RETURN OF THE JEWS.

The subject of the present chapter demands a volume for its discussion, but only a cursory view of it is now permitted. It is not necessarily a point of dispute between pie- millennialists and post-millennialists, for the literal return of the Jews to their own land is firmly held by many of the latter, while it is utterly rejected by many of the former. For example. Dr. David Brown, speaking of the Holy Spirit’s statement in the Epistle to the Romans, “So all Israel shall be saved,—for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance, well says, “If this perpetuity of the Abrahamic covenant, as' respects the natural seed, be admitted on the authority of the Apostle, it will be difficult, I think, to avoid admitting their territorial restoration, the PEOPLE and the LAND of Israel being so connected in numerous prophecies of the Old Testament, that whatever literality and perpetuity are ascribed to the one, must, one would think, on all strict principles of interpretation, be attributed to the other also,” (p. 434). On the other hand, the great body of the Second Adventists, as they are called, have been led in some unaccountable way, and in strange inconsistency with their own principles of interpretation, to deny the literal restoration of Israel. It may be well, therefore, to glance at it here, because of the light it throws upon the character of the age in which we live, the revealed purposes of God with respect to our earth, the manifestation of the antichrist, and the moral condition of the world at the time of our Lord’s return.

Dr. Fairbairn, who has argued very earnestly and ably in his Typology of the Scriptures against the literal return of the Jews, does not seem to think highly of Hooker’s well known remark, that “where a literal construction will stand, the farthest from the letter is generally the worst’’; but he quotes with a strong expression of approval the following rule of Vitringa: “It is an indispensable canon of interpretation, in regard to divine, as well as human writings, that we must not, without solid and necessary reasons, depart from the primary, proper, and grammatical sense, which the genuine signification of words and phrases, the circumstances of time and action, and the occasion and scope of the words uttered by the prophets present to the reader; that is, it must only be done, when attributes are connected with subjects, which, in the primary and proper sense, are not suitable to them, for reason then obliges us to go farther, and think of an analogous subject.” So plain and essential to any possible understanding of the Bible, or any other book. Is the rule here laid down by Vitringa, that It is cordially accepted by the Rationalists themselves. Ernesti says, “The natural meaning is not to be departed from without evident reason or necessity,” and Ammon, who was still more rationalistic in his views, declared that, “we are not to quit the natural meaning unless it be frigid, ridiculous, or contradictory.”

Taking with us, this “indispensable canon of interpretation,” it remains to be seen whether there are solid and necessary reasons for departing “from the primary, proper, and grammatical sense” of the words and phrases, which in scores upon scores of instances positively assert without any figures of speech the future gathering and permanent dwelling of God’s ancient people in the land He gave unto their fathers. At the very beginning of their separate existence, we find Him saying to Abram, “Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed FOREVER. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth; so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee,” (Gen. xiii: 14-17). A few years later the promise was distinctly repeated: “I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an EVERLASTING possession; and I will be their God,” (Gen. xvii: 8). Still later it was graciously renewed and confirmed to Jacob: “Behold, I will make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, and I will make of thee a multitude of people; and will give this land to thy seed for an EVERLASTING possession,” (Gen. xlviii: 4).

Here then we have an explicit grant of a specified land to a certain people forever and as an everlasting possession; and if it be urged that the words prove too much, since they denote an eternity of existence in the land, the reply is, that even if this were so, the mind that is thoroughly subject, not to feeble and fallible human reason, but to the word of God, would not stagger at the promise through unbelief. It is well to have the faith of the humble, old Christian, who was asked by a sneering skeptic, “Do you believe that Jonah swallowed a whale?” “No,” was the answer, “I do not, but if God’s word had said so, I would have believed it.” It is well to see that “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God,” and when this blessed truth is received, not as a cold theory by the intellect, but in the power of the Holy Ghost into the heart, it will also be seen that the proper province of human reason is to bow reverently before the majesty of a voice that says, “Be still and know that I am God.” The mind of man is too weak and contemptible to sit in judgment upon divine revelation, for, left to its unaided powers, it can not receive the simplest things of the Spirit of God, neither can it know them, because they are spiritually discerned. Admitting, then, that the promise to Abraham demands an eternity of occupation by himself and his natural seed of the land of Canaan, it would be insolence and presumption in us to say that Jehovah can not make the promise good on the “new earth,” which He has so plainly and repeatedly declared will form part of His magnificent empire through endless ages, that the doctrine has been universally accepted by believers who possess an ordinary degree of intelligence, and is taught by Expositors of every school of Theology.

But if any insist that the words forever and everlasting are sometimes used in Scripture in such way as to show they do not necessarily imply eternity, this may be readily granted, without shaking for an instant the position here taken, that obviously nothing in the past history of the Jews has exhausted the promise of God, and therefore it awaits a future and literal fulfillment. He conferred the land upon Abraham personally, no less than upon his seed, but as Stephen says in his testimony before the Jewish Council, “He gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on”; and hence the believing patriarch will enter upon his possession at “the resurrection of the just.” With a faith that laid hold of resurrection in the offering up of Isaac, that overleaped intervening centuries, that rejoiced to see Christ’s day, he walked like a disguised prince amid scenes that will hereafter witness his coronation, a happy pilgrim, a man of the tent and the altar, sojourning in the land of promise as in a strange country, “for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” Nor did the promise take effect for four hundred and thirty years, and even then, after repeated subjugations and an uncertain tenure at all times, his descendants were scattered abroad in a cruel captivity, and have never been restored as a people to this day. For twenty-five hundred years they have been permitted to occupy their own covenanted land only by the sufferance of their Gentile conquerors, and at the very time of their Messiah’s appearing, they were compelled by the most abject humiliations to recognize the domination of a foreign and heathen power. Nothing more is needed to convince those who are willing to take God at His word, that much yet remains to be accomplished of a divine and unchangeable promise to give Abraham and his seed a well defined tract of country forever and for an everlasting possession.

