’s present surface, but gradually diminishing and approximating to it, - while, I say, geology presents to us in these phænomena a body of evidence irresistible, (if only we suppose the laws of matter the same formerly as now,) for the fact of our earth having been originally fluid from intense heat, and having gradually, in the course of ages, cooled down so as to constitute the outer crust solid and mild in temperature, such as we now experience it, geology also calls attention to another fact, viz. that this cooling down is only superficial or exterior. Of this the gradual increase of heat observed on descending to any depth below the surface, ^[15] and the ejection from time to time in all quarters of the globe of boiling streams of lava, and other minerals from below the primitive granite, furnish sufficient indication. And the irresistible violence of these eruptions of the more central earth’s boiling and inflammable materials, shows that there is as it were a train laid, that waits but the bidding of Almighty to break up the earth’s solid crust, and wrap this our world, or any fated part thereof, in a universal conflagration. - I may refer to the first Plate in Dr. Buckland’s Bridgewater Treatise, as very illustrative of this point. He who has familiarized himself with it can scarcely, I think, help realizing the fact, that the ground he treads is under wrought with volcanic agencies; ready, the instant the Almighty may please to employ them, to execute the predicted judgment.

11. See the end of Note 1a p. 99

12.Apoc. xviii. - To this same catastrophe Walter Brute, A.D. 1391, applied Ezekiel’s denunciation, xxviii. 18, - against the Prince of Tyrus; “I will bring forth a fire from the midst of the whole earth, and will make thee as ashes upon the earth, in the sight of all that behold three.” Foxe iii. 138. The time noted (verses 25, 26, “Thus saith the Lord GOD; When I shall have gathered the house of Israel from the people among whom they are scattered, and shall be sanctified in them in the sight of the heathen, then shall they dwell in their land that I have given to my servant Jacob. 26: And they shall dwell safely therein, and shall build houses, and plant vineyards; yea, they shall dwell with confidence, when I have executed judgments upon all those that despise them round about them; and they shall know that I am the LORD their God.”) --- seems very remarkably to be that of the final restoration of Israel. - Compare what was said of Antichrist’s, or the King of the North’s, ultimate perishing at that same time, according to Dan. xi. 45, p. 58 suprà; and also the dwellers in the isles, as fortold by Ezekiel, p. 65. Compare too Dan. vii. 11, and the passage referred to at pp. 115, 116

Palestine, 13 and everywhere, as in the case of Sodom, making the very elements to melt with fervent heat: 14 and that there perhaps the flame shall consume Antichrist at the head of his confederacy, 15 while the sword also does its work of slaughter; 16 the risen saints being perhaps (as would seem not improbable from Enoch’s, 17 St. Paul’s, 18 and the Apocalyptic prophecies) 19 the attendants of the Lord’s glory in this destruction of Antichrist, and assessors in his judgment on a guilty world. - And then, immediately, it would seem also that the renovation of this earth is to take place: its soil being purified by the very action of the fire, 20 in all

13. Zech. xiv. 4, 5, “And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south. 5: And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal: yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the LORD my God shall come, and all the saints with thee.”.

14. 2 Pet. iii. 12, “Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?”.

15. Apoc. xix. 20, “And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.”

16.Apoc. xix. 21, “And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.”, also Isa. lxvi. 16, “For by fire and by his sword will the LORD plead with all flesh: and the slain of the LORD shall be many.”, Joel iii. 10-13, “Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong. 11: Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O LORD. 12: Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. 13: Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great.” &c

17. Jude 14, “The Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints.”

18. 1 Thess. iii. 13, “To the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.”

19. It is said, just before the description of the Beast’s destruction, Apoc. xix. 11, 14, “And I saw heaven opened; and behold a white horse, and one that sate on it. . and the armies in heaven followed him on white horses, clothed in fine linen (busson) clean and white.” On this question arise, What coming of Christ was this, and what hosts these that accompanied him; - angelic hosts, or hosts of the risen saints? On the first question, Mr. Bickersteth exclaims, “Here can be no mistake:” as if the symbolized coming must be personal. And though we cannot surely, on the mere evidence of a symbolic picture, conclude on the parousia being Christ’s personal advent, yet it seems not improbable: the heaven now for the first time being said to be opened, as if to permit the passage to earth of some one seated beyond the visible heaven; according to Acts iii. 21, “Whom the heaven must receive unto the times of the restitution of all things.”

