THE THOUSAND YEARS IN BOTH TESTAMENTS

 

By

 

NATHANIEL WEST

 

 

PART 1

 

It is a very common opinion, widely spread throughout Christendom, and in most cases believed to be true, that “the thousand years” of which John speaks in the Apocalypse, Rev. 20: 1-7, are mentioned nowhere else in the sacred Scriptures.  The doctrine of a millennial kingdom on earth, introduced by the advent of Christ in His glory, is a Jewish fable without support from the word of God.  A deeper study of the sacred volume dissipates this false prejudice and reveals the fact that, not only are “the thousand years” of which John speaks found everywhere in both Testaments, but that next to the eternal state, the millennial blessedness of God’s people on earth, and of the nations, is the one high point in all prophecy, from Moses to John, the bright, broad tableland of all eschatology.  The prejudice against the study of a theme so sublime and far-reaching, and occupying so much space in the revelation of God has been pleased to give us, is as remarkable in our age, as [Page 2] it is inexcusable, although by no means surprising.  To use the words of Prof. Van Oosterzee, “We cannot be surprised that the inner discrepancy between the modern theological philosophy and the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures should perhaps, on no point come forth so clearly, and apparently so irreconcilably, as precisely in reference to the doctrine of the ‘Last Things’ – Eschatology.  Here, especially are the terms, ‘Jewish conception,’ ‘oriental garb,’ ‘poetic imagery,’ ‘accommodation to the narrow ideas of the age,’ etc., etc., the order of the day, and the doctrine of the consummation of the ages is ordinarily regarded as a moderately insignificant appendix to some philosophico-dogmatic system.  In Scripture, on the contrary, it is distinctly presented in the foreground, and for the believer it attains, with every year and every century, increased significance, so that what for a time seems to be an appendix, becomes eventually the main question!*[* Person and work of the Redeemer, 450.]

 

Every faithful student of the Scriptures, unbiased by false theories of interpretation, will attest these words as true.  What we find in the New Testament as its outcome in respect to the ages and the kingdom, has already lain in the bosom of the Old Testament from the beginning.  The closing part of the New Testament is but the full flower of which the opening part of the Old Testament was the precious seed, the kingdom one and the same, in essence, all the way.  Nothing appears in the latter revelation that was not hid in the earlier, nothing in John that was not in Moses.  This is what Augustine meant by his golden maxim, “Novum Testamentum in Vetrere latet, Vetus in Novo patet.” In the [page 3] Old Testament the New is concealed; in the New the Old is revealed.”  We shall find “the thousand years” in many places of God’s word, long before the Rabbis ever had a being or a name.

 

We shall be obliged in this investigation to make use of what men call “technical” terms, in order to save circumlocution.  We speak of the “Last Things.”  The Greek term for this is “Eschata,” and by these are meant what should “come to pass,” not in the “latter,” as oftentimes King James’ version has it, but in the “last” days, as Moses, Joel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Peter, Paul and John, preferred to have it.  If we study the eschatology of the Old Testament, we will find the Eschata there identical with the Eschata of the New Testament, and the Eschatology of both Testaments the same, only the New is more developed than the Old.  Such is the organic and genetic character of revelation and of prophecy that if “the thousand years” are not in Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets, they have no right to be in John.  To understand the prophets it is necessary, however, to understand the Apocalypse, and to understand the Apocalypse it is necessary to understand the prophets.  The one is light to the other, and reciprocally.  In order to attain a clear conception of Old testament prophecy and its fulfilment, we must combine both Advents of Messiah, remembering that the first only brought the partial fulfilment of the prophetic word which yet awaits the second in order to secure its plenary accomplishment.

 

Joel’s prophecy as to the outpouring of the Spirit in the last days, and of the great and notable day of the Lord, with all its terrestrial and celestial phenomena, the final redemption of Israel, and the transfiguration of the Holy Land, was only incipiently and partly [page 4] fulfilled to a few, an election out of Israel, at the first coming of Christ, and awaits a far larger fulfilment at His second appearing.  So the prediction of Amos, in reference to the dispersion and sifting of Israel the “Sinful Kingdom,” and God’s visitation of the Gentiles, “after this,” to take out of them a people for His name, met a partial and precursive fulfilment in the first calling of the Gentiles to the knowledge of Christ, in the days of the apostles, as James in the first council at Jerusalem assures us.  We see that by comparing Acts 15: 13-18 with Amos 9: 8-12.  But there is to be a grander fulfilment still in coming days, when, now that a Second Dispersion and Sifting of Israel has occurred, since James spoke, there shall be a fullness of the Gentiles “after this,” also, and finally the fallen Booth of David, or Israel’s proper Kingdom, as the prophets picture it, will be re-erected with the fullness of Israel converted to God, and the glorious millennial age heave into view.  So it is with reference to Isaiah’s Redeemer coming to Zion, and Hosea’s Israel abiding alone for many days, and Micah’s halting daughter of Zion to whom at length, comes the “former dominion.”  Whatever occurred to Israel graciously, at the first coming of Christ, was only a preliminary fulfilment to be exhaustively completed for Israel, at His second coming.  Such is the law of prophecy and the law of fulfilment, and it will save us from many an error, if only we are careful to remember it.

 

THE KINGDOM AND PROPHECY.

 

From first to last, the kingdom of God on earth, its inception, progress, conduct, and consummation in glory, is the one theme of Old Testament prophecy.  To this end were the converts with Christ, Adam, [page 5] Noah, Abraham, Israel and David.  To this end was the choice of the one national “Israel,” the “choice forever,” as a prophetic, priestly, kingly nation, a messianic and mediatorial nation, the one national “Servant of Jehovah,” and national Son of God, standing between God and mankind, and bringing salvation to a lost world; a people from whom should come the one personal “Israel,” Prophet, Priest and King, the one Mediator and true Messiah, Seed of the woman, Seed of Abraham, Seed of David, Son of Man and Son of God, in whom all nations should bless themselves – Jesus Christ.  Identified with Him, individually, and called by His name, stands Israel collectively, in His whole Messianic work and kingdom.  Neither acts without the other.  The Pentateuch prophecies refer chiefly to the people.  The Messianic Psalms emphasize the King, the Kingdom, and the Priest.  Isaiah dwells upon the prophetic character of Israel; Ezekiel displays the priestly; Daniel reveals the kingly; Zechariah blends all in one.  Old Testament prophecy knows no other subjects of discourse than these, Israel, Messiah, and the Nations.  As to the kingdom, Israel had it, under the Old Testament, in its outward form; the Gentiles have it under New Testament, in its inward form; in the age to come, Jews and Gentiles together, shall have it, both forms in one, one kingdom of Messiah, spiritual, visible and glorious, with Israel still the central people, the prelude of the New Jerusalem and the nations walking in its light forever.

 

The division of the Davidic kingdom into two, laid the ground for all the prophecies concerning the “Kingdom of Israel” and the “Kingdom of Judah,” i.e., the ten-tribed Israel, called “Ephraim,” and the two-tribed Israel, called “Judah,” as distinguished from “all [page 6] Israel,” or the twelve-tribed Israel, an election from those children shall one day form the national nucleus of the millennial kingdom.

 

The catastrophe that brought destruction to Jerusalem and captivity to Judah under the Chaldean King, forms the ground of the common destruction of the canonical prophets into their present classification.  The Babylonian exile is the middle point.  If we study the prophecies that speak of the Kingdom of Messiah, Israel’s kingdom, the Millennial Kingdom, and the relation of the nations to each, - all as parts of the Kingdom of God on earth, - we shall take in all the prophets.  If we group these around the several great epochs of Israel’s history, they will fall into three main divisions, (1), pre-exile prophets (2), exile prophets (3), post-exile prophets.  Or, to be still more specific, they will fall into five chief divisions: (1) The pre-Assyrian, viz., Obadiah, Joel, Jonah; i.e., the prophets of the period prior to the Assyrian invasion and captivity of Israel; (2), The Assyrian, viz., Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Nahum: (3) The transition prophets, viz., Zephaniah and Habbakuk; (4) The prophets of the Chaldean period, viz., Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel; (5) the Persian period, or period of the Restoration down to the close of prophecy, viz., Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi.  Sixteen in all; all speaking of the Kingdom of God and its development through Israel in relation to the nations, amidst conflicts and victories, judgment and mercy, apostasy and recovery, until the whole world becomes subject to Israel and Israel’s king.

 

As a further help to our investigation, it is necessary we should know that the Kingdom of God, in its development, though one, exists in different forms, and runs through various ends of ages.  Essentially, it is one. [page 7]  Phenomenally, it is many.  It is singular and plural, both.  It is an everlasting kingdom in its essence.  It is a temporal kingdom in its forms.  It exists forever.  The Dispensations pass away.  The Kingdom still abides.  New forms emerge along the ages until the endless age arrives, and the final form appears.  And yet more.  With the outer historic development of prophecy as well as of history, an inner genetic development runs parallel.  The original prophetic grem, found in the first promise in the garden, true to scientific law, parts itself into law and gospel, divides, expands, and assumes more ample and concrete forms.  What is at first most general, becomes particular.  What is obscure becomes more clear.  The ages and the ends are evolved according to the same law of “becoming,” which obtains in the natural world, viz., by division and integration.  The result from all is that, as prophecy advances, what is folded up darkly, at first, is opened out in clearer and distincter statement later on.  The ages and the ends come more definite.  The later predictions explain the earlier ones.  And, along this line of divine evolution, as there is no “spontaneous generation” in the kingdom of God, so there is no “transmutation of species.”  God alone creates.  Israel, the created people of God, abides Israel, and the history of Israel is not a mere frame in which to hang pictures of the New Testament Gentile church.  The kingdom is ever the kingdom, one sided for Israel alone in time past, one sided for the Gentiles alone now, outward in the one case, inward in the other, but both sided for both in one, hereafter, Israel evermore the root, the centre, organic basis, and ground of all.  By observation of this, we learn the characteristic differences between pre-exile prophecy on the one hand, and exile with post-exile prophecy on [page 8] the other.  It is precisely along this line of development we detect the evolution of the ages in prophecy itself, and are obliged to hold that Prophecy as well as History as an “organism,” as is Nature, the kingdom and the Church – the one a parable of the other – “natural law in the spiritual world;” and “spiritual law in the natural world,” in short, as Newton showed, a system of universal and identical laws producing analogous phenomena in different spheres.  Where there is life there is law.  It is precisely along this line of study of the Word of God, we discover not only a description of the Millennial Kingdom yet to be, but are able to detect the relative location of the millennial age itself, even in Old Testament prophecy, and find it exactly as the Apostle John has pictured and located it – its character, its name, its measure, and the events by which it is opened and closed.  The existence of “the 1,000 years” in the Old Testament is a matter of scientific demonstration, as truly as the existence of any geological age in the history of the planet, and is supported by an exegesis, grounded in the organic unity and continuity of prophecy in both Testaments, that is unassailable.  It is another proof of the truth of the golden saying of Augustine, “The New Testament lies concealed in the Old, the Old stands revealed in the New.”

 

The six pre-exile prophets form a connected chain ending with Nahum.  Of these, Isaiah is the chief, his radius of vision spanning all horizons, near, remote, and between and losing itself in the breast of eternal glory.  He sees all things, however, in one divine perspective, one divine light, one divine picture, Messiah the centre of all, Israel around Him, the Nations around both.  The ends and ages are all confounded in the [page 9] first end, and the age following.  All is a composite photography, the events standing cheek to cheek, which only later prophecy can separate.  On the earlier prophets, the exile and post-exile prophets rest as on sure ground, the spirit of prophecy being one.  Their office is not to transcend, but develop, the earlier.  What Isaiah was to the earlier, Daniel was to the later.  He bequeaths to them, and to us, the great problem of the Millennial Age, whose epoch Isaiah, Micah, and Ezekiel, have fixed, the problem of Israel’s final future and relation to the nations, with Israel’s history between the return from exile, and Israel’s final redemption in the glory of the Kingdom at Messiah’s second coming.  Its solution is given, also, in the various visions of the four empires, four beasts, and seventy weeks, whose last week is rent off from the rest in fulfilment, the Roman times of the Gentiles lying between – a seventieth week wholly eschatological, the basis of the seals, trumpets and vials in John’s Apocalypse.  The same problem appears in another form to the night visions of Zechariah, Haggai’s shaking of the nations, and Malachi’s burning day, whose close is crowned with healing from the sun of righteousness.  The solution of the great problem of Israel’s future, spring from the breach in David’s Kingdom, is the solution of the problem of the Millennial Kingdom, and comes with Israel’s future acceptance of David’s Son as their Lord, the closing up of the ancient breach in David’s Kingdom, the union of Israel and Judah in one nation, on the mountains of the fatherland forever; - in short, Israel a converted people and nation, acknowledged by Christ in person, the nations applauding.  With that consummation, after judgments and mercies unknown before, and the revelation of Christ Himself [page 10] in His glory, dawns the Millennial Age.  Search where we may, through all the prophets, this is the one theme, the redemption of Israel, after judgment has fallen on both, Christ the glory of all.  It is the time of the “Kingdom restored to Israel.”  Search where we may, we shall nowhere find unveiled the mystery of the New Testament “Church.”  See Rom. 16: 25.  1Cor. 2: 7, 8.  Wph. 3: 8, 9. Col. 1: 24, 27.  Nor does the disclosure of this, in the New Testament, avail to destroy the prophetic word of the Old in reference to Israel, or abolish the standing contrast in the Old between Israel and the Nations, or in the New between Israel, the Nations, and the Church.

 

It is among the “Eschata,” or “Last Things,” the things to “come to pass in the last days,” or “End Time,” that we find the Millennial Age.  It lies, as we shall see, between the “Yom Yehovah,” or “Day of the Lord,” which, in the New Testament, is called “The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ,” and the endless age of the “New Jerusalem” in the final “New heaven and earth.”  It is bounded by two distinct judgments, one at the opening, one at the close of the Millennial Age, the opening judgment being that of the Nations, and of all powers, terrestrial and super-terrestrial, opposed to Christ and His reign, as only by a judgment upon Israel and Jerusalem, ending in the redemption of both.  The “Yom Yehovah” everywhere precedes the Millennial Age, which is the age of Israel’s glory in the Kingdom, and comprehends in itself most of the Eschata of the Old Testament.  The judgment that closes the Millennial Age is represented as a judgment on Gog and Magog, which extends itself to a “visitation” of final doom upon all the wicked, after which Israel rests [page 11] eternally secure in their glorified land, the nations of the saved walking in the light of the Holy City, the Lord Himself dwelling forever among His people.  Such, in general, is the Old Testament representation.

 

To understand this, however, it is necessary to know first, the manner in which the prophets divided the whole course of time, and the way in which the ages and ends are represented in prophecy, as also the relation in which the Eschata stand to these ends and ages, first in pre-exile prophecy, and next in exile prophecy.

 

GENERAL DISTRIBUTION OF TIME.  PRE-EXILE PROPHECY.

 

And first, as to the division of time, in pre-exile prophecy.  The whole course of time, from the creation of the heaven and earth to the re-creation of the same, is divided into two great ages, the bisecting epoch between which is called the “End.”  In this End is placed the “Yom Yehovah,” during which the personal self-revelation of Jehovah in glory, for the deliverance of Israel, and the destruction of His and their enemies, is also placed, and for the establishment of His kingdom in glory on earth.  To this “Day of the Lord” belong all the Eschata, or Last Things, that precede the age of glory on earth, and are connected with the Advent of Messiah.  To this one End all prophecy constantly looks, in every picture of the future, from Joel to Malachi.  The first of these two ages is the pre-Messianic age, or Jewish age, with all the time preceding, and is called the Hebrew theology, “Olam Hazzeh,” “this present world.”  The second of these ages is the Messianic age, and is called “Olam Habba,” or “the world to come.”  The New Testament employs [page 12] these divisions of time, and they are ever in the mouth of our Lord and His Apostles, as “Aion ho houtos,” “this present world,” and “Aion ho mellon,” “the world to come,” i.e., “this age,” and the “coming age.”  These terms have no reference to individual life here, or the life of the disembodied spirit, after death.  The bisecting point between them is not death, but the End of this first age.  They relate wholly to the course of earthly history, and the development of the kingdom of God on earth.  In pre-exile prophecy in general, there is but one End, One Day of the Lord, One Judgment, One Advent of Messiah in glory; an all-comprehensive and undeveloped with but One age succeeding, the Messianic Age, the age of Israel in the kingdom and the glory, an End that “does not discriminate between the Parousia in humility and the Parousia in glory, but beholds the whole work of Messiah as complete,” (Delitzsch.)  Therefore does Isaiah’s page shine the more intensely, for into that one age the whole grace and glory of Messiah’s work is concentrated.  All the sufferings of the “servant of Jehovah,” all the splendour of His reward, all there is for Jew, and all for gentile, focalize themselves in that one End and radiate out of that one succeeding age.  It is the uniform view of all pre-exile prophecy.  In the “Yom Yehovah,” – day of judgment, day of wonders, - day of wrath and day of mercy, - day of reeling for earth and shaking for heaven, - of tumult, storm, and fire, - of dissolution and reconstruction, - the nations are judged, the Gentile powers are smitten, Antichrist is destroyed, the wicked are swept away, Satan and his hosts are imprisoned in the pit, and Israel’s faithful dead are raised.  We see it all in [page 13] the “Little Apocalypse of Isaiah,” – Chapters 24-27.  Israel’s time begin.  In the proverb of the Rabbis, “Esau is the end of Olam Hazzeh, Jacob is the beginning of Olam Habba.”  It is the view of the prophetic portions of the Pentateuch, the Historical books, the Messianic Psalms, and of all the prophets prior to the exile.

 

The character of this Messianic age is painted in colours the most gorgeous and brilliant in the prophets, even as it is sung in strains the most inspiring, in the Psalms.  When the Lord has come and brought salvation with His own right arm, and Jacob’s tribulation is past, everything puts on a new appearance.  Under the New Covenant, sin is pardoned through Messiah’s death, the gospel is preached, the Gentiles are gathered, the Spirit is poured from on high, and streams of knowledge, holiness and life, perpetually overflow.  Showers of blessing continually fall.  The people are all righteous, and the righteous shine.  The City of Jerusalem is transformed, made glorious not alone by the boundless wealth of the nations then tributary to it, but by the new-creating presence of the Lord Himself.  The Temple is rebuilt in glory unsurpassed.  The Land itself is transfigured as an Eden.  Jerusalem is Jehovah’s throne.  Zion is His dwelling place.  The very desert blooms like Sharon.  Unwonted fruitfulness appears.  All nature is at peace, and man in harmony therewith.  Idolatry and War and Crime, exist no more.  Sin is restrained and death is checked, because Satan is bound.  The curse is gone, longevity returns, and Israel’s risen saints enjoy a deathless life, fresh and beauteous, as the flower on which the morning dew rests, and the morning light still shines.  In a new heaven and earth, [page 14] the Holy City is crowned with light, and the nations walk in that light.  A painless, tearless, sorrowless state, the reproach taken from the Jew, the veil taken from the nations, and death swallowed up in victory, the Bridegroom rejoicing over His Bride, Messiah reigning on David’s throne, a festive jubilee, Jehovah dwelling with His people, both in perfect fellowship and blessedness, is what we see, Eternal splendours streaming everywhere.  And just because all future ages are here inclosed in this one age, therefore, is it, for Isaiah, the “everlasting[*See note at end. – Ed.] age, and all things are everlasting that belongs to it.  Not indeed that it has but one form, and this one form eternal, but that its facts are so, be they of grace which is glory begun, or of glory which is grace made perfect.  All is everlasting, with Isaiah; an everlasting Kingdom, an everlasting Throne, an everlasting Covenant, an everlasting Nation, an everlasting Name, an everlasting Righteousness, an everlasting Joy, an everlasting Song, an everlasting Peace, an everlasting Holiness, an everlasting Life, an everlasting Dwelling, an everlasting Rock, an everlasting Redeemer, an everlasting Salvation, an everlasting God.  All, is olamic, aeonian, eternal, forever!  All eschatologies are mingled here in one, all ends in one End in which Messiah comes, all ages in the one Age which follows that one appearing.  The Rabbis call it the “Immortal Age,” and say of the righteous raised from their graves, that they “sit with crowns on their head and behold the splendour of God:” and that “All the good the prophets have spoken concerning Israel belongs to “Olam Habba,” the “world to come.”

 

If we represent, in schematic form, the manner [page 15] and ends as seen, in general, in pre-exile prophecy, the diagram will stand thus:

 

[Pre-Messianic Age.]   <<<>>>   [Advent. / End.]   <<<>>>  [Messianic Age.]

 

That is, two ages and one end between, the last age the everlasting one, or age that has no end.

 

EXILE PROPHECY

 

Let us come now to speak of exile prophecy.  Here we find a marked difference from all preceding prophecy, in respect to the ages and the ends, and the disposition of the Eschata.  Events that stood together in one picture, in the earlier prophets, begin to be parted here.  The hints in Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah, of such a possible development, and of which we shall speak later on, receive now their true significance.  We learn how the great epochs of Israel’s history are the great epochs of prophecy, and that the development of both runs parallel.  Our attention is attracted to the partition of the one end, and the development of the one age following.  Two Ends instead of one appear.  Two Advents instead of one.  Two Judgments instead of one.  Two Resurrections instead of one.  Two Ages following the ends instead of one., the endless age, of course, the last.  The whole cast and character of the future seem changed, as if some strange fatality on the part of the people, still unprepared to receive their promised Messiah at His first coming, had served to postpone the promised redemption.  This much is clear, that national Israel has not profited as it should by the catastrophe of the exile, for prophecy now speaks of a second destruction of rebuilt Jerusalem as the result of Israel’s impenitence, even after the [page 16] return from Babylon; a second dispersion, another long period of desolation, a curse of rejecting Messiah Himself.  And yet it pictures a second coming of Messiah, and Israel redeemed at last, triumphant in the promised kingdom and glory.

 

Something new has occurred.  The synthesis of ends and ages in pre-exile prophecy gives place to their analysis in post-exile prophecy.  The one end parts into two, each part closing itself up again, the space between becoming that an intermediate age, though still foreshortened, the age that is endless lying behind the last of these ends.  Instead of two ages and one end, as in pre-exile prophecy, we have three ages and two ends, schematized thus:

 

[Jewish Age.]   >>><<<   [1st. Advent. / End.]    >>><<<   [Christian Age.] >>><<<   [2nd. Advent. / End.]    >>><<<   [Millennial Age.]

 

At the end of the pre-Messianic or Jewish Age Messiah comes, but not in glory.  He is “cut off,” and there is “nothing for Him” – no kingdom in the form predicted, no crown.  He is rooted out by a violent death, and Israel is, moreover, rejected.  The Messianic Age is now divided into two, during the first of which the risen Messiah, ascended to Heaven, remains concealed and unseen throughout the whole period of Israel’s rejection, while the news of His name and His great salvation goes to the Gentiles.  It is the Church-historical period between the first and second Advents, a period closed up to Daniel, or at most, only briefly alluded to, even though its termini, the two Advents, are given.  It is the period when Israel’s national history is a blank before God.  As the end of the intermediate age, which is the end of His concealment in Heaven, He comes again and appears “in the clouds of Heaven,” and comes to [page 17] Israel penitent and believing, in the crisis of Israel’s last tribulation, and comes to “restore the kingdom to Israel.”  At His first coming He was rejected by Israel, and Israel was rejected by Him.  At His second coming He is accepted by Israel, and Israel is accepted by Him.  Then, there was “nothing for Him.”  Now, there is everything for Him.  Then, also, there was nothing for Israel as a nation.  Now, there is all.  The kingdom and the glory are for both, “under the whole heaven.”  Olam Habba, or the world to come, has become two worlds, of which the first, being an intermediate age, shares the nature of both, and while being the “world to come,” or Olam Habba,, with respect to the age preceding, is yet “this present world,” or Olam Hazzeh, with respect to the age still following.  It is our Christian Dispensation.  The Yom Yehovah, with its unaccomplished Eschata, still lies beyond.  Such is the picture Daniel gives us: Two ends, two ages, two advents, for the one end, one age, one advent, of pre-exile prophecy.  Messiah comes at the beginning of the fourth empire.  He comes also at its close.

 

But this is not all.  Ezekiel develops the ends and ages still more than Daniel does.  He has nothing to say of the first Advent, as Daniel has, and nothing of the Antichrist.  He has nothing to say of the missionary proclamation of the Gospel, or Israel’s prophetic calling, as Isaiah has.  He leaves to Isaiah the prophetic, to Daniel the kingly, and presents almost exclusively the priestly side of Israel in the kingdom.  He speaks in his earlier prophecies of the judgments of God on Jerusalem and the nations, but, his later visions are of Israel’s deliverance and the splendour of their land, city and temple, in the day of the personal manifestation of the “glory” to His people.  He speaks not [page 18] only of Israel’s spiritual regeneration by means of the “New Covenant,” which Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah have celebrated, but also of Israel’s final restoration as a people, their political reunion and national conversion, and independence, their blessedness and glory in the land promised to their fathers, God’s sanctuary in their midst, God their God, and David their Shepherd-Prince forevermore.  Instead of the Valley of Dry Bones with the Collossus towering over them, what we see is a resurrected people, standing up as a great army, and instinct with the “Spirit of Life from God.”  It is new-born Israel of the end-time, coming to their inheritance and priestly royalty, re-established in their land forever.  All this we get in what is called “Ezekiel’s Apocalypse,” embracing chapters 37-48.  His vision of the land, the city and the temple, chapters 40-48, is but a further expansion of what is foretold in chapter 37, and presents the priestly side of the same kingdom whose royal greatness Daniel had predicted.  Glorious in holiness it is to Ezekiel.  And, as to Daniel, it came with the coming of the “Son of Man” in the clouds of Heaven, in all its kingly grandeur, so, to Ezekiel, does it come in all its priestly ornament and holy beauty, with the entrance of the “glory” in the temple.  With the personal appearing of the “glory” the cosmical transfiguration begins, the temple waters flow.

 

But the peculiarity of Ezekiel is this, that even to this coming age of Israel’s blessedness in the kingdom, he sees an “end;” not an end to the kingdom but an end to the age.  Another end heaves into sight, the transition point between the Millennial Age and the Age that is endless; an end beyond the second end already seen in Daniel; a third end followed by the age [page 19] without end.  The event that marks this new end is the predicted war-march and judgment of Gog and Magog, at the end of Israel’s “many days” in the kingdom.  Just as in exile prophecy the one pre-exile end is developed into two, so, once again, these two ends are developed into three.  In Ezekiel, the second end expands itself into two.  Just as in Daniel, the judgment on Antichrist and Israel’s restoration in the kingdom, marks the opening of the age that lies beyond the second coming, so, in Ezekiel, does the judgment of Gog and Magog, which appears as the last judgment, mark the close of that age.  With that judgment, which, as we shall see, extends itself to the resurrection of the wicked and their final doom, in John’s Apocalypse, Ezekiel’s vision ceases.  What we have now, instead of two ends and three ages, are three ends and four ages, covering all time, from the exile down to the final new heaven and new earth of which Isaiah speaks, viz.: The Jewish Age and the end of it, the Christian Age and the end of it, the Millennial Age and the end of it, and the Endless Age of the New Jerusalem.  If we schematize the conception the diagram will stand thus:

 

[Jewish Age.]   >>><<<   [1st. Advent. / End. ]  >>><<<   [Christian Age.]  >>><<<   [2nd. Advent. / End.]  >>><<< [Millennial Age.]   >>><<<   [White Throne. / End.]  >>><<<  [Endless Age.]

 

What to us is now the “world to come,” will be to its own inhabitants “the present world,” even as our present age was the world to come, to pre-christian Judaism.  As time wears away, and the future comes to make the present, then glides into the past. Olam Habba becomes Olam Hazzeh, even on the other side of the second Advent.  In other words, the Messianic or everlasting age, which, in pre-exile prophecy, was [page 20] but one age following Messiah’s one Advent, and which in Daniel became two ages, by reason of the clear separation of the comings, has, in Ezekiel, become three ages by reason of the new end introduced: so making four in all, if we begin with the Jewish Age, viz.: (1) The period of Old Testament times; (2) the Church-historical period; (3) the Millennial Age of Israel in the kingdom; and (4) the Eternal State or New Jerusalem in the “New Heaven and Earth.”  The end of the Jewish Age brought resurrection, judgment, and a new age succeeding.  The end of our present age will do the same.  The end of the Millennial age will do the same.  In each case the kingdom receives a re-establishment in new form.  There is a re-creation.  A personal advent of Messiah marks the close of each age, save the Millennial.  No third advent at the judgment of Gog and Magog is intimated in Ezekiel’s nor even in John’s Apocalypse, for the final resurrection and the judgment of the wicked, into which the judgment of Gog extends itself, for the reason that no second departure of Christ from His people is revealed.  As in the Old Testament, so in the New, the last judgment is perspectively covered and connected with the judgment at the second coming of the Son of Man.

