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The Approaching Advent of Christ
Alexander Reese
(1881-1969)
CHAPTER I-THE QUESTION STATED
Until the second quarter of the nineteenth century general agreement existed among pre-millennial advocates of our Lord’s Coming concerning the main outlines of the prophetic future: amidst differences of opinion on the interpretation of the Apocalypse and other portions of Scripture, the following scheme stood out as fairly representative of the school:
(1) The approaching Advent of Christ to this world will be visible, personal, and glorious.
(2) This Advent, though in itself a single crisis, will be accompanied and followed by a variety of phenomena bearing upon the history of the Church, of Israel, and the world. Believers who survive till the Advent will be transfigured and translated to meet the approaching Lord, together with the saints raised and changed at the first resurrection. Immediately following this Antichrist and his allies will be slain, and Israel, the covenant people, will repent and be saved, by looking upon Him whom they pierced.
(3) Thereupon the Messianic Kingdom of prophecy, which, as the Apocalypse informs us, will last for a thousand years, will be established in power and great glory in a transfigured world. The nations will turn to God, war and oppression cease, and righteousness and peace cover the earth.
(4) At the conclusion of the kingly rule of Christ and His saints, the rest of the dead will be raised, the Last judgment ensue, and a new and eternal world be created.
(5) No distinction was made between the Coming of our Lord, and His Appearing, Revelation, and Day, because these were all held to be synonymous, or at least related, terms, signifying always the one Advent in glory at the beginning of the Messianic Kingdom.
(6) Whilst the Coming of Christ, no matter how long the present dispensation may last, is the true and proper hope of the Church in every generation, it is nevertheless conditioned by the prior fulfillment of certain signs or events in the history of the Kingdom of God: the Gospel has first to be preached to all nations; the Apostasy and the Man of Sin be revealed, and the Great Tribulation come to pass. Then shall the Lord come.
(7) The Church of Christ will not be removed from the earth until the Advent of Christ at the very end of the present Age the Rapture and the Appearing take place at the same crisis; hence Christians of that generation will be exposed to the final affliction under Antichrist.
Such is a fair statement of the fundamentals of Premillennialism as it has obtained since the close of the Apostolic Age. There have been differences of opinion on details and subsidiary points, but the main outline is as I have given it.
These views were held in the main by Irenæus, the "grand-pupil" of the Apostle John, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and the primitive Christians generally until the rise of the Catholic, political Church in the West, and of allegorical exegesis at Alexandria (Harnack). In later times they were also held and propagated by Mede and Bengel, who did so much to revive the primitive hope of Christ’s Coming. And since the beginning of the last century what a galaxy of preachers, theologians, and expositors have appeared to maintain the ancient faith! In Britain and America the names of Alford, Andrews, David Baron, Birks, Bonar, Ellicott, Erdman, Gordon, Guinness, Kellogg, Moorehead, Müller, Maitland, B. W. Newton, Ryle, Saphir, Stifler, Tregelles, Trench, and West pass before us; whilst in Germany and the Continent generally, we meet with an imposing list of exegetes and theologians such as Auberlen, Bleek, Christlieb, Delitzsch, De Wette, Düsterdieck, Ebrard, Ewald, Godet, Hofmann, Lange, Luthardt, Orelli, Rothe, Stier, Van Oosterzee, Volck, and Zahn, who assented to, and expounded, the pre-millennial doctrine set forth above.[1]
The fact that so many eminent men, after independent study of the Scriptures, reached similar conclusions regarding the subject of Christ’s Coming and Kingdom, creates a strong presumption—on pre-millennial presuppositions—that such views are scriptural, and that nothing plainly taught in Scripture, and essential to the Church’s hope, was overlooked. About 1830, however, a new school arose within the fold of Premillennialism that sought to overthrow what, since the Apostolic Age, have been considered by all premillennialists as established results, and to institute in their place a series of doctrines that had never been heard of before. The school I refer to is that of "The Brethren" or "Plymouth Brethren," founded by J. N. Darby.
It will be convenient to give a summary of the new doctrines, with extracts from the writings of the four pioneer writers who filled Evangelical Christendom with their teaching. I refer to Darby’s Lectures on the Second Coming and Notes on the Apocalypse, Kelly’s Lectures on the Second Coming and Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, Christ’s Coming Again, and Lectures on the Book of Revelation, Trotter’s Plain Papers on Prophetic Subjects, and C. H. M.’s (Charles Henry Mackintosh) Papers on the Lord’s Coming.
In America the new teachings were spread abroad through W. E. Blackstone’s Jesus Is Coming, and numerous writings of F. W. Grant, J. M. Gray, A. C. Gaebelein, F. C. Ottman and C. I Scofield, but all these followed the lead of the British (or Irish) pioneers. Scofield’s Reference Bible represents a lifelong study of the Scriptures, and is hailed in all the world by Brethren as setting forth their views on the interpretation of Scripture, especially of prophecy and "dispensational truth." And naturally: Scofield was for a generation an assiduous and admiring student of Darby’s writings. In A. C. Gaebelein’s many writings the influence and spirit of William Kelly are everywhere evident. These things are not said churlishly, but only to explain our confining the quotations, at this juncture, to primary authorities.