It may be alleged, however, that the promise was made to Abraham and his spiritual seed, that is, Christians of any and every race. But apart from the shocking violence done to the language by such an interpretation, which, it is safe to say, could never have been entertained, if there had been no preconceived theory or system to establish, its absurdity is at once apparent when we remember that it excludes Abraham himself entirely from the blessing; that it is still less true of the spiritual than the natural seed that they have possessed the land of Canaan; that no one believes the spiritual seed has been or will be confined to that land, which is absolutely necessary to make the promise intelligible according to the view here stated; and that the view in no way relieves but rather increases the difficulty that is felt in the use of the words forever and everlasting. In no sense can it be true that the particular land in which Abraham and Jacob dwelt was given to Christians forever and for an everlasting possession, as distinguished from any other land on the globe; and If it is connect to say that the promise referred only to the spiritual seed, It is clear that it was a promise devoid of meaning.

The only way, therefore, to escape the literal fulfillment of the promise is to suppose that it was conditional, or made to depend upon the conduct of the Jews, But a glance at the context will satisfy the reader that it was absolutely unconditional, and that this is the fact in every instance where the promise of future restoration to their own land is given by the Holy Ghost in the Prophets. It is true that their restoration is represented as accompanied by faith, repentance, and holiness, but as these are entirely the gifts of God, and are distinctly vouchsafed, they can not be regarded as conditions upon which the promise turns, because the spiritual and the temporal blessings are indissolubly linked together, and the one is as certain as the other. Their dispersion is conditional, made to depend upon their obedience, but, blessed be God, their restoration is unconditional, made to depend upon His sovereign grace and unchangeable purpose. For example, when He announced by the mouth of Moses that He would drive them out from their land for their sins, not only into Babylon, but to the ends of the earth. He graciously added, “If any of thine be driven out unto the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will the Lord thy God gather thee, and from thence will He fetch thee: and the Lord thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and He will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers. And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live,” (Deut. xxx; 4-6).

The ground on which this explicit promise is based, before the Israelites entered the land of Canaan, is subsequently presented in a statement that throws more light upon Ethnology than all the speculations of scientific men put together; “Wlien the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel,” (Deut. xxxii; 8). Here it is declared that He who “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation,” (Acts xviii: 26), had reference in their distribution to that narrow strip of country which He gave to Abraham and his posterity for an everlasting possession. Of course this will seem very absurd to those who “look on things after the outward appearance,” but the question here is not concerning our opinions either of our national greatness, or of the despised Jew; it is simply a question concerning God’s revealed purpose and plan. The vast American Republic is not mentioned distinctly in prophecy, nor are the Powers of Europe, except to announce their doom, while Israel is constantly before the mind of Jehovah through the Sacred Scriptures. With Israel was inseparably bound up the fate of the mightiest empires of antiquity, as Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon, and so in the future, as the chosen hand for inflicting God’s righteous judgments, it will become the center of His earthly government, and the source of earthly blessings to the nations, when Jesus comes to reign.

It is regretted that the numerous proofs of this statement, found in the book of Psalms, can not now be cited. But it is well worthy of remark in passing, that these inspired lyrics, which have been the solace and support of saints through weary centuries, can not be understood, if it is forgotten that a prominent subject of which they treat is Israel in the latter days, groaning in her last and deepest degradation, and then rising in triumph above her foes by the interposition of the eternal and unchangeable One who has never forsaken her. Of course Christ is their chief theme, as He is of all the Scriptures, and as He Himself distinctly testifies, (Luke xxiv: 44; John V: 39); but besides His personal experiences, as here recorded, and the experiences of believers in every age flowing out of their union with Him, there are constant allusions in connection with predictions of His second advent to the restoration of God’s ancient people, and their re-establishment in the favor of Jehovah which they have so long forfeited, and in the land which they have so long lost.

This sufficiently explains what are called the “imprecatory Psalms,” that are mere prophecies of the inevitable doom which will come upon the persistent enemies of Jesus, or they announce for man’s warning the just judgment of God against iniquity, or they foretell the duty which will be assigned to recovered Israel as the divinely appointed executioners of merited retribution upon the apostate nations, precisely as it is said of the ruler in human government, “He beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil,” (Rom. xiv: 4). It is ignorance of this which has led certain ministers, of whom better things were expected, to unite with infidels in denouncing some of the Psalms as inhuman, and therefore not inspired. If a rebellion arises against their own government, they see no impropriety whatever in putting it down with the sword; but they think it is horrible when God reveals His purpose to put down rebellion against His government with the sword, at the close of the present dispensation in which long suffering grace pleads with the proud rejecters of offered mercy. They cry out, for example, against the 109th Psalm, and speak of it as a barbarous war song belonging to a ruder and darker age, but a very slight acquaintance with Scripture would teach them that, instead of expressing the personal vindictiveness of David toward his enemies, it refers directly to Judas and others like him; and if it be right in God to punish them, it is certainly right to announce their punishment. These presumptuous cavillers might complain with as much reason because the Israelites were used to punish the wicked inhabitants of Canaan, or because the King set on the holy hill of Zion will punish those who defy His authority, or because sin is punished at all, and this is probably the secret of their difficulty with the “imprecatory Psalms.”