 

Such is the entire development of the ages and the ends in prophecy, - the Biblical AEonology and Teleology – from Genesis to Regenesis; the whole time prior to the first coming being regarded as the pre-Messianic Age.  Our own age is a parenthetic one.  The age next beyond that of our own is that of Israel in the kingdom.  The last age is what we call “Eternity;” time rolling on unto “ages of ages,” in the illimitable future, “world without end.” [page 21]

 

THE SUB-DISTRIBUTION OF TIME.

 

The Scriptures give us not only the ages and the ends, but also a sub-distribution of prophetic and historic time, from the period of the exile or blotting out of the visible kingdom of God on earth, down to its re-establishment, i.e., from the time of Israel’s subjection to the Gentile power to the time of Israel’s redemption from the same: or until the “mystery of God” concerning Israel’s blindness and rejection, and Israel’s new sight and recovery, is “finished,” under the sounding of the seventh trumpet.  Beyond that we find no sub-distribution, save the judgment on Gog already mentioned, and which, in connection with Isaiah 24:22 and Isaiah 65:17, extends itself to the final resurrection and judgment, and the New Heaven and Earth.  The sub-distribution we refer to is found first of all, in the vision of the great metallic image, or Monarchy-Colossus, Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream (B.C. 604) eighteen years before the destruction of Jerusalem (B.C. 586), that image being a symbol of the Gentile power standing on Israel’s prostrate body; or, if we combine the visions of Daniel with those of Ezekiel, then the Colossus stands erect in the midst of Israel’s national graveyard – “Habbikah Melcah Atsamoth” – “the valley full of bones, and very dry,” – and remains standing, while national Israel remains dead, until that image is overthrown.  In short, that Colossus represents a series of four Gentile empires, appearing and disappearing in successional order, - four different forms or phases of the one God-opposed world-power, as it comes in contact with Israel; from the time of the Babylonian Empire down to the Cloud-Comer from Heaven to overthrow the world-power, erect His kingdom on its ruins, and restore the lost sovereignty [page 22] to Israel.  The vision of the four-empired image and its fate was given to humiliate the monarch’s pride and inspire afresh the sinking hope of Israel.  To the same end was the Valley of the Dry Bones reanimated by the word of prophecy, and the blowing of God’s Spirit in the last days, given to Ezekiel at the Gola, when the news reached him of Jerusalem’s fall (Oct. B.C. 586).  The one vision shows the Colossus falling down, the other Israel rising up; the one, man’s kingdoms passing away; the other, Messiah’s kingdom come forever, with Israel in the front.

 

Again, the same distribution of the period of Israel’s national sepulture and corruption, the high Colossus standing as the tombstone, with a “hic jacet Israel,” as it were, upon its breast, is given to Daniel in a new vision of four beasts (B.C. 541) forty-five years after Jerusalem’s fall, - a vision parts of which were expanded two years earlier (B.C. 539) under the symbols of the Ram and Goat.  The design of the beast vision was not merely to show how differently from men God looks upon the phases of the world power, they regarding the world-kingdoms as the concentration of all material wealth, splendour, and might.  He regarded them as predacious beasts, but also to allow a further development from the symbol of the ten horns which would have been unnatural in the ten toes.  Careering on through Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek and Roman Empires, down to the last outcome of the Roman power, divided, lost, and yet revived and reappearing in the “Little Horn,” Gentile power shall wend its way – Israel still underneath its feet, - until the Mountain-Stone strikes the Image in its toes, and the Cloud-Comer smites the Horn on its head, the one sent whirling like the chaff to the wind, the other tossed, living, [page 23] to the flame, while Israel, resurgent from the grave, appears a mighty host, and wields the empire of the world.  The radius of prophetic vision reaches to the Second Coming of the Son of Man.  Till then Israel, as a nation, is dead, the people scattered, and the Holy City trodden under Gentile feet.  But then, “at that time,” Israel, as a nation, revives.  And here we meet a strange phenomenon.  As it is with Israel and the nations Daniel has to do, and not with the New Testament Church; as his mission is to prophecy of the world kingdoms and Israel’s relation thereto, and the fall of these kingdoms when Israel’s “Basileia” comes; so we find that both in the vision of the Colossus (Chapter 2) and that of the four beasts (Chapter 7), the whole period between the rise of the fourth beast and the final ten horns out of which the last Antichrist comes (Israel’s last oppressor) – the entire period between the First and Second Comings of Christ – is overlapped.  Or, better, the period itself lies hid without any sign of the First Advent, in the legs and feet of the Colossus.  The terminus a quo is not given.  It has two aspects, viz.: that of the Church-dispensation, and that of Israel’s national prostration, both running parallel during the same period.  With the Church Daniel has nothing to do.  It is Israel and the Colossus that absorb his attention; and neither in the Colossus, nor in the Beasts, is the First Advent marked anywhere.  The period of the gentile domination runs on continuous to the end.  Only in the 70 Weeks, does the First Advent appear, and the interval between the two comings begin to be opened out; as we shall see.

 

Once more.  Still another sub-distribution of the same stretch of time is given in the celebrated prophecy of the “Seventy Weeks” (Chapter 9), the last week [page 24] of which is eschatological, since it follows the interval that follows the Roman or second destruction of Jerusalem, consequent upon the national rejection of Messiah “cut off” by the Jews, - a week divided into two equal periods of three and one-half years, or forty-two months, or 1,260 days each, during which we have the rise, reign and ruin of the last Antichrist, the “prince that shall come” (Nagid Habba), the “Desolator” (Meshomen), who perishes beneath the outpoured vials of divine wrath.  It is of supreme importance to recognize this fact.  The 70th. of Daniel’s seventy weeks is not immediately sequent upon the 69th. week at whose close Messiah was “cut off.”  The Jews nailed the “King of the Jews” to the cross, and while at the First Advent the kingdom came in its spiritual inward power on the day of Pentecost – a “tasting of the powers of the world to come,” – it was postponed in its outward, visible and glorious part, as a polity and public sovereignty, until Messiah’s Second Coming; and this because of Israel’s unbelief.  This is the sun-clear statement of prophecy.  The 70th. week stands in the midst of the Yom Yehovah, or day of the Lord.  It precedes the Second Advent, the destruction of Antichrist, the Resurrection, and Israel’s glory in the kingdom restored to Israel.  The Church Fathers saw this; Irenaeus, Cyprian, Primasius, Hippolytus, Appolinaris, and others.  Modern eschatologists see it and victoriously defend it, - Delitzsch, Hofmann, Luthardt, Godet, Koch, Christiani, Rinck, Baur, Weiss, Nagelsbach, Karsten, Ebrard, Van Oosterzee, Kliefoth, and how many more!  More than a hundred living expositors maintain it.  The interval, however, between the First and Second Advents – our Church-Historical period – twinkles into light.  The same interval that lies concealed [page 25] in the image and four beasts, between the rise of the fourth empire proper and the final ten horns, or (what is the same thing) the final Antichrist, is here revealed as lying between the 69th and 70th of the “seventy weeks,” the period of the Roman “times of the Gentiles,” from Caesar onward.  At the close of the 69th week Messiah comes and is “cut off,” and there is “nothing for Him,” no Messianic kingdom as predicted.  He is despised, and rejected, and crucified, as the “King of the Jews.”  For this the nation is despised, rejected, slaughtered, and entombed by Gentile hands “until He come.”  The histories of Israel and Christ are analogous, as sin-bearers and salvation-bringers.  The 70th week resumes God’s gracious dealings with the Jewish people, “as a people.”  The prophetic formula, including the 70 years’ captivity, viz.: 70 plus 7 plus 62 plus (interval) plus 1, represents the whole stretch of time measured by the height of the Colossus, from head to feet, which is also the whole stretch of time measured by the life of the four beasts, in all reaching to the Second Advent.  The termini a quo and ad quem are the same for all.  In pre-exile prophecy, the return from exile retreats into the background, and the entire period from the exile to the final gathering of Israel is viewed as one continuous two-day dispersion and subjection.  It is true that the final redemption of Israel seems to come, in pre-exile prophecy, with the return from Babylonian exile itself.  But that is due to the law of prophetic representation.  Two horizons, the near and remote, the time-historical and the eschatological, are blended into one.  The present is thrown into the future.  The future is attracted to the present.  All things are seen in the light of the “end.”  Hence prophecy is “complex and [page 26] apotelesmatic.”  The same law works in exile and post-exile prophecy, but modified because of the later standpoint, and the progress of both prophecy and history.  It is here the law of “perspective” comes in.  A First Advent is specially marked in Daniel, and in Zechariah, yet only to emphasize the fact of Israel’s rejection of Messiah, and rejection by Messiah, then leap at once to paint the time of Israel’s final struggle and redemption, at Messiah’s Second Coming.  Until then Israel’s history, as a nation, is a blank before God.  All gracious covenant relations between God and that people, as such, are suspended, on account of Israel’s apostasy.  This strange Phenomenon, as to the “over-leaping” of the intervals, or what Delizsch calls the “deep silence” of the prophets in their “concealment of the mystery of the church,” has its true ground in what Hofmann calls the “organic structure of Old Testament Prophecy in relation to Israel.”  And herein, Auberlen, following Baumgarten, has stated clearly the solution of the riddle.  Israel, after having rejected salvation, ceased to be the subject of sacred history, and became that of profane history alone.  The intervening period between the two Messianic epochs – between the time the kingdom of God is taken from Israel and given to the Gentiles until the Second Coming of Christ, i.e., between the destruction of Jerusalem and the conversion of ‘All Israel’ and which forms of the people of the covenant a great parenthesis – is veiled from Daniel, in much obscurity, on account of his Old Testament and Israelitish standpoint.” * [* Auberlen Der Prophet Daniel, 141.]

 

Thus do the visions of the empires, beasts, and [page 27] seventy weeks, concur harmoniously and, with their corresponding intervals, span the course of ages from the Babylonian time down to the second Advent.  All, without exception, overleap the interval of Israel’s national rejection, and locate the point when Israel’s blessedness begins at Christ’s second appearing.  Here enter those times of “Return,” “Reviving,” “Refreshing,” “Restitution,” “Regeneration,” “Resurrection” and “Redemption,” foretold for Israel, and the resultant blessing, after judgment, for the nations; millennial times described in terms so glowing and so wonderful.  The pre-condition of them all is the second Advent, itself pre-conditioned by the witness of the gospel to all nations, and Israel’s begun repentance and return to Christ.  Nowhere, in all prophecy, is the Millennial Age located in the “Times of the Gentiles,” the Church-historical Period, the time of Israel’s national death and resting in the grave.  Impossible!  Nowhere is the word of God guilty of the nameless folly of confounding the “Times of the Gentiles” with “the 1,000 years.”  It would make all prophecy a contradiction of itself.  These never come before the fall of the Colossus, nor before the overthrow of antichrist, nor before the end of Gentile power, nor before the resurrection of the faithful dead; none of which events occur before Messiah’s coming in the clouds of heaven, descending to alight “on Olivet,” “come to Zion,” and cause His voice to “roar from Jerusalem.” (Zech. 14: 3; Isa. 59: 20; Dan. 7: 9, 22; 12: 2; Joel 3: 16).  No figurative exposition and no spiritualizing interpretation, such as we find in Hengstenberg, Fairbairn, Keil, Brown, Milligan, Glasgow, and others of the same school, can avail to break the oracles of God, or transmute Israel into the New Testament Church, Canaan into [page 28] Christendom, or the times after Christ’s second Coming into the times before it.  It is impossible upon the grounds of Old Testament prophecy, or of New, in their common distribution of the ages, to locate the Millennium between the First and Second Advents, for the simple reason that, between these Advents, Israel lies nationally dead, and the Millennial Age begins with Israel’s national resurrection. (Ezek. 27: 1-28); and also for the simple reason that between these Advents the Gentile Colossus still remains standing and the Millennial Age begins when the Colossus is struck and blown away like chaff. (Dan. 2: 35.)  And that this was not a fact at the first Advent, and is not a fact now, is proved by the further fact that gentile politics and power still rule, and Israel, as a nation, is still unrisen from the dead.

 

The contrary view which makes a “figure” of the Second Advent, would break down the whole Apocalypse of John which is built up, line for line, on Old Testament prophecy, and the words of our Lord in His Olivet discourse, and puts the crown and consummation on Israel’s hope.  Impossible – forever impossible – that the prophetic pictures of Israel’s future, so brilliant and glowing, should belong to that period of time when, in God’s account, Israel is a blank, their nation non-existent, the woeful Gentile times; an age in history when Jerusalem lies trodden in the dust with Gentile chains on her neck, and the proud Colossus tramples on the bones of Israel still bleaching in the valley, and Israel’s faithful dead still slumber in the grave; an age when Israel remains outcast, dispersed, rejected, still enthralled and unredeemed!  Impossible! Impossible!  As impossible as that the Covenant of God should break, or the “Strength of Israel” should lie!  It cannot be.  To evade, by dogmatic prepossession or [page 29] false hermeneutics, or ignorant prejudice, or indifference, the clear revelation of God herein, and insist that the “Jewish people,” “Daniel’s people,” “Ezekiel’s and Isaiah’s people,” “the whole house of Israel,” mean “the totality of believers in all ages of the world,” or “The New Testament Church,” and that “the land” means Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Great Britain, the United States, “the Territories of Christendom” (Keil), is to do more than trifle with God’s Word.  It is to distort and negate it”. (Delitzcsh).  To plead “difficulty of conception” is to bid for the rejection of every well-established doctrine.  By such a method of exposition, all the Eschata of both Testaments are dislocated, fact is evaporated, development in prophecy ignored, our present age misunderstood, no time or history beyond the Second Advent allowed, Israel’s future destiny and mission denied, the unity and continuity of prophecy left unheeded, and our conceptions substituted for the thought and will of God.

 

If we sum up, therefore, the result of our study, the whole subject will shine out with a clearness equal to the brilliance of the noonday.  What we have is the development, in prophecy, of God’s kingdom on earth, by means of Israel the Messianic people.  The history of Israel prior to the Prophetic Age, it has been necessary to discuss.  It is enough that we begin with the blotting out of God’s visible kingdom on earth, by means of Israel’s subjection to Gentile politics and power.  From that time onward, the prophets look to the time of the restoration of the kingdom to Israel at Messiah’s coming in the clouds of heaven, and even to the eternal glory beyond.  We get the whole range of their visions in the expressions “Until,” “Unto,” “After two days,” which bring us to the Second Coming, even [page 30] as the sixty-nine weeks bring us to the first Coming.  Then we have the “Third Day” which is a “Multitude of Days,” “Many Days,” “His Days,” “the one thousand years,” which bring us down to Gog’s destruction, the last resurrection and judgment and the final New Heaven and Earth.  We have swept the ages and the ends, and also the intervals in prophecy: all constructed and revealed with special reference to Israel; the Jewish or Mosaic Age down to the rejection of Israel’s Messiah.  Then the interval concealed in prophecy, viz., the Church-Historical Period, covered simply by “and unto,” in Dan. 9: 27.  Then comes Israel to the front again, when the times of the Gentiles are ended at the Second Coming of Messiah to reclaim His people, and we enter upon the interval of Gentile subjection to Israel’s supremacy, the tables being turned in an age of Millennial Glory.  Then, after this, Israel and the nations, in the New Jerusalem under a new heaven and on a new earth, Jew, Gentile, and the Church of God, all one, their distinctions still remaining their unity eternal, and God all in all.  If we put the whole Old Testament Chronological Prophecy together, concerning Israel, after David’s kingdom was broken, we shall get the formula of the combined 70 years’ Captivity, and the Seventy Year-Weeks, including the Great Interval between the 69th and 70th week, thus: 70 years, plus 483 years, or 69 weeks, plus the interval of our present age, plus the closing or seventh week of years, i.e., seven years; or, in a briefer form, the formula will be 70 plus 7 plus 62 plus our interval plus 1, a formula that covers the whole time from the Babylonish captivity down to the Second Coming of Christ.  If we now annex to this the Yammin Rabbim, or “Many Days” of Ezekiel, i.e., the Millennial Age [page 31] for Israel restored, at the close of which is Gog’s destruction and the new heaven and earth predicted by Isaiah, then the formula will be 70 plus 7 plus 62 plus our interval plus 1 plus the “many days,” plus “Gog’s little season” followed by the final judgment and the new heaven and earth.  We get the total aeonology and theology of both Old and New Testament prophecy with respect to Israel, the Church and the Nations; and in all we see how Israel, God’s “choice forever,” stands out in rejection and in their calling, mission, death and resurrection, as the Bringer, nationally, of Salvation to mankind.  It is God’s plan, and full, as Paul tells us, of the “unsearchable wisdom of God.”  Rom. 11: 33.  Salvation is from the Jews.” John 4: 22.

 

POST-EXILE PROPHECY.

 

A word here must suffice.  Haggai sees the final glory of the Messianic kingdom and connects it immediately with the Second Temple reared by Zerubbabel, and into which the “glory” comes and fills the house.  To him, this consummation is in the near future.  Once, already, Israel’s God has overthrown proud Babylon and brought a practical redemption, though poor, to His people.  Yet once more, it is a little while!”  How short a time!” and Israel’s God will not only shake one nation but “all nations,” and “not only earth, but heaven also, sea and dry land” together, and all “the precious things of the nations” shall be made tributary to the structure of the Temple, and into it the “glory” will enter personally, and “fill the House” with His splendour.  The Temple shall thus become the constant dwelling of Jehovah, the bond of union, and the centre of all light to surviving [page 32] nations, in a kingdom that cannot be shaken.  Haggai 2: 6-9, 21-23.  While this oracle was, in part, fulfilled by the personal appearing of Christ in the Temple, whose Advent was preceded by the overthrow of the Persian and Greek monarchies and Rome’s Republic, and the subjugation of the world by Roman arms, we have Paul’s apotelesmatic word for it that it looks to the Second Coming of Christ, and that the catastrophe it pictures, more appalling than the scenes at Sinai, at Marathon, or Salamis, or Philippi, is a universal world-catastrophe, such as we see in John’s Apocalypse under the sixth seal, and only after which the “Basileia Asaleutos,” or “Immovable Kingdom” comes.  Heb. 12: 26-29.  Marathon” and “Maranatha” are in the same perspective!  This is Haggai’s peculiarity, one Advent, the Second, and one age following, and yet implying a previous Advent of the “Glory” and to be connected with the Second Temple.  At any rate, the promised kingdom cannot come until after the “Day of the Lord” in which heaven, earth, sea, dry land, and all nations are shaken.  So says Isaiah 2: 10-22; 24: 1-23.

 

In the clearest manner Zechariah distinguishes Two Advents, two Ends, and the Millennial Age following the second, but without Gog and Magog at its termination.  He sees Zion’s king coming meek and lowly riding on a colt, 9: 9, then pierced with cruel hands, Jehovah’s Fellow smitten by the sword of justice, 13:7; 12: 10.  as a result of this, he sees the “Suspension of the Covenant of God with Israel,” not God’s Covenant of Grace, which is eternal, but theSuspension of the National Covenant of God with Israel as a People,” (Delitzsch, Hofmann, Kohler, Auberlen, Luthardt, Godet, Wright, Pember, Anderson, Seiss,) by the breaking of the two staves of “Beauty and Bands,” Zech. 11: 7-10, [page 33] Israel’s existence as a covenant Nation forfeited, because of Israel’s rejection of Messiah, until the time of Israel’s penitence, travail, reunion, and resurrection, Micah 5: 1-3.  Ezekiel 37: 1-28.  He sees Him again descending on the Mount of Olives in His Majesty, with all His “holy ones” for Israel’s deliverance, and the creation of the kingdom in its universal glory.  The scene is that of the “Yom Yehovah” replete with terrestrial and super-terrestrial phenomena, a day unique – nocturnal day and solar night.  It is a day preceded by the outpouring of the Spirit upon Israel, attended by the reappearing of their wounded Shepherd to them, their national, domestic, personal and universal, penitence and tears; beyond the tears “at Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddo,” where young Josiah fell.  At first, Judah is seen in deep apostasy.  But, as in the case of Paul, so here, a sudden change occurs; and Judah fights with superhuman power to raise the siege against Jerusalem.  Miraculous in Israel’s deliverance, even by Messiah’s own appearing, 12: 1-14; 13: 1-9, 14: 1-7.  Then follows the Messianic Age of glory, the Millennial day, when Israel’s land is transfigured, Jerusalem inhabited forever, and the Theocrat becomes a universal empire with Messiah as the universal king.  The holiness of Israel is universal also.  All nations are obedient to Israel’s king.  Jerusalem has seen a Jewish Christian Passover, and a Jewish Christian Pentecost, in which some Gentiles shared.  She sees a Jewish Christian “Feast of Tebernacles” now, in which all nations blend their harvest jubilee.  Two Advents, two Ends, two Ages, the Millennial Age still following the Second Advent as in all other prophets; this is Zechariah’s painted page, a page among the very brightest and the richest of all Old Testament prediction. [page 34]

 

We come to Malachi, the last of the prophets.  As he stands nearest the First Coming of Christ, and in the midst of deepening apostasy, the “Glory” retreats into the background, night comes on with the storm attending, and the picture of Israel’s near future is dark indeed.  The sun has gone down.  Malachi predicts two Advents, between which Israel is rejected and the Gentiles do homage to Messiah, yet after which Israel is redeemed through judgment and returns to the faith of their fathers.  The promise that Messiah’s name should be “great among the gentiles,” etc., 1: 3, is really a threatening against apostate Israel, foreboding the rejection of the nation, the passing of the Gospel to the Gentiles, and the substitution of a spiritual worship for the ancient ritual, “in every place.”  This plainly looks into the “times of the Gentiles,” or Church-Historical period, following the first Advent and Israel’s notional rejection.  Nevertheless, Israel shall be saved by means of judgment, in the burning “Day of the Lord,” and by a return to the spiritual essence of the ancient faith, under the prophetic testimony of Elias sent to restore them, and to herald the Advent of the “Angel of the Covenant,” 3: 1-3; 4: 4-6.  After purgation by judgment, and an outpoured Spirit, Israel’s worship shall be pleasant to Jehovah, their “land become fruitful,” and “all nations call them blessed,” 3: 1-4, 10-12.  After the storm, comes the sunshine.  Upon all who fear Jehovah’s name, “the Son of Righteousness will rise with healing in His beams,” and Israel, redeemed, shall gambol in the glory like calves that frisk and play upon the sunlit pasture when loosened from their stalls, 4:2, 3. [page 35]

 

 

PART 2

 

A. THE THOUSAND YEARS

 

It remains now to speak definitely of the different times given to the Millennial Age in the Old Testament, and point out the passages where John found his “1,000 years.”  In this we shall admire still more the unity of both Testaments, and learn that John understood the prophets better than most of his expositors.  It will fasten upon us the conviction that the New Testament “Apocalypse of Jesus Christ” is but the Old Testament Yom Yehovah, in which the Lord reveals Himself for the redemption of His people, and that the Eschata in that Apocalypse are only what we elsewhere find in Old Testament predictions, in the words of Christ Himself, and in the utterances of His Apostles; and that in all these Eschata Israel still holds his place, as in all the prophets, and still waits the promised glory in the Millennial Kingdom.

 

While what we have said concerning pre-exile prophecy is true, there are yet not wanting intimations, or, if we may so call them, “Germs” of the later [page 36] development of the ages and ends we find in exile and post-exile prophecy.  These belong to the organic nature of prophecy, and in them we find the names of the age which John describes as “the 1,000 years.” Apoc. 20: 1-7.  There is a text in what is known among scholars as the “little Apocalypse of Isaiah,” a section consisting of chapters 24-27.  It is found in Isaiah 24: 21-23.  referring to Yom Yehovah, or Day of the Lord, in which Messiah comes to hold judgment and restore the kingdom to Israel, the prophet says, It shall come to pass, in that day, that the Lord shall visit upon (punish) the Host of the High Ones on high, and the kings of the earth on the earth.  And they shall be gathered together as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in prison.  And after a multitude of days – Rov Yammin – they shall be visited (released for final judgment).  Then shall the moon be confounded and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, and the glory shall be in presence of His ancient ones,”  The “Day of the Lord” is, as already seen, that which closes our present age, the day of the Second Coming of Christ.  The judgment predicted in the preceding context is that of the proud nations, and Israel’s land, to which is added the desolation of the present cosmic order; 24: 1-20.  With this is connected the judgment upon the terrestrial powers of evil, “the Kings of the Earth on the Earth,” or the Anti-Christian hosts, and the judgment at the same time, of the aerial powers of evil, “the Host of the High Ones on High,” i.e., “the principalities and powers and world-rulers of darkness, the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies,” Eph. 6: 12, “the prince of the power of the air,” Eph. 2: 2, “the dragon and his angels,” Rev. 12: 7-9; 20: 1-3, - in short, Satan [page 37] and his legions, who are cast down from their height to be shut up in the abyss, as prisoners are chained in a dungeon, restrained from public activity, and reserved for future release and final judgment.

 

The time when this dejection of Satan and his legions occurs is said to be “in that day,” the time when Michael stands up to fight for Israel, Dan. 12: 1; Rev. 12: 7, the time when, in the vision of John, “the angel, having the key of the abyss, and a great chain in his hand, laid hold of the dragon, the Old Serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and cast him into the abyss, and shut and sealed it over him that he should deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years should be finished, after which he must be loosed for a little season.” Rev. 20: 1-3.

 

The time of this casting down of Satan and his hosts from their aerial mansions to earth, is that mentioned also in Rev. 12: 7, 8, 12, 13, when the dragon, in great rage, having but “short time” to work upon earth before he is sent to the abyss, “makes war with the woman, and with the remnant of her seed who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus.”  That is, it is the time of Israel’s conversion, Rev. 12: 7-11, the time of the close of the testimony of the two witnesses, the end of the first three and a half years (1,260 days) of Daniel’s 70th. week; in short, the beginning of the great tribulation, Rev. 11: 7, 13: 12, at whose end Satan is imprisoned in the abyss, Rev. 20: 1-3.  And this time of the judgment upon “the Host of the High Ones on High,” is the time of the judgment of the “kings of the earth on the earth,” or Antichrist and his armies, who are destroyed at the close of the last three and a half years (1,260 days) at the Second Coming of Christ from “Heaven [page 38] opened,” Rev. 19: 11-21.  There is nothing clearer than that the visions of John, in the text referred to, are the companion pieces of the prophecy of Isaiah just quoted.  The judgments upon Antichrist and his armies, and upon Satan and his hosts, are identical in Isaiah and John, and occur “in that day,” the day of the Second Coming of Christ.

 

But this is not all.  The imprisonment of Satan and his demonic powers is not their final judgment.  The prophet speaks of a reckoning “after” this.  He fixes the duration of the imprisonment at whose close the reckoning comes.  He defines the length of that duration as a “multitude of days,” Rov Yamin.  He says that “after” this long period which follows Antichrist’s overthrow and Satan’s captivity, the final reckoning shall come.  After a multitude of days they shall be visited,” or as the verb here properly means, “they shall be looked after for final retribution.”  This implies, as is admitted, their future unchaining and letting loose again.  They do not escape from prison, but are released, or let out, to meet their final award.”  In this, all scholars agree.  To this, corresponds the account in John’s Apocalypse, Rev. 20: 1-7, where we read that “After the thousand years are finished, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison” to play his old game.  As, after his casting down from the heavenlies, and before his imprisonment in the abyss, the “short time” of 1,260 days was allowed him to assail the saints, so between his release from prison and his final casting into the lake of fire, he is allowed “a little time” in which to muster the nations, and make his last effort against the Kingdom of God.  This we read in the Apocalypse of John who separates the events Isaiah combines in one general expression.  The demonstration is inductively [page 39] complete that the definite period of time called Rov Yamin, by Isaiah, or the “Multitude of days,” is identical with the period called Chilia Ete, or “the thousand years” by John.  The judgments which precede this period are the same.  The “First Resurrection” which occurs at the same time, also; the resurrection of the faithful dead, as is clear from Deut. 32: 39; Ps. 49: 14; Hos. 13: 14; Isa. 25: 8; 26: 14, 19; Ezek. 37: 12; Dan. 12: 1-3; 1 Cor. 15: 54, 55; Rev. 11: 18; 20: 5.  And the time of these judgments and this resurrection is the Yom Yehovah or “the Day of the Lord,” in which the “Lord Himself” visibly reveals His person to effect these events.  The succeeding long period of the “Multitude of Days,” or “The Thousand Years” is the same.  And the judgments at the close of this period are the same.  What confirms this all the more is the fact that unless the “visiting” of the imprisoned Anti-christian hosts, at the end of the “Multitude of Days” involves their resurrection – the resurrection of the wicked unto final judgment – there is no text in the Old Testament that does.  Isa. 24: 21, 22, is the only passage; since Dan. 12: 2, properly translated, speaks only of the resurrection of the righteous.

