[It
is recommended that the following collection of
writings should be read in conjunction with Back to
Pentecost by Andrew Murray.]
-------
[NOTE.
Cover
picture above, and the information
on page 5,
are from: Herald
- the magazine of
Christian Witness to
*
*
*
HE THAT PUTTETH HIS TRUST IN ME SHALL
POSSESS THE LAND,
AND SHALL INHERIT MY
-------
And thou shalt observe the feast
of weeks,
of
the first fruits
of wheat harvest.
The central thought in
connection with each of
The
feast
of weeks,
better known as Pentecost,
is described at greatest length in Lev. 23:
15-21. Here it is
connected with
the first
fruits of wheat harvest.
This at once makes us think of James 1: 18:
Of His own will begat He us
with the Word of truth, that
we
should be a kind of
firstfruits of
His creatures.
Dispensationally, the feast received a
partial fulfilment at the descent of the Spirit in Acts 2. We say partial fulfilment,
for Peters words in Acts
2: 16, But this is that which
was spoken by the prophet Joel, rather than this is
the fulfilment
of that which
was spoken by [the
prophet] Joel,
tell us that the complete realization is yet future:
as indeed it is.
The two loaves
of Lev. 23:
17
pointed, first, to Jew and Gentile now gathered
together and made fellow-members of the Body
of Christ, but, ultimately they
foreshadowed the re-uniting of the two houses of
Israel (cf.
Ezek. 37:
16)
when, after this dispensation [or evil
age] has run its course, the
Jews will
be
restored once more to Divine favour.
And the feast of ingathering
at the years end.
This
is
better known as the feast
of tabernacles.
It was
the final one on
[* NOTE. This Judgment takes place after the time of Death, and before the time of
Resurrection; and the result of this Judgment
will be the determining factor, as to who, from amongst the redeemed people of God,
will be accounted worthy to attain to
that age (the Lords millennium) and
the resurrection from the dead (Luke 20: 35,
R.V.) See
also Phil. 3: 11.
It
is, I hope, unnecessary to say that Hades and the
Thrice in the year shall all
your men children appear before the Lord God,
the
God of
The particular occasions
specified were, in the feast of unleavened
bread, and in the feast of
Weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles (Deut. 16: 16).
Really, those feasts contemplated three
distinct dispensations: the
first, the O. T., when
As
we
have said, the feasts
had to do with corporate responsibility,
and corporate privilege
too, for, Behold, how
good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell
together in unity (Psa. 133:
1). But alas,
history has repeated itself.
At the beginning of
But
at
the end of the Old Testament period the corporate
testimony of
For
I will cast out the nations before thee and enlarge
thy borders: neither
shall any
man desire thy land,
when thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord
thy God thrice in the year (v.
24). How
remarkably does this verse illustrate Prov. 16:
7: When
a mans ways please the Lord, He
maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.
God will not allow any man to he
His debtor: He has promised, Them that honour Me, I will honour (1
Sam. 2: 30). So it was
here. These
Israelites were going up to the temple to worship the
Lord; in their absence He would guard their homes.
Neither
shall any man desire thy land, when
thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord thy God
thrice in the year.
How
strikingly does this demonstrate the absoluteness of
Gods control of His creatures!
And man, though fallen and rebellious, is no
exception. As
Dan. 4:
35
tells us, He doeth according to His will in
the army of heaven, and among the
inhabitants of the earth:
and none can stay His hand.
So it was here.
The male Hebrews were to leave their farms
and go up to the temple in
Thou shalt not offer the blood
of My sacrifice with
leaven.
God was
very jealous of the types.
Why? Because they pointed forward to the
person and work of Christ. Thus, His jealousy of the types
was His guarding of the glory
of His beloved Son. Therefore,
inasmuch as the sacrifices pointed forward to the Lord
Jesus, leaven
(which is an emblem of evil) must
be excluded,
for He is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from
sinners (Heb. 7: 26).
Thou shalt not
offer the blood of My
sacrifice with leaven.
Very
wonderful
and blessed is it to observe how the Lord here refers
to the sacrifice: He does not say the blood of thy
sacrifice,
but, MY
sacrifice. This is also
the language of the antitype: The Sacrifice offered
once for all, was of Gods appointing, was
of Gods providing, was
for Gods satisfaction.
Man had no part or lot in it whatsoever. Salvation is
of the Lord.
Frequently is this same truth brought out in
the types.
In Gen.
22: 8 we hear Abraham saving to his
sons query of Where is the lamb for the burnt
offering? - God will
provide Himself
a
lamb.
In Ex. 12:
27
we are told, It is the Lords Passover. In
connection with the two goats on the day
of atonement, lots were cast, one lot for the Lord (Lev. 16:
8):
and so on.
Neither shall the sacrifice of
the of the passover
be left
unto
the morning.
The
paschal
lamb was to be eaten on the same night it had been
slain and roasted in fire, not left over to be
partaken of on the morrow (see 12: 10).
The application of this detail of the type is
very solemn and searching.
To have eaten the lamb on the morrow,
would have been to dissociate it front the import of its death.
The eating of the lamb speaks to us of the
believer (already sheltered by His blood) feeding on
Christ: eating the lamb the same night it was killed,
tells us that we are ever to feed upon Christ with a
deep sense in our souls of His death and bearing
judgment for us (roast with
fire) really involved for Him. Note how
Christ Himself emphasized this in John
6: first vv. 50,
51,
then vv. 53-56!
The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou
shalt
bring unto the house
of the Lord thy God.
This Divine ordinance receives
amplification in Deut.
26: 1-11. The
interested reader would find it profitable to
prayerfully study in detail the whole of that passage
for himself; we can but summarise its teaching here.
First,
it had to do with
All
of
the above is rich in its typical teaching, much of
which has already been before us in other connections.
That which is here distinctive, is the contrast
presented between what we find in Ex. 34:
22
and here in v. 26. The
[first of the]
firstfruits
of wheat
harvest refers
to
Christ (cf. [Acts 2:
22-28,
31-34];
John 12: 24
with 1 Cor.
15: 23). But the first
of the fruit of thy
land
or inheritance* speaks, we believe, of the
Holy Spirit, who is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession
(Eph. 1:
13, 14).
Do we not get the antitype of Ex. 34:
26
in Rom. 8:
22,
Ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit. And
in the light of Deut.
26: 10,
11 are we not
taught that we should thank God as heartily for the
gift of the [Holy] Spirit as for the gift of
His Son? Do
we realize that we are as much indebted to, and
therefore have as much cause of praise for, the work
of the [Holy] Spirit in
us, as the work of Christ for us!
[*NOTE.
The redemption of the
purchased possession, can also have
reference to an inheritance
in the land, at the time of the redemption (i.e.,
the setting free) of the
whole creation, which groaneth
and travaileth in pain until now, (Matt. 5: 5;
Rom. 8:
22, R.V.)!
This earthly inheritance,
says the inspired apostle, is what regenerate
believers can lose;
and therefore they are encouraged to Run
that ye may attain
(1 Cor.
6: 9;
9: 24,
R.V.). See
Gal.
5: 19-26; Eph.
5: 5,
6.
No believer will be brought
before the judgment before Christ, to determine
whether or not he is justified by faith: all
believers have already received that,
by the grace
of God. Therefore, he is no longer an enemy,
but a servant. He most certainly is eternally
saved. But our Lord and His Apostles teach
that all servants will give an account to Him
regarding their behaviour since they first believed,
and will be rewarded or punished, according as their
deeds deserve, (Romans
chapters 2; 14:10-13; 2 Corinthians 5: 10 -
to take no more passages). This is the
doctrine of several of our Lords parables; such as
the Unmerciful Servant, the Steward, the Talents,
and the Pounds. What means that Its like a man going away:
He leaves his house in charge of his servants, each
with his assigned task, and tells the one at the door to
keep watch. Therefore keep watch
because you do not know when the owner of the house
will come back - whether in the evening, or
at midnight, or when the cock crows, or
at dawn. If he comes suddenly,
do not let him find you
sleeping. What I say to you,
I say to everyone: Watch!
(Mark 14: 34-37). - (R.
Govett.)
This is the high ideal. It
is our reasonable service. Give it
unrestrainedly, and the day is coming when you will
rejoice that you did not hold back. Refuse the
appeal, do not respond and you will be saved, and
have nothing to show for your life. Why seek
an easeful estate now and miss this rich inheritance
which might be yours by serving the Lord on the
mission field or in some ministry of love which
would cost you something for His sake? Why
spend so much of your powers for present passing
things which breed vanity and emptiness, when the
highest service beckons you, and meanwhile will fit
you for an infinitely larger enjoyment of God in
the age to come. Serve the Lord and you
will never regret it. How sweet it will be to
be greeted by our blessed Lord, with the words Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance the Kingdom prepared
for you since the creation of the world.
There is no anticipation so
glorious as this.
- (D.
M. Panton.)
This inheritance, as previously
affirmed, has reference to the Millennial kingdom, a
portion of which is being reserved for all those
revealed to be with Christ in His presence (1 Cor. 15: 23).
They will be those begotten ones who have
walked worthy of God, who
has called [us] into His kingdom and glory (1
Thess.
2:
12). To
be numbered among the worthy of our hope
of His calling (Eph.
1: 18). This inheritance is the reward of Col. 3: 24. It is the reward
to be brought with Christ upon His return, Rev. 22: 12 (C.
Dines, Being
Glorified Together With Him pp.
133) supplied today by Amazon Books.
Is
it not true to say that the majority of Christs
servants are fast asleep today - dreaming that the
world is getting better, and is about to be converted
by the preaching of the Gospel of Gods grace?
Will Christians, who reject this promised inheritance
in the Age to come,
be accounted worthy
to receive it from the Lord as
a reward?
Look and see:-
Lk.
20: 35;
Matt. 5:
5, 20,
Rom. 8: 17b; 1
Cor. 3:
12-15;
Eph. 5:
5, 6;
2 Cor. 4:
2-4;
1 Thess.
2: 10-12; 4:
2-8;
2 Thess.
1: 3-5; 1
Tim. 6: 17-19;
2 Tim. 2:
3-6;
Rev. 2:
10, 11;
3: 10,
11, 21,
22. ]
Thou shalt not seethe a kid in
his mothers Milk.
Upon
this
we have nothing better to offer than the brief comment
of Mr. Dennett:
This
remarkable prohibition is found three times in the
Scriptures (Ex.
23: 19;
34: 26:
Dent. 14:
21). God will
have His people tenderly careful, guarding
them from the violation of any instinct of nature. The milk
of the mother was the food, the sustenance of the
kid, and hence this must not he used to seethe it as food for others.
And the Lord said unto Moses.
Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these
words have I made a covenant with thee and with
This
verse
summarises all that has been before us in the previous
verses of the chapter.
An imperishable record was to be made of all
that Jehovah had said unto His servant.
The words, I have made a covenant with thee (the typical mediator) and with
- ARTHUR
W.
PINK,
(Taken
from Gleanings
in Exodus,
pp. 365-367.)
[*NOTE.
THAT GLAD DAY will be when: The earth shall yield her
increase, and Gods blessing
shall be added when he
shall judge the people righteously, and
govern the nations upon earth
(Psa. 67: 4, 6).
The creatures shall again rejoice under
mans dominion, when He who is made
a little lower than the angels,
and then crowned with
glory and honour,
receives praise out
of the mouth of babes and sucklings, - the little children of whom
His kingdom is composed, - and stills
the enemy and the avenger
(Psa. 8; Heb. 2).
And then also, they who are accounted
worthy to receive that world [Age], and the
resurrection [out] from
the dead, shall neither marry nor be given in
marriage, neither shall they any more be liable to
death, for they shall be as the angels of God (Luke 20:
35,
36).
Then shall be
realized what some impious dreamers would affect
to aim at now; and plenty, peace, and purity shall
reign.
Then may those laws and institutions be
safely dispensed with or disparaged, which at
present restrain the lawless passions that otherwise
would make this earth a hell.
But woe
to all who would prematurely touch these
safeguards, whether with the rude hand of
violence, or the more refined subtle influence of
a fictitious sanctity and a spurious kind of
purity, - such as, at the best, is but an unequal
warfare with the impure.
Woe to those who remove landmarks, or
encourage insubordination, or despise holy
marriage, whether for the license of unbridled
lust, or in vain idolatry of the virgin state,
- R. S. Candlish, - (From his Expositions of Genesis.)]
*
*
*
FIRSTFRUITS
AND
HARVEST
By
G.
H. LANG
A Study in Resurrection
and Rapture
-------
INTRODUCTION
We must not adhere to those systems of doctrine that never can bear
an infringement of a view that is held popularly. For
instance, perhaps we have all been brought up in the
notion that all the children of God, in all ages,
compose the
The world system that occupies
the earth is aged and decrepit.
Like some vast, worn-out machine it creaks
and groans as at the breaking-point.
The age is as weary as wicked, and the only
solid comfort is that its consummation seems to be
nearing. The
death-throes of this vast body corporate will be
desperate and painful; yet they will be also the
birth-throes of a better age.
The
chief need of the world is competent government. Even the
best disposed and ablest rulers prove signally unequal
to relieving the woes of the nations, but for this
urgent need the mercy of God has made full provision. He has in
readiness a perfect Sovereign for heaven and earth,
His own Son, Jesus Christ the Lord, and His coming to
earth to assume the government is a chief theme of the
Word of God. (Psm. 96: 9-14;
97: 1:
etc.)*
[*
NOTE.
Quotations are usually from the Revised
Version.]
In
this expectation the apostles of Christ as devout Jews
were trained; but their Lord when about to leave them
intimated that there were circumstances connected with
that expectation which yet awaited disclosure, and
that the [Holy] Spirit [page 8 - Christs
Germinal Teachings]
of God, Who had visited and inspired the prophets,
should come to them also, to abide with them, and to
guide them into all the truth, and to disclose unto
them those things to come (John
16: 13).
One
of these yet undisclosed particulars Christ had just
hinted in the words of John
14: 2, 3: In my Fathers house are many
abiding places; if it
were not so I would have told you;
for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I
go and prepare a place for you,
I come again, and
will receive you unto myself;
that where I am,
there ye may be also.
This
intimation was probably as yet obscure to the
apostles. It
suggested: 1. That for them the Lord had in mind an abode away from the earth
in the heavenly regions; 2. That that place was not
yet ready, but that He was about to go thither and
prepare it for their use; 3. That He would come again from heaven; 4. That at His coming He would take them away from the earth to that
prepared region; 5.
That this was in order that they might be in His
company in His heavenly abode.
Here
then is the introduction of the subject of the removal
of some of mankind from the earth to dwell in the
heavens. In
his Progress
of
Doctrine in the New Testament
(24), Bernard
has well said, and shown, that there is no part of the
later and larger doctrine [of
the New Testament]
which
has not its germs and principles in the words which
Christ spake with His own lips in the days of His
flesh. It
is provided that all which is to be spoken after shall
find support and proof from His
own pregnant and forecasting sayings. This is a
fact, and it is of the first importance for a right
interpreting of the New Testament.
The four Gospels open the truths expanded in
the epistles; the latter must be construed with the
former and cannot be rightly explained in separation
from them. The
doctrine of the rapture is an instance.
It is rooted in this germinal saying of our
Lord, even as that of the first resurrection is rooted
in His words in Luke 20: 34-36:
The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage:
but they that are accounted
worthy to attain
to that age [the age to
follow this age, the age of the kingdom], and the resurrection which is out from among the dead, neither marry
nor are given in marriage:
for neither can they die any
more
[as those individuals raised [page 9 - Going
To Heaven]
from the dead before that resurrection had done and
could yet do]: for
they are equal to angels; and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.
The
doctrine of the Rapture is thus rooted in this
germinal saying of our Lord in John
14: 2, 3.
The idea itself was not wholly new.
Enoch and Elijah while living had been
removed bodily from the earth to the heavenly world;
but that a similar honour was open to themselves
was probably a new idea to the apostles; nor did
Christ here make clear whether the subjects of this
favour would be found living at the moment or be
raised from the dead. These and other particulars were
afterwards revealed by the [Holy] Spirit and our present
purpose is to set forth briefly some main elements of
the New Testament teaching upon this theme.
I. THE H0PE
1. The
Necessary
Change of Body. Man by constitution is made
of and for the earth.
He is physically incapable of living in the
presence of God (1 Cor. 15:
50;
1 Tim. 6: 16), so that a change
of body is indispensable (1
Cor.
15: 50-58; Phil.
3: 20, 21;
2 Cor.
4: 16-5:
10). It
is not at death but at the coming of the Lord that
this change will be effected and we shall be made
like Him (Col. 3:
4; 1 John 3: 1-3).
2. With the Lord. The purpose
and effect of this removal and change is that the Lord
may have us with Himself, like Himself, to share His
glory and authority and to assist in ruling His [millennial] kingdom
(John 14:
3, 17, 24;
1 Thess.
4: 17; Rev.
3: 4, 5,
21; 14: 4;
17: 14; 20:
4).
3. This is Unique in the Ways of God.
The
expression going to heaven
has become a commonplace, used as the equivalent of a
sinner being delivered from hell, but it implies
vastly more. A
king may pardon a rebel liable to death without taking
him to live in the royal palace and appointing him to
high office and, honour.
So sinners might have been saved from eternal
death and been given eternal life without their ever
being removed to the heavens as their abode.
This certainly will be the lot of multitudes
of the saved and might have been of all.
There will be a new earth with saved nations,
and God coming down to them, not their being taken up
to His region (Rev. 21:
1-31, 24).
That some [page 10 ENOCH] of the saved are
to be honoured as above indicated seems to be
exceptional in the ways of God and is the final secret
of His eternal counsels.* Since God cannot make any superior to His Son, He can do nothing
greater than to cause some to share His Sons glory
and authority. This
is the highest possible to the creature to all
eternity.
* Col.
2: 3: omit
even Christ, and read
in which, that is, the mystery of God in
which are all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge hidden. See Alford, and Darby, New Translation.
4. The
Principle
of Selection. In view of
our sinful state and wicked works it is evident that
this holy
calling
to share His own kingdom and glory is given to us by
God not
according to our works, but
according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ
Jesus before times eternal
(2 Tim.
1: 9). But since
not all the saved of mankind will enjoy this highest
destiny there must be some principle of selection, for
God always acts on moral grounds, not arbitrarily or
by caprice.
(a) Enoch was translated alive
to heaven before that first age developed its worst
degree of corruption and long before the judgment of
heaven was poured out.
Concerning him the [Holy]
Spirit
emphasizes that he looked forward to the coining of
the Lord and forewarned the wicked of the judgment
then to fall (Jude 14: 15),
as also that he walked with God (Gen. 5: 24) in such
wise that before
his translation
he hath
had witness borne to him that he had been well-pleasing unto God
(Heb. 11:
5). Nothing therefore can be clearer than that the unique privilege of
translation must be preceded by such a life of
faith in God as produces a clear witness, and a
holy walk which God already endorses as
well-pleasing to Himself, and which He will crown
by a removal to His own sphere of the universe. Unless
this were the lesson for us of this christian
age why are these pointed comments upon Enoch made
in the New Testament?
(b) Concerning certain Old Testament saints we are told that they desired that
heavenly
country, looked
for that
heavenly city, and therefore in practical daily life
walked in separation from the world, confessing that
they were strangers and pilgrims in the earth.
This manner of life amongst the godless and
violent was attended by manifold [page 11 - MAKING
ELECTION SURE]
inconveniences and perils (Gen. 13:
7-9; 14: 22, 23;
21: 25; 23:
4, 16; 26:
15-21). The divine
comment on these men of faith and this way of living is, Wherefore
God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God: for
[that
is, it is evident He is not ashamed of them, because] He
hath prepared for them a city (Heb. 11:
8-16),
which He would not do for any of whom He might be
ashamed. This
wherefore is most significant.
It shows that it was this same manner of
life, their response and devotion to the call of Gods
grace, that made sure to them their calling, by Gods
choice, to the heavenly world.
They had not been ashamed to serve the true
and living God among men who did not wish to retain
Him in their knowledge (Rom. 1: 20);
He is not ashamed of them who thus confessed Him. They
embraced the offer that grace made them of a place in
the heavens, and in consequence they walked a
sanctified life in separation from the godless; and therefore He
Who
was their sanctifier was not ashamed of them, and
shall bring
them to glory (Heb. 2:
10-11), by the first
resurrection.
To
us also this applies: to us those of old are set
forth as a weighty example (Heb. 11); to us the
Scripture, speaking specifically of our obtaining a
rich entrance (i.e.,
by the first resurrection, instead of by the second
resurrection after the millennial age) into the
eternal kingdom and glory to which we are called,
cries: Give
diligence to make your calling and election sure (2 Pet. 1: 10, 11; 1 Pet. 5: 10). For it was
to such as had just confessed Him to be the Christ of
God that Jesus solemnly said, Whosoever
shall be ashamed of Me and of My words, of Him shall the Son of Man be
ashamed, when He
cometh in His own glory, and
the glory of the Father,
and of the holy angels (Lk.
9: 20-26;
comp. Mk.
8: 38; Mat.
10: 32, 33;
Lk.
12: 8, 9;
2 Tim. 2: 10-13).
(c) Thus translation, both of the living, as of the dead by the first
resurrection, is consequent upon a life of faith which
seizes upon the offer of the heavenly calling and
shapes its course and conduct accordingly.
So the Lord, dealing with
the first and select resurrection [of reward],
spoke of those that are accounted worthy to attain
to that age and the resurrection from among the dead
(Lk.
20:34-36). That
age
(singular) is not a Bible term for eternity, which
is not one age but [page 12 - THE OUT‑RESURRECTION] many, the ages of the ages (thirteen times in the
Revelation). That
age is
set by Christ in direct contrast to this age,
and so means the age of the [millennial] kingdom to follow this age. A general
resurrection the Jews expected (Jo. 11:
34; Acts 24: 15), but here Christ speaks of the resurrection which is out from
among the dead
(tees anastaseos
tees ek nekron).
This is the first clear intimation of
such a limited, select resurrection (this doctrine
also, as has been pointed out, being rooted in a
germinal saying of Christ), and its terms are the key
to and must control all subsequent instruction upon
the subject. And
it is made very clear that this resurrection
is a privilege to which one must attain and
be accounted worthy
thereof. The notion that a share in the first resurrection is a certainty,
irrespective of attainment and worthiness, can
only be held in direct disregard of this primary
declaration by the One who will effect the
resurrection and determine who shall participate
therein, the Son of God.
It
was through Paul that the Holy Spirit saw fit to give
in permanent written form fuller particulars as to
this theme (1 Cor. 15;
1 Thess.
4), and it is Paul who elsewhere repeats the
words of our Lord Jesus just considered, declaring
that, whereas justifying righteousness is verily
received through faith in Christ, not
by our own
works, yet, in marked contrast, the
resurrection which is from among the dead (teen exanastasin
teen ek nekron) is a
privilege at which one must arrive (katanteeso) by a given course of life, even the experimental knowledge of
Christ, of the power of His resurrection, and of the
fellowship of His sufferings, thereby becoming
conformed unto His death (Phil. 3:
7-21). Surely the
present participle (summorphizomenos becoming
conformed) is significant, and decisive in favour of
the view that it is a process, a course of life that
is contemplated.
It
has been suggested that Paul here speaks of a present
moral resurrection as he does in Romans
6. But
in that chapter it is simply a reckoning of faith that
is proposed, not a course of personal sufferings. The subject
discussed is whether the believer is to continue in
slavery to sin (douleuein), as in his
unregenerate days, or is the mastery (kurieuo)
of sin to be immediately and wholly broken?
It should be remembered that when writing to
the Philippians [page
13 - IF BY ANY MEANS] Paul was near the close of
his life and service.
Could a life so
holy and powerful as his be lived without first
knowing experimentally the truth taught in Romans
6? Did
the Holy Spirit at any time
use the apostles to urge others to seek
experiences which the writer had not first known, and
to which therefore he could be a witness?
And again, if by the close of that long and
wonderful career Paul was still only longing and
striving to attain to death to the old man
and victory over sin, when did he ever attain thereto? Such
reflections upon the apostle are unworthy, and, as has
been indicated, the experience set forth in Romans
6 is not to be reached, or to be sought, by
suffering, by attaining, by laying hold, by pressing
on, or any other such effort as is urged upon the
Philippians, but by the simple acceptance by faith of
what God says He did for us in Christ in relation to
the old
man.
Thus
this suggested exposition is neither sound
experimental theology nor fair exegesis.
Paul indicates as plainly as language can do
that the
first resurrection may be missed. His words
are: If
by any means I may
arrive at the
resurrection which is out from among the dead. If
by any means
(ei pos)
I
may -
if with the subjunctive of the
verb - cannot but declare a condition; and so on this
particle in this place Alford says, It
is used when an end is proposed, but failure is
presumed to be possible:
and so Lightfoot:
The
apostle states not a positive assurance, but a
modest hope: and Grimm-Thayer (Lexicon)
give its meaning as, If in any way, if by any means,
if possible,
and Ellicott
to the same effect says, the idea of an attempt is
conveyed, which may or may not be successful.
Both Alford
and Lightfoot
regard the passage as dealing with the resurrection of
the godly from death, and Ellicotts note is worth giving in full. The resurrection from the dead; i.e., as the context suggests,
the first resurrection (Rev.
20:
5), when, at the
Lord's coming the dead in Him shall rise first (1 Thess.
4: 16), and the quick be caught up to
meet Him in the clouds (1
Thess. 4: 17); comp.
Luke 20:
35.
The first
resurrection will include only true believers, and
will apparently precede the second, that of
non-believers, and disbelievers, in point of time. Any
reference here to a merely ethical resurrection
(Cocceius) is wholly out of the
[page
14 - HOPING TO ATTAIN] question.
With
the addition that the second resurrection will
include [regenerate]
believers not accounted worthy of the first, this
note is excellent.
The
sense and force of the phrase if by any means I may arrive are surely fixed beyond
controversy by the use of the same words in Acts
27: 12: the
more part advised to put to sea from thence, if by any means they
could reach
[arrive at]
Phoenix, and
winter there
(ei pos dunainto
katanteesantes),
which goal they did not
reach.
Further,
speaking
upon the very subject of the resurrection and the
kingdom promised afore by God, Paul used the
same verb, again preceded by conditional terms,
saying (Acts 26: 6-8),
unto
which promise our twelve tribes,
earnestly serving God night and day, hope to
attain. Here the force of elpizei katanteesai unto which they hope to attain is the same as his words in Philipplans
ei pos kantanteeso,
if
by any means I may attain. This hope of the Israelite of sharing in Messiahs kingdom is plainly
conditional (Dan. 12: 2,
3). It
is assured to such an Israelite indeed as Daniel (12:
13), and to such a faithful servant of God in
a period of great difficulty as Zerubbabel (Hag. 2:
23). It
was also offered to Joshua the high priest, but upon
conditions of obedience and conduct.
Joshua had been relieved of his filthy
garments and arrayed in noble attire (Zech. 3: 1-5), but immediately his
symbolic justification before Jehovah had been thus
completed, and his standing in the presence of God
assured, the divine message to him is couched in
conditional language: And the Angel of Jehovah protested
unto Joshua, saying,
Thus saith Jehovah of hosts,
If thou wilt walk in My
ways, and if
thou wilt keep My charge,
then thou
also shalt judge My house, and
shalt also keep My courts,
and I will give thee places to walk among these that
stand by
(ver.
6,
7).
It
is at this point that the ifs
of the Word of God come in, and are so solemn and
significant. Whenever
the matter is that of the pardon of sin, the
justifying of the guilty, the [free] gift of eternal life,
Scripture ever speaks positively and unconditionally. The sinner
is justified
freely by Gods grace,
and the
free gift of God is eternal life (Rom. 3:
24; 6: 23), in which places
the word free
means free of conditions, not only of payment.
Eternal life therefore [page 15 - CONDITIONAL
PROMISES]
is what is called in law an absolute gift, in contrast
to a conditional gift.
The latter may be forfeited if the condition
be not fulfilled; the former is irrevocable.
But as soon as the sinner has by faith
entered into this standing before God, then the Word
begins at once to speak to him with Ifs. From this
point and forward every privilege is conditional.
It
is truly in all wisdom and prudence that God has made known to
us the mystery of His will (Eph. 1:
8, 9). The
indispensable minimum, justification, without which no
further blessing is possible, and which the sinner is
utterly unable to acquire, having no nature that can
produce ought acceptable to God, this God grants
freely through the atoning work of the Lord Jesus. But now that a new nature has been implanted by grace, capable through
the [Holy] Spirit of pleasing God, all attainment is made
conditional upon the exertion that this new nature
is able to make, and must make. The whole promised land,
together with the title to share it and the power to
conquer it, are gifts of covenant grace, but
no one shall get an inch more than he sets his own
foot upon, by the use of the power freely granted to
faith that obeys. And
some who had equal title with the rest shall not
reach the inheritance at all,
though neither shall they ever get back to
*
See my
Firstborn Sons.
The
comments of Mr.
David Baron upon the incident of Joshua are
impressive. (The Visions and
Prophecies of Zechariah, 103-105.)
I extract
the
following. The
word protested means solemnly to
protest, and is intended to express the solemnity
and importance of the charge about to be made. The
expressions, Walk in
My ways and Keep My charge
are frequently used in the Pentateuch for holding
on in the way of life, well-pleasing to God, and for
keeping the charge given by God.
The first part of the charge refers
particularly to Joshuas personal attitude towards
the Lord - to fidelity in his personal relations to
God; and the second to the faithful performance of
his official
duties as high priest.
And the reward of his thus studying (in his
personal and official capacity) to present [page 16 - BARON
ON JOSHUA THE HIGH PRIEST]
himself approved unto God
will be (a) Then
thou shalt also judge My house ...
(b) And shalt also
keep My courts ... (c) But the climax of
promise in this verse is reached in the last clause,
And I will give thee
places to walk among these that stand by...
These that
stand by - as we
see by comparing the expression with verse
4 -
are the angels, who were in attendance on the Angel
of Jehovah, and who stood
before Him ready to
carry out His behests. The
Jewish Targum ... is, I believe, nearer the
truth [than many christian
commentators]
when it
paraphrases the words, In the resurrection of the
dead I will revive thee, and give thee feet walking
among these seraphim.
Thus applied to the future the sense of the
whole verse would be this: If thou wilt walk in My
ways and keep My charge, thou shalt not only have the
honour of judging My house and keeping My courts, but
when thy work on earth is done thou shalt be
transplanted to higher service in heaven, and have places to walk among these pure, angelic beings who stand by Me, hearkening unto
the voice of My word (Ps. 103: 20, 21).
Note the ifs in this verse, my dear reader,
and lay to heart the fact that, while pardon and
justification are the free gifts of God to all that
are of faith, having their source wholly in His
infinite and sovereign grace, and quite apart from
work or merit on the part of man, the honour and
privilege of acceptable service and future reward are
conditional upon our obedience and faithfulness:
therefore seek by His grace and in the power of His
Spirit to walk
in His ways and to keep His charge,
and in all things,
even if thine be the lot of a porter or doorkeeper in the House of
God, to present thyself approved unto Him, in
remembrance of the day when we
must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of
Christ, that each one may
receive the things done in the body,
according
to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad (2 Cor.
5: 10).
By
virtue of their relationship to Abraham all Israelites
are natural sons of the kingdom which is the goal of
their national hopes according to the purpose and
promise of the God of Abraham; but the King has told
them plainly, first, that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
together with all the prophets - that is, all the men
of faith and devotion - shall be in that [page 17 - ISRAEL
AND THE KINGDOM] kingdom, but secondly, that it is very possible that some of the sons of the kingdom may forfeit
their entrance thereinto (Matt. 8: 10-12: Luke 13:
28-29);
for there are
those who may have been first in privilege and
opportunity who shall be last in final attainment.
If,
therefore, an Israelite attains to that kingdom it
will be on the basis of a covenant made by God with
his federal head, Abraham; the source of which
covenant is the grace of God in Christ, the
working
principle of which on mans side is faith proving
itself by obedience.
Wherein now does this differ in basic
principle from that new and better covenant which
introduces to better, that is, to heavenly privileges,
to sharing the heavenly sphere of that same kingdom,
not only its earthward side?
This new and higher order of things is also
derived from a covenant made with our federal Head,
its source is in that same grace of God, its working
principle on our side is a faith that proves its
quality in obedience.
Moreover,
since
the man of true faith in that earlier age could aspire
to this same heavenly city and country as ourselves
there manifestly was no difference in his position and
ours in this matter, though it may be he had only a
more distant view and not so full a revelation of the
purpose of God in all this project.
So that if they of old could miss their share, on what principle of
righteousness shall we be
exempted from their need of diligence and obedience? Such
exemption not only would contain an invidious and
inexplicable distinction, but it would prove highly
dangerous to our moral fibre and our zeal for
godliness. And
has not this been seen? We heard it boldly stated from
a platform, that the sharing in the bridal glories of
the wife of the Lamb is guaranteed absolutely no
matter what our practical life may or may not have
been. But
obviously if the very highest of all honours cannot
possibly be forfeited plainly nothing
is
forfeitable, and the whole notion of reward for effort, so heavily emphasized in Holy
Scripture, is swept away.
For ourselves we repudiate this common
teaching as grossly immoral in its tendency, the
sheerest antinomianism, and flatly repugnant to the
Word.