But notwithstanding objections, it is repeatedly declared that God’s ancient people will again be employed, as they were employed at the beginning of their national career, to accomplish the purposes of His deserved wrath, and it is in view of this the Holy Ghost exclaims, “Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two- edged sword in their hand; to execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishment upon the people; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; to execute upon them the judgment written: this honor have all the saints,” (Ps. cxlix; 6-9). It does not follow, however, that the language of imprecation or of exultation over prostrate foes would be becoming in the saints now, who are “partakers of the heavenly calling,” whose citizenship is in heaven,” who are forbidden even under the sorest provocation to avenge themselves, vv^ho are called to go forth unto Christ without the camp, bearing His reproach, and who have the far higher honor assigned them of being witnesses both here and hereafter of the blessed principle of grace, apart from law. But the Spirit of truth informs us that “to everything there is a season,” and “He hath made everything beautiful in his time,” (Eccles. iii: i, ii); and to Israel, as an earthly people to whom are given earthly promises, will be committed the important trust of vindicating justice and upholding righteousness on the earth when the present age shall have come to an end. It is the failure to recognize the marked difference between the two dispensations which has led to such utter confusion in reading the Scriptures, and to the wretched habit of “spiritualizing” the plainest testimonies of the word concerning the divine purposes with respect to the Jews.

Thus, if we turn to the commencement of the prophecy by Isaiah, it is said to be “the vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.” If Isaiah, and Amoz, and Uzziah, and Jotham, and Ahaz, and Hezekiah, are to be taken literally, surely Judah and Jerusalem are to be taken literally, and therefore the vision was not concerning Europe and America, or Christendom at large, but it was, just as the Bible says, concerning Judah and Jerusalem. But if so, we find in the same chapter, that after the announcement of literal desolations for their sins, which has been fulfilled in the eyes of the world, God says, without any conditions whatever, “I will turn my hand upon thee, and purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin: and I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called. The city of righteousness. The faithful city. Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness,” (Isa. i: 35-27). Of what was this said? Of Jerusalem, was it not, that has been literally laid waste? Then, since the prediction has not been fulfilled in the past, it remains to be fulfilled in the future.

At the commencement of the next chapter we read, “The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say. Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem; And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more,” (Isa. ii: 1-4). Here, the question is not whether figurative language occurs in the description of the lovely scene before us, but whether Judah and Jerusalem are figurative. If they are, it would be as well to conclude that their threatened calamities are also figurative, and we may give up the attempt to understand the meaning of the Holy Ghost upon any subject. If they are not figurative, it is certain that in the last days Judah and Jerusalem will be restored to more than their ancient glory, and will become a source of blessing to the peaceful, millennial nations.

“And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cutoff; Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim. . . . And the Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea; and with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the river, and shall smite it in the streams, and make men go over dry-shod. And there shall be a highway for the remnant of his people, which shall be left from Assyria; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt,” (Isa. xi: 11-16). Here, the recovery of God’s ancient people is said to be “the second time”; to consist, not of a few, but of the entire remnant that shall be left; to be composed, not of those carried captive into a single land, but of those gathered from various countries and from the islands of the sea; to be marked by the cessation of strife between the two great sections of Israel, only a portion of one of which has ever yet returned to their former land; to be attended by displays of miraculous power; and as none of these things can be said of the partial and temporary restoration that took place at the close of the seventy years of servitude in Babylon, it follow^s that this remarkable passage refers to a return of the Jews yet future.

“For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land: and the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob. And the people shall take them, and bring them to their place; and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord for servants and handmaids: and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors,” (Isa. xiv: 1,2). It is obvious at a glance that this prediction can not refer to Christians or the Church, for the people do not take them, and bring them to their place, nor do they possess the people for servants and handmaids, nor do they take them captives, nor rule over their former oppressors. It is equally obvious that it was not fulfilled at the feeble return from the Babylonian captivity, and therefore, as God’s word is true, it remains to be accomplished hereafter.

“Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously,” (Isa. xxiv: 33). “And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it,” (Isa. xxv: 6-8). “Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnities: thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken,” (Isa. xxxiii: 20). “And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called. The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those; the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up therein, it shall not be found there: but the redeemed shall walk there. And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away,” (Isa. xxxv: 8-10). As it is an “indispensable canon of interpretation,” “that we must not, without solid and necessary reasons, depart from the primary, proper, and grammatical sense” of the words and phrases in the foregoing passages, it seems that Zion means Zion, and Jerusalem means Jerusalem, for not only are the glorious promises preceded by predictions of the most terrific judgments, which all admit fell literally upon Zion and Jerusalem, but the literal Zion and Jerusalem are confessedly the subjects of the prophecy, at least until the promises are given, and their inhabitants are carefully distinguished from other people and other nations. Judah and Jerusalem must be restored, therefore, and become a blessing to all the earth.

The same thing may be said of the literal import of these words, wherever they occur throughout the beautiful prophecy of Isaiah, for surely there is no solid and necessary reason for supposing that the Holy Ghost meant Great Britain and London, or the United States and New York, or the Christian Church, which is made up almost exclusively of Gentiles, when He spoke of Judah and Jerusalem and Zion. For example, all the commentators tell us that the allusion is to Jesus Christ where it is said, “It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth, (Isa. xlix: 6). Here, the relation of Messiah to the literal Israel as well as to the Gentiles is distinctly asserted, but the former having despised and abhored Him, and, as a consequence, suffering the severest afflictions, Zion is represented as The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me. Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me. . . . For thy waste and desolate places, and the land of thy destruction, shall even now be too narrow by reason of the inhabitants, and they that swallowed thee up shall be far away. The children which thou shalt have, after thou hast lost the other, shall say again in thine ears. The place is too strait for me: give place to me that I may dwell. Then shalt thou say in thine heart. Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children, and am desolate, a captive, and removing to and fro.? and who hath brought up these.? Behold, I was left alone; these, where had they been? Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will lift up my hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people: and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders. And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers: they shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord,” (Isa. xlix: 15-23). However proper it may be to draw lessons of comfort for Gentile believers from this passage, its careful perusal will convince any mind, subject to the authority of the word, without pre-conceived theories to establish, that it expresses the purpose of God with respect to the Israelites, and hence there remains for that scattered people a wonderful national restoration, with glorious exaltation.