 

But that Isaiah 24: 22 does involve the resurrection of the wicked, at the close of the “Multitude of Days,” is clear from this, that John interprets Isaiah’s prophecy by his own vision of the resurrection of the wicked at the close of “the thousand years” which, as we have seen, are identical with the “Multitude of Days.”  It stands exegetically fast, that John’s Millennial Age is Isaiah’s “Multitude of Days,” dating from the Second Advent; that epoch of time which runs into the age following; the epoch when Israel is redeemed, and nationally restored; when Jerusalem, [page 40] the “beloved city” becomes the middle point of the Millennial Kingdom during “the thousand years,” Rev. 20: 9, and “the Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, even in Jerusalem, and glory shall be in presence of His ancient ones.”  Isa. 24: 23.

 

It is the time when, as the context in Isaiah shows, the sleeping saints of God are raised, the veil is taken off the nations, and Israel’s rebuke and long reproach exist no more.  Isa. 25: 8, 9.

 

It will perhaps, assist our understanding, to see how this exegesis of the passage in Isaiah, so little understood by many, is supported by a scholarship than which none better can be found.  The binding of Satan,” says Auberlen, “is, like the thousand years, peculiar to the Apocalypse, although, strictly speaking, Isaiah prophecies the same thing in chap. 24: 21-23.” * [* Der Prophet Daniel, p. 330.] Better still are the words of Nagelsbach upon the passage: “The prophet’s eye here sees what will take place at the end of the world.  The invincible extra-mundane heads of the worldly powers, as well as their earthly visible organs, will, according to the prophet, be collected as prisoners in the pit, and shut up in it.  But not merely the binding of these angelic and worldly powers, but their being let loose for a time, is also announced.  Only by a brief obscure word, perhaps not seen through by the prophet himself, does the prophet intimate this.  We would not, perhaps, have understood this word, if the New Testament revelation, which is nearer the time of the fulfilment, did not throw light on this dark point.  It declares expressly that, after a thousand years, Satan should be loosed from his prison. Rev. 20: 7.  Isaiah [page 41] uses here an indefinite announcement of time, ‘After a multitude of days.’ And an indefinite verb, ‘pakad,’ stands here as in Isa. 23: 17, of a ‘visiting’ which consists in a looking again after some one who, long time, has remained neglected.  Jer. 27: 22.  The word is here taken in the sense of a visitation for judgment, as is seen in the place in the revelation by John.

 

“The letting loose of Satan is only the prelude to his total destruction, Rev. 20: 10.  Then follows the last, highest, and grandest revelation of God.  The earth becomes now what it ought originally to have been, but was hindered from being by the sin of man, the common dwelling place of God and men.  The heavenly Jerusalem, the Tabernacle in which God dwells with men, Rev. 21: 3, descends upon the renovated earth, and here Jehovah reigns as king.  This city needs no sun and no moon any more, for the Lord Himself is its light.” * [* Dr. C. W. E. Nagelsbach, in Lange, on Isa. 24: 11-23.]

 

And even better still is the comment of Weber on the passage.  After showing that the context the prophet predicts (1) the judgment on the earth, and plagues on men in general, in the end time, to which the sixth seal in the Apocalypse refers; (2) the judgment on the world-city or Babylon of the future; (3) the final judgment on Jerusalem and all who deal treacherously with Israel’s remnant, he continues thus: “The Lord will hold ‘in that day,’ another judgment.  He will ‘visit the Most High Ones in the height, and the kings of the earth on the earth.’  The earthly and heavenly powers, who have deceived mankind into apostasy, shall receive their punishment.  They shall both be visited on that same day.  The host of [page 42] the high ones on high includes the angels of the nations and kingdoms of which Daniel speaks, 10: 13, 21; 12: 1, and John, Rev. 12: 7.  They have exercised over the nations a God-opposing influence, and shall be judged with them.  What the punishment of these aerial powers is we are told.  They shall be thrust into a pit, as prisoners are into a dungeon, and ‘after a multitude of days,’ shall be visited.  A time comes when once more they shall be released and allowed to begin their earlier practice of deception.  But it shall not continue long; for, after a brief last conflict, that kingdom of Jehovah will begin in that full revelation of its glory on earth, before which the light of the sun and moon shall fade, and the God-opposed spirits of evil sink eternally in the lake of fire.  In that day Jehovah of Hosts shall rule royally upon Mount Zion, even in Jerusalem, and in presence of the ancients shall be glory.  The intention of the prophet here is to unveil the future as it will be at the great turning point of things in the development of the kingdom on earth when Israel, restored, shall turn the nations to the obedience of God.  This is achieved through a judgment of the nations, and of the wicked spirits who deceived them.  This judgment is universal, and fulfils itself in a series of severest plagues wherein God’s hand must be confessed.  Only a remnant of mankind will survive.  As Israel, through judgment, comes to renovation, so it is with the nations.  As the sifting of Israel will not be in vain, so it will be with the nations.  A remnant is converted and survives the judgment.  Upon the ruins of the world-power a new kingdom shall arise in which the Lord will reveal Himself to all the earth.  This is the great announcement of the prophet.  What a lesson it teaches us in reference to our own times!  How are we compelled [page 43] to confess that the great breach between Christendom and the laws, and ordinances, and covenant of god, is a present fact, and that with swift steps we are nearing the approaching judgment of the end!  The age following this world judgment, and the judgment of aerial evil powers is the Millennial Age pictured in Isaiah 25: 6-9, in which upon Mount Zion the Lord will prepare a feast to all peoples, and destroy the veil spread over the nations, and swallow up death in victory, and take away the reproach of His people forever.  There is so much likeness, and difference, between the millennial and eternal states of glory that here we may regard the description of both as one, and yet must again separate the one from the other, the one a prelude to the other.  The mountain’ (Zion) shall be the middle point of the kingdom of God on Earth.  And this will continue until the wicked spirits, released once more, gain opportunity to introduce the final judgment, the transition act between time and eternity.  In that day of Jehovah’s self-manifestation and millennial blessedness, Israel shall sing, ‘Lo, this is our God, we have waited for Him.  He will save us.  This is the Lord.  We have waited for Him, and we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.’ ” * [* Dr. J. W. Weber, Der Prophet Jesaia, pp. 216, 223.]  Such the splendid comment of a loved and devoted man whom Delitzsch has honoured as “one of the first Hebrew scholars of Europe.” [page 44]

 

These extracts might suffice to show the meaning of the prophet, and vindicate the Apostle John from the empty charge made so often, that he was indebted to the Apocryphal legends and literature of the Rabbis for his conception of “the thousand years!”  But there is a testimony yet more sublime than all the rest, which ought here to be produced.  It is the comment of the childlike, deeply devout, and gifted man, Dr. Christian August Crusius, Professor of Theology in Leipsic forty years during the last century (the successful antagonist of Leibnitz), a man of whom Bahrdt said, “He is the greatest philosopher and richest thinker of our times,” and of whom Kant said he felt it an honour to be allowed to testify that “he is the clearest philosopher, and second to none in the promotion of philosophy, in our age.”  In his work, “Decaelo per Adventum Christi commoto,” A.D. 1757, he says, “With the gradual development of the kingdom of God on earth, since the incarnation, the great historical events in the spiritual world run parallel.  Not only earth but heaven also is shaken.  The powers of evil in the height are in commotion.  Under the lead of Satan they oppose every step of the development of the Kingdom of God.  It was so at the incarnation of Christ.  It was so at His death.  It was so at His resurrection and ascension.  The prince of this world was even then judged and cast out, and yet not so cast out as that all access to aerial regions was forbidden him.  The final shaking of the heavens was not accomplished, nor will be, until the final “lucta ecclesiae cum Satana.”  It is still permitted him to be the “Prince of the power of the air,” and “god of this world,” to tempt, accuse and plague the Church of Christ, which like her Head, must pass through suffering to victory. [page 45] Once more, in the progress of the judgment on Satan, parallel with the progress of the heavenly kingdom, Satan shall be cast down from heaven to earth, amid the shaking of the powers of heaven, the earth, and the nations.  Then, as John in his Apocalypse assures us, “No more place will be found for him or his angels in Heaven.” Rev. 12: 7.  Knowing this, then, that his “time is short,” Rev. 12: 12, he makes use of it to introduce the Antichrist, Rev. 13:1, after whose destruction he is cast out from the earth itself, chained and shut up in the abyss, in a weary long captivity of a thousand years, after which, a short period of liberation being allowed him, - and then eternal judgment, he closes his career in the lake of fire. Rev. 20: 1-3, 7-10.  Both these events, the tossing out of Satan from heaven to earth, and the overthrow of Antichrist, are accompanied by powerful shaking of the heavens.  Other shakings had previously occurred, but this one, the mightiest of all, and of which both Haggai and Paul speak as the final one – the apotelesma – is connected with the Second Coming of the Son of Man and His appearing in glory.  At the sound of the trumpet, more terrible than at Sinai, the powers of heaven shall be shaken, and the light of the sun shall be obscured before the splendour of the throne of Majesty.  Then, in place of the things that are shaken, will come the Basileia Asaleutos, the kingdom that cannot be shaken.  Heb. 12: 26-29.  then Israel, converted to the Lord, shall receive the promise, and Jerusalem the seat of the first Christian Church from which the gospel – the Zionite law – went forth, shall be made glorious as the mother church and mother city of the Kingdom of God; and then all nations shall come and [page 46] worship before the Lord because His judgments are made manifest.* [* Rev. 15: 4.  (Quoted by Delitzsch Bibl. Proph. Theologie, pp. 123-138)]

 

From the last commentary on Isaiah, we venture to quote the following admirable words by Prof. Von Orelli of Basle – words that will be welcomed by all: “Not the angelic host ministering to Jehovah is here intended,” says Orelli, “but the host of the spirit world accountable to Jehovah, and which like the possessors of earthly power, is subject to His judgment.  The figure is that of the arrest of State criminals who at first, without regard to the extent of their demerit, are thrown into prison, then afterward, at the day of judgment, are dealt with according to the measure of their guilt.”  “The world-judgment here presented, is pictured as a cosmical catastrophe, like the deluge, which once swept away mankind, but yet more fruitful of good.  The earth shall altogether lose its hold, and be broken under the weight of its sin.  The judgment shall not merely strike the rulers of the earth, but shall reach the super-earthly powers, also, who are not blameless before God.  Between these, and the sinful world-powers there is a close connection, as the book of Daniel shows, and which is here asserted through the fact that they both are judged together.  As common criminals, these highest rulers shall be ignominiously arrested and imprisoned in order that, after a long time, they may receive their sentence which shall be pronounced by the Lord enthroned on Mount Zion, and His glorious judgment host there assembled.  Sun and moon shall lose their splendour in token of His great indignation against the world, while His people, redeemed on Mount Zion, dwell in the clearest light, [page 47] their elders deemed worthy to behold the glory of God; so that, according to chapter 4: 5, 6, and far more gloriously than in Moses’ time, Ex. 24: 9, 10, they shall be permitted to enjoy, permanently, the protection of the Shekinah-Cloud as the residence of the Lord who has now taken to Himself the sovereignty of the world.”

 

“After this world-judgment, in which Antichrist and his hosts are destroyed, as also Satan and his legions judged, and both imprisoned in the abyss, and Israel is redeemed and delivered, comes the blessed time of the “Multitude of days,” the Millennial Age,” on which Orelli remarks, “then following this judgment, comes the Triumphlied of the redeemed, chap. 25, as at chap. 12, an exalted echo of Israel’s song at the Red Sea, Ex. Chap. 15.  To all nations who do homage to the Lord in the end of the days, and undulate like swelling billows to the holy mountain to worship there, the Lord Himself will prepare a wondrous feast of joy.  It shall be to them a divine surprise when now He takes away the covering which, long enough already, has veiled the eyes of the nations.  They shall behold Him as the Dispenser of all life and grace, and taste how good He is to those who bend before His majesty.

 

“By a second act of almighty love and power, not less miraculous, He will abolish death with all the woe that wrung from man uncounted tears, and lift the curse which, from the beginning, has weighed so heavily upon the human race.  Here is, indeed, the end of the ways of God with men, of which the New Covenant in Christ, the Risen One, has unveiled the aim.  As the remnant of Israel, so also the remainder of mankind, spared through the judgment on the nations, shall be destined to unexpected blessedness by Him the All-Merciful [page 48] One, and this shall be, of itself, the most beautiful apology for Israel, while the pride of Gentile power, the odious rival of God’s people, shall be crushed forever.”

 

And in conclusion, on chapter 26, the last of the “Little Apocalypse of Isaiah,” he gives us this: “The songs of victory which first we heard far off in 24: 14, and were next intoned from Zion to the nearing nations, 5: 15, have now no end.  The redeemed hymn a new song wherein, in glowing words, they justify the ways of God.  Zion is now a city indestructible whose bulwark and defence are God’s salvation.  To all the righteous who trust in Him, the Rock of Ages, her gates are open.  And she extols that righteousness.  While the enemies of God fall into death remediless, 5: 14, God’s people find an increase of their numbers and a widening of their boundaries.  All human birth-pains, for a better future, have been vain.  No living soul has come from them; no increase has been born, 5: 17, 18.  But Jehovah brings such increase, in an unexpected way, as the sudden exclamation, interrupting Israel’s moan, announces, ‘Thy dead ones shall live!  My dead body (Israel) shall arise! Awake!  Sing! Ye dwellers in the dust, for the dew of lights is thy dew, and the earth shall bring forth the dead!’ Verse 19.  Not only shall Israel’s ranks no more be thinned by death, but even the faithful who, in bitter tribulation, have succumbed to death, shall come to life again; God’s dead ones whom we never may forget, nor be without.  These and the living church shall meet in life again!  Here is something new under the sun!  The unyielding under-world shall, through the power of heavenly dew, be fructified, and the departed rise and bloom in light and life again.  Then, in that day, the Lord binds [page 49] the Dragon, and Israel takes root, and fills the world with fruit, 27: 1-6.” * [* Orelli, in Strack-Zockler’s Kurtz Komm, Der Proph. Jesaia, pp. 86, 89-93.]

 

Such is the exposition of the contents, in part, of the “Little Apocalypse” of Isaiah, by Orelli – a picture of the World Judgment at the Second Advent and of the Millennial Age, the “Multitude of Days,” the “long time” following that judgment; a period of blessedness opened by the restoration of Israel, the judgment on Antichrist and Satan, the resurrection of the faithful dead, and the revelation of the glory of Christ to the nations, the companion piece of John’s Apocalypse, chapters 19 and 20.  It is not possible to place the Millennial Age before the coming of Christ, except by an open contradiction of the Word of God.

 

B. EZEKIEL 38.

 

An exile passage also claims our attention, in proof that “the thousand years” of John’s Apocalypse are found in the Old Testament itself.  It is the strangely introduced yet significant prediction concerning “Gog and Magog,” in Ezek. 38: 8.  It comes upon the reader suddenly, as an independent prediction of judgment due to Gog “after many days,” and stands isolated, as it were, in the text.  It seems to be a parenthetic expression.  It is a brief oracle, and yet it is the one word on which John’s whole representation of the order of the Eschata is pivoted, in the twelth chapter of his Apocalypse.  After many daysRabbim Yamimthou shalt be visited.”  The verb (tippakedh) its tense form and import are the same as in Isaiah 24: 22; 29: 6, not merely a testing by divine judgment, but a destruction.  Smend’s rendering “Thou shalt be mustered,” and the rendering “Thou shalt be commissioned,” [page 50] are insufficient.  The verb imports here judicial visitation for destruction.  What the prophet here predicts is Satan’s last attempt, through Gog and Magog, in the latter years, against the Kingdom of Messiah, after Israel has been long time restored, and dwelling safely in their fatherland as a reunited and converted people, and the final judgment on Gog and his armies.  This prediction occurs in the Apocalypse of Ezekiel, chapters 37-48, where we find (1) Ezekiel’s vision of the Valley of Dry Bones reanimated, or the final religious and political rehabilitation of the “whole house of Israel,” in their fatherland, for “many days,” even “forever;” * one flock under one shepherd, one nation under one king, 37:1-28.  (2) Ezekiel’s prophecy of the war-march of Gog and his conglomerate swarm against Israel long time restored, and the judgment on Gog, 38: 1-23; 39: 1-29.  (3)  Ezekiel’s vision of the glory of the temple, city, and land, during these “many days,” a further expansion of what is foretold in 37: 1-28, when the Lord has poured His Spirit out upon the people, revived their nationality, awakened their faithful dead, and planted them forever in their own inheritance.

 

The time of the visitation on Gog is said to be “after” these “many days,” which belong to “the later years.”  (1) The terminus a quo of these “many years” is Israel’s restoration, conversion to Christ as a people and a nation, and the repossession of their land; the epoch of the resurrection of their faithful dead, an event included in the promise made 37: 12, as is proved by Deut. 32: 39; Ps. 17: 15; 49: 14, 15; Hos. 13: 14; Isa. 25: 6-9; 26: 14, 19; Dan. 12: 1-3, all of which passages refer directly to this same epoch, and fore-announce the literal resurrection of Israel’s faithful dead, [page 51] and non-resurrection of the wicked “at that time,” and “in that day.”  All this we have in chapter 37.  It is the terminus a quo.  It is the same epoch, also, of the judgment upon Antichrist and his armies, and upon Satan and his angels, that we find in Isaiah 24: 21, 22; Daniel 12: 1; Revelation 12: 7-9; 20: 1-3.  (2) The period, or age, that follows this terminus a quo is plainly the Rabbim Yamim or “many days,” whose glory, peace and blessedness are described in chapters 40-48, which are the expansion of 38: 1-28, and of what Isaiah has predicted; Isa. 2: 2-5; 11: 6-9; 24: 23 25: 6-9; 40: 1-22; 61: 4-11; 62: 2-12; 65: 17-25; 66: 20-23.  They are the period “after” Israel has been “gathered out from many nations,” “brought back from the sword,” is “dwelling safely, and at rest, in unwalled villages having neither bars nor gates,” – God alone their protection, - abundant in wealth and all possessions.  Exekiel 38: 8-12, 14.  They are the period of the new indwelling glory in New Israel, chapters 40-53; of the New Service following the entrance of the Glory in the Temple, which He makes the place of His throne and of the soles of His feet, 44-46; of the life and healing to the land from the flowing of the temple waters; and of the splendour to the city whose name is Jehovah Shammah, “The Lord is there!”  47-48. (3)  The terminus ad quem of these “many days” is expressly said to be the judgment on Gog, precisely as John makes the judgment on Gog to be the close of “the thousand years.”  Rev. 20: 7.  After many days thou shalt be visited.”  The termini in Isa. 24: 22, and Ezek. 39: 8, are, therefore, identical.  The passages are parallel, supplementary, and mutually explanatory.  The character of the “visitation” at the end of the “many days” is the same in both.  The parties [page 52]visited” are different, but this is due to the fact that Ezekiel’s prophecy is an advance upon Isaiah’s word, and brings to light new things occurring at the same time with those of which Isaiah speaks.  In Isaiah, the parties visited after “many days” are Satan and his angels let loose from their imprisonment, and the Anti-Christian wicked raised from their graves for the last judgment.  In Ezekiel, they are the living nations outlying on the extreme borders of the glorified kingdom of Israel, whose center is Jerusalem restored and glorified, and who, as we learn from John, have been deceived again by Satan let loose.  Each prophet is given his own work to do, and vision to see, “by the same Spirit who divides, severally, to every man as He will.” 1 Cor. 12: 11.  Isaiah says nothing of Gog.  Ezekiel says nothing of Antichrist.  Both say much of Israel’s final redemption, at the coming and appearing of the “Glory.”  Both speak of Israel’s long blessedness after restoration to their land and conversion to Messiah.  Both announce a “visitation” at the end of the “many days” of that blessedness.  What in undeveloped in the one, is developed in the other.  In the combination of both we find the total picture of the end as seen by the Old Testament prophets, whose work it was reserved for John, in Patmos, to complete and crown by the development of prophecy and further revelation, the last and brightest God has given.

 

If we turn to John’s Apocalypse we shall find his Eschata concerning Israel and the Millennial Kingdom precisely what they are in Old Testament, but only more developed.  We learn the organism and the unity, the structure and the continuity, of all prophecy, its persistence, progress, and perfection.  Interpretation is simply its own self-revelation, the shining of its own face, self-evident, infallible. [page 53]

 

Amid the vast variety in the unveiling of the word and plan of God, the unity remains the same from age to age.  The ends and ages are the same in the New as in the Old Testaments.  The Advents there are the Advents here.  Antichrist there is Antichrist here.  Gog there is Gog here.  The judgments there are the judgments here. The resurrections there are the resurrections here. The power, the kingdom, and the glory there are the power, the kingdom, and the glory here.  And the times of the Gentiles first, and the times of Israel next, in the last unfolding of the kingdom of God, are the same there and here.  In short, the relation of Israel to the nations, in the outcome of the Kingdom of God, is precisely what the prophets, to whom the “mystery” of Israel’s blindness, rejection and recovery, was revealed, say it shall be; a mystery finished under the sounding echoes of the seventh trumpet.

 

In John, we have the period of “the 1,000 years.”  Their commencing date, or terminus a quo, is identified with that in Isa. 24: 22, and Ezekiel 38: 8.  The Eschata that open “the 1,000 years,” prove this.  We have (1) the gathering, sealing, conversion, and restoration of Israel to their own land and city, in the midst of tribulation and judgment.  Rev. 7: 1-8; 10: 7; 11: 1; 12: 1-6; 14: 1-5; 15: 2-4; 20: 9.

 

Chapters 10, 11, and part of 12, introduce us to Ezekiel’s Valley of Dry Bones, just when the voice begins to thunder, the witnesses to prophecy, the Spirit to come from the four winds, and the earthquake’s shock to attend the resurrection from the dead.  The whole riddle of Ezekiel’s Apocalypse, i.e., chapters 37-48, finds its solution on John’s Apocalypse, chapters 10-20: 7.  (2)  We have the personal visible and [page 54] glorious advent and appearing of Messiah, for the redemption of His people, destruction of His enemies, and erection of His Kingdom.  Rev. 1: 7; 6: 16, 17; 10: 1; 11: 3, 17; 14: 1; 16: 15; 19: 11-16. We have (3) the judgment and imprisonment of Satan and his angels.  Rev. 12: 7-9; 20: 1-3.  We have (4) the judgment of Antichrist and his armies.  Rev. 14: 18-20; 16: 16; 19: 11-21.  We have (5) the resurrection of the faithful dead, and their reign with Christ in His kingdom of glory on the earth. Rev. 5: 10; 11: 11, 18; 20: 4-6.  And these events are precisely what Moses, David, Hosea, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah, all say precede the final glory of Israel, and stand in front of and attend the “many days.”  And as to the terminus ad quem of “the thousand years,” the Eschata here are (1) the loosing of Satan and his demonic powers, Rev. 20: 7, 8; (2) the war march of Gog and the nations deceived by Satanic influence against Israel’s land and city, Rev. 20: 9; (3) the judgment of Gog by fire, Rev. 20: 9; (4) the resurrection and judgment of the wicked, Rev. 20: 12; (5) the judgment of Satan, and his final doom, Rev. 20: 11; (6) the final and total destruction of death, Rev. 20: 13; (7) the final New Heaven and Earth, 21: 1.  And all these events are precisely what Isaiah and Ezekiel declare and imply shall occur at the close of, or “after,” the “many days.”  To him who declines to accept that spiritualizing and allegorizing system of interpretation which negates and destroys so much of the prophetic word itself, the conclusion is both necessary and irresistible that the Rov Yamin of Isaiah and the Rabbin Yamim of Ezekiel, are indeed the Chilia Ete of John; the “multitude of days” and “many days,” the same as the “thousand years.”  In these two Old Testament Apocalypses of Isaiah, [page 55] chapters 24-37, and Ezekiel, chapters 37-48, where the period of Israel’s blessedness is defined by these two equivalent terms of time just named, the Eschata that bound the opening of this period on the one side, and those which bound the close of it on the other side, are the same as those we find, respectively, in John’s Apocalypse, as bounding the two extremes of the Millennial Age.  And, for the opening of this period, the Aposalypse of Daniel and Zechariah, as the prophecies of the other prophets, Joel, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Haggai, when combined, show the same events, occurring in the Yom Yehovah, during which Messiah comes in glory and in judgment, to destroy His enemies, redeem His people, and erect His kingdom on the ruins of the Gentile powers and on the overthrow of Satan’s empire; and if, in reference to the closing of this period, new characters emerge, or what was but obscure before becomes full formed and clear, it is because of the progress of prophecy itself, which, like its fulfilment, has a “springing and germinant accomplishment,” its light increasing more and more unto the perfect day.  And if, in earlier pre-exile prophecy, where but one end, one advent, and one judgment, with one age following, are found, we find a mother-source, or general ground, notably in Joel, for both great judgments, that on Antichrist and that on Gog; and if again in Isaiah, the ground is laid not only for these, but for both resurrections as well, with an interval between; and if, in exile prophecy, in addition to this, we find, notably in Ezekiel, the ground laid for the still clearer, farther, and closing revelations of John, in whose Apocalypse the remoter Eschata stand out, in all their brightness, or their gloom, distinct and [page 56] un-confounded; it is because, from first to last, the word of prophecy is one continuous genetic movement, struggling ever to evolve in its conclusion what was first involved in its beginning.  The prophets all supplement each other, and John is the all-embracing consummation of them all.  His light illuminates the rest. 

 

From what has been said it must be clear that the Millennial Kingdom is the time of blessedness on earth for Israel restored to God, for Israel reclaimed to Christ, and lies beyond His Second Coming, beyond the resurrection from the dead.  This cannot be successfully denied.  Even post-millennialists confess as much, in contradiction of their own theory.  the binding of Satan,” says Schroeder, on Ezekiel, in Lange, “is the necessary preliminary of the millennial kingdom.  If he is not to deceive the nations during this time but after it, does so again, then it is clear even from that to which he afterward deceives them, that his imprisonment means, above all, the cessation of war and violence, and of violent combating of the church of God, inasmuch as the following vision of witnesses unto blood seems to point particularly in the same direction,”  Gog and Magog both follow the resurrection (Ezek. 37), as in John’s revelation (Rev. 20: 4-6), and he who is constrained to recognize, in Ezekiel, chap. 37. Israel’s re-quickening as a nation, will not, thereby, be hindered from conceding that it will be followed by the re-quickening from their graves, of “all who are Christ’s,” as Paul expresses it.  Moreover, the repeated “forever” – “Leolam” – (in Ezekiel, chapter 37) – can here be interpreted by the Chilia Ete there (in Revelation 20: 1-7.) * [* Schroeder on Ezekiel, in Lange, 376, 350.]  Again: After many days” denotes the [page 57] expiration of a long time, and supposed to be the last time, which is not only the consummation of the Kingdom of God, but of the world generally.  The words “Days” and “Years” interchange harmoniously in the verse.  After many days” “in the latter years.”  That which appears in the single event as “many days,” is, for the eye of the Apocalyptic seer that ranges over the whole, the summation of what is still outstanding in years, or time generally.  Both these phrases denote the Messianic age.” * [* Ibid 363]

 

So Schroeder speaks.  And we add that, if indeed, as is the fact, the binding of Satan precedes the judgment on Gog; if it occurs at the Second Coming of Christ when the resurrection from the dead takes place; if Israel’s political resurrection precedes this personal one; if “Leolam,” “forever,” is used in its qualified sense as equivalent to “the thousand years” of John, the “long time” or “outstanding” period, next preceding the consummation of the kingdom and the world; if all this is conceded, then it is hard to see how any who accept these conclusions could find relief from their force, by resort to the allegorical, spiritual, or symbolical theories of interpretation.  The relations of the events must, at least, remain the same, and the “Many Days” must come in between the Second Coming of Christ and the judgment on Gog.  If, moreover, we allegorize one event, to be consistent we must allegorize all.  This wrecks the whole prediction, and denies the vast body of literal Scripture elsewhere with which it stands connected.

