By
D.
M. PANTON, B.A.
The Golden Age of earth - which was never nearer than it is at
this moment since the fall of Adam - is the key to a lock the wards of which it exactly fits. Either because world-conditions are now so
ripe as to compel a Divine Dictatorship or else annihilation, or else because
Satan, whose wisdom lies in imitation of God, is awkwardly counterfeiting what
is coming - never, to a watchful eye, was our Lord’s Reign on earth so
inevitable as a climax to the present world crisis, or more perfect for capping
modern conditions. The great world movements - disarmament, annihilated war,
competent leadership, efficient government, a restored Palestine, leagues of
nations - are crying aloud, by their very hopeless and constant miscarriage,
for the Ideal Empire in which, as photographed millenniums before these
movements began, they are all summed up and perfectly solved.
A
MAN
The supreme fact of the Kingdom, bulking huge on its
thresholds as its absorbing vision, is the King; and the coming World Dictator
is a man, for to man alone has God made the earth subject; and he is of
Israel’s blood, for to Israel alone has been granted the throne of the
nations. Immediately after Isaiah has
depicted the forest of the nations as devastated by divine judgments, he says:-
“And
there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of
his roots shall bear fruit” (Isa. 11: 1). From the prostrate trunk of Jesse, out of
its buried roots - the stump remaining above the ground when a tree is felled (J. A. Alexander, D.D.) - a Man ascends
David’s universal Throne.
THE
SPIRIT
It is extraordinary what emphasis is now laid on the
attributes and equipment of a perfect Dictator, an equipment
which this Ruler is unique. “And the
Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon
him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of
the Lord; and his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.”
The ‘Seven spirits of God’ which are before the Throne (Rev. 5: 6) - that is, the Holy Spirit in
sevenfold manifestation and in immeasurable fulness, transient gifts, but in
permanent attributes - upon Him. The
Spirit as equipment for practical work is strikingly revealed in Bezaleel:- “I have filled
him with the Spirit of God in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge,
and in
all manner of workmanship to devise cunning works.” (Exod. 31: 3).
THE
EQUIPMENT
The sevenfold equipment is most wonderful. (1) Wisdom - special sagacity when
called as a ruler to judge difficult, complex cases, the mastery of principles
and abstract truth before concrete decisions are taken; (2) understanding
- keen, quick discernment, to do the right thing, to say the right word; (3) counsel
- the power to form wise plans,
efficiency of administration, the mature sovereign and diplomat; (4) might
- absolute mastery to enforce decisions when force is right; (5) knowledge
- a limitless mastery of the facts; (6) the fear of the Lord - a perfect Vice-consul of Heaven; and (7) delight in the fear of the Lord - constant and
joyous goodness. It is the wonderful
Lord of Earth that is coming.
THE
ADMINISTRATION
So we arrive at the practical administration. “And he shall not judge after the sight
of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears.”
Statesmen and judges can do little more: they hear the evidence, they
watch the witnesses, and their consequent judgments are not
seldom correct; but it is the Godhead of the Spirit resting on Christ
which, knowing everything, adjudicates
unerringly. So “with
righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity” - therefore
inflicting punishment with exquisite justice – “for the meek of the earth.”
Class war is a wrong solution of a real problem: in the Lord’s Kingdom
every man gets his due and bears his due; and every class is met with
perfect compensating justice. For all is
backed by sinless force. “Force,” says the Nineteenth Century (July, 1934),
“stalks naked
through
* The immense
status of the inhabitants of the Kingdom - presumably rulers, though our Lord’s
words do not so limit it - He has amazingly portrayed:-
“Among them that are born of women there bath not
arisen a greater than John the Baptist: yet he that is but little in the
kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Matt
11: 11).
PEACE
No more penetrating revelation could be given of what the
Kingdom means than the passing of savagery from the animal world. In what our Lord Himself calls “the
REGENERATION” –
earth’s second birth – “when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory”
(Matt. 19: 28), the wild beasts, one of God’s four sore judgments (Ezek. 14:
21) with which he
will yet scourge the earth (Rev. 6: 8), are not exterminated, but changed;
and so perfectly is it the Kingdom of Peace that the tiger and the snake shall “lie down” - no longer crouching to leap – with
the kindly ox and the gentle sheep. “And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall
lie down with the kid; and the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the basilisk’s den.”
