NO MILLENNIUM TILL CHRIST COMES. - PART 7

(10). The discourse of our Lord in the twenty- fourth and twenty-fifth chapters of Matthew, although previously noticed, is so important in its bearing upon the question before us, that it demands renewed consideration. It does not seem to be the same discourse which is recorded in the twenty-first chapter of Luke. In the twentieth chapter of the latter gospel we find that “He taught the people in the temple, and preached the gospel.” So in the twenty-first chapter He is seen in the temple, where “He looked up, and saw the rich men casting their gifts into the treasury.” It further appears that while still there, “as some spake of the temple, how it was adorned with goodly stones,” He delivered the discourse recorded by Luke, which refers, as has been shown, so largely to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, and to its continued desolation, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled, and the Son of Man shall come in a cloud with power and great glory. Accordingly Luke tells us what was said by our Lord while He taught in the temple, and of course before He left the city.

Matthew, however, tells us what He said on the Mount of Olives to a few of His disciples after He had withdrawn from public view, sorrowfully exclaiming, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you. Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord,” (Matt, xxiii; 37-39). personal ministry, therefore, was ended at the time of the discourse lecorded by Matthew, and He had gone forth in deep grief from the doomed city, whose inhabitants shall see Him no more until they shall look upon Him whom they pierced, and mourn for Him, as one mourneth for an only son, and be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his first born.

“And Jesus went out and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said unto them. See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be throw^n down. Subsequently “As he sat upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us when shall these things be.? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world.?” Strictly speaking, there are three questions here, though probably the disciples, with Jewish pride in the stability of their magnificent temple, regarded its destruction as possible only at the second coming of the Lord, and at the end of the world, or of the age, as the word should have been rendered. Or it may be they had in view what He had previously said in the temple about its overthrow, and He is led to repeat substantially the discourse they had already heard, as He frequently did, only applying it differently to other circumstances and objects. However this may be, Peter and James and John and Andrew, as Mark informs us, came to Him privately, as He sat upon the Mount of Olives, saying, “Tell us, when shall these things be.? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world [age].?” The answer which follows touches so lightly the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, if it touches it at all, that Alford does not hesitate to entitle the discourse a “Prophecy of His coming, and of the times of the end.” Lange also says, “in harmony with apocalyptic style, He exhibited the judgments of His coining in a series of cycles, each of which depicts the whole futurity, but in such a manner that with every new cycle the scene seems to approximate to, and more closely resemble the final catastrophe. Thus the first cycle delineates the whole course of the world down to the end, in its general characteristics, (verses 4-14).”

He tells them of attempts that will be made to deceive them; of wars and rumours of wars; of nation rising against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; of famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes in divers places, which He declares to be but the beginning of sorrows; of afflictions, and persecutions, and the scorn of all nations coming upon them; of many among His professed disciples who shall be offended, and betray one another, and hate one another, while many shall be deceived; of iniquity abounding, and the love of many waxing cold; and closes the sad description by saying, “this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world [the habitable earth, as the word means] for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.” Truly there is nothing here that looks like a Millennium, and this state of things shall continue, we are told, until the end shall come. It is important. too, to notice, that our Lord does not say that the gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the habitable earth for the conversion of all nations, but for a witness unto all nations, or as Mark has it, “the gospel must first be published among all nations,” and the end will be at hand.

Such is the first section, or cycle as Lange calls it, of the discourse, bringing us to the time of the end when, as may be shown hereafter, the Church of the present dispensation will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, although there will be a faithful remnant of believing Jews still waiting for the consolation of Israel. To these our Lord next addresses His warnings, saying, “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth let him understand:) then let them which be in Judea flee unto the mountains: . . . but pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day: for there shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened. Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. . . . For as the

lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.” Truly there is nothing in this section, as there was nothing in the former, that looks like a Millennium, but precisely the reverse. There shall be great tribulation, such as the world never before saw, so severe and wide-spread, that all flesh must be destroyed except for the shortening of those days; and false Christs and false prophets shall arise, showing great signs and wonders, which we are told in Revelation will be witnessed during the reign of the Lawless one; and thus it will continue up to the lightning-like coming of the Son of Man.

Turning to the passage in Daniel to which our Lord refers, we read, “At that time [the time of the reign of Antichrist] shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time; and at that time thy people [the Jews] shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. . . . And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days [ literal days, as may be shown]. Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days. But go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days,” (Dan. xii).

It is plain, then, that the judgment upon the Jews, to which both Daniel and our Lord allude, is still future, for at that time Michael, the great prince, shall stand up in their behalf, and they shall be delivered; and then too, to adopt the literal rendering of Tregelles, “Many from among the sleepers of the dust of the earth shall awake; these shall be unto everlasting life; but those [the rest of the sleepers] shall be unto shame and everlasting contempt.” It is needless to say that the Jews were not delivered when they were slaughtered and sold into captivity by Titus, nor was there anything like the resurrection, mentioned by the prophet, at the destruction of their sacred city. The reference, therefore, is to a period yet to come, when the Lawless one so often predicted in the Old and New Testaments, shall have full sway, and when it will be seen that the overthrow of Jerusalem by the Romans was only a faint shadow of another and greater tribulation, such as was never known before and shall never be known again. Jeremiah, for example, predicts the sufferings that shall then be endured by God’s ancient people, and exclaims, “Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child? wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness? Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it,” (Jer. xxx: 6, 7). Zechariah also tells us, as previously noticed, that all nations shall be gathered against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; but the Lord shall go forth, and fight against those nations, and His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives.

