THE REIGN OF CHRIST ON EARTH
By D. M. PANTON, M.A.
The
sudden defection of so able and godly a teacher as Mr. Phillip Mauro from
Millenarian truth - an abandonment, after decades of conviction, of belief in
our Lord's thousand summers on earth, and on the grave stand that it is
anti-Scriptural* - is a sharp
challenge to all who hold it. For if a coming Kingdom of God breaking in
miraculously upon the present order is a myth, and a downward plunge of the
world to Armageddon an illusion - as far the larger section of the Church,
though not Mr. Mauro, contend; and the denial of an earthly Reign and the
refusal of a physical Advent are two views which naturally and usually coalesce
- the paralysis of all political and social action which such an error must
engender, when every nerve should be strained so to Christianize the world as
to make the Church triumphant, can be nothing short of an immeasurable
disaster, and an error profoundly displeasing to God. It is a challenge extraordinarily practical
and of the first magnitude.
[*
For we so understand Mr. Mauro. "As regards the
period given us as a thousand years,"
he says, "We should
seek the spiritual and symbolical meaning of the term" (Patmos Visions, p. 502). In the new dispensationalism which contradicts the Word of God, he
places, as a leading tenet, "that all mankind
will enjoy uninterrupted peace, plenty, and every earthly gratification for a
thousand years" (The Gospel of the Kingdom, p. 215).
Earth is destroyed in the moment of the Advent (ib.
p. 207). The Great Tribulation is past,
THE KINGDOM
Now
to Daniel it was given supremely to see and foretell the crumpling up of all
earthly empire in the inauguration of the
EARTHLY EMPIRE
Now
the origin and nature of this Kingdom, as revealed by Daniel, could not be more
sharply defined. Our Lord said: "My kingdom is not from hence" (John 18: 36):
so here, a Kingdom in the form of a descending Stone, hewn by no earthly hands,
is launched like a torpedo from an aeroplane. It is "the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of his power in flaming fire, rendering vengeance" (2 Thess. 1: 7).* It is
exclusively a kingdom from on high: its abrupt collision with world-powers is no gradual permeation, but sharp military overthrow; the
vacuum it creates, it fills - therefore the
Kingdom is as literal and earthly as the kingdoms which it supplants:
it is earth's final royalty, imperishable, unchanging, divine. It reigns
in the sense they reigned. Mineral replaces mineral. Imagery is a
falsehood, and language is meaningless,
if the Smashing Stone is not a catastrophic Advent, followed by a literal
Empire. "Behold there came with the
clouds of heaven one like unto the son of man, and there was given him
dominion, and glory, and a kingdom,
THAT ALL THE PEOPLES, NATIONS,
AND LANGUAGES SHOULD SERVE HIM"
(Dan. 7: 13).
[*
Protestant controversialists on the Temporal Power misquote our Lord, Jesus
said, "My Kingdom is not from (ek) this world": He
never said:- "My Kingdom
is not of this world." The Stone descends from heaven, but it is earth which it fills.]
THE NATIONS
So
our Lord shows us the actual descent of the Stone:-
"When the Son of Man shall come in his glory"
- that is, as He has already once been on earth, on the Mount of
Transfiguration - "and all the angels with Him, then shall He sit on the throne of His
glory: and before Him shall be gathered ALL THE NATIONS" (Matt. 25: 31). It is manifest from the
thronging Angels that it is the descent of the Lord at the Second Advent, which
the Saviour had just indicated:- "then shall
appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and they shall see the Son
of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and with great glory"
(Matt. 24: 30). It is a judgment of
"nations" - therefore not of the dead,
among whom there are no nations; as the
final judgment is of the dead alone (Rev.
20: 11), so this judgment is of
the living alone; resurrection is never once named; and it is pre-millennial,
for the Judge says, - "Come ye
blessed of My Father, inherit the
kingdom" (Matt. 25: 34). Finally conclusive are our Saviour's word to
the Apostles :- "I
appoint unto you a kingdom; and
ye shall sit on thrones JUDGING THE
TWELVE TRIBES OF
RESURRECTION
So
now we arrive at the Kingdom itself as revealed in a passage the peculiar value
of which lies in its unique revelation of the kingdom's duration. "And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them; and they lived" - that is, came to
life, they ceased to be the dead - "and REIGNED
with Christ" - whose literal return to earth has been recorded in
the preceding chapter - "A THOUSAND YEARS;
this is the first resurrection" (Rev.