(a) The Second Coming of Christ is to take place in two distinct stages; the first, which concerns the Church alone, occurs at the beginning of, or prior to, the last or apocalyptic Week of Daniel (See note at the end of this chapter); the second, which concerns Israel and the world, takes place at the close of that Week. Between Christ’s Coming in relation to the Church, and His Coming in relation to the world, there thus intervenes a period of at least seven years—the period of the apocalyptic Week, during which Antichrist is manifested. At the first stage of the Advent all the dead in Christ, together with the righteous dead of the O.T., will be raised in the image and glory of Christ; these, together with those Christians who live to see the Lord’s Coming, will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. This is the Coming of the Lord, and is the true hope of the Church. At the second stage, seven or more years later, Antichrist will be destroyed, Israel converted and renewed, and the millennial Kingdom set up. This is the Day, Appearing, or Revelation of Christ, and is entirely distinct from the Coming, for it concerns the world and Israel, whilst the Coming concerns the Church alone. The second stage of the Advent has this, and this only, that concerns the Church, that it will be the time for the judgment and rewarding of the heavenly saints for their service on earth. Some, however, refer the rewarding to the time of the Coming, or Rapture, as the first stage is generally called.
C.H.M. says (Charles Henry Mackintosh):
Having, as we trust fully established the fact of the Lord’s coming, we have now to place before the reader the double bearing of that fact—its bearing upon the Lord’s people, and its bearing upon the world. The former is presented in the New Testament, as the coming of Christ to receive His people to Himself; the latter is spoken of as "The Day of the Lord" —a term of frequent use also in Old Testament Scriptures.
These things are never confounded in Scripture, as we shall see when we come to look at the various passages. Christians do confound them and hence it is that we often find "that blessed hope" overcast with heavy clouds, and associated in the mind with circumstances of terror, wrath, and judgment, which have nothing whatever to do with the coming of Christ for His people, but are intimately bound up with "The Day of the Lord" (Papers on the Lord’s Coming, p. 23).
Again, the same writer says:
The great object of the enemy is to drag down the Church of God to an earthly level—to set Christians entirely astray as to their divinely appointed hope—to lead them to confound things which God has made to differ, to occupy them with earthly things—to cause them to so mix up the coming of Christ for His people with His appearing in judgment upon the world, that they may not be able to cultivate those bridal affections and heavenly aspirations which become them as members of the body of Christ (Papers on the Lord’s Coming, pp. 31-32).
Again,
Wherever we turn, in whatever way we look at the subject, we are more and more confirmed in the truth of the clear distinction between our Lord’s coming, or "state of presence," and His "appearing" or "day." The former is ever held up before the heart as the bright and blessed hope of the believer, which may be realized at any moment. The latter is pressed upon the conscience in deep solemnity, as bearing upon the entire practical career of those who are set in this world to work and witness for an absent Lord. Scripture never confounds these things, however much we may do it (Papers on the Lord’s Coming, p. 45),
Referring to the Church’s hope and the Day of the Lord, William Trotter says:
She looks for Him, however, in a previous stage of His return. She looks for Him not as the Son of Man who comes to execute judgment on the ungodly, but as the Son of God, the Head and Bridegroom of His Church, who comes to receive to nuptial joys and heavenly glory, the Church which has known and confessed Him, in whatever weakness during His rejection by a proud and unbelieving world. She knows that when He comes in judgment she shall be the companion of His triumphs, and the sharer in His glories (Plain Papers on Prophetic Scriptures, p. 22).
Again:
The coming of Jesus and our gathering together to Him in the air, is the Church’s portion: the day comes upon the world. He (the Apostle) beseeches them by the one not to be distracted about the other. The day cannot burst with its terrors on the world till the saints have been gathered to the Lord Jesus in the air. Then he further shows that "the day" cannot come till there come a falling away first (literally, the apostasy), and that man of sin be revealed—that wicked whom the Lord shall consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. It is on the man of sin that the judgments of the day of Christ first fall. It is by the epiphany of His coming, or presence, that the man of sin is destroyed. Clearly, then "the day" cannot come till the man of sin has come. But the apostle does not say that CHRIST cannot come till then. He distinguishes between "the coming (parousia) of our Lord Jesus Christ" and "the brightness (epiphaneia) of his coming (parousia)." It is His parousia that gathers the saints in the air. It is the epiphaneia of His parousia that destroys the man of sin. The day commences with the epiphaneia of Christ’s coming—that is, with His appearing to the world. The day comes not till the man of sin has come. But we have no warrant to say this of the parousia of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together to Him. That may be any day, any hour. Nothing that has been considered presents any obstacle to that (Plain Papers on Prophetic Scriptures , p. 288).
Here we have the quintessence of the new eschatology, the new exegesis, and the new reasoning: a single phrase—"the manifestation of His coming" (2 Thess. 2:8), is interpreted as meaning that a secret coming (parousia) takes place at the beginning of the Seventieth Week of Daniel (or perhaps even long before it), and another public parousia or epiphany at the Day of Christ, when the millennium is established. Not all is said; but what is not said is in the background, with the whole school approving. Soon all will be said.
Let us have another extract from the same primary source of the new teaching:
Certain events are indeed predicted as inevitably to occur before "the day of Christ" arrives; but Scripture was seen most clearly to distinguish between the coming of Christ for His saints, and the day of Christ which brings judgment on the world. All that must occur prior to the day may transpire between the descent into the air and the return of Christ with all His saints to execute judgment on the earth: and this latter event it is that brings "the day of Christ" (Plain Papers on Prophetic Scriptures, p. 527, italics his).
