CHAPTER IV.

NO MILLENNIAL REVIVAL OF JEWISH PECULIARITIES.

THAT the unbelieving Jews should look for a rebuilt temple, a re-established priesthood, the restoration of their bloody sacrifices, and an Israelitish supremacy-at once religious and civil-over all the nations of the earth, when their Messiah comes, is not to be wondered at. With these views of Old Testament prophecy, their fathers rejected Jesus and put him to death, as he neither realized their expectations, nor professed to do so; but, on the contrary, directed his whole teaching to the uprooting of the prevalent conceptions of Messiah's character, work, and kingdom, and to the establishing of views directly opposite. Unless they had been prepared to abandon their whole scheme of Old Testament interpretation, they could not consistently have acknowledged Jesus to be the Messiah. But that any Christians should be found agreeing with the unbelieving Jews in their views of Old Testament prophecy-that there should be a school of Christian interpreters, who, while recognising Jesus as the promised Messiah, and attached in all other respects to evangelical truth, should nevertheless contend vehemently for Jewish literalism, and, as a necessary consequence, for Jewish altars, sacrifices, and supremacy-is passing strange. It is true that this Judaistic element was not wholly expelled from the minds of the apostles before the day of Pentecost; it is true that even after this it had its advocates in some of the infant Churches-as the Galatian and Colossian; and it is true that, even when extruded thence by the zeal with which

Paul attacked it, and the light which he poured upon the Old Testament by his rich expositions, it still lingered, and struggled for a footing, and succeeded in intrenching itself in a number of shallow minds, and forming small sects whose precise tenets are still matter of dispute among ecclesiastical historians.* But characterised as they were by low views of the Person and Work of Christ, as well as of every thing else in religion, their existence was brief and outside the orthodox Church; nor have such Judaizing opinions ever been able to raise their head, save in a few isolated cases, till the present day. The most remarkable fact of all is, that those who held the premillennial theory in the second and third centuries, seem not to have believed in any literal, territorial restoration of the Jews at all,-much less in their millennial supremacy over all nations, and the re-establishment of their religious peculiarities.

How strangely, in the light of these facts, do the following extracts from the premillennialists of our day strike the ear :—

"Zion and Jerusalem," says Mr Fry (Rector of Desford), "are to be the great source of spiritual blessedness to the whole world. This city of Jehovah' is represented as the grand centre and emporium of civil and religious power, whither all nations resort for their laws and government. 'He shall reign in Jerusalem unto the ends of the earth.'... But what most surprises us is, that a ritual of worship, so like the Mosaic ceremonial, should again be restored by Divine appointment, rather than institutions more analogous to those of the gospel Church; and especially, that the sacrifices of animal victims should be again enjoined! For we read of all the various offerings of the Levitical economy, not only 'peace-offering' and 'meat-offering,' but 'burnt-offerings,' 'trespass-offerings,' and 'sin-offerings.' We can only reply, such is the Divine pleasure. It is not for us to judge what would be best for Israel and for the world at large in this future age." "However averse to our preconceived notions may be the restitution of ceremonial sacrifices, that restitution exactly corresponds with the prediction

* I have expressed this more generally than in the second edition, with the terms of which Mr Wood finds fault (p. 250), although there is nothing in his quotation from Neander to contradict my statement.

in the close of the fifty-first Psalm, where a reference is clear to Israel of the last times: 'Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion: build the walls of Jerusalem. Then wilt thou desire the right sacrifices, an offering and a holocaust; then shall they offer steers upon thine altars." 999*

"In Ezek. xliii. 26," says Mr Freemantle, "it is commanded that the priests shall purge the altar seven days. . . . . And upon the eighth day and so forward, the priest shall make the burnt-offerings upon the altar, and the peace-offerings, and God will accept them. Thus the legal ceremonies will be celebrated upon the day of the resurrection of Christ. . . . . . Then the song of thanksgiving in Ps. lxvi. shall resound through the temple aisle. . . . 'We will go into thy house with burnt-offerings; I will offer unto thee burnt-sacrifices of fatlings, with the incense of rams; I will offer bullocks with goats.' And this forms the fourth and last feature [of 'Israel's glory after the advent'], viz., the renewal of sacrificial worship.