The
Lord
told His disciples that status
in
the kingdom of the heavens was to be determined by
the measure of obedience and of having encouraged
others to obedience, and [page 18 - STRETCHING FORWARD] He as clearly added that entrance itself into that
kingdom was conditional upon a certain degree of practical righteousness
(Matt.
5: 19, 20).
He
further plainly warned the apostles themselves that
except they turned from their high-mindedness, and
became as humble as a little child, they should on
no account enter into the kingdom (Matt.
18: 3). And
this same possibility of missing our inheritance by
practical misconduct became a stock element in the
apostolic teaching of their converts, and most
especially and notably of Paul (1
Cor. 6: 7-10;
Gal. 5: 19-21;
Eph.
5: 5).
It
followed that godly Israelites, bent on securing a
share with Abraham in the kingdom of Messiah, served
God, as Paul says, with the utmost earnestness and
ceaselessly: earnestly
(en ekteneia)
serving God night and day (Acts
26: 7).
It
is an intensive form of this very word which Paul
employs in the Philippian passage (epekteinomenos) to
describe his own strenuous endeavours in godly
service and suffering to reach that same goal, the
out-resurrection.
The word pictures the racer leaning far
forward, stretched out toward the goal, straining
every fibre to win the coveted prize.
It is
the sharpest possible rebuke to the complaisant idea
that so great a reward is guaranteed to all
believers irrespective of piety, zeal, devotion, and
life-long perseverance.
Nor
is there warrant for the assertion that to Paul only
or even first were these themes made known.
He indeed learned them direct from the Lord,
but so did other holy apostles and prophets, according to his own
statement (Eph. 3:
5). These
mighty
truths were as much the need of and as much the
property of those many saints whom Paul never taught
as of that portion of the
When
first writing to the Thessalonians he could say that
they already knew perfectly about the day of the Lord,
and when writing again he added that he had told them
about these things when with them (1
Ep.
5: 2; 2 Ep. 2: 5). This is
further shown by the way he speaks without explanation
of those who will be left
unto the presence
of the Lord,
to His parousia.
How could he have enlarged when with them
upon these topics and yet not even himself have known
about the vital matter of the first resurrection? Yet this is
necessarily involved in the assertion that this truth
was not made known before the first letter to the
Thessalonians.
II. WHO ARE THOSE OF
CHRIST JESUS?
But
it is urged that two important scriptures upon the
topic of resurrection seem to contemplate all
believers as sharing in the first resurrection. These
are 1 Thess. 4 and 1
Cor.
15.
The
former passage speaks of those who have fallen asleep through Jesus (1
Thess.
4: 14,
R.V. marg.).
Is this of necessity the fact concerning the
end of all believers?
Is there not such a thing as death through Satan, acting as the executioner of the sentence of the court of heaven against
a [regenerate] believers [wilful] sins?.
(1 Cor.
5: 5; 11: 30;
Acts 5: 10
[Heb.
10: 26-31]: comp. 1
Tim. 1: 19,
20: 1 Jo. 5:
16, 17: Jas. 5: 19-20).
Man
through sin is by nature in the power of Satan as the
one who, by his angel servants, ends human life when
the [page 20 - DEATH IS GAIN] Most High
requires.* But the sinner who in faith
submits to Christ is transferred from Satans
authority and is put under that of the Son of God (Col.
1: 13),
and thenceforth
the Evil One cannot touch him (1
Jo. 5: 18).
In
life his Lord protects him and in death puts him to
sleep. But
on
account of gross sin, of living again as if a
servant of Satan, he may be delivered
unto Satan, as regards his present experience (Matt.
5: 23, 26; 6: 13;
18: 34, 35) and his bodily
life, in which case Satan may be permitted to cut
short his life, as the above cited passages show.
* Heb.
2: 14; Acts 12: 23; Luke 12:
20, marg. they,
i.e., angels:
contrast Job 2: 6.
It
is not such a death that is gain
within the meaning of Phil. 1:
21. When
Paul wrote
of death as gain
he made no general statement concerning all believers. He said, For
to
me to live is Christ and to die is gain. At that time he was a
prisoner, and it was not certain that he would not
shortly die for the faith.
That was the death immediately in question,
and similarly such an one as the faithful Stephen,
dying as a witness for Christ, could say, Lord
Jesus, receive my
spirit. The Lord
accepted the trust, and the simple record of that
dreadful moment is, he slept. Doubtless
not martyrs alone but each who can truly say, for to me to live is Christ may add truly, to
die is gain. Those
who
thus fall asleep will, as we expect, share in the
first resurrection; others
have no guarantee that they will do so.
But
it is further urged that in 1
Cor.
15: 51,
the Scripture declares that though we shall not all sleep, but some be alive at the descent of the Lord, yet we shall all be changed, and surely, says the
objector with emphasis, all means
all.
Truly; but in verse
22, For as in Adam all die, so also in the Christ shall all be made alive, all
means all of mankind, for every child of Adam will at
some time be raised by Christ (Jo. 5: 28,
29). But
not all at the first resurrection (Rev.
20: 5). Therefore
in this very chapter all means different things, and in verse
51 requires limiting, since it refers to a
smaller company than in verse
22.
The
last and immediate context is in verses
48, 49,
which speak of those who are to bear the image of the heavenly, that is, are to share with
the Lord in His heavenly form, [page 21 - MAGE OF THE HEAVENLY] glory,
and sovereignty.
Now the more difficult, and therefore the more
probable reading here is as in the R.V. margin: As
we have borne the image of the earthy,
let
us also bear the image of the heavenly.
It is evident that one copying a document is not
likely to insert by mistake a more difficult word or
idea than is in the manuscript before him; so that, as
a general rule, the more difficult reading is likely
to have been the original reading.
Moreover, in this case let us also bear is so well attested by the
manuscripts as to have been adopted as the true
reading by Lachmann,
Tischendorf,
Tregelles,
Alford, and Westcott and
Hort,
and is given as the text in the latest editions of the
Greek Testament, those of Nestle
and Von Soden.
Ellicott
prefers the common reading, but on subjective and
internal grounds only, and his remark on the external
authority is emphatic: It is impossible to deny that the
subjunctive, phoresomen is supported
by very greatly preponderating authority. Alford
(on Romans 9: 5) well says, that
no conjecture
[i.e.,
as to the true Greek text] arising from
doctrinal difficulty is ever to be admitted in the
face of the consensus of MSS. and versions.
By
this exhortation the apostle places upon Christians
some responsibility to see that they secure that image
of the heavenly which is indispensable to inheriting the
kingdom of God (ver.
50). In
this
Paul is supported by Peter, who also writes of that inheritance
which is reserved in heaven
(1 Pet. 1: 4),
which he describes by the later statement that the
God of all grace called you unto His eternal
glory
in Christ
(5: 10).
But Peter goes on to urge the called to give
the more diligence to
make your calling and election sure (2
Pet. 1: 10), thus showing that
this calling to share the glory of God has to be made
sure. He
is not at all discussing justification by faith or
suggesting that it
must be made
sure by works done after conversion. Justification and
eternal life are not in
the least his subject.
He writes expressly to those who have [already] obtained like precious faith with us in the righteousness of our God
and Saviour Jesus Christ (2
Pet. 1: 1).
The calling of grace is to share in Gods own
eternal glory, or, as Paul expresses it, to share
Gods own
kingdom and glory,
and he tells [page 22 - FIRSTFRUITS
RESURRECTION]
us that he
exhorted, encouraged, yea, and testified, to the end
that his children in faith should walk worthily of God Who had called them to such
supreme dignity (1 Thess.
2: 11-12).
Since
therefore
this most honourable calling must be made sure
by walking
worthily,
in order that we may be counted
worthy of the
kingdom of God, for
which ye also suffer
(2 Thess.
1:
5), the reading let us also bear the image of the
heavenly
becomes consistent and important.
Thus 1 Cor. 15:
51, 52 is
addressed to those who are assumed (whether it be so
or not) to have responded to that exhortation, and it
will mean that we
[who shall be accounted worthy to bear that heavenly
image] shall
not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.
Of
that
company it is strictly true that all means all.
Further,
the
primary antecedent to verse
52 is in verse
23: But each [shall be made alive] in his own order:
Christ the
first-fruits; then they that are
Christ's in His Parousia: then the end ... Does not the
whole sentence, in the light of other passages, carry
the force: But each shall be made alive, not
all at the same hour, but each in his own class or
company (tagma); first-fruit,
Messiah; then, next, those of the Messiah, i.e.,
in His character as first-fruit, at His Parousia;
then, later, the end of all dispensations, involving
the resurrection of all, saved and unsaved, not
before raised?
Here is additional reason for R. C. Chapmans
view (to be considered later) that the first
resurrection is one of first-fruits, and not
of
all who will be finally raised in the harvest
of eternal life.
The
translation they that are Christs is not an exact rendering. The Greek
reads: then
those of
the Christ
(hoi tou Christou) in His Parousia, and
it is not a question of what these words may mean to
an English reader to-day with his mind obsessed by a
certain theory, but what did they convey to a Greek
ear of the day when they were written.
(See Appendix.)
In
the ideal and possibility all who are in Christ
are of
Christ,
but that it is possible to be a believer on Him unto
salvation from hell and not to be of that privileged
personal circle which He will acknowledge before God,
angels, and men as His companions, is plainly taught
in the [page 23 - THE KINGS COMPANIONS] Word.
If
I wash thee not, thou
[Peter, my believing, devoted follower until now] hast no part with
Me -
not in
Me, that would have forfeited all, including
salvation; but with Me,
which means that unwashed thou canst not continue in
My company, My circle (John
13: 8). Again, Thou
hast a few names in
*
Rev.
3: 4, 5: comp. Luke
12: 9,
with the use the apostle and the early church made of
that saying, as in 2 Tim. 2:
11-13.
The
fact that such as show special trust in and fidelity
to God are granted intimacy with Him beyond others is
very natural and it runs throughout Scripture.
Instances are: Abraham,
peculiarly the friend of God, from whom Jehovah would
hide none of His purposes (Gen. 18:
17-19): Moses,
privileged beyond others of the people of God with
mouth to mouth converse with Him, because he was
faithful (Num. 12:
7, 8):
the prophets,
without informing whom Jehovah would not act (Amos
3: 7):
of which Elisha
is a notable instance, as witness the tone of surprise
in his words, Jehovah
hath hid it from
me and hath
not
told me!
(2 Kin. 4:
27). So
God, reproving false prophets,* says: Who
[of them] hath
stood in the council of Jehovah?
and, If
they had stood in My
council (Jer. 23: 18, 22)
- not [page 24 - MY FRIENDS IF] counsel, as
A.V., but in My secret council, as the Hebrew means, whither
faithful prophets were transported in spirit (1
Kin.
22:
19).
[* Who are these false
prophets?
All - both regenerate and unregenerate
alike - who teach contrary to the Words and Prophecies
of God.
Hymenaeus and Philetus have erred,
saying that the
resurrection is past already, and overthrow the faith of some
(2 Tim. 2:
17, 18,
R.V.)
The
apostasy by Christians today, is due to the influence
of Gnosticism: - a belief
that all matter is evil!
Therefore, they erroneously conclude that
Christians ascend into
Heaven - (as spirits or human phantoms, at
the time of Death), and not at a time our Lord Jesus
return! (1 Thess.
4: 16.)
This false teaching is rampant today throughout
all of Christendom!
The Spirit saith
expressly that in later times
- as the Age closes - some
shall
fall away from the faith
apostatize giving
heed to seducing spirits
an apostasy therefore that will be frankly Spiritualistic
(D. M. Panton).
What their profane, secular, unspiritual, bablings were, we can only guess, but
the reference to a resurrection
past
already helps us in
guessing. It
is likely that we have here one of the earliest
allusions to a type of thought known later as
Gnosticism, or the Gnosis;
the
religion of Knowledge
rather than of Faith; a teaching which claimed to
lead its disciple past the common herd of mere believers
to a superior and gifted circle who should know the
mysteries of being, and who by such knowing should live emancipated from the slavery of matter,
ranging at liberty in the world of spirit. (H. C. G. Moule, D.D.)]
Thus
also in the New Testament we learn of very many
hundreds who believed on Jesus when He was here (1 Cor. 15:
6, e.g.), but of these, some few enjoyed His
special love, as the Bethany family (John
11: 5); a small band were honoured to share
peculiarly His toil, ministry, reproach, and company, and will therefore be specially honoured in His kingdom (Lk.
22: 28-30;
Rev. 22: 14): of which few
again a smaller circle were more especially favoured
with His confidence (Lk. 9:
28; Matt. 26:
37), and one was loved above them all (Jo.
13: 23; 19:
26, 21: 7, 20).
But
as there is no respect of persons, no favouritism,
with the Lord, as we are repeatedly and emphatically
assured (Col. 3:
25; 1 Pet. 1: 17:
etc.), there must have been reason for this
distinguishing of some.
In John 15: 14,
15, Christ lays down its condition in the
words: No
longer do I call you slaves
[though it is to be well noted from the openings of
the epistles that that is exactly what they continued
evermore to call themselves]; for the slave knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends;
for all things that I heard
from My Father I have made known unto you.
Thus as with Abraham His friend, so with
these, He had hid nothing from them, had had no
secrets, but had made known unto them all that He had
heard. But
the terms of
this incomparable friendship were, and are, Ye
are My friends if
ye do the things which I command you, a condition nowhere attached
to the forgiveness of sins or to the obtaining of
eternal life, but of the simple nature of things in friendship
between the
Creator and the creature, the King and the subject. To this privileged
circle all indeed may attain, but it is reached by
such only as pay the (in reality) purely nominal
but quite unavoidable price of full obedience to
their Saviour as their Lord.
Thus
also in Hebrews 3: 12-14,
we learn that we have become companions* of
the Messiah
(metochoi tou Christou),
[page 25 - GOD'S
HOUSE IF]
if
it be so that
(eanper)
we
hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm
unto the end. And in verse six preceding we
are told that we are the household over which the Son
of God is ruler if we hold fast our boldness and the glorying of
our hope firm unto the end. Israel,
though redeemed by blood and delivered, did not become
the house of God until one whole year
after redemption (Ex. 40:
1); and, though the people of God by covenant
and redemption, they only narrowly escaped the penalty
of never having God dwelling among them and so of not
being to Him as a house (Ex. 33: 1-3).
To be a pardoned rebel, restored to being a
loyal subject of the sovereign, is one thing, and is
great indeed, but to be a member of the royal house, a
chosen intimate of the sovereign, is much greater. His pardon
of the rebel, sealed and delivered, God never
recalls; but
the privilege of belonging to His Sons personal
circle is contingent and may be forfeited.
*
Darby, New
Translation,
note: I use the word companions
as being the same one as in
c.1: 9 metochoi, to
which, I doubt not, it alludes; that is, to the
passage quoted, Ps.
45. Partakers of
Christ has indeed
quite a different sense.
The
type of tabernacle and temple when taken in its
entirety shows that the house
of God may be
forsaken by Him and be temporarily destroyed (Jer. 7:
12; Ps. 78:
60, 61; Jer. 12:
7; Ps. 74:
7; Matt. 23:
38); and
the
New Testament solemnly declares the same as to the
believer: Know ye not that ye are a
sanctuary of God, and
the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. If any man
destroyeth the sanctuary of God
[mars it - see Jer. 17: 7, 9, where the LXX use
this word - so rendering the house unfit as a dwelling
for the Holy One], him shall God destroy
(see 1 Cor.
5: 5:
etc.), for the sanctuary of God is holy, which sanctuary ye are (1 Cor. 3: 16,
17). The
believer who so lacks the spirit of Christ, and so
walks according to flesh, as to incur that
judgment, will indeed, by the changeless grace of
God and through the eternal virtue of redemption
by the precious blood of Christ, be himself, as to
his person, saved, yet only so as through fire (ver. 15); but such will
not be sharers of the privileges pictured as being
the house of God or
companions of the Messiah,
the King. But
inasmuch
as all who rise in the first resurrection will share
those very privileges (Rev. 20: 4-6),
it results that such as are adjudged by the Lord
unworthy thereof will not have part in that
resurrection, even as the many scriptures reviewed
declare.
Thus
the expressions fallen asleep through Jesus and [page 26 - GRACE
AND FAITH]
those of Him in
His Parousia (those who are to be
companions with Him during the period of His presence as King of this earth), both
allow for the solemn possibility of some who might
have been accounted worthy to attain unto that age [of the
Presence] and
the resurrection which is from among the dead
(Lk. 20:
35) failing to attain thereto.
Passages
which
deal with a matter from the point of view of Gods
plan and willingness use general, wide terms to cover
and to disclose His whole provision.
But these must be ever considered in
connection with any other statements upon the same
subject which reveal what God foresees of the human
element which, by His own creation of responsible
creatures, He permits to interact with His working. Out of these
elements, through self-will in the believer, arises
the possibility of individuals not reaching unto the
whole of what the grace of God had offered in Christ.
The isolation of the former class of
passages produced Calvinism, of the latter
Arminianism. Truth
is found by construing all Scripture together.
The principle of the divine provision is grace:
the principle of our attaining is faith;
and according to your faith be it unto
you is
the inflexible condition.
Now faith is not merely an apprehending of
ideas by the intellect, nor only the assent of the
reason, though it includes of necessity both of these
elements: faith
is
a principle of action which produces obedience to
God and works out in love to men.
Incipient
faith obeys God upon the primary point of trusting
to Christ for salvation from wrath, and it secures
that primary benefit for which it trusts.
Developing faith obeys God upon various
successive points of His holy will; this
issues in sanctity of character and purity
of conduct; and according to this advance of faith
in practical godliness will be the weight of glory
which each will be capable of bearing.
Any particular possibility for which
ones measure of faith does not qualify will not be
obtained. The path of sorrow is not indeed
the meriting, but the capacitating preparation for
glory
(Moule on Rom.
8: 18).
It
is unquestionable that this unchanging, because
unavoidable, rule operates undeviatingly
as to benefits available in this life: the Scripture shows plainly that it operates as to benefits available
beyond this life.
Of these one is the [page 27 - ACCORDING TO FAITH]
sharing in the first resurrection and so inheriting
the [millennial]
Such faith in us, 0 God, implant,
And to our prayers Thy favour grant,
Through Jesus Christ, Thine only Son,
Who is our fount of health alone.
When
it is said that the acceptance of the believer in
Christ involves the imputation to him of all the
acceptability of Christ, and that he is thereby
qualified to share the eternal glory of Christ in the
presence of the Father, and that consequently his own
life and works can have no place in the matter, we
point out that, inasmuch as the merit of Christ is
imputed judicially to every believer equally,
therefore every believer should of necessity share
equally in all and every privilege, and no distinction
in reward would be possible, one star could not then
differ from another star in glory.
But the opposite of this is taught in the
Word. The
imputation of righteousness in Christ gives to
every believer equality of standing and of
opportunity, but
it does not, and cannot, do away with the necessity
for faith, or alter the rule that attainment is
according to faith.
It
being therefore the case that the
first resurrection, while
open indeed to all, is a prize which must be
attained, and which, like every prize, may be
forfeited, it is at once made clear why in Rev. 20: 4-6,
where the two resurrections are set, one at the
opening of the Millennial kingdom and the [page 28 - THE BOOK OF LIFE]
other at its close, it is said that blessed
and holy is he that hath part in the
former, including pre-eminently those who in varying
degree had suffered for and with Jesus and for the
word of God. And
that some believers not accounted worthy of that
resurrection, will rise in the second resurrection
unto eternal life, though they will have missed
reigning with Christ in His [Millennial] Kingdom,
fitly explains why at the final judgment the book of
life will be opened and searched (Rev.
20: 11-15). Were it known as
a fact that no possessors of eternal life would or
could be there this examining of the book of life
would not be required, nor should we expect the
statement that if
any was not
found written in the book he was cast into
the lake of fire; for in that event the natural
expression would be as
their names were not found, etc.
A
correct understanding of future events is of high
value in the life of the Christian, but it is not
fundamental to the gospel, neither does any
rearranging of the order or particulars of those
events imperil the faith.
Men of undoubted orthodoxy and greatly used
of God have taken very divergent views on these
topics, which teaches that great names cannot prove
any one view to be the true meaning of Scripture. On the other
hand, this divergence should assure toleration and
earnest research, so that more light may be
gained and ever closer agreement be reached.
It
is worthy of mention that Hudson
Taylor and R.
C. Chapman held the view here advocated. In the
Appendix to his small work on The Song of Songs,
entitled Union and Communion (ed. 5, p. 83), Hudson
Taylor
wrote of such as if saved,
are only half-saved: who
are for the present more concerned about the things of
this world than the things of God.
To
advance their own interests, to secure their own
comfort, concerns them more than to be in all
things pleasing to the Lord. They may [page 29 - HUDDSON TAY4OR AND CHAPMAN] form part of that great company
spoken of in Rev.
7: 9-17, who come out of the great
tribulation, but they will hot form part of the
144,000, the
first-fruits unto God and to the Lamb (Rev. 14:
1-5). They
have forgotten the warning of our Lord in Luke 21: 34-36;
and hence they are not accounted
worthy
to escape all these things that shall come to
pass, and to stand before the Son of Man. They have not, with Paul,
counted all things
but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of
Christ Jesus the Lord,
and hence they do not attain
unto that
resurrection from among the dead, which Paul felt
he might miss, but aimed to attain unto.
We wish to place on record our solemn conviction that
not all who are
Christians, or think themselves to be such, will
attain to that resurrection of which St. Paul speaks
in
Phil.
3: 11, or will thus meet the Lord in the air.
Unto those who by lives of consecration
manifest that they are not of the world, but are
looking for Him, He will appear without sin unto salvation.
Robert Chapman
about the year 1896 issued a series of
Suggestive
Questions. Number
10 includes the following: Are not the redeemed in Rev.
4 and 5 the
same with those in
ch. 20:
4, Thrones
and
they sat upon them? (verse
5) This is the first
resurrection. Is it not
a resurrection
of first-fruits?
...
Now in the essential nature of the case first-fruits
are but a portion of the whole harvest,
and so the Question proceeds: And the rest of the dead (in
the same verse) do they not include all the family
of God? not the wicked
dead only. Hence,
in verse 12,
Another book was opened, which is the book of life:
and the dead were judged out of those things which
were written in the books, according to their
works (verse 15). And whosoever was not found
written in the book of life was cast into.the
lake of fire.
Further
as
to this last passage, the exact rendering in the Revised Version, if
any was not found written in the book
of life he was cast into the lake of fire, by its negative form
strongly supports this view.
If it should be said of the crowd at a
platform barrier that, If
any was found not to
have a ticket he was refused admittance, no one would
suggest the meaning that not
one of
all
who were there had a ticket or was allowed to pass. [page 30 - DOCTRINE
AND HOLINESS]
The
late Mr. E. S. Pearce was intimately acquainted
with Mr. Chapmans views for he lived with him many
years. He
wrote to me as follows: It was Mr. Chapmans desire
that, by
so walking with God and by obedience to His Word
in all
things, he might not shut himself out
from the honour of reigning with Christ. He saw no authority from the Scripture for saying that all the children
of God would. Rev. 20: 4, And
they
sat upon them, Mr.
Chapman
considered were distinguished persons, not all the
saints.
Now
from verses 4 and
6 of Rev.
20, they lived and reigned
and Blessed
and holy is he that hath part in the first
resurrection ... they
shall reign,
it is clear that all who rise in the first
resurrection do reign, from which it certainly follows
that such as are not accounted worthy to reign do not
rise at that time. Who shall say to what large degree
this searching, conscience‑quickening belief
contributed to the blamelessness of Mr. Chapman's
beautiful life? The doctrine of the coming of our Lord
is in the Scripture so set forth as to promote
holiness of life (1 John 3: 3;
2 Pet. 3: 11-14; 1 Pet.
1: 13). That line of
exposition will be found most accordant with Scripture
which makes the most imperative demand for holiness.
To gain that prize I towards that
goal will struggle
Which God has set before;
To gain that prize gainst sin and
death Ill battle
And with the world make war;
And if it brings me here but shame and troubles
And scorn, if pain life fills,
Yet seek I nothing of earths empty baubles;
My God alone my longing stills.
To
gain that prize, to reach that crown Im pressing
Which Christ doth ready hold;
I mean His great reward to be possessing,
His booty for
the bold.
I will not rest, no weariness shall
stay me,
To hasten home is best,
Where I some day in peace and joy shall lay me
Upon my Saviours heart and rest.
- (From
the German).
*
*
*
[page
31 - THE
FIRST RESURRECTION]
III.
THE PERIOD OF THE PAROUSIA.
The first resurrection,
accompanied by the removal of the living, will take
place at a certain moment when the Lord Himself shall
descend from His present place at the right hand
of the throne of God, in the upper heavens, to the
neighbourhood of the earth (1
Thess.
4: 15-17).
He is now absent from the earth: then He will
be present again.
This will be the commencement of His Parousia
(presence). The
Word of God shows that this descent will take place at
the end of that Great Tribulation which is to be
inflicted upon the saints by the Beast at the very
close of this age.
It has been suggested that the phrase sat
down on the right hand of the Majesty in the heights (Heb.
1: 3) does
not imply place,
but merely dignity.
Yet this will not be said of 1
Kin. 2: 19: The king sat down on his throne,
and caused a throne to be set
for the kings mother,
and she sat on his right hand. There is a
spot in the heaven of heavens where the Father is
throned in light unapproachable by man in the flesh. There the
Son sits at the right hand of God, and thence He will
descend at the hour which the Father has set within
his own authority.
1. Christ stated that a time
would come when His enemies should see the Son of man sitting at the
right hand of power,
and coming on the clouds of heaven (Matt. 26:
64): from which it would appear that down to
an hour when He is to be seen by the godless at the
right hand of power He remains there, which place
therefore He did not leave for the air several years
before that time.
Christ had said before that the hour when the
world should thus see Him would follow the Great
Tribulation (Matt.
24: 29, 30).
2. Now under seal 6 (Rev.
6) the godless are shown fleeing in terror
from the face of God and from the wrath of the Lamb
and are hiding in the rocks.
This accords with
paragraph one above and with Isa.
2: 10, 19,
21.
The latter passage fixes the hour as that
when Jehovah
ariseth to shake
terribly the earth,
again showing at what point the Lord leaves the throne
on high. Seal
6 repeats the many signs in heaven and earth which
Christ said should follow the Tribulation (Matt. 24:
29, 30),
which confirms that the [page 32 - THE BLESSED HOPE] arising of
the Lord and the appearing of His glory to men follow
that Tribulation.
3. According to Paul himself the blessed hope
of the church is
the appearing of the glory
of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ (Tit. 2:
13), not any secret, invisible event.
The words in italics are a repetition of
words used by Christ on the same topic (Matt.
24:
29, 30). So that at
the close of His then presence with His disciples the
Lord pointed them onward to His appearing in glory,
and they adopted that appearing as their hope.
But the Lord stated that this His
appearing
would be after the signs that should immediately
follow the Great Tribulation.
The
suggestion that the blessed hope
is a first event and the appearing a second is denied
by the grammar of the passage in Greek.
Hope and appearing
belong together (Alford. See also
4. The Lord stated next (Matt.
24: 31)
that at that moment of His appearing He would gather
together His elect. That the elect are Christians, not
Jews, is certain.
(a) No gathering of Jews to
5. Christ further stated that the gathering of the elect should be
accompanied by a great sound of a trumpet (Matt. 24: 31). This is
repeated in 1 Thess.
4:
16, and 1 Cor. 15: 52 describes this as
the last
trump. The last
trump of Scripture is recorded in Rev. 11: 15-18.
Under it four events are grouped: (1) The
anger of the nations and Gods wrath upon them; (2)
The time of the dead to be judged - the godly dead,
for it is before the millennium: comp. Dan. 7:
22; (3) The rewarding of the prophets,
saints, and those who fear God; (4) The destruction of
the destroyers of the earth.
Thus
the raising and rewarding of the godly take place at
the same epoch as the destruction of the wicked, and
all is after the Tribulation, for it is the time of
the destruction of the Beast, and is after he has
persecuted, and has killed the Two Witnesses in
Jerusalem (Rev. 11: 1 ‑ 13).
6. This is confirmed by the declaration of the strong angel whose message
follows trumpet 6 (Rev.
10:
5-7). He announces
that the mystery of God shall be completed during the
period of the seventh trumpet.
Paul taught concerning: (1) the mystery
(secret);
(2)
that it was according
to the gospel (good
tidings);
(3) that it was made known according to the commandment of the
eternal God; (4) and
that this was done through the writings of
the prophets (Rom. 16: 25-27). The angel
repeats these four particulars concerning (1) the mystery;
(2) that it was according to the good tidings (the
same word as gospel); (3) that it was declared
by God; (4) through His servants the
prophets.
The
two passages read thus:
Rom. 16:
25-27: Now unto Him that is able to
establish you according to my gospel and the
preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the
revelation of the mystery which hath been [page 34 - SCRIPTURE TESTIMONY ONE] kept in
silence through times eternal, but now is
manifested, and by the scriptures of
the prophets,
according to the commandment of the eternal God,
is made
known unto all the nations unto
obedience of faith.
...
Rev. 10: 7: ... in
the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, then is finished the mystery of God, according to the good tidings which He declared to His
servants the prophets.
The
attempt to make out that these are not the same
mystery, and that there are two divine purposes of
which all four particulars are equally and separately
true, will surely only be made in the interests of
some special theory of interpretation.
The
mystery that was such a vital element in apostolic
teaching is shown by Eph. 3:
1-13 to be
the gathering of the church from Jews and Gentiles,
and therefore was it to be made known unto all the
nations. This
work will be completed by the resurrection and
rapture, which will be under trumpet 7, which will be
after the Tribulation, as shown above under (5).
7. Other Scriptures also reveal this same grouping of events. In 2
Thess. 1: 6-8,
it is said that the delivering of the saints from
trouble at the hands of the godless will be at the
time of the destruction of the latter by the Lord at
His revelation in flaming fire with His angels.
Thus the
1 Thess. 4: 13-18 and 5:
1-11,
belong together, though often arbitrarily dissevered,
and they similarly associate these events for the
godly and the godless respectively.
The times and the seasons of verse
1 necessarily means the times and the seasons
in which will come the events just mentioned.
No other events have been mentioned, so that
there is no other antecedent to the expression, which
thus connects the paragraphs.
Thus
the earliest revelations by Christ, the middle period
teachings of Paul and others (see 2
Pet. 3: 15, that Peter and
Paul taught alike), and the latest through John (Rev. 10: 11), agree.
8. This harmony is seen further in the passages which picture the Lord as
coming as a thief.
[page
35 - COMING
AS A THIEF]
Christ
used
the figure to warn His own servants of His own
household (Matt. 24:
42, 44: Lk.
12:
39). Peter, who heard that warning, repeats
it to those who had obtained like precious faith
with himself in the righteousness of our
God and Saviour Jesus Christ (2 Pet.
3: 10, 11;
1: 1). Paul reminds
the Thessalonians that they, by his particular
instruction, knew of that thief-like coming, and so
they need not be caught unawares by its unannounced
arrival, only they must be very careful to keep awake,
continuing watchful and
sober (1 Thess. 5:
21).
The Lord from heaven repeats these warnings
to the church at
Thus
it appears that the house, and
the Lords servants in it, continue
on earth in His absence down to the close of the
Tribulation era when the Beast is preparing for the
final battle.
9. That the first resurrection takes place after the Tribulation is clear
from the fact that those martyred by the Beast share
therein (Rev. 20:
4). The
supposition that this resurrection will be completed
in stages, of which this will be the last, is not
needed and seems without Scripture authority.
10. In Rev. 14 there is a series of six
visions. In the first a company of saints are seen on
the Mount Zion with the Lamb, in the region of the
throne of God, for the elders and the living creatures
are present, before the throne.*
These saints have been purchased out of the earth (showing that they are not
then on earth), and they learn [page 36 - THE HARVEST] the song of heaven. In the
second vision the hour of judgment strikes; that is,
the end days begin. In the third we learn that the
Harlot,
* In Revelation before
the throne always means a heavenly locality,
not on earth. It
is the place of the presence of God, of the elders,
living creatures, angels, the glassy sea, the heavenly
throne and altar. See 4:
5,
6, 10; 7:
9; 8: 3;
14: 3; 20: 12;
all its occurrences.
Here
again the presence on the clouds, with the gathering
up of the godly, is put between the Tribulation and
the destruction of the lawless. With unique emphasis
Christ had taught that the wheat
must remain in the field with the tares until
the harvest
and that the harvest is the consummation of the age (Matt. 13:
30-39), not any
point of time prior to the End Days.
In Rev. 14 this harvest is
shown appropriately as the last great event but one in
this age.
The
whole New Testament agrees in putting at this point
the appearing in glory of the Son of man, which was
seen from afar by Old Testament prophets; nor does the
Scripture know of any earlier descent of the Lord from
the throne to the air.
And so Paul in one sentence (2
Thess.
2: 1-5)
grouped together (a) the Parousia, (b) our
gathering together unto the Lord, and (c) the Day of
the Lord, and most expressly announced and warned that
these all must be preceded by the apostasy and the
revelation of the Man of Sin.
George
Muller said: having been a careful diligent student of the Bible for nearly fifty
years, my mind has long been settled upon this
point, and I have not the shadow of a doubt about
it. The Scripture
declares plainly that the Lord Jesus will not come
until the apostasy shall have taken place, and the
man of sin, the son of perdition
(or personal Antichrist) shall have been revealed,
as seen in 2 Thess.