 

Riehm, as an exegete, though seeking to avoid the literal interpretation of prophecy in reference to Israel’s [page 58] future, yet finds in impossible to evade the clear representation of Ezekiel himself.  He says, “In Ezekiel, we certainly read of imminent danger to the Kingdom of God in the ‘End of the daysafter its restoration.  The victory of Jehovah divides itself into two acts rather widely separated from each other.  The judgments which bring deliverance to Israel, first of all, fall upon the neighbouring nations already in conflict with the people of God.  After’ Israel’s deliverance, there is a time of security and peace, Ezek. 38: 8, 11, 12, yet still the distant nations have not learned to know Jehovah’s power, and at the ‘End of the Days’ they assemble, under Gog, to fight against Israel, but the Lord destroys them, and consumes their country with fire, 39: 6.  Only after this is the kingdom assured against further attack, 38: 29.” “Most remarkable indeed, are the words of Ezekiel in 28: 25, 26.  After the first judgments securing Israel against surrounding nations, the kingdom is established in the Holy Land, and for a long time the people enjoy undisturbed repose, 38: 8, 11, 12.  At the ‘End of the Days,’ Gog and Magog make their final attack, after whose destruction Israel remains forever secure against their foes.”  In Micah, the Messianic king has ascended the throne before the final attack of the distant nations; and as in the Apocalypse of John, the Kingdom of Christ has stood a thousand years before Satan is let loose to lead the hosts of Gog and Magog against it, so also in Ezekiel, Israel enjoys for a long time the blessing of complete communion with Him before they are finally assured of their safe possession of the blessing.” * [* Riehm, Messianic Proph. 110, 210.]

 

Clearly, then, even according to Riehm’s view, the [page 59]many days” in Ezekiel, are the period of Israel’s blessedness in the Messianic Kingdom on earth, and are bounded at their opening, by the “first judgments” which bring deliverance to Israel and the establishment of Israel in the Messianic kingdom on earth, and at their close are bounded by the “destruction of Gog.”  The period between these different and separated judgments, which stand apart “rather widely,” is a “long time,” when “a thousand years,” and Micah, Ezekiel and John, herein agree.  The millennium announced by John is only what the prophets, pre-exile and exile, have foretold, and the duration of which they measure by the “many days” between Israel’s introduction, by means of the Messianic judgment, into the kingdom established in the Holy Land, and the final overthrow of Gog.  Micah, as well as Isaiah, forecasts “the thousand years” of John.  Not before, but only “after the thousand years,” when Gog is judged, is the ultimate glory of the kingdom.  In other words, the view of the total End-Time, in the widest and most comprehensive scope, as seen by the prophets, and embracing the perfect victory of Messiah for Israel’s complete deliverance and complete establishment of the kingdom of glory on earth, in the latter days, is represented as that of two great acts or phases of judgment between which lie the “many days” of Ezekiel which are “the thousand years” of John.  In other words again, the “End of the Days” of which Ezekiel and Isaiah speak, in the texts already referred to, is the end of “the thousand years,” the “end” which Paul has in view, in 1 Cor. 15: 34, when Messiah’s victory is complete, and, all rule, authority and power being put down, and [page 60] death itself destroyed, the kingdom is surrendered to the Father, and God is all in all. 1 Cor 15: 24-26.  The harmony and unity of Isaiah, Micah, Ezekiel, Paul and John, herein, are both demonstratable and indestructible.  Their testimony to the location of the Millennial Kingdom the other side of the Second Coming of Christ, is final.  Pastor Koch, therefore, in his admirable work on “The Thousand Years’ Kingdom,” eminent not less for its logic than for its critical ability and thorough knowledge of the Scriptures, is right when, discussing Ezekiel’s “Many Days,” says: “This period of Israel’s peace and blessedness can be no other than ‘the thousand years’ kingdom treated of Rev. 19: 11-21.  Between the overthrow of Antichrist and Gog’s march lies the period of Rev. 20: 1-6 which is nothing else than ‘The Thousand Years.’  The march of Gog follows only ‘after the thousand years are finished,’ ” * [* Das tausendjuhrige Reich, p. 65.]

 

C.  LEOLAM.  FOREVER.

 

 In the extract from Schroeder, quoted above, it was said that the term “Leolam,” “forever,” Ezek. 37: 25, 26, 28, applied to the duration of the times of Israel in the kingdom, in future days, “can be interpreted by the Chilia Ete, or ‘The Thousand Years,’ in Rev. 20: 1-7.”  This is exegetically true as it is theologically important, and rests upon the Biblical use of the term itself.  It refutes the vain charge that Chiliasm denies the “everlasting” character of Messiah’s kingdom, because it asserts its temporal form in a Millennial Age. [page 61]

 

A better knowledge of the usus loquendi, and of the term “forever,” would render this, like many other similar objections, impossible.  The kingdom of Messiah is, as the Scriptures everywhere declare, everlasting in its essence and existence.  It has “no end.”  Isa. 9: 7; Heb. 1: 8-12.  Messiah’s throne is “forever.”  Ps. 89: 4, 29, 36; Heb. 1: 8; 72: 77.  Throughout its several forms of dispensations, it is an everlasting kingdom also, but yet to each of these forms there is an “end.”  Matt. 24: 14; Heb. 9: 26; 1 Cor. 15: 24.  It is olamic aeonian in both, but in a different sense; in the first, absolutely so; in the second, relatively so; unlimited as to its essence, limited as to its forms.  As to its essence, no external event can limit it.  As to its form, external events do limit it.  Viewed in its essence it is eternal only.  Viewed in its essence and form, together, it is both temporal and eternal, yet called eternal in its relative sense, that is, “age-abiding.” * [*See NOTES at Emd – Ed] Essentially it is one, and endures forever in an absolute sense.  Circumstantially, or dispensationally, it is many, its forms evanescent, though each is age-abiding.  This rests upon the nature of the case, and the Biblical expression is accommodated to the fact.  The wise man tells us God has sent “Olam,” “eternity,” in the heart of man, and he knows “that whatever God doeth it should be Leolam, forever.” Eccl. 3: 11, 14.  No man can find, out the work of God from its beginning, or in its end, no man can conceive an absolute beginning or an absolute end, for no man can conceive an absolute beginning or an absolute end, because “God has set Olam in the heart of man.”  Eternity transcends human thought, and yet it is the innermost core of man’s spiritual constitution, writes vanity on all things perishable, and bespeaks man’s immorality.  In spite of the world’s fading fashion which attracts and [page 62] in the eternal state, will differ as greatly from its previous form in the millennial state, as that millennial form will differ from our present form, and as ours again differs from the old Mosaic, or as that did from the patriarchal tent.

 

Schroeder is right, therefore, as are Kliefoth, Oehler, Kuper, and many others, when saying that Ezekiel’s Leolam, Forever, in 37: 25, 26, 28, is the equivalent of John’s Chilia Ete, or “one thousand years,” in Rev. 20: 1-7.  Isaiah’s everlasting age concealed in its bosom all the relative ages of the great development, and their termini, even as Joel’s prophecy was “generic” and contained the two judgments of the double end, the judgment on antichrist and the nations, and the judgment on Gog.  And in the whole development, all things are connected with temporal and terrestrial relations.  From first to last, even in the New Testament, the ages and the kingdom of the heavens are associated with our planet.  Nowhere in the Old Testament, as nowhere in the New, can our popular idea of “an end to the world,” as the terminus where Time and Eternity meet, or Time passes into Eternity, and “our planet is no more,” to be found.  Such conceptions are unbiblical, Manichean, Origenistic, Shakesperean and pessimistic.  The “hills of Olam” abide for ever and forever.  Materiality is glorified, not annihilated, in God’s Kingdom.  The creation is recreated.  A new heaven and earth supplant the old, and this begins with the “many days,” “the one thousand years.”

 

D. HOSEA 3: 4.

 

Another expression, similar to those already noted, is found on Hosea when predicting God’s watchful care over Israel in their dispersion and lonliness; - [page 65] the time  of Lo Ammi and Lo Ruhamam – “Not my people,” and “Not my beloved;” the time when harlot Israel, divorced from God, yet separated from idolatry, is still in desolation and concealment and providentially preserved for God.  Hos. 1: 6, 9, 10; 2: 20-23.  The words of punishment and grace are the alike remarkable.  Thou shalt abide for me many daysYamin Rabbim.  Thou shalt not play the healot.  Thou shalt not be any man’s wife.  So will I also be for thee!”  God’s pledge to the sinful Jewish Church, to apostate Israel!  To divorced Lo Ammi and Lo Ruhamah!  This is grace amazing.  It tells the topmost mercy, boundless love, and bottomless compassion of God.  This is surely immeasurable.  For the children of Israel shall abide (dwell, yeshbhn) many days, - Yamin Rabbim, - no king and no prince, and no sacrifice, and no obelisk, and no ephod and terraphim.  Afterward (achar) shall the children of Israel return (convert, yashubhu) and seek the Lord their God and David their King, and shall come with fear to the Lord and His goodness, in the afterness of the days,” Hosea 3: 3-5.  If we ask what are these “many days” of Israel’s loneliness and isolation, and strangely-pledged preservation for God, we can only answer promptly, with Delitzsch, “The many days here are the long period of the exile, the condition in which the Jewish people is, even now; - a people, but not a State with a King; - a still worshiping congregation, but with no sacrifices, a people so radically alienated from polytheism that it regards itself as the pillar of monotheism; - a people who, at length, shall be seized with a repentant desire for Jehovah, and David its King, that is, as the Targum translates, ‘for Messiah the Son of David,’ the king David of the final period.  Jer. 30: 9; [page 66] Ezek. 34: 23-31; 37: 24-28;” and then he adds: “The entire Old Testament can exhibit no brighter prophecy respecting the conversion of Israel than this companion piece to Rom. 11: 25, and which received its full spiritual signification, first of all, in the light of the New.” * [* Messianic Prophecies, p. 61].  It is a photograph of the condition of Israel to-day, and as certain a prediction of what their end will be, as a people, in a few short years.  But this is not all.  There is another aspect of this period.  Contrary to Pusey’s inadequate comment, the “many days” here are gathered into two great days, two historic days, covering the whole time of Israel’s national decease and rest, as a nation, in the grave; the whole time of the existence of the Valley of the Dry Bones; at the expiration of which returning Israel’s resurrection shall take place, i.e., on the third historic day. “Come and let us return unto the Lord, for He hath torn and will heal us; He hath smitten and will bind us up.  After two days, - Miyyomayim, - He will requicken us.  On the third day, - Bayom Hashshelishi, - He will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight,” i.e.,before Him.”  Hos. 6: 1, 2.  Then follows the age of perpetual sunshine and spiritual showers, v. 3, the summer for the just, the resurrection glory.

 

If we ask what these two historic days are, we can only say again, with Delitzsch, “The prophecy refers to the people, after the second day of whose death a resurrection day follows.  Rom. 11: 15.  The two days of their death are, in the history of fulfilment, the Assyrian and Babylonian exile, and the Roman exile, in which the Jewish people still are.” [*ibid, p. 62.]  That is, the first day of Israel’s national death is the Old Testament [page 67] period of Israel’s destruction as a nation, the people carried captive, Jerusalem destroyed, the Temple gone, the land depopulated, and the outward kingdom blotted out; the second day is the New Testament period, with the like catastrophe repeated, the first day reaching to the First Coming of Christ, beginning with a new dispensation, the Roman or second day reaching to the Second Coming, the total period being the time of Israel, as a nation, in the Valley of Dry Bones, the Monarchy-Colossus still standing unstruck.

 

Then comes the “third,” the resurrection day, in whose “morningIsrael arises, the time of Israel’s repentance and home-coming, the time when the Colossus falls, and the Dry Bones stand up erect, reanimated, clothed with flesh, a host exceeding great!  What we have here is a spiritual resurrection first, Ezek. 36: 25; a national and political resurrection next, Ezek. 37: 1-28; a literal corporal resurrection of the faithful dead of Israel last, Ps. 49: 14, 15; Isa. 26: 19; Dan. 12: 1-3.  The apostle Paul quotes the words of Hosea 13: 14, “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death.  O death, where are thy plagues?  O grave, where is thy destruction?  in proof of a literal destruction of the body, 1 Cor. 15: 55, and, in his letter to the Romans, tells us that this time of Israel’s conversion and re-establishment will bring no less an event than “life out from the dead.”  Rom. 11: 15.

 

What Hosea gives us here, at the beginning of the third day, is precisely what Moses gives us, Deut. 32: 39; and David gives us, Ps. 49: 14, 15; and Isaiah gives us, 25: 8; 26: 19; and Daniel gives us, 12: 1-3; and Ezekiel gives us, 37: 1-28; and John’s Apocalypse gives us, 11: 11, 18; 12: 5; 10: 11; 20: 4-6. [page 68]   Then after these mighty events that mark the end of our present age, or end of Israel’s second day of national death, comes the Millennial Age of Israel’s blessedness, pictured beautifully, as the times of perennial reviving and refreshing, the age of Israel’s Dew, and Blossoming, and Lily growth, and deepening roots like the Cedar tree, and spreading branches like the olive tree; the age of blessing to the Nations, when they, too, dwelling under Israel’s shadow, shall revive as the corn, and bloom as the vine, and be fragrant as wine of Lebannon; and Israel, all holy to the Lord, will have no more to do with idols, but, unwithering, like the fir tree, bear holy fruit to God.  Hosea 14: 4-8.

 

The demonstration, then, is clear, inductively. Hosea’s “many days” reach from the Assyrian captivity down to the Second Advent of Christ.  During this whole period Israel as a nation lies buried in the grave with the Colossus on its breast.  Israel’s resurrection as a nation is on the “morning” of the “third day.”  In the history of Christ the history of Israel is recapitulated.” (Delitzsch.)  Israel must die as a nation in order to live.  From death to life is the path for Israel to the kingdom.” (Orelli.)  Equally clear is it that the “Multitude of Days” in Isa. 24: 22, and the “Many Days” in Ezek. 38: 8, are identical with “the Thousand Years” in John, Rev. 20: 1-7, and reach from the Second Coming of Christ to the destruction of Gog.

 

These two vast periods, taken together, cover, therefore, the whole time from the Assyrian captivity to the Last Judgment and the final New Heaven and Earth.  The age next before us is that of the “Third Day,” the “Sabbatism” of the world.  Not at the First Coming of Christ was Hosea’s prediction fulfilled, as is clear [page 69]  from John’s Apocalypse, where, under the sixth vial, the Euphrates, beyond which the ten tribes roved into concealment among the nations, is “dried up” to make way for the return of Israel, under the care of the princes from the sun rising.  Rev. 16: 12; 2 Kings 17: 6; Isa. 11: 16; 24: 16; 66: 19, 20; 41: 2, 25; Zeph. 3: 10.  It is true that the terms “Afterward” and the “Last Days” are standing eschatological formulae for the whole Messianic time covered by Isaiah’s everlasting age, as well as for the time next preceding the “Yom Yehovah,” or “Day of the Lord;” and that, as is clear from Joel and Peter, they include the first as well as the second appearing of Messiah. !sa. 2: 2; Joel 2: 28; Acts 2: 17; the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, as well as the still future outpouring predicted by Paul.  Rom. 11: 27, and parallels; Isa. 59: 21; Ezek. 36: 24, 25; and both which are wrapped up in Zechariah’s oracle, Zech. 12: 10-14; 13: 1, 6.  Compare Rev. 1: 7.  But it is equally true that whatever conversion of Jews occurred on the day of Pentecost, or of any Israelites since, it is only the initial, not the final, redemption of that people, since Israel, as a nation, is still cast away, not gathered, their house desolate, and their land still trodden under Gentile feet.  The “afterness of the days” is the end-time at the second coming of Christ.  It refers to the epoch of Israel’s entrance into the kingdom restored, the time when Israel seeks and welcomes Christ the King.  Luke 13: 34, 35; Rev. 15: 3; and also to those super-natural days of Messiah, called “his days,” in Psalm 72: 7, when Israel’s “handful of corn,” or saved remnant, “shall shake like Lebanon,” and “they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth,” 72: 16; the time when those words, so bitter and sad, “Lo Ammi[page 70] and “Lo Ruhamah,” shall no more be spoken.  Down to this very hour Israel has remained pure from the sin of “Idolatry” since the day their national exile began, and, as a people, will so abide, reserved for the Kingdom of Christ at His Coming.  The same race, punished for sin, is the race reclaimed by grace.  Nationally, as well as personally, God deals with the Jewish people.

 

Israel’s identity abides through all the ages.  From the genesis of Israel in Abraham to the re-genesis of Israel in Christ, Israel “abides,” Israel, untarnsmuted, and, from Sennacherib down to the last Antichrist, will so “abide,” kept for that day when the “Branch of Jehovah shall become an ornament and glory, and He the Fruit of the Land be a pride and a boast for the escaped of Israel.” Isa. 4: 2.  So sing the prophetic Blessing of Judah, the Oracles of Balaam, the Dying Song of Moses, and the Words of David, preluding the fortunes of the chosen people down to, and into, the “Last Days.”  So sing Hosea and Amos, the two prophets of the ten tribes, in concert with all the rest.  In God’s strange providence Israelabides” for Him, and not another, unobelisked and unteraphimed, and He is “toward them,” and will yet “have mercy on them.”  Then, in that day of Israel’s home-coming, the Jewish Church of the end time will be revived.  The Lord will renew the Covenant of His love with “Lo Ruhamah,” take away any ambiguous “Baali” from her mouth, and put the loving “Ishi” there.  He will betroth her Himself in righteousness and judgment, in loving kindness and in mercies, even in faithfulness forevermore.  In her final tribulation He will allure her to the wilderness, as John’s Apocalypse also shows us.  Rev. 12: 6, 14; and nourish her, and tenderly repeat His “Ammi[page 71] to her heart, and breathe “Rumamah!”  He will accept her penitence and tears, and give her again “the Valley of Trouble” for a door of hope, and make her sing her old Egyptian song.  There will not only be a Wedding Day, but a Day of Victory.  When David’s fallen Booth is re-erected, in more than ancient splendour, Israel and Judah, reunited, as “one nation,” and marching under “One Head,” shall “come up from the land,” victorious, across the plain of Megiddo, where Barak fought and Deborah sang, and “Great will be the Day of Jezreel!”  Hos. 1: 11.

 

 

E. MOSES.

 

But Moses demands a hearing.  The Prophets have said nothing on this great matter that even Moses had not already said before them.  Let it be enough, just here, to say that Moses himself defines the time during which Israel shall be nationally cast away, and at whose close Israel shall be nationally restored, and made glorious in their fatherland.  If we turn to Leviticus 27: 18, 21, 24, 28, we shall hear God saying what He will do  to Israel in case of their apostasy,  If ye will not hearken unto me, but will walk contrary to me, then I will add to smite you Seven Times (Sheba) upon your sins.”  When, however, in the Acharith Hayyamin, or Last Days, Israel repents, accepting the justice of their punishment, nationally, then, says God. “I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, my covenant I made with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, and I will remember the land.” Lev. 26: 42, 45.  Who cannot see that the Sheba or Seven Times of Israel’s national punishment are the whole stretch of time in Israel’s chastisement, from the smiting of Israel and Judah, as kingdoms, down to the [page 72]Last Days” when Israel nationally repents, i.e., down to the Second Coming of Christ?  They are the measure of the duration of Israel in the lion’s den, and furnace of affliction, seven times hot, the whole period of the “Times of the Gentiles,” the period of the Colossus standing erect on Israel’s grave; the “Many Days” of Hosea, his “Two Days,” at whose close Israel’s resurrection and redemption occur, and the Millennial Age begins.

 

Listen to the “Song of Moses,” Deut. 32: 39-43.  It predicts Israel’s apostasy, and final recovery, as a nation, in the Acharith Hayyamin or Last Days, the “End of the Days,” still future to us.  The faithful of that oracle, in Moses, has never yet taken place.  Its radius of vision reaches to the Second Advent, as all successive prophecy shows, and all history confirms.  Both Testaments conspire to prove this.  It points, in clearest terms, to the Great Tribulation, the interposition of Christ, and the “making alive” of Israel’s faithful dead by Him who “killsIsrael’s adversaries.  To spiritualize this into a subjective redemption of all God’s people, or of the New Testament Church, is to mock the Scriptures.  He who, in Moses, swares, as He lifts His hand, “I am He, I kill and I make alive, I live forver,” and vows to “avenge the blood” of His martyred ones, and calls the nations to “rejoice with His people” (the Jews) in that crisis, is He who in John, Rev. 10: 7, lifts His hand and swears that, with the seventh trumpet, the Tribulation shall come to an end, and Antichrist be destroyed, Israel be delivered, and not only Moses, but Daniel also predicted (Dan. 12: 1-3) and the righteous dead be restored to life.  Such is the organic unity of all prophecy from Moses to John.  Then the “mystery of God” foreshown to the prophets [page 73]shall be finished” and the kingdom come.  John is only repeating and filling out Moses and the Prophets! * Look at Deut. 31: 28, 29; 32: 39-43; Rev. 6: 10; 10: 7; 15: 3, 4; 19: 11-21; 20: 1-7.  Sunlight is not clearer than that the Age of Israel’s glory in the kingdom is placed, by Moses, after the Seven Times of punishment which reach down to the very “End of the Days,” or “Acharith Hayyamin” in their utmost development, that is, after Hosea’s “two days.”  In other words, Moses puts it precisely where Hosea’s “third day” stands, and John’s 1,000 years belong.  It follows Israel’s national conversion to Christ.  Deut. 30: 1-4.  And he who studies Paul, will find him teaching the same truth when discussing the “Jewish Problem,” as men call it.  In Rom. 10: 6-10; 11: 25, 29, he puts Israel’s conversion, as a people, even as Isaiah does, Isa. 59: 16-21, and Peter does, Acts 3: 19-21, at the Second Coming of Christ.

 

[* “ANI-HU” (I AM HE) is the covenant name of Christ, in the Old Testament, Deut. 32: 39; Isa. 43: 10; 46: 3, 5; 48: 12.  It is the name of the Second Person of the Trinity (1) making Himself equal in Essence with God (HE), while yet asserting a distinct Personality.  It is the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, of the Word of God, and is the ground of John’s Logos doctrine.  John 1: 1.  He who here speaks, to Moses, is the personal “Word of God,” who appears as the diademed Rider on the White Horse, Rev. 19: 11, and as the Angel of the Covenant, or Maleach Habberith, coming, the second time to Israel, to wake His people out of the Valley of Dry Bones, and appearing with solar-face, rainbow-crown, His shoulders in cloud, and His feet in pillars of fire, Rev. 10: 1, and swearing the same words to John that He swore to Moses.  It was ANI-HU who dwelt in the Pillar of Cloud by day, and Fire by night.  It was ANI –HU who spoke to Moses in the “Bush.”  It was ANI-HU HAMMIDDABBER, I AM HE, the Speaking One, a motto Stier has taken for his “Words of Jesus.”  It was a name asserting the deity, eternity, personality, majesty, and real presence and glory of Christ, in Old Testament History.  ANI-HU is the “Alpha and Omega” in the Apocalypse, Isaiah’s “Immanu-EL” or “With-us-God.”  The Christ who talked to Moses upon the same subject, and in reference to the same time.]

 

F.          THE PSALTER.

 

Nor is the Psalter silent.  All the sweet singers of Israel, from David to Ezra, pre-celebrate the same future for Israel.  They sing in concert with Moses.  The “Set Time” to favour Zion, as it stands in the prophetic outlook, Psalm 102: 13-22, is demonstrably the “End Time” when the Angel of Jehovah, the Lord Himself, throned on the “Clouds,” comes with His holy “Angels” to “appear in His glory and build up Zion,” to “judge the people, the world, the earth, in righteousness,” to give the righteous “dominion in the morning,” to cause them to “wake in His likeness,” to “send the rod of His strength out of Zion,” “rule in the midst of His enemies,” “smite kings in the Day of His wrath,” “redeem Israel,” “make known His Salvation in the eyes of all nations,” and “fill the earth with His glory.”  It is all eschatological.  Those marvellous Psalms, 102, 97, 18, 96, 49, 110, 72, show this at once.  The expression “His Days” in Psalm 72: 7, denotes plainly the days of Messianic or Millennial glory on earth, foretold by the prophets, and as following the “Seven Times” of Moses.  These “Days” are the “Third Day” of Hosea, the “Many Days” of Isaiah and Ezekiel, and the “Thousand Years” of John.  Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets, all sing the same thing concerning Israel and Messiah, both as to their sufferings and glory, all idealizing critics to the contrary notwithstanding.  A pre-advent Millennium is unknown to the Psalter.  That bright constellation of five Psalms closing with the 100th Psalm, is a chorus of Second Adnent songs.  Delitzsch calls them “Apocalyptic Psalms.”  Prof. Binnie of Aberdeen styles them “Songs of the Millennium.”  Herder named them a “Group of Millennial Psalms.”  Tholuck adorned [page 75] them with the title “Millennial Anthems.”  What is it they celebrate?  The Glorious kingdom of the Messiah, the kingdom restored to Israel, after the Second Coming, or personal Self- Revelation of Jehovah, to judge the world.  Like so many others, they teach as the Prophets do, the pre-millennial Advent of Christ, and the “Shower Seasons,” or “Times of Reviving” following, when “He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass, and as showers that water the earth;” the very “times of refreshing” of which Peter spoke, when the first Christian Pentecost, their pledge, was fully come.  Paul tells the Hebrews in his first chapter that the 97th Psalm relates to the Second Advent when the First-Born Heir of all things is publicly installed in His inheritance amid the homage of all angels.  The Old Hundredth Psalm is simply an anticipation of the Millennial Age when “All the people that on earth do dwell” unite to praise the Lord.  What is the 45th Psalm but an “Advent Hymn” as the great Crusius called it, “Celebrating the victories of the Bridegroom-Warrior coming to His kingdom?”

 

What is the 97th. Psalm but a catalogue of the nations whose individuals are put on the burgess roll as born citizens of metropolitan Zion when God establishes her in universal empire?  That the 37th Psalm refers to the Millennial Age, when “the meek shall inherit the earth,” is our Lord’s own teaching.  The 68th Psalm is a “Great War-Hymn of the Conqueror of the World-Power.”  The 50th Psalm opens with the “Advent of Christ to judgment.”  The Hebrew Poets are all Pre-millennialists, as are the Hebrew Prophets, and the Psalter has to do with “the 1,000 years” as plainly as has the Apostle John. [page 76]

 

G.        SUMMING UP.

 

If we sum up the results of our investigation, we shall find that the Spirit of Prophecy has furnished us various time-designations which span the whole development of the Kingdom of God on earth from the Assyrian captivity down to the final New Heaven and Earth.  Israel’s fate is the measure of all prophecy.  Of these designations to cover the whole period from the Assyrian exile down to the Second Coming of Christ, viz., the “Many Days” in Hosea 3: 4, 5, during which Israel “abides,” waiting for Jehovah, and which in Hosea 6: 2, are summed up in “Two Days” the two great historic periods of national death for Israel, viz., (1) the Old Testament Day of Assyrian and Babylonian captivity and dispersion, and (2) the New Testament Day of Roman captivity and dispersion, these two days reaching down to the time of Israel’s predicted return, resurrection, and national rehabilitation in their fatherland, at the Second Coming of Christ or in the morning of Hosea’s “Third Day,” Hosea 6: 2; the history of “Israel” the national Messiah, and “Israel” the personal Messiah, being modelled on the same divine plan.  What we further find is that the Messianic Kingdom and Glory on earth, i.e., the Millennial age, this side the final Regenesis of all things, is defined, in the Scriptures, by no less than six different equivalent expressions, viz.:

 

Rov Yamin.  Multitude of Days.  Isa. 24: 22.

 

Rabbin Yamin.  Many days. Ezek. 38: 8.

 

Yom Hashshelishi.  Third Day.  Hos. 3: 4, 5.

 

His Days.  Psa. 72: 7

 

Leolam.  Forever.  Ezek. 37: 25, 26, 28.

 

Chila Ete. Thousand Years.  Rev. 20: 1-7.

 

All descriptive of the same period of time, bounded [page 77] on each side by the same events, the period between the Second Advent and the destruction of Gog, or between the binding and loosing of Satan.  It is important to observe that the “Many Days” of Hosea, are a very different period from the “Many Days” of Ezekiel, and the “Multitude of Days” of Isaiah.  The former are the “Times of the Gentiles,” the times of the Colossus, the Four Beasts, Israel’s Graveyard, 69 weeks, with at least 1890 years of the Interval following the period of Israel’s national Rejection and Death.  The latter are the Millennial Age itself, introduced by the Second Advent, the gathering and judgment of the nations, the downfall of the Colossus, the destruction of the Antichrist, the 70th week, and the resurrection of Israel.  What we further find is that the 70th of Daniel’s 70 weeks is divided into twice 1260 days for the Rise, Reign, and Ruin, of Antichrist, and that the formula, 70 years, plus 7 year-weeks, plus 62 year-weeks, plus our Interval, plus I year-week, all of which make the “Two Days” of Hosea, spans the whole time from the Destruction of the visible kingdom of God on earth to its setting up again; that the “Many Days” of Hosea, which are his “Third Day,” span “the 1,000 years” of John; and that all, taken together, exhaust the whole prophetic calendar if we add, hereto, Gog’’s “little season,” at the close of the Millennial Age.  The formula of the total AEonology is 70 years plus 69 year-weeks, plus our Interval, plus 1 year-week, plus the 1,000 years, plus Gog’s little season.