Many other passages of Scripture speak of this second and unequalled visitation of wrath that is to fall upon a people still so inveterate in their prejudices, and so obstinate in their rejection of the Messiah; but according to the testimony of our Lord what is to occur immediately after the unparallelled tribulation? A thousand years of temporal and spiritual prosperity without His personal presence? Let Him answer. “Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other,” (Matt, xxiv: 29-31).

It is useless to object that, following these words, the Saviour says, “this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled,” for the objection has- already been effectually set aside; and surely no intelligent Christian will assert that all these things, including the mourning of all the tribes of the earth, and the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven, and the gathering together of His elect from the four winds, occurred in the life time of the men then living. The coming is obviously literal and personal, for the question of the disciples, all admit, was concerning His literal and personal return to the earth; and twelve times in the entire discourse does He allude to His second advent, in every instance in a literal and personal sense, as even post-millennialists agree, unless it be in the passage last quoted. Does this passage, then, form an exception to the rule? If not it is certain there can be no Millennium till He comes, for not only is there a total absence of all allusion to a thousand years of triumph for the Church, but there is no possible space for such triumph up to the very day that shall witness the appearing of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven. Each section or cycle of the discourse running to the close of the present age is crowded with predictions of continuous trials, and immediately after the great tribulation Jesus Himself shall come. Hence the remainder of chapter twenty- four is occupied with solemn admonitions to watchfulness, because of that day and hour know- eth no man; only we know that the world will be as it was just before the flood, wholly devoted to the cares of business, the enjoyment of wealth, and the pursuit of pleasure, and not to the cause of Christ, when He shall return.

(11). At the beginning of chapter twenty-five we read, “Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: but the wise took oil in their Tessels with their lamps. While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.” The particle “then” with which this passage begins is not a mere connective, but it properly means, as Alford translates it in his revised New Testament, “at that time.” He also says, “The obvious question there to ask is, ‘at what time?’ And it will be best answered by referring to what went before. On doing so, we find that our Lord had just been speaking of the time during which He, the Master of the household, should be absent, and His coming expected. . . . And thus in the case before us we may, if it seem best, regard the time described by Christ as covering the whole of the period intervening His removal from us and the second advent; the time during which it might be said by the servant, ‘My Lord delayeth his coming’; the time, in short, in which we live. The chief and strict application of the parable may be, and I believe, is, to one portion of that long interval; but unquestionably, it is not applicable to that portion only,” (The Coming of the Bridegroom, pp. 6, 7).

But admitting that our Lord had in view, as probably He did, the state of the Church just before His second advent, it is said, they all slumbered, or nodded, and slept. Where is there the slightest intimation that at any time during the entire period of His absence, they shall be alert and active, covering the earth with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the seas, and securing the universal reception of the true religion for a thousand happy years? It is the merest assumption to assert that a spiritual Millennium precedes the slumbering at the close, for if this were true, it is inconceivable that there should not be a hint of it in all tills remarkable discourse, nor anywhere else in the New Testament. It may well humble the pride and abate the boastful spirit of the Church to remember that not only some, but that all slumbered and slept, plainly with reference to our Lord’s second coming; and it seems that this profound insensibility has already set in as the result of the dreadful reaction which must necessarily follow the rash predictions and reckless speculations of so many pre-millennial writers who confidently asserted that Louis Napoleon was the Antichrist, or who fixed the very year of our Saviour’s return.

It does not fall within the purpose of this work to discuss the question whether the foolish virgins represent those who barely have spiritual life, and, therefore, shall in the end be saved, yet so as by fire; or whether they are types of hypocrites and self-deceived persons found in the Church. It is enough to know that the entire number, wise and foolish alike, nodded and slept, and that when the midnight cry was heard, “Behold the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him,” all the virgins had to be aroused from their slumber to trim their lamps; while one-half of them discovering that their lamps had gone out, or rather were going out, were unprepared to receive the Lord, and were consequently excluded from the marriage. It is quite certain, then, that at the time of His coming the professing Church as a body will not be in a state of millennial expectation and righteousness and joy; nor can such a state precede His coming, for in a lengthy discourse confessedly treating of the last times there is not a word that can be tortured into the remotest allusion to a spiritual Millennium in the twenty-fourth chapter; while in the twenty-fifth, after speaking of the slumbering virgins who need to be awakened, the next scene presents the family settlement which our Lord has with His own servants, and the next His judgment upon the living nations.

Men may argue ably against the pre-millennial advent of our Lord, as does Dr. David Brown, but after all, the question remains, “what saith the Scripture?” He may prove, at least to his own satisfaction, that “the Church will be absolutely complete at Christ’s coming”; that “Christ’s second coming will exhaust the object of the Scriptures”; that “the sealing ordinances will disappear at Christ’s second coming”; that “the intercession of Christ, and the work of the Spirit, for saving purposes, will cease at the second advent”; but all this, with much more that he says, does not prove that there will be a Millennium of holiness and happiness before our Lord’s return. In the nature of the case it can not be proved by human reasoning, human prejudice, human pride in our ecclesiastical organizations; and when we find in the extended remarks made by the Saviour in response to a question concerning His second advent, that He does not once even whisper of the triumph of the Church, but on the other hand fills the entire interval of His absence with predictions of sorrows and sufferings, we are forced to the conclusion that there will be no Millennium at all, or, as the only alternative, that there can he NO Millennium till Christ comes.