20: 4). It has been universally assumed, with almost unbroken
unanimity, that the dead who stand, at the close of the Thousand Years, before
the Great White Throne (20: 11) are a
resurrection: the conclusion therefore is inexorable
that the first resurrection, preceding it, and ushering in the Thousand
Years, is no less literal.
"The thousand years are mentioned not less than six
times: this intentional, emphatic repetition shows that real importance is
attached to the number" (Hengstenberg). The Kingdom, as Dr. Lange says, is "an aeon, and
specifically the transition-aeon between this present world and the world to
come." It is
peculiarly and exclusively the Kingdom of the Messiah, and so it is four times
named in the Apocalypse as the Kingdom of "the
Christ". For "he that overcometh,"
Jesus promises, "I will give to him to sit down
with Me in My throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with My Father in
His throne" (Rev. 3: 21):
two distinct thrones; the Lord being now seated on His Father's, but then
on His own: while the Throne of Eternity , beyond, is the joint "throne of God and the Lamb".* And most startling is the
nature of the Kingdom depicted, not as a permeating leaven, or a mystical rule,
but as a smashing enforcement
of righteousness; for "he that overcometh, to him will I give authority over the
nations; and he shall rule them with a
rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are BROKEN IN SHIVERS"
(Rev. 2: 26).
[* Since
no man can share the present Throne of God, and equally no man can share the eternal Throne of God and the Lamb, the Throne to which Christ invites
fellow-occupants, and which He makes dependant on overcoming grace, can only
be the Millennial.]
FALSE PROPHECY
For
the grave truth is that golden predictions of earth's future, apart from the
physical Advent, are not merely a denial of God's forecasts, but, actually
constituting false prophecy, reveal an attitude of acute danger. For if
the world is to be conquered for Christ by the Church, the spending of all our
energies on the Gospel alone when God meant those energies to reform the world
is a wrenching of Niagara from its bed in a gigantic miscarriage; but, on the
other hand, if earth's iniquity is heading it for Armageddon, and only the
catastrophic miracle of the Advent can save the world, the situation is exactly
reversed. It must be one or the other. For what would a cheerful
optimism in man's future have betrayed while the
[* It is of the utmost gravity that far the major portion of the truly
regenerate are thus denying the Kingdom as revealed by the
Scriptures. The [regenerate] believer who
shares in a measure of the world's unbelief must share in an exactly
commensurate measure of the world's judgment.
All of
Doing the Father's will is a large demand far exceeding simple,
saving faith, or a backslidden or carnal life. The Crown of righteousness Paul
confines to those who love His appearing.)
THE PRIZE OF OUR CALLING
So
the closer that the great event approaches, the more urgent and crucial becomes
the problem of the co-kings of the Christ. Dr. E.
R. Craven gives the conflicting solutions of the problem that are offered:
"Some hold that they are all the saints; others that they are only the martyrs; others still, that they are the specially
faithful, including the martyrs." With such scholars
as Lange and Stier; such students of prophecy
as Govett
and Pember;
such saintly souls as Fletcher of Madeley, and Robert
Chapman; such God-used missionaries as Hudson
Taylor, and evangelists as Paul
Rader:- we share the profound conviction that in the third solution all Scriptures fit as cogs into a wheel.
It is extremely suggestive that the main objections to a literal Thousand Years
Dr. Barnes finds in the assumption
that all the saints reign with Christ. He says:-
(1) “Every other description of the resurrection and
glory of the saints as such is catholic
in its character, while this is limited;
(2) none but the wicked would remain to be judged in the last judgment, which is inconsistent with the implication of
the opening of the Book of Life: (3) to
tell us that saints risen from the dead, and reigning in glorified bodies with
Christ, are holy, seems to me
very superfluous." These
difficulties die at once under the third solution. The overwhelming
predominance of the martyrs - they compose three out of the four classes named
- makes it virtually impossible to suppose that the Kingdom is shared by all
believers, irrespective of suffering or fidelity, and obviously implies that it
is the epoch of recompense for fiery trial; while the beatitude - "blessed and holy is HE that hath part in the first
resurrection" - carefully individualizes the reward, and isolates
the victor in a peculiar sanctity, and devotes him to an appropriate joy.
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