This is true also of the only other passage in Isaiah which can be now noticed. “The sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee: for in my wrath I smote thee, but in my favour have I had mercy on thee. Therefore thy gates shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day or night; that men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted. The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir tree, the pine tree, and the box together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary; and I will make the place of my feet glorious. The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee; and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet; and they shall call thee, The city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee, I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations. Thou shalt also suck the milk of the Gentiles, and suck the breasts of kings: and thou shalt know that I the Lord am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob,” (Isa. lx: 10-16). The only fair, honest construction to put upon this language refers it to literal Israel, to whom Moses had said long before, “The Lord shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath,” (Deut. xxviii: 13). Indeed the entire prophecy at which we have glanced is concerning literal Judah and Jerusalem, just as much as it is concerning literal Babylon, Moab, Egypt, Damascus and Tyre, so far as they had to do with the destiny of the Jews; and the principle of interpretation now almost universally adopted in reading the book, by which the threatened curses are literally applied to the Jews, and the promised blessings coolly appropriated to ourselves, is fatal to a correct understanding of any portion of Scripture.

Turning now for a moment to Jeremiah, we find numerous predictions of utter desolation coming upon Judah and Jerusalem and all Israel for the sins of the people, foretelling the seventy years of captivity in Babylon, their partial restoration, their continued iniquity, their banishment into all countries, and their final return in connection with the glorious advent and reign of their Messiah. “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be said. The Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; but. The Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the North, and from all the lands whither he had driven them: and I will bring them again into the land that I gave unto their fathers,” (Jer. xvi: 14, 15). “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man, and with the seed of beast. And it shall come to pass, that like as I have watched over them, to pluck up, and to break down, and to throw down, and to destroy, and to afflict; so will I watch over them, to build, and to plant, saith the Lord. . . . Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was a husband unto them, saith the Lord: but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying. Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. 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, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The Lord of hosts is his name: if those 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. xxxi: 27-36).

“Behold, I will gather them out of all countries, whither I have driven them in mine anger, and in my fury, and in great wrath; and I will bring them again unto their place, and I will cause them to dwell safely: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God: and I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for the good of them, and of their children after them: and I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear into their hearts, that they shall not depart from me. Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in the land assuredly with my whole heart and with my whole soul. For thus saith the Lord; Like as I have brought all this great evil upon this people, so will I bring upon them all the good that I have promised them,” (Jer. xxxii: 37-42). “In those days, and at that time, will I cause the Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David; and he shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land. In those days shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely: and this is the name wherewith she shall be called. The Lord our righteousness,” (Jer. xxxiii: 15, 26). Here, too, as it will not be denied that the threatenings were addressed to the Jews, and were literally executed, the only just Inference is that the promises addressed to the same people will also be literally fulfilled. But if this Is so, there can be no doubt concerning their future return with richest spiritual blessings to their own land, for It will scarcely be claimed that all the mercies, pledged to them in the Scriptures just quoted, were made good to the handful of slaves who were permitted to go back from Babylon.

The burden of the prophecy by Ezekiel is precisely the same that the Holy Ghost laid upon the hearts of Isaiah and Jeremiah—the woes of Israel for their iniquities, and their restoration at last to the favor of Jehovah, together with their establishment in their own land. Of course these prophecies contain most important principles that are applicable to Gentile Christians, and teach most valuable lessons to all of every race, and therefore should be devoutly studied by all, but they can not be read Intelligently and profitably, if it is forgotten that they are chiefly occupied with the destinies of the Jews. At the beginning of the book now before us Ezekiel sees the glory of God departing from Jerusalem, and from that time it was said of them, Lo-ammi, “not my people.” But this is followed by the assurance that in the end they shall again be a peculiar treasure unto Jehovah, and the word of the Holy Ghost came unto the prophet, “Therefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God; I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name’s sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen, whither ye went. And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, saith the Lord God, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God. . . . And the desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of all that passed by. And they shall say. This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced and are inhabited,” (Ezek. xxxvi: 22-35).

It is no objection to the return of the Jews to say that the blessings here promised are spiritual, for most cheerfully will this be conceded. But the point is that the spiritual blessings vouchsafed, that are infinitely more desirable than all temporal blessings, will be bestowed upon them in their own land. This is clearly brought out in the next chapter, where we have the well known and oft expounded vision of the valley of dry bones. Whatever uses we may appropriately make of this vision in preaching now, the Holy Ghost declares that it was designed to typify the national resurrection and reconstruction of Israel to whom it was said, “Ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, and shall put my Spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land.” Moreover, the prophet was commanded to take two sticks, one representing the house of Judah, and the other the house of Israel, and to make them one in his hand, as a symbol of the reunion of the divided kingdom, which every one knows did not occur at the restoration from the Babylonian captivity. “And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land: and I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all, and they shall be no more two nations,. neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all. . . . And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their children’s children forever: and my servant David shall be their prince fbrever,” (Ezek. xxxii). It is difficult to conceive of a more distinct promise of their still future return to their own land, and happy subjection to Christ.