The reader is asked to note the significance of this explanation of the phrase "Day of Christ," for it represented the view of the whole school till about the end of the century.[2] It was Messiah’s glorious Day, when He comes to set up His kingly rule, after routing His foes. Perfect clarity here will help us to avoid misunderstanding all through our inquiry; so I give an extract on this point from C.H.M., and then a brief one from Darby. The former writes:
We are plainly and expressly told the "day is at hand" (Rom. 13:12). What "day"? The day of the Lord, most surely, which is always the term used in connection with our individual responsibility in walk and service. This, we may remark in passing, is a point of much interest and practical value. If the reader will take the trouble to examine the various passages in which "the day" is spoken of, he will find that they have reference, more or less to the question of work, service or responsibility. For instance, "That ye may be blameless (not at the coming, but) in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 1:8). Again, "Every man’s work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it" (1 Cor. 3:13). "Without offence till the day of Christ" (Phil. 1:10). "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day" (2 Tim. 4:8). From all these passages and many more which might be adduced, we learn that "the day of the Lord" will be the grand time for reckoning with the workers; for the appraisal of service; for the settling of all questions of personal responsibility; for the distribution of rewards—the "ten cities" and the "five cities" (Papers on the Lord’s Coming, pp. 44-45; italics and brackets his).
On "Christ’s day" in Philippians 2:16, Darby says in the same vein: "The apostle thus unites his work and the reward in the day of Christ with the blessing of the assembly" (Synopsis of the Books of the Bible). So Kelly, Revelation, p. 236.
The pith of which is that Christ’s Coming or Parousia brings the Rapture, and Christ’s Day the judgment, the reward, and the Kingdom, several years later.
(b) The Coming of Christ " for the Church," the resurrection of the sleeping saints, and the translation of the living, together with them, to meet the descending Lord, will take place secretly: none of the unconverted will witness them. Not so, however, the Day of Christ, seven or more years later; for the Lord will then come forth in visible glory, and every eye shall see Him. Referring to the Ascension in Acts 1:10-11, C. H. M. says: —
And here we may ask—though it be rather anticipating what may come before us in a future paper—Who saw the blessed Lord as He went up? Did the world? Nay; not one unconverted person ever laid his eyes upon our precious Lord from the moment that He was laid in the tomb. The last sight the world got of Jesus was as He hung on the cross, a spectacle to angels, men, and devils. The next sight they will get He shall come forth to execute judgment, and tread, in terrible vengeance, the winepress of the wrath of Almighty God...
Is it possible for testimony to be more distinct or satisfactory? Could proof be more clear or conclusive? How can any counter-argument stand for a moment, or any objection be raised? Either those two men in white apparel were false witnesses, or our Jesus shall come again in the exact manner in which He went away. There is no middle ground between these two conclusions. We read in Scripture that, "in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established;" and therefore in the mouth of two heavenly messengers—two heralds from the region of light and truth, we have the word established that our Lord Jesus Christ shall come again in actual bodily form, to be seen by His own first of all, apart from all others, in the holy intimacy and profound retirement which characterized His departure from this world. All this, blessed be God, is wrapped up in the two little words "as" and "so" (Papers on the Lord’s Coming, pp. 17-18).
In expounding 2 Thessalonians 4:16, (William) Kelly, the acknowledged theologian of the movement, writes thus in his Second Coming:
It is mere and ignorant unbelief to press the fact that the Lord so shouts and then to conclude that all the world must hear Him at that epoch. It is contrary to every analogy, that the world will be witnesses of the Lord’s coming to take away the believers. It is easy to conceive that the Lord could conceal it if He pleased. Of course the world may be alarmed and astonished for a while by the fact of the disappearance of so many. That there will be a great effect produced in the world by it I am not in the least disposed to deny; but I believe that the simple and natural interpretation of the terms employed in this Scripture (1 Thess. 4) supposes a special connection between the Lord and those for whom He comes, and that the choice of the expressions limits His action in sight and sound too, as well as in effects of deeper moment, to those whom it all concerns. No more at present would I deduce or assert (pp. 171-172).
On the same passage Darby writes in his Second Coming:
The only persons who hear it are "the dead in Christ," Christ being represented as in this way gathering together His own troops...At the proper time the Lord comes—it is not said appears—and calls us up to be for ever with the Lord, to take our place associated with Christ (pp. 44-5).
(c) Christ, having come secretly to the air and received His waiting or sleeping people to Himself, returns with them to heaven, and there awaits the Day or Revelation. They remain in heaven for an undetermined period, but it is almost universally recognized to be at least seven years, the period of the last of Daniel’s Seventy Weeks. When the Day of the Lord arrives Christ will appear in glory from heaven, accompanied by the previously-raptured saints. Every eye shall see them. This is called Christ’s Coming with His saints, as distinguished from the earlier, secret Coming for his saints. The distinction is insisted upon as most vital.
(d) The realization of the Coming of Christ for His saints is quite independent of the fulfillment of all or any signs and predicted events; it awaits no progress in the evangelization of the world on the one hand; no spread of apostasy in the professing Church on the other. It is independent of the return of the Jews to their own land, of the emergence of the Concert of the Ten Kings, and of the rise and reign of the last Antichrist—for all these events take place after the Secret Rapture, which is conditioned by nothing except the conversion of the last member of Christ’s mystical Body.