 

And what we find further, is that no prophet of the Old Testament gives a complete, but only a partial picture of the End-Time, even as neither Christ, nor any Apostle does, but that the work of John, under the guidance of the Spirit of Prophecy, was to combine the [page 78] Eschata of Joel, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah; in short, the Eschata of all the prophets, and arrange them in their temporal order and succession, supplementing by one prophet the partial picture of the End drawn by another, until all the Eschata fall into their places, as they shall occur in history, so furnishing to us one grand tableau of the End Time.  This is what the Holy Ghost did with the seer in the “isle that is called Patmos.”  Nothing is clearer than that “the 1,000 years” of John are found in the Old Testament prophets, and that Hosea’s “Third Day,” Isaiah’s “Multitude of Days,” Ezekiel’s “Many Days,” bounded by two resurrections, two conflagrations, and two judgments, each distinguished from one another, and between which the Millennial Kingdom lies.  The New Testament Apocalypse answers herein, to the Old, as face answers to face in water, and it belongs to the shame and reproach due to the superficial knowledge of so many in our day, who pretend to greater things, that they have not recognized this fact, in their study of the Scriptures, but still keep harping on the old and timeless string that “the Millennium is found in only one passage of the Bible, and that in a very obscure book called the Apocalypse!” a boast and a blindness which have happened in part of many Gentile interpreters who inform us that Israel of Old Testament Prophecy, “Daniel’s People” brought out of Egypt, and to whom a future so glorious is reserved, after a punishment so great, means believers in Christ, the Old and the New Testament “Church,” from the “first man Adam,” down to the “Second Adam, the Lord from heaven,” a grand spiritual company gathered not only from Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and dwellers in Mesopotamia, but from Greeks, Turks, Germans, Saxons, Romans, Arabs, [page 79] Frenchmen, Esquimaux and Indians.  What a perversion, or as Delitzsch calls it, a “destruction and negatation of the prophecies not effected!  Or what is more humiliating to a scholar than the allegorizing “Anglo-Israelism” of some of our times!  On the Contrary, if we only let God speak for Himself – allowing Israel to “abide” Israel, till the Lord comes, that “Genea” not passing away, how bright the unclouded Apocalypses of Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah and John!  How clear the Millennial age following the Advent!  How false the common view entertained by the Church, and blindly advocated by so many of her teachers!

 

H

 

It does seem strange that any student of God’s word should doubt, for one moment, the truth that blazes everywhere so clearly in the Old as well as the New Testaments, viz., that the Second Coming of Christ precedes the Millennium.  And it does seem criminal that such an unreasoning prejudice should exist in the minds of any against the use of the term as Spiritual as are the terms “Baptism,” “Baptist,” “Episcopalian,” “Presbyterian;” words which the objectors themselves have chosen to consecrate as the names of their several denominations, and in which they glory.  How unreasonable is man’s opposition, even to God’s own word!  Man would,” as Bengel says, “take the very words of God out of His own mouth!  We coin the word “Millennialist,” in Latin, from the words “Mille” and “annos,” which are simply the Roman equivalents for the Greek “Chilia Ete” of John in Rev. 20: 1-7, the English translation of which is a “thousand Years.”  It is Scriptural.  We coin the word “Chiliast” from these same inspired words.  It is as Scriptural a term, as is “Baptist,” [page 80] “Presbyterian,” or “Episcopalian,” or “Christian,” and as “Orthodox” as any of these!  It means that he who wears it believes that the “Day of the Lord” in which Christ comes precedes the Millennium.  The Advent is before the Millennium.  That is, he is a “Pre-Millennialist.”  It denies what the Scriptures everywhere deny, viz., the fiction of a pre-advent Millennium.  With equal justice, we might coin the word Ravyamist from the Hebrew terms “Rov Yamin” and “Rabbim Yamim,” In Hosea, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, there used to denote the same truth.  Every prophet was a Ravyamist.  He believed in a period of time, “after” Messiah’s Coming to judge the Nations, in which Israel, re-gathered, redeemed, restored, renewed, resurrected, and renationalized, should enjoy the Messianic glory in the kingdom on earth – a period of time called “Many Days,” or as John has it, a “thousand years,” and prior to the Last Judgment and the final New Heaven and earth.  And Christ Himself was a “Ravyamist,” or, as Auberlen somewhere truly says, “Jesus was a Chiliast.”  All the Apostles were the same.  All the early Apologists for Christianity were the same.  Can we imagine when we hear such a man as Delitzsch say, “I am a Chiliast,” and “Chiliasm was the faith of the early Church,” and when also we hear the greatest modern patristic scholar, Harnack, say, “Chiliasm is inseparably associated with the gospel, and this is its defence,” that these men are either heretics or foolish?  On the contrary, that great martyr and scholar, “Irenaeus the Great,” like “Justin the most learned man of his time,” catalogued and held as “Promoters of heresy,” and even of “blasphemy,” all who denied the Chiliastic faith which, in their day, was the “test of an orthodox church.”  It is a proposition no honest critic dare deny [page 81] that, if  the early church, having such teachers as Irenaeus, Justin, and others of the same apostolic faith and influence, and knowing what Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah, John, our Lord, and His Apostles, had taught, had not been Chiliastic in her creed, she ought to have been so, and her failure to have been so would have convicted her as recreant to what Moses and the Prophets, and Christ and His Apostles, had revealed of the course of history, and the outcome of God’s kingdom on earth.  It was impossible, however, that, standing next to Christ and His Apostles, and with the Psalms and Prophets in her hand, the Jew nationally cast away yet only for a time, and the Gentile erect on Israel’s grave, and even persecuting the church itself, she could have been anything else than she was in her creed, and the proof is perfect, and increases more and more, with every fresh investigation of the early history of the church, that, only by means of apostasy from the Word of God, did she surrender for the sake of opulence and power, money and prosperity, extension in the empire, and freedom from fagot and flame, that blessed truth whose defence from Moses and John, God has made the mark of a faithful, a suffering, and a witnessing church.  And, surely, if the pious Hebrew held the Hope of Christ’s Coming to judge the nations, restore Israel, and set up His Kingdom on earth, as the only Hope for the world’s redemption, the only way by which gentile politics and power could be overthrown, the Antichrist destroyed, and the faithful dead awakened to share the promise of the kingdom, much more ought it to be our Hope, bound up as it is with our own deliverance, as well as the deliverance of Israel, and the final glory of the world.  What a stupendous absurdity, in flat contradiction to [page 82] every prophet, that the Millennial Age will come prior to the “Yom Yehovah,” or “Day of the Lord,” in which Messiah appears for Israel’s final recovery!  Such an idea simply inverts, perverts and distorts, Moses and the Prophets, Christ and the Apostles.  The whole testimony of prophecy, pre-exile, exile, and post-exile, is against it.  The entire New Testament is against it.  Never, till the Colossus comes down my means of judgment, and the Bones of Israel awake in the Valley, and the Antichrist is destroyed, and Satan is bound, and God’s sleeping saints are raised, and heaven, earth, sea, dry land, and the nations are shaken, can the kingdom come, as predicted.  And that none of these marvels can occur apart from the Second Coming of Christ, the merest tyro in Biblical knowledge must recognize as a first principle and truth in the interpretation of prophecy.

 

I

 

A closing word is demanded as to Israel in the Apocalypse.  That wonderful Book is capable of many “applications,” but only the one organic “interpretation,” based upon the entire unity, analogy, and identity of prophecy.  We may “apply” its symbols to the times of early Pagan persecution, and also to later Papal persecutions.  This is the figurative “application” based upon the equation of “Israel” with the “Christian Church.”  The Apocalypse was a book of comfort to the early church.  It was a comfort, also, to the witnesses of Christ in the Middle Age, and during the Reformation.  But as surely as IsraelabidesIsrael, and Daniel’s “people” are not the “Church,” so surely is Israel the key for the true and final interpretation of the closing prophecy of the New Testament.  It sums up in itself all the unfulfilled predictions respecting that chosen and predestined race.  We meet [page 83] Israel everywhere. The very announcement of the Theme of the book.  Behold He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him; they also who pierced Him,” Rev. 1: 7, i.e., the Jewish nation, as Zechariah assures us.  The text is a combination of two passages, one from Zechariah, the other from Daniel, both in strict textual connection, in the prophets, with Israel’s deliverance at the second Advent of Messiah.  We encounter Israel again in the promise made to the Philadelphian Church, Rev. 3: 7-11, by Him who is the “Lion of Judah’s tribe,” and has “the Key of David.”  Israel shall be converted in the last time, and in connection with the coming of Christ.  Again we find Israel in the sealing of the 144,000 out of all the tribes, Rev. 7: 1-8, just before the Trumpet Judgments occur, and the tribulation begins.  Again, we see Israel in chapters 10, 11, and 12, chapters that place us in the very midst of Ezekiel’s Valley of Dry Bones, and show us the prophet’s word, and the Spirit of Life from God, with attending earthquake, beginning that work of spiritual, personal and national, conversion and resurrection foretold by the prophets.  The oath-taking Angel of the Covenant, Solar-faced, and Rainbow-crowned, whose shoulders are robed in cloud and feet like pillars of fire, reminds us of the Pillar of Cloud in the Wilderness, and Him who dwelt in it coming to his people again.  The “little book” is the matter of the testimony of the “two witnesses.”  Their 1260 days of witness is the first half of Daniel’s 70th week.  The slaughter of the witnesses is in the middle of that week, and is the first public persecuting act of the last Antichrist.  The succeeding 1260 days is the second half of that week, the time of the tribulation.  The “Worshippers,” 11: 1, the sun-clothed woman, or [page 84] daughter of Zion, 12: 1, the “Our Brethren,” 12: 10, the “Woman” fled to the wilderness, are all the same, the Jewish Christian Church of the End-Time, or 70th week of Daniel.  The “Remnant of her seed, who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus,” and whom Satan, through the Antichrist, persecutes 1260 days, 12: 17, 13: 1, 5, 7, are either Gentile believers, or the remainder of Israel returning from the East under the care of eastern princes, doubtless both, 16: 12.  The 144,000 in 14: 1-5 are Israel again, secure with Messiah returned to Zion, after the Trumpet judgments are over.  Again, Israel stands triumphant, in 15: 3, 4, singing “the Song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb,” blending their first and last deliveries in one, and declaring that the time for national Christianity on earth has come, now that Israel is victorious, and is a nation converted to Christ.  What we see in 19: 11-21, is the Armageddon conflict, closed out, in the valley of Jehashapat, outside Jerusalem, the Lord Himself descending from “Heaven Opened” to destroy the Antichrist, bind Satan, raise the faithful dead, and begin the “thousand years” blessed kingdom of glory on earth, Rev. 20: 1-7.  And what shines before us in Rev. 20: 9, is the “Beloved City,” Jerusalem restored, the home of the Daughter of Zion, which, for a “thousand years” has enjoyed the uninterrupted peace and glory, foretold by the prophets.  He who cannot see “Israel” here, in this book as distinct from the “Church” and the “Nations,” will see nothing.  Wonderful is the regularity of Israel’s recurrence!  After the 6th verse of the 1st chapter; in the 6th of the seven Epistles to the Churches; between the 6th and 7th seals; between the 6th and 7th trumpets; between the 6th and 7th vials; in the Wilderness [page 85] here; on Mount Zion there; a worshiping part in the city now; a multitude pressing into the land from the east; a shelter, a victory, a triumph, a glory, an effect on the nations, and all at the Second Coming of Christ!  He who cannot see this will see nothing!  It is the Eschatology of all the prophets.  It is the Eschatology of Christ.  It is the Eschatology of the Apostles, - one eschatology, from first to last, built and based on the one eternal plan and purpose of God with respect to Israel, an interpretation grounded in the unity, continuity, organic structure, and genetic development of all prophecy, divine, infallible, sure, a light forever.

 

A glance is enough to confirm this.  John has nothing here the prophets have not.  He has nothing Christ has not, for the Apocalypse was given him of God, and does not mean a literary production, or book, but the “Revelation of Jesus Christ” (Rev. 1: 1), as He comes the second time, in the clouds of heaven (Rev. 1: 7), and to His Covenant people, Israel of Old Testament Prophecy, to fulfil the word of His promise to them, to deliver them, to restore their state, and give them the kingdom.  He comes, indeed, to judge the professing Church and the world, but He comes to Israel as the “Malakh Habberith” or “Angel of the Covenant” the “Lord Himself;” and “Who may abide the day of His Coming, or stand when He appeareth?”  (Rev. 7: 17; 7: 1-8, Malachi 3: 2-4).  John has nothing, the Apostles have not.  His Eschatology is the same as that of Peter and Paul.  Peter binds Israel’s national repentance and the Second Coming of Christ together, Acts 3: 19-21.  He tells of scoffers in the last days, of the World-Judgment, the day of the Lord, the resurrection and glory, the visible kingdom, and the New Heaven and Earth. [page 86]   He sees judgment at the beginning and at the End of the Millennium in one, and overleaps the Millennial Age as a “Day,” in order to speak of the final New Heaven and Earth.  The whole future was before him in one view, and is crouched on one all-comprehending expression.  The Conflagration blazes in front, the Glory shines beyond.  Paul also takes up each eschatological point, and discusses it separately.  In 2 Thess. 2: 8, we have the Antichrist and Second Coming of the Lord, but nothing is said to Israel.  In Romans chapter 11, we have Israel’s conversion and the Second Coming, but nothing is said about antichrist.  In 1 Cor. 15: 12-57, we have him discussing the first resurrection at the Second Coming, but not a word about either Israel or Antichrist.  In Romans 8: 17-23, we have him dilating upon the glorified inheritance on earth, to be received at the redemption of the body from the grave, when Christ comes, but nothing about any of the other points.

 

If we combine all these in one picture, what we shall get as a result is Antichrist destroyed, Israel redeemed, the [faithful] saints raised, the Inheritance glorified, all at the Second Coming of Christ, and the Millennial Interval between that Coming of Christ to assume the kingdom and the remote End when He shall have surrendered the Kingdom of God, even the Father, having abolished all rule, and all authority and power, and annihilated Hades and Death, “that God may be all in all.” 1 Cor. 15: 24-28.  In short, we get precisely what John has given us in the Apocalypse, with this difference, that, whereas Peter and Paul discuss the points separately, John discusses nothing, but combines all in a total tableau of the End-Time, glowing under the highest light of the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.  And so [page 87] will every student of God’s word find it, if only he comes to that word with an humble heart, free from prejudice, and false theories of interpretation, and prays that God will open his eyes to see light in God’s light alone, accounting all other light as but darkness.  Blessed book is the Bible, the living word of the living God, one word from beginning to end, the work of one infinite mind, full of the wonders of wisdom, love and power!  And from Moses to John, the Eschatology is one, because God’s plan is one, the “Thousand Years” in John, following the Second Advent, and preceding the Last Judgment, being the very Interval Paul himself has acknowledged in 1 Cor. 15: 24, and none other than that period of time, called by Hosea, the “Third Day,” by Isaiah a “Multitude of Days,” and by Ezekiel “Many Days” – in every case, in both Old and New Testaments, associated with the Glory of Israel in the Kingdom, and the redemption of the Nations, accomplished at the Second Coming of Christ.  The holy penmen mutually supplement each other.  The Lord open the eyes of His Church to see it, love it, and teach it, and to Him be the glory forever.

 

-------

 

NOTES

 

[Selected by the editor from Nathaniel West’s “Supplementry Discussions.]

 

 

1.Olam,” “Ever.”

 

The word “Olam,” “Ever,” does not, of itself, and by fixed necessity, always denote the annihilation of time, but as frequently, in Hebrew usage, denotes simply unbroken continuance up to a special epoch in history, or to a certain natural termination.  It has a relative as well as an absolute sense, a finite as well as an infinite length.  It means “Here” as well as “Beyond,” and applies to a kingdom that comes to “an End,” as well as to one that has “no End.”  For this reason, a great World-Period, or Age, are called “Olam,” and in World-Periods, or Ages, are called “Olammim,” and in order to express infinite time, the reduplication is used, “Ages of Ages,” “Olammim Olammim.”  It is therefore a false conclusion to say that because the term “Le Olam,” “Forever,” is applied to the Messianic kingdom, therefore the Hebrews contradicted themselves, when they assigned to it limits at the same time.  Messiah’s kingdom is Temporal and also Eternal, and in both senses, Olamic.  The bondsman’s free covenant to serve his master lasted “forever,” but that only meant “till Jubilee.”  The Levitical economy was established to be “forever,” but that only meant till “the time of reformation.”  The Christian Church is “forever,” in its present form, but that only means “till He comes.”  True to this view, the Jewish Teachers ever held to a Temporal Kingdom of glory on earth, in the “World to Come,” this side the Eternal State in the final New Heaven and Earth.  Therefore we read in Fourth Ezra (Second Esdras in the English Apocrypha) that Messiah’s kingdom is restrained “to 400 years,” * while in the Apocalypse of Baruch – both these productions written in the time of the Apostle John, - it is said to “stand forever,” yet only “until the corruptible world is ended.” **  All this instructs us in the flexible, as well as fixed, character of the tern “forever.”

 

*4th Ezra, VII. 48

**Baruch, XLVIII.

 

MILLENNIAL, NOT ETERNAL

 

That the Millennial Age is not the Final Age is made clear in both Testaments.  The kingdom of 1,000 years stands in relation to an Age beyond its own limits, the Endless Age.  It is a false construction if the word “Until” in the expression “Until the 1,000 years are finished,” Rev. 20: 3, 5, 7 to say that the end of these years is the end of the kingdom of Christ, or of the blessedness of Israel, or of the Risen Saints’ reign with Christ, or of the distinction between Israel and the Nations, or between the Holy City and the outside dwellers.  Even after the Judgment of the “Great White Throne,” and the surrender of the Messianic Kingdom to the father, the priestly co-regency of Christ and His saints still exist.  There is still a dominion of Christ and His Bride, “the Holy City,” over the outside “Nations” and the “Kings” in the New earth, who are distinguished from her, and “bring their glory and their honour into her.”  And there is a condition of things transcending that which we see in the Millennial times.  In the New Jerusalem there is “no temple,” and “no night.”  They need no light of lamp, neither light of sun, for the Lord God gives them light, and the Lamp is the Lamb.”  Rev. 22: 23.  It is plainly said, “They shall reign for ever and ever,” verse 5.  This is the last word on the whole subject.  No more is spoken.  FOREVER!”  And it confirms Paul’s word, “FOREVER,” in 1 Thess. 4: 17.  Their kingdom is an “everlasting kingdom,” Dan. 7: 25.  Christ’s dominion has “no end,” Isa. 9: 5.  To the Son He saith, Thy throne, O God, is FOREVER,” Ps. 45: 6; Heb. 1: 8.  The Golden Age will disappear, Satan, let loose for a season, will cause to fade away the beauty of the vision from the eyes of all the nations girding Israel’s home and subdued so long to Israel’s sway.  Unmindful of the centuries when Israel was trodden down by Gentile pride, they will become restless and averse to all divine dominion.  Then, after a brief final test, come the closing Judgment and the farthest “End:” – the door that brings the Endless Age.  The last high point of the Apocalypse is gained, the Absolute End of the ways of God to men; - a vision of Eternal Glory toward those unveiling all previous revelation and all History have been the path, and on which the eyes of all prophets have been strained since the world began.

 

 

2. MODE OF LIFE AMONG THE RISEN.

 

As to the mode of intercourse between the glorified and un-glorified, there are many vain speculations.  We only “know in part,” and time will bring the answer to our various askings.  The whole discussion binds itself to our conceptions of the Resurrection-Body, - what it needs, and what its functions, are.  From the very first, the Jewish teachers were embarrassed here, and much divided in their views.  The later Jews are not more clear.  Saadias and Maimonides maintained that “they who rise in the resurrection, eat, drink and marry, and their bodily members serve them, for these are not in vain and they die again.”*  It was an ancient view, and founded on the cases of the resurrection of the son of the Shunamite, and the son of the widow of Zarepta, “both whom,” says Saddis, “ate and drank and doubtless took wives.”  On the other hand, Bechai and Abarnanel maintained that “they who rise in the resurrection neither eat, nor drink, nor marry, for there is no further need of these, after the resurrection, nor do the risen righteous ones return to dust again.  They have their bodies, in which the fleshly functions have ceased, as in the case of Moses, when in the Mount with God.” ** Our Lord corrects both these views when, confuting to the Sadducees, He replies that “they who shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world (Olam Habba) and the resurrection out from the dead, - [therefore, they cannot return again to the death state and remain in Hades until the millennium has ended, - Ed.] - neither marry nor are given in marriage, NEITHER CAN THEY DIE ANY MORE; for they are equal to the angels, - [that is, able to ascend to heaven or descend upon earth; and therefore able to rule in both spheres during the Millennium, - Ed.] - and are sons of God, being sons of the RESURRECTION.”  Luke 20: 35, 36.  Saadis and Ben Maimon said that the Risen “eat, drink, marry, die.”  Bechai, Abarbanel, Talmud and Cabbala, aver they “neither marry nor are given in marriage, neither can they die any more,” but says nothing as the “eating” or “drinking.”  What he teaches is that the children of the resurrection are as the sexless angels.  Beyond the fact that Lazarus ate after his resurrection, John 12: 1, 2, remains the fact that our Lord Himself, after His resurrection, had a tangible and visible material body, already free from the limitations of His former humiliation, and possessed of resurrection-life, and yet “ate” food in Jerusalem and at the shore of Galilee, Luke 24: 30, 41, 42; John 21: 12, and not only promised to the Twelve to “drink of the fruit of the vine, new in the Kingdom of God,” Matt. 26: 29, but “appointed” them “a Kingdom,” in which, said He, “ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel.”  Luke 22: 29, 30.  We can grossly carnalize this, on the one hand, and as ethereally spiritualize it on the other.  The fact remains that the Resurrection kingdom is “ON THE EARTH,” and that the “children of the resurrection” have material bodies, adapted to spiritual uses, and free from certain physical functions.  While we must shun an Ebonite Chiliasm on the one hand, we must equally avoid a Gnostic Chiliasm on the other, and not rob corporeity of its rights in the resurrection, or dissolve, under the idea of “Glory,” the resurrection body into a gauzy texture ballooning in the sky.  Such a conception is foreign to the whole word of God.  The risen ones shall have a human body, like their Lord’s, know each other, and be known, and live in relation to the saints UPON the earth, and to the Nations.  Their mode of immorality and intercourse are not revealed.  It is enough for us to know that not more difficult is the faith of Christ’s companionship with His disciples during the 40 days next following His resurrection.  It is enough to know that Death is robbed of his empire, and that, as Professor Milligan himself admits in his able work on the resurrection, our lord’s body was a true spiritual, glorified body, immediately upon His rising, and not first after His ascension, and that our bodies are to take the form and equality of His.  Equal to the “angels” we shall be, in one respect.  Like “Him,” we shall be, in another.  As both, in all.  Flesh and blood” cannot inherit God’s Kingdom, because “corruption” cannot “inherit incorruption,  1 Cor. 15: 50.  And yet “flesh and bones,” pervaded by the Spirit, and made incorruptible, is what our Lord’s body was in His resurrection, Luke 24: 26, a “glorious body,” and “like” which – not “equal” to which – ours shall be at His coming.  Phil. 3: 21.  In such bodies, the Risen Saints shall have fellowship with the unrisen in the Millennial Age.  For the rest, our curiosity must be restrained, and will be, if we listen to the Angel’s voice to Daniel, “Go thy way, Daniel, till the End shall be!”  Inquire no more.  Be content with what is already spoken.  Leave the unrevealed future to God.  Sure we are of one thing.  We shall behold God’s face in righteousness,” and “be satisfied when we awake with His likeness!”  Ps. 17: 15.  Even so, Lord Jesus!

 

*Eisenmenger. Eut. Jud. II. 943.

 

** Ibid 495.

 

CONCLUDING REMARKS

 

. . . “The Lord’s Advent is not to annihilate the existence of the Nations, as such, but to overthrow their politics and rule, and scatter both like chaff, and then transfer the sovereignty to Israel.  Dan. 2: 44; 7: 27; Rev. 11: 15, 18; 12: 10.  The three Great Parties of the 1000 years, are therefore:-

 

(1) The Risen saints [ That is, the ‘faithful’ dead or the “accounted worthy” from both Testaments, for, “apart from us they (the afore mentioned Old Testament saints – Ed.) - should not be made perfect,” Heb. 11: 40. – Ed.].

 

(2) New-Born Israel in the flesh,

 

(3) The Favoured Nations in the flesh.

 

. . . Such is the clear representation of the whole word of God.  Earth is beginning to realize the “pattern shown in the Mount,” and prepare for the full accomplishment in the final “new Heaven and Earth,” at the close of the 1000 years.  The Nations are the Fore-Court of the Temple; Israel and their Holy Land, are the Holy Place; the Holy City and the Risen BRIDE are the Holiest of All; no veil existing.  To the perfect realization of this, all things are tending.  The invisible is the source of all Realities, and what has been in history is the Beginning and Type of what will be, only in greater perfection.  David’s kingdom shall be restored, and among the “sure mercies” to David is the gathering of Israel, and the resurrection of the faithful [dead] to enjoy that kingdom together; and therein all Christians [whom our Lord will ‘account worthy’ – Ed.] shall share, at Messiah’s Second coming. . .

 

. . . as to the alleged “incongruity of the glorified among the unglorified,” and “how they will live,” and “what they will do,” and “what their condition,” and “daily occupation,” – questions revived by Kliefoth, and repeated by others, though raised and answered ages ago; and, further, “will there be flies, and bees, and mosquitoes, in the Millennial Age,” as still others have sportingly asked; and, yet others again, as to “the habit of nature” – they all belong to that same unbelieving spirit, and cast of mind, that made a Socinus, some Schoolmen, and later profane wits, inquire “whether our Lord rose from the grave with His digestive organs?”  “Whether,” as Cleopatra wanted to know, “the Saints will rise with raiment”?  andwhence came the raiment our Lord wore when He rose?” and so, conclude, from all, to a denial of the literal resurrection of the body.  Such inquisition, it becomes us to repel, with force, and rebuke into silence, holding, in spite of a thousand questions all men can ask and none can answer, in reference to every doctrine of Scripture, that it is far more Christian to believe what God has spoken, and give him the glory, as “Doer of wonderous things,” than it is to idealize the prophecy, to suit our vain thoughts, and land ourselves at last into open rejection of the Word of God.

 

The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise that they are vain.  Painful to the last degree is the ever-recurring style of objection we meet with in certain writers, as “It is unreasonable?”  How remote from reasonable brobability!”  It is “Inconceivable,” “incredible,” and “far from probable,” and everything the mere natural man can object to the supernatural.  We dismiss it all with the divine words, “O man, who art thou that repliest against God?  Should it be a marvellous thing in my eyes, saith the Lord?  The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this.”  The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it!  It is the utterance of Jehovah, Doer of these things!  It must be so, as God has said.  As to the Risen Saints, we know what their perfection is, and how near they are to Christ.  It is the righteous man raised from the dead, who is the perfect man, ordained to dominion, in the Age to come.”

 

-------

 

 

THOUSAND YEARS IN BOTH TESTAMENTS

 

By

 

NATHANIEL WEST

 

 

PART 1

 

It is a very common opinion, widely spread throughout Christendom, and in most cases believed to be true, that “the thousand years” of which John speaks in the Apocalypse, Rev. 20: 1-7, are mentioned nowhere else in the sacred Scriptures.  The doctrine of a millennial kingdom on earth, introduced by the advent of Christ in His glory, is a Jewish fable without support from the word of God.  A deeper study of the sacred volume dissipates this false prejudice and reveals the fact that, not only are “the thousand years” of which John speaks found everywhere in both Testaments, but that next to the eternal state, the millennial blessedness of God’s people on earth, and of the nations, is the one high point in all prophecy, from Moses to John, the bright, broad tableland of all eschatology.  The prejudice against the study of a theme so sublime and far-reaching, and occupying so much space in the revelation of God has been pleased to give us, is as remarkable in our age, as [Page 2] it is inexcusable, although by no means surprising.  To use the words of Prof. Van Oosterzee, “We cannot be surprised that the inner discrepancy between the modern theological philosophy and the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures should perhaps, on no point come forth so clearly, and apparently so irreconcilably, as precisely in reference to the doctrine of the ‘Last Things’ – Eschatology.  Here, especially are the terms, ‘Jewish conception,’ ‘oriental garb,’ ‘poetic imagery,’ ‘accommodation to the narrow ideas of the age,’ etc., etc., the order of the day, and the doctrine of the consummation of the ages is ordinarily regarded as a moderately insignificant appendix to some philosophico-dogmatic system.  In Scripture, on the contrary, it is distinctly presented in the foreground, and for the believer it attains, with every year and every century, increased significance, so that what for a time seems to be an appendix, becomes eventually the main question!*[* Person and work of the Redeemer, 450.]