The book of Daniel has been previously noticed, because of the bearing of its testimony upon the pre-millennial advent of our Lord, and it is noticed again, because of the remarkable revelation it gives concerning the destiny of the Jews. At the time it was written, the prophet was a captive, hanging his harp upon the willows by the rivers of Babylon, and it fell to him at intervals, during the entire period of the captivity, to describe the character and course of Gentile dominion through the coming ages of Israel’s rejection, or, as the Saviour expresses it, “until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” Thus, in the second chapter, we have the vision of the great image, which was seen in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, and which the prophet explains as the symbol of four successive kingdoms that shall hold sway over the earth, until, in the days of the last, when existing in a divided form, a stone, cut out without hands, shall fall with terrific violence, and break the image to pieces, and then, after the destruction, fill the whole earth; and the God of heaven shall set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, and the kingdom shall not be left to other people. Again, in the seventh chapter, we are told that in the first year of Belshazzar the prophet saw in a vision four great beasts coming up from the sea, which also represent the four universal kingdoms under Gentile rule, with the added information that during the continuance of the fourth in ten confederated monarchies, a power mentioned as a “little horn” shall make war with the saints and prevail against them, until the Ancient of days comes; that “he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws, and they [the times and laws] shall be given into his hand, until a time and times and the dividing of time. But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end. And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.”

Again, in the eighth chapter we learn that in the third year of the reign of king Belshazzar, another vision appeared unto Daniel, in which two of the four kingdoms are mentioned by name, and after they are represented as having passed away to give place to other sovereignties, it is said, “In the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up. And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and holy people. And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace [or prosperity] shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes: but he shall be broken without band.” It is not difficult. to see that the persecuting “horn” of the seventh chapter, appearing when the Roman empire shall be restored in ten united kingdoms, and makins: war with the saints until the second advent of Christ, is the persecuting king of the eighth chapter, with the further statement that he shall spring out of the territory formerly under the authority of one of Alexander’s successors, and subsequently incorporated with the Roman dominion, that he shall wield a power not his own, that he shall destroy the Jews, that he shall make war with Jesus Himself, and that he shall perish in an unusual manner.

The ninth chapter brings us to the first year of Darius, when we find that Daniel was not only a prophet, but a student of prophecy, and having learned from the book of Jeremiah that the seventy years of captivity were drawing to a close, he set his face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth and ashes, and with a touching confession, that may be regarded as a model for all time. “And while I was speaking,” he says, “and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the Lord my God for the holy mountain of my God,” Gabriel, being caused to fly swiftly, came to him with the following important communication: ‘‘Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people, and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. Know, therefore, and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem, unto the Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that, shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined. And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week; and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.”

First, it is clear that the subject of this prophecy is not the Christian Church, but the history of Israel, for it is said, “Seventy weeks are determined upon THY people, and upon thy holy which of course can be none other than the Jews and Jerusalem, for these were Daniel’s people, and Daniel’s holy city, and it was solely about these he was praying and fasting and confessing. It is also said that “from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem;” and still further, we read of “the sacrifice and the oblation all conclusively showing that it is the destiny of the Jews we are to keep in view in this remarkable passage.

Second, of the seventy weeks, Tregelles, whose competency to decide such a question will not be doubted, says, “The word itself [translated ‘weeks’] is strictly, something divided into or consisting of seven parts—a heptad, a hebdomad. It bears the same grammatical relation to the numeral seven as one of the Hebrew words used for ten does to the other of similar meaning. Gesenius simply defines its meaning to be ‘a septenary number,’ he then speaks of its use as applied sometimes to days, sometimes to years;—the word itself, however, defines nothing as to the denomination to which it belongs, whether the one or the other. . . . In the present passage it takes its denomination from years. which had been previously mentioned in Daniel’s prayer: Daniel had been praying to God, and making confession in behalf of his people, because he saw that the seventy yearswhich had been denounced as the term of the captivity of Judah, were accomplished; and thus the denomination of years connects itself with the answer granted to him: he had made inquiry about the accomplishment of seventy years; he receives an answer relative to seventy heptads of years.” It appears, then, that by the seventy weeks we are to understand seventy heptads, just as we are in the habit of saying, the census is taken every decade, or ten decades have nearly completed their course since the declaration of American independence was made. The most careless reader of the Sacred Scriptures must have noticed the prominence and significance of the number seven^ as the symbol of dispensational completeness or fullness, and it would be easy to prove that the Holy Ghost has divided the entire national history of Israel, from the exodus down to the close of the present dispensation, into three great periods, each of seven times seventy years, just as He divides the genealogy of our Lord into three periods, each of seven times two generations. Without dwelling upon this, however, the only point that now demands special attention is the testimony, given in Daniel, that seventy heptads must run their round in the future of his people and his holy city, “to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and the prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy, that is, the most holy place, as the language is never in any other passage applied to a person, but to the holy of holies belonging to the tabernacle or temple.

Third, as Bagster’s Polyglot Bible correctly states in the margin, the seventy heptads begin from the twentieth year of Artaxerxes, when the royal decree was issued to Nehemiah to restore and to build Jerusalem, and not from the seventh year of the Persian monarch, when permission was given to Ezra the priest to reconstruct the demolished house of his God. Moreover, it is doubtless known to every one that the dates found in the heads of the chapters and at the top of the pages in our English version possess no divine authority, and are generally taken from Archbishop Usher’s Chronology. But even he, after careful review, and without any doctrinal or prophetic object whatever to accomplish, announced, as the result of patient and particular attention to the point, that the twentieth year of Artaxerxes corresponds to the year 454 before Christ, and not to the year 446, which is the date still generally retained. As all are aware, our Lord’s birth occurred four years earlier than the time assigned in our common chronology, and hence He was crucified in the Jewish month Nisan, A. D. 29, which added to the year 454 B. C., when, in the same month, Nisan, the decree of Artaxerxes was issued, we have precisely 483 years, or sixty-nine heptads from the command to restore and build Jerusalem, to the very month when Messiah was cut ofT, but not for Himself.