When, therefore, we read in the Gospels or Epistles that certain events have to be fulfilled before the Return of Christ, we are to understand at once that it is the second stage—the Day, or Revelation, or Appearing of Christ, and not the secret Coming that is so conditioned. With his usual lucidity Kelly says in his Second Coming:—
The Lord keeps His coming to receive His saints as a distinct hope of the heart, apart from earthly events. When they are, at His coming, translated to heaven, then the earthly tide of events begins to flow. Hence, a further stage of Christ’s coming is called "the appearing," the "revelation of Christ," and the other terms which imply manifestation among the rest, "the day of the Lord" (p. 183).
Again:
I have no hesitation in affirming from these inspired statements that we have come to the second act, so to speak in which the Lord manifests His presence. He appears from heaven, and the saints, already risen and changed, already taken up to be with Him above, come along with Him from heaven. It is between His coming for the saints and His coming with them from heaven, that the earthly events transpire, with various signs and tokens never of His coming to receive the saints, but of His coming to judge the world. In short there are no defined periods or visible harbingers to intimate that He is coming to receive us, but there are manifold and manifest signs before He comes with the saints in the execution of His judgment upon the world (p. 184).
(e) During the interval of seven years or more that will elapse between the Coming and the Day of Christ, God will resume His purposes with the Jews. Whilst many will return in unbelief to Palestine, and yield to the seduction of Antichrist, a small Remnant will remain faithful to the true God. Their relation to Christianity will be unique; they may have some knowledge of Christ’s person,[3] but little or none of His saving work; they may recognize Jesus as Messiah, yet because of the removal of the Holy Spirit from the earth at the Rapture of the Church, they will be unable to appropriate the benefits of His redemption. Hence they will have no real knowledge of salvation until Christ comes in His glory, when they will repent and be saved. In a word, their state until then might be described as semi-Christian.
The spiritual experience of this Remnant is believed by pre-tribs to be mirrored to us in scores of the Psalms; even the Imprecatory Psalms, with their cries for vengeance on the godly, are applied to the future Jewish Remnant; so are several of the Beatitudes of our Lord.
During the second half of Daniel’s apocalyptic Week this Remnant of Jews will take up the Great Missionary Commission of Matthew 28, and go far and wide preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom. Extraordinary power and success will accompany their labors, for an immense number possibly the vast majority—of the inhabitants of the world will be brought to God through their labors, prior to the Day of the Lord. According to many teachers—including Darby, Anderson, and Gaebelein—this will be the true intent and fulfillment of our Lord’s Missionary Commission in Matthew 28, but this is not urged by all. Many other portions of our Lord’s discourses are also referred to this Jewish Remnant of the Last Days, instead of to members of the Christian Church: the Lord’s Prayer, most of the Sermon on The Mount, and the prophecy of the End in Matthew 24-25, are so applied.
For a convenient exposition of pre-trib teaching on the Jewish Remnant the reader is referred to the two chapters, "The Spared Remnant" and "The Martyred Remnant," in Trotter’s work (Plain Papers on Prophetic Subjects), and to Gaebelein’s volume, Hath God Cast Away His People?.
Darby’s Synopsis contains scattered references to this subject, which is handled systematically in his Collected Writings, and in the two works just mentioned. Anderson’s view of Matthew 28:18-20 is found in an appendix to his Buddha of Christendom and The Bible or The Church? Scofield treated of the subject in his Bible Correspondence Course; there the position is taken up that the sealed of Israel are "144,000 Pauls" sent into all the world to evangelize the nations after the removal of the Holy Spirit to heaven,[4] and during the 1,260 days of Antichrist’s triumph: a big order, yet they succeed in converting "the overwhelming majority" of earth’s inhabitants to God. (Sect. 2, pp. 112-113).
(f) From the fact that the Church will be removed to heaven prior to the rise of Antichrist it follows that no member of the Christian Church will suffer in the Great Tribulation, instigated by him (Matthew 24:21; Rev. 7:14; etc.). No single point in the new scheme is more earnestly contended for than this one, and every year sees new tracts issuing from the Press in support of it. Anyone who denies the Church’s immunity from the Antichristian persecution of the Last Days is looked upon as having departed seriously from the faith once delivered to the saints, and is received coldly or not at all by pre-tribs. Thrice welcome is he who has written a tract affirming it.
(g) The resurrection of the saints at the Coming of Christ prior to the Seventieth Week of Daniel will be succeeded by another resurrection of saints at its close. This is the resurrection of the immense number of martyrs who die, ex hypothesi, between the previous resurrection and rapture, and the Day of the Lord. But these martyrs—converted by the preaching of the Remnant—have no connection with the Church of God. It should be said also that the martyred portion of the semi-converted and semi-Christian Jewish Remnant, which enters heaven, [sic] at death, is also raised at this time to share the image of the heavenly. "A martyr’s death is for them the passage to heavenly glory, and to association with Christ when He shall reign over the earth" (Trotter, Plain Papers on Prophetic Subjects, p. 402). It is contended by pre-tribs that this second resurrection is really part of the first resurrection, which, ex hypothesi, takes place some years or decades previously, at the Rapture.
It will be understood, of course, that the kingly rule of Christ and His saints, the resurrection and judgment of the unrighteous dead, and the creation of a new world at the close of His reign, are firmly held in the new school.