Connected with this is an argument of Daubuz, drawn from the dress of the hosts that followed Christ. He says that the bussov or byssine linen dress, now ascribed to them, is here mentioned for the first time; white robes, atolai leukai, being the dress specified as given to the souls under the altar previously: - also that this byss, woven from a plant in Palestine, (so Pausanias tell us,) made the very finest whitest linen in use among the ancients: and that it is spoken of in Gen. xli. 42, “And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and put it upon Joseph's hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck;” - as worn by Joseph; in 1 Chron. xv. 27, “And David was clothed with a robe of fine linen, and all the Levites that bare the ark, and the singers, and Chenaniah the master of the song with the singers: David also had upon him an ephod of linen.” - as worn by King David, on occasion of bringing up the ark to Jerusalem; and in Exod. xxviii. 39, “And thou shalt embroider the coat of fine linen, and thou shalt make the mitre of fine linen, and thou shalt make the girdle of needlework.” - as appointed for the priests under the ark the Jewish law. Thus, from its being the finest linen, and that both the royal and the pontifical robe, he infers that it signifies the bridal dress of incorruption and purity, given to them that are to be kings and priests at the resurrection; and so betokens the hosts of Apoc. xix. 14, “And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.” - to be the risen saints, now associated with Christ in judgment, as afterwards in reigning. (I have just alluded to this Note * p. .26, supra) ^[16] [Editor: we introduce the note here: 1. Bussinon. This was linen of the finest kind; such as kings and priests and nobles wore: for example Joseph, Gen. xli 42; David, 1 Chron. xv. 27; the priests, Exod. xxviii. 39; and the rich man in the parable, Luke xvi. 19. - On the possibly intended meaning of the world here, as suggested by Daubuz in a very interesting critique, I reserve my observations till the chapter iv. following.] -- Elsewhere angels too seem noted as attendant See Matt. xxv. 31, “ When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:”, John i. 51, “And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.”.But I think what is said in Apoc. xix. 19 of the Beast, and his allied kings “being gathered to make war with him that sate on the horse, and with his army,” better suits the view of Christ’s attendant hosts in this Apocalyptic vision being his saints: the war of the Beast against Christ and them being, as I suppose, against their cause.

20. I have already, at p. 72 note 596 suprà, noted this as one characteristic point in the pre-millennial views of the early Fathers. Let me quote Methodius, as a specimen “Says the great Patriarch Methodius,” observes Andreas on Apoc. xx. 11, “It pleases me not what some assert, that the whole universe is to perish together, and heaven and earth and air to be no more. Rather the whole world will through its inundation of fire be burnt so that its purification and renewal shall be the result. Even as St. Paul speaks Rom. viii. 19.” So too Origen Contrà Marcion, p. 65. (Ed. Basle 1674.)

Very much the same seems to have been the view of the early Reformers of our Church. In King Edward the Sixth’s Catechism, to the question, “By what way, and with what fashion and circumstances,” there is to be brought about the renewing of all things, and introduction of the new heavens and earth of which St. Peter speaks, the following answer is made. “I will tell you as well as I can, according to the witness of the same apostle. The heavens shall pass away like a storm: the elements shall melt away: the earth and all the works therein shall be consumed with fire:- as though he should say, As gold is wont accustomed to be fined, so shall the whole world be purified with fire, and brought to his full perfection. The lesser world, which is man, following the same, shall likewise be delivered from corruption and change. And so for man this greater world (which for his sake was first created) shall at length be renewed, and be clad with another hue much more pleasant and beautiful.” P. 510. Parker Ed.

The supposed fact of the earth’s purification by fire is another point on which geology offers interesting illustration. For it is a fact, I believe, that volcanic fire will sometimes make the most sterile parts fertile: so that it has been said, for example, of the great African Zahara, or Desert, that nothing more than fire of this kind is needed to turn it into fertility.

that shall remain of it, for “the nations” of the saved, i.e. the undestroyed Gentiles 21. and restored Israel; (these being perhaps they that are called to the marriage-supper of the Lamb: 22 and the Spirit too poured out from on high to renew, in a yet better sense, the moral face of nature: and that so the millennial commencement of Christ’s eternal reign with his saints is to begin: 23 the Shekinah, or personal glory of Christ amidst the saints, being manifested chiefly in the Holy Land, and at Jerusalem; 24 but the whole earth partaking of the blessedness: and thus the regeneration of all things, 25 and the world’s redemption from the curse, having their accomplishment, according to his promise, at the manifesting of the sons of God. 26.

Such seems to me to be in brief the appointed order of events, introductory to the Millennium. I pray the reader to believe that it is in no presumptuous of light spirit that I have ventured on these awful and mysterious subjects.