2.
*
*
*
IV.
THE PRE-TRIBULATION RAPTURE.
There are two principal views
upon the matters here [page 37 - ESCAPE
POSSIBLE] considered:
one, that the Parousia will commence prior to the
Times of the End, and that at its inception all
believers of the heavenly calling, dead and living,
will be taken to the presence of the Lord in the air;
the other, that the Parousia will occur at the close
of the Great Tribulation, until when no believers will
be raised or changed.
The one view says that no believers will go
into the End Times, the other that none then living
will escape them.
The
one involves that the utmost measure of
unfaithfulness or carnality in a believer puts him
in no peril of forfeiting the supreme honour of
rapture or of having to endure the dread End Days:
the other view involves that no degree of
faithfulness or of holiness will enable a saint to
escape those Days. As regards this
matter, godliness and unfaithfulness seem
immaterial on either view; which raises a doubt of
both views.
Our
study thus far has shown that the former view is
unfounded: we have now to see that the latter is
partly right and partly wrong.
It is right in asserting that the Parousia
will commence at the close of the Great Tribulation,
but wrong in declaring that no saints living as the
End Times near will escape that awful period.
1. For our Lord Jesus Christ has
declared distinctly that escape is possible. In Luke
21 is a record of instruction given by Him to
four apostles on the
Then
He mentions the disturbances in nature and the fears
of mankind that are grouped under seal 6 in Rev. 6:
12-17, and
adds explicitly that then shall
they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power
and great glory,
and that when these things begin His disciples may
know that their redemption draweth nigh (ver.
27, 28).
In
concluding this outline of the period of the Beast the
Lord then uttered this exhortation and promise: But
take heed to yourselves,
lest haply your hearts be overcharged with
surfeiting, and
drunkenness, and
cares of this life, and
that day come on you suddenly as a snare: for so shall it come upon all them
that dwell on the face of all the earth.
But watch ye at
every season, making
supplication, that
ye may prevail to escape all these
things that shall come to pass,
and to stand before the Son of Man.
This
declares distinctly: (1) That
escape is possible from all those things of which
Christ had been speaking, that is, from the whole
End-times. (2)
That that day of testing will be universal, and
inevadable by any then on the earth, which involves
the removal from the earth of any who are to escape
it. (3)
That those who are to escape will be taken to where
He, the Son of Man, will then be, that is, at the
throne of the Father in the heavens.
They will stand before Him there. (4)
That there is
a fearful peril of disciples becoming worldly of
heart and so being enmeshed in that last period. (5) That
hence it is needful to watch, and to pray ceaselessly, that so we may prevail
over all obstacles and dangers and thus escape that
era.
This most important and unequivocal
statement by our Lord sets aside the opinion that
all Christians will escape irrespective of their
moral state, and also negatives the notion that no
escape is possible. There is a
door of escape; but as with all doors, only those who
are awake will see it, and only those who are in earnest will reach it ere the storm bursts. In every
place in the New Testament the word escape
has its natural force - ekpheugo,
to flee out of a place or trouble and be quite clear
thereof.* It never
means [page 39 - THE
ESCAPE COMPLETE]
to endure the
trial successfully.
In this very discourse of the Lord it is in
contrast with the statement, He that endureth (hupomeno) to the end [of these things] the
same shall be saved
(Matt.
24: 13).
One
escapes, another endures.
*
It comes only at Luke 21: 36; Acts 16:
27; 19: 16; Rom. 2:
3; 2 Cor. 11:
33; 1 Thess. 5:
3: Heb. 2: 3;
12: 25. In
comparison with
The
attempt to evade the application of this passage to
Christians on the plea that it refers to Jewish
disciples of Christ, is
baseless: (a) No Jewish
disciples of Christ are known to the Scriptures (Gal.
3: 28; Eph. 2: 14
- 18). (b) The
God-fearing remnant of
2. In
harmony
with this utterance of our Lord is His further
statement to the church at Philadelphia (Rev.
3: 10):
Because thou didst keep the word of My patience, I
also will keep thee from
(ek) the hour of trial, that hour which is to
come upon the whole inhabited earth, to try them that dwell upon the
earth.
Here also are declared: (a) The universality of
that hour of trial, so that any escape from it must
involve removal; (b) the promise of being kept from
it, (c) the intimation that such
preservation is the consequence of a certain moral
condition: Because
thou didst keep
... I also will keep. As this is
addressed to a church no question of a Jewish
application can arise.
Nor do
known facts or the Scriptures allow of the
supposition that every Christian keeps the word of
Christs patience (Matt. 24:
12; Rev. 2:
5; Gal. 6:
12: Col. 4:
14 with
2 Tim.
4: 10
concerning Demas); so that this
promise cannot be stretched to mean all [regenerate] believers.
In
The Bible
Treasury, 1865,
p. 380, there
is
an instructive note by J.
N. Darby (see also Coll. Writings, vol. 13,
Critical [page 40 - THE WOMAN IN
HEAVEN] 1,
581) on the difference between apo and ek. The former regards
hostile persons and
being delivered from them; the latter refers to a state and
being
kept from getting into it.
On Rev. 3:
10 he wrote: So in Rev. 3
the faithful are kept
from getting into this state, preserved from getting
into it. or, as we say,
kept out of it. For the words here answer fully to
the English out
of or from.
That the thought is not being kept from being
injured in soul by the trials is implied in the
expression Keep thee out of that hour; it is from the period of time itself that the faithful are to be
kept, not merely from its spiritual perils.
3. Of this escape and preservation there are two pictures as there are two
promises.
In Rev. 12
is a vision of (a) a woman; (b) a man-child whom she
bears; (c) the rest of her family. Light on this
complex figure may be gained from Hosea 4 and Isa.
49: 17-21;
50: 1.
As
to this woman the
dominant fact is that at one and the same time she is
seen in heaven arrayed with heavenly glory and on
earth in sorrow and pain.
This simultaneous and contradictory
experience is true of the
As
to the Man-child, his birth and rapture, as with the
whole of this book from c. 4:
1, pointed to events which the angel
distinctly said were future to the time of the
visions. There
is no exception to this, and therefore there is no
possible reference to the resurrection and ascension
of Christ. Nor,
in the fact, did our Lord at His birth escape from
Satan by rapture to the throne of God: on the
contrary, the Dragon slew Him in manhood and only
thereafter did He ascend to heaven.
Nor at the ascension of Christ was Satan cast
[page 41 - THE MAN CHILD] out of heaven.
Thirty years later, when Paul wrote to the
Ephesians, he and his servants were still there (Eph. 6: 12), and another
thirty years later again, when John saw the visions,
his ejection was still future (Rev. 12).
The
identity of this Man-child is indicated by the
statement that he is
to rule all the nations with a rod of iron,
for this is a repetition of the promise (Rev. 2:
26, 27), And
he that
overcometh, and
he that
keepeth My works unto the end [comp. the keeping the word
of My patience, as above], to him will I give
authority over the nations,
and he shall rule them with a
rod of iron. This
promise is given only to Christ
and the overcomers of
the churches. As it cannot
here (Rev. 12)
apply to Him it can only apply to them.
This
removal of the Man-child cannot be the event foretold
in 1 Thess. 4:
15-17, for
those there in view will be taken up only as far as to
the air around this earth when the Lord descends
thereto from heaven, but this removal takes the
Man-child to the throne of God, which is where Christ
now is, in the upper heavens.
This fulfils the promise that such as prevail
to escape shall stand before
the Son of Man.
As
we have seen, the Lord does not descend from heaven
till the close of the Great Tribulation, not before
Satan is cast down. Moreover, this one child can be
only a part of the whole family, not the completed
church in view in 1 Thess.
4* and
1 Cor. 15.
The woman
out of whom he is born remains on earth,
and after his ascent the rest of her seed are persecuted by the Beast;
but his removal is before the Beast is even on the
scene or Satan is cast out of heaven. Thus those who
will form this company escape all things [page 42 - FIRSTI7RUITS, HARVEST, VINTAGE] that will occur in
the End-times, as Christ promised; and the
identification with the overcomers declares that they
had lived that watchful, prayerful, victorious life,
upon which, as the Lord said, that escape will depend.*
*
In 1
Thess. 4:
15, 17 the
word perileipo, that are left,
deserves
notice. It
is not found elsewhere in the New Testament, but the
force may be seen in the LXX of Amos.
5:
15, and of the
verb (in some editions) at 2
Chron.
34: 21; Hag. 2: 3.
In each case it
means, to be left after others are gone. So the
lexicons also, and they are confirmed by The Vocabulary
of the Greek Testament. In
this place it seems redundant save
on our view that the rapture there in question is
at the close of the Tribulation and that some
saints will not have been left on earth until that
event, but will have been removed alive earlier;
for to have marked the contrast with those that had
died it would have been enough to have said we
that are alive, without twice repeating this
unusual word.
[* When
the
teaching of the return of Christ (before the
Millennium) began to spread, it was the privilege of
the writer to hear and accept the truth.
It certainly was the message of the hour. There was,
however, a note lacking.
The
lacking note was the imperative demand for
holiness of heart and life as the necessary
qualification for this supreme event. Little or
nothing was said upon this subject by these first
messengers. The
fact of the return of Christ, imminent and certain,
was all the people were prepared for; and even this
was resented by the vast majority of those who heard
it. So
unpopular was this message that it could only be
propagated through faith and self-sacrifice.
Indeed, we remember instances when those
who preached it were not only ostracised, but shamefully entreated. Little by
little, however, the truth prevailed, until the
outstanding ministers began to preach it boldly. Now, for
the past twenty-five or thirty years, the
evangelists and Bible teachers who specialize in
this doctrine receive large emoluments and
favourable notoriety instead of abuse.
Having been taught this truth from childhood, among people who knew
nothing of sanctification, the writer naturally
wondered what would become of their unsanctities as
these saints were caught up.
We cannot help feeling that the preaching of
the Second Coming of Christ, as it was preached fifty
years ago, has lost its power of conviction, and has
become largely a matter of entertainment.
We have arrived at this definite conclusion:
that it is no longer the
message
of the hour,
and that the preachers who proclaim the near coming of Christ, and
fail at the same time to stress the necessity of
sanctification, are deceiving their hearers, and
rocking them to sleep in a cradle of
self-indulgence and sin.
W. T. MacArthur.]
Consequent
upon
this removal of the watchful, Satan is cast out of
heaven, and presently brings up the Beast, who
persecutes the rest of the womans family (12:
17,
18; 13: 7-10). So that one
section of the family escapes the End-times by
being rapt to heaven, and the rest, the more
numerous portion, as
the term indicates, go into the Great Tribulation. These latter
are such as keep the commandments of God and hold the
testimony of Jesus
(ver. 17).
In Rev. 14:
12, such are termed the
saints,
which in New
Testament times, was the term regularly used by
Christians of one another; and among their number
John had already included himself
(1:
2, 9). It covers
therefore the
4. The second picture of this pre-Tribulation rapture is given in Rev. 14.
In this chapter there are six scenes:-
1.
First-fruits with the Lamb on the
2.
The
hour of judgment commences (6, 7).
3.
4.
The
Beast period is present and persecution is in progress
(9-13).
5.
The
Son of Man on a white cloud reaps His harvest
(14-16).
6.
The
vintage of the earth is gathered,
and is trodden in the winepress on earth (17-20).
The
agricultural figure wrought into this chapter by the
Holy Spirit is the key to its teaching. In the early
summer the Jew was to gather a sheaf of corn as soon
as enough was ripe, and this was to be presented to
God in the temple at
The last scene is the destruction of the
Beast by the Lord at His descent to
The
First-fruits cannot be a picture
of the whole of the redeemed as they will finally
appear at the end of the drama of those days, for
first-fruits cannot
be more than
a portion of the whole harvest,
neither can first-fruits describe the final
ingathering. It were
a contradiction to speak thus.
Firstfruits
must be gathered first, before the reaping of the
remainder.
The number 144,000 need not be taken literally. In the
Apocalypse numbers are sometimes literal, but
sometimes figurative.
As
has been noted above, these had been purchased out of
the earth, which shows that they were not then on
earth, and they learn the song of the heavenly choir. Nor can this Mount Zion be at Jerusalem, but must be that in the
heavens, for the Lord will not descend to the
earthly Zion till after the Tribulation, not before
it, as this scene is placed.
The
144,000 of ch. 7 are a different
company. They
are the godly Remnant of Israel seen on earth after
the appearing and the gathering of the elect to the
clouds, and are sealed (comp. Ezek. 9) so as to be
untouched by the wrath of the Lamb now to be poured
upon the godless (Zeph. 2: 3; Isa. 26:
20, 21).
The
identity of these First-fruits is revealed by a
similar means to that which reveals the identity of
the Man-child. These
persons are shown as connected with the Father, the
Lamb, and the Mount Zion, which also refers
back to the promises to the overcomers, and
shows that the First-fruits will be a portion of the company of the victors,
who, it is [page 44 - TWO RAPTURES]
promised, will be
marked as connected with the Father, the Son, and the
New Jerusalem (Rev. 3:
12). These
three marks of identification come together in these
two passages only.
Now the
moral features attributed to these First-fruits show
that they had lived just that pure, faithful
Christian life which necessarily results from
watchfulness, prayerfulness, and patient obedience
to the words of Christ, as inculcated in the
corresponding passages quoted.
As
the Man-child and the rest of the womans seed were
but one family, only removed in two portions, one
before the Beast and the other after his persecutions,
so first-fruits and harvest were grown from one sowing
in one field, only they
were reaped in two portions, one before the hour of
judgment and the other after the Beast had
persecuted.
We have remarked above that these latter are
termed saints, and that this
was
the regular title that Christians gave to one
another; that it is amplified by the double
description they that keep
the commandments of God and the
faith of Jesus, and
that in this description John had before twice
included himself; so that the terms mean that company
in which John had membership, the
church of God. Moreover, as the Jewish remnant
will not have owned Jesus during the period in view the terms can apply only to Christians.
Finally,
as
between the gathering of the sheaf of first-fruits and
the ingathering of the harvest there came the
intensest summer heat, so between the removal of the
First-fruits and the reaping of the Harvest there is
placed (ver. 9-13)
the Great Tribulation, that final persecution which
while, like all persecution, it will wither the
un-rooted stalk (Matt. 13:
21), ripens the matured grain.
It is ripeness, not the calendar or the clock, that determines
the time of reaping (Mk. 4: 29).
The Heavenly Husbandman reaps no unripe
grain: hence, the hour to reap is come when the harvest is dried up (Rev. 14:
15), for the
dryness of the kernel in the husk is its fitness for
the gamer and for use.
Thus
the Great Tribulation will be a true mercy to [some of]
the Lords people by fully developing and
sanctifying them for their heavenly destiny and
glory.
It
thus appears that the foretold order of events will
be:-
1.
The removal of such as prevail to escape the Times of
the End. These
will be taken up to God and to His [page 45 - THE
FORETOLD ORDER]
throne on the
2.
The Beast arises and persecutes.
3.
The Lord descends to the clouds and gathers together
His elect (Matt. 24:
29-31; 1 Cor. 15: 51,
52;
1 Thess.
4: 15-17;
Tit. 2: 13; Rev. 14:
14-16). At this time
there will be the first resurrection. Each who shall
be accounted worthy of the coming age will arise into his lot at the end of
the days,
not sooner, certainly not before the End days have
commenced (Dan. 12:
13). Nor may we
assume of the First-fruits that they will have
priority in the Kingdom over equally faithful saints
of earlier times.
4.
After an interval the Lord descends to the
It
is therefore our wisdom to give earnest, unremitting
attention to our Lords most solemn exhortation take
heed to yourselves, lest haply
your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and
drunkenness [that
is,
fleshly indulgence],
and cares
of this life
[that is, its burdens through either poverty or
riches], and
that day come on you suddenly as a snare: for so shall it come on all
them
that dwell on the face of all the earth. But watch
ye at every season, making supplication, that ye may
prevail
to escape all
these things that shall come to pass,
and to stand before the Son of Man (Lk. 21:
34-36).*
[* The divorce between the teaching
of consecration and the heralding of the Second
Advent is a painful and dangerous development of the
moment.
And since it might be difficult to find
an Advent Testimony meeting up and down the land
where warnings are given to any but the unsaved,
Advent truth has lost it grip, and seems to the
outsider little more than an unreal, speculative,
academic forecast of events and dates.
The Judge standing before the doors is no
longer the dynamic truth that shook the
Oh, dare and suffer all things!
Yet but a stretch
of road,
Then wondrous
words of welcome,
And then - the FACE OF GOD!
Many
of the perplexities felt as to these themes are caused
by misconceptions upon three subjects - the
constitution of man, the
place and
state
of the dead,
the judgment of the Lord upon His people.
Some discussion of these matters follows.
*
*
*
[page
46]
SOUL
OR SPIRIT, WHICH IS THE MAN?
V. AN ENQUIRY
AS TO MAN-S CONSTITUTION AND FUTURE,
WITH REMARKS ON HADES AND
As treasures heavy and
valuable may hang upon a small hook, so consequences
weighty and far-reaching may follow the settlement of
what may seem a small point.
Because
at
death the spirit
of man returns to God who gave it (Eccl. 12:
7), it is generally thought that man goes
then to God in heaven.
If the passage meant this it would teach that
the ungodly, as well as the godly, go to heaven at
death, for it refers to man as man.
This alone shows that this is not the sense
of the passage. But further, the meaning given assumes
that the man, the conscious entity, the person, the
ego, is his spirit. But if this is not so, then the
opinion stated, has no support in Scripture.
Again,
many
annihilationists deem that the man, the person,
consists of two parts only, the body and the spirit,
and that when these are parted at death the person,
the conscious, ego, ceases to exist until the two
parts are reunited in resurrection.
But if the conscious personality has ceased
to exist, it is extremely difficult to conceive that
it is the identical conscious person that comes into
existence again. Would it not rather be a new
personality that comes into being at resurrection? How
can continuity of personality persist during
non-existence, and how, then, shall this new man be
held morally responsible for the deeds of that former
person, and be righteously liable to judgment therefor?
Moreover,
this
would involve (what indeed we have heard asserted) a
disintegration of the person of the Man, Christ Jesus,
between His death and resurrection.
According to the theory, during that period
His humanity was non-existent.
So that whilst the Son of
God existed, Christ did not until resurrection. This is
fatal heresy, and alone forbids the doctrine in
question.
The
alternative must be for the annihilationist to adopt
the first mentioned view, that
personality attaches to the spirit, as others of that
school do. But
if it be, that the soul
is the
[page
47
MAN FORMED] person, and that after death the
soul has its own separate existence, then
the whole assertion fails.
Inasmuch therefore as most
serious issues are involved, this inquiry is of great
practical importance.
Indeed, it may be said that many most
interesting and profitable themes can only be understood aright by a right understanding of our question - Soul
or Spirit, Which is the Man?
It
must here be remarked that this theme, like all such
profounder topics of the Word of God, cannot be studied in
the English
Authorised Version. It is not possible, on
account of the deliberate irregularity in translation
used by the Translators so as to secure pleasing
English. We quote here generally the English
Revised Version, and sometimes the New
Translation of J. N. Darby (Morrish,
1. THE CREATION OF MAN.
The
creation of man is described in Gen. 2:
7: And Jehovah Elohim formed man,
dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life; and
man became a living soul.
Here
are
three stages. 1.
A material form fashioned but of material particles,
dust. This
is the body. 2.
A somewhat inbreathed by God, named in Eccl. 12:
7, spirit. That
the breath of Gen. 2: 7,
and the spirit of Eccl.
12: 7 are
one is confirmed by the combination of the two terms
in Gen.
7: 22: All
in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life. 3.
The result, that man became what is here called soul, a living soul.
1. As to the body, it is to be observed that it was not itself the man. It lay
there, fashioned and prepared, but the man was not yet there. The
body was an inanimate form, which preceded the
existence of the man.
This as against the Sadducean materialist and
his assertion that the body is the man, and that when
it dies his existence ends.
2. The same is true of the breath or spirit, which God inbreathed. It also
was in existence prior to the man, for God breathed it
into the body. It was not God; it is not divine: it is
not said that God breathed of Himself, or [page 48 - MAN
A TRINITY]
breathed His
Spirit into the body, but a somewhat not to be defined
by us as to its substance or nature, but which God
terms spirit.
In Zech. 12:
1 it is declared to be a created thing, a
thing formed,
as an article made by a potter. It is the same word as
potter in Zech.
11: 13,
and is found first at Gen. 2: 8,
God formed man. This as
against the pantheist, and the doctrine akin to
pantheism, that there is a measure of divinity in all
men by creation.
The immanence of God in all creation is truth, the identity of all
things, or of any created thing, with God is error,
deadly error.
Thus
the spirit was not the man, for he
only came
into existence by reason of the inbreathing of the
spirit into the body, which conjunction of two
separate, previously existing things, resulted in the
creation of a third: man became a living soul.
3. It remains only that the man is what he is here described to be, a living soul.
The man is the soul, not the spirit, even as he is not the
body.
This as against the annihilationist theory
above mentioned.
It
is fairly certain that every false philosophy that has
beclouded the thoughts of man had been instilled into
mens minds by spirits of darkness in
This
threefold
composition of man is implied everywhere in the Word
of God, and sometimes is distinctly stated.
Thus in 1 Thess.
5: 3: And
the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly;
and may your spirit and soul
and body be preserved entire,
without blame in the parousia
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The
body is distinguished from the spirit in James
2: 26: The
body apart from (the) spirit
is dead;
and the soul from the spirit in Heb. 4:
12, The word of God ...
piercing to the dividing of soul and
spirit.
The
man has a body with which he operates upon the
material world; but the body is not the man. He has
also [page 49 - DEATH]
a spirit
with which he has dealings with the spiritual realm;
but the spirit is not the man.
The
man himself, the conscious ego, is the soul.
Personality
in man inheres in the
soul, which will become yet more apparent as we
proceed, but may be seen in such passages as Ex.
1: 5:
all
the souls
were seventy souls;
Lev.
4: 2: if a
soul shall sin 5:
2: if a soul touch; Lev. 5:
4: if a soul swear 7: 18: the soul that eateth,
etc., etc. The
evident sense is: If a person do this or
that. See
also LXX Ezk. 16: 5.
2. THE MEANING OF THE WORD DEATH.
Now
the
body without spirit is dead
(Jas.
2: 26),
and the soul,
the man, cannot use or inhabit a dead body. The
spirit imparts to the body vitality, animation,
and makes it usable by man.
Thus so long as the two are united man is a
living soul, but when God recalls the spirit which He gave, the body
ceases to have life, the soul vacates it, and
thenceforth, until resurrection,
the man is dead.
But
it is carefully and always to be remembered that in
Scripture the term life
does not mean simply existence, but much more and much
rather it means a certain mode or quality of
existence, and equally so the term death, therefore, does
not mean, non-existence, but an opposite state or
mode of existence.
Many things exist which do not exhibit the
property called life. All annihilationist
reasoning which we have read assumes this false sense
of the words life and
death and cannot
proceed without it.
Yet
in some real sense Adam died the day he disobeyed God,
according to the sentence, in the day that thou eatest of it
thou shalt certainly die
(Gen.
2: 17),
but he did not cease to exist that day.
So, by a powerful antithesis, it is said, she
that giveth herself to pleasure is dead while she liveth,
which cannot be read, ceases to exist while she exists
(1 Tim. 5:
6). In
much
the same way we speak of a living death.
Equally
arresting
is our Lords argument against the annihilationists of
His day (Lk. 20:
37, 38).
He
first admits that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are dead,
saying, But that the dead are
raised,
and at once adds that God is not the God of the dead,
but of the living, for [page 50 - DEATH, ITS
DURATION]
all live
unto Him.
So dead in one sense, they are yet alive in
another, showing that both terms describe only
relative conditions of existence.
Similarly the Lord makes the father of the
prodigal say: This my son was dead,
and is alive again
(Lk. 15: 24),
though in another sense he had been as much alive in
the far country as after his return. Further, it is
clear that the
first death does not cause the annihilation of the
sinner or there could be no second death for him.
Thus
the word death does not of itself mean ceasing to be,
and such as say that the second death means
annihilation are bound to show that the Scripture adds
to the word this sense which does not belong to it. The second
death is the lake of fire
(Rev.
20: 14). The beast
and the false prophet are cast thereinto before the
thousand years reign of Christ (Rev.
19:
20); they are still there at the close of
that period when Satan is cast there (Rev. 20:
10); so that a thousand years in the second
death has not destroyed their existence, and the
sentence upon all three is that they shall be tormented day and
night for the ages of the ages.
It would be impossible to torment that which
had ceased to be.
It
is consistent with the holiness and the love of God -
for it is fact - that angels that abused His favour
shall be confined in that place of misery, Tartarus,
for already thousands of years (2
Pet. 2: 4); that Dives (Lk. 16), who abused His
goodness on earth, shall be tormented in
a
flame in Hades for a period unknown to us, for it is
not yet ended; that the Beast and the false prophet,
who blasphemed His holy name, shall be in the lake of
fire for more than a thousand years at least.
As this is consistent with the love and
justice of God why should it not be so for 10,000
years, for 100,000, for a billion years, or for ever,
and especially in the case of those who rejected His
amazing love in Christ, trampled under foot the Son of
God, and definitely resisted the Spirit of truth? We are not
competent to form our own opinion as to what God may
or may not, do consistently with His character and
because of it. We
can only bow to what He has revealed, assured that He
will ever act consistently with what He is, for He is
not able to do otherwise.
We can best estimate what sentence a judge
may pass by considering what sentences he has before
passed, as well as what statements he may have made as
to future sentences. [page
51 - DEATH,
ITS NATURE]
3. WHAT
The
passage before cited tells us that the dust returns to the earth as
it was, and the
spirit returns unto God who gave it (Eccl. 12:
7). But what becomes of the soul?
An
actual case is better than much speculation, an ounce
of fact being worth a ton of theory.
Of the Man Christ Jesus we ate told
distinctly what took place at His death.
1. His dead body was
laid in the tomb.
2. His last words on the cross were, Father, into
thy hands I commend my spirit (Lk. 23:
46), the human
spirit thus returning unto God who gave it.
That the human spirit is not the divine
Spirit is seen clearly in the case of our Lord, for
His entire holy humanity was a created thing conceived
by an operation of the Holy Spirit in Mary (Lk.
1: 35);
years later it was anointed with power by the Spirit
of God coming upon it; and at last on the cross, He
surrendered His human spirit to the Father: an act
impossible in relation to the Spirit of God with Whom
He as God was in indissoluble union.
The distinction - necessary and unavoidable -
between the human and the divine is thus ever
maintained. It was the human
spirit which vitalized His body that Jesus gave up
that He might die.
3. But the Spirit of prophecy in David (Ps. 16:
10) had put into Messiahs mouth these other
words: Thou
wilt not leave my soul to Sheol, which
words were later, on the day of Pentecost, applied by
Peter to Christ.
Thou
wilt not leave my soul unto Hades (Acts
2: 27).
The
error of Apollinaris
(cent. 4), that the person of Christ consisted of a
human body and soul only, with the divine Spirit (or
Logos) taking the place in Him of a human spirit,
must be steadfastly resisted. His
humanity, as ours, consisted of body, soul, and
spirit.
Sheol
and
Hades are equivalent words in Hebrew and Greek
respectively. Of this
region there is abundant information in Scripture. It is very
far from the fact, as spiritualists assert,
that no certain information as to the state after
death is available save what they think they receive
from spirits through mediums. But
most unfortunately the reader of the Authorized
Version is completely stopped from this study by
the variety of the terms employed.
Sheol and Hades are [page 52 - SPIRIT
NOT THE PERSON]
rendered grave,
pit,
and hell.
The last in its older English meaning was not inaccurate,
but it has come now to mean only the final place
of the lost, the lake of fire, which never is the
sense of Sheol or
Hades. However, any
diligent reader can pursue the subject in the Revised
Version, for these original terms are given in
either text or margin where ever they occur.
This is one example, and an important one, of
the superiority of the R.V.
over the A.V.
4. WHERE IS HADES?
So the soul of our Lord was in Hades between His death and His resurrection
on the third day.
And Eph. 4:
9, 10
shows beyond question (1) that the soul
was the Lord Himself, the personality, and (2)
where Hades is situate.
It says: Having ascended up on high he has
led captivity captive,
and has given gifts unto men. Now this, having ascended,
what is it but that He also descended into the lower
parts of the earth?
He that descended is the same who has also ascended
far above all heavens, that
he might fill all things.
1. The Person that ascended is the same Person that had descended, and from His own express words to Mary directly after His resurrection it is
certain that He himself did not go to the Father
at the hour of death,
for He said to her: I have (perf. ind.,
anabebeeko)
not yet ascended to my
Father; but go
to my brethren and say unto them,
I ascend to my Father (Jo.
20:
17). As His
ascent to the Father had yet to take place it is clear
that His human spirit, which He had commended to His
Father as He died, was not Himself.
Nor would the words admit the thought;
for a man cannot send his personality, his self, away
from himself, but we read of Jesus that he
gave up the spirit,
or, breathed
out the
spirit,
expired, as we say, the exact reversal of the act of
creation when God breathes
in the
spirit.
The
spirit therefore was not Himself, but a part of His
composite humanity that He could dismiss by an act of
the will. Man does not possess the power to do this;
he must use violence to terminate his life: but Christ
had received this power specially from
His Father, according to His statement [page
53 - HADES, ITS LOCATION] that the Father had given
Him authority to lay down His life by His own act (Jo.
10: 17, 18).
2. The realm to which Christ descended,
elsewhere, as we have seen, named Hades, is in this
place in Ephesians stated plainly to be in the lower parts of the earth.
Scripture
always locates it there and nowhere else.
So Jacob of old said: I will go down to Sheol to my son
(Gen. 37:
35); and so the great prophet Samuel, when
permitted by God to come from the world of the dead to
announce the doom of Saul (an exceptional permission
and event) said: Why hast thou disquieted me to
bring me up? (1
Sam. 28: 15).
And so Christ said of
Readers
of
the great classics will not need to be reminded that
it was the common belief of the ancient world that the
place of the dead was within the earth.
We are not aware that any other opinion was
then in mens minds.
Their details of that place and its
conditions are not to be accepted without Scripture
confirmation, even as those of mediaeval writers like
Dante are
not to be; but the general facts of the location of the world of the dead within
the earth, and of its having two divided regions,
one of pain and one of bliss, are plainly adopted
in Holy Scripture (as in Lk.
16), and so are confirmed as facts. And it
could be shown that some details also are thus
confirmed; as that the poets made visitors to and from
that realm go and come through some cave or opening in
the earth, and the Revelation
similarly represents demon hordes as coming
from the abyss through a shaft or opening therefrom (Rev.
9: 1-11). We
take the idea in each case to represent the conception
that the realm of the dead is within the earth.
5.
BUT DO NOT SAINTS AT DEATH GO
TO HEAVEN?
The
death of Stephen presents the exact features seen at
the death of his Lord.
We are told that he called upon the Lord, saying,
Lord Jesus, receive my spirit
... and ... he
fell asleep
(Acts 7:
59, 60).
His body did not fall asleep: it was battered
to death by brutal ill-usage, and devout men [page
54 - ON "GOING TO HEAVEN"] buried it.
It does not say that his spirit fell asleep,
but that he surrendered it to his Lord.
We shall see later that neither
does the soul sleep
in relation to that other realm to which it goes at
death; so that the expression fell
asleep can only mean as to its relation
to this earth-life which it leaves at death.
But
did not Stephen go to heaven
when he died? Do
not all who die in Christ do so?
It
has been the almost universal belief of Protestants,
but there
is no Scripture for it.
If Solomons words, the spirit returns to God who gave
it,
mean this, then the saints before the time of Christ
must have gone there, and, as before remarked, not
saints only, but the ungodly also, for the statement
applies to all men.
It
has been often asserted that when the Lord rose he
released from Hades the godly dead and removed them to
It
should be asked, Where were these multitudes of souls during the forty days before Christ
himself ascended? Raised at His resurrection, as the
theory asserts, what was their location during that
period?
But
it is known definitely that one of the most renowned
of Old Testament men of God did not ascend
to
heaven with the Lord, for at
Pentecost,
which was after the ascension, Peter distinctly
stated that David has not
ascended into the heavens
(Darby, Acts 2:
34).
Why was David left behind?
There is no reason to think he was: the
other godly dead also stayed there, as far as
Scripture is concerned.
Alford translates: David himself [i.e.,
in contrast to Christ] is
not
ascended:
In
his great work on The Creed (Art. 5, He descended into Hell) Bishop Pearson shows
how little basis the opinion in question has. He says:
The
next consideration, is whether by virtue of His
descent, the souls of those who before believed in
Him, the Patriarchs, Prophets, and all the people of
God, were delivered from that place and state, in
which they were before; and whether Christ descended into Hell
to that end, that He might translate them into a
place and state, far more glorious and happy.
This has been, in the later ages of the
Church, the vulgar opinion of most men
...
But even this opinion, as general
as it hath been, hath
neither the consent of Antiquity, nor such
certainty as it pretendeth. Indeed,
very
few (if any) for above five hundred years after
Christ, did so believe that Christ delivered the
saints out of Hell, as to leave all the damned
there. Many
of the Ancients believed not, that they were
removed at all, and few acknowledged that they
were removed alone.