I have thus sought fairly and accurately to set forth the pre-trib scheme of the prophetic future. It must not be supposed, however, that all among Brethren accepted the new views. On the contrary, some of their weightiest members repudiated them as innovations. Not only accomplished scholars like S. P. Tregelles and B. W. Newton, but also devout men like George Müller and James Wright of Bristol, Robert Chapman, and Dan Crawford, resisted the new theories of Darby. The following extract from Müller’s writings will show how the group I have mentioned adhered to the early pre-millennial views set forth above. Asked, shortly before his death, whether Christians are to expect our Lord’s Return at any moment, or whether certain events must be fulfilled before He comes again, Müller replied as follows:—
I know that on this subject there is great diversity of judgment, and I do not wish to force on other persons the light I have myself. The subject however, is not new to me; for, having been a careful, diligent student of the Bible for nearly fifty years, my mind has long been settled on 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, the Man of Sin, the "son of perdition" (or personal Antichrist), shall have been revealed as seen in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5. Many other portions also of the Word of God distinctly teach that certain events are to be fulfilled before the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. This does not, however, alter the fact that the Coming of Christ, and not death, is the great Hope of the Church and, if in a right state of heart, we (as the Thessalonian believers did) shall "serve the living and true God, and wait for His Son from Heaven" (Cited by Frank H. White in The Saint’s Rest and Rapture).
Müller’s teaching, however, despite the enormous prestige of his name, is rejected, even among "Open Brethren"—the movement that originated in his breach with Darby over ecclesiastical contamination at Bristol and Plymouth. On Missions and Baptism, Müller’s influence prevailed; on prophecy and prophetic speculation, Darby’s.
It must be kept clearly in view, moreover, that I have described only the original, parent scheme, as formulated by Darby and his associates. This scheme is still in the ascendant today. Adaptations and developments of Darby’s original scheme by J. A. Seiss, G. H. Pember, E.W. Bullinger, and Sir Robert Anderson, will be duly noticed in the sequel. Suffice it to say here that Seiss and Pember, followed by Hudson Taylor, D. M. Panton, and others, taught that only really faithful Christians will be raptured prior to the Great Tribulation: all others will be left behind to be purified in that trial. Bullinger, among other peculiarities, excluded the Pentecostal Church from the mystical Body of Christ, and limited the Lord’s action at the first stage of the Advent to the Body alone: only members of the Body will be raised and raptured; the holy dead of ancient times, and all Christians prior to Paul, will not be raised until the Day of the Lord. Bullinger, moreover, found more than one rapture in the N.T. Anderson does not accept the distinction between the Coming, Appearing, Revelation, and Day of Christ, but teaches a doctrine of a series of comings or appearings at the End; this has found little acceptance. He also disclaims the idea of secrecy at the Rapture; so also R. A. Torrey and a growing number of writers.
For these aberrations from Darby’s scheme the reader is referred to Hudson Taylor’s Union and Communion, Seiss’ Apocalypse, Panton’s Rapture, Anderson’s Coming Prince, Forgotten Truths, and Unfulfilled Prophecy (2nd ed.), and Bullinger’s Ten Sermons on The Second Advent, The Apocalypse and The Mystery. Moreover, changes are still going on. In Touching the Coming, Messrs. Hogg and Vine, two Brethren expositors of note today, repudiate the pioneers’ distinctions between the Coming and the Appearing, Revelation and Day of Christ, which gave early Brethren songs in the night, and which, C. H. M. told us above with such certitude, it was a design of Satan to confound and mix up, and they find exegetical salvation in adopting everywhere the translation presence for the Greek word Parousia; so that the period or age, ex hypothesi, between the Rapture and the Appearing, which some think may be only three and a half years, others seven, others about seventy, but which Anderson thinks may possibly be a thousand years, gives the true meaning of the Apostolic references to the Coming of our Lord. He is then present. (Chart & app., 152-155.)
And now in the year of grace, 1932, which marks the centenary of the first Brethren assembly in England, C.F. Hogg, one of the authors of the volume just referred to, proposes a further retreat from dispensational orthodoxy, with no diminution of confidence and certainty. Writing officially, I take it, in the Brethren publication, "The Witness," for June, 1932, he thinks that confusion is only avoided, and adherence to truth promoted, by accepting his suggestion that the Rapture is not really the Lord’s Coming, but "our going to be with Him" —the levitation of the scattered saints through space to the Lord’s presence: "The second Advent, or Coming, of the Lord is His coming to the earth in power and great glory for the overthrow of His enemies and the establishing of His Kingdom" (p. 135). And this, he tells us elsewhere,[5] is "the Blessed Hope" of the Church. The levitation of the saints to Christ secures for them the blessed immunity from the Great Tribulation; but the Blessed Hope of Christ’s Second Coming belongs to the Day of the Lord, after the time of tribulation.
It was as necessary as it was desirable to exhibit the new theories at a single view, because misrepresentations and misconceptions of them abound, and some there are who may read this volume who are little acquainted with Darby and his school of prophetic interpretation. Experience shows, moreover, that some very intelligent people, although initiated into the new methods of exegesis, have never grasped the new plan in all its bearings—such are its astonishing intricacies. As an example, I mention that even well-taught ministers, who maintained the new views, have applied Matthew 24:40-41 and Luke 17:34-35 ("the one shall be taken and the other left"), to the Rapture of 1 Thessalonians 4:17. Not so leaders like Darby, Kelly and Gaebelein, who, seeing the inconvenient proximity of the Glorious Appearing at Matthew 24: and Luke 17:30, did not admit a rapture in the context; and naturally.
The question that now concerns us is whether the pre-trib theories are true and scriptural, and thus entitled to supplant the former scheme outlined.