The Lord is the Last Adam ruling once again in an un-fallen
creation. The most dangerous reptiles
will submit to the ruling of a little child.
The fearful difficulty at the heart of nature is gone for ever:-
Who trusted God was love indeed,
And love creation’s final law,
Tho’ nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d
against his creed.
For Paul has crowded the whole philosophy of the world’s agony
into one prophecy which the Kingdom alone can fulfil (Rom. 8:
20):- “For we know
that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until
now. For the creation was subjected to
vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope
that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption
into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.”
KNOWLEDGE
One of the vast prophecies of the Bible - magnificent,
incomprehensible, bewilderingly beautiful - now opens
on our vision. “They shall
not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the
earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”
All violence, injustice, assassination, cruelty will have passed from
the world: throughout the whole earth, which is but a slope of the Mount of
God, no one hurts or destroys. And the
reason is given - the boundless knowledge of God. In all earlier ages, regenerating knowledge –
“whom
to know is eternal life” - was at most in lakes and inland seas: vast continents of
ignorance, doubt, atheism blackened the earth: now the all-changing knowledge
of God is a world - covering ocean - no land is heathen, no race infidel, no
soul ignorant. With the transfer to
industry or social need of the £1,000,000,000 now spent annually on armaments,
together with the vast capital sums expended on the repression of crime; the
re-absorption of the ability and power now invested in gigantic institutions of
national offence and defence; the abolishing of all traffic and tariff barriers
now holding up commerce; the elimination of the fearful incubus of disease and
death, with their enormous cost - there begins to dawn on us some conception of
the coming wealth and wonder of the world.
AN
ENSIGN
The vision closes with a view of all nations. “And it shall come to pass in that
day, that the root of Jesse, which standeth for an ensign of the peoples, unto
him shall the nations seek; and his resting-place shall be glorious.” The unity of the race is at last
attained, and Jehovah Nissi – ‘the Lord my banner’- is the rallying ensign of all nations, the source and centre
of the world’s unity. And for the
restoring of Israel, miracle again intervenes: “and the Lord shall utterly
destroy” - that
is, dry up – “the tongue” - the gulf or bay in which it terminates – “of the
Egyptian Sea”
- the Arabian Gulf; “and shall
smite [the
Euphrates] into
seven streams,” so made easily fordable for
crossing. Enormous is the pedestal of
the Millennial Jew. “In those
days, it shall come to pass that ten men, out of all the languages of the nations, shall take hold of the skirt of him
that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with
you” (Zech. 8: 10-23).
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THE SECOND ADVENT
“If it were not for the heavenward
look,” exclaims Dr. Alexander Maclaren, “how could we bear
the sight of earth?” So far from
the doctrine of the Lord’s return cutting the nerve of missionary effort, or
paralyzing service, it will yet prove the sole solvent of despair. Dr.
Duncan Main, of Hang-Chow, one of the sagest and ripest of missionaries,
says:- “We do
not know anything which so certainly sanctifies life to its highest service in
the mission field as this great truth, steadfastly believed and maintained by
God’s servants, while they are journeying through this heathen land, not toward
darkness but the sun-rising. When
through the cloudy mystics, moral mists and half-lights of earth the promise of
the glorious appearing is discerned, it
determines not only the direction of the journey but also its character. It settles the question of our real affinities. It corrects and brightens our outlook on the
things seen. It forbids pessimism and
long-faced Christianity. It smiles at
fear and inspires an unquestioning and dauntless courage, and puts stiffening
into the backbone. It reveals every
difficulty to be but an opportunity of new discovery. It chases all gloom and care from the heart
and all weariness from the feet. It
keeps the first love alive, and fans the smoking flax into a flame. It puts a new song into willing lips and
makes all life tuneful and joyful. It transforms
every curse of mourning into a horn of anointing oil. It makes even the lame man leap as a hart,
and replaces the tiredness of exhausted nature with buoyant energy.”