But
it is asked, What became
of those who came forth from their graves after Christ
had risen and who appeared unto many? (Matt. 27: 52, 53).
Did they not go to
heaven with the Lord?
Let those say what became of these to whom
God may have given private information upon the point;
but it
cannot be learned from Scripture that they went to
heaven.
And in return it may be asked, What
became of Lazarus and the other persons who were
resuscitated, as mentioned in Scripture?
Did they go to heaven without dying again or,
are they still on earth? or,
did they not in due time go back to the death
state, from which they had been temporarily recalled
to exhibit the power of God?
That
Christ led captivity captive carries no suggestion that He took the godly dead to heaven.
The figure itself forbids the idea.
It is taken from the ancient practice that a
victorious commander dragged many, and the most noble,
of his captives to his capital city and exhibited them
for his glory at his triumphal entry.
The expression could in no wise apply to the
possible recovery of some of his own subjects from captivity by his enemy and their
return home with him in liberty. The sense may be seen
plainly in the place in [page 56
6. WHEN AND WHERE IS
Paul
says that he was caught away into the paradise (2
Cor. 12:
4),
which, in view of the meaning of the word, does not
mean the heaven of heavens where God has His own
especial dwelling.
The word caught up is not exact, for the Greek word
harpazo does
not in itself indicate the direction.
Nor is it certain that by the
paradise he means the third
heaven to which he had been taken according
to the verse preceding, because he had said (ver.
1) that he was about to speak of visions,
not of only one vision, whereas he did not mention
more than one, unless the two are separate events.
But
if the article the
paradise points to one such region that is
pre-eminently
But
the article the paradise does not require the sense
of a region in the heavens, because Christ used it
when he said to the thief, To-day shalt thou be with me in the
paradise
(Lk. 23:
43), and it is beyond question, as we have
seen, that Christ
did
not go to the heavenly regions that day, but to
Hades, in the lower parts
of the earth. Therefore the blissful region of Hades, Abraham's bosom
(Lk. 16:
22) was paradise; and ought not we, the
followers of the Lord, to feel that a
region which was suitable to Him in the death state
must be fully suitable for us?
As
far as the meaning of the word goes there may be many
paradises, even as Solomon says, I made me paradises; and so it may be that the Paradise of God, where grows
the tree of life of which saints that have conquered
in the battles of life shall be privileged to eat, is
heavenly in location
(Rev.
2: 7; 22:
14); but in any case that
is future, not present, as to our enjoyment of it,
and does not touch the place and state of the
dead.
The
Lord Jesus in His
universal presence is not only in heaven; He is also
in the midst of two or three living saints gathered
to His name on earth.
He is in Hades also: He descended ... He
ascended, that He
might fill all
things
might occupy the universe (ta panta), might pervade it all with His
presence, as the odour of the ointment did the house (John 12: 3),
where the same verb is used as in Eph.
4: 10
(pleeroo).
Thus, without vacating
His place at the right hand of God, He could
present Himself personally and repeatedly to His
imprisoned and hard-pressed servant on earth (Acts 23:
11; 2 Tim. 4: 16, 17), and can also
communicate with the dead, as we shall see
shortly.
And the [disembodied] soul, freed from the trammels of this
enfeebled, deranged body of our humiliation, can in consequence appreciate that presence more keenly and enjoy it
more blessedly, and so Paul could rightly say that
to depart and to be with Christ would be very far
better than to be chained day and night to a rough
pagan soldier, as was at that time his distressing
lot (Phil. 1:
23). It is
however to be noted that the apostle does not here
make any general statement that to
[page 58 - SOULS UNDER THE
ALTAR]
die is
gain; strictly his assertion is made
of himself only.
He had just stated his earnest expectation and hope that Christ should continue
to be magnified
in his body, whether
by life or by death. Not every [regenerate] believer
lives
with this as his fixed and paramount intention.
Not every Christian has so dedicated his body
to Christ as to be as willing for death as for life. Then Paul
adds: For
to
me to live is Christ,
and to die
is gain (Phil.
1: 20, 21). Doubtless this is
true of each who lives to magnify Christ; but it is not
said of [regenerate] believers
who may not so live, as those, for example, who are
cut off prematurely in their sins, as were Ananias
and Sapphira and the evil living Christians in the
Corinthian church (Acts
5: 1; Cor. 11: 30).
7. THE SOULS UNDER THE ALTAR.
It
is a serious loss to many believers that they regard
the book of the Revelation as
beyond comprehension, and are afraid to accept its
symbols and visions as a revelation. Hence, when appeal is made to
it they decline to accept its testimony.
But symbols, pictures, figures of speech,
being used by the [Holy] Spirit of truth with divine
care, teach with accuracy,
and indeed with superior vividness, those who have
eyes to see and ears to hear.
Hieroglyphs have plain meaning to those who
can read them, and this had been just as much the fact
during the period when men could not read them, or in
the later period when scholars differed as to their
meaning. Patient
research brought explanation and reconciliation.
One
of the most illuminating portions of Scripture upon
our present interesting and necessary themes is in Revelation 6: 9-11.
John
[the apostle]
says: And
when the Lamb opened the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of
them that had been slain for the word of God,
and for the testimony which they held: and
they cried with a great voice, saying,
How long, O
sovereign ruler, the
holy and true, dost
thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that
dwell on the earth? And there
was given to them, to each one,
a white robe; and it
was said unto them
that they should rest yet for a little time, until
their
fellow-bondmen also and their brethren, who
should be killed even as they were, should have
fulfilled their course.
[page
59 - CONSCIOUSNESS
IN HADES]
At the time here in view the resurrection
of the godly has not yet come, for the roll of the
martyrs is not complete. These
brethren
therefore are still without their resurrection
bodies. But
to John, rapt in spirit into that super-sensuous world
(c.
1: 10: I
became in spirit,
that is, in an ecstatic state), those souls were visible.
Therefore death does not end the existence of
the soul. Moreover,
they are
conscious: they remember
what befell them on earth at the hands of the
godless; they know
what the future will bring of vengeance; they ponder
the situation, and they wonder
at the seeming delay of their vindication by God;
they appeal to their Lord; they are
given
answer, counsel, and encouragement; they receive the sign of their Masters approval, the white robe, at once
His recompense for that they
did not defile their garments in this foul world,
and His assurance that
they shall be His personal and constant associates
in His [millennial] kingdom (Rev.
3: 4, 5).
This last item -
the giving of the white robes - shows further that not all saints
await a session of the judgment seat of Christ when
at last He shall come from heaven; for His decision
and approval are here made known to these in advance of His coming and of their
resurrection.
The
vision contains also something more, and which is
completely unseen by most readers.
When
Samuel came
from Hades to speak to Saul (1
Sam. 28: 12-14)
he was seen by
the
medium. She
saw him coming up out of the earth,
a further plain
Intimation that Sheol
is within the earth.
She described him, saying it was an
old man who
had appeared, and he was covered with a
robe. The
description was so accurate that Saul, who had long
known Samuel on earth, recognized him by it and was
satisfied that the real Samuel was present, though he
had not himself seen the appearance; for it says that
he
perceived
(Heb., knew), not
that he saw that it was Samuel.
Equally does his question to the witch What
seest thou? tell that he had not himself
seen the form.
This
makes
evident (a) that the
disembodied soul has form and garments, such as
can be seen by one endowed with vision therefore, as
were the medium then and John later; and (b) that the psychical
form and clothing of that state correspond
recognizably to the outer material form and clothing
of the former earth life.
This has bearing upon the
[page 60 - PSYCHICAL
FORM AND CLOTHING]
question of
recognition after death, and upon other interesting
points not now to be examined.
The
reality of this psychical form is often assumed or
asserted in Scripture.
Dives in Hades (Lk.
16) has a body that can feel anguish from a flame.
There is water
that could cool his tongue. Lazarus has a finger.
Both Dives and Abraham have eyes and ears and
voices; they see and hear and speak.
The
reality of bliss in that state must be surrendered
if the reality of torment there be denied. That those
realities are subtle as compared with their grosser
counterparts of this world,
does not make them or the experiences less real, but
rather the more acute.
Thus
also it is as to the souls under the altar.
John sees them, and sees that to each of them
is given a robe
that is both suitable and significant.
It
was for a similar, yet even higher, experience that
Paul longed; for, while the disembodied state would
indeed be far better than his painful lot as a
prisoner, yet in itself it is not the best.
And so on another occasion, when he was in
freedom and rejoicing in his wondrous and privileged
service, he spoke differently (2
Cor. 5: 1-10).
First he spoke of
the present: We that are in this tent-dwelling [the body] do
groan, being burdened:
then he mentioned the
intermediate state after death: not for that we would be unclothed (without adequate covering),
for this is not to be desired, it is as unpleasant and
unseemly for the soul as for the body*; and then he
spoke of the future: we
long to be clothed upon with our habitation which is
from heaven; if so be that being clothed we
shall not be found naked,
that
is, at [the time of] the
coming of the Lord.
*
Compare the
evident longing of the evil spirit to return into the
body he had left.
Without a material body he wandered restless,
like a thirsty man seeking water in a desert (Matt. 12:
43-45). Demons also
begged to enter the bodies of even swine, when driven
from the body of a man.
This misery of disembodied beings is
recognized by the heathen, who often, by reason of
dread and unholy contact with the demon world, have
more sense of these matters than the materialized
modern westerner.
Thus a
Chinese driver explained the whirling dust
spouts of the
[page
61 - SUITABLE
CLOTHING DEMANDED]
This
if
so be
implies the
possibility of not having part in the first resurrection, for (1
Cor. 15: 54) that is the hour
when what
is mortal shall be swallowed up of life, by the soul being clothed
upon with its building from God, a
house not made with hands, eternal,
in the heavens,
a house in contrast to this
present body, the frail transitory tent.
This
is the meaning of his earlier prayer above noticed,
that the
spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, unblemished, and so un-blamable
(amemptbs includes
both) when the Lord shall come (1
Thess.
5: 22). No naked,
that
is, un-embodied, soul can be presented before the
presence of God's glory, because for that it must
be without blemish (amomos), not to be blamed (Jude 24; Eph.
1: 4). Were a man,
however perfect his form, and even were he of the
royal family, to present himself
naked on a court day before the king upon his throne
he would be severely blamed.
Not only comeliness of person, but clothing,
and suitable clothing, is indispensable.
Indeed, the officers of the court would
prevent anything so utterly unseemly.
Shall the King of kings receive less respect? He
that hath ears to hear let him hear this, and lay
to heart that not death, but resurrection or rapture fits
for translation to the realms above and the court of
the God of glory.
It was thus with Christ himself.
For
entrance into the holy places the priest had not only
to be one of the redeemed people of God; he
had also to be unblemished as to his person (Lev. 21),
and he had further to be clothed in garments of glory and beauty (Ex.
28).
Both were indispensable for access to the
presence of God.
Moreover, before
the perfect form could be clothed in such garments
it had to be washed with water (Lev.
8:
6; 16: 4), which is the work
our Moses, Christ, wishes to effect in us in this
earthly life by
His word (Eph. 5:
25-27)
and by discipline (Heb. 12: 10), in
preparation
for that coming day of our being clothed for access
to and service in the true sanctuary above.
If
it be asked whether the righteousness [of
Christ]
imputed to the believer upon first faith in Christ
does not include all this that is evidently
necessary, the answer is a distinct negative.
One consideration settles this. That imputed
righteousness is the righteousness
of God, and this is of necessity
indefectible, untarnishable.
But, according to the regulations, [page
62 - GARMENTS MAY BE LOST] the priest may possibly
be defective in form or defiled in person and
clothing: were it not so, what need of the regulations
and purifying ceremonies?
For the forgiveness of sins, and for
life as a forgiven man in the camp,
neither
perfection
of form, nor washing at the gate of the tabernacle,
nor special clothing, were demanded; but
for access to God and for priestly service all these
were as indispensable as the atoning blood. Imputed righteousness settles completely and for ever the judicial
standing of the believer as justified before the law
of God; but
practical
righteousness
must be added in order to secure many of the mighty
privileges which become possible to the justified. Let him that
hath ears hear this also, for loss and, shame must
be his at last who
has
been content to remain deformed and imperfect in
moral state, or is found to have neglected the
washing, and so to be unfit to wear the noble
clothing required for access to the throne of glory.
Such neglect of present grace not only causes
the loss of heart access to God, as the careless
believer surely knows, but will
assure
the forfeiture of much that grace would have granted
in the future.
Here
lies the weight of the warning which our Lord
announces from heaven as to be specially
applicable when His coming draws near:
Behold, I come as a thief. [This, message is set in the
midst of the gathering of the hosts of Antichrist for
the battle of Har Magedon, and so indicates the
period when the coming will be]. Blessed
is he that
watcheth,
and keepeth his garments,
lest he walk naked and
they see his shame (Rev. 16:
15). Therefore
garments may be lost. If
the reference is to the imputed righteousness
[of
Christ],
then justification [by faith] may be forfeited, and the once [eternally]
saved be afterwards lost.
But let those who rightly reject this,
inquire honestly what it does properly mean as to
the eternally justified. And let them face what is involved in the loss of ones
garments.
In
the temple of old the guards were placed at nightfall
at their posts. The
captain of the temple, at any hour he chose, went
round with a posse of men unannounced, and if a guard
was caught asleep at his post, he was stripped of his
clothes, which were burned, and he was left to go
forth in his shame.
The shame of his nakedness was the outward
counterpart of the deeper shame that he had slept when
on duty. Not
in that dishonoured state dare he enter the house of
God [page 63 - MAN
NOT A SPIRIT]
and sing or serve.
And it would be long ere the disgrace of that
night would fade from memory, his
own or others.
My soul, keep awake through this short night
of duty while thy Lord is away!
Thou knowest not in which watch of the night
He will come, and it were dreadful to be left
unclothed with that house which is from heaven should
He come suddenly and find thee sleeping!
To
return to seal 5. These, then,
are souls not spirits. Man has
spirit as part of his composite being, but he is not a
spirit, as angels are.
In the 397
places where the word spirit
comes in the New Testament man is never called a
spirit, because he himself
is not one,
but is a soul. Hence, by
the way, the in-prison
spirits of 1
Pet. 3: 19
are not
human beings,* but those
fallen angels whom Peter again mentions (2
Pet. 2: 4: comp. Gen. 6:
1-4 and Jude 6). This
is put beyond question by the fact that these
are in the underworld, in
prison, in Tartarus - a region well known to the
ancient world, and by this name that Peter uses, as
the deepest and most dreadful part of Hades, a
prison of fallen angels; whereas the [animating] spirit
of man does not go to the underworld, but
to God who gave it.
[* NOTE. Peter is
believed to be referring to the Nephilim
or Giants here. That is,
those described in Gen.
6: 2,
4 are believed to
be the offspring from the daughters of men
and the sons of God
(fallen angelic creatures); described as, the
mighty men which were of old, the
men of renown (verse 4, R.V.): they
are neither human of angelic!]
It is therefore the soul which is the
person;
and - against the annihilationist - the
soul has not ceased to exist, or lost its sense of
personality, because of being without spirit or
body. Yet
neither can man in this incomplete condition stand in the all-holy
presence of God in heaven.
For entrance into the holy of holies the high
priest himself must be arrayed in garments specially
pure and glorious.
It
was only in His resurrection body of glory that the Man Christ Jesus entered into the holy
place on high, and
so only can the under-priests, His followers, do so. To stand
there the being must be complete
in structure and
perfect morally, which is the point of Pauls
prayer for fellow-saints: The God of peace himself sanctify you
wholly; and
may your spirit
and soul
and body be preserved entire, blameless
in the parousia [the presence, at His coming]
of our Lord Jesus Christ
(1 Thess. 5:
23). This
shows that the phrase the
spirits of just men made perfect points
to [the time of] resurrection.
It has just before been said of them, that apart
from us
they
- [i.e., Old Testament saints are included, (see verses 4-39) in this chapter.
Ed.]
could
not be made perfect
(Heb. 12: 23;
11: 40). All [page 64 - UNDER
THE ALTAR]
the other glories
to which in this passage we are said, to have come are
future, to be realized actually at the coming of the
Lord. See
my Firstborn
Sons, 84 ff.
The
use of spirit in
this place (Heb. 12:
23) may seem
at variance
with the statement that man is not called a spirit!
It is a rare instance, perhaps in the New
Testament the only instance, of Cremers fourth sense in which the term is used.
It comes to denote
an essence without any corporeal garb for its inner
reality; that is, in Heb. 12:
23, which he cites, the man, the
soul, without its body, is described as spirit, meaning
a spiritual substance destitute of a material
covering.
This does not cancel the regular distinction
in Scripture between soul and spirit, but indicates only the immateriality of the soul, the ego, in itself. The student
should by all means study Cremers treatment
of pneuma and psuche (Lexicon
of
N.T. Greek),
and note his conclusion that psuche
[soul] is
the subject or ego of life.
Now
these souls that John saw are under the altar.
Not
one of the first six seals, of which this is the
fifth, pictures events in the presence of God in
heaven; all deal with affairs of earth, or as seen
from the earth.
This altar, then, is not in heaven. There is an
altar in heaven pictured in the book, but it is
specified as being the golden altar, that is, the one for incense
(comp. Ex.
30:
3), and as
being before
the throne
or before
God (Rev.
8: 3; 9:
13). In
this book before the throne always
means the upper heavens.
But this other altar is one of sacrifice,
though not of atoning sacrifice.
We Christians have an altar of atoning
sacrifice (Heb. 13:
10): it
is the cross of Jesus, the Lamb of God.
But that is not in view here.
The
picture is really quite simple.
The brazen altar of sacrifice in the
tabernacle was square and hollow, with a grating upon
which rested the wood and the victims.
When the fire had done its work the remains
of the sacrifice fell through the grating to beneath
the altar, whence they could be removed on occasion. Now
the
place, the altar,
where these martyrs of Christ sacrificed person and
life in His cause is obviously this earth, and thus this vision
simply declares what we have seen from other
scriptures, that the place of the dead is under
the earth:
He
descended
into the lower
[page
65 - IMMORTAL SOUL]
parts of
the earth; whence those still there
will be removed at
[the
time
of their] resurrection.
Since
these
pages were written I have learned that this was the
explanation of the earliest known Latin commentator on
the Apocalypse, Victorihus of Pettau (died 303).
Mr. F.
F. Bruce summarized this in The Evangelical
Quarterly
(Oct., 1938) as follows: The
altar (6:
9)
is the earth: the brazen altar of burnt-offering and
the golden altar of incense in the Tabernacle
correspond to earth and heaven respectively.
The
souls under the altar, therefore,
are in Hades,
in that department of it which is remote from pains and fires, the rest of the saints.
This
confirms Bishop
Pearson cited above as to the view held in the
earliest Christian centuries.
A
great deal more concerning Hades can be learned from
Scripture, but it would require separate treatment.
Here we deal with the matter only as connected with
the subject in hand.
It
is true, as above indicated on Heb.
12:
23,
that the words soul and
spirit take, by much usage, shades of meaning derived
from their primary sense.
The student will discover these, and will not
be confused thereby if only the primary, dominant
sense of each has been first grasped firmly.
And keeping that sense before him, we believe
he will find it to illuminate many obscure scriptures
and subjects to see that the
soul is the person - a living
soul while on
earth - a dead soul while
in
the underworld
- and to be made alive in immortality at the [time
of]
resurrection,
with a body of glory incorruptible, indestructible.
The
term immortal soul is
incorrect and misleading when
used of our present state or of the dead.
To be
immortal is to be incapable of dying.
Man is not this as yet.
Neither the innocent humanity of Adam, nor
even the sinless humanity of Jesus was immortal, for
both were capable of dying, and did in fact die. But the saved of men will become immortal in resurrection,
as the man Christ Jesus did. The soul,
the man, has now endless
existence but
not
immortality, in the proper sense of the word, until resurrection; and then only the saved will be incapable of dying; the lost
will exist for ever, but in a state termed dead, the second
death. [page
66 - INDISSOLUBLE
LIFE]
We
rightly describe death as a dissolution, for the
partnership between mans
[animating] spirit
and
soul and body is dissolved.
Of our Lord in resurrection we read the
glorious fact that He liveth in the power of indissoluble life and death no more hath dominion over
Him (Heb. 7:
16: Rom. 6:
9, 10). This life
His [redeemed] people will share for ever
and ever. But for them, as for Him, it can be reached only by resurrection
or rapture, never
by death. It will be no
small profit from this discussion if it be seen that
the opinion that the believer goes at death to glory
diminishes the sense of need of
resurrection or rapture, and consequently of the
return of Christ when these will take place;
and also if it
thus cause some hearts to feel that these events are
utterly indispensable, the proper, the blessed hope
of the believer. As Peter
exhorts, let us set our hope perfectly [that is, undividedly]
on the
favour that is being brought unto us at
the
revelation of Jesus Christ (1
Pet. 1: 13).
*
*
*
[page
67]
THE JUDGMENT SEAT OF CHRIST
1. God has an inescapable duty to be the Judge of all the earth (Gen. 18:
25).
Those who submit to Him are subject to this
judgment equally with the insubordinate: The
Lord shall judge His people (Deut. 32: 36; Ps. 135: 14; Heb. 10:
30). The
children of the sovereign are amenable to the laws
and the courts and liable to penalty for
misconduct.
2. This judgment is ever in process.
There is a perpetual overruling of human
affairs by higher authorities. Prominent instances are
Job (ch.
1 and 2),
Ahah (1
Kin. 22),
Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 4).
The first case shows the judicial proceedings
effecting
perfecting, the second death,
the third reformation.
Job
was a godly man under discipline for his good: an
upright man was made a holy man.
Thus still does God chasten His sons that
they may become partakers of His holiness (Heb.
12:
10, 11).
Sinning Christians were disciplined even
unto premature death,
and it is explained that this operates to save them
from liability to condemnation at the time when God
will deal with the world at large (1
Cor.
11: 32).
3. But this continuous judicial administration has its crisis sessions,
its special occasions.
Instances are: the Flood; the
destruction of
Hereafter there will come the destruction
of Gentile world dominion and the punishment of
Antichrist. Then
the judgment at
But
it is most necessary to keep in mind that all such
separate and specific sessions are but part of the
ceaselessly operating judicial administration of
heaven and earth. [page
68 -THE
SUPREME JUDGE]
4. It is important to remember that the Son of man is the chief Judge of
the universe. It
was He who acted at the Flood: Jehovah
sat as king at the Flood (Ps. 29:
10). It
was
He who, in holy care that only justice should be done,
came down to enquire personally whether Sodom and
Gomorrah ought to be destroyed (Gen. 18:
20, 21),
and Who again came down to deliver Israel from Egypt (Ex.
3: 7, 8).
It was His glory as judge that was seen by
Isaiah (ch.
6; John 12: 41), and later by
Ezekiel (ch. 1).
He
is the Man appointed to judge the world in
righteousness on behalf of God the Father (Acts
17: 31);
for the Father has entrusted all judgment unto the
Son, in order that He may receive equal honour with
the Father (John 5: 19-29).
5. Yet it is particularly needful to note that the last cited passage is
in reference to the future sessions of the divine
judgment, for the judging in question is there set in direct connection with the
raising of men from the dead (John
5: 21, 22,
27-29). For
when the Son of God became man He ceased for the
present to supervise those judgments of heaven. This was
among the dignities of which He emptied, that is,
divested Himself, for His immediate and blessed
purpose in becoming man was their salvation from
judgment (John 5: 24). Therefore He
said: God
sent not the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be
saved through Him
(John 3:
17); nor has He yet resumed the office of
supreme Judge, though appointed thereto as man.
In relation to the world He is still the
Dispenser of the grace of God, not yet the Executor of
His holy wrath, as He will one day become.
This
is clear from three chief considerations:
(1)
That the Father has called Him to sit at His own right
hand until the time when His enemies are to be put
under His feet (Ps. 110:
1; Heb. 1:
13; 10: 13).
That is, He is not yet sitting upon His own
throne and asserting His own right and authority, as
He will do in
a later
[millennial]
day
(Rev.
2: 26, 27; 3:
21; Matt.
25:
31); but He is waiting expectantly that coming day.
(2)
And therefore is it twice pictured that, as Son of
man, the Lamb, He is hereafter
to be brought before the Father to
be invested officially with that authority to judge
and to make [page 69 - CHRISTIANS JUDGED NOW] war the title to which is
His already but the exercise of which is in abeyance (Dan.
7: 13, 14; Rev.
ch.
4 and 5). In both of
these scenes it is God the Father who is shown acting
from the throne of judgment until the Son has been
thus formally installed as Judge.
(3)
And therefore is He now the Advocate of His people
before the Father (1 John
2: 1). But the
Advocate cannot be at the same time the Judge.
6. Thus during this interval the especial concern and sphere of the Son of
man is the company He is calling out of the world, the
And
this work calls for both grace and judgment.
He can bear gently with the ignorant
and the erring, sympathizing
with our infirmities
(Heb. 5: 2; 4: 15), but dealing with
kind severity with the wilful of His people.
Behold then the goodness and
severity of God
(Rom.
11: 22). Nor may we
abuse His goodness by making light of His severity; or
if we do, it will be unto painful disillusionment.
7. Judgment upon His own [redeemed]
people therefore God exercises now; this is the very period for
it; but the general judgment of the world is deferred:
The
time is come
for judgment
to begin at the house of God (1 Pet. 4: 17).
And again: If we discriminated [sat in strict judgment upon] ourselves, we
should not be judged,
but when
[failing in this holy self-judgment] we
are judged, we are chastened by the Lord [here perhaps the Father,
comp. Heb. 12:
5, 9,
where He who chastens is the Father of spirits] that we may not be condemned with the world
(1
Cor. 11:
30, 31). And
this chastening may extend to bodily weakness,
positive sickness, or even death. So it was in
the cases of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts
5: 1-11, and see Jas. 5:
19, 20;
1 John 5, 16, 17;
Matt. 5: 21-26; 18:
28-35).
8. The Lord made many most serious statements as to His dealings with His
own
servants at [the time of] His
return. Some
of these are: [page 70 - LORD AND SLAVE] (1) Luke 12:
22-53. From
dealing with the crowd He turns and speaks
specifically to His own disciples (ver.
22). Only
genuine disciples, regenerated persons, are able to
fulfil His precepts here given.
To mere professors the task is impossible,
and such cannot be in view.
They are to live without any anxiety as to
the necessities of life, and in this are to be in
express contrast to the nations; they are His little
flock, for
whom the Father intends the kingdom, and therefore
they are to give away, not to hoard, and so to lay
up treasure in heaven (21-34). It is impossible to include the
unregenerate in such a passage; nor would it be
attempted save to avoid the application to Christians
of part of the succeeding and connected instruction.
This
instruction is that disciples
are like the personal household slaves of an absent
master, who upon his return will deal with each according
to his conduct during the masters absence. In
particular, the
steward set over the household will be dealt with
the more strictly that his office, opportunities,
and example were the higher.
The goodness of the master is seen in
exalting the faithful (though from one point of view
he had done no more than his duty and was an
unprofitable servant) to almost unlimited privilege
and power: He will set him over all that he
hath (ver. 44):
his severity is shown by cutting in sunder* the servant who had abused
his trust, and appointing his portion with the
unfaithful (35-53)
*
Equals severely
scourge, because the scourge used cut deeply
into the flesh - see margin.
(2)
This is elaborated and enforced in later statements. Luke 19. 11-27.
The picture is the
same, namely, the absent master and the faithful or
unfaithful servants. The pound
represents that deposit of truth entrusted to the
saints (Jude 3), for their
use among men while Christ is away: Trade
ye till I come. The Nobleman
himself held and used it while here, and left it with
us when He went to receive the kingdom.
If we
traffic with knowledge it increases in our hands and
we gain more; if we neglect to do so it remains
truth, retaining its own intrinsic value (thou
hast thy pound), but we do not accumulate
knowledge, nor benefit others, nor bring to our Lord
any return for His confidence in us.
In this parable it is not the personal life
of the slave that is in [page 71 - THE
EVIL SERVANT] question; that may have been
good: it is
his use of the truth in either spreading it among man,
or hiding his light under a bushel of silence, or,
as the picture is here, burying the pound in the
earth.
The
unfaithful servant loses opportunity further to serve
his lord, the pound is taken from him.
Sadder still, his lord has no confidence in
him. But
he is not an enemy of his
lord, nor is treated as such.
He does not lose his life.
The contrast is most distinct between him,
however unfaithful, and the foes and rebels: But these
mine
enemies that would not that I should reign over them, bring hither and slay them before
me (ver. 27).
(3)
Matt.
24: 42-25, 30. Only a
few days later the Lord repeated this instruction,
with fuller detail.
The head slave, set as steward of the house
during the absence of the master, will be set over all
his lords possessions if
only he have acted faithfully (45-47). But if that evil servant abuses
his position, and becomes self-indulgent and
tyrannical, he will be severely scourged, and his
portion be allotted with the hypocrites, where he
will weep and gnash his teeth over his folly and
lot.*
[* See
Heb.
12: 6-8,
14-17,
R.V.)]
Only
a believer who does not consider his own heart will
assert that a Christian cannot act the hypocrite, be
unfaithful, or arbitrary and unloving.
But the pronoun that
- But if that evil servant, etc., leaves no option but to regard him as
a believer, for it has no antecedent to whom it can
refer except the faithful servant just before
described, no other person having been mentioned. That evil servant what
evil
servant? and there is no
answer but that the faithful steward has become
unfaithful*:
And such cases are known.
Nor
will we, for our part, join to consign all such to eternal
ruin rather
than accept the alternative of the temporary, though
severe, punishments intimated by the Lord being
possible to a [regenerate]
believer.
Those who take the latter course, mainly
influenced to support certain dispensational theories,
have surely never weighed the solemnity of thus easily
consigning so many backsliders to endless misery.
*
[page
72 - THOU
WICKED SERVANT]
Since,
then,
an unbeliever is (a) not set by the
Lord over
His house, nor (b) could feed the souls of his
fellows, nor (c) could be so faithful as to become at
last ruler of all the possessions of the Lord, this
man must be a true believer.
But when such a one may lapse from his
fidelity he does not thereby become unregenerate;
consequently the unfaithful steward is still called
one of the Lords own
servants; and therefore a believer may incur
the solemn penalties veiled, under the figures used.
If
it be thought inconceivable that the Lord should
describe, one of His blood‑bought and beloved people
as a wicked servant (Matt. 25:
26), it must be weighed that He had before
applied the term to a servant whose debt had been fully
remitted: thou wicked
servant, I forgave thee all that debt (Matt.
18: 32). Thus one
who, as an act of compassion by the Lord, has been
fully forgiven all his failure as a servant may prove
a wicked servant, his
wickedness consisting in this,
that though forgiven he would not forgive. To
deny that a child of God can be unforgiving is to
blind the eyes by denying sad and stem fact. The Lord
left no room for doubt that members of the divine
family were in His mind by the application of the
parable He then and there made: Even
so shall my heavenly Father do unto you
[Peter, whose question as to forgiving had drawn forth
the parable, and the other disciples, ver.
1, 21], if ye forgive not, each one of you
(hekastos), his brother from your
hearts (35). It is the Father and the brothers
who are
in question, not here those outside the family circle.
Moreover,
if
this parable be pressed to include a mere professing
but unregenerate person some inevitable implications
must be accepted.
It is by no means denied that there are such
persons, but if they are in view here these
consequences follow:-
(a)
An unregenerate person has had all
his debt forgiven.
(b)
In spite of this free forgiveness he remains
unregenerate.
(c)
A forgiven sinner can have the free pardon of his
sins, revoked, in which case he will thereafter stand
in his former lost estate exposed to the eternal wrath
of God. He
may be saved to-day yet lose this to-morrow.
(d)
Though delivered to the tormentors
he may entertain hope that he may yet himself pay
all that is due [page 73 - THE TORMENTORS]
(ver.
34); that is, the wrath of God against the
unregenerate can be somehow, some time satisfied by
the sufferings and efforts of the sinner
himself. In
these cases therefore Christ
died for nought; they can at last secure
their own deliverance.
In
the fact, however, being delivered to the tormentors has no reference to the
eternal judgment of the lost.
In the lake of fire neither lost angels nor
lost men are stated to torment one another, but are
all alike in the same torment.
It is a picture of present and temporal
chastisement under that continually proceeding
judgment of God above indicated, and which applies to
His family as to others.
Regarded thus the above confusing
implications do not arise, implications which no one
divinely illuminated could accept.
But it
results that the
wicked
servant is a real servant, not a hypocrite, and
were it not for the severity of the punishment no
one would be likely to question this.
It
is not difficult to see what the punishment is.
(a)
The forgiveness of his great failures as
a servant can
be revoked, and he be made to feel the sin and
bitterness of not having walked by the same spirit as
his Lord, nor rendered to Him the due use and return
of the benefits grace had bestowed.
(b)
Paul says of some who had once had faith and a good
conscience (or they could not have thrust these away),
and who had started on the voyage of faith (or they
could not have made shipwreck), whom
I delivered to Satan (the present tormentor,
as of Job); but not to be afflicted by him in hell,
but for their recovery, that they might be taught not to
blaspheme, which
the torments of the damned will not teach them, as far as we see in the Word (1 Tim. 1:
19, 20.
See also 1 Cor. 5:
3-5).