It matters not that they are new and novel, and have never been heard of in the whole history of the Christian Church since the Apostolic Age. What men call heresy sometimes proves to be the truth of God. It matters not that the great pre-millennial scholars and theologians—Alford, Bengel, Delitzsch, Zahn, and others—found no trace in the N.T. of the teachings raised by Darby, for they may be all wrong, and he alone right. Reluctant as some may be to admit it, it is quite possible that the very men who fought and won the battle of Premillennialism in the modern Church, may all have been—to borrow a phrase of William Kelly—"antagonists of the truth," inasmuch as they missed the distinction between the Coming of Christ, and the Revelation seven or more years later; and because they made the Day of Christ the day for the realization of the Church’s hope.
Let us therefore be candid and open-minded for fear lest, in resisting the new theories, we resist the Spirit of God Himself.
But there is another side to this: Darby and his followers may be wrong, and the hundred-and-one famous advocates of the older premillennial school right; in which case the "brayings of ignorance" (Kelly), the "hotch-potch system of exegesis" (Anderson), and other terms applied by some advocates of the new, to those of the old, school, will prove rather inept, for, if the new theories are not true and scriptural, then we must class them with the "noble errors" —to use a phrase of Gladstone’s—that devout men have sometimes sincerely propagated.
To the examination of this issue the rest of the present volume will be devoted.
EXCURSUS ON THE SEVENTY WEEKS OF DANIEL
To its credit, historical criticism is now admitting that archaeology has strikingly vindicated historical statements in the Book of Daniel that were formerly impugned with much confidence. In ICC (International Critical Commentary) on Daniel, Dr. Montgomery makes acknowledgement of the brilliant discoveries of Pinches, Dougherty, and Sidney Smith: "The Bible story is correct as to the rank of kingship given to Belshassar" (See pp. 67, 72, and 109). The lessons of the new discoveries are driven home effectively by Boutflower, In and Around the Book of Daniel (1923), and R.D. Wilson, The Book of Daniel (1917). Cf. C. H. H. Wright, Daniel and His Prophecies (1906).
More encouraging still is Dr. Montgomery’s finding that Daniel 1-6 originated in Babylon in the third century B.C., and not in Palestine or Syria in the second. This warrants the conclusion that the author of chapter 2 was a seer who foresaw the triumph of the Roman Empire as the fourth power in the Great Image, and its division before the End.
Again, "The Expository Times" (Nov., 1929, pp. 61-62) reviewed favorably the work of the eminent American archaeologist, Prof. Dougherty, of Yale, Nabonidus and Belshazzar (Milford), and concluded: "It is of peculiar interest to hear so competent an investigator announce that ‘of all neo-Babylonian records dealing with the situation at the close of the neo-Babylonian empire the fifth chapter of Daniel ranks next to the cuneiform literature in accuracy so far as outstanding events are concerned.’ It begins to look as if Biblical traditions deserve more credence than critics have sometimes been willing to concede to them."
Many will think that a similar remark applies to the prophecies of Daniel. Undoubtedly our Lord and all His Apostles viewed Daniel as a prophet. Ordinary Christians, unaffected by presuppositions against the supernatural, will always think that they were right. In his commentary on Thessalonians in CGT, Dr. G. G. Findlay concludes a valuable paragraph on our Lord’s use of Daniel: "The use made by Jesus Christ of this obscure and suspected Book of Scripture has raised it to high honor in the esteem of the Church" (p. 219).
Worth noting is the position of Dr. Zahn; accepting (Introduction to the N.T., vol. 3, pp. 387-378) the pseudepigraphical character of Daniel, and a late date for its composition, he yet treats its prophecies as genuine products of divine inspiration, and has frequent references to them that are full of unusual insight. His laying aside a plan to expound Daniel’s prophecies at length in his great commentary on Revelation (in the Zahn-Kommentar) is to be deeply regretted.
As the eschatological character of the Seventieth Week is assumed throughout this volume a note should be added on the prophecy of the Seventy Weeks (Dan. 9:24-27). Daniel was informed that seventy weeks (= 490 years) would intervene between the promulgation of a decree to rebuild Jerusalem and the fulfillment of the divine purpose concerning the chosen city and the chosen people. This period is divided into three parts, namely, seven weeks (49 years), sixty-two weeks (434 years), and one week (7 years), which elapse in the order named. After the sixty-two weeks (see R.V.)—that is, after sixty-nine, weeks (483 years) in all, for the seven weeks (49 years) are first fulfilled—Messiah the Prince is cut off and has nothing for Himself (see mg.). Thereupon the people of the Coming Prince (the Romans, not the Prince himself) destroy the city and the Sanctuary (i.e., Jerusalem). An undetermined interval follows, which is characterized by war and desolations; it is the present time. Then comes the last or Seventieth Week, which begins with a covenant between the Coming Prince (Antichrist) and the multitude of Daniel’s people, the Jews. In the middle of the week, that is, after three and a half years, the Prince breaks the league or covenant, and causes sacrifice and oblation to cease. Then, as hinted here, and clearly taught elsewhere, the Prince initiates a brief period (3 1/2 years) of persecution and blasphemy. Thereupon wrath is poured out upon the desolator and, the Seventy Weeks being accomplished, Messiah and His saints possess the sovereignty (Dan. 7:22).