Fourth, the seventy heptads are broken up by Gabriel into seven heptads, threescore and ten heptads, and one heptad. During the first period of seven heptads, “the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times,” or as it is in the margin, in strait of times. Then follow threescore and two weeks, when “Messiah shall be cut off, but not for himself, [or, ‘shall have nothing,’ as it is in the margin]: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuaiy; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined, [or, ‘it shall be cut off by desolations’: margin]. And he shall confirm the [not the, but a, as the margin has it] covenant with many for one week [heptad]: and in the midst of the week [heptad] he shall cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate [‘upon the battlements shall be the idols of the desolater’: margin] and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate” [‘desolater’: margin].

It is clear that the translators of our English Bible regarded the whole of this striking passage as fulfilled at the first coming of Christ, and hence the forced rendering of much of the language but it is equally clear from the marginal reading, where the correct translation is given, that the prophecy reaches to the close of the present dispensation, and indicates the overwhelming calamities, mentioned so often in the Scriptures, which are coming upon the Jews just before the second advent. It is obviously the design of the Holy Ghost in Daniel to describe the character and career of Gentile power, after the dominion passed out of the hands of apostate Israel, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled; and accordingly the seventy heptads reach to the end, when the time shall come to seal up the vision and prophecy, which we know did not occur at the first coming of Christ, for much yet remains to be fulfilled. We find, therefore, that after sixty-nine heptads, or 483 years, Messiah shall be cut off, and have nothing, for He was so thoroughly disowned and rejected by His own people. His mangled body must needs be buried in a borrowed tomb. Then what follows? “The people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.” This is a remarkable expression. It declares that a certain people shall destroy the city, and they shall be the people of a prince that is afterwards to come, or in other words, the Romans will destroy the city, and the prince afterwards to come will be the head of the Roman empire. There is a break, consequently, between the desolation of the city by the people and the coming of the prince, but of what duration we are not informed; for, in dealing with the Jews, God makes no note of time, except when they are in their own land. It is ignorance of this important principle which has led avowed infidels and writers of the Colenso school, “worse than an infidel,” to assert that the Sacred Scriptures contain a false statement in declaring that four hundred and eighty years elapsed from the exodus to the time when Solomon began to build the temple. They tell us that there were 601 years, but they include 121 years during the period of the Judges, when the Israelites were in captivity under a foreign yoke, and this time of shame and of slavery the Lord does not count.

Hence, we are not surprised that nothing is said of the length of the interval between the destruction of the city, when the Jews are sold into slavery, and the coming of the prince, but we are told that he, that is, the prince that shall come, shall confirm a covenant with many for one week, or the seventieth heptad, and in the midst of the week, he shall cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease, and upon the battlements shall be seen the idols of the desolater, and for the remainder of the heptad, embracing three years and a half, or forty and two months, or twelve hundred and sixty days, or a time, times, and the dividing of a time, as it is variously expressed, there shall be utter desolation, until that determined shall be poured upon the desolater, who is to be destroyed by the epiphany of Christ’s personal coming.

Of this prince, there is frequent mention in the Sacred Scriptures. In the seventh chapter of Daniel he is described under the symbol of a little horn “that had eyes, and a mouth that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows. I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them, until the Ancient of days came. . . . And he shall speak great words against the Most High, and wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws; and they shall be given into his hand, until a time, and times, and the dividing of time.” In the eighth chapter it is said that “in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up. And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power, [the book of Revelation tells us how the power is gained and maintained]: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people. And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace [or prosperity: margin] shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand.” In the eleventh chapter we have a vision which is expressly said to be concerning things that shall befall Daniel’s people, the Jews, in the latter days, and which reaches on to the time when Daniel’s people, the Jews, shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book, the time also, as it is expressly said of the resurrection of the righteous dead. In this vision the Antichrist, who fills up the seventieth heptad, is described as “a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honor of the kingdom: but he shall come in peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries.” Here the Critical and Experimental Commentary, of which Dr. David Brown is one of the authors, says, that while the primary reference is to Antiochus Epiphanes, Antitypically. Antichrist’s relations towards Israel are probably delineated.” “And arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate. . . . And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvelous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be done.” Upon this Dr. David Brown’s Commentary remarks, “The wilful king here, though primarily Antiochus, is antitypically and mainly Antichrist, the seventh head of the seven-headed and ten-horned beast of Rev. xiii, and the ‘beast’ of Armageddon, who gathers together thither the kings of the earth against the Lamb, (Rev. xvi: 13, i6; xix: 19).”

It is apparent at a glance that, while Antiochus may have been a type and precursor of Antichrist, the former does not exhaust the meaning of these remarkable prophecies; for our Lord evidently alludes to the actions of the same person to whom the Holy Ghost, in Daniel, refers, as taking place long after Antiochus had passed away; and the divine Spirit, in Thessalonians, obviously describes the same person as appearing long after the Apostle’s time, when He declares that the day of the Lord shall not come, except there come the apostasy first, “and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” It is the same person of whom our Lord speaks, when He says to the Jews, “I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive,” (John v: 43). It is the same person who occupies so large a part of the book of Revelation, which, with the exception of the first three chapters, contains a prophetic history in symbol of the last days, embracing the cruel persecution of the godly remnant of the Jews by the Antichrist, who is to be cast alive into a lake burning with brimstone at the true Christ’s advent to inaugurate the millennial kingdom of a thousand years. It is the same person of whom frequent mention is made by the prophets, who, it is needless to s-ay, agree perfectly in describing his appalling wickedness, his daring atheism, his dreadful power, and in asserting that he shall come to an end in a manner entirely unexampled in the history of the world.