(4)
We remark upon one other instance of these solemn
testimonies by Christ, the parable of the virgins (Matt.
25). It
is to the same effect.
(a)
They are all virgins, the foolish
equally with the wise, which figure is inappropriate
to indicate a worldling in his sins, even though he be a professing Christian. In the only
other places where it is used figuratively and
spiritually it certainly means true Christians (2 Cor.
11:
2; Rev. 14:
4).
[page
74 - THE
FOOLISH VIRGINS]
(b)
They are all equally the invited guests of the
bridegroom, not strangers, let alone his enemies.
(c)
They all have oil, or, the foolish could not say our lamps are going out. Without some
oil the lamps could not even have been lit, for a dry
wick will not kindle and certainly could not have
burned during the time they had slept.
(d)
But the foolish had no supply to replenish the dimly
burning flax and revive their testimony.
They had formerly been light
in the Lord, but had been thoughtless as to
grace to continue alight.
(e)
They found means for this renewing for in spite of the
darkness they gained the bridegrooms gate.
(f)
They did not lose their lives, as enemies, but
they did lose the marriage feast,
and were left
in the darkness outside the house.
This
is parallel to the wicked servant,
who also did not lose his life but did lose the
entrance into the joy of his master at his return,
and was cast into outer darkness.
Two
observations are vital to grasping the meaning of
these judgments.
(1)
A marriage feast is obviously no picture of anything
eternal. Plainly
it is a temporary matter.
Grand, intensely happy, a highly coveted
honour, especially when the kings son, the heir
apparent, is the bridegroom, it yet
is but the prelude to a
life, a reign, not anything long-extended, let alone
permanent. Does
not
this correspond to the joy of the millennial kingdom as the glorious prelude to the eternal
kingdom? For the marriage of the Lamb comes at
the immediate inception of that millennial kingdom (Rev.
19: 6-9). And are not
the invited virgins those of whom verse
9 says, Blessed are they that are bidden to the
marriage supper of the Lamb,
rather than the wife herself?
A bride is not usually invited to her wedding
feast: it cannot (save, perhaps, among Moslems) be
held without her.
Does not
this give the clue to what the virgins and the
unfaithful servant lose?
(2)
Outer darkness is no picture of the lake of fire.
It is the realm just outside the palace where
the feast is held, not the public prison or execution
ground. If
the strict sense of Scripture pictures be
kept, and imagination be not allowed [page 75 - A CONTRAST] to fill in what the Divine
Artist did not put in, much confusion will be avoided.
It
has been felt that the words of the bridegroom to the
virgins, Verily I say unto you, I know you not preclude us from taking
these to represent His true people.
But again the picture itself will give the
real sense. The bridegroom is here pictured as
standing within the heavy and thick outer door that
secures every eastern house of quality, and the door
is shut. He
does not open it, or he would see who they are, and
that they are some of his own invited guests, but
standing the other side of the closed door he says, in
idiomatic English, I tell you
sincerely, I dont know who you are (Ameen lego
humin, ouk oida
humas). Into
such a picture it is not permissible to read in divine
omniscience; it must be taken simply as it is given.
Its
force may be gathered more readily by the distinction
between what is here said and what the Lord said in Matt.
7: 15-23.
There He spoke of false prophets, bad trees,
men who, like the sons of
Sceva in Acts
19: 13,
used His holy name without warrant.
Picturing Himself
as standing face to face with these He protests, I never at any time made your
acquaintance! Here
the scene is changed; there is no closed door between:
the verb to
know is different: and the word rendered never
is most emphatic and gives force and finality to the
assertion (Oudepote egnon
humas). He did
not speak thus to the virgins.
9. It is not our present purpose to consider all such testimony of the
Word. Enough
has been advanced to show how much and how solemn is
the teaching of Scripture as to judgment upon careless
Christians. We
wish only to deal now with the time
of the
judgment seat of Christ as to His people.
The
most general opinion is that this judgment lies
between the moment of the Lords descent to the air,
when they, dead and living, are caught up to Him
there, and that later moment when He is to descend
with them to the earth to set up His [millennial] kingdom. That is, the
judging of His saints will take place during the
Parousia.
Observations
(1)
No passage of Scripture seems distinctly to place this
[page
76
SUPPOSITIONS] judgment in this interval and
in the air. It seems to be rather assumed that it must
take place then and there since the effects of it are
to be seen in the different positions and honours in
the kingdom immediately to follow.
(2)
As regards the parabolic instruction Christ gave when
here it is to be observed that it speaks only of
persons who will be found alive when the nobleman,
the master of the house returns. Strictly,
therefore, these
parables tell nothing as to the time and
circumstances of the judgment of dead believers. It must be
allowed that the principles of justice will be the
same for dead and living, but the details as to the
judgment of the former cannot be learned from these
passages.
(3)
Some presuppositions held are:
(a)
That every believer will share in the first
resurrection and the millennial kingdom.
(b)
The opposite, that not every believer will do so.
(c)
That the judgment of the Lord will result in some of
His people suffering loss of reward because of
unfaithfulness, but nothing more than loss.
This involves that none of the positive and
painful inflictions denounced can affect true
believers.
(d)
The opposite, that the regenerate may incur positive
chastisement as a consequence of the Lords judgment
at that time. Thus
in Touching
the Coming of the Lord
(84, 85.
ed. 1), upon Col. 3: 25, For
he that doeth wrong shall receive again the wrong
that he hath done (margin): and
there is no respect of persons, Hogg
and Vine apply this text to that judgment of
Christ at His parousia, and say: It
may be difficult for us to conceive how God will
fulfil this word to those who are already in bodies
of glory, partakers of the joy of the redeemed in
salvation consummated in spirit, soul and body. Yet
may we be assured that the operation of this law is
not to be suspended even in their case. He that knoweth how to deliver the godly
out of temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under
punishment unto the day of judgment
(2 Pet.
2:
9), knows also how
to direct and to use the working of His law of
sowing and reaping in the case of His children also.
The attempt to alleviate the text of some of its
weight by suggesting that the law operates only in
this life, fails, for there is nothing in the text
or [page
77 IMPOSSIBILITIES] context to lead
the reader to think other than that while the sowing
is here the reaping is hereafter.
It is clear that if it were not for this
supposed difficulty of referring the words to the
Christian in the condition in which, as we know from
other Scriptures, he will appear at the Judgment seat
of Christ, the question whether that time and place
were intended would not be raised.
(e)
Some (Govett, Pember, and others) who
hold that the millennial kingdom may be forfeited by
gross sin, suppose that all believers rise in the
first resurrection, appear before the judgment-seat of
Christ, and being adjudged by Him unworthy of the
kingdom they return to the death state to await the
second resurrection and the great white throne
judgment. Their
names being then as believers found in the book of
life, they have eternal life in the eternal kingdom,
but they will have missed the honour of sharing in and
reigning in the millennial age.
These
two
last ideas (d) and (e) seem
alike utterly impossible.
It seems wholly inconceivable that a body
heavenly, spiritual, glorified, like indeed to the
body of the Son of God himself, can be subjected to
chastisement for guilt incurred by misuse of the
present sin-marred body.
Not only the manner of
the infliction but the fact of it seems to us
out of the question.
It
seems equally so that a
body that is immortal and incorruptible can admit of
its owner passing again into the death state. The ideas
and the terms are mutually contradictory and
exclusive. Of
those who rise in that first resurrection the Lord
said plainly: neither can they die any more
(Lk.
20: 36).
What,
then,
is the solution of these difficulties?
10. We turn to passages dealing directly with the subject.
(1)
2 Cor. 5:
10. We make it our aim, whether at home or absent, to be well-pleasing unto Him.
For we must all be made manifest before the
judgment-seat of Christ;
that each one may receive the things done through
the body, according
to what he hath done,
whether it be good or bad. This
chief statement leaves unmentioned the time and
place of the judgment.
(2)
Heb.
9: 27. It
is laid up for men once
to
die and after this judgment (meta de touto
krisis, no
article). Thus [page 78 - JUDGMENT
AFTER DEATH]
judgment
may
take place at any time after death. Luke
16 shows Dives suffering anguish immediately
after
death, for the scene is Hades, the realm of the dead
between death and resurrection, and his brothers are
still alive on earth.
But again, Rev. 20:
11-15,
shows another, the final judgment, after resurrection,
after the millennial kingdom.
Both are after death
[verse 12].
Neither of these passages suggests the parousia in the
air as the time or place.
(3)
The statements of the Lord as to His, dealing with His
own servants at His return, contemplate that His
enemies will be called before Him immediately after He
will have dealt with His own household: But these mine enemies,
who would not that I should reign over them,
bring hither, and slay them
before me
(Lk. 19:
27). Hither, that is, to the
same spot where He had just been dealing with His
servants. This,
as to servants then alive on earth at least, excludes
the parousia in the air,
for His enemies will not be gathered there.
(4)
Luke 16:
19-31.
Dives and Lazarus are seen directly
after death in conditions the exact reverse of
those just before known on earth.
The passing of the soul to that other world,
and the bringing about of so thorough a change of
condition, is too striking, too solemn just to happen.
Some one must have decided and ordered
this reversal; that is, there
must have been a judging of their cases and a
judicial decision as to what should be their lot
in the intermediate state.
This
judgment therefore may
take place at or immediately after death,
as Heb. 9: 27 above.
And in
the time of Christ thus almost all men believed. See, for
example, the judgment of Ani
directly after death, before Osiris
the god of the underworld, in the Egyptian Book
of the Dead. Or,
as to the Pharisees, to whom particularly Christ spoke
of Dives and Lazarus, see Josephus, Antiquities,
18: 3.
(5)
2 Tim.
4: 6, 7,
8. I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and
the time of my departure is come. I have
fought the good fight,
I have kept the faith; I
have finished the course,
henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of
righteousness, which
the Lord, the
righteous judge, shall
give to me at that day:
and not only to me,
but also to all them that have loved His appearing.
Paul was now certain he had
won his crown. When [page 79 - THE
CROWN WON]
writing to the
Philippians a few years before (3: 10-14)
he spoke
uncertainly: not that I have already obtained, for then he had not yet finished the course; but now he writes with certainty.
How could this assurance have become his save
by communication from the Righteous Judge?
But this implies that the Judge had both
formed and communicated His decision upon Pauls life
and service, even though Paul had not yet actually died. In such a
case, as it would seem, any session of the judgment
seat in
that day
will be only for bestowment of the crown already won and
allotted, not for adjudication upon the race or
contest, the latter having before taken place as
to such a person.
(6)
The expression I have finished
my course
is taken from the athletic world which held so large a
place in Greek life and interest and is so often used
by Paul as a picture of spiritual effort. In 1
Cor.
9: 24-27, it
is used as a plain warning that the coveted prize
may be lost.
Phil.
3: 12-14 employs it to urge
to intense and unremitting effort to win that prize. The Lord is
the righteous Judge, sitting to adjudicate upon each
contestant in the race or contest.
Now
of unavoidable necessity the judge of the games
automatically formed his decision as to each racer or
wrestler as
each finished the course or the contest.
The
giving of the prizes was indeed deferred to the
close of the whole series of events: Pauls crown
would be actually given in
that day; but not till then did the
judge defer his decision as to each item or
contestant. It
could not be, for the most celebrated of the Greek
games, the Olympic, lasted five days.
The
figure, taken with the case of Paul, and in the light
of Dives and Lazarus, suggests
a decision of the Lord as to each believer before
or at the time of his death. That
decision issues in determining the place and
experience of the man in the intermediate
state, and may extend to assurance that he has
won the crown, the prize of the high calling.
(7)
Rev.
6: 9, 11.
The Fifth Seal. As before
shown, these martyrs under the altar are not yet raised from the
dead, for others have yet to be killed for Christs
sake, and only then will they be all vindicated and
avenged. But to each one of them separately a white
robe is given. Now
ch. 3:
4, 5,
shows that the white robe is the visible sign,
conferred by the Lord, of their worthiness to be His
companions in [page 80 - JUDGMENT BEFORE RESURRECTION] His glory and kingdom. This
again makes evident that for
these the Lords judgment has been formed and
announced.
No later adjudication upon such is needful or
conceivable: only the giving of the crown in
that day.
11. From these facts and considerations it seems fairly clear that the
judgment of the Lord upon the dead of His people is
not deferred to one session but is reached and
declared either (a) immediately
before death (as Paul), when there is no
further risk of the racer failing, or (b) immediately after death (as Lazarus), or (c) at
least in the intermediate state of death (the souls under
the altar).
If
this is so, then it will follow that the
decision of the Lord as to whether a believer is
worthy of the first resurrection and reigning in
the kingdom is reached prior to resurrection, in
which case the two insoluble problems above stated
simply do not arise; that is, there is no question
of one raised in a deathless state returning to
the death state, nor of bodies of glory being
subjected to chastisement.
Believers adjudged not worthy of the first
resurrection will not rise, but will remain where
they are until the second resurrection.
We
agree fully that the judgment seat of Christ will
issue in chastisement for unworthy living by
Christians, but this
will not be inflicted after resurrection.
(8)
Rev.
11: 18
repays exact study.
The four and twenty elders worship God
because He has put forth His power,
His great power
(teen dunamin sou
teen megaleen)
and has exercised His sovereignty.
In consequence of this asserting of power
there are five results.
(1) The nations are angry, (2) Gods wrath
replies, (3) there arrives the season for the dead to be
judged, (4)
for the faithful to be rewarded, and (5) for the
destruction of the destroyers of the earth.
Since
prophets
and saints are to receive their reward at the
resurrection of the just (Luke
14: 14),
the first resurrection (Rev. 20: 1-6), the season for the
dead to be judged and rewarded is here found directly
before the destruction of the Antichrist and his
helpers in the wasting of the lands.
Concerning
this
judging of the dead three features are
to be noted.
1. It must be of godly dead, for
it is before the thousand years, whereas the
judgment of the ungodly dead is thereafter (Rev.
20: 1, 11-15).
[page
81 - JUDGED
WHILE DEAD]
2. It is a judgment of persons who are dead at the time they are judged. There is no
ground for reading in that they have been raised from
the dead before the judgment takes place. They
are styled the dead. No one would
think of styling living persons the
dead. The
term employed (nekros) is nowhere
used of persons who are not actually dead, physically
or morally. Moreover,
resurrection does not of itself assure life.
That unique and glorious change to be the
portion of such as share the first resurrection (1 Cor. 15) is their special
privilege; it
does not attach to all resurrection.
Dead persons can be raised dead.
In John 5:
29 our Lord creates
a clear contrast: They that have done good
shall come forth unto resurrection of life; and they that have done evil unto
resurrection of judgment. The Lord did not say that
they shall come forth out of the tombs alive, but that
they shall come forth unto resurrection
of life or unto resurrection of judgment (eis anastasin). There seems no
scripture, indeed, that at the moment they come forth
they have even a body, other than that psychical
counterpart before noticed and which persists in the
death state. Thus in Rev. 20:
12 also it is as dead that they
are judged: I
saw the dead standing before the throne ... and
the dead were
judged. It should
therefore be supposed that those there present whose
names are found in the book of life will thereupon be
restored to life, that is, will be given an immortal body, even as the Lord said: The
Father raiseth the dead
(egeirei tous
nekrous)
and
makes them live (zoopoiei), thus also the Son makes to live whom He will (zoopoiei, John
5: 21). Here two
operations are distinguished by the and makes them live.
3. The verb to be judged, the season of the dead to be judged, is the infinitive passive
aorist (kritheenai). Being
an
aorist it has the force of a completed and final
action. But
this final judgment, which disposes of the case, may
be the conclusion of a process of judgment.
This is seen in another place where this
aorist is twice used, Acts
25: 9, 10.
Festus asked Paul whether he would be willing
to go up from Caesarea to
This
short discussion is no more than suggestive, directed
to certain obscurities and perplexities found in our
main theme, designed to provoke enquiry so as further
to elucidate truth
and dispel darkness.
May the Lord in grace use it to this end.
*
*
*
[page 83]
VII. APPENDIX TO PAGE 22.
On
the meaning of the genitive of
Christ (tou
Christou) in 1
Cor. 15: 23.
(This critical study is submitted with
respect to those able to examine it.)
The force of this genitive may
be studied in the following passages.
1. In Acts 16: 33 it is said of the
jailer at
2. In the first chapter of the epistle that is before us (1
Cor. 1: 12) the apostle
reproves the believers on account of the contentions
among them. Now this I mean,
that each one of you saith, I
am of Paul; and I of Apollos;
and I of Cephas; and I of Christ
(Christou).
It
cannot
be supposed that these believers were attributing
their redemption to Paul, Apollos, or Peter; so that
the meaning is, I am of Pauls circle; I of
Apollos; I of Peters; I of Christs circle.
It
was sectionalism, schism, denominationalism,
sectarianism; although all
alike were on the only foundation (ch. 3:
10, 11).
Family
relationship
alone did not make the jailers relatives to be of him at that particular
hour. It
was those who were actually in his house at that time,
which would include servants and slaves (if any). All
believers were equally children of God, but some were
of
Paul,
others of
Peter,
etc. Thus
these
two instances show that it
is not relationship, natural or spiritual, but
open membership in a known visible circle that
is the idea in the term of
him.
3. Romans 14:
4 reads Who art thou that judgest the
servant of another?
(oiketees, household
dependent; Lk.
16:
13;
Acts 10: 7; 1 Pet. 2:
18: all
places). To his own lord he standeth or falleth.
Verses 7,
8 add: For none of us liveth to himself, and none
dieth to himself.
For whether we live,
we live unto the Lord; or
whether we die, we die unto the Lord:
whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lords (we are of
the Lord, tou Kuriou
esmen. The [page
84
- IDEAL OR
ACTUAL]
German can express
this, as the Greek, by case ending, wir sind des Herrn, Elberfeld
version). For to this end Christ died,
and lived again, that
He might be Lord of [might
rule over] both dead and living (Darby). Christs
lordship, His proprietorship of and authority over
all, is indisputable: in the apostles argument all
are assumed to be owning it: he that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto
the Lord: and he
that eateth, eateth
unto the Lord (ver. 6), but,
as we shall see shortly, not all believers do in
fact own that lordship, or do not own it
continuously and to the end of life.
Thus ideally all are of
Him, but actually some who might be, and
ought to be, are not.*
* Herodotus narrates that Astyages, king of the Medes,
ordered a courtier, Harpagus,
to kill the infant Cyrus, the king's grandson. The
courtier says: But for
safetys sake it is necessary for me that this child
should die; it is necessary however that one of those
of Astyages himself (ton tina Astyageos)
should be the slayer and not (one) of
mine (ton heemon).
This
he said and straightway sent a messenger to
(one) of the herdsmen of Astyages (ton Astyageos)
whom he knew... and left the matter to
him (Hdt. I. 109, 110). Here two
circles are distinguished, that of the king and that
of the courtier, and each, in relation to its head, is
described by the genitive.
This force of the genitive occasions in
English the italicized words in 1
Cor. 1: 11, them
which
are of the household of Chloe,
where the original has simply ton
Chloees (those of
Chloe).
4. This same meaning is to be seen in 2 Cor.
10: 7, Ye
look at the things that are before your face. [It is something visible
that is in question.] If
anyone has confidence in himself of Christ to be (Christou einai), this let him
consider with himself, that as he is of Christ
(Christou) thus also are we:
that is, I Paul am evidently and obviously of Christs
circle at least as much as my critic is: in proof of which
he adduces the known public features of the
measure and power of his ministry of the Word,
which were the Lords open acknowledgment of His
faithful servant.
5. The same thought of a circle of persons that may be contrasted with
other circles lies in the statement in Gal. 5:
24, And those of Christ Jesus
(hoi tou Christou
leesou) crucified
the flesh with the
[its] passions
and the [its] cravings. In fallen
human nature there works a powerful principle of evil,
described in christian
terms as, the old man which [page
85 - THE FLESH CRUCIFIED] gets
more
and more corrupt according to the
[its] deceitful cravings (Eph. 4:
22). Its
cravings deceive man into indulging them, because they
promise satisfaction though they produce corruption. Through
partaking of the divine nature the believer in Christ
is afforded a way of escaping from the corruption that is in the world
through lust [the
cravings of the old man] (2
Pet. 1: 4); but it abides a
certainty, to the Christian as well as to the
unbeliever, that the one sowing to the flesh
out of the flesh shall reap corruption (Gal. 6: 8).
How
this corrupting principle in human nature originated
perplexed philosophers and how to master it baffled
moralists. Various
schools had different methods.
The circle of Epicurus proposed the sensually
agreeable plan of stifling the flesh by satiating it. That of the
Stoics advocated a stem rigid suppression.
Eastern philosophy, as in Buddhism,
recommended a sustained passive ignoring of all
desire.
The
circle which bore the name of Christ Jesus had a
method peculiar to itself.
It was neither satiating,
suppressing, nor ignoring, but crucifying: those of Christ Jesus crucified the
flesh.
They taught that Christ died on account of
the old man himself, as well as his corrupt doings. They held
that, judicially, before God, mans creator and judge,
the death of the Substitute was the death of the
sinner, that therefore the old man was
crucified
with Christ (Rom. 6: 6). The
messengers of this faith offered a promise from
God that whoever would accept from the heart this
view, with its implications and practical
consequences, should receive power from His
eternal Spirit to live in freedom from the old
tyranny of sin.
The new method worked effectively where
all other attempts had failed.
Moral crucifixion with Christ led on to
moral resurrection with Him, and the circle that
bore His name became, as a circle, and by
contrast, conspicuous for holiness.
No
doubt this crucifixion was more distinctly apprehended
and more fully exhibited by some than by others; we
know that in fact some in the circle were not children
of God at all - they seemed to be of Christ
Jesus
in the sense of publicly belonging to the circle that
bore His name, though they were not in
Christ Jesus
by spiritual union: but the thought in the statement
before us is that a certain known [page 86 - INFANTS OR SONS] circle or school - those
of Christ Jesus
- was characterized
by a certain attitude and doctrine, which its
members were presumed to have adopted, and were
expected and exhorted to maintain in practical
conduct.
6. The
important
argument in Gal. 3:
23-29,
contains the same conception.
But if ye are of Christ,
then are ye
Abrahams seed,
etc. (ei de humeis
Christou,
ver. 29). Those
who fear God are viewed by Him in two classes: first,
such as in, spiritual growth are
yet infants, and therefore under control by rules - thou shalt ... thou
shalt not; second, those who have become of
age, grown up sons, who are freed from such
restrictions; are at liberty.
The former are under a tutor, the law (ver. 23-25), who orders
their conduct, who restrains and punishes the
outworking of their carnal nature: the sons
are of Christ (but if ye are of
Christ), Who enables them by the [Holy]
Spirit to walk by the free, holy impulses of the new
nature.
Translation
from
the one status and association into the other is by faith and baptism:
that is, by an act of the heart known to God, but also by a public act seen by men; for we become in
Christ Jesus by faith
(ver. 26),
but we put
on Christ by
baptism (ver.
27). Thus
here also to be of Christ
means something more than to have exercised faith in
Him, even to
have associated openly by immersion with those who
profess to have died out of the old circle and to
have risen again into a new circle, that of Christ
Jesus.
7. In 2 Tim.
2: 19-21,
the apostle again speaks of things plain and
visible; such as a foundation stone, and the
inscription carved upon it; a house built on the
foundation; the various utensils of the house, of
either valuable or common materials, gold and silver
or wood and earth.
The
picture is very like Pauls earlier metaphor in 1 Cor. 3.
where also is the
foundation, the superstructure, the precious or the
perishable materials, either of which may be built by
the believer into the life-work and character which
each is erecting on the one foundation.
He exhorts the Corinthian Christians not to
use the perishable: in Timothy he exhorts to purge out
of ones character the common elements, that the gold
and silver of the divine nature, created in us by the
[Holy] Spirit
upon the ground of redemption, may alone remain, and
one be thus a vessel fit for the immediate use of the
[page
87 - FOUNDATION
AND SUPERSTRUCTURE]
divine Master, not
one relegated to the lower purposes of the great
house.
The
said inscription on the foundation reads thus: Knows the Lord those being of Him
(tous ontas
autou), and, Let every one naming the name
of the Lord depart from unrighteousness.
That is, the Lord, on His side, knows
distinctly each one who in reality, according to the
Lords standard, is of His circle.
On our
side the sign that warrants any person being
accorded by us a place in that circle is that he
forsakes unrighteousness.
He who never yet has forsaken unrighteousness
(wrong doing, adikia, as 1 Cor.
6: 8, 9) is not of
Him, (that is, not as the Lord judges), even
though he may hold membership in a Christian church. He who
having forsaken wrong doing afterward returns thereto
is to be put out of the Christian circle (1
Cor.
5: 13),
and thus ceases to be of Him
for the purposes of this expression.
This
does
not affect the final salvation of every believer;
for one is saved before he is added to the church,
and therefore final salvation does not depend upon
membership in that privileged company who will form
the church.* This cuts away the root of the Romish error that
one must belong to the church to be saved.
But
the wrong doers of the church circle are plainly
warned that they shall not inherit Gods kingdom (1 Cor. 6:
9: etc.).
Such will not be accounted worthy of the
8. The
expression
under review is in Romans
8:
9: But ye are not in flesh but in
spirit, if at least
spirit of God dwells in you. But if any
one has not spirit of Christ,
this one is not of Him.
The
omission from verse 1
preceding of the clause who
walk not according to flesh but according to spirit is of first importance,
showing that the justification of a believer in Christ
is not dependent upon his walk as a Christian.
At the very moment that a repenting sinner
rests his salvation upon the atoning work that Christ
accomplished upon the cross, and therefore before he
has had opportunity for doing any works, he acquires a
new standing. By
that faith in Christ he obtains access to the standing
of one who is in [page 88 - FLESH OR SPIRIT] the favour of God (Rom. 5: 1, 2).
He is then and there seen by God, his judge,
no longer as he is in himself, but as he now is in Christ.
He is deemed to have met his doom and to be
free therefrom. The
storm of wrath due to him on account of his sins has
burst upon him in the person of his Divine Substitute:
he has thus endured its full fury; that
storm has exhausted itself, and there is therefore now no
condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.
But
this eternally justified believer may henceforth walk
either by the impulses of his old fleshly nature or by
the leading of that new spirit nature which is created
in us when we believe on Christ.
That a justified person may walk according
to flesh is certain from many Scriptures and
much sad experience. I,
brethren,
says Paul, was not able
[formerly] to
speak to you as to spiritual but as fleshly ... But
neither yet now am I able,
for yet fleshly ye are. For
whereas there is among you jealousy and strife,
are ye not fleshly, and walk according to men,
that is, not
according to God? (1 Cor.
3: 1-3.
See also Gal. 5: 13-26, for a sustained
contrast between flesh
and spirit, the old
nature and the new, in the believer).
To
the Romans the apostle declared that if they lived
according to flesh they would be unable to please God
and were liable to die (8: 7,
8, and comp. 1 Cor.
10: 1-6).
Upon this possibility of premature death we
have before spoken.
But, he adds, ye
are not in flesh but in spirit, if at least (eiper) spirit
of God dwells in you.
This if at least* shows clearly the
possibility of one who is for ever free from
condemnation not being indwelt by spirit
of God.
It is God the Spirit Who creates and energises
the new nature, but it is not the Holy Spirit as a
person that is here in view: the question is whether
the believer is ruled still by the mind of the old
nature, which is flesh,
or by the mind of the new nature, which is spirit,
according to the exhortations be renewed in the spirit of your
mind: Have this
mind [page
89 - OF CAESAR] in you which was
also in Christ Jesus (Eph.
4: 23; Phil. 2: 5).
And, adds the Scripture (
* The Greek particle is more than merely if
(which often equals since or as), and suggests
just such doubt and enquiry as would
amount to self-examination.
See 2 Cor. 13:
5. Moule, Camb.
Bible for Schools, in
loco. So
Alford:
if so be that (provided that; not
since
... that this is the meaning
here is evident by the exception which immediately
follows).
In
the
light of the other places considered this will mean
that one not ruled by the same spirit which animated
Christ is not of that company which He owns as His
circle, His household.
He is not His
(belongs not to Him, in the higher and blessed sense
of being united to Him as a member of Him) Alford,
in loco; italics
mine.
In
his
learned critical work Licht vom
Osten (Light
from the East ‑ ed. iv. 322) Professor
Adolph Deissmann
has remarked upon the parallel between this genitive Christou, of Christ, and doulos Christou
Christs slave, and the expressions Kaisaros of Caesar, and Caesars slave, belonging to Caesar, his own personal property; that is, his
personal retinue and slaves as distinct from the vast
host of his subjects outside of his immediate
household. In
illustration he cites several of the passages here
examined, including the one chiefly before us, 1 Cor. 15:
22, they that are of Christ
in His Parousia. This usage
is found in Phil.
4: 22:
All
the saints salute you, especially they that are of
Caesars household
(hoi ek
tees Kaisaros oikias). Comp. also Matt.
22: 21 and
parallels: the things that are Caesars
(of
Caesar, ta Kaisaros)
contrasted with the other circle, the things that are Gods (ta tou
Theou). Similarly, Christ also has a vast number who do acknowledge Him as Saviour
but have not learned to be His slaves, and so are not of
Him
within the force of this term.
Many
of the topics of this pamphlet are opened more fully,
in
THE
REVELATION
OF
JESUS
CHRIST
Some of the themes of this
pamphlet are enlarged in
FIRSTBORN
SONS
Their Rights and Risks
*
*
*
THE FIRST RESURRECTION,
OVERCOMERS
AND THE MILLENNIAL KINGDOM.
1. There is no charge of intentional misleading, on the part of those
Bible teachers who assume, that the
Christian
enters into his final glory at death.
Eschatological teaching would be greatly
simplified if we were able to take that for granted. Assuming that to be the final statement of truth, then it
would disqualify several important Christian
doctrines. The
Second Advent of our Lord would be one of them. Why
should it be necessary for Him to - come
again and receive you unto Myself,
if His people
go to Him in a final sense at death?
The
N.T. doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, when
the Lord shall so come, would be redundant if we
were able to say of all departed saints that the
resurrection is past
already. It
would
not be the first time in the Christian era that such
a disastrous thing has been taught (2 Tim.
2: 18).
Consider
for
a moment the evidence of this mistaken conception, in
those well-known lines of Charles
Wesley as follows:- Come,
let us join our friends above, who have received
the prize
Let
all the saints terrestrial sing with those to
glory gone.
Judge
for yourself as to
whether the perfect poet was also a perfect
theologian, by an enquiry like this: is the
prize received in the hymn, the same as
one anticipated by Paul in Phil. 3:
10-14 -
I press toward the mark,
for the prize of the high
calling, of God in
Christ Jesus? If so,
then there would be this difference between Paul and
Wesley - the former expected it in the out-resurrection from
among the dead, which
he sought so diligently to attain, and the latter at the time of his death.
It is one thing to sing:-
Around the
throne of God in heaven, thousands of children
stand, but quite another thing to prove it from the Holy Scriptures.
-
Joseph
Ellison.
2.
Paul assures us (Phil.
3: 11)
that he was seeking with all his spiritual energy to attain unto
the out-resurrection
out of the dead
(lit.). That is, he
says there is an
elect
resurrection
from among the dead - though he had obtained mercy,
had been counted faithful, and had been put into the
ministry (1 Tim. 1: 12,
13); though he had
received a special and unusual call from God (Gal.
1: 15,
16); though in his
ministry he had endured unparalleled trials (2
Cor. 11:
23-33);
though he had been given divine revelation beyond the
ordinary (2 Cor.
12: 1-5); though his
possession of divine gifts surpassed that of any in
the church (1 Cor.
14: 18,
37) - he
yet was pressing toward that he might attain. If Paul
thus earnestly counted this resurrection a goal to be attained, the Christian, whose eyes
are earthward, like the man with the
muckrake of whom Bunyan speaks, can surely
not be considered as a possible winner of such a
prize.
The
3. The harvest is composed of those for whom Christ has overcome,
the FIRSTFRUITS
are those in whom and through whom
He has overcome, as well as having overcome for them.
The Apostle Paul had no doubt about his
place in the main body, for his testimony is clear, I know Whom
I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to
keep that which I have committed unto Him against
that day (2 Tim. 1:
12).
When, however, he was writing to the
Philippians (3.) he
told them that there was one thing he was seeking
above all else, the prize
of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus, that he might by any means attain to the out-resurrection
from among the dead.
He was sure of having a place in the general
harvest, but not sure, as yet, of being one of the FIRSTFRUITS as an OVERCOMER.
If
Peter, James, John, and Andrew
needed the warnings give them by our Lord to Take
heed
to watch
and pray
(Mark 13: 3,
5, 9,
23, 33),
and be ye also ready
(Matt. 24:
44), it
is clear that something more is wanted of us than
faith in Christ for salvation if we would be ripe
enough for the firstfruits. The teaching that everyone who believes is ready for the Coming of the
Lord is a deadly narcotic.
No
wonder the Church is asleep!
If,
on
the other hand, we see that, being saved, there is yet a prize to be won which is worth the counting of all else
as refuse, then we find in it a
powerful stimulant
to a holy and victorious life in union with our coming
Lord.
A.
Champion.
4. It is most evident that our Lord intended the recital of
the events connected with His coming to act as a
solemn warning to us,
and a spur to holiness.
What becomes of our Lords warnings if
all, whatever be their
spiritual state, are to share the First Rapture
and none who are saved miss it?