 

Every faithful student of the Scriptures, unbiased by false theories of interpretation, will attest these words as true.  What we find in the New Testament as its outcome in respect to the ages and the kingdom, has already lain in the bosom of the Old Testament from the beginning.  The closing part of the New Testament is but the full flower of which the opening part of the Old Testament was the precious seed, the kingdom one and the same, in essence, all the way.  Nothing appears in the latter revelation that was not hid in the earlier, nothing in John that was not in Moses.  This is what Augustine meant by his golden maxim, “Novum Testamentum in Vetrere latet, Vetus in Novo patet.” “In the [page 3] Old Testament the New is concealed; in the New the Old is revealed.”  We shall find “the thousand years” in many places of God’s word, long before the Rabbis ever had a being or a name.

 

We shall be obliged in this investigation to make use of what men call “technical” terms, in order to save circumlocution.  We speak of the “Last Things.”  The Greek term for this is “Eschata,” and by these are meant what should “come to pass,” not in the “latter,” as oftentimes King James’ version has it, but in the “last” days, as Moses, Joel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Peter, Paul and John, preferred to have it.  If we study the eschatology of the Old Testament, we will find the Eschata there identical with the Eschata of the New Testament, and the Eschatology of both Testaments the same, only the New is more developed than the Old.  Such is the organic and genetic character of revelation and of prophecy that if “the thousand years” are not in Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets, they have no right to be in John.  To understand the prophets it is necessary, however, to understand the Apocalypse, and to understand the Apocalypse it is necessary to understand the prophets.  The one is light to the other, and reciprocally.  In order to attain a clear conception of Old testament prophecy and its fulfilment, we must combine both Advents of Messiah, remembering that the first only brought the partial fulfilment of the prophetic word which yet awaits the second in order to secure its plenary accomplishment.

 

Joel’s prophecy as to the outpouring of the Spirit in the last days, and of the great and notable day of the Lord, with all its terrestrial and celestial phenomena, the final redemption of Israel, and the transfiguration of the Holy Land, was only incipiently and partly [page 4] fulfilled to a few, an election out of Israel, at the first coming of Christ, and awaits a far larger fulfilment at His second appearing.  So the prediction of Amos, in reference to the dispersion and sifting of Israel the “Sinful Kingdom,” and God’s visitation of the Gentiles, “after this,” to take out of them a people for His name, met a partial and precursive fulfilment in the first calling of the Gentiles to the knowledge of Christ, in the days of the apostles, as James in the first council at Jerusalem assures us.  We see that by comparing Acts 15: 13-18 with Amos 9: 8-12.  But there is to be a grander fulfilment still in coming days, when, now that a Second Dispersion and Sifting of Israel has occurred, since James spoke, there shall be a fullness of the Gentiles “after this,” also, and finally the fallen Booth of David, or Israel’s proper Kingdom, as the prophets picture it, will be re-erected with the fullness of Israel converted to God, and the glorious millennial age heave into view.  So it is with reference to Isaiah’s Redeemer coming to Zion, and Hosea’s Israel abiding alone for many days, and Micah’s halting daughter of Zion to whom at length, comes the “former dominion.”  Whatever occurred to Israel graciously, at the first coming of Christ, was only a preliminary fulfilment to be exhaustively completed for Israel, at His second coming.  Such is the law of prophecy and the law of fulfilment, and it will save us from many an error, if only we are careful to remember it.

 

THE KINGDOM AND PROPHECY.

 

From first to last, the kingdom of God on earth, its inception, progress, conduct, and consummation in glory, is the one theme of Old Testament prophecy.  To this end were the converts with Christ, Adam, [page 5] Noah, Abraham, Israel and David.  To this end was the choice of the one national “Israel,” the “choice forever,” as a prophetic, priestly, kingly nation, a messianic and mediatorial nation, the one national “Servant of Jehovah,” and national Son of God, standing between God and mankind, and bringing salvation to a lost world; a people from whom should come the one personal “Israel,” Prophet, Priest and King, the one Mediator and true Messiah, Seed of the woman, Seed of Abraham, Seed of David, Son of Man and Son of God, in whom all nations should bless themselves – Jesus Christ.  Identified with Him, individually, and called by His name, stands Israel collectively, in His whole Messianic work and kingdom.  Neither acts without the other.  The Pentateuch prophecies refer chiefly to the people.  The Messianic Psalms emphasize the King, the Kingdom, and the Priest.  Isaiah dwells upon the prophetic character of Israel; Ezekiel displays the priestly; Daniel reveals the kingly; Zechariah blends all in one.  Old Testament prophecy knows no other subjects of discourse than these, Israel, Messiah, and the Nations.  As to the kingdom, Israel had it, under the Old Testament, in its outward form; the Gentiles have it under New Testament, in its inward form; in the age to come, Jews and Gentiles together, shall have it, both forms in one, one kingdom of Messiah, spiritual, visible and glorious, with Israel still the central people, the prelude of the New Jerusalem and the nations walking in its light forever.

 

The division of the Davidic kingdom into two, laid the ground for all the prophecies concerning the “Kingdom of Israel” and the “Kingdom of Judah,” i.e., the ten-tribed Israel, called “Ephraim,” and the two-tribed Israel, called “Judah,” as distinguished from “all [page 6] Israel,” or the twelve-tribed Israel, an election from those children shall one day form the national nucleus of the millennial kingdom.

 

The catastrophe that brought destruction to Jerusalem and captivity to Judah under the Chaldean King, forms the ground of the common destruction of the canonical prophets into their present classification.  The Babylonian exile is the middle point.  If we study the prophecies that speak of the Kingdom of Messiah, Israel’s kingdom, the Millennial Kingdom, and the relation of the nations to each, - all as parts of the Kingdom of God on earth, - we shall take in all the prophets.  If we group these around the several great epochs of Israel’s history, they will fall into three main divisions, (1), pre-exile prophets (2), exile prophets (3), post-exile prophets.  Or, to be still more specific, they will fall into five chief divisions: (1) The pre-Assyrian, viz., Obadiah, Joel, Jonah; i.e., the prophets of the period prior to the Assyrian invasion and captivity of Israel; (2), The Assyrian, viz., Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Nahum: (3) The transition prophets, viz., Zephaniah and Habbakuk; (4) The prophets of the Chaldean period, viz., Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel; (5) the Persian period, or period of the Restoration down to the close of prophecy, viz., Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi.  Sixteen in all; all speaking of the Kingdom of God and its development through Israel in relation to the nations, amidst conflicts and victories, judgment and mercy, apostasy and recovery, until the whole world becomes subject to Israel and Israel’s king.

 

As a further help to our investigation, it is necessary we should know that the Kingdom of God, in its development, though one, exists in different forms, and runs through various ends of ages.  Essentially, it is one. [page 7]  Phenomenally, it is many.  It is singular and plural, both.  It is an everlasting kingdom in its essence.  It is a temporal kingdom in its forms.  It exists forever.  The Dispensations pass away.  The Kingdom still abides.  New forms emerge along the ages until the endless age arrives, and the final form appears.  And yet more.  With the outer historic development of prophecy as well as of history, an inner genetic development runs parallel.  The original prophetic grem, found in the first promise in the garden, true to scientific law, parts itself into law and gospel, divides, expands, and assumes more ample and concrete forms.  What is at first most general, becomes particular.  What is obscure becomes more clear.  The ages and the ends are evolved according to the same law of “becoming,” which obtains in the natural world, viz., by division and integration.  The result from all is that, as prophecy advances, what is folded up darkly, at first, is opened out in clearer and distincter statement later on.  The ages and the ends come more definite.  The later predictions explain the earlier ones.  And, along this line of divine evolution, as there is no “spontaneous generation” in the kingdom of God, so there is no “transmutation of species.”  God alone creates.  Israel, the created people of God, abides Israel, and the history of Israel is not a mere frame in which to hang pictures of the New Testament Gentile church.  The kingdom is ever the kingdom, one sided for Israel alone in time past, one sided for the Gentiles alone now, outward in the one case, inward in the other, but both sided for both in one, hereafter, Israel evermore the root, the centre, organic basis, and ground of all.  By observation of this, we learn the characteristic differences between pre-exile prophecy on the one hand, and exile with post-exile prophecy on [page 8] the other.  It is precisely along this line of development we detect the evolution of the ages in prophecy itself, and are obliged to hold that Prophecy as well as History as an “organism,” as is Nature, the kingdom and the Church – the one a parable of the other – “natural law in the spiritual world;” and “spiritual law in the natural world,” in short, as Newton showed, a system of universal and identical laws producing analogous phenomena in different spheres.  Where there is life there is law.  It is precisely along this line of study of the Word of God, we discover not only a description of the Millennial Kingdom yet to be, but are able to detect the relative location of the millennial age itself, even in Old Testament prophecy, and find it exactly as the Apostle John has pictured and located it – its character, its name, its measure, and the events by which it is opened and closed.  The existence of “the 1,000 years” in the Old Testament is a matter of scientific demonstration, as truly as the existence of any geological age in the history of the planet, and is supported by an exegesis, grounded in the organic unity and continuity of prophecy in both Testaments, that is unassailable.  It is another proof of the truth of the golden saying of Augustine, “The New Testament lies concealed in the Old, the Old stands revealed in the New.”

 

The six pre-exile prophets form a connected chain ending with Nahum.  Of these, Isaiah is the chief, his radius of vision spanning all horizons, near, remote, and between and losing itself in the breast of eternal glory.  He sees all things, however, in one divine perspective, one divine light, one divine picture, Messiah the centre of all, Israel around Him, the Nations around both.  The ends and ages are all confounded in the [page 9] first end, and the age following.  All is a composite photography, the events standing cheek to cheek, which only later prophecy can separate.  On the earlier prophets, the exile and post-exile prophets rest as on sure ground, the spirit of prophecy being one.  Their office is not to transcend, but develop, the earlier.  What Isaiah was to the earlier, Daniel was to the later.  He bequeaths to them, and to us, the great problem of the Millennial Age, whose epoch Isaiah, Micah, and Ezekiel, have fixed, the problem of Israel’s final future and relation to the nations, with Israel’s history between the return from exile, and Israel’s final redemption in the glory of the Kingdom at Messiah’s second coming.  Its solution is given, also, in the various visions of the four empires, four beasts, and seventy weeks, whose last week is rent off from the rest in fulfilment, the Roman times of the Gentiles lying between – a seventieth week wholly eschatological, the basis of the seals, trumpets and vials in John’s Apocalypse.  The same problem appears in another form to the night visions of Zechariah, Haggai’s shaking of the nations, and Malachi’s burning day, whose close is crowned with healing from the sun of righteousness.  The solution of the great problem of Israel’s future, spring from the breach in David’s Kingdom, is the solution of the problem of the Millennial Kingdom, and comes with Israel’s future acceptance of David’s Son as their Lord, the closing up of the ancient breach in David’s Kingdom, the union of Israel and Judah in one nation, on the mountains of the fatherland forever; - in short, Israel a converted people and nation, acknowledged by Christ in person, the nations applauding.  With that consummation, after judgments and mercies unknown before, and the revelation of Christ Himself [page 10] in His glory, dawns the Millennial Age.  Search where we may, through all the prophets, this is the one theme, the redemption of Israel, after judgment has fallen on both, Christ the glory of all.  It is the time of the “Kingdom restored to Israel.”  Search where we may, we shall nowhere find unveiled the mystery of the New Testament “Church.”  See Rom. 16: 25.  1Cor. 2: 7, 8.  Wph. 3: 8, 9. Col. 1: 24, 27.  Nor does the disclosure of this, in the New Testament, avail to destroy the prophetic word of the Old in reference to Israel, or abolish the standing contrast in the Old between Israel and the Nations, or in the New between Israel, the Nations, and the Church.

 

It is among the “Eschata,” or “Last Things,” the things to “come to pass in the last days,” or “End Time,” that we find the Millennial Age.  It lies, as we shall see, between the “Yom Yehovah,” or “Day of the Lord,” which, in the New Testament, is called “The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ,” and the endless age of the “New Jerusalem” in the final “New heaven and earth.”  It is bounded by two distinct judgments, one at the opening, one at the close of the Millennial Age, the opening judgment being that of the Nations, and of all powers, terrestrial and super-terrestrial, opposed to Christ and His reign, as only by a judgment upon Israel and Jerusalem, ending in the redemption of both.  The “Yom Yehovah” everywhere precedes the Millennial Age, which is the age of Israel’s glory in the Kingdom, and comprehends in itself most of the Eschata of the Old Testament.  The judgment that closes the Millennial Age is represented as a judgment on Gog and Magog, which extends itself to a “visitation” of final doom upon all the wicked, after which Israel rests [page 11] eternally secure in their glorified land, the nations of the saved walking in the light of the Holy City, the Lord Himself dwelling forever among His people.  Such, in general, is the Old Testament representation.

 

To understand this, however, it is necessary to know first, the manner in which the prophets divided the whole course of time, and the way in which the ages and ends are represented in prophecy, as also the relation in which the Eschata stand to these ends and ages, first in pre-exile prophecy, and next in exile prophecy.

 

GENERAL DISTRIBUTION OF TIME.  PRE-EXILE PROPHECY.

 

And first, as to the division of time, in pre-exile prophecy.  The whole course of time, from the creation of the heaven and earth to the re-creation of the same, is divided into two great ages, the bisecting epoch between which is called the “End.”  In this End is placed the “Yom Yehovah,” during which the personal self-revelation of Jehovah in glory, for the deliverance of Israel, and the destruction of His and their enemies, is also placed, and for the establishment of His kingdom in glory on earth.  To this “Day of the Lord” belong all the Eschata, or Last Things, that precede the age of glory on earth, and are connected with the Advent of Messiah.  To this one End all prophecy constantly looks, in every picture of the future, from Joel to Malachi.  The first of these two ages is the pre-Messianic age, or Jewish age, with all the time preceding, and is called the Hebrew theology, “Olam Hazzeh,” “this present world.”  The second of these ages is the Messianic age, and is called “Olam Habba,” or “the world to come.”  The New Testament employs [page 12] these divisions of time, and they are ever in the mouth of our Lord and His Apostles, as “Aion ho houtos,” “this present world,” and “Aion ho mellon,” “the world to come,” i.e., “this age,” and the “coming age.”  These terms have no reference to individual life here, or the life of the disembodied spirit, after death.  The bisecting point between them is not death, but the End of this first age.  They relate wholly to the course of earthly history, and the development of the kingdom of God on earth.  In pre-exile prophecy in general, there is but one End, One Day of the Lord, One Judgment, One Advent of Messiah in glory; an all-comprehensive and undeveloped with but One age succeeding, the Messianic Age, the age of Israel in the kingdom and the glory, an End that “does not discriminate between the Parousia in humility and the Parousia in glory, but beholds the whole work of Messiah as complete,” (Delitzsch.)  Therefore does Isaiah’s page shine the more intensely, for into that one age the whole grace and glory of Messiah’s work is concentrated.  All the sufferings of the “servant of Jehovah,” all the splendour of His reward, all there is for Jew, and all for gentile, focalize themselves in that one End and radiate out of that one succeeding age.  It is the uniform view of all pre-exile prophecy.  In the “Yom Yehovah,” – day of judgment, day of wonders, - day of wrath and day of mercy, - day of reeling for earth and shaking for heaven, - of tumult, storm, and fire, - of dissolution and reconstruction, - the nations are judged, the Gentile powers are smitten, Antichrist is destroyed, the wicked are swept away, Satan and his hosts are imprisoned in the pit, and Israel’s faithful dead are raised.  We see it all in [page 13] the “Little Apocalypse of Isaiah,” – Chapters 24-27.  Israel’s time begin.  In the proverb of the Rabbis, “Esau is the end of Olam Hazzeh, Jacob is the beginning of Olam Habba.”  It is the view of the prophetic portions of the Pentateuch, the Historical books, the Messianic Psalms, and of all the prophets prior to the exile.

 

The character of this Messianic age is painted in colours the most gorgeous and brilliant in the prophets, even as it is sung in strains the most inspiring, in the Psalms.  When the Lord has come and brought salvation with His own right arm, and Jacob’s tribulation is past, everything puts on a new appearance.  Under the New Covenant, sin is pardoned through Messiah’s death, the gospel is preached, the Gentiles are gathered, the Spirit is poured from on high, and streams of knowledge, holiness and life, perpetually overflow.  Showers of blessing continually fall.  The people are all righteous, and the righteous shine.  The City of Jerusalem is transformed, made glorious not alone by the boundless wealth of the nations then tributary to it, but by the new-creating presence of the Lord Himself.  The Temple is rebuilt in glory unsurpassed.  The Land itself is transfigured as an Eden.  Jerusalem is Jehovah’s throne.  Zion is His dwelling place.  The very desert blooms like Sharon.  Unwonted fruitfulness appears.  All nature is at peace, and man in harmony therewith.  Idolatry and War and Crime, exist no more.  Sin is restrained and death is checked, because Satan is bound.  The curse is gone, longevity returns, and Israel’s risen saints enjoy a deathless life, fresh and beauteous, as the flower on which the morning dew rests, and the morning light still shines.  In a new heaven and earth, [page 14] the Holy City is crowned with light, and the nations walk in that light.  A painless, tearless, sorrowless state, the reproach taken from the Jew, the veil taken from the nations, and death swallowed up in victory, the Bridegroom rejoicing over His Bride, Messiah reigning on David’s throne, a festive jubilee, Jehovah dwelling with His people, both in perfect fellowship and blessedness, is what we see, Eternal splendours streaming everywhere.  And just because all future ages are here inclosed in this one age, therefore, is it, for Isaiah, the “everlasting” [*See note at end. – Ed.] age, and all things are everlasting that belongs to it.  Not indeed that it has but one form, and this one form eternal, but that its facts are so, be they of grace which is glory begun, or of glory which is grace made perfect.  All is everlasting, with Isaiah; an everlasting Kingdom, an everlasting Throne, an everlasting Covenant, an everlasting Nation, an everlasting Name, an everlasting Righteousness, an everlasting Joy, an everlasting Song, an everlasting Peace, an everlasting Holiness, an everlasting Life, an everlasting Dwelling, an everlasting Rock, an everlasting Redeemer, an everlasting Salvation, an everlasting God.  All, is olamic, aeonian, eternal, forever!  All eschatologies are mingled here in one, all ends in one End in which Messiah comes, all ages in the one Age which follows that one appearing.  The Rabbis call it the “Immortal Age,” and say of the righteous raised from their graves, that they “sit with crowns on their head and behold the splendour of God:” and that “All the good the prophets have spoken concerning Israel belongs to “Olam Habba,” the “world to come.”

 

If we represent, in schematic form, the manner [page 15] and ends as seen, in general, in pre-exile prophecy, the diagram will stand thus:

 

[Pre-Messianic Age.]   <<<>>>   [Advent. / End.]   <<<>>>  [Messianic Age.]

 

That is, two ages and one end between, the last age the everlasting one, or age that has no end.

 

EXILE PROPHECY

 

Let us come now to speak of exile prophecy.  Here we find a marked difference from all preceding prophecy, in respect to the ages and the ends, and the disposition of the Eschata.  Events that stood together in one picture, in the earlier prophets, begin to be parted here.  The hints in Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah, of such a possible development, and of which we shall speak later on, receive now their true significance.  We learn how the great epochs of Israel’s history are the great epochs of prophecy, and that the development of both runs parallel.  Our attention is attracted to the partition of the one end, and the development of the one age following.  Two Ends instead of one appear.  Two Advents instead of one.  Two Judgments instead of one.  Two Resurrections instead of one.  Two Ages following the ends instead of one., the endless age, of course, the last.  The whole cast and character of the future seem changed, as if some strange fatality on the part of the people, still unprepared to receive their promised Messiah at His first coming, had served to postpone the promised redemption.  This much is clear, that national Israel has not profited as it should by the catastrophe of the exile, for prophecy now speaks of a second destruction of rebuilt Jerusalem as the result of Israel’s impenitence, even after the [page 16] return from Babylon; a second dispersion, another long period of desolation, a curse of rejecting Messiah Himself.  And yet it pictures a second coming of Messiah, and Israel redeemed at last, triumphant in the promised kingdom and glory.

 

Something new has occurred.  The synthesis of ends and ages in pre-exile prophecy gives place to their analysis in post-exile prophecy.  The one end parts into two, each part closing itself up again, the space between becoming that an intermediate age, though still foreshortened, the age that is endless lying behind the last of these ends.  Instead of two ages and one end, as in pre-exile prophecy, we have three ages and two ends, schematized thus:

 

[Jewish Age.]   >>><<<   [1st. Advent. / End.]    >>><<<   [Christian Age.] >>><<<   [2nd. Advent. / End.]    >>><<<   [Millennial Age.]

 

At the end of the pre-Messianic or Jewish Age Messiah comes, but not in glory.  He is “cut off,” and there is “nothing for Him” – no kingdom in the form predicted, no crown.  He is rooted out by a violent death, and Israel is, moreover, rejected.  The Messianic Age is now divided into two, during the first of which the risen Messiah, ascended to Heaven, remains concealed and unseen throughout the whole period of Israel’s rejection, while the news of His name and His great salvation goes to the Gentiles.  It is the Church-historical period between the first and second Advents, a period closed up to Daniel, or at most, only briefly alluded to, even though its termini, the two Advents, are given.  It is the period when Israel’s national history is a blank before God.  As the end of the intermediate age, which is the end of His concealment in Heaven, He comes again and appears “in the clouds of Heaven,” and comes to [page 17] Israel penitent and believing, in the crisis of Israel’s last tribulation, and comes to “restore the kingdom to Israel.”  At His first coming He was rejected by Israel, and Israel was rejected by Him.  At His second coming He is accepted by Israel, and Israel is accepted by Him.  Then, there was “nothing for Him.”  Now, there is everything for Him.  Then, also, there was nothing for Israel as a nation.  Now, there is all.  The kingdom and the glory are for both, “under the whole heaven.”  Olam Habba, or the world to come, has become two worlds, of which the first, being an intermediate age, shares the nature of both, and while being the “world to come,” or Olam Habba,, with respect to the age preceding, is yet “this present world,” or Olam Hazzeh, with respect to the age still following.  It is our Christian Dispensation.  The Yom Yehovah, with its unaccomplished Eschata, still lies beyond.  Such is the picture Daniel gives us: Two ends, two ages, two advents, for the one end, one age, one advent, of pre-exile prophecy.  Messiah comes at the beginning of the fourth empire.  He comes also at its close.

 

But this is not all.  Ezekiel develops the ends and ages still more than Daniel does.  He has nothing to say of the first Advent, as Daniel has, and nothing of the Antichrist.  He has nothing to say of the missionary proclamation of the Gospel, or Israel’s prophetic calling, as Isaiah has.  He leaves to Isaiah the prophetic, to Daniel the kingly, and presents almost exclusively the priestly side of Israel in the kingdom.  He speaks in his earlier prophecies of the judgments of God on Jerusalem and the nations, but, his later visions are of Israel’s deliverance and the splendour of their land, city and temple, in the day of the personal manifestation of the “glory” to His people.  He speaks not [page 18] only of Israel’s spiritual regeneration by means of the “New Covenant,” which Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah have celebrated, but also of Israel’s final restoration as a people, their political reunion and national conversion, and independence, their blessedness and glory in the land promised to their fathers, God’s sanctuary in their midst, God their God, and David their Shepherd-Prince forevermore.  Instead of the Valley of Dry Bones with the Collossus towering over them, what we see is a resurrected people, standing up as a great army, and instinct with the “Spirit of Life from God.”  It is new-born Israel of the end-time, coming to their inheritance and priestly royalty, re-established in their land forever.  All this we get in what is called “Ezekiel’s Apocalypse,” embracing chapters 37-48.  His vision of the land, the city and the temple, chapters 40-48, is but a further expansion of what is foretold in chapter 37, and presents the priestly side of the same kingdom whose royal greatness Daniel had predicted.  Glorious in holiness it is to Ezekiel.  And, as to Daniel, it came with the coming of the “Son of Man” in the clouds of Heaven, in all its kingly grandeur, so, to Ezekiel, does it come in all its priestly ornament and holy beauty, with the entrance of the “glory” in the temple.  With the personal appearing of the “glory” the cosmical transfiguration begins, the temple waters flow.

 

But the peculiarity of Ezekiel is this, that even to this coming age of Israel’s blessedness in the kingdom, he sees an “end;” not an end to the kingdom but an end to the age.  Another end heaves into sight, the transition point between the Millennial Age and the Age that is endless; an end beyond the second end already seen in Daniel; a third end followed by the age [page 19] without end.  The event that marks this new end is the predicted war-march and judgment of Gog and Magog, at the end of Israel’s “many days” in the kingdom.  Just as in exile prophecy the one pre-exile end is developed into two, so, once again, these two ends are developed into three.  In Ezekiel, the second end expands itself into two.  Just as in Daniel, the judgment on Antichrist and Israel’s restoration in the kingdom, marks the opening of the age that lies beyond the second coming, so, in Ezekiel, does the judgment of Gog and Magog, which appears as the last judgment, mark the close of that age.  With that judgment, which, as we shall see, extends itself to the resurrection of the wicked and their final doom, in John’s Apocalypse, Ezekiel’s vision ceases.  What we have now, instead of two ends and three ages, are three ends and four ages, covering all time, from the exile down to the final new heaven and new earth of which Isaiah speaks, viz.: The Jewish Age and the end of it, the Christian Age and the end of it, the Millennial Age and the end of it, and the Endless Age of the New Jerusalem.  If we schematize the conception the diagram will stand thus:

 

[Jewish Age.]   >>><<<   [1st. Advent. / End. ]  >>><<<   [Christian Age.]  >>><<<   [2nd. Advent. / End.]  >>><<< [Millennial Age.]   >>><<<   [White Throne. / End.]  >>><<<  [Endless Age.]

 

What to us is now the “world to come,” will be to its own inhabitants “the present world,” even as our present age was the world to come, to pre-christian Judaism.  As time wears away, and the future comes to make the present, then glides into the past. Olam Habba becomes Olam Hazzeh, even on the other side of the second Advent.  In other words, the Messianic or everlasting age, which, in pre-exile prophecy, was [page 20] but one age following Messiah’s one Advent, and which in Daniel became two ages, by reason of the clear separation of the comings, has, in Ezekiel, become three ages by reason of the new end introduced: so making four in all, if we begin with the Jewish Age, viz.: (1) The period of Old Testament times; (2) the Church-historical period; (3) the Millennial Age of Israel in the kingdom; and (4) the Eternal State or New Jerusalem in the “New Heaven and Earth.”  The end of the Jewish Age brought resurrection, judgment, and a new age succeeding.  The end of our present age will do the same.  The end of the Millennial age will do the same.  In each case the kingdom receives a re-establishment in new form.  There is a re-creation.  A personal advent of Messiah marks the close of each age, save the Millennial.  No third advent at the judgment of Gog and Magog is intimated in Ezekiel’s nor even in John’s Apocalypse, for the final resurrection and the judgment of the wicked, into which the judgment of Gog extends itself, for the reason that no second departure of Christ from His people is revealed.  As in the Old Testament, so in the New, the last judgment is perspectively covered and connected with the judgment at the second coming of the Son of Man.

 

Such is the entire development of the ages and the ends in prophecy, - the Biblical AEonology and Teleology – from Genesis to Regenesis; the whole time prior to the first coming being regarded as the pre-Messianic Age.  Our own age is a parenthetic one.  The age next beyond that of our own is that of Israel in the kingdom.  The last age is what we call “Eternity;” time rolling on unto “ages of ages,” in the illimitable future, “world without end.” [page 21]

 

THE SUB-DISTRIBUTION OF TIME.

 

The Scriptures give us not only the ages and the ends, but also a sub-distribution of prophetic and historic time, from the period of the exile or blotting out of the visible kingdom of God on earth, down to its re-establishment, i.e., from the time of Israel’s subjection to the Gentile power to the time of Israel’s redemption from the same: or until the “mystery of God” concerning Israel’s blindness and rejection, and Israel’s new sight and recovery, is “finished,” under the sounding of the seventh trumpet.  Beyond that we find no sub-distribution, save the judgment on Gog already mentioned, and which, in connection with Isaiah 24:22 and Isaiah 65:17, extends itself to the final resurrection and judgment, and the New Heaven and Earth.  The sub-distribution we refer to is found first of all, in the vision of the great metallic image, or Monarchy-Colossus, Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream (B.C. 604) eighteen years before the destruction of Jerusalem (B.C. 586), that image being a symbol of the Gentile power standing on Israel’s prostrate body; or, if we combine the visions of Daniel with those of Ezekiel, then the Colossus stands erect in the midst of Israel’s national graveyard – “Habbikah Melcah Atsamoth” – “the valley full of bones, and very dry,” – and remains standing, while national Israel remains dead, until that image is overthrown.  In short, that Colossus represents a series of four Gentile empires, appearing and disappearing in successional order, - four different forms or phases of the one God-opposed world-power, as it comes in contact with Israel; from the time of the Babylonian Empire down to the Cloud-Comer from Heaven to overthrow the world-power, erect His kingdom on its ruins, and restore the lost sovereignty [page 22] to Israel.  The vision of the four-empired image and its fate was given to humiliate the monarch’s pride and inspire afresh the sinking hope of Israel.  To the same end was the Valley of the Dry Bones reanimated by the word of prophecy, and the blowing of God’s Spirit in the last days, given to Ezekiel at the Gola, when the news reached him of Jerusalem’s fall (Oct. B.C. 586).  The one vision shows the Colossus falling down, the other Israel rising up; the one, man’s kingdoms passing away; the other, Messiah’s kingdom come forever, with Israel in the front.