21. As distinguished from the plhrwma twn eqnwn of Rom. xi. 25, or fullness of Gentile first-fruits, gathered into the Church of the redeemed under the present dispensation: the which, together with the older Jewish first-fruits, is to partake at Christ’s coming of the glories of the first resurrection. This distinction is important, but too often overlooked.

22.See pp. 52, 55, suprà.

23. At p. 71, 72, suprà I have already referred to Justin Martyr, Irenæus, and Lactantius, as examples from the early premillennarian Fathers, showing that they did not hold the 1000 years to be any more than the commencement of an eternal reign; therein following Dan. vii. 18, “But the saints of the most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever.” and Apoc. xxii. 5, “And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever,” and Apoc. xxii. 5.

24. It is to be observed that Mr. Faber, and other anti-premillennarians, constrained by the force of Scripture evidence, allow not a little of what has been said in this Chapter: and that a mighty earthquake, a volcanic conflagration, a millennium of blessedness, and even the Shechinah, or visible revelation of Christ’s glory, are to follow on the destruction of Antichrist. S.C. iii. 329, 336. It is only the fact of this being the glory of Christ’s second advent, and the saints’ concomitant resurrection, that Mr. F. contravenes.

25.Matt. xix. 28, “And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”

26. Rom. viii. 19, “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.”

I have dome so only under a sense of the necessity laid on me an expositor: and offer what has been said, simply as suggestions of what I infer to be most probable from Scripture; but which I fully allow, must, in respect of details, be in no inconsiderable measure conjectural and uncertain.

It had long been a disputed question among prophetic expositors, (as my sketch of the chief millennial theories given in the preceding Chapter will have shown already,) where precisely the New Jerusalem of the 21st and 22nd chapters of the Apocalypse 27 is to have its position; whether during, or only after the Millennium: and, if synchronous with it, whether as identical, or not, with the glorified Jerusalem prophesied of in the Old Testament. Of the older Fathers alike the premillennarian Tertullian 28 and the anti-premillennarian Augustine explained the glorified Jerusalem of Old Testament prophecy as identical with that of the Apocalypse; the one however as symbolic of the risen saints’ millennial glory, the other of their heavenly and everlasting blessedness.29 Again, of the moderns, we have seen that Whitby and Vitringa, while also identifying the two figurations, did yet explain them to signify the millennial earthly blessedness of the still living Christian Church:30 and that

27. Apoc. xxi. 1. “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. 2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them; and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. 4 And God shall wipe away all tears; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former thins are passed away. 5. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said [unto me], Write: for these words are true and faithful. 6. And he said unto me, It is done. ^[17] I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. 7. He that overcometh shall inherit all things: and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. 8. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

9. And there came [unto me] one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, full of the seven plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife. 10. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that [great] city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God; 11. Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal; 12. And it had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel: 13. On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. 15. and he that talked with me had a golden reed, to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof. 16. And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth; and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and breadth and the height of it are equal. 17. And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel. 18. And the building of the wall of it was of Jasper; (probably reddish brown) and the city was pure garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; (red) the second, sapphire; (variety of blue) the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald; (deep green) 20. The fifth sardonyx; (variety of red and white) the sixth sardius; (the fifth and sixth, both varieties of tinted quartz) the seventh, chrysolite: (a yellow stone) the eighth, beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprasus; (a light green color) the eleventh, a jacinth; (yellow-orange) the twelfth, an amethyst. (deep violet) 21. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl; and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. 22 And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. 23 And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. 24. And the nations [of them which are saved] shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it. 25. And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there. 26. And they shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into it. 27. And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

xxii. 1. And he showed me the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb. 2 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3. And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him; 4. And they shall see his face; and his name shall be on their foreheads. 5. And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, nor light of the sun; for the Lord God shall give them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.”

28. Adv. Mare. iii. 25.

29. See p. 72.

30. See p. 74. So tool Bryce Johnston.

Mr. Faber would separate the two; and make Isaiah’s Jerusalem of the latter day, with its new heaven and earth, alone millennial, that of the Apocalypse post-millennial.31 To which I may add, that some expositors, while explaining one or both to prefigure earthly glories destined for God’s people, make the restored and converted Jews nationally, not the Church Catholic generally, the grand object and chief intended recipients of the coming glory32. So does the great question about the Jews’ restoration intermixed itself with that respecting the New Jerusalem; and force upon us at this point the more direct consideration of the Jewish people’s destiny in the coming future.

31. S. C. iii. 340, 298. So too, nearly, Mr. Brown. On what is more peculiar in his view see p. 87 suprà

32. E.g. Mr. Kelly.

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