To Dr. Tregelles (Daniel, pp. 93-127) and Sir Robert Anderson (The Coming Prince) we owe the best interpretation of the prophecy; but this is said with due reserve, and with full recognition of the fact that there are a hundred rival solutions; and that there is difficulty in determining with absolute certainty both the terminus a quo (starting point), and the terminus ad quem (terminal point), of the prophecy. Nevertheless Sir R. Anderson has shown in a volume of conspicuous ability and sanity that, from the edict to rebuild Jerusalem (Nehemiah 2:5-8), in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes (14th March, 445 B.C.), to the day of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem (6th April, A.D. 32), was exactly and to the very day sixty-nine weeks (173,880 days or 483 prophetic years of 360 days). See chapter 10; and also his Daniel in the Critic’s Den. Valuable popular expositions on the same lines will be found in W. Kelly’s Notes on Daniel, Dr. Campbell Morgan’s God’s Methods With Man (pp. 47-65), and Dr. Robert Sinker’s notes on Daniel in the Temple Bible series (pp. 192-193).
It is noteworthy that when Anderson wrote his Coming Prince (1881) his date for the Crucifixion (A.D. 32) seemed too late; tradition and scholarship placed it in 29 or 30. Today investigation is slowly coming round to a later date, viz., 33. This is the date adopted in Bishop Headlam’s Life and Teaching of Jesus Christ (p. 320), also in a recent learned article by Dr. Fotheringham, an eminent authority ("The Journal of Theological Studies," April, 1934), and by the Pope for the nineteenth centenary of the Crucifixion (April 3rd, 1933). This date, if correct, involves an error of one year in Anderson’s calculation. Dr. Fotheringham, working on seventy astronomical observations made at Athens by Julius Schmidt, declares that 32 is an impossible date for the Crucifixion, because the 14th Nisan fell on Sunday, April 13th, or Monday the 14th, instead of the previous Thursday or Friday. Perhaps this is so, but the interested reader may be reminded that Anderson (pp. 99-105) anticipated the objections to the 32 date on the ground of the Paschal moon’s not falling on a Friday, and dealt vigorously with them. To one reader his reasoning seems convincing; see p. 102 especially.
I may add that in "The Expository Times" for February, 1937, there is an interesting article by the Rev. D. R. Fotheringham, M.A., brother of the late Dr. J. K. Fotheringham, on "Bible Chronology;" in it he draws attention, justifiably, to the great value of his brother’s researches, and gives his principal conclusions in reference to the date of the Nativity.
The date adopted by Bishop Headlam, Dr. Fotheringhan, and the Roman Church involves a Ministry of five passovers, which is pretty well an innovation. The strength and simplicity of the 32 date is that, by adding four passovers (the almost universally accepted length of the Ministry) to the one certain date afforded us the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar (Luke 3:1), i.e., August 19th, 28—we get 32 as the date for the Crucifixion.
That the Seventieth Week is eschatological is a view as old as the primitive Fathers, and is rendered certain by John in the Revelation, where Antichrist (the Prince of Dan. 9:26) persecutes the saints for three and a half years (=42 months or 1260 days, or 31 times)—precisely the closing portion of Daniel’s Seventieth Week of seven years. During the interval between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks Israel is set aside, and God is gathering out of the Nations a people for His Name (Acts. 15:14; Rom. 11:25). It is, broadly, the present Dispensation.
In his Thousand Years (1889), and in an appendix to Premillennial Essays, edited by him (1879), Dr. Nathaniel West, who gave a great part of his life to the literature of the Last Things, cites numerous exegetes on the Continent who treated the Seventieth Week or the last half of it as eschatological. Two present-day outstanding names may be added: Zahn, in his INT. and comments on Matthew 24:15 and Revelation 11-13 (Zahn-Kommentar), and Dr. Adolph Schlatter, of Tubingen in his well-known Erldulerungen zum N.T. (1928), on the same passages. On the limits set to Jerusalem’s trial in Revelation 11:2, Schlatter says: "John had already read this in Daniel, whence he borrows the number that is employed for the duration of the last conflict and its tribulation—42 months or, what is the same thing, 1260 days, that is, 3 1/2 Jewish years, the last half-week of Daniel’s vision."
West (Thousand Years, pp. 175 ff.) accepting the Cyrus date (536) as the a quo, and the birth of Christ as the ad quem, finds an interval of fifty-seven years between the first three and the last four of the 7 sevens in Daniel 9:5. But, as he himself admits, such an interval is "not even hinted at there" (p. 199); nor is it anywhere; it is otherwise with the gap between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks. Daniel 9:26a furnishes good ground for making the Crucifixion approximately, and not the birth of Christ, the ad quem of the sixty-ninth week. West’s handling of the seventieth week, however, is beyond praise; see his Thousand Years, and Daniel’s Great Prophecy—two of the greatest works in English on the Last Things, though one differs from the author on some points.
I think it was a true instinct that led Sir R. Anderson to choose our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem as the day on which the prophecy "unto Messiah the Prince" (Dan. 9:25; Luke 19:37-38) and the sixty-nine weeks were fulfilled. In his Light From the Ancient East Dr. Adolph Deissmann writes: "We may now say that the best interpretation of the Primitive Christian hope of the Parusia is the old Advent text, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee" (p. 372. And see our discussion of "Parousia," chapter 11 Deissmann always spells "Parousia" without the "o").