But watch ye at every season,
making supplication, that
ye may prevail to escape
all these
things that shall come to pass,
and to stand before the Son of man: Luke
21: 36.
It seems worse than trifling to say, as I
have heard it said, that the Rapture is not mentioned
in the first three Gospels, or, as a writer says, that
Christ is speaking to His
disciples as the representatives of the Jewish
nation.
We believe both these statements to be untrue
and that He was speaking to them as representing His Church. In Luke
21: 17 it
is Christians, not Jews, that
are hated for Jesus sake.
Jews are never raptured to stand
before the Son of man and escape the
tribulation, for Christ never comes to the earth
itself before Armageddon, which proves it to be a rapture to heaven.
Now
this earnest exhortation is made again and again. We
are to watch and be ready, lest He find us
spiritually sleeping.
C.
H.
Mercer, B.A.
5. With the current foolishly optimistic view - that as soon as we believe
we are in possession of all the glorious possibilities
that are set before us - it is not strange that
Christians neglect the admonition to pass the time of
their sojourning in fear (1
Pet. 1: 17);
that they ignore the warning, Many
are called, but few
chosen
(Matt. 22:
14);
and that they
are not rendered anxious even by the thought that
those only who are accounted worthy shall escape the
things that are coming to pass, and shall obtain the
Millennial Age and the resurrection from the dead.
-
G. H. Pember, M.A.
6. The Apocalypse has shown us throughout that only the overcomer has the promise of victory and rulership ahead of
him (2: 26,
27; 3:
21).
Nor is this taught only in this closing book,
but throughout the
New Testament. We
are, in our exposition, just where the
Kingdom is to be set up - are there no
Scriptures that in clearest statement, declare that they
which do such things shall not inherit the
Paul
ever
warns regarding these things, but popular teaching has
become so easy-going that anyone can slip into Gods
highest and best because, forsooth, Its
all of grace!
But grace
leaves no room for sin - if Paul teaches that it does,
pray where? Rather
does he write, Even so might grace reign
through righteousness (not through sin,
God forbid!) unto eternal life (Rom.
5: 21
- 6: 7.).
W.F.
Roadhouse.
7. Here lies the mistake of most commentators.
It is assumed, that there is no difference
between reward and bare salvation.
It is taken for granted that the crown is
only
a figurative expression for simple salvation.
It is supposed that eternal
life and the
On
such
assumptions, passages like the above present very
great, or, we may say, insuperable
difficulties
to the Christian reader.
Not that even insuperable difficulty is
sufficient reason for our rejecting a doctrine made
known by the testimony of God.
But a
view of the difference between eternal life and
the [millennial]
- Robert Govett.
8. Apart from direct prophecy there must of necessity be a Millennium, or
personal reign of Christ on earth, to fulfil the
promises made to Abraham.
The
promise of Canaan was made not
only
to his seed but
to himself; I will
give unto thee,
and to thy seed after thee, the land of Canaan
was the promise; and we know as a fact that Abraham
has
never so far owned the land so much as to set his foot on,
save the cave in which he buried his wife.
Nor has his seed ever yet possessed the lands from the
9. Like the locomotive on its two steel rails, so our thoughts must run
along the appointed track, if
we are to reach the terminus of TRUTH in safety. Alignment
of truth is imperative, both for
the in-working of our salvation, and the out-working
of it IN THE NEAR FUTURE; and this is the alignment
we follow.
The First
Advent of Christ into this world, is the gateway for
some,
into eternal salvation: His Second
Advent into this world, will be the
gateway for some, - (from amongst His redeemed: see Lk. 20:
35; Rev.
3: 21.
cf.
Lk.
22: 28-30; Heb.
11: 35b)
- into THE GLORIES THAT SHOULD FOLLOW
(1 Pet. 1:
11).
10. The former is the controlling
factor of grace, the latter is the governing
factor of our expectations,
which is to be consummated by a mighty, collective
movement UPWARD.
It is, therefore,
an axiom of
Christian doctrine, that there IS AN INTERVAL OF
TIME lying between the Christians death, and the coming of the Lord to receive him unto Himself,
-
J. Ellison.
11. It is interesting to know by name some of those who shall be
resurrected and share in the Kingdom.
Ye shall see Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob
and all
the prophets
[Moses must therefore be included]
in
the Kingdom. Daniel will
be there, according to specific promise; thou shalt stand in thy lot at
the end of the days;
David will
be there; My servant David shall be king over them
- no doubt as
regent under his great Son, through whose mother the
promise was made that He should be given the
throne of His father David.
We are told too by our Lord Himself of some
of those who will not
be
there. Some of
the sons
of the Kingdom
who have forfeited their right thereto; and it is most significant
that exactly the same words are used as to their
exclusion, as are used in reference to the exclusion
of the unprofitable servant Christs own servant,
to whom He had delivered His goods while away in the
far country. Cast forth into outer darkness,
where shall be weeping and
gnashing of teeth (Cp. Matt.
8: 12,
and Matt. 25:
30); not into the Gehenna of fire, but somewhere -
known to the Lord - outside,
in
each case, of the heavenly and earthly spheres of
the Kingdom.
Jews too, it seems, shall be missionaries of the Kingdom, and even now many have become
missionaries of the Gospel.
- From
*
*
*
[PART TWO]
THE
RESTORATION OF
AND THE
By Tim Price*
* Tim Price
is currently UK National Co-ordinator for the CMJ
(the Churchs
Ministry
Amongst the Jewish
people.
-------
Israel
and Zion(ism) are two words that
raise passions in our world today, yet why should
these words which fill the pages of Scripture have
come to be regarded as pejorative by so many within
the church? The
prophet Isaiah said:
The Lord will have compassion on Jacob; once
again he will choose
For
In these two readings lies the redemption
of these names that have become the source of such
bitterness. They
hold out both the hope of reconciliation between
Arab and Jew, Israeli and Palestinian, and also the glorious destiny of Jerusalem within the
eschatological purposes of world redemption, when,
instead of being a source of division, she becomes
the centre of the kingdom of God.
Isaiah
writing of this time said:
In
that day
there will be a highway from
This glorious vision of reconciliation
has clearly yet
to be fulfilled. The
whole of biblical revelation finds its focus in this
one nation
Yet
as
I grew up, another name for the Land was in common
usage. Bibles
and Bible reference books would refer, for example, to
Today
the
names of
5th
International
Sabeel Conference 2004
At
the
5th International Sabeel
Conference held in
The subject of this conference is one that goes deeper than simply
the critique of a deeply eccentric form of Christian
theology, and it should take us further than yet
another analysis of the cyclical patterns of violence
and injustice in the conflicts of the region.
It should also be an opportunity for us to
clarify something of what as Christians we can say
about
The two extreme positions with which we are wearily familiar will
fail to carry such good news.
At one end of the spectrum, there is the view
that argues for unconditional support of any decision
made by the Israeli government (whose claims for
maximal territory and security are based on grounds
whose relation to both Hebrew and Christian Scripture
is tenuous to say the least).
At the other is the view that there
is
essentially nothing to be said about the Jewish
people and the State of Israel from the standpoint
of Christian theology, a view which runs up against
the complexities of much Christian Scripture, not
least Pauls great and tormented meditation in Romans
9-11.
In
other
words, Archbishop
Rowan concludes: I am
not at all sure that we
best respond to distorted theologies by denying that there
could be a good theology of
A tale of two theologies
None
of
us who witnesses the ongoing crisis between
Certainly
up
to 100 CE, the time at which Jewish believers formed
the majority within the church,
the prevailing view was that the
restoration of
However,
for
much of the last 2,000 years, and certainly since the
Council of Nicaea, the
historic church has itself been dominated by a
theology shaped by the early church fathers.
They sought to put clear
blue water between the emerging rabbinic
Judaism and Christianity, and so asserted the
supremacy of church over synagogue.
As we shall see later, the marginalisation
and the gradual withering of the Jewish wing of the
church following the two Jewish revolts against
The
increasing
enmity between church and synagogue fuelled the belief
that the church had replaced or superseded
This view by the church has significantly
shaped the churchs attitude to Jewish people,
breeding an arrogance towards them in which they are
but the ghosts at the Christian banquet, consigned
to be damned and cursed for ever, and denying them any future role within the purposes of God or even as an
independent nation. Any ongoing
theological role for them is restricted to that within
a Gentile-dominated church, in which any Jewish
expression has been marginalised or excluded.
It has been the dominant theology that has
led to Christian anti-semitism and paradoxically to
the very Zionism about which it is often so voluble
and vitriolic today.
Today
the
church is polarised around two theological positions
whose origins go back to the early church.
On the one hand we have dispensationalism,
which has its roots in classic pre-millennialism, and
on the other hand covenant or replacement theology,
whose roots lie in the traditional teaching that the
church has now superseded
The
Christian
world largely mirrors that divide, with one end
advocating the restoration of Israel to its full
biblical borders, and the other coming to the rescue
of a beleaguered part of the church, oppressed by a
nation that it regards as having no ongoing spiritual
significance and indeed scarcely any legal or moral
right to exist at all.
For one, the Land is covenanted to
The vision
How have we got into this
position and is there any way in which those
differences can be reconciled?
Perhaps
an
appropriate place to begin is to look at the bigger
picture of Gods great purpose for world redemption,
the bringing of the nations under the lordship of
Christ through the whole people of God, Jew and
Gentile. That
is the vision of Psalm
2 when the Lord promises to give to the Anointed One, literally the
Messiah (Hebrew) or the Christ (Greek), the
nations as
His inheritance.
The
overarching
message of Scripture is not about either
The
establishment
of Gods kingdom then is played out in the theatre of
nations and through the instruments that God has
brought into being to fulfil His purposes, namely
Jesus
said:
I
tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things,
when the Son of Man sits on his glorious
throne, you who have followed me will
also sit on twelve thrones, judging
the twelve tribes of Israel (Mt.
19: 28). This
passage is significant because it encapsulates the
core issue that divides the church today - the
restoration of
As
I
have made clear from Revelation, on the new earth that
parity of relationship between Israel and the church
is restored, as symbolised by the gates of the tribes
of Israel and the walls of the apostles of the church
in the new Jerusalem where dwells the presence of God. This
wonderful picture of reconciliation, renewal and
transformation is depicted by John so well:
I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and
the Lamb are its temple.
The city does not
need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the
glory of God gives it light, and
the Lamb is
its lamp.
The nations
will walk by
its light, and
the kings of the earth will bring their
splendour into it ...
the glory and honour of the
nations will be brought into it. (Rev.
21: 22-26)
The
descent
of the new Jerusalem to
the renewed earth marks the culmination of Gods
completed work where God Himself comes to dwell with
mankind. It
answers that question of Solomon after the dedication
of the
Gods plan of redemption is far bigger
and greater than we can imagine, and is global in
concept, encompassing all the nations of the world. It
concerns the ultimate restoration
of our world to its right and lawful rule under God. Although God is sovereign
over the whole cosmos, the
Both
The
overwhelming
emphasis in the teaching of Jesus is on the
Kingdom teaching set
against the backdrop of Israel
Jesus
kingdom
teaching is always set against the backdrop and
context of
Kristell
Sandell, writing in Christs
Lordship and Religious Pluralism, says: It remains a fact worth pondering
that Jesus
preached the Kingdom
while the Church preached
Jesus. And
thus we are faced with a
danger. We
may so preach Jesus that we
lose
the vision of the Kingdom, the mended and restored
creation.
One plan
The
church
needs to rediscover its mission of being an agent and
an instrument of Gods kingdom whose purpose is to
bring this world under the rule of its King and to
share in that rule.
As the body of Christ, we are not only called as co-heirs with Christ, we are also called
to
co-reign with Him [
The creation
waits in eager
expectation for
the sons of God to be revealed.
For
the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who
subjected it, in hope
that the
creation
itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the
children of God.
(Rom 8: 19-21).
The
ultimate
goal of world
redemption
is then the lifting of the original curse over creation and its
ultimate
liberation within the
Paul
gives
the reason as to why this veil hangs over all the
peoples when he says: The god
of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers,* so that
they cannot see the light of the
gospel of the
glory of Christ, who
is the image of God (2
Cor. 4:
4). For nearly
2,000 years there has been a veil covering the Jewish
people caused by their unbelief, but Paul says that one
day that veil will be lifted and all Israel will
be saved (Rom 11:
26). Perhaps this
is a foretaste of Gods final strategy for bringing
the nations under His lordship.
And just as the veil over
[* NOTE.
The unbelievers
must also include some of His own
redeemed people; - those whose minds are
being blinded by Satan relative to the gospel
(or good news) of the glory of Christ, R.V.
This
gospel - (or good
news of Messiahs coming glory) - has to do
with a future Age,
when He cometh in His own glory
(Lk.
20: 35;
9: 26)
to
built up
This
brings
us to the priority of mission, for just as the
priority for individual salvation and incorporation
into the
The ecclesia (church) -
kingdom people
For
the
present, God is drawing out a community of people,
kingdom people, who live and walk by faith, and who
are making His kingdom purposes their primary
consideration, transcending their Jewishness or Gentileness.
They are called to reign with Christ in His
kingdom, first [in their hearts]
under His unseen
rule and then [upon
this earth] later
as
it becomes visible and manifest.
Waiter
Riggans has
commented that when Jesus urges His followers to seek
first the
A
principal feature of the
And they
[the elders], sang a new song: You
are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals,
because you were slain,
and with your blood you
purchased men for God from every tribe and language
and people and nation.
You have made them to
be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they
will reign on the earth. (Rev
5: 9-10)
As the Life
Application
Bible puts it: The song of Gods people praises
Christs work. He
was slain and through that act purchased men by his
blood sacrifice and so gathered a kingdom of priests
who are appointed to reign
on earth. Jesus has
already died and paid the penalty for sin.
He is now gathering us into His kingdom from
every ethnic group, language, people and nation, and
making us priests.
In
the future - [if
accounted worthy (Lk.
20: 35,
R.V.)] - we will reign with Him when He fully establishes
His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Someone has remarked that
the church, in its truest expression, is shown as
colonies of heaven where the evidence of Gods reign
can be observed through the kingdom lifestyle of its
citizens.
So
then
the
Election
Election and choice
are unfortunate words because they often imply
favouritism, and sadly that has been true in the way
the church has regarded itself as having gained or
acquired Gods favour from
When Paul quotes Malachi 1:
2-3 in Romans
9: 13,
Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated, this is not a statement of
Gods emotional reaction to these twin sons of Isaac,
but a statement of Gods intention to prefer the
younger to the older for the carrying forward of His
elective purpose.
It could then be translated: Jacob I loved, but
Esau I loved less. We need to
look at
The election of Israel
Why
did
God choose
I will make nations of you,
and kings will come from you. I
will establish my covenant as an everlasting
covenant between me and you and your descendants
after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your
descendants after you.
The
whole
land of Canaan,
where
you are now an alien, I
will give as an everlasting*
possession to you and your descendants
after you;
and I will be their God.
(Gen 17: 6-8)
[* That is, an
everlasting
possession in the sense of as long as this
earth remains.]
Of
course,
Abrahams decision to accomplish Gods promise by
having a child by Hagar has complicated the issue. The Arab
nations base their claim to the Land through the line
of Ishmael. Indeed
in
Islamic tradition it is not Isaac that is offered
up on
However,
that
may be Islamic tradition, but it is not biblical, and
in fact God
makes it clear that the covenant will be through the
union of Abraham and Sarah, through Isaac. Indeed it is
just after Abraham offers up Isaac that God reaffirms
the covenant, and says:
I
swear by myself, declares
the Lord, that because
you have done this and have not withheld your
son, your only son [Ishmael is not recognised], I
will surely bless you and make your descendants as
numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on
the seashore ... and
through your offspring all nations on earth will be
blessed, because you have obeyed me. (Gen 22:
15-18)
Then, as if to leave us in
no doubt as to the line, God renews the covenant
with Jacob at
And
God
said to him, I am God Almighty; be fruitful and increase
in number.
A nation and a
community of nations will come from you, and kings will come from your body. The
land I
gave to Abraham and Isaac I also give to you,
and I will give this
land to your descendants after you. (Gen 35: 11-12)
Later,
when
God encounters Moses at the burning bush, He makes
Himself known through linking His name to that of a
particular lineage: I am the God of your father,
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of
Jacob (Ex.
3: 6).
The
covenant
is unconditional and everlasting
If
we
are left in any doubt as to whom the covenant is for,
and how permanent it is, other passages make this
clear: For
the Lord your God is a merciful God; he
will not abandon or destroy you or forget the
covenant with your forefathers, which
he confirmed to them by oath (Deut.
4: 31),
or Jeremiah: This is what the
Lord says: Only if
the heavens above can be measured and the
foundations of the earth below be searched out will
I reject all the descendants of Israel because of
all they have done, declares
the Lord (Jer 31: 37).
Ezekiel,
one
of several of the post-exilic prophets, speaking of a future restoration declares:
This is what the Sovereign Lord says: It is not for your sake, 0
house of
The central calling of
Of
special
significance then for Christians is the fact that in
the New Testament Luke includes, in the opening words
of his Gospel, the testimony of Zechariah that the
covenant with Abraham was
still in effect, coming now to its great
fulfilment but not its completion: Praise be to the Lord, the God of
Israel, because
he has come and has redeemed his people ... to show mercy to our fathers and
to remember his holy covenant, the oath he swore to our father Abraham (Luke
1: 67-73).
For
those
who insist that these verses now apply to all*
the people of God in Christ, Paul asks: Did
God reject his people?
By
no
means! (Rom
11: 1).
He then goes on to stress his own Israelite
pedigree and so identifies himself as part of national
or ethnic Israel, Israel according to the flesh. And later: As far as the gospel is concerned,
they are enemies on your
account; but as far
as election is concerned, they
are loved on account of the patriarchs, for Gods gifts and his call are
irrevocable (Rom.
11: 28). Lets look
then at how this calling was to be expressed.
[* NOTE.
The divine
promise will not apply
to all the people
of God in Christ!
It applies only to those
who are obedient!
See Gen.
22: 15-18 above, and compare
with 1 Pet. 1:
22: Ye have purified
your souls in your obedience to the truth
- (concerning our hope and the
grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Christ verse 13.).
Again in 1 Pet.
2: 7,
8: -
they stumble at the word
being disobedient. This is an overcomers promise with
reference to the thousand
years, and is therefore conditioned by a
Christians faith in that Kingdom - and his obedience
to the precepts of its coming King, Matt.
7: 21;
8: 11,
12; Rev.
2: 25,
26; 3:
21.]
Mosaic covenant
It
is
at
This
covenant
is very different from that made with Abraham.
It is a conditional
covenant. There
are clear conditions attached to it, which
result in consequences if it is broken by either party. The most
serious consequence was exile, but not banishment from
the Land. This
has happened only twice with the Babylonian exile and
what has become known in Jewish tradition as the
Great Exile, the nearly 2,000-year exile
which began in CE 70 and only ended with the
re-establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The hymn
writer J. M. Neale picks
up this theme in
his Advent hymn: 0
come, 0 come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive
One
of
the titles the Lord gives to
A paradigm nation
It helps to ask what covenantal promise is thought to be for in the
Hebrew Scriptures.
And the answer is given in various forms in
parts of Leviticus, in many strands of the prophetic
tradition especially Isaiah, in aspects of the Wisdom
literature and might be summarised by saying Israel is
called to be the paradigm nation, the example held up
to all the nations of
how a people lives in obedience to God and justice
with one another.
This is how a nation is meant to be: living
by law, united by a worship that enjoins justice and
reverence for all, exercising a special concern for
those who have fallen outside the safety of the family
unit (widows and orphans) and those who fall outside
the tribal identities of the people (the resident
alien, the stranger within the gates). What is
more, as Deuteronomy insists (Deut. 4: 5, 6, 32-34; 17: 7,
8), this is a
people, a community, that exists solely because of
Gods loving choice; they
have been called out of another nation, specifically
to live as a community, whose task is to show Gods
wisdom in the world.
This
is
maybe the reason why we become so offended when we see
Israelis mistreat Palestinians, behaving as if they
have no right to be within the Land; why we are
shocked that
This
covenant
then outlines how God expects
The national constitution:
One
way
of putting it is to say that it is as if God formed a
people through Abraham, and then created a national
constitution for that people through Moses.
They are to be a holy people called to serve
a holy God. In Leviticus this is articulated: I
am the Lord your God; consecrate
yourselves and be holy, because
I am holy (Lev.
11: 44). In order for
the people to live in a holy way, God needs to provide
directions to make His will known, to teach His people
about Himself and His requirements, and this
revelation of Gods will is precisely what is conveyed
by the Hebrew term Torah.
The
standard
translation of this word is Law,
which
not only falls to do justice to the original Hebrew,
but it has become positively harmful.
Why? Because Christians
see the word Law
and then conjure up images of Jewish legalism and
bondage to the Law.
However, although Torah does contain laws, it
contains far more than just laws.
Torah comes from the root word to
fire at a target.
The best single word is Instruction. It conveys a
sense of direction,
directions on how to get to a goal, but also a sense
of authority; when your leader gives a directive, then
you make sure you do it.
Christian theology has too readily forgotten
that the Torah was Gods idea!
As Paul writes in Romans:
So, then,
the law is holy, and the commandment is holy,
righteous and good
... the law is spiritual.
At
this
point it is important to clear up a major
misunderstanding that has dogged our understanding of
the relationship between grace and Law.
Law is not
an Old Testament concept and grace
a New Testament one. The Abrahamic covenant is
entirely of grace.
There was nothing that Abraham had to do to
keep covenant with God.
Everything within this covenant is
accomplished by God from start to finish.
Abraham is even put to sleep when it is put
into effect! What
more definite illustration of the unilateral action of
God in effecting this covenant is required?
Grace precedes Law by at least 430 years, and
even earlier with Noah: For Noah found grace in the eyes
of the Lord.
One
of
the most deeply ingrained Christian stereotypes is
that
Christ the goal of the Law
and the embodiment of Israel
Christians
often
say that the coming of Christ marks the end to the
Law, and justify their stance from Romans: Christ
is the end of the law (
However,
the
choice of the word end
is unfortunate, because it implies termination.
The Greek word for end
is telos, which also
means goal.
Christ is the goal, fulfilment or culmination
of the Law, and the purpose of the Law is to bring us
to Christ. The
Christian is no longer under
the Law since Christ has freed us from its
condemnation, but the Law still plays a role in our
lives. We
are now set free by the Holy Spirit to fulfil its
moral demands. As
Christians our lives centre on the one who kept the
Law perfectly, and who fulfils it entirely in His
person. In
this respect Jesus embodies the Law, showing what it
truly means to be
Obedience to God is as central to New
Testament teaching as it is to the Old Testament.
However, while
Israels
election
and calling is to be that paradigm nation through whom
all the nations of the world will
[one Day] be blessed, and whose election and
calling is supremely embodied in the one who
personifies Israel.
The church, by contrast, is called to flesh out what that
means, through becoming a community of believers drawn
from Israel and the nations, who by their lives
reflect the Messiah of Israel, becoming, to use Pauls
analogy, the body of the Messiah, with Messiah himself
as its head. Messiahship
is both individual, located in the person of Jesus,
and corporate in so far as the church, the ecclesia,
is called to
model and demonstrate the kingdom values of the
Messiah. To understand that, we need to look at
Royal
Perhaps one of the saddest
verses of the Bible is where the Lord says to Samuel:
Listen
to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they nave rejected,
but they have rejected me as
their king (1
Sam. 8: 7). As we have
seen earlier,
King
David
longed to build the Lord a permanent dwelling place in
The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house
for you.
When your days are
over and you rest with your fathers, I
will raise up your
offspring to succeed you, who
will come from your own body, and
I will
establish his kingdom.
He is the one who
will build a house for my Name, and
I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever. I
will be his father, and
he shall be my son. (2 Sam. 7: 11-13)
The
reigns
of David and Solomon were seen as the golden age of
Later,
through
the writings of the prophets, the role of the Messiah
became defined with clear expectations of what He
would do, and by what line He would come.
Luke, announcing the birth of Jesus,
describes the descendant of David in this way: He will be great and will be
called the Son of the Most High.
The Lord God will give him the
throne of his father David*
and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever.
His kingdom will
never end (Luke
1: 32-33).
This
prophecy, if for no other reason, should convince us
that Jesus
is
supremely
[* That is,
from
Davids throne in
Stephen
Travis, in
End of
Story, says:
And there is one Messiah for all.
This is a hard thing to say.
Isnt it arrogant for Christians to say to
Jews, You are missing
the heart of your faith. The
Messiah for whom youre waiting has already come,
and his name is Jesus? Arent we
disqualified from saying such things by centuries of
Christian anti-semitism and persecution of the Jewish
people? Didnt
Hitler
think he was speaking for Christian
civilisation
when he wrote in Mein Kampf:
By
warding
off the Jews I am fighting for the Lords work?
Yet
to
give up on Christian witness to Jewish people would
be to saw off the branch on which we are sitting. Christian
faith rests on the conviction that Jesus came to be
the Messiah, and we are committed to sharing that
faith with Jews whose
Messiah He came to be.
Deny that He is the Messiah and there is no
reason for Christianity to exist.
If Jesus is not the Messiah of the Jewish
people, He cannot be my Saviour or the Saviour of
the world.
It
is
significant that at the beginning and end of His life,
Jesus is given the title King of the Jews. In the birth
narratives it is the Magi who enquire of Herod the
Great: Where
is the one who has been born king
of the Jews? (Mt. 12).
In the superscription above the cross is
recorded the crime for which He is convicted: The King
of
the Jews (Mk.
15: 26).
There is one in heaven who is not only the Saviour of the world but who
remains King of Israel, entitled to take up the earthly
throne of His father David. During
His earthly ministry Jesus never asserted His physical
kingship over the pretenders to the throne, or to
those appointed to rule over
Certainly
this
passage speaks of the transfer of that which hitherto
had been
Paul
makes
clear that
The
Gentile
church owes a deep debt of gratitude to
The Puritans believed that the
re-gathering and restoration of Israel would lead to
the greatest evangelisation the world has ever
witnessed, and would indeed usher in the fullest
expression of the kingdom of God and the return of
the King to reign. Perhaps when
Paul speaks of the salvation of all Israel, he is
speaking of the coming together of Israel according to
the Spirit, the body of the Messiah, the ecclesia,
together with a large part but not necessarily all of
the nation of Israel.
The prophet Zechariah reinforces the view of
a national turning by
That
is
the ultimate goal of the gospel: to bring in the
-
From
*
*
*
THE ROAD TO
THE HOLOCAUST
A Brief
Survey of the
History of Christian Anti-semitism
By
Derek White
January 2005 marked the
sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of
The
pages
of this dark period are stained not only with the
inhuman actions of the immediate Nazi perpetrators,
but with the apathy of the free world, who, by almost
total failure to speak and act on behalf of the Jews
of
*
*
The Listener,
16 September 1983.
It
is
not generally appreciated to what extent the ground
for the Holocaust was prepared by the Christian
church, so that a major portion of guilt must be
apportioned to long-standing and deep-rooted Christian
attitudes to the Jewish people.
The history of nearly 19 centuries of
Christian anti-semitism is a black stain on the record
of the Christian church, although recognised by very
few, and without it the Holocaust might conceivably
have never taken place.
Christ-Killers?
The
kernel
of Christian anti-semitism is historically the charge
of deicide or God-killing - that
the Jews crucified and killed Christ.
Let it be said at the outset that the gospels
in no way allow this charge to be brought against the
Jewish people. The
synoptic Gospel records (Matthew,
Mark, Luke)
show without any shadow of doubt that the Jewish
people in general did not assent to the crucifixion,
but rather that the political manoeuvrings of the
religious leaders (chief priests and elders) were
delayed by the popular acceptance of Jesus (Mt.
21: 46;
Mk. 11:
18; 12:
12; 14:
2; Lk. 19:
47-48;
22: 2).
Jesus
arrest
and subsequent death was engineered by the religious
leaders only with the support of an incited rabble (Mt. 26:
47, 59-62; 27:
20), who also
formed a majority of those present at the trial and
who replied with the fateful words: His
blood be on us and on our children (Mt.
27: 25).
Concerning
the
high priest, a Jewish scholar states that, in addition
to being an ignorant man and a Sadducee heretic, he
was the appointee of Roman power - for not only did
the Romans give the high priest power, they actually
selected him and appointed him to office.
Thus the high priest who handed Jesus over to
the Romans, fearing that His activities would offend
the Roman occupying officials, was not acting on
behalf of Jewish religion, which he did not represent,
but in his capacity as a Roman-appointed police chief
(Jn.
11: 48).*
*
Hyam Maccoby,
Judaism in the First Century
(Sheldon Press, 1989), p.8.
Peter,
in
his sermon on the Day of Pentecost, summed up the situation in these words: And
now, brothers,
I know that you acted in
ignorance, as did
your leaders, and this was confirmed by the
massive response among his Jewish hearers to his
preaching (Acts 3:
17).
The
idea
that the Jews crucified Christ, murdered the Saviour,
killed God, took root like a cancer in the early
Christian centuries and has persisted until almost the
present day, being the pretext for every form of
pillage, humiliation, murder and pogrom.
It soon became common belief that the whole
Jewish people were guilty of the death of Christ, for
all time, and that they and their childrens children
to the last generation were condemned by God to a life
of misery and degradation.
It became easy to spill Jewish blood on the
pretext that the perpetrators were carrying out the
will of God.
It
may
be noted that opinions differ as to whether or not
anti-semitism as such existed in the church during the
first three centuries.
What, however, is ominous is the emergence of
a teaching clearly enunciated in St Hippolytus
and Origen,
that the Jews are a people punished for their deicide
who can never hope to escape their misfortunes - a
teaching that greatly contributed to the course of
anti-semitism from the fourth century onwards.
Thus Origen
(185-254) stated: We say
with confidence that they will never be restored to
their former condition.
For they committed a crime of the most
unhallowed kind, in conspiring against the Saviour
of the human race ...*
*
Edward H.
Flannery, The
Anguish of the Jews (Paulist
Press, 1985),
p. 41.
We
should
note that the growth of Christian anti-semitism is
closely linked with the development of the theology of
replacement.
Early Christian writings
A
survey of Christian writings, as reflecting then
current preaching and teaching down the centuries, is
a sufficient testimony to the scope and nature of
these hostile Christian attitudes, and when the power
of the church is taken into account during centuries
of Christian Europe,
their influence on the beliefs and behaviour of the
masses can be understood.
One
of
the earliest was Justin,
surnamed the Martyr
(100-c. 165), described as
one of the earliest and most
distinguished apologists of the Christian Church.*
In his Dialogue with Trypho the record
of an actual discussion with a rabbi, he wrote:
*
Chambers Encyclopedia, 1901.
You hate and (whenever
you have the power) you
kill us.
Justin was the first to give voice to the
theme that Jewish misfortunes are the consequence of
divine punishment for the death of Christ.
Tribulations were
justly imposed upon you, for you have murdered the
just One.
Justin further insisted that the scriptures
and promises were now no longer the property of the
Jews, but were now the property of the church.*
*
Edward H.
Flannery, op.cit., pp. 35, 39-40.
The
nature
of such early Christian preaching and writing is
illustrated by the language of St
John Chrysostom (CE 347-407) the
Golden-Mouthed, one of the greatest of the
church fathers, whom Cardinal
Newman described as a
sensitive heart, a temperament open to emotion and
impulse; and all this elevated, refined, transformed
by the touch of heaven - such was St John Chrysostom.*
The chief venting of his ire was six sermons
delivered in his see of Antioch, where Jews were
numerous and influential and where, apparently, some
of his flock were frequenting synagogues and Jewish
homes. The synagogue, he said, is worse than a brothel
... it is the den of
scoundrels and the repair of wild beasts ...
the temple of demons devoted
to idolatrous cults ... the refuge of brigands and debauchees, and
the
cavern of devils.
Whatever name even
more horrible could be found, will never be worse
than the synagogue deserves.
As for me, I hate
the synagogue ... I
hate the Jews for the same reason.**
He was the first Christian preacher to publicly accuse
the Jewish people of deicide: The
Jews have assassinated the Son of God!
How dare you take part in their festivals?
... You dare to associate
with this nation of assassins and hangmen!
... 0 Jewish people!
A man crucified by your hands has been
stronger than you and has destroyed you and
scattered you.***
*
Historical Sketches, II, 234, quoted in Malcolm
Hay, The Roots
of Christian Antisemitism
(Freedom Library Press, 1981), chap. 1, p.
27.
**
Ibid, chap. 1, pp. 27-8. *** Ibid,
chap. 1. p. 30.
He
taught
that they were hated of God: Why
then did He rob you?
Is it not obvious that it was because He
hated you, and rejected you once for all?* On the strength of Psalm
106: 37
he said in CE 387 that the Jews: sacrificed
their sons and daughters to devils; they outraged
nature; and overthrew from their foundations the
laws of relationship.
They are become worse than the wild beasts,
and for no reason at all, with their own hands they
murder their own offspring, to worship the avenging
devils who are the foes of our life.
The synagogues of the Jews are the homes of
idolatry and devils.
The Jews do not worship God but devils, so
that all their feasts are unclean.
God hates them, and indeed has always hated
them. It
was of set purpose that He concentrated all their
worship in
*
Sixth Homily Against the Jews, quoted in Malcolm Hay, op.cit., chap. 1. p. 30.