But, blessed be God, his authority shall be brief, for, as we learn in Daniel, it is in the midst of the last or seventieth heptad, his idols shall be placed upon the battlements to be worshipped, as we learn in the Apocalypse, leaving twelve hundred and sixty days, or forty and two months, to run his disastrous career. It was the universally received opinion of the early Church that these days and months are to be understood literally, and only within a comparatively recent period was the “year-day system” of interpretation invented, in order that the predictions concerning Antichrist might be applied in all their force to the Papacy. It is clear, however, that such a principle of interpretation, so utterly subversive of the “indispensable canon” of Vitringa, “that we must not, without solid and necessary reasons, depart from the primary, proper, and grammatical sense,” would never have been imagined, had there been no preconceived opinion to maintain or purpose to accomplish. If the Holy Spirit had meant years He would have said years instead of days, and the facts that have occurred since A. D. 1866, the time fixed by post-millennial writers for the downfall of the Papacy, completely overthrow the theories that have been built upon the year- day system, and add one more to the long list of illustrations of man’s folly in seeking to bend the word of God, like a piece of soft wax, to suit his own fancies. The Papacy was never more vigorous than it is now. It is keeping all Europe astir with anxiety and apprehension, and its progress in the two great Protestant countries of Great Britain and the United States is so rapid that it may not be long before they are at its feet.

It is true that there is much in Romanism, and, alas! much in Protestantism which is typical of Antichrist, and which is surely leading on to the manifestation of Antichrist, as the Spirit warns the babes in Christ, when He says, by the Apostle John, “Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that Antichrist shall come, even now are there many Antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time,” (1 John ii: 18). But whoever reads the Scriptures attentively and impartially must be convinced that the real Antichrist, who, as Greswell shows, “signifies another Christ, a pro-Christ, a vice-Christ,” is neither an organization, nor a succession of individuals, but a person, appearing in the last days, as the exponent and head of the universal infidelity and blasphemy that shall prevail. Whatever, therefore, tends to degrade Christ as the divine and only Saviour, and to exalt and deify man, is essentially antichrist in its spirit and aim, whether it be found in the Roman Catholic or Protestant body. But this is precisely the tendency of the popular preaching of the day. The humbling doctrines of God’s word have given place in thousands of professedly Christian pulpits to the “gospel of manhood,” as it is called, and to “the development of the divine element in every human soul and there seems to be little recognition of the solemn truth, that the gospel of manhood is just the opposite of the gospel of Jesus, and that there is no divine element in any soul, until it is born again by the wonder-working power of the Holy Ghost, and thus made a partaker of the divine nature through faith in Christ. Nearly every religious journal furnishes painful proof in one way or another that the Church is drifting rapidly from the ancient land marks both in doctrine and practice, to be speedily wrecked upon the fatal coast of the Laodiceans, while the secular press is helping the Ministers it most admires to ripen the fruit of the world’s boasted progress in the appearing of the Antichrist.

As the sum of God’s testimony upon this important subject, it may be stated, that dominion in the hands of the Gentiles since the time of Nebuchadnezzar will demonstrate man’s failure far more impressively, and on a far vaster theatre than when it was exercised by Israel; that during the period intervening between the sixty-ninth and seventieth week of Daniel’s vision, our rejected but ascended Lord is gathering out an elect people to the praise of the glory of His grace; that the natural descendants of Abraham will be partially restored to their land as the result of a covenant made with a Prince of the revived Roman empire existing in ten confederated kingdoms; that in the midst of the week this Prince will establish idolatry, causing his image to be worshipped, as the crowning iniquity of the self-glorification now witnessed on every hand; that a faithful remnant of godly Jews will suffer terrible persecutions for their refusal to comply with the impious demand; and that in their despair, the true Christ, they have so long refused, will descend from heaven for their deliverance, and for the destruction of their oppressor. Then shall follow the introduction of the millennial reign, and the fulfillment of many glowing prophecies concerning the Jews, that can not possibly refer to the return from the Babylonian captivity, as when it is written, “Thus saith the Lord of hosts. It shall yet come to pass, that there shall come people, and the inhabitants of many cities: and the inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying. Let us go speedily to pray before the Lord, and to seek the Lord of hosts; I will go also. Yea, many people and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the Lord. Thus saith the Lord of hosts. In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold, out of all the languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, we will go with you; for we have heard that God is with you,” (Zech. viii: 20-23).

Scores of similar predictions could be quoted, if space permitted, many of which even post- millennial expositors admit must be taken literally, and as they can not possibly allude to the return of a few dispirited Jews from Babylon, neither can they possibly be fulfilled in what is now going on in the Church; not merely because such a supposition would be doing gross violence to the “indispensable canon of interpretation,” noticed at the beginning of this chapter, but because it is plainly declared in the New Testament that the Church as now existing, forming the mystical body and bride of Christ, was unknown to the Old Testament prophets. The Holy Ghost explicitly affirms that it was a mystery, that is, unrevealed, “which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets [that is, the New Testament prophets] by the Spirit; that the Gentiles shall be fellow- heirs, and of the same body. . . . which [mystery] from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God,” (Eph. iii: 5-9). When, therefore, the reader of the Bible discovers in the predictions of the old prophets concerning the Jews and Jerusalem, nothing but allusions to the Gentile Church, he finds that which even the prophets did not know. But apart from this, it would be amusing if it were not humiliating, to notice the cool effrontery and selfishness with which Gentile Christians are in the habit of parcelling out all the curses of the old prophets literally to the poor Jew, and appropriating all the blessings to themselves. A Christian in arguing with a Jew might seek to convince him of error by showing that more than a hundred predictions with regard to the promised Messiah have been literally fulfilled in the person, the life, and the death of Jesus of Nazareth, and that far more than a hundred predictions in relation to the sufferings of His own people have been literally fulfilled in their history. “Very well,” replies the Jew, “but I see many predictions promising the future restoration and glory of my kinsmen according to the flesh, in their own land.” “Oh,” says the Christian,” these do not refer to you, but they have been fulfilled spiritually to us Gentiles.” No wonder the Jew scofls at such an interpretation.

