LECTURE I. THE RIGHT ORDER OF SCRIPTURAL ENQUIRY CONCERNING THE MILLENNIUM. ACTS iii. 22. MOSES TRULY SAID UNTO THE FATHERS, A PROPHET SHALL THE LORD YOUR GOD RAISE UP UNTO YOU OF YOUR BRETHREN, LIKE UNTO ME; HIM SHALL YE HEAR IN ALL THINGS WHATSOEVER HE SHALL SAY UNTO YOU. THE Second Advent is a leading subject in Holy Scripture. It should also be prominent in the preaching of all Christ's Ministers; else are they disobedient to him, and unfaithful to his church committed to their charge. Disobedient to him,for it is his express command that they should preach unto the people, and testify that it is he which was ordained of God to be the judge of quick and dead." Unfaithful to his church,-for what subject can there be more edifying, more invigorating, more consoling, than " that blessed hope, a Acts x. 42. B 2 THREE VARIETIES OF OPINION L. I. and the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ'?" In proportion to the prominence which is due to this topic is the importance of a right judgment concerning it; and yet how many the varieties of opinion which the mere mention of it recalls to the mind! For the second coming of the Lord cannot be fully discussed without some reference to the Millennium of the Apocalypse; and how many the questions which are agitated concerning that thousand years of Satan's binding! Is the period thus predicted already past? Is it now running its course? Or is it wholly future? Again, if yet future, shall it come before or shall it follow after the personal advent of the Lord? With regard to these several questions I need not tell you, that, in the first place, there have been found, in all ages of the Church, men of loving heart and holy life who, fully expecting a Millennial Sabbatism, have not brooked that it should interpose any delay between themselves and the return of their Lord. "The Church," they say, “is bidden to live in hourly expectation of his coming. But how can she do so, if she know for certain that full a thousand years must • Titus ii. 13. τοῦ μεγάλου Θεοῦ καὶ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. The names of many such excellent men will occur in the course of these Lectures. For the present it is enough to mention Mede, Daubuz, Bp. Newton, Cuninghame, Bickersteth, Habershon, Elliott, Birks, Cumming, and the late heavenly. minded James Haldane Stewart. 1 L. I. CONCERNING THE MILLENNIUM. 3 elapse before his appearing? No! this cannot be. Isaiah has pourtrayed the glories of the kingdom,John has announced its duration,-but the King himself must come to establish it. The saints with the weapons of their present warfare are unequal to the task, their work is but preparatory,-it is by the preaching of the Gospel to gather out an elect remnant. Yet a little while, and the Captain himself of the militant host shall be seen approaching in the clouds of heaven,-all enemies shall be trodden under his feet,-the Devil himself shall be shut up in the bottomless pit,—and then shall Jesus reign for a thousand years with his risen and glorified saints over an earth physically and morally renewed. Then one last, one desperate outbreak of hellish evil more, and for ever God shall be all in all." To others however, in the second place, it has seemed that these anticipations, fascinating though they be, are the offspring of a misapprehension of the language of Holy Scripture more excusable under the shadows of the Mosaic dispensation, than in the clear shining of Gospel days.. "Even if a period of bliss, greater far than any that has yet been seen on this our earth, be before us, it will, it can be brought about," they say, " only by the same agents and the same instrumentalities as those which have achieved the past triumphs of the Gospel. Christ may indeed yet go forth conde. g. Whitby, Vitringa, Faber, Wardlaw, Brown, Marsh, Gell. 4 OF THESE PRE-MILLENNARIANISM L. I. quering and to conquer,-but his coming will be testified, not by a visible manifestation of his person, but by the more abundant outpouring of his Spirit. To proclaim any other advent than this before the final consummation of all things, is not to prophesy according to the proportion of faith." And, differing from both of these, there is yet a third class of Apocalyptic expositors',—there are those who believe that neither party has rightly understood the binding of Satan and its associated symbols. They maintain, that that memorable passage in the twentieth chapter of the Revelation prefigures a state of things in the Church's history very different from that which is so commonly anticipated; a period in fact which, if it be not already past, is, at the least, fast hastening to its close. Now it is obvious that the manner in which the Second Advent is preached must, in every case, be more or less affected by the judgment which has been formed with regard to this the Millennial question. It is however by the first of the tenets which I have enumerated that the most powerful influence is exerted. For it is impossible, either e Romans xii. 6. f e. g. Augustine, Luther, Paræus, Foxe, Brightman, Ussher, Hall, Baxter, Lightfoot, and more recently Gipps, Wordsworth, Hengstenberg. See for further information on this subject Lecture VII. and the Notes appended to it. |