**
Chrysostom, Homilae Adversus
Iudaeos. A similar
selection is given by Edward H. Flannery, op.cit.
pp. 50-52, 306; Marvin H. Wilson, Our Father Abraham (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
& Centre for Judiac-Christian
Studies, 1989), p. 95; Denis Prager
and Joseph Telushkin, Why the Jews?
(Simon & Schuster, 1985), p. 94.
These
three
words of St
John Chrysostom, God
hates you, have echoed down the centuries in
the ears of both Christians and Jews.
Jerome (345-420),
universally regarded as the most learned and eloquent
of the Latin church
fathers, said: There could
never be expiation for the Jews ... God
had always hated them.
He called it incumbent on all Christians to
hate the Jews who, he said, were
assassins of Christ, and worshippers of the devil.*
*
Jerome revised the
Latin New Testament in 382, and between 390 and 405,
while living in
*
Augustine, The
Creed, 3: 10, cited by Edward H.
Flannery, op.cit., pp. 52-53.
To
these
could be added Cyprian,
Eusebius, Hippolyttis,
St Gregory of
Nyssa, St
Agobard (Archbishop
of Lyons), Pope
Gregory VII, as well as others, and all these
set the tone for the churchs attitude for centuries
to come. It
is not true to say that these men were not real
Christians. One
certainly cannot say this of the early church fathers,
nor Luther,
nor countless others.
The fact that they were, in part, victims of
contemporary attitudes in no way excuses the deep
wrong of their words.
Separation from the roots
Efforts
to
sever the church from her Jewish roots were
unrelenting in church history, and a quotation from Constantine
indicates the spirit of the Roman imperial church of
the fourth century and onwards: We
ought not therefore to have anything in common with
the Jews, for the Saviour has shown us another way
... In unanimously adopting this mode [Easter
Sunday], we desire, dearest
brothers, to separate ourselves from the detestable
company of the Jews.*
*
Life of
Such
a
severance has resulted in incalculable loss to sincere
Christians and an impoverishment of their faith, and
it has provided a door to serious misunderstandings
and distortions of the Bible and its teaching.
The Crusades
To
the
average Christian, the Crusades of the eleventh
century constitute a romantic chapter in the story of
The
first
Crusade began to move down the
We are
marching a great distance to seek our sanctuary and
to take vengeance on the Moslems.
Lo and behold, there live among us Jews
whose forefathers slew Jesus and crucified Him for
no cause. Let
us avenge ourselves on them first, and eliminate
them from among the nations, so that the name of
Israel no longer be remembered, or else let them be
like ourselves and believe in the son of Mary.*
*
Meyer Passow, Five
Great Dates (WIZO,
One
chronicler,
Guibert of Nogent
(1053-1124), reported the Crusaders of Rouen as
saying: We desire to combat
the enemies of God in the East; but we have under
our eyes the Jews, a race more inimical to God than
all the others.
We are doing this whole thing backwards. Turning this
logic into action, the Crusaders fell upon the Jews in
*
Edward H.
Flannery, op.cit., pp. 91-2.
They
fell
upon the Jews of Germany, where by July 10,000 Jews
had been slaughtered, and whole Jewish communities
reduced to a memory.
At
*
Henry Hart Lalman, Dean of St Pauls, History of the Jews (John
Murray, 1866), Vol. 3, pp. 176-8.
Having
thus
plundered and killed in the
No
one
can say how many victims perished, but 70,000 Muslims were slaughtered. The
Jews fled in a body to their chief synagogue, but no
mercy was shown to them.
The building was set on fire and they were
burned alive.* Then, in the
words of a chronicler: sobbing
with an excess of joy and embracing one another with
joy and release, the Crusaders rushed to the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre where they folded their
blood-stained hands in prayers of thanksgiving.
**
* Steven
Runciman, The
First Crusade (CUP, 1980), chp.
14: Malcolm Hay, op.cit., chp.
2.
**
** Passow,
op.cit., p.10;
Edward H.
Flannery, op.cit.,
p. 92.
The
crusaders
took
They
threw
away their arms still streaming with blood: they
advanced with reclined bodies, and naked feet and
hands, to that sacred monument; they sang anthems to
their Saviour, who had there purchased their salvation
by his death and agony; and their devotion so overcame
their fury, that they dissolved in tears, and bore the
appearance of every soft and tender sentiment! (Abbe Vertot; Hume). Joseph
Haydn, Dictionary of Dates
(Edward Moxon, 1853),
under Crusades.
The
second
Crusade (1146-7)
brought the same sufferings as the first.
Peter
the Venerable, the influential abbot of the
French monastery of
* Edward H. Flannery, op.cit., under Ritual Murder
Accusations; Henry Hart Milman,
op.cit., pp. 224-8.
There
was
one notable exception in this tide of murder in the
person of St
Bernard of Clairvaux.* Despite his repeating those
sentiments concerning the Jews current at his time,
during the second Crusade he wrote many letters in
defence of the Jews.
R.
Joseph ben Meir
records in his Chronicles:
The Lord heard their cry, and
remembered His Covenant ... and
He sent ... the Abbot St
Bernard of Clairvaux
(who said): Come, let us go up unto Zion,
to the sepulchre of their Messiah; but take ye
heed that ye speak to the Jews neither good nor
bad; for whoever toucheth them is like as if he
touched the apple of the eye of Jesus; for they
are His flesh and His bone.*
*
Henry Hart Milman, op.cit.,
p. 181.
Sadly,
however,
St Bernard also preached sermons almost as provocative
as those of St John Chrysostorn:
You see, 0 Jew, that I am
milder than your own prophet, I have compared you to
the brute beasts; but he sets you even below these,
and 0 evil seed ... whence hast thou these figs crude
and coarse? ... For
war was their business, wealth their whole craving,
the letter of the Law the only nurture of their
bloated minds, and great herds of cattle, bloodily
slaughtered, their form of worship. *
* Malcolm Hay, op.cit., p. 181.
The
trail
of Jewish suffering and ruin ran on through the second
and third Crusades, and all was done in
the name of Christ and in the sign of the cross. When the
Crusaders arrived in the
The blood libel
About
the
time of the second Crusade the blood libel found its
origin in the English city of
* Dennis
Brager and Joseph Telushkin,
Why the Jews?
(Simon & Schuster, 1985), p. 98.
The
horrifying
lie, which claimed that Jews need Christian blood for
their various religious rites, especially for the
Passover matzot, first
claimed its victims in the French city of
The
blood
libel in fact persisted into the twentieth century. In central
Europe there were almost more examples of the
accusation between 1880 and 1945 than in the whole of
the Middle Ages.* An instance
is recorded as recently as 1928 in New York State, and
in the Polish town of Kielce
in July 1948 when 42 Jews were murdered - and the
blood libel was used by the Nazis for anti-Jewish
propaganda.**
Although common coinage in the Islamic world, a recent
blood libel was in 1993 when Prada
accused the Lubavitch of
ritually sacrificing two members of the Orthodox
novitiate. Some
time later the accusation was rebutted in Isvestia.
*
Ibid,
p. 100.
**
See Edward H.
Flannery, op.cit.,
under
Ritual Murder Accusations;
Henry Heart Milman, op.cit., pp.
224-8.
The Inquisition
The
period
of the Inquisition in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries brought further horrors.
Most Christians remember the Inquisition for
the many true Christian believers who were tortured or
burned to death.
What many do not know is that hundreds of
thousands of Jews died equally terrible deaths at the
hand of the inquisitors - in
the name of Christ and in the sign of the cross
- and whole Jewish communities were destroyed.
So
one
could go on, mentioning the pogroms in Russia of the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, carried
out to the age-old cry of Christ-killers,
and often at Christmas or Easter. *
* See Henry H. Flannery, op.cit., under Spanish Inquisition.
Martin Luther
For
the
evangelical Christian, it is a particular sorrow to
recollect the words of Martin Luther towards the end
of his life. In
1523 he had written:
Popes, bishops, sophists, monks
and other fools treated Jews like dogs.
They were called names and had their
belongings stolen.
Yet they are blood-brothers and cousins of
the Saviour. No
other people have been singled out by God as they
have; they have been entrusted with His Holy Word.
Luther,
however,
was disappointed that the Jews made little response to
his evangelistic overtures, and in 1543 he published a
pamphlet entitled On
the Jews and their Lies in which
he wrote: Doubt not, beloved
in Christ, that after the Devil you have no more
bitter, venomous, violent enemy, than the real Jew,
the Jew in earnest in his belief.
He set out his
honest advice as to how Jews should be
treated:
First, their synagogues or
churches should be set on fire, and whatever does
not burn up should be covered or spread over with
dirt so that no one may ever be able to see cinder
or stone of it.
And this ought to be done for the honour of
God and of Christianity in order that God may see
that we are Christians, and that we have not
wittingly tolerated or approved of such public
lying, cursing and blaspheming of His Son and His
Christians.
Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed. For they
perpetrate the same things there that they do in their
synagogues. For
this reason they ought to be put under one roof or in
a stable, like gypsies, in order that they may realise
that they are not masters in our land, as they boast,
but miserable captives, as they complain of us
incessantly before God with bitter wailing.
Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayer books and Talmuds
in which such idolatry,
lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught.
Fourthly, their Rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death to
teach any more.
Fifthly, passport and travelling privileges should be absolutely
forbidden to the Jews.
For they have no business in the rural
districts since they are not nobles, nor officials,
nor merchants, nor the like.
Let them stay at home.
Sixthly, they ought to be stopped usury.
All their cash and valuables of silver and
gold ought to be taken from them and put aside for
safekeeping. For
this reason, as said before, everything that they
possess, they stole and robbed from us through their
usury, for they have no other means of support.
This money should be used in the case (and in
no other) where a Jew has honestly become a Christian,
so that he may get for the time being one or two or
three hundred florins, as the person may require. This,
in order that he may start a business to support his
poor wife and children, and the old and feeble. Such
evilly-acquired money is cursed, unless, with Gods
blessing, it is put to some good and necessary use.
Seventhly, let the young and strong Jews and Jewesses be given the
flail, the axe, the hoe and spade, the distaff and
spindle, and let them earn their bread by the sweat of
their noses as is enjoined upon Adams children. For it is
not proper that they should want us cursed Goyim
to work in the sweat of our brow and that they, pious
crew, idle away their days at the fireside in
laziness, feasting and display.
And in addition to this, they boast impiously
that they have become masters of the Christians at our
expense. We
ought to drive the rascally lazy bones out of our
system.
If, however, we are afraid that they might harm us personally, or
our wives, children, servants, cattle, etc. when they
serve us or work for us - since it is surely to be
presumed that such noble lords of the world and
poisonous bitter worms are not accustomed to any work
and would very unwillingly humble themselves to such a
degree among the cursed Goyim -
then let us apply the same cleverness (expulsion) as
the other nations, such as France, Spain, Bohemia,
etc. and settle with them for that which they have
extorted usuriously from us, and after having divided
it up fairly, let us drive them out of the country for
all time. For,
as has been said, Gods rage is so great against them
that they only become worse and worse through mild
mercy, and not much better through severe mercy. Therefore
away with them.
To sum up, dear princes and nobles who have Jews in your domains,
if this advice of mine does not suit you, then find a
better one so that you and we may all be free of this
insufferable devilish burden - the Jews.*
* Encyclopedia Judaica, article on Anti-Semitism;
Edward H. Flannwet, op.cit., pp. 152-4.
The Holocaust
The
Holocaust
stands out as the most horrific expression of
anti-semitism, possibly of all recorded history. This
systematic attempt to destroy all European Jewry began
in the last week of June 1941, and continued without
respite for nearly four years.
At
its
height, during the autumn of 1941 and again in the
summer of 1942, many thousands of Jews were killed
every day, and by the time Nazi Germany had been
defeated, as many as 6 million of Europes 8 million
Jews had been slaughtered.
It is impossible to grasp the magnitude of
this event. Perhaps
one can only appreciate something of it by isolated
cameos which to a degree represent the whole.
Treblinka
was
one of the Nazi death camps deep in the heart of the
Polish countryside.
It is recorded that some 800,000 (others say
1 million) were exterminated in Treblinka over a
period of 13 months between July 1942 and August 1943. In one month
in the summer of 1942, 300,000 Jews died.
At its peak Treblinka was killing 15,000
people a day. It
took only 50 Germans, 150 Ukrainians and just over
1,000 Jewish prisoners to accomplish it.
Treblinka
railway
station, where Jews from all over Europe disembarked,
was made to look like an ordinary railway station,
complete with a uniformed ticket collector, a left
luggage room, the facade of a restaurant, timetables,
and even a station clock (with painted hands).
Deceptions continued all the way to the camp,
with false shop-fronts, a little zoo and a final
street sign announcing TO
THE GHETTO, although this was in fact the
road to the gas chambers.
At
the
entrance to the gas chambers was a small booth in
which a cashier,
guarded by SS men and Ukrainians, demanded all money
and valuables. The
transfer from the cashiers
booth to the place of execution took six to seven
minutes. The
final bizarre deception arrived when the naked,
frightened people came face to face with an elegant
stone building, in the style of an ancient temple with
wide ornamental doors and all around flowers and
potted plants. Above
the doors was the single word BATHHOUSE.
Beyond
these
doors lay the gas chamber, and all around, armed
guards, ferocious dogs and pitiless SS men, driving
human beings forward to their death.
A thousand people at a time were driven into
the gas chamber. After execution, seven dentists
extracted teeth with gold fillings and then the bodies
were thrown into enormous pits - the furnaces of
Treblinka.
The
whole
process, from the arrival of the train to the remains
being hurled into the pit, took less than two hours
and most of the victims never fully realised where
they were or what was happening until it was too late.
According to one account, the pyres of dead bodies burned
by day and night. The smoke
that rose from the chimneys of dozens of crematoria
could be seen over the entire district.
Human dust settled down on the entire area,
and the death factory never ceased its work even for a
single day.
The
sadism
in Treblinka did not cease even in the brief hours
that elapsed between arrival and death.
The same account tells of one of the Nazis
who lived in the camp together with his family: It was this mans habit to murder
a few Jews before his meals,
otherwise he could not sit down at table.
The Untersturmer
Meuter and Scharfuhrer Fast
used
to amuse themselves by setting dogs on Jewish
children.*
* Martin Gilbert, Final Journey: The
Fate of the Jews in Nazi Europe
(Allen & Unwin,
1979), chp. 9, pp. 121-2.
Treblinka
was
but one of many similar camps scattered throughout
greater
Adolf Eichmann
himself inspected the Einsatzgruppen at work. At his trial
in
* Ibid, chp.
4, p. 62.
Later
that
year (1941) Eichmann formulated the Nazi Final
Solution.
Heydrich
explained, from a draft memo prepared by Eichmann, in the course of the practical
implementation of the final solution,
*
Idid, p. 64.
It
must
be asked: how could a cultured and Protestant nation
such as
In
1932
a majority of Germans knowingly voted for parties
committed to the overthrow of German democracy.*
The fact of the matter is that ordinary
Germans, as well as other nationalities, were the
agents of the demeaning and later wholesale murder of
the Jews of Europe.
*
Laurence Rees, The Nazis; A
Warning from History (BBC Books,
1997).
The testimonies of more than 50 eye witnesses, many of whom were
committed Nazis ... confirm that there was massive
collaboration with the Nazi regime, both at home and
on the war fronts, and that the terrible atrocities in
the east were the work not just of elite killing
squads but also of ordinary German soldiers and of
local civilian populations.*
*
Ibid, jacket cover.
A
recent author similarly presents the thesis that the
Holocaust was as much a product of the anti-semitism
of the average German as it was of a Nazi blueprint
for genocide.*
The Holocaust did not come about out of the
blue. The
way had been prepared by centuries of anti-Jewish
attitudes, mainly from the
church, and sadly it seems that the words of
Luther provided the final preparation for Hitlers
hatred of the Jews to find acceptance in the heart of
the German nation.
* Daniel
Goldhagen, Hitlers
Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the
Holocaust. Review by The
Times 12 Jan. 1998, p. 12.
Hans Kung,
a Swiss-born theologian who went through World War II
as a teenager, wrote in 1974: The
mass murder of Jews by the Nazis was the work of
godless criminals, but without the almost 2,000-year
history of Christian anti-semitism ... it would have been impossible.
The killing of the Jews in the twentieth century was the final
result of a tradition of denigration and rejection of
Jews and Judaism dating from early in Christian
history, which also tried to strip Jesus of his
Jewishness to produce a home-made God and Saviour, a
Gentile hero.*
* The
Times,
3 April 1985.
Hitler
was
appointed Chancellor of the Third Relch
on 30 January 1933.
In April 1933, following his decision to
establish concentration camps and to boycott Jewish
shops, Hitler said to Cardinal
Faulhaber: I
am only doing what the Church itself has been
preaching and practising against the Jews. He repeated
this in a conversation with Bishop
Berning and Msgr Steinman,
A
few years later, in 1938, in the presence of his legal
adviser, Hans Frank, Hitler
said: In the Gospels
the Jews called out to Pilate when he refused to
crucify Jesus: His
blood be upon us and
upon our childrens children. Perhaps I
have to fulfil this curse.
It is no wonder that in his book Mein
Kampf
Hitler could write: I
believe that I am today acting in accordance with
the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending
myself against the Jews, I am fighting for the work
of the Lord.*
* Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Houghton Miflin, 1943), p. 65; quoted
by Edward H. Flannery, op.cit.,
p.
210.
When
Julitis Strelcher
in 1941 recommended the
extermination of that people whose father is the
devil he was simply echoing the sentiments
of Bernard of
Clairvaux in the
twelfth century when he had described the Jewish
people as a race who had not
God for their father, but were of the devil, and
were murderers as he was a murderer from the
beginning. *
*
Malcolm Hay, op.cit., chp.
2.
Passive
support
for Hitlers policies towards the Jews came from many
sections of the church.
During the Holocaust, M.
D. Weissmandel, a
Polish Jew, appealed for help to the Papal
Ambassador, asking him to intervene on behalf of
innocent Jews, especially children.
He was told: There
is no innocent blood of Jewish children in the
world. All
Jewish blood is guilty.
You have to die.
This is the punishment that has been
awaiting you because of that sin (namely the
crucifixion of Jesus).*
* Eliezer Berkovits, Faith
after the Holocaust (Ktav,
1973), p. 19.
The
official
attitude of the
The National Socialist leadership
of Germany has given irrefutable documentary proof
that this world war was instigated by the Jews
... As members of the German
national community, the undersigned Protestant
provincial churches and church leaders stand in the
front line of this historic struggle which has made
enemies of the Reich and the world. Even Martin
Luther, from bitter experience, advocated stringent
measures against the Jews and demanded their
expulsion from
From the crucifixion to this day the Jews have fought against
Christendom or exploited and misrepresented it for
their own ends. Baptism
changes nothing in the racial separateness, national
status, or biological character of the Jews.
The task of any
Even
as
late as 1948 the German
Evangelical Conference proclaimed: The
terrible Jewish suffering in the Holocaust was a
divine visitation and a call to the Jews to cease
their rejection and ongoing crucifixion of Christ.
Thankfully
in
1980 this same
conference was able to declare: Stricken,
we confess the co-responsibility and guilt of German
Christendom for the Holocaust ... We
believe in the permanent election of the Jewish
people of God and understand that through Jesus
Christ the Church is taken into the covenant of God
with His people.
Despite
such
welcome changes in attitude, can it nevertheless be
any surprise to us that so many Jewish people regard
Christians, the church and all attempts to preach the
gospel of Jesus Christ to them with the deepest
suspicion? Their
history is etched deeply into their minds and hearts. So many
today, either personally or in their immediate
families, have suffered in the Holocaust, which is
understandably seen by them as the final expression by
a Protestant nation of centuries of Christian
anti-semitism.
Elie
Weisel,
Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize Winner said in
1996:
You must
understand why I feared Christians, why I had to
change side-walks when I saw a priest and why I resent
it when you say that the Holocaust is a problem for
both of us. I
say, No! The victims are my
problem, the killers are yours. I say, You must
understand that the cross for you is a symbol of
love and compassion; for us Jews it is a symbol of
suffering and oppression.
Lest
it
be objected that we today in the West no longer repeat
the crude anti-semitism of our forebears, let us face
up to the fact that anti-Zionism - opposition
to the restoration of the Jews to their Land and to
the State of Israel - is also Jew-hatred. Moreover,
the
widespread
Christian teaching that the Jews have forfeited
their position as Gods covenant people and have
been replaced by the church as the new
Israel is of the same sort.
It
may be that we no longer cry Christ-killers. It is now
*
See Edward
H. Flannery, op.cit., pp. 267-69.
Gods
call
to repentance
In that
[coming millennial] day, when history shall be written in the light of truth, the people of
Israel will be known not as Christ-killers, but as
the Christ-bearers; not as the God-slayers, but as
the God-bringers to the world.
The
Christian
church is in deep need of repentance for its past, and sometimes present, attitudes. There
is a great need for Christians
everywhere to say to
the Jewish people,
We are sorry - please
forgive us, and to show the reality of that repentance by practical
support and by standing alongside the Jewish people. Christians need to stand alongside
Gods
attitude
to the Jewish people is declared clearly in the
Scriptures:
But
In all their distress he too
was distressed,
and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy he
redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried
them all the days of old. (Is.
63: 9)
Let our heart attitude be that of
the God we profess to know and worship.
Sources of information
Brown,
Michael
L., Our Hands are Stained with Blood (Destiny
Image,
1992).
Flannery,
Edward H., The Anguish
of the Jews
(Paulist Press, 1985).
Gilbert,
Martin, Final journey: The Fate of
the Jews in Nazi
Guinness,
Paul Grattan, Hear,
0
Hay, Malcolm,
The Roots of
Christian Antisemitism (Freedom
Library Press: New York, 1981).
Passow, Meyer, Five Great Dates
(WIZO:
Prager, Dennis and Joseph Telushkin,
Why the Jews?
(Simon & Schuster: New York,
1985).
Rees,
Laurence, The Nazis: A Warning from
History
(BBC Books: London,1997).
*
*
*
it
just too sensitive a subject.
Jesus and His teachings have been blamed for
the Holocaust by so many people, and especially Jewish
people-in large because of the ghastly way that Jesus
name has been used and abused to make hateful
statements about Jewish people.
The
video cannot undo decades of tragic and untrue
correlation between Jesus and the hatred that made the
Holocaust possible, but we believe the film presents a
much needed counter perspective.
Not only that, but if the gospel cannot speak
to this heinous human tragedy, how is that same gospel
to save us from our sin and its awful power to forever
separate us from God?
Indeed, in view of such a horrific
demonstration of what sin can do, the gospel stands
out as the only hope for humanity.
Have
you ever tried to share the gospel with someone who is
furious with God because of a personal tragedy?
I have heard these words: How
dare you speak to me of a loving God when He allowed
my child to suffer and die such a cruel death before
my very eyes?
For that parent, this is a personal and
private holocaust.
So what do we do?
We weep with those who weep.
We dont force the issue.
But neither do we dare desist from offering
Jesus, the only hope, to people who are in such great
pain.
In the
midst of the heated reactions we received to That Jew Died For
You, Susan
Perlman received a
call from Rabbi
Bernhard Rosenberg, the son of Holocaust
survivors and the former chairman of the New York
Board of Rabbis Commission on the Holocaust.
Rabbi Rosenberg was calling to thank us for
producing what he called, a
film made from compassion. (You can see the
Rabbis full response online at: www.jewsforjesus.org/publicationsrealtime/april-2014/tidfyrr). Rabbi
Rosenberg states unequivocally that he is not a
believer in Jesus, and yet he took the risk of
offending people by stating that Jesus, a Jew, was not
responsible for the Holocaust.
Who knows how many people will question the
lie linking Jesus to the Holocaust thanks to this
rabbis courageous words?
The
purpose of truth-telling is not to offend, but that
doesnt mean that those conditioned to disbelieve
wont be offended. Paul said it
best when he wrote: For
we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those
who are being saved and among those who are
perishing.
To the one we are
the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of
life leading to life.
And who is
sufficient for these things? (2
Corinthians 2: 15-16)
Who
indeed?*
*
This writing is
from: Jews For Jesus
(June 2014): A newsletter
for the Christian who wants to know more about Jews
and evangelism.
Watch the video at: thatjewdiedforyou.com
To
date over 1.5 million people have viewed the film on
YouTube, including
1000.000 Israelis.
The film caught
the attention of the media in the
On April 25 Julia
Pascoe was interviewed alongside Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner
on the Radio 4 Today Programme 5 Live.
The Independent
and the Guardian
posted the video on the online site as did the Jewish Chronicle.
*
*
*
THE DAY
OF
THE LORD
By David Noakes*
* David Noakes has had a long standing
relationship with Prophetic
Word Ministries in a number of roles, and is Chairman of
the Board of Hatikvah
Film Trust.
He is respected as a Bible teacher and
acknowledged for his deep understanding of the
ministry of the prophets.
-------
There is today a
famine of the truth of the word of God in many parts of the church, and it
is a famine which is increasing in severity. It is of
the greatest importance that in the difficult days
that lie ahead, Gods
people should not find themselves either deceived by
false teaching or taken unawares by events that
their teachers had not told them to expect.
It
is a matter of urgency that we try to grasp clearly
and accurately the whole of what Scripture predicts
for the closing days of this age - but stripped of
the speculation and sensationalism which so often
surrounds it.
To
establish truth, we
need the illumination of the Holy Spirit;
and we need to allow Scripture to interpret Scripture, allowing the word of God to be its own commentary
upon itself, and letting the weight of the whole of
the prophetic writings taken together build up a
clear picture of the events which are being
predicted. It could be
likened to a jigsaw puzzle, scattered through the
pages of the books of the prophets, which only the
Holy Spirit can assemble correctly.
The
topic
of the
Day of the
Lord
is a thread that is interwoven into the Scriptures
from the time of the earliest writing prophet,
Obadiah, right through to the book of Revelation. Almost every
prophet makes reference to it, either directly or
indirectly. Sometimes,
as with Isaiah in
chapters 9-12,
their prophetic vision leaps back and forth, from the
time of the immediate future of which they are
speaking, to the time of the end of this age.
Sometimes, as with Joel and Zephaniah, the
Day of the Lord is completely central to their
writings, and the prophetic revelation arises either
out of considering historical events that have already
taken place - in Joels case a judgement on the Land
of Israel by means of an invasion of locusts which had
already happened in his own day (Joel
1: 1 - 2: 11) -
or as with Zephaniah, out of a prophetic awareness of
the imminence of the invasion and destruction of Judah
by the Babylonians, which took place some 45 years
later in 586 BCE (Zeph 1:
4 - 2: 3; 3: 1-13).
A major theme of biblical
prophecy
The
Day
of the Lord is a theme to which the prophets were
drawn like moths to a candle flame.
What is this great event that so occupied
their thoughts and which keeps breaking into their
writings as if they had suddenly taken off their
reading glasses and instead had picked up a telescope
to gaze with astonishing clarity of vision into the
distant future?
It
is
a major theme of biblical prophecy, running like an
unbroken thread through the writings of the Hebrew
prophets, in which the phrase the Day of the Lord, with its unique
significance, occurs 21 times between Isaiah
2:
12 and
the very last verse of the Old Testament, Malachi 4: 5. Parallel to that phrase is
another that has similar theological significance when
used by the prophets: in
that day, which is found 107 times in their writings and out of which 80
references are directly relative to the future Day of
the Lord.
The Day of the Lord is
thus mentioned by the prophets more than 100 times. It is
continuously into the book of Isaiah, appearing in no
fewer than 17 of the first 35 chapters.
Of the 17 books of the Old Testament
prophets, only five fail to mention it directly by
name; and of those five, Daniel in chapters 7-12 deals with the subject
extensively, while both Nahum and Habakkuk also
contain relevant prophecy relating to the closing days
of this age. This
prophetic theme continues through the New Testament,
emerging, for example, in the Olivet Discourse (Mt.
24: 15-31;
Mk. 13: 14-27;
Lk. 21:
20-36), in 1
Corinthians, Philippians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians,
Hebrews, 2
Peter, Jude and of course almost the
whole of the book of Revelation.
How should we understand this
term the
Day of the Lord
and its counterpart In that day? What do they
signify? There
is no special significance in the actual Hebrew or
Greek words used in the two phrases.
In the Hebrew
Old Testament the ordinary Hebrew word for day, yom,
is used; while in the Septuagint and the New Testament
the usual Greek word, hemera, is
found. Yom is translated variously
in the Scriptures as day, time or year.
It can express either a particular point in
time, or a period of time that may extend during
months or even years.
When included in the phrases the Day of the Lord or in
that day,
it is used prophetically to indicate a particular future period of time
when Gods personal and direct intervention in human
history will occur in order to fulfil His purposes.
Gods purposes
What
are
these purposes? The
evidence from Amos
5: 18 indicates that the popular understanding among the people at the time
of his ministry in the northern kingdom of Israel
(c.760 BCE) was that it
would be a day when God would intervene in such a
way as to exalt Israel to be chief among the
nations, irrespective of Israels unfaithfulness
towards Him.
This was the view being taken by the people
at a time of relative peace and prosperity, which had
led to great complacency (Amos
6: 1-7).
Amos,
however, hastens to disabuse them of such an idea. The Day of
the Lord will certainly be an occasion when God
intervenes, but first to punish sin, which has reached a climax: Woe to you who long for the day of
the Lord!
Why do you long for the day of the Lord?
That day will be darkness, not
light ... will not
the day of the Lord be darkness,
not light -
pitch-dark, without a
ray of brightness? (Amos
5: 18, 20).
All
the
prophetic writings confirm Amoss
understanding of the Day of the Lord as a day
of terror, involving the invasion of
The great day of the Lord is near - near and coming quickly. Listen!
The cry on the day of the Lord will be
bitter, the shouting
of the warrior there. That day
will be a day of wrath,
a day of distress and anguish, a
day of trouble and ruin,
a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and blackness, a
day of trumpet and battle cry against the fortified
cities and against the corner towers. (Zeph 1:
14-16)
Both
these
and other passages in the prophetic writings
underscore the fact that the
Day of the Lord is to be a day when the terror of
divine Judgement is to be poured out on the
unbelieving nation of Israel (see, e.g., Isaiah 2:
6-21; Jeremiah 30:
4-17; Joel 1: 15
- 2: 11;
Malachi 4: 1).
Yet this by no means represents the whole of
Gods purposes at that time.
The
unbelieving nations of the world will also be
brought into judgement; and
in addition a surviving remnant of the nation of
Israel will enter into a national conversion,
forgiveness of sins, cleansing, and restoration to
possession of the entirety of the Land that God
Promised to Abraham (see, e.g., Isaiah 4: 2-6;
Jeremiah 30: 18-31:40;
Micah 4:
1-8; Zechariah 12:
10 - 13: 2).
The tribulation period
The
Day
of the Lord is always found in the context of a
prophetic prediction of a future disaster, involving
certain signs that will portend its arrival, notably
convulsions of nature and periods of darkness in the
sky. The
Day itself involves the direct intervention of God
in the affairs of men, bringing judgement and
great destruction upon Israel through military
invasion by the Gentile nations, which in turn
results in destruction by God of those armies at
the return of the Lord Jesus and deliverance for
the repentant remnant of Israel. This
leads directly into the fullness of restoration of
both the nation and the
What
we
are describing is thus that period of prophetic
prediction in human history known in the New Testament
as the Tribulation or the Great Tribulation.
It may be helpful to tabulate some of the
other terms used in the Old Testament to represent
this period of time.
It is variously referred to as:
The
Time of Jacobs Trouble
. Jeremiah 30:
7
His
wrath. Isaiah 26:
20
The
Overwhelming Scourge .
Isaiah 28: 15,
18
Gods
Strange Work.
Isaiah 28: 21
Gods
Alien Task.
Isaiah 28: 21
Day
of Vengeance. Isaiah 34: 8; 35:
4; 61: 2
The
Seventieth Week of Daniel
. Daniel 9: 27
The
Time
of Wrath. Daniel 11:
36
The
Time of Distress. Daniel 12: 1
The
Day of Pitch-darkness, without a ray of brightness. Amos 5: 18
The
Day of Darkness and Gloom. Joel 2:
2; Zephaniah 1: 15
The
Day of Clouds and Blackness. Joel 2: 2;
Zephaniah 1: 15
The
Day of Judahs Disaster. Obadiah 13
The
Day of Wrath. Zephaniah 1: 15
The
Day of Distress and Anguish. Zephaniah 1:
15
The
Day of Trouble and Ruin. Zephaniah 1: 15
The Day
of Trumpet and Battle-Cry. Zephaniah 1:
15
These
descriptions
alone are sufficient to indicate that this period will
be a time of unparalleled distress for the whole
world, but pre-eminently for the house of Jacob, for
whom it will be the final outworking of Gods
judgement upon their national sin and apostasy.
This must come to pass before the restoration
of the kingdom to
The uniqueness of the
nation of Israel
To
understand
rightly what the Scriptures reveal, it is of critical
importance to bear in mind that what we are examining
is the writings of Hebrew prophets, prophesying to
Hebrews about what is primarily, in the purposes of
God, an event which involves His final dealing in
judgement with the nation of
It
is
impossible to understand the events that will mark the
closing days of this age without understanding the
relationship between Hebrew Israel, the physical
descendants of Jacob, and the God of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob. This
relationship is special, unique and irreplaceable; and
no third party, including the church, can ever be a
substitute within it.