 

Again, the same distribution of the period of Israel’s national sepulture and corruption, the high Colossus standing as the tombstone, with a “hic jacet Israel,” as it were, upon its breast, is given to Daniel in a new vision of four beasts (B.C. 541) forty-five years after Jerusalem’s fall, - a vision parts of which were expanded two years earlier (B.C. 539) under the symbols of the Ram and Goat.  The design of the beast vision was not merely to show how differently from men God looks upon the phases of the world power, they regarding the world-kingdoms as the concentration of all material wealth, splendour, and might.  He regarded them as predacious beasts, but also to allow a further development from the symbol of the ten horns which would have been unnatural in the ten toes.  Careering on through Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek and Roman Empires, down to the last outcome of the Roman power, divided, lost, and yet revived and reappearing in the “Little Horn,” Gentile power shall wend its way – Israel still underneath its feet, - until the Mountain-Stone strikes the Image in its toes, and the Cloud-Comer smites the Horn on its head, the one sent whirling like the chaff to the wind, the other tossed, living, [page 23] to the flame, while Israel, resurgent from the grave, appears a mighty host, and wields the empire of the world.  The radius of prophetic vision reaches to the Second Coming of the Son of Man.  Till then Israel, as a nation, is dead, the people scattered, and the Holy City trodden under Gentile feet.  But then, “at that time,” Israel, as a nation, revives.  And here we meet a strange phenomenon.  As it is with Israel and the nations Daniel has to do, and not with the New Testament Church; as his mission is to prophecy of the world kingdoms and Israel’s relation thereto, and the fall of these kingdoms when Israel’s “Basileia” comes; so we find that both in the vision of the Colossus (Chapter 2) and that of the four beasts (Chapter 7), the whole period between the rise of the fourth beast and the final ten horns out of which the last Antichrist comes (Israel’s last oppressor) – the entire period between the First and Second Comings of Christ – is overlapped.  Or, better, the period itself lies hid without any sign of the First Advent, in the legs and feet of the Colossus.  The terminus a quo is not given.  It has two aspects, viz.: that of the Church-dispensation, and that of Israel’s national prostration, both running parallel during the same period.  With the Church Daniel has nothing to do.  It is Israel and the Colossus that absorb his attention; and neither in the Colossus, nor in the Beasts, is the First Advent marked anywhere.  The period of the gentile domination runs on continuous to the end.  Only in the 70 Weeks, does the First Advent appear, and the interval between the two comings begin to be opened out; as we shall see.

 

Once more.  Still another sub-distribution of the same stretch of time is given in the celebrated prophecy of the “Seventy Weeks” (Chapter 9), the last week [page 24] of which is eschatological, since it follows the interval that follows the Roman or second destruction of Jerusalem, consequent upon the national rejection of Messiah “cut off” by the Jews, - a week divided into two equal periods of three and one-half years, or forty-two months, or 1,260 days each, during which we have the rise, reign and ruin of the last Antichrist, the “prince that shall come” (Nagid Habba), the “Desolator” (Meshomen), who perishes beneath the outpoured vials of divine wrath.  It is of supreme importance to recognize this fact.  The 70th. of Daniel’s seventy weeks is not immediately sequent upon the 69th. week at whose close Messiah was “cut off.”  The Jews nailed the “King of the Jews” to the cross, and while at the First Advent the kingdom came in its spiritual inward power on the day of Pentecost – a “tasting of the powers of the world to come,” – it was postponed in its outward, visible and glorious part, as a polity and public sovereignty, until Messiah’s Second Coming; and this because of Israel’s unbelief.  This is the sun-clear statement of prophecy.  The 70th. week stands in the midst of the Yom Yehovah, or day of the Lord.  It precedes the Second Advent, the destruction of Antichrist, the Resurrection, and Israel’s glory in the kingdom restored to Israel.  The Church Fathers saw this; Irenaeus, Cyprian, Primasius, Hippolytus, Appolinaris, and others.  Modern eschatologists see it and victoriously defend it, - Delitzsch, Hofmann, Luthardt, Godet, Koch, Christiani, Rinck, Baur, Weiss, Nagelsbach, Karsten, Ebrard, Van Oosterzee, Kliefoth, and how many more!  More than a hundred living expositors maintain it.  The interval, however, between the First and Second Advents – our Church-Historical period – twinkles into light.  The same interval that lies concealed [page 25] in the image and four beasts, between the rise of the fourth empire proper and the final ten horns, or (what is the same thing) the final Antichrist, is here revealed as lying between the 69th and 70th of the “seventy weeks,” the period of the Roman “times of the Gentiles,” from Caesar onward.  At the close of the 69th week Messiah comes and is “cut off,” and there is “nothing for Him,” no Messianic kingdom as predicted.  He is despised, and rejected, and crucified, as the “King of the Jews.”  For this the nation is despised, rejected, slaughtered, and entombed by Gentile hands “until He come.”  The histories of Israel and Christ are analogous, as sin-bearers and salvation-bringers.  The 70th week resumes God’s gracious dealings with the Jewish people, “as a people.”  The prophetic formula, including the 70 years’ captivity, viz.: 70 plus 7 plus 62 plus (interval) plus 1, represents the whole stretch of time measured by the height of the Colossus, from head to feet, which is also the whole stretch of time measured by the life of the four beasts, in all reaching to the Second Advent.  The termini a quo and ad quem are the same for all.  In pre-exile prophecy, the return from exile retreats into the background, and the entire period from the exile to the final gathering of Israel is viewed as one continuous two-day dispersion and subjection.  It is true that the final redemption of Israel seems to come, in pre-exile prophecy, with the return from Babylonian exile itself.  But that is due to the law of prophetic representation.  Two horizons, the near and remote, the time-historical and the eschatological, are blended into one.  The present is thrown into the future.  The future is attracted to the present.  All things are seen in the light of the “end.”  Hence prophecy is “complex and [page 26] apotelesmatic.”  The same law works in exile and post-exile prophecy, but modified because of the later standpoint, and the progress of both prophecy and history.  It is here the law of “perspective” comes in.  A First Advent is specially marked in Daniel, and in Zechariah, yet only to emphasize the fact of Israel’s rejection of Messiah, and rejection by Messiah, then leap at once to paint the time of Israel’s final struggle and redemption, at Messiah’s Second Coming.  Until then Israel’s history, as a nation, is a blank before God.  All gracious covenant relations between God and that people, as such, are suspended, on account of Israel’s apostasy.  This strange Phenomenon, as to the “over-leaping” of the intervals, or what Delizsch calls the “deep silence” of the prophets in their “concealment of the mystery of the church,” has its true ground in what Hofmann calls the “organic structure of Old Testament Prophecy in relation to Israel.”  And herein, Auberlen, following Baumgarten, has stated clearly the solution of the riddle.  Israel, after having rejected salvation, ceased to be the subject of sacred history, and became that of profane history alone.  The intervening period between the two Messianic epochs – between the time the kingdom of God is taken from Israel and given to the Gentiles until the Second Coming of Christ, i.e., between the destruction of Jerusalem and the conversion of ‘All Israel’ and which forms of the people of the covenant a great parenthesis – is veiled from Daniel, in much obscurity, on account of his Old Testament and Israelitish standpoint.” * [* Auberlen Der Prophet Daniel, 141.]

 

Thus do the visions of the empires, beasts, and [page 27] seventy weeks, concur harmoniously and, with their corresponding intervals, span the course of ages from the Babylonian time down to the second Advent.  All, without exception, overleap the interval of Israel’s national rejection, and locate the point when Israel’s blessedness begins at Christ’s second appearing.  Here enter those times of “Return,” “Reviving,” “Refreshing,” “Restitution,” “Regeneration,” “Resurrection” and “Redemption,” foretold for Israel, and the resultant blessing, after judgment, for the nations; millennial times described in terms so glowing and so wonderful.  The pre-condition of them all is the second Advent, itself pre-conditioned by the witness of the gospel to all nations, and Israel’s begun repentance and return to Christ.  Nowhere, in all prophecy, is the Millennial Age located in the “Times of the Gentiles,” the Church-historical Period, the time of Israel’s national death and resting in the grave.  Impossible!  Nowhere is the word of God guilty of the nameless folly of confounding the “Times of the Gentiles” with “the 1,000 years.”  It would make all prophecy a contradiction of itself.  These never come before the fall of the Colossus, nor before the overthrow of antichrist, nor before the end of Gentile power, nor before the resurrection of the faithful dead; none of which events occur before Messiah’s coming in the clouds of heaven, descending to alight “on Olivet,” “come to Zion,” and cause His voice to “roar from Jerusalem.” (Zech. 14: 3; Isa. 59: 20; Dan. 7: 9, 22; 12: 2; Joel 3: 16).  No figurative exposition and no spiritualizing interpretation, such as we find in Hengstenberg, Fairbairn, Keil, Brown, Milligan, Glasgow, and others of the same school, can avail to break the oracles of God, or transmute Israel into the New Testament Church, Canaan into [page 28] Christendom, or the times after Christ’s second Coming into the times before it.  It is impossible upon the grounds of Old Testament prophecy, or of New, in their common distribution of the ages, to locate the Millennium between the First and Second Advents, for the simple reason that, between these Advents, Israel lies nationally dead, and the Millennial Age begins with Israel’s national resurrection. (Ezek. 27: 1-28); and also for the simple reason that between these Advents the Gentile Colossus still remains standing and the Millennial Age begins when the Colossus is struck and blown away like chaff. (Dan. 2: 35.)  And that this was not a fact at the first Advent, and is not a fact now, is proved by the further fact that gentile politics and power still rule, and Israel, as a nation, is still unrisen from the dead.

 

The contrary view which makes a “figure” of the Second Advent, would break down the whole Apocalypse of John which is built up, line for line, on Old Testament prophecy, and the words of our Lord in His Olivet discourse, and puts the crown and consummation on Israel’s hope.  Impossible – forever impossible – that the prophetic pictures of Israel’s future, so brilliant and glowing, should belong to that period of time when, in God’s account, Israel is a blank, their nation non-existent, the woeful Gentile times; an age in history when Jerusalem lies trodden in the dust with Gentile chains on her neck, and the proud Colossus tramples on the bones of Israel still bleaching in the valley, and Israel’s faithful dead still slumber in the grave; an age when Israel remains outcast, dispersed, rejected, still enthralled and unredeemed!  Impossible! Impossible!  As impossible as that the Covenant of God should break, or the “Strength of Israel” should lie!  It cannot be.  To evade, by dogmatic prepossession or [page 29] false hermeneutics, or ignorant prejudice, or indifference, the clear revelation of God herein, and insist that the “Jewish people,” “Daniel’s people,” “Ezekiel’s and Isaiah’s people,” “the whole house of Israel,” mean “the totality of believers in all ages of the world,” or “The New Testament Church,” and that “the land” means Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Great Britain, the United States, “the Territories of Christendom” (Keil), is to do more than trifle with God’s Word.  “It is to distort and negate it”. (Delitzcsh).  To plead “difficulty of conception” is to bid for the rejection of every well-established doctrine.  By such a method of exposition, all the Eschata of both Testaments are dislocated, fact is evaporated, development in prophecy ignored, our present age misunderstood, no time or history beyond the Second Advent allowed, Israel’s future destiny and mission denied, the unity and continuity of prophecy left unheeded, and our conceptions substituted for the thought and will of God.

 

If we sum up, therefore, the result of our study, the whole subject will shine out with a clearness equal to the brilliance of the noonday.  What we have is the development, in prophecy, of God’s kingdom on earth, by means of Israel the Messianic people.  The history of Israel prior to the Prophetic Age, it has been necessary to discuss.  It is enough that we begin with the blotting out of God’s visible kingdom on earth, by means of Israel’s subjection to Gentile politics and power.  From that time onward, the prophets look to the time of the restoration of the kingdom to Israel at Messiah’s coming in the clouds of heaven, and even to the eternal glory beyond.  We get the whole range of their visions in the expressions “Until,” “Unto,” “After two days,” which bring us to the Second Coming, even [page 30] as the sixty-nine weeks bring us to the first Coming.  Then we have the “Third Day” which is a “Multitude of Days,” “Many Days,” “His Days,” “the one thousand years,” which bring us down to Gog’s destruction, the last resurrection and judgment and the final New Heaven and Earth.  We have swept the ages and the ends, and also the intervals in prophecy: all constructed and revealed with special reference to Israel; the Jewish or Mosaic Age down to the rejection of Israel’s Messiah.  Then the interval concealed in prophecy, viz., the Church-Historical Period, covered simply by “and unto,” in Dan. 9: 27.  Then comes Israel to the front again, when the times of the Gentiles are ended at the Second Coming of Messiah to reclaim His people, and we enter upon the interval of Gentile subjection to Israel’s supremacy, the tables being turned in an age of Millennial Glory.  Then, after this, Israel and the nations, in the New Jerusalem under a new heaven and on a new earth, Jew, Gentile, and the Church of God, all one, their distinctions still remaining their unity eternal, and God all in all.  If we put the whole Old Testament Chronological Prophecy together, concerning Israel, after David’s kingdom was broken, we shall get the formula of the combined 70 years’ Captivity, and the Seventy Year-Weeks, including the Great Interval between the 69th and 70th week, thus: 70 years, plus 483 years, or 69 weeks, plus the interval of our present age, plus the closing or seventh week of years, i.e., seven years; or, in a briefer form, the formula will be 70 plus 7 plus 62 plus our interval plus 1, a formula that covers the whole time from the Babylonish captivity down to the Second Coming of Christ.  If we now annex to this the Yammin Rabbim, or “Many Days” of Ezekiel, i.e., the Millennial Age [page 31] for Israel restored, at the close of which is Gog’s destruction and the new heaven and earth predicted by Isaiah, then the formula will be 70 plus 7 plus 62 plus our interval plus 1 plus the “many days,” plus “Gog’s little season” followed by the final judgment and the new heaven and earth.  We get the total aeonology and theology of both Old and New Testament prophecy with respect to Israel, the Church and the Nations; and in all we see how Israel, God’s “choice forever,” stands out in rejection and in their calling, mission, death and resurrection, as the Bringer, nationally, of Salvation to mankind.  It is God’s plan, and full, as Paul tells us, of the “unsearchable wisdom of God.”  Rom. 11: 33.  “Salvation is from the Jews.” John 4: 22.

 

POST-EXILE PROPHECY.

 

A word here must suffice.  Haggai sees the final glory of the Messianic kingdom and connects it immediately with the Second Temple reared by Zerubbabel, and into which the “glory” comes and fills the house.  To him, this consummation is in the near future.  Once, already, Israel’s God has overthrown proud Babylon and brought a practical redemption, though poor, to His people.  “Yet once more, it is a little while!”  “How short a time!” and Israel’s God will not only shake one nation but “all nations,” and “not only earth, but heaven also, sea and dry land” together, and all “the precious things of the nations” shall be made tributary to the structure of the Temple, and into it the “glory” will enter personally, and “fill the House” with His splendour.  The Temple shall thus become the constant dwelling of Jehovah, the bond of union, and the centre of all light to surviving [page 32] nations, in a kingdom that cannot be shaken.  Haggai 2: 6-9, 21-23.  While this oracle was, in part, fulfilled by the personal appearing of Christ in the Temple, whose Advent was preceded by the overthrow of the Persian and Greek monarchies and Rome’s Republic, and the subjugation of the world by Roman arms, we have Paul’s apotelesmatic word for it that it looks to the Second Coming of Christ, and that the catastrophe it pictures, more appalling than the scenes at Sinai, at Marathon, or Salamis, or Philippi, is a universal world-catastrophe, such as we see in John’s Apocalypse under the sixth seal, and only after which the “Basileia Asaleutos,” or “Immovable Kingdom” comes.  Heb. 12: 26-29.  Marathon” and “Maranatha” are in the same perspective!  This is Haggai’s peculiarity, one Advent, the Second, and one age following, and yet implying a previous Advent of the “Glory” and to be connected with the Second Temple.  At any rate, the promised kingdom cannot come until after the “Day of the Lord” in which heaven, earth, sea, dry land, and all nations are shaken.  So says Isaiah 2: 10-22; 24: 1-23.

 

In the clearest manner Zechariah distinguishes Two Advents, two Ends, and the Millennial Age following the second, but without Gog and Magog at its termination.  He sees Zion’s king coming meek and lowly riding on a colt, 9: 9, then pierced with cruel hands, Jehovah’s Fellow smitten by the sword of justice, 13:7; 12: 10.  as a result of this, he sees the “Suspension of the Covenant of God with Israel,” not God’s Covenant of Grace, which is eternal, but the “Suspension of the National Covenant of God with Israel as a People,” (Delitzsch, Hofmann, Kohler, Auberlen, Luthardt, Godet, Wright, Pember, Anderson, Seiss,) by the breaking of the two staves of “Beauty and Bands,” Zech. 11: 7-10, [page 33] Israel’s existence as a covenant Nation forfeited, because of Israel’s rejection of Messiah, until the time of Israel’s penitence, travail, reunion, and resurrection, Micah 5: 1-3.  Ezekiel 37: 1-28.  He sees Him again descending on the Mount of Olives in His Majesty, with all His “holy ones” for Israel’s deliverance, and the creation of the kingdom in its universal glory.  The scene is that of the “Yom Yehovah” replete with terrestrial and super-terrestrial phenomena, a day unique – nocturnal day and solar night.  It is a day preceded by the outpouring of the Spirit upon Israel, attended by the reappearing of their wounded Shepherd to them, their national, domestic, personal and universal, penitence and tears; beyond the tears “at Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddo,” where young Josiah fell.  At first, Judah is seen in deep apostasy.  But, as in the case of Paul, so here, a sudden change occurs; and Judah fights with superhuman power to raise the siege against Jerusalem.  Miraculous in Israel’s deliverance, even by Messiah’s own appearing, 12: 1-14; 13: 1-9, 14: 1-7.  Then follows the Messianic Age of glory, the Millennial day, when Israel’s land is transfigured, Jerusalem inhabited forever, and the Theocrat becomes a universal empire with Messiah as the universal king.  The holiness of Israel is universal also.  All nations are obedient to Israel’s king.  Jerusalem has seen a Jewish Christian Passover, and a Jewish Christian Pentecost, in which some Gentiles shared.  She sees a Jewish Christian “Feast of Tebernacles” now, in which all nations blend their harvest jubilee.  Two Advents, two Ends, two Ages, the Millennial Age still following the Second Advent as in all other prophets; this is Zechariah’s painted page, a page among the very brightest and the richest of all Old Testament prediction. [page 34]

 

We come to Malachi, the last of the prophets.  As he stands nearest the First Coming of Christ, and in the midst of deepening apostasy, the “Glory” retreats into the background, night comes on with the storm attending, and the picture of Israel’s near future is dark indeed.  The sun has gone down.  Malachi predicts two Advents, between which Israel is rejected and the Gentiles do homage to Messiah, yet after which Israel is redeemed through judgment and returns to the faith of their fathers.  The promise that Messiah’s name should be “great among the gentiles,” etc., 1: 3, is really a threatening against apostate Israel, foreboding the rejection of the nation, the passing of the Gospel to the Gentiles, and the substitution of a spiritual worship for the ancient ritual, “in every place.”  This plainly looks into the “times of the Gentiles,” or Church-Historical period, following the first Advent and Israel’s notional rejection.  Nevertheless, Israel shall be saved by means of judgment, in the burning “Day of the Lord,” and by a return to the spiritual essence of the ancient faith, under the prophetic testimony of Elias sent to restore them, and to herald the Advent of the “Angel of the Covenant,” 3: 1-3; 4: 4-6.  After purgation by judgment, and an outpoured Spirit, Israel’s worship shall be pleasant to Jehovah, their “land become fruitful,” and “all nations call them blessed,” 3: 1-4, 10-12.  After the storm, comes the sunshine.  Upon all who fear Jehovah’s name, “the Son of Righteousness will rise with healing in His beams,” and Israel, redeemed, shall gambol in the glory like calves that frisk and play upon the sunlit pasture when loosened from their stalls, 4:2, 3. [page 35]

 

 

PART 2

 

A. THE THOUSAND YEARS

 

It remains now to speak definitely of the different times given to the Millennial Age in the Old Testament, and point out the passages where John found his “1,000 years.”  In this we shall admire still more the unity of both Testaments, and learn that John understood the prophets better than most of his expositors.  It will fasten upon us the conviction that the New Testament “Apocalypse of Jesus Christ” is but the Old Testament Yom Yehovah, in which the Lord reveals Himself for the redemption of His people, and that the Eschata in that Apocalypse are only what we elsewhere find in Old Testament predictions, in the words of Christ Himself, and in the utterances of His Apostles; and that in all these Eschata Israel still holds his place, as in all the prophets, and still waits the promised glory in the Millennial Kingdom.

 

While what we have said concerning pre-exile prophecy is true, there are yet not wanting intimations, or, if we may so call them, “Germs” of the later [page 36] development of the ages and ends we find in exile and post-exile prophecy.  These belong to the organic nature of prophecy, and in them we find the names of the age which John describes as “the 1,000 years.” Apoc. 20: 1-7.  There is a text in what is known among scholars as the “little Apocalypse of Isaiah,” a section consisting of chapters 24-27.  It is found in Isaiah 24: 21-23.  referring to Yom Yehovah, or Day of the Lord, in which Messiah comes to hold judgment and restore the kingdom to Israel, the prophet says, It shall come to pass, in that day, that the Lord shall visit upon (punish) the Host of the High Ones on high, and the kings of the earth on the earth.  And they shall be gathered together as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in prison.  And after a multitude of days – Rov Yammin – they shall be visited (released for final judgment).  “Then shall the moon be confounded and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, and the glory shall be in presence of His ancient ones,”  The “Day of the Lord” is, as already seen, that which closes our present age, the day of the Second Coming of Christ.  The judgment predicted in the preceding context is that of the proud nations, and Israel’s land, to which is added the desolation of the present cosmic order; 24: 1-20.  With this is connected the judgment upon the terrestrial powers of evil, “the Kings of the Earth on the Earth,” or the Anti-Christian hosts, and the judgment at the same time, of the aerial powers of evil, “the Host of the High Ones on High,” i.e., “the principalities and powers and world-rulers of darkness, the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies,” Eph. 6: 12, “the prince of the power of the air,” Eph. 2: 2, “the dragon and his angels,” Rev. 12: 7-9; 20: 1-3, - in short, Satan [page 37] and his legions, who are cast down from their height to be shut up in the abyss, as prisoners are chained in a dungeon, restrained from public activity, and reserved for future release and final judgment.

 

The time when this dejection of Satan and his legions occurs is said to be “in that day,” the time when Michael stands up to fight for Israel, Dan. 12: 1; Rev. 12: 7, the time when, in the vision of John, “the angel, having the key of the abyss, and a great chain in his hand, laid hold of the dragon, the Old Serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and cast him into the abyss, and shut and sealed it over him that he should deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years should be finished, after which he must be loosed for a little season.” Rev. 20: 1-3.

 

The time of this casting down of Satan and his hosts from their aerial mansions to earth, is that mentioned also in Rev. 12: 7, 8, 12, 13, when the dragon, in great rage, having but “short time” to work upon earth before he is sent to the abyss, “makes war with the woman, and with the remnant of her seed who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus.”  That is, it is the time of Israel’s conversion, Rev. 12: 7-11, the time of the close of the testimony of the two witnesses, the end of the first three and a half years (1,260 days) of Daniel’s 70th. week; in short, the beginning of the great tribulation, Rev. 11: 7, 13: 12, at whose end Satan is imprisoned in the abyss, Rev. 20: 1-3.  And this time of the judgment upon “the Host of the High Ones on High,” is the time of the judgment of the “kings of the earth on the earth,” or Antichrist and his armies, who are destroyed at the close of the last three and a half years (1,260 days) at the Second Coming of Christ from “Heaven [page 38] opened,” Rev. 19: 11-21.  There is nothing clearer than that the visions of John, in the text referred to, are the companion pieces of the prophecy of Isaiah just quoted.  The judgments upon Antichrist and his armies, and upon Satan and his hosts, are identical in Isaiah and John, and occur “in that day,” the day of the Second Coming of Christ.

 

But this is not all.  The imprisonment of Satan and his demonic powers is not their final judgment.  The prophet speaks of a reckoning “after” this.  He fixes the duration of the imprisonment at whose close the reckoning comes.  He defines the length of that duration as a “multitude of days,” Rov Yamin.  He says that “after” this long period which follows Antichrist’s overthrow and Satan’s captivity, the final reckoning shall come.  “After a multitude of days they shall be visited,” or as the verb here properly means, “they shall be looked after for final retribution.”  This implies, as is admitted, their future unchaining and letting loose again.  “They do not escape from prison, but are released, or let out, to meet their final award.”  In this, all scholars agree.  To this, corresponds the account in John’s Apocalypse, Rev. 20: 1-7, where we read that “After the thousand years are finished, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison” to play his old game.  As, after his casting down from the heavenlies, and before his imprisonment in the abyss, the “short time” of 1,260 days was allowed him to assail the saints, so between his release from prison and his final casting into the lake of fire, he is allowed “a little time” in which to muster the nations, and make his last effort against the Kingdom of God.  This we read in the Apocalypse of John who separates the events Isaiah combines in one general expression.  The demonstration is inductively [page 39] complete that the definite period of time called Rov Yamin, by Isaiah, or the “Multitude of days,” is identical with the period called Chilia Ete, or “the thousand years” by John.  The judgments which precede this period are the same.  The “First Resurrection” which occurs at the same time, also; the resurrection of the faithful dead, as is clear from Deut. 32: 39; Ps. 49: 14; Hos. 13: 14; Isa. 25: 8; 26: 14, 19; Ezek. 37: 12; Dan. 12: 1-3; 1 Cor. 15: 54, 55; Rev. 11: 18; 20: 5.  And the time of these judgments and this resurrection is the Yom Yehovah or “the Day of the Lord,” in which the “Lord Himself” visibly reveals His person to effect these events.  The succeeding long period of the “Multitude of Days,” or “The Thousand Years” is the same.  And the judgments at the close of this period are the same.  What confirms this all the more is the fact that unless the “visiting” of the imprisoned Anti-christian hosts, at the end of the “Multitude of Days” involves their resurrection – the resurrection of the wicked unto final judgment – there is no text in the Old Testament that does.  Isa. 24: 21, 22, is the only passage; since Dan. 12: 2, properly translated, speaks only of the resurrection of the righteous.

 

But that Isaiah 24: 22 does involve the resurrection of the wicked, at the close of the “Multitude of Days,” is clear from this, that John interprets Isaiah’s prophecy by his own vision of the resurrection of the wicked at the close of “the thousand years” which, as we have seen, are identical with the “Multitude of Days.”  It stands exegetically fast, that John’s Millennial Age is Isaiah’s “Multitude of Days,” dating from the Second Advent; that epoch of time which runs into the age following; the epoch when Israel is redeemed, and nationally restored; when Jerusalem, [page 40] the “beloved city” becomes the middle point of the Millennial Kingdom during “the thousand years,” Rev. 20: 9, and “the Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, even in Jerusalem, and glory shall be in presence of His ancient ones.”  Isa. 24: 23.

 

It is the time when, as the context in Isaiah shows, the sleeping saints of God are raised, the veil is taken off the nations, and Israel’s rebuke and long reproach exist no more.  Isa. 25: 8, 9.