It may he asked, however, whether the New Testament does not compel this spiritual interpretation of such passages. The answer is, the New Testament can not be in conflict with the Old Testament, and the fact is, the New Testament confirms the view here taken of the literal application of the Old Testament to the Jews and Jerusalem. For example, our Lord speaking to His disciples of the literal Jerusalem, as all admit, said to them, “When ye see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh: . . . and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled,” (Luke xxi: 20-24). If this does not mean that the time will come when Jerusalem shall cease to be trodden down of the Gentiles, and of course restored to its ancient inhabitants, it is difficult to know what language implies. Again, after the resurrection of the Saviour, the disciples, who had been sadly disappointed and dispirited by His death, as they “trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel,” came to Him with the anxious inquiry, “Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” He did not give the slightest intimation that they were mistaken in supposing that the kingdom would be again restored to Israel, as He certainly would have done if they had been in error in their fondest expectation, but He only 1‘ebuked their unprofitable curiosity by replying, “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power,” (Acts i: 6, 7).

The word Judaea occurs in the New Testament about forty-five times; the word Israel, about seventy times; the word Jew about one hundred and forty times; and the word Jerusalem about two hundred times; and they are always used literally, except in the very few instances where some qualifying word is found, as “Jerusalem which is above,” “new Jerusalem,” or “heavenly Jerusalem.” If it be argued that the Apostle tells us, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus,” (Gal. iii: 28); while it is true that there is no distinction as to our state and standing by grace, it does not follow that the Jew loses his national characteristics and personal identity by becoming a Christian, just as it is certain that the bondman and the freeman do not surrender their outward condition, and that the male and the female do not give up sex by being united to Christ. Not only is there no hint in the New Testament of the fulfillment in Christian experience during the present dispensation of the almost innumerable promises addressed to the Jews in the Old Testament concerning their future temporal and spiritual blessings in the land of their fathers, but directly the reverse is plainly taught. “For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written. There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: for this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sakes. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance,” [or change of mind, as the word repentance really means] (Rom. xi: 25-29). Even Dr. David Brown, as we have seen, admits that the gifts and calling of God, referring to the covenant with Abraham, imply territorial restoration, and this is all that is contended for here, without going into the question which he raises of the revival of Jewish peculiarities during the millennium.

Not one jot or tittle, therefore, of all that God promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob shall in any wise fail. He entered into a solemn covenant to give to their seed the land of Canaan, and the blood of His own Son has been poured out to ratify the covenant. No power, then, on earth or in hell can set it aside. That Son shall yet reign upon the throne of David, as announced to the virgin Mary, and elsewhere throughout the New Testament, and if readers of the Bible would stop to think, instead of blindly following tradition, they would see that in no conceivable sense is the throne of David in our hearts, nor yet in heaven, but just where our Lord says it is, when He declares He “will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem; and Jerusalem shall be called, A city of truth, and the mountain of the Lord of hosts. The holy mountain. . . . Thus saith the Lord of hosts. If it be marvellous in the eyes of the remnant of this people in these days, should it also be marvellous in mine eyes? saith the Lord of hosts. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Behold, I will save my people from the east country, and from the west country; and I will bring them, and they shall dwell in the midst of Jerusalem; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God, in truth and in righteousness,” (Zech. viii: 3-8). They are scattered now to the ends of the earth, but He who will gather the dust of His sleeping saints shall surely bring them back to the Canaan of which He said, “The land shall not be sold forever: for the land is mine,” (Levit. xxv: 23). For this purpose they have been so miraculously preserved through the bondage and dreadful persecutions of twenty-five hundred years. Found among all nations, and yet not mingling with any, they are still a distinct and peculiar people, surviving the sweeping revolutions of the past, and reserved for a sublimer destiny than the genius of the most ambitious statesman has sought to attain for his country.

To the Jew with far more truth than to the Puritan may be applied the fine language of Macaulay, “For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed;” and if aroused to resentment by the wrongs his ancestors suffered. he has his revenge in the ruin that has overtaken all who have oppressed them. Egypt, Edom, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Rome, the mightiest powers of earth, have sought to crush them, and have perished for the attempt. Well might Frederick the Great say, “Meddle not with these Jews; no man ever touched them and prospered and of the celebrated Hegel his biographer states, that having often and long thought upon Hebrew history, and often changed his thoughts, “all his life long, it tormented him as a dark enigma.” It is a dark enigma indeed unless studied in the light of God’s prophetic word, but all is clear when we follow with unquestioning faith the testimonies of the Holy Ghost concerning the future of this wonderful people. Already they are largely controlling the course of current events by their splendid intellectual endowments, for not only is it well known that the continental press of Europe is mainly in their hands, but in the more stately journals of science and philosophy, in the professorial chairs of the Universities, in the council chambers of royalty, in the management of finances that constitute the sinews of war, they are quietly and unconsciously forecasting their approaching greatness, when the vail which even unto this day is upon their hearts shall be lifted at the coming of their Messiah to give them the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Then shall be fulfilled the prophecy of Moses, “There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky. The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy before thee; and shall say. Destroy them. Israel then shall dwell in safety alone: the fountain of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine; also his heavens shall drop down dew. Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thy excellency! and thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee; and thou shalt head upon their high places,” (Deut. xxxiii: 26-29).