But it may be asked, Is it commanded? Assuredly. Turn to a prophecy relating to times subsequent to the restoration of the twelve tribes, and you have the answer (Jer. xxxiii. 17, 18), ‘Thus saith the Lord, David shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel; neither shall the priests the Levites want a man before me to offer burnt-offerings, and to kindle meat-offerings, and to do sacrifice continually.' And in Ezek. xlv., xlvi., the most minute directions as to the manner in which the sacrifices are to be offered, and which in some respects will be found to differ from the details under the law of Moses." +

"At that [millennial] time," says Mr Brock, "the [civil or political] ascendency of Israel will be paramount over the Gentiles. Clear to this effect are the predictions of the prophets. . . . . The same ascendency shall also be exercised by Israel over the Gentiles in spiritual things. Jerusalem will be the metropolitan city of the converted nations. "The mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains; and all nations shall flow unto it,' &c."‡

Jerusalem," says Mr Pym, "shall be the METROPOLIS OF THE WORLD, from which the law shall go forth, and be the CENTRE OF WORSHIP That this shall then distinguish

FOR THE WHOLE EARTH.

*The Second Advent, &c., by the Rev. John Fry, 1822, vol. i. pp. 120, 583, 585, 586.

† Lent Lect. for 1843, ut supra, pp. 276, 278, 279.

Lent Lect. for 1846 ("Israel's Sins and Israel's Hopes"), pp. 271–273.

Jerusalem above every other city, is apparent from the words of the prophet (Isa. ii. 2, 3), 'The mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains,' &c. 'From one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me' (Isa. lxvi. 23). ‘Every one that is left of all the nations shall go up from year to year to worship, . . . . and to keep the feast of tabernacles.' His people shall be exalted above all others. And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the alien shall be your ploughmen and your vine-dressers. But ye shall be named the priests of the Lord, ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles,' &c. When I read such passages as these, do I marvel that the heart of an Israelite according to the flesh should beat high in prospect of the future glories of his nation? Why, the blood runs faster through my own veins when I consider the predictions of their national greatness upon earth in the ages to come; much more, then, must it kindle the affections of that people who are the subject of these promises. It would appear from this passage, that the ordinary avocations of life, such as the dressing of vines and the tending of flocks, will be performed for them by the Gentiles, whilst they are to be engaged in the higher offices of being the priests of the Lord.""*

added to the list

I regret that the Messrs Bonar must be of those who have adopted these views. As I shall have occasion to quote a few words from Mr A. Bonar's "Leviticus" on this subject by and by, I merely refer here to his "Redemption," ch. vi. Dr H. Bonar, after endeavouring to show that the literal sense of these prophecies, and particularly of the last eight chapters of Ezekiel, is the only practicable one, exclaims

....

"Why should not the temple, the worship, the rites, the sacrifices, be allowed to point to the Lamb that was slain in the millennial age, if such be the purpose of the Father? . . . . How needful will [such] retrospection be then, especially to Israel? How needful, when dwelling in the blaze of a triumphant Messiah's glory, to have ever before them some memorial of the cross, some palpable record of the humbled Jesus, some visible exposition of his sin-bearing work [i.e., by the sacrificing of beasts, as of old !], in virtue of which they have been forgiven, and saved, and loved. . . . . And if God *Lent Lect. for 1847 ("Good Things to Come''), pp. 165-167.

should have yet a wider circle of truth to open up to us out of his Word concerning his Son, why should he not construct a new apparatus for the illustration of that truth?"*

In a recent work of Mr Molyneux, the same views are urged with at least equal boldness:

"The temple-worship, with all its varied rites and ceremonies, will be restored, and sacrifices again prevail. . . . . The law must not be in vain even to them; it must yet, peradventure, point back to Christ, and teach them retrospectively—what it was intended to teach them prospectively-the sacrificial and expiatory nature of his work. They will see him in glory, in the heavenly city, on the throne [that is, in their mortal bodies, and with eyes of flesh!] and they themselves will be living in light and joy on the regenerated earth; but they must learn [that is, by the spectacle of slain beasts as of old !] through what he passed to that throne, and through what they have been brought to so glorious an inheritance; and the law will possibly be their schoolmaster to teach them this. Thus, the sacrifices themselves (presenting, however, the object in a stronger light) may virtually be to them what the sacrament of the 'supper' is actually to us; and they in the former [the sacrifices] may continually show forth the Lord's death, when He shall have come, as we continually in the latter do show forth the Lord's death till He come."+

On reading these statements, a number of thoughts crowd into the mind, of which the following are a few.

1. Such startling literalism goes a great deal farther than its advocates are willing, or indeed able to carry it. They are compelled to stop short; and, so doing, it becomes evident that their principles of interpretation are radically wrong. To show this, we have but to go through with the literal interpretation of their own passages. Thus,

Isa. ii. 2, 3: "And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will

* Coming and Kingdom, &c., p. 222.

† Israel's Future, &c., Fourth Thousand, 1853, pp. 252, 257, 258.