A
key biblical distinction is between the place of
The
Bible
speaks of
The
consistent
testimony of the many passages of Scripture that
relate to Gods future dealings with the nation of
Judgement and salvation
Scriptures
predict
exactly what we see today in the nation-state of
An
examination
of the passages of Scripture dealing with the topic of
the Day of the Lord leads to the realisation that, as
we have already said, the period of time being
described in the Old Testament writings is the same as
that which the New Testament identifies as the great
tribulation (Rev
7:
14). At every
place in Scripture where the phrase the Day of the Lord is to be found, it is in a
context which relates it to the tribulation period.
Although
the
period of the tribulation is first and foremost the
time of Jacobs trouble, it will include also Gods
judgement on the Gentile nations and
will result in the salvation and restoration of the
surviving remnant of the nation of
To
put
some more flesh on these bones and to substantiate
what has been said, we need to examine certain key
passages of Scripture that make detailed reference to
the Day of the Lord.
Since, however, the theme runs like a
continuous thread through the prophetic writings, from
Isaiah to Revelation, we cannot attempt to cover every
place where it is mentioned.
Let
us
begin with the book of Joel, after Obadiah the first
of the writing prophets to deal with the subject of
the Day of the Lord.
He prophesied to the southern
Military invasion of the
Land of Israel
In
chapter 1:
2-14, Joel
describes an actual historical invasion of the Land by
locusts in four successive waves (v. 4), bringing total destruction of the crops.
From an examination of Jeremiah
15:
3 and Ezekiel 14:
21, it
is apparent that, prophetically, four stages of a
disaster indicate its completeness.
It brings lamentation among the people and a
call to the priests for national repentance (vv.
13-14). From the springboard of
this account of an actual invasion by locusts in
Joels own day, he moves immediately into the
prophetic future, using the analogy of the invasion by
locusts to describe an invasion of the
Although
there
was at least some limited measure of fulfilment of
this prophecy in both the Assyrian and the Babylonian
invasions of 722 BCE and 586 BCE respectively, this
passage has its real and ultimate fulfilment in an
even more catastrophic event yet to come.
This invasion will be the worst in
More than three centuries
later, following the return of the remnant of Judah
from the Babylonian exile, the prophet Zechariah
received a more detailed account of that same
invasion, which even the post-exileic period was still
revealed as a future event.
In Zechariah 12,
the Lord states in verses
2 and 3:
I
am going to make
Turning
to
the book of Zephaniah,
whose central theme is also that of the Day of the
Lord (1:
14), we
find that the whole of chapter
3 is speaking to
the unrepentant city of Jerusalem concerning Gods
future judgement, and beyond that to the subsequent
restoration of a saved remnant of her people.
Again, we are told that Gods judgement will
be executed at the hands of Gentile nations, who will
in turn themselves be judged by the Lord.
Zephaniah
3: 7-8
reads:
I said to the city, Surely you will fear me and accept
correction! Then
her dwelling would not be cut off,
nor all my punishments
come upon her.
But they were still eager to act corruptly
in all they did. Therefore, wait for me,
declares the Lord, for
the day I will stand up to testify. I have
decided to assemble the nations,
to gather the kingdoms and to pour out my wrath on
them - all my fierce
anger.
The whole world will be consumed by the
fire of my jealous anger.
To
digress
briefly at this point, the translation here may be
somewhat misleading.
The final sentence, translating the Hebrew
word erets, which is translated only rarely as world, but more usually as either
earth or land,
says that the whole world will be consumed, while the
KJV renders it All the earth shall be devoured.
Both translations appear to assume that God
has here turned His attention to speaking solely of
His judgement on the Gentile nations of the world. However, God never states
that He is jealous over the nations of the world,
but states frequently that He is jealous over His
people Israel and
over the city of Jerusalem; and in the context
of the whole passage, it may be that the final
sentence of 3: 8 should read: The
whole land
will be consumed by the fire of my jealous anger.
This statement can be understood either to be
literal, or as a metaphorical expression of the
overflowing of the Lords heated indignation against
the corruption about which He has already protested
with solemn warnings.
The
likelihood
of this possibility appears to be reinforced by an
examination of the language used by Zephaniah in chapter
1.
In verses
2 and 3,
which clearly refer to widespread destruction on the
whole inhabited earth in the day of the Lords
judgement, the word translated earth
is adamah; whereas in verse
18, in the
context of a passage which begins in verse
4 and in which
the prophet is specifically addressing Judah, the word
erets is chosen. This
distinction in the choice of language in the original
inspired texts is surely significant for our
understanding and interpretation: adamah
is
used to describe the earth as a whole, erets when
the
God speaks primarily to
Israel, secondarily to the Gentiles
A factor of importance in our
eschatological understanding of biblical prophecy
concerning the closing days of this age is that
although it is not at all unusual for the prophets to
speak of specific Gentile nations as being the
recipients of Gods judgement, when they do it is
almost invariably made clear by the fact that those
nations are mentioned by name.
Except
where that is the case, we need to bear in mind that
the usual task of the Hebrew prophets was to
prophesy to their own people concerning the nation
and the
The rest of the world will,
of course, experience the supernatural manifestations
of the wrath of God as revealed in appalling detail in
the Book of Revelation; and the clear implication of
scriptures such as those found, for example, in Isaiah 24 and in the Olivet Discourse
is that the entire world will experience the shakings
and disasters that result from the overflowing of
Gods judgement upon the sin of all the nations (cf. Hag. 2: 20-22 and Heb.
12: 26-27). When
the
worlds cup of iniquity is full, His final
judgements will fall in the Day of the Lord.
Worldwide warning signs
We
have
already quoted Amos
5:
18 and
20, stating that the Day of the
Lord will be darkness, not
light - pitch-dark,
without a ray of brightness.
Returning to Joel
2: 2
we find similarly, that the day will be one of darkness
and gloom, a day
of clouds and blackness, and in 2: 10 that the
earth shakes, the
sky trembles, the
sun and moon are darkened, and
the stars no longer shine. This is not
just symbolic darkness; there will also be a literal
aspect to it. Jesus
said in Luke
21: 25 that there will be signs in the sun, moon and stars.
Even as there was physical darkness when
Jesus was enduring the judgement of God against sin at
The
terrible
invasion described in Joel
2 brings forth
Gods call to
Salvation of a remnant
Following
this
repentance, God responds to the surviving remnant and
delivers those who have called upon Him for salvation
(2:
32; see
also Mal. 3:
16 -
4: 3).
The second part of Joels prophecy moves from
the invasion and destruction of
Thus
far,
we see the Day of the Lord as being a time of terrible
judgement on the Land and nation of
(a) upheavals in nature;
(b) a period of unnatural
darkness.
These
are
warnings to all those who have ears to hear and
especially to
In
the whole land, declares the Lord, two-thirds
will be struck down and perish; yet
one-third will be left in it. This third
I will bring into the fire;
I will refine them like silver and test them like
gold.
They will call on my name and I will answer
them; I will say,
They are my people, and they will say, The Lord is our God.
Romans 9: 26-29, Paul quotes from Hosea 1:
10, Isaiah 10: 22-23 and Isaiah
1:
9 to
establish the fact that a remnant of Israel will be
saved; and on examination of the scripture that he
quoted from Isaiah
10, we find that it is at the time of the Day of Lord, the complete
quotation beginning in verse
20 with the theologically significant phrase
in
that day. The whole
passage, Isaiah
10: 20-23, reads:
In that day the remnant of
Jesus also confirmed that
there would be a surviving remnant.
In Matthew
24: 15, He turns His attention to the time of the great tribulation and gives
prophetic warnings relating to it.
It is to be, in Judea particularly (v.
16), a
time of unparalleled distress (v.
21) from which
there would be no survivors except for divine
intervention (v. 22),
but God will intervene and bring an end to the
tribulation in Judea for
the sake of the elect - that is, the remnant of
Israel that is to be saved out of it.
The Little
Apocalypse of Isaiah
24-27
Another
key
passage of Scripture that is prophetic of the Day of
the Lord is the Little
Apocalypse of Isaiah 24-27.
Many commentators appear to think that the
whole of chapter 24
is speaking about Gods judgement solely on a
worldwide basis, but this assumption does not seem to
equate with the usual prophetic methods of expression.
We
noted
previously that when the Hebrew prophets are speaking
about nations other than
It
appears
significant when considering the language of Isaiah 24 that when the prophet wishes to make reference to the earth in a
worldwide sense, he uses a different Hebrew word. In this
context he does not use erets but
adamah, which
means the ground or the soil of the dry land.
Adamah
is used in Isaiah 23:
17,
where
Of
the
two occasions when the word translated as the earth or the world is not the usual erets, Isaiah
employs the word adamah,
once in verse 21; while on the
other occasion in verse 4,
he uses the less common word for the habitable earth,
tebel,
sandwiched
between two uses of erets in
the
very same verse.
Why should there be these variations of usage
on only two out of seventeen occasions when the earth is in view?
It
is
easy to see in verses
21-23 that the prophetic
revelation shifts its emphasis into a clear global
perspective of judgement upon world rulers, both
human and spiritual; hence the change of
emphasis signified by the sudden use of the different
word adamah.
In verse 4, however, the
sudden single use of tebel
may be to
enable the prophet to speak in the same sentence of
the simultaneous total impoverishment of both the
It
seems
very probable, from the actual content of this chapter
also, that the prophecy does relate primarily to the
However,
in
the context in which Isaiah is writing in chapter 24, it seems
much more likely that the broken covenant which is in
the prophets view is Gods covenant with Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, expressed in 1
Chronicles 16: 15-18
and Psalm
105:
8-11 to be an everlasting
covenant
concerning Israels inheritance of the Land of Canaan,
ultimately to be possessed by the restored nation in
its entirety from the Mediterranean Sea to the River
Euphrates (Deut 11: 24).
What, one must ask, would amount to an
infraction of this covenant by Gods chosen people? Could it be
that in the sight of God the willingness to surrender
His Land (Joel 3: 2) in return for a
spurious peace amounts to such a denial of that
covenant He has made with His people?
In
verses
10 and 12 we find reference to a
ruined, desolate city, which would fit with the
condition of
In
verses
18b-20 of Isaiah
24 the Scripture
makes reference to a great earthquake.
Is this to be a worldwide earthquake?
In Zechariah
14:
4-5 it is predicted that in the
Day of the Lord there will be a great earthquake in
the Land of Israel which splits the Mount of Olives in
two immediately prior to the Lords Second Coming. Revelation 11, which speaks of events in
Gods subsequent judgement
of the nations
Returning to the book of
Joel, the prophets attention turns in
chapter 3 towards the judgement of
the Gentile nations of the world.
This also forms part of the events of the Day
of the Lord, and will happen (v. 1)
the time of Gods restoration of the fortunes of
Judgement
on their armies
Verses 9-11
underline that the nations have come to
Judgement
on the individual Gentile survivors on that Day
Following
this
deliverance, and the repentance and restoration of the
surviving remnant and of the Land, which we have
already mentioned and which is also described in Zechariah 12:
10-13: 1
and 14:
6-11, the returned Messiah will
bring the survivors of all the nations before Him for
judgement in the Valley of Jehoshaphat (Joel 3:
1-8, 12-17). They will be
there in huge numbers (v. 14).
The
judgement
of God upon the Gentiles will be on the basis of
either their anti-Semitism or their pro-Semitism (v. 2).
His charges against them will be those of
scattering the people of
Judgement
of particular nations
Space
will
not permit the lengthy examination of Gods dealings
with specific individual nations, but Scripture has
much to say on the subject.
For example:
Babylon and Edom (the
descendants of Esau) will both become permanent
desolate wastelands, dwelling-places only for demons (Jer.
50: 35-40;
51: 37-43
[Babylon]; Jer.
49: 13, 15-18; Obad. 15-18; Is. 34:
5-16 [Edom]).
The descendants of Lot (the
nations of
After judgement, both
Philistia
will
be taken over by
The establishment of the
millennial kingdom
The final outcome of the Day of the Lord is the
establishment of the millennial kingdom.
The
Lord will
dwell in
What will be the signs to warn us of the
impending
approach of the Day of the Lord?
1. Specific to the nation of Israel will be the re-establishment of the
ministry of the prophet Elijah, which will have the
particular emphasis of calling the nation to
repentance in the area of its collapsing family
relationships (Mal.
4: 5).
2. We have already seen in Joel 2:
31-32 the prophetic prediction
that before the coming of the great and dreadful day
of the Lord, there will be certain signs:
(a)
wonders
in the heavens and on the earth, blood
and fire and billows of smoke (v.
30),
corresponding to the effects of the first, second,
fifth and sixth trumpet judgements found in Revelation 8:
7-9 and Revelation
9:
1-21;
(b)
the
sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood
(v. 32), corresponding to the
judgement released at the Lambs opening of the sixth
seal in Revelation 6: 12-17.
The
whole
of the order of nature in the heavens and on the earth
will be thrown into turmoil and upheaval as a result
of the out-pouring of the judgements of God, before
the culmination of the Day of the Lord in the
Armageddon campaign and the Second Coming of Messiah.
Isaiah 13:
9-10, Amos 5:
20 and
Zephaniah
1:
15 all
speak similarly of periods of darkness coming over the
earth at that time, and Jesus underlined these events
during the Olivet Discourse.
He says in Luke
21 that:
(a) there
will be wars and revolutions (v. 9);
(b)
Nation
will rise against nation,
and kingdom against kingdom (v.
10);
(c)
well see great earthquakes, famines and
pestilences in various places (v.
11);
(d)
there will be fearful
events and great signs from heaven (v. 11);
(e)
before
all this, they will lay hands on you and persecute
you (v. 12).
All these events of war, and upheavals of
nature on earth and in the heavenly bodies, have been
predicted by more than one of the writing prophets. Daniel 9: 26, speaking of the times of the end when the Antichrist will rule, says:
The
end will come like a flood: War
will continue until the end, and
desolations have been decreed
(see also Psalm 46:
8).
3. To these predictions,
however, Jesus adds one more: the severe persecution
of the church, together with the apostasy this will
bring about (Mt.
24: 9-13).
4. This apostasy is mentioned
by Paul in 2
Thessalonians 2: 3,
which leads us on to one final and crucial indication
that the Day of the Lord is drawing near.
This will be the emergence of the man
of lawlessness,
the Antichrist. Paul
writes to the church at Thessalonica in 2 Thessalonians
2:
1-4:
Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered
to him, we
ask you, brothers, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, report or letter supposed to have
come from us, saying
that the day of the Lord has already come. Dont
let anyone deceive you in any way,
for that day will not come until the rebellion
[Greek apostasia] occurs and the man of lawlessness
is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.
He will oppose and exalt himself over
everything that is called God or is worshipped, so that he sets himself up in
Gods temple,
proclaiming himself to be God.
What
will
initiate the Day of the Lord,
the period of the tribulation?
The
final
sign, just mentioned, is that of the emergence into
recognition of the man of sin, the Antichrist.
The same figure appears constantly as a king
in Daniel chapters
7, 8, 9
and 11.
We read in 7: 25: He
will speak against the Most High and oppress his
saints and try to change the set times and the laws;
in 8: 25: He
will destroy many and take his stand against the
Prince of princes. Yet he
will be destroyed, but
not by human power;
and again in 11: 36: The king will do as he pleases.
He
will exalt and magnify himself above every god and
will say unheard-of things against the God of gods.
He will be successful until the time of
wrath is completed, for
what has been determined must take place.
This
same
figure is in focus in Daniel
9:
24-27, the well-known passage to
the 70 weeks of years that Daniel prophesied.
There is still remaining one period of seven
years to run in Gods prophetic time-clock for
The warning of Jesus is
specific: So when you see standing in the
holy place the
abomination that causes desolation,
spoken of through the prophet Daniel ... then let those who are in Judea
flee to the mountains
For then there will be great
distress, unequalled
from the beginning of the world until now - and never to be equalled again
(Mt.
24: 15-16,
21).
Speaking
of
the Antichrist, 2
Thessalonians 2: 4
says: He
sets himself up in Gods temple,
proclaiming himself to be God. This event,
breaking His covenant made with Israel, will be the
clear signal to the Jewish nation that their time of
false security (for that is what it will have been) is
over and that the final and intense period of Jacobs
trouble, their last great persecution at the hands of
the Gentile nations, is about to begin.
What
are
the purposes of the Day of the Lord?
1. To
bring a great harvest of salvation from all nations
into the
2. To
break the stubbornness of the nation of
3. To deal with the sin
of the Gentile nations, of which
4. To
usher in the millennial kingdom, with Jesus on the
throne in
*
*
*
The Indestructible Jew
[Selected
from The Vanguard Reprints]
By D.
M. Panton.
The preservation of the Jew
during so many centuries of complete dispersion is a
fact standing nearly, if not absolutely, alone in
the history of the world.
It is at variance with all other experience
of the laws which govern the amalgamation with each
other of different families of the human race.
(Duke
of Argyll).
There is no land without a Jew; and so fecund
and virile is the race that in fifty years it has
leapt up from four millions to twelve, and now exceeds
by five millions the Jewish census of the time of King
David. Between
Nor
is
the racial type altered.
Other races have suffered dispersion, but
dispersion in colonies; the Jew alone has been a race
in solution among other races: yet what he was on the
We
are
now confronted with a startling fact.
The ineradicable instinct of the Jew has been
to seek absorption among the nations.
Even in the golden age of Israel the Psalmist
had to say, - They mingled themselves with the
nations and learned their works (Psa. 106:
35); and it was the
unceasing grief of Jehovah that Israel, His Bride, was
never weary of breaking wedlock.
So eagerly did Israel absorb a Babylonian
atmosphere that, after seventy years, Nehemiah had to
translate the Law into Hebrew (Neh. 8:
8), and a thousand
years later the language of Palestine was still a
compound manufactured in Babylon.
Yet every instinct of absorption has been
defied by an invisible barrier of mysterious destiny. Intermarriages
with Gentiles have but one third to one fourth the
fertility of pure Jewish marriages.
A ring of fire has kept the Jew lonely,
isolated, and indestructible.
Experience shows
that this conservation is due in a great degree to
the very hatred which they have incurred (Spinoza).
It
was
the persecutions of a Pharaoh which first isolated the
Jew into a national consciousness, and made him a
nation. It
was the whips of Philistia, and the scorpions of
The
indestructibility
of the Jew is a fact of unsurpassable significance. There could
be no more startling proof as to Who
it was that hung upon the Cross than these nineteen
centuries of un-exhausted expiation.
For our SINS
- the Jews have confessed every year since the burning
of the
Nor
could
it be the transgression of the Mosaic Law alone; for
Jehovah had explicitly promised, that, on repentance,
the
Lord thy God will TURN
THY
CAPTIVITY, and
have compassion upon thee
(Deut. 30:
3).
No people has fasted longer, or prayed more
fervently; no nation has so studied the Law, or sought
more earnestly to obey its precepts: yet not a single
blessing, that was to follow obedience, has been
procured, and not a single curse, which was to follow
disobedience, has been averted. What
immediately preceded this tremendous catastrophe.
The
survival
of the Jew is an equally arresting proof of the love
of God. The
worlds that roll around our earth are no more
indestructible than the people of Gods choice.
Thus saith the Lord,
which giveth the sun for a
light by day, and
the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a
light by night: If
these ordinances depart from before me, saith the Lord, then
the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a
nation before me for ever (Jer. 31:
35).
All
blessing for the world God has lodged in the Jew. In thee shall all the nations of the earth be blessed:
with the absorption of the Jew among the nations,
therefore, would disappear, as a river that sinks out
of sight, the hope of the world, and his survival is
essential to the salvation of the race. The
indestructible Jew carries in the
wandering feet and weary breast the
irrefutable proof of the crucifixion of the Son of
God, and the perpetual witness of Jehovahs
un-exhausted love.
Take
the
Jew from the world, and what becomes of the Bible? Take the
Bible from the world, and how do you explain the Jew? Interpret
one by the other and the proof is overwhelming that
God has sent His Son into the world,
that through Him the world might have life.
2
The Glories of
It is not easy, says McCheyne,
writing on Mount Carmel, to pray really for
1.
- Israelites.
Not Jacobites,
but Israelites: not mens supplanters, but wrestlers
on their behalf with God; princes by conquest in
intercession. Thou
hast striven with God and with men, and
hast prevailed
(Gen. 32:
28).
It was
2.
- The Adoption.
Ex. 4: 22,
Jer.
31: 9. The Church
receives an adoption as sons (Gal.
4: 5);
3.
- The Glory.
Gods Shekinah Fires never dwelt in the midst
of any nation except
4.
- The
Covenants. Apart from
Noah, God has never entered into a covenant with any
man but a Jew. Eight
covenants were made with Abraham; one with Moses; at
least two with Israel; and the New Covenant, the blood
of which has been shed (Luke
22: 20),
and the ministers of which have been appointed (2 Cor.
3: 6),
has yet to be made with the Houses of Israel and Judah
(Heb. 8:
8).
Covenants between God and man belong only to
the blood of Abraham.
5.
- The Law.
Jehovahs descent in person on Sinai, with a
Decalogue written by the fingers of Deity, is an
unique glory of
6.
- The Worship. Jew
means praise: and
Gods liturgy, the sole mode of ritual access into His
presence under the Law, was revealed to the Jew only.
If
thou bearest the name of a Jew, [thou] restest upon the law, and gloriest in God, and knowest His will ... being instructed out of the law (Rom.
2: 17). God planned
every knob and tent-pin in Tabernacle and
7.
- The Promises.
All promises are held in germ in one promise
to Abraham; - In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed
(Gen. 22:
18).
Thy seed is
a Jew: whether, therefore, by way of circumcision, or
through faith, salvation is of the Jews, because
salvation is from a Jew.
So also the
promise of the Spirit was first given to the Jew. Gal.
3: 14. Acts 2: 39.
8.
- The Fathers.
Gods providence never leaves the Jew because
His love never leaves their fathers.
Because He loved thy fathers,
therefore He chose their seed
after them (Deut. 4:
37).
No man ever gave God a name but a Jew: He is
not known as the God of Adam, or the God of Noah; but,
- I
am the God of thy father, the
God of Abraham, the
God of Isaac, and
the God of Jacob
(Ex. 3:
6).
No nation ever had divine priests but
9.
- The Christ.
In
3
Garnering the Wheat
Ripeness.
The vital principle of all harvesting has
been laid down by our Lord once for all: - When
the fruit is RIPE,
immediately he putteth in the
sickle (Mark 4:
29).
No farmer reaps his field because a fixed
date is come, but because his corn is ripe; the
reaping of unripe corn is utterly unknown; and the
farmer cuts only those sections of his field which are
ripe. So
it is in the spiritual sphere: study nature, and learn
grace; for they are from the hand of one Maker.
Wheat, our Lord reveals - for He defines the wheat-plants as the children of the Kingdom,
growing, without intermission, between the first
sowing by the Son of Man and the End of the Age (Matt. 13:
38, 39)
- is the Church: wheat
is a type of Christian, not Jewish, experience.
Thus our Lord unfolds a momentous principle. It is not
wheat that the Angels (Matt.
13: 41)
reap, but ripe wheat: neither the individual believer,
nor the Church as a whole, is ripe simply because they
are wheat: (our Lords words indicate a delay between
the springing of the wheat and its maturity): and it
is not Christs return that rules the ripeness of the
wheat, but the ripeness of the wheat that rules the
date of Christs return.
The
Sheaf. The
spiritual Harvest is inaugurated by the reaping of a
solitary Sheaf. When
ye shall reap the harvest, then
ye shall bring the sheaf of the first fruits
- one
selected from among the earliest ripe ears
- and
the priest shall wave the sheaf before the Lord
(Lev. 23:
10).
Paul
gives
us the clue to the type.
Now hath Christ
been raised from the dead;
(resurrection involves rapture, as God does not leave
the risen to dwell on earth): and so our Lord was carried up into heaven,
to be waved before God in the upper
The
First-fruits. So this
illuminating clue, furnished by the Holy Spirit,
establishes the whole Type; and reveals at once that,
even among the First-fruits, there is more
than one rapture.
For seven Sabbaths after, on the fiftieth day
- an immense period, an era of dispensational
completeness, when the Jubilee Sabatismos
(Heb. 4:
9) arises - the next removal of wheat occurs, and it is still First-fruits.
Seven
Sabbaths shall there be complete, and ye shall offer
a new meal offering unto the Lord, two
wave loaves baken with
leaven, for first-fruits unto the Lord
(Lev. 23:
15). That this fine flour was to be baken with
leaven at once proves that it is not Christ,
for no offering that stands for Christ was ever
offered with leaven, which was strictly forbidden (Lev. 2:
11):
besides, the Sheaf of Christ had gone long before:
here is a holy group - two loaves, Jew and Gentile,
consecrated for Jehovah;
yet with the leaven of indwelling sin up to the very
moment of rapture - a part of whom is unveiled to us
on the heavenly Mount.
These were purchased from among
men to be the first-fruits unto God and unto the
Lamb: they are
without blemish
(Rev. 14:
4).
So here is a second rapture.
The
Harvest. Now we
arrive at Harvest. Ye shall
reap the harvest of your land (Lev.
23: 22);
usually some three weeks after First-fruits; for these
are wholly severed: if first-fruits are
gathered simultaneously with harvest, they are not
first-fruits; it is a time-word, and implies fruit
cut (like our Lord) earlier than the general crop.
So the
Apocalypse also reveals both the maturity which is the
determining factor in the date of rapture, and also
the consequent plurality of reaping.
For, after First-fruits have
already appeared on high, the message reaches the Son
of Man in the Parousia-cloud, - Send forth [for the sickle is a
reaping band of angels] thy
sickle, and
reap: for the hour
to reap is come: FOR
the harvest of the earth is over-ripe (Rev. 14:
15). Here
therefore is a fresh rapture.
As grain ripens in the hottest season, so the
fierce heats of the Tribulation will dry up roots
which once clung tenaciously to earth, and which, had
they but sheltered in warmer valleys and rooted
themselves in richer soil, would never have been left
so long un-garnered.
When the fruit
yields itself - yields itself to its
gracious Sun, spontaneously unfolding into full-orbed
ripeness - straightway he
putteth in the sickle (Mark
4: 29). Christ is
responsible for the sowing of the Wheat, but not for
the date of its maturity.
So here is a fresh clue to the Type - the harvest is Christian
rapture: for Christian believers only (and not Jews,
nor Gentiles) are bodily removed by descending angels.
The
Corners of the Field. But even so
the reaping is not yet exhausted: the Harvest itself
does not remove all the grain from the Field.
When ye reap the harvest of your
land, ye shall not
wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou reap the
gleaning of thy harvest (Lev.
23: 22). Here, then, is yet another
rapture. For we must all be made manifest
before the judgment seat of Christ (2
Cor. 5:
10),
sometime during the Parousia, throughout which the
Bema remains set up: the whole Field must ultimately
be reaped: and, in wonderful accordance thereto, at
the very close of Antichrists reign, sandwiched in
between two descriptions of Armageddon, and couched in
terms always addressed to the Church, a warning cry
goes forth to the un-gleaned Corners of the Field.
Behold, I
come as a thief.
Blessed is he that watcheth,
and keepeth his garments,
lest he walk
naked, and they
see his shame
(Rev. 16:
15).
*
*
*
REDEMPTION
AT
THE HEART OF PROPHECY*
By Derek Rous
[* The following can be found
in: Prayer For Israel,
Summer Magazine 2014,
pp.10-13.)]
CALLED TO BE A PROPHET
One thing you cant avoid
noticing in the Bible is that the life of a prophet
was not an easy one. All
of them enjoyed the privilege of close communion with
God, but also a life of conflict, trial, pain and
suffering from the community to whom they were called
to serve. In
the end, many faced an early death. Please read Hebrews 11: 32-40.
But
how
could you know whether a prophet was from God or not?
The answer
is simple. Whilst false prophets always acted as
a group and wanted to speak pleasantries, never
challenging the lifestyle of the people. By
contrast true prophets were always loners and realists
who spoke about painful truths in order to bring a
message from the heart of God, which if acted upon,
would bring the hearers back into a relationship with
God. Theirs
was an intercessory ministry and they acted as priests
for people. Even
so, there were times when even with their best and
faithful efforts, God told them to stop because He was
withdrawing Himself from speaking anymore to His
people.
Take
Jeremiah
for example in Jer. 11:
14, despite identifying himself
with the people by confessing their sin, God repeats
Himself that He will not hear their cry 14: 11-12.
Jeremiahs grief reaches a
peak in 20: 7 when he appeals to God to
relieve him of his post. With
tears, he passionately lays down his commission only
to find that the Word of God in him was like a burning
fire and he became weary of holding it back. Now
hes
in a conflict. Fear
on every side but inside this burning fire! Finally,
he
discovers and proclaims triumphantly, But
the Lord is with me as a mighty awesome One.
Therefore my persecutors will
stumble and will not prevail. They will be greatly ashamed for
they will not prosper. Their
everlasting confusion will never be forgotten.
Perhaps
thats
why there are so few true prophets today - those
fashioned in the Biblical mould. The
privilege is great but the cost is high. Of
course there are numerous prophetic ministries but how
many can truly be regarded as Prophets of God bringing
Gods unchanging message?
JESUS IS CENTRAL
Rev. 19:10 says, And
I felt at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me,
See [thou do
it] not: I am thy fe[low-servant.
and
of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus.
Worship God - for the
testimony
of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.
The
book
of Revelation is a true prophecy from a man suffering
for his faith, designed to inform believers of things
that must take place shortly [in a short time]. More
importantly, its central theme is the message of
redemption which had come through the person and work
of Jesus the Messiah. His
testimony had been at the core of Prophetic utterance
from the beginning and now was at the centre of this
message from John for the last days. It
showed that the purpose of prophecy for
Redemption
is
the heart of all the prophets messages to
KINGDOM
NOW?
So
the
message was not primarily about preaching a Kingdom Now of justice and peace to the
world, as commendable as it seems and bringing in the Kingdom of God,
since this could never come to pass until Jesus comes
Himself to rule and reign. Every
effort
at righteous government over the past 2000 years
through the power of a
To
repeat
- the message of the prophets, taken up by the N.T.
apostles was that the only way to establish the
MESSAGE OF THE
Acts 3: 18-26. The Apostles message to
IS
THE GOSPEL RELEVANT TO JEWS?
There
are
those who believe that Jews dont need to convert -
they are O.K. as they are. There
are also those who believe that there are two separate
covenants - one for Jews and one for gentiles. And now there
are a third group who promote that Jews have already
got Jesus within their midst but they just dont
recognize Him. (Mark Kinser
and Messianic Orthodox movement - Post Missionary
Messianic Judaism P.14 lower para.)
So what does Acts 3: 19 mean when it says, Repent
and be converted?
Surely, it
suggests that yes indeed, they do need to convert. The question
is of course to what do they need to be converted
into? For
centuries, the established state church of the
But the message of the gospel
was Make
Teshuvah.
Repent and
be converted to God and become saved and Godly Jews. You need to be
saved. The Law will not
save you only
Jesus can save you.
Pauls
letter to the Romans says,
1.
Gospel is to
the Jew first.
2.
There
is no partiality with God (regarding [eternal] salvation). Rom.
2:
11.
3. A
true Jew is not one who is just outwardly identifiable
- but inwardly. Circumcision
identifies you with
4.
By
the deeds of the Law, no flesh is justified in His
sight. The Law exposes sin. Its
a Schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. Rom. 3:
20;
Gal. 3: 24.
5. The Law is
established through faith - believers are not to be
lawless. Rom. 3: 31.
6.
The
Law is holy, the
commandment holy and just and good. Rom.
7: 12. God would write
it on their hearts.
PROPHECY REQUIRES
CONSISTENT INTERPRETATION
If prophecies relating to Jesus
are true, then so are the ones relating to
The increasingly gentilised
Church blamed the
Jews for
killing
Jesus. In
John
20: 19
the KJV uses the term for fear
of the Jews
rather than Jewish
leaders. This created the
unfortunate impression that the disciples and Jesus
Himself were not Jews.
Anchor verse for SSCs
is Gatations
6: 16 And
as many as walk according to this rule,
peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the
THE RESTORATION OF ALL
THINGS
Acts 3: 18-21.
Three
commentaries say little about what restoration here
means. (New
International ‑ FF Bruce, IVP - IVP - IH Marshall,
Online Critical commentary by J, F and B) Some
talk of the restoration of the ideal kingdom WHEN
Jesus returns but none really deal with the prophetic fulfilments necessary BEFORE the
return of Jesus.
Here
Peter
is referring to the greatest restoration
or
restitution that will take place in the Latter
days, which is the return of the Jews to the Land as a
precursor to His return - even though in difficult and
challenging times for Israel and the World as a whole.
(See also Jesus prophecies in Matt.
24.)
O.T.
PROPHETS
WERE NOT AFRAID TO TALK
OF
THE SALVATION OF
Jeremiah 31 -
the New Covenant was to be made first with
In
the
end, when all prophecies will find their fulfilment, Zechariah declares, Many
nations shall be joined to the Lord in that day and
become MY
PEOPLE.
Isnt it a lot more edifying to listen to the true prophets
of God rather
than false ones?
-------
Dont let the world, or any false
teachings by Anti-millennialists, or others within
the