It is presupposed here and elsewhere in the volume that Antichrist is a person yet to arise in Roman Europe or the Near East in the Last Days, at the head of an ancient kingdom; also that this person and his kingdom are signified by the first Beast of Revelation 13, not the second; and that Antichrist is also identical with the "Little Horn" of Daniel 7 and the "Man of Sin" of 2 Thessalonians 2. There is an informing article on Antichrist by Canon Meyrick in Smith’s Bible Dictionary (4 vols. 2nd Eng. edition 1893). In Bousset’s Antichrist Legend (E.T.) there is valuable light on Antichrist and the periods of prophecy, though written in unbelief. Newman’s sermons in Tracts for the Times (No. 83) give an interesting presentation of the Fathers’ views on Antichrist; whilst with vast learning Dollinger, perhaps the greatest of Catholic divines sets forth the history of the interpretation of the passage about the Man of Sin in 2 Thessalonians (The First Century of Christianity and the Church, Appendix I, E.T.). Dr. Samuel J. Andrews, author of an important Life of Christ, wrote Christianity and Antichristianity in Their Final Conflict, wherein he expounds the relevant passages on Antichrist and analyses keenly the trends of modern thought both within and without the Church. But it is in Dr. G.G. Findlay’s commentary on Thessalonians in CGT (Appendix) that one meets the most satisfactory treatment of the subject in English. In the face of modern research and unbelief, Dr. Findlay avowed his belief in the appearing of a personal Antichrist in the Last Days, and expounded the Scripture doctrine in a way that leaves nothing to be desired.
On the "Year-day" system, once popular, whereby the period of 1260 days in the Revelation of John was interpreted in the sense of years, and applied to a part of the present period of Church history, the reader is referred to a completely satisfactory refutation of it in Tregelles’ work on Daniel, and S.R. Maitland’s First and Second Inquiries. It is to be noted that the new era of scientific exegesis has driven the theory, and most of the Protestant anti Roman interpretation, out of consideration. See the commentaries of Beckwith, Charles, Moffatt, Anderson Scott, and Simcox.
West (Thousand Years, p. 164), followed by F. W. Grant (Numerical Bible, Rev., p. 287), makes the strong point that if the Year-day theory is applicable to the second half of the Seventieth Week (= the 1260 days), it is to be applied to the whole period of the Seventy Weeks; so that we get a period of 176,400 years to elapse before the arrival of the promised blessings on the chosen city and people! Beyond question they are right. Further, without accepting the idea that all the "seals" of Revelation are still future one may say that there is a crushing refutation of the extravagances of the Historical School (on the sixth seal) in Sir R. Anderson’s Coming Prince pp. 291-304. Nothing better has been written in small compass. On the Futurist side the present writer knows nothing to compare with Zahn’s section on the Revelation in Volume 3 of his Introduction to the N.T. and parts 2-6 of West’s Thousand Years.
It is a pleasure to admit that the Historical School has produced one of the best of all books on the Lord’s Second Coming—Ecce Venit, by a true American saint, Dr. A.J. Gordon of Boston. It has recently been reprinted under the title Behold He Cometh (Thynne & Co., Ltd., 3s. 6d.). Dr. Gordon was formerly a Futurist; the book is to be recommended though one differs from him in referring so much in Scripture to the Roman Church, and in his acceptance of the Year-day theory, which is quite exploded.
People who are confident that they have identified the Apostate Church anywhere, except in their own—would do well to bear in mind a remark of Adolph Saphir’s. He observed how beautiful it was in the Apostles that, when the Lord announced that one of themselves would betray Him they all replied, "Lord, is it I?" He makes the point that Churches would do well to imitate the humility of the Apostles, and examine themselves, when they read of the Apostasy. There are distressing things in Rome, but it is the same Saphir who says that things are now said in Protestant Churches about our Lord that the "older Socinians would not have dared, nor even wished, to say."
ENDNOTES:
[1] For the teaching of the Fathers I am indebted to C. D. Maitland’s Apostolic School of Prophetic Interpretation, and J. H. Newman’s Sermons on Antichrist in Tracts for the Times; the views of continental scholars (up to 1897) on the crucial passage of the millenarian controversy (Rev. 19-20) will be found in Dr. Nathaniel West’s Thousand Years in Both Testaments, and in Pre‑millennial Essays (Appendix), edited by him.
It will be understood that I am not committing all the writers mentioned to uniformity in interpreting the events under (6). Thus Bengel had a peculiar doctrine of a second millennium following that in verse 3 of Rev. 20.
There is a learned summary of the controversy in Harnack’s article in the Encycl. Brit. (“Millennium “). See also the article by Dr. C. A. Briggs in the New Schaff‑Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge.
The names of Bp. Ellicott and Abp. Trench are included on the strength of the article Millennium in Chambers’ Encyclopedia (revised ed.).
[2] The application of the phrase to the Rapture (by Anderson, Gaebelein, and Scofield) is examined in the chapter “Messiah’s Day.”
[3] This is not admitted, however, by others; see E. Dennett, an interpreter of Darby: The Blessed Hope, pp. 55 and 81.
[4] Darbyists interpret the difficult verses, 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7, of the removal of the Holy Spirit at the Rapture; evil then comes in like a flood. I deal with the point in the last chapter but one of this volume. Kelly deals with the theory in Christ’s Coming Again, vol. 2, p. 99, etc.
[5] “The Morning Star,” August 1, 1912; Touching the Coming (pp. 141-142). In their commentary on Thessalonians the authors say: “Where it is used prophetically, parousia refers to a period beginning with the descent of the Lord from Heaven to the air, 1 Thessalonians 4:16,17, and ending with His revelation and manifestation to the world” (p. 88). The extract from Mr. Hogg’s article is given at length in the last chapter of this volume. Anderson’s view of the interval between the Rapture and the millennium is to be found in his Coming Prince, p. 289, and is quoted later.
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