 

It will perhaps, assist our understanding, to see how this exegesis of the passage in Isaiah, so little understood by many, is supported by a scholarship than which none better can be found.  “The binding of Satan,” says Auberlen, “is, like the thousand years, peculiar to the Apocalypse, although, strictly speaking, Isaiah prophecies the same thing in chap. 24: 21-23.” * [* Der Prophet Daniel, p. 330.] Better still are the words of Nagelsbach upon the passage: “The prophet’s eye here sees what will take place at the end of the world.  The invincible extra-mundane heads of the worldly powers, as well as their earthly visible organs, will, according to the prophet, be collected as prisoners in the pit, and shut up in it.  But not merely the binding of these angelic and worldly powers, but their being let loose for a time, is also announced.  Only by a brief obscure word, perhaps not seen through by the prophet himself, does the prophet intimate this.  We would not, perhaps, have understood this word, if the New Testament revelation, which is nearer the time of the fulfilment, did not throw light on this dark point.  It declares expressly that, after a thousand years, Satan should be loosed from his prison. Rev. 20: 7.  Isaiah [page 41] uses here an indefinite announcement of time, ‘After a multitude of days.’ And an indefinite verb, ‘pakad,’ stands here as in Isa. 23: 17, of a ‘visiting’ which consists in a looking again after some one who, long time, has remained neglected.  Jer. 27: 22.  The word is here taken in the sense of a visitation for judgment, as is seen in the place in the revelation by John.

 

“The letting loose of Satan is only the prelude to his total destruction, Rev. 20: 10.  Then follows the last, highest, and grandest revelation of God.  The earth becomes now what it ought originally to have been, but was hindered from being by the sin of man, the common dwelling place of God and men.  The heavenly Jerusalem, the Tabernacle in which God dwells with men, Rev. 21: 3, descends upon the renovated earth, and here Jehovah reigns as king.  This city needs no sun and no moon any more, for the Lord Himself is its light.” * [* Dr. C. W. E. Nagelsbach, in Lange, on Isa. 24: 11-23.]

 

And even better still is the comment of Weber on the passage.  After showing that the context the prophet predicts (1) the judgment on the earth, and plagues on men in general, in the end time, to which the sixth seal in the Apocalypse refers; (2) the judgment on the world-city or Babylon of the future; (3) the final judgment on Jerusalem and all who deal treacherously with Israel’s remnant, he continues thus: “The Lord will hold ‘in that day,’ another judgment.  He will ‘visit the Most High Ones in the height, and the kings of the earth on the earth.’  The earthly and heavenly powers, who have deceived mankind into apostasy, shall receive their punishment.  They shall both be visited on that same day.  The host of [page 42] the high ones on high includes the angels of the nations and kingdoms of which Daniel speaks, 10: 13, 21; 12: 1, and John, Rev. 12: 7.  They have exercised over the nations a God-opposing influence, and shall be judged with them.  What the punishment of these aerial powers is we are told.  They shall be thrust into a pit, as prisoners are into a dungeon, and ‘after a multitude of days,’ shall be visited.  A time comes when once more they shall be released and allowed to begin their earlier practice of deception.  But it shall not continue long; for, after a brief last conflict, that kingdom of Jehovah will begin in that full revelation of its glory on earth, before which the light of the sun and moon shall fade, and the God-opposed spirits of evil sink eternally in the lake of fire.  In that day Jehovah of Hosts shall rule royally upon Mount Zion, even in Jerusalem, and in presence of the ancients shall be glory.  The intention of the prophet here is to unveil the future as it will be at the great turning point of things in the development of the kingdom on earth when Israel, restored, shall turn the nations to the obedience of God.  This is achieved through a judgment of the nations, and of the wicked spirits who deceived them.  This judgment is universal, and fulfils itself in a series of severest plagues wherein God’s hand must be confessed.  Only a remnant of mankind will survive.  As Israel, through judgment, comes to renovation, so it is with the nations.  As the sifting of Israel will not be in vain, so it will be with the nations.  A remnant is converted and survives the judgment.  Upon the ruins of the world-power a new kingdom shall arise in which the Lord will reveal Himself to all the earth.  This is the great announcement of the prophet.  What a lesson it teaches us in reference to our own times!  How are we compelled [page 43] to confess that the great breach between Christendom and the laws, and ordinances, and covenant of god, is a present fact, and that with swift steps we are nearing the approaching judgment of the end!  The age following this world judgment, and the judgment of aerial evil powers is the Millennial Age pictured in Isaiah 25: 6-9, in which upon Mount Zion the Lord will prepare a feast to all peoples, and destroy the veil spread over the nations, and swallow up death in victory, and take away the reproach of His people forever.  There is so much likeness, and difference, between the millennial and eternal states of glory that here we may regard the description of both as one, and yet must again separate the one from the other, the one a prelude to the other.  ‘The mountain’ (Zion) shall be the middle point of the kingdom of God on Earth.  And this will continue until the wicked spirits, released once more, gain opportunity to introduce the final judgment, the transition act between time and eternity.  In that day of Jehovah’s self-manifestation and millennial blessedness, Israel shall sing, ‘Lo, this is our God, we have waited for Him.  He will save us.  This is the Lord.  We have waited for Him, and we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.’ ” * [* Dr. J. W. Weber, Der Prophet Jesaia, pp. 216, 223.]  Such the splendid comment of a loved and devoted man whom Delitzsch has honoured as “one of the first Hebrew scholars of Europe.” [page 44]

 

These extracts might suffice to show the meaning of the prophet, and vindicate the Apostle John from the empty charge made so often, that he was indebted to the Apocryphal legends and literature of the Rabbis for his conception of “the thousand years!”  But there is a testimony yet more sublime than all the rest, which ought here to be produced.  It is the comment of the childlike, deeply devout, and gifted man, Dr. Christian August Crusius, Professor of Theology in Leipsic forty years during the last century (the successful antagonist of Leibnitz), a man of whom Bahrdt said, “He is the greatest philosopher and richest thinker of our times,” and of whom Kant said he felt it an honour to be allowed to testify that “he is the clearest philosopher, and second to none in the promotion of philosophy, in our age.”  In his work, “Decaelo per Adventum Christi commoto,” A.D. 1757, he says, “With the gradual development of the kingdom of God on earth, since the incarnation, the great historical events in the spiritual world run parallel.  Not only earth but heaven also is shaken.  The powers of evil in the height are in commotion.  Under the lead of Satan they oppose every step of the development of the Kingdom of God.  It was so at the incarnation of Christ.  It was so at His death.  It was so at His resurrection and ascension.  The prince of this world was even then judged and cast out, and yet not so cast out as that all access to aerial regions was forbidden him.  The final shaking of the heavens was not accomplished, nor will be, until the final “lucta ecclesiae cum Satana.”  It is still permitted him to be the “Prince of the power of the air,” and “god of this world,” to tempt, accuse and plague the Church of Christ, which like her Head, must pass through suffering to victory. [page 45] Once more, in the progress of the judgment on Satan, parallel with the progress of the heavenly kingdom, Satan shall be cast down from heaven to earth, amid the shaking of the powers of heaven, the earth, and the nations.  Then, as John in his Apocalypse assures us, “No more place will be found for him or his angels in Heaven.” Rev. 12: 7.  Knowing this, then, that his “time is short,” Rev. 12: 12, he makes use of it to introduce the Antichrist, Rev. 13:1, after whose destruction he is cast out from the earth itself, chained and shut up in the abyss, in a weary long captivity of a thousand years, after which, a short period of liberation being allowed him, - and then eternal judgment, he closes his career in the lake of fire. Rev. 20: 1-3, 7-10.  Both these events, the tossing out of Satan from heaven to earth, and the overthrow of Antichrist, are accompanied by powerful shaking of the heavens.  Other shakings had previously occurred, but this one, the mightiest of all, and of which both Haggai and Paul speak as the final one – the apotelesma – is connected with the Second Coming of the Son of Man and His appearing in glory.  At the sound of the trumpet, more terrible than at Sinai, the powers of heaven shall be shaken, and the light of the sun shall be obscured before the splendour of the throne of Majesty.  Then, in place of the things that are shaken, will come the Basileia Asaleutos, the kingdom that cannot be shaken.  Heb. 12: 26-29.  then Israel, converted to the Lord, shall receive the promise, and Jerusalem the seat of the first Christian Church from which the gospel – the Zionite law – went forth, shall be made glorious as the mother church and mother city of the Kingdom of God; and then all nations shall come and [page 46] worship before the Lord because His judgments are made manifest.” * [* Rev. 15: 4.  (Quoted by Delitzsch Bibl. Proph. Theologie, pp. 123-138)]

 

From the last commentary on Isaiah, we venture to quote the following admirable words by Prof. Von Orelli of Basle – words that will be welcomed by all: “Not the angelic host ministering to Jehovah is here intended,” says Orelli, “but the host of the spirit world accountable to Jehovah, and which like the possessors of earthly power, is subject to His judgment.  The figure is that of the arrest of State criminals who at first, without regard to the extent of their demerit, are thrown into prison, then afterward, at the day of judgment, are dealt with according to the measure of their guilt.”  “The world-judgment here presented, is pictured as a cosmical catastrophe, like the deluge, which once swept away mankind, but yet more fruitful of good.  The earth shall altogether lose its hold, and be broken under the weight of its sin.  The judgment shall not merely strike the rulers of the earth, but shall reach the super-earthly powers, also, who are not blameless before God.  Between these, and the sinful world-powers there is a close connection, as the book of Daniel shows, and which is here asserted through the fact that they both are judged together.  As common criminals, these highest rulers shall be ignominiously arrested and imprisoned in order that, after a long time, they may receive their sentence which shall be pronounced by the Lord enthroned on Mount Zion, and His glorious judgment host there assembled.  Sun and moon shall lose their splendour in token of His great indignation against the world, while His people, redeemed on Mount Zion, dwell in the clearest light, [page 47] their elders deemed worthy to behold the glory of God; so that, according to chapter 4: 5, 6, and far more gloriously than in Moses’ time, Ex. 24: 9, 10, they shall be permitted to enjoy, permanently, the protection of the Shekinah-Cloud as the residence of the Lord who has now taken to Himself the sovereignty of the world.”

 

“After this world-judgment, in which Antichrist and his hosts are destroyed, as also Satan and his legions judged, and both imprisoned in the abyss, and Israel is redeemed and delivered, comes the blessed time of the “Multitude of days,” the Millennial Age,” on which Orelli remarks, “then following this judgment, comes the Triumphlied of the redeemed, chap. 25, as at chap. 12, an exalted echo of Israel’s song at the Red Sea, Ex. Chap. 15.  To all nations who do homage to the Lord in the end of the days, and undulate like swelling billows to the holy mountain to worship there, the Lord Himself will prepare a wondrous feast of joy.  It shall be to them a divine surprise when now He takes away the covering which, long enough already, has veiled the eyes of the nations.  They shall behold Him as the Dispenser of all life and grace, and taste how good He is to those who bend before His majesty.

 

“By a second act of almighty love and power, not less miraculous, He will abolish death with all the woe that wrung from man uncounted tears, and lift the curse which, from the beginning, has weighed so heavily upon the human race.  Here is, indeed, the end of the ways of God with men, of which the New Covenant in Christ, the Risen One, has unveiled the aim.  As the remnant of Israel, so also the remainder of mankind, spared through the judgment on the nations, shall be destined to unexpected blessedness by Him the All-Merciful [page 48] One, and this shall be, of itself, the most beautiful apology for Israel, while the pride of Gentile power, the odious rival of God’s people, shall be crushed forever.”

 

And in conclusion, on chapter 26, the last of the “Little Apocalypse of Isaiah,” he gives us this: “The songs of victory which first we heard far off in 24: 14, and were next intoned from Zion to the nearing nations, 5: 15, have now no end.  The redeemed hymn a new song wherein, in glowing words, they justify the ways of God.  Zion is now a city indestructible whose bulwark and defence are God’s salvation.  To all the righteous who trust in Him, the Rock of Ages, her gates are open.  And she extols that righteousness.  While the enemies of God fall into death remediless, 5: 14, God’s people find an increase of their numbers and a widening of their boundaries.  All human birth-pains, for a better future, have been vain.  No living soul has come from them; no increase has been born, 5: 17, 18.  But Jehovah brings such increase, in an unexpected way, as the sudden exclamation, interrupting Israel’s moan, announces, ‘Thy dead ones shall live!  My dead body (Israel) shall arise! Awake!  Sing! Ye dwellers in the dust, for the dew of lights is thy dew, and the earth shall bring forth the dead!’ Verse 19.  Not only shall Israel’s ranks no more be thinned by death, but even the faithful who, in bitter tribulation, have succumbed to death, shall come to life again; God’s dead ones whom we never may forget, nor be without.  These and the living church shall meet in life again!  Here is something new under the sun!  The unyielding under-world shall, through the power of heavenly dew, be fructified, and the departed rise and bloom in light and life again.  Then, in that day, the Lord binds [page 49] the Dragon, and Israel takes root, and fills the world with fruit, 27: 1-6.” * [* Orelli, in Strack-Zockler’s Kurtz Komm, Der Proph. Jesaia, pp. 86, 89-93.]

 

Such is the exposition of the contents, in part, of the “Little Apocalypse” of Isaiah, by Orelli – a picture of the World Judgment at the Second Advent and of the Millennial Age, the “Multitude of Days,” the “long time” following that judgment; a period of blessedness opened by the restoration of Israel, the judgment on Antichrist and Satan, the resurrection of the faithful dead, and the revelation of the glory of Christ to the nations, the companion piece of John’s Apocalypse, chapters 19 and 20.  It is not possible to place the Millennial Age before the coming of Christ, except by an open contradiction of the Word of God.

 

B. EZEKIEL 38.

 

An exile passage also claims our attention, in proof that “the thousand years” of John’s Apocalypse are found in the Old Testament itself.  It is the strangely introduced yet significant prediction concerning “Gog and Magog,” in Ezek. 38: 8.  It comes upon the reader suddenly, as an independent prediction of judgment due to Gog “after many days,” and stands isolated, as it were, in the text.  It seems to be a parenthetic expression.  It is a brief oracle, and yet it is the one word on which John’s whole representation of the order of the Eschata is pivoted, in the twelth chapter of his Apocalypse.  “After many days – Rabbim Yamim – thou shalt be visited.”  The verb (tippakedh) its tense form and import are the same as in Isaiah 24: 22; 29: 6, not merely a testing by divine judgment, but a destruction.  Smend’s rendering “Thou shalt be mustered,” and the rendering “Thou shalt be commissioned,” [page 50] are insufficient.  The verb imports here judicial visitation for destruction.  What the prophet here predicts is Satan’s last attempt, through Gog and Magog, in the latter years, against the Kingdom of Messiah, after Israel has been long time restored, and dwelling safely in their fatherland as a reunited and converted people, and the final judgment on Gog and his armies.  This prediction occurs in the Apocalypse of Ezekiel, chapters 37-48, where we find (1) Ezekiel’s vision of the Valley of Dry Bones reanimated, or the final religious and political rehabilitation of the “whole house of Israel,” in their fatherland, for “many days,” even “forever;” * one flock under one shepherd, one nation under one king, 37:1-28.  (2) Ezekiel’s prophecy of the war-march of Gog and his conglomerate swarm against Israel long time restored, and the judgment on Gog, 38: 1-23; 39: 1-29.  (3)  Ezekiel’s vision of the glory of the temple, city, and land, during these “many days,” a further expansion of what is foretold in 37: 1-28, when the Lord has poured His Spirit out upon the people, revived their nationality, awakened their faithful dead, and planted them forever in their own inheritance.

 

The time of the visitation on Gog is said to be “after” these “many days,” which belong to “the later years.”  (1) The terminus a quo of these “many years” is Israel’s restoration, conversion to Christ as a people and a nation, and the repossession of their land; the epoch of the resurrection of their faithful dead, an event included in the promise made 37: 12, as is proved by Deut. 32: 39; Ps. 17: 15; 49: 14, 15; Hos. 13: 14; Isa. 25: 6-9; 26: 14, 19; Dan. 12: 1-3, all of which passages refer directly to this same epoch, and fore-announce the literal resurrection of Israel’s faithful dead, [page 51] and non-resurrection of the wicked “at that time,” and “in that day.”  All this we have in chapter 37.  It is the terminus a quo.  It is the same epoch, also, of the judgment upon Antichrist and his armies, and upon Satan and his angels, that we find in Isaiah 24: 21, 22; Daniel 12: 1; Revelation 12: 7-9; 20: 1-3.  (2) The period, or age, that follows this terminus a quo is plainly the Rabbim Yamim or “many days,” whose glory, peace and blessedness are described in chapters 40-48, which are the expansion of 38: 1-28, and of what Isaiah has predicted; Isa. 2: 2-5; 11: 6-9; 24: 23 25: 6-9; 40: 1-22; 61: 4-11; 62: 2-12; 65: 17-25; 66: 20-23.  They are the period “after” Israel has been “gathered out from many nations,” “brought back from the sword,” is “dwelling safely, and at rest, in unwalled villages having neither bars nor gates,” – God alone their protection, - abundant in wealth and all possessions.  Exekiel 38: 8-12, 14.  They are the period of the new indwelling glory in New Israel, chapters 40-53; of the New Service following the entrance of the Glory in the Temple, which He makes the place of His throne and of the soles of His feet, 44-46; of the life and healing to the land from the flowing of the temple waters; and of the splendour to the city whose name is Jehovah Shammah, “The Lord is there!”  47-48. (3)  The terminus ad quem of these “many days” is expressly said to be the judgment on Gog, precisely as John makes the judgment on Gog to be the close of “the thousand years.”  Rev. 20: 7.  “After many days thou shalt be visited.”  The termini in Isa. 24: 22, and Ezek. 39: 8, are, therefore, identical.  The passages are parallel, supplementary, and mutually explanatory.  The character of the “visitation” at the end of the “many days” is the same in both.  The parties [page 52] “visited” are different, but this is due to the fact that Ezekiel’s prophecy is an advance upon Isaiah’s word, and brings to light new things occurring at the same time with those of which Isaiah speaks.  In Isaiah, the parties visited after “many days” are Satan and his angels let loose from their imprisonment, and the Anti-Christian wicked raised from their graves for the last judgment.  In Ezekiel, they are the living nations outlying on the extreme borders of the glorified kingdom of Israel, whose center is Jerusalem restored and glorified, and who, as we learn from John, have been deceived again by Satan let loose.  Each prophet is given his own work to do, and vision to see, “by the same Spirit who divides, severally, to every man as He will.” 1 Cor. 12: 11.  Isaiah says nothing of Gog.  Ezekiel says nothing of Antichrist.  Both say much of Israel’s final redemption, at the coming and appearing of the “Glory.”  Both speak of Israel’s long blessedness after restoration to their land and conversion to Messiah.  Both announce a “visitation” at the end of the “many days” of that blessedness.  What in undeveloped in the one, is developed in the other.  In the combination of both we find the total picture of the end as seen by the Old Testament prophets, whose work it was reserved for John, in Patmos, to complete and crown by the development of prophecy and further revelation, the last and brightest God has given.

 

If we turn to John’s Apocalypse we shall find his Eschata concerning Israel and the Millennial Kingdom precisely what they are in Old Testament, but only more developed.  We learn the organism and the unity, the structure and the continuity, of all prophecy, its persistence, progress, and perfection.  Interpretation is simply its own self-revelation, the shining of its own face, self-evident, infallible. [page 53]

 

Amid the vast variety in the unveiling of the word and plan of God, the unity remains the same from age to age.  The ends and ages are the same in the New as in the Old Testaments.  The Advents there are the Advents here.  Antichrist there is Antichrist here.  Gog there is Gog here.  The judgments there are the judgments here. The resurrections there are the resurrections here. The power, the kingdom, and the glory there are the power, the kingdom, and the glory here.  And the times of the Gentiles first, and the times of Israel next, in the last unfolding of the kingdom of God, are the same there and here.  In short, the relation of Israel to the nations, in the outcome of the Kingdom of God, is precisely what the prophets, to whom the “mystery” of Israel’s blindness, rejection and recovery, was revealed, say it shall be; a mystery finished under the sounding echoes of the seventh trumpet.

 

In John, we have the period of “the 1,000 years.”  Their commencing date, or terminus a quo, is identified with that in Isa. 24: 22, and Ezekiel 38: 8.  The Eschata that open “the 1,000 years,” prove this.  We have (1) the gathering, sealing, conversion, and restoration of Israel to their own land and city, in the midst of tribulation and judgment.  Rev. 7: 1-8; 10: 7; 11: 1; 12: 1-6; 14: 1-5; 15: 2-4; 20: 9.

 

Chapters 10, 11, and part of 12, introduce us to Ezekiel’s Valley of Dry Bones, just when the voice begins to thunder, the witnesses to prophecy, the Spirit to come from the four winds, and the earthquake’s shock to attend the resurrection from the dead.  The whole riddle of Ezekiel’s Apocalypse, i.e., chapters 37-48, finds its solution on John’s Apocalypse, chapters 10-20: 7.  (2)  We have the personal visible and [page 54] glorious advent and appearing of Messiah, for the redemption of His people, destruction of His enemies, and erection of His Kingdom.  Rev. 1: 7; 6: 16, 17; 10: 1; 11: 3, 17; 14: 1; 16: 15; 19: 11-16. We have (3) the judgment and imprisonment of Satan and his angels.  Rev. 12: 7-9; 20: 1-3.  We have (4) the judgment of Antichrist and his armies.  Rev. 14: 18-20; 16: 16; 19: 11-21.  We have (5) the resurrection of the faithful dead, and their reign with Christ in His kingdom of glory on the earth. Rev. 5: 10; 11: 11, 18; 20: 4-6.  And these events are precisely what Moses, David, Hosea, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah, all say precede the final glory of Israel, and stand in front of and attend the “many days.”  And as to the terminus ad quem of “the thousand years,” the Eschata here are (1) the loosing of Satan and his demonic powers, Rev. 20: 7, 8; (2) the war march of Gog and the nations deceived by Satanic influence against Israel’s land and city, Rev. 20: 9; (3) the judgment of Gog by fire, Rev. 20: 9; (4) the resurrection and judgment of the wicked, Rev. 20: 12; (5) the judgment of Satan, and his final doom, Rev. 20: 11; (6) the final and total destruction of death, Rev. 20: 13; (7) the final New Heaven and Earth, 21: 1.  And all these events are precisely what Isaiah and Ezekiel declare and imply shall occur at the close of, or “after,” the “many days.”  To him who declines to accept that spiritualizing and allegorizing system of interpretation which negates and destroys so much of the prophetic word itself, the conclusion is both necessary and irresistible that the Rov Yamin of Isaiah and the Rabbin Yamim of Ezekiel, are indeed the Chilia Ete of John; the “multitude of days” and “many days,” the same as the “thousand years.”  In these two Old Testament Apocalypses of Isaiah, [page 55] chapters 24-37, and Ezekiel, chapters 37-48, where the period of Israel’s blessedness is defined by these two equivalent terms of time just named, the Eschata that bound the opening of this period on the one side, and those which bound the close of it on the other side, are the same as those we find, respectively, in John’s Apocalypse, as bounding the two extremes of the Millennial Age.  And, for the opening of this period, the Aposalypse of Daniel and Zechariah, as the prophecies of the other prophets, Joel, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Haggai, when combined, show the same events, occurring in the Yom Yehovah, during which Messiah comes in glory and in judgment, to destroy His enemies, redeem His people, and erect His kingdom on the ruins of the Gentile powers and on the overthrow of Satan’s empire; and if, in reference to the closing of this period, new characters emerge, or what was but obscure before becomes full formed and clear, it is because of the progress of prophecy itself, which, like its fulfilment, has a “springing and germinant accomplishment,” its light increasing more and more unto the perfect day.  And if, in earlier pre-exile prophecy, where but one end, one advent, and one judgment, with one age following, are found, we find a mother-source, or general ground, notably in Joel, for both great judgments, that on Antichrist and that on Gog; and if again in Isaiah, the ground is laid not only for these, but for both resurrections as well, with an interval between; and if, in exile prophecy, in addition to this, we find, notably in Ezekiel, the ground laid for the still clearer, farther, and closing revelations of John, in whose Apocalypse the remoter Eschata stand out, in all their brightness, or their gloom, distinct and [page 56] un-confounded; it is because, from first to last, the word of prophecy is one continuous genetic movement, struggling ever to evolve in its conclusion what was first involved in its beginning.  The prophets all supplement each other, and John is the all-embracing consummation of them all.  His light illuminates the rest. 

 

From what has been said it must be clear that the Millennial Kingdom is the time of blessedness on earth for Israel restored to God, for Israel reclaimed to Christ, and lies beyond His Second Coming, beyond the resurrection from the dead.  This cannot be successfully denied.  Even post-millennialists confess as much, in contradiction of their own theory.  “the binding of Satan,” says Schroeder, on Ezekiel, in Lange, “is the necessary preliminary of the millennial kingdom.  If he is not to deceive the nations during this time but after it, does so again, then it is clear even from that to which he afterward deceives them, that his imprisonment means, above all, the cessation of war and violence, and of violent combating of the church of God, inasmuch as the following vision of witnesses unto blood seems to point particularly in the same direction,”  “Gog and Magog both follow the resurrection (Ezek. 37), as in John’s revelation (Rev. 20: 4-6), and he who is constrained to recognize, in Ezekiel, chap. 37. Israel’s re-quickening as a nation, will not, thereby, be hindered from conceding that it will be followed by the re-quickening from their graves, of “all who are Christ’s,” as Paul expresses it.  Moreover, the repeated “forever” – “Leolam” – (in Ezekiel, chapter 37) – can here be interpreted by the Chilia Ete there (in Revelation 20: 1-7.) * [* Schroeder on Ezekiel, in Lange, 376, 350.]  Again: “After many days” denotes the [page 57] expiration of a long time, and supposed to be the last time, which is not only the consummation of the Kingdom of God, but of the world generally.  The words “Days” and “Years” interchange harmoniously in the verse.  “After many days” “in the latter years.”  That which appears in the single event as “many days,” is, for the eye of the Apocalyptic seer that ranges over the whole, the summation of what is still outstanding in years, or time generally.  Both these phrases denote the Messianic age.” * [* Ibid 363]

 

So Schroeder speaks.  And we add that, if indeed, as is the fact, the binding of Satan precedes the judgment on Gog; if it occurs at the Second Coming of Christ when the resurrection from the dead takes place; if Israel’s political resurrection precedes this personal one; if “Leolam,” “forever,” is used in its qualified sense as equivalent to “the thousand years” of John, the “long time” or “outstanding” period, next preceding the consummation of the kingdom and the world; if all this is conceded, then it is hard to see how any who accept these conclusions could find relief from their force, by resort to the allegorical, spiritual, or symbolical theories of interpretation.  The relations of the events must, at least, remain the same, and the “Many Days” must come in between the Second Coming of Christ and the judgment on Gog.  If, moreover, we allegorize one event, to be consistent we must allegorize all.  This wrecks the whole prediction, and denies the vast body of literal Scripture elsewhere with which it stands connected.

 

Riehm, as an exegete, though seeking to avoid the literal interpretation of prophecy in reference to Israel’s [page 58] future, yet finds in impossible to evade the clear representation of Ezekiel himself.  He says, “In Ezekiel, we certainly read of imminent danger to the Kingdom of God in the ‘End of the days’ after its restoration.  The victory of Jehovah divides itself into two acts rather widely separated from each other.  The judgments which bring deliverance to Israel, first of all, fall upon the neighbouring nations already in conflict with the people of God.  After’ Israel’s deliverance, there is a time of security and peace, Ezek. 38: 8, 11, 12, yet still the distant nations have not learned to know Jehovah’s power, and at the ‘End of the Days’ they assemble, under Gog, to fight against Israel, but the Lord destroys them, and consumes their country with fire, 39: 6.  Only after this is the kingdom assured against further attack, 38: 29.” “Most remarkable indeed, are the words of Ezekiel in 28: 25, 26.  After the first judgments securing Israel against surrounding nations, the kingdom is established in the Holy Land, and for a long time the people enjoy undisturbed repose, 38: 8, 11, 12.  At the ‘End of the Days,’ Gog and Magog make their final attack, after whose destruction Israel remains forever secure against their foes.”  “In Micah, the Messianic king has ascended the throne before the final attack of the distant nations; and as in the Apocalypse of John, the Kingdom of Christ has stood a thousand years before Satan is let loose to lead the hosts of Gog and Magog against it, so also in Ezekiel, Israel enjoys for a long time the blessing of complete communion with Him before they are finally assured of their safe possession of the blessing.” * [* Riehm, Messianic Proph. 110, 210.]

 

Clearly, then, even according to Riehm’s view, the [page 59] “many days” in Ezekiel, are the period of Israel’s blessedness in the Messianic Kingdom on earth, and are bounded at their opening, by the “first judgments” which bring deliverance to Israel and the establishment of Israel in the Messianic kingdom on earth, and at their close are bounded by the “destruction of Gog.”  The period between these different and separated judgments, which stand apart “rather widely,” is a “long time,” when “a thousand years,” and Micah, Ezekiel and John, herein agree.  The millennium announced by John is only what the prophets, pre-exile and exile, have foretold, and the duration of which they measure by the “many days” between Israel’s introduction, by means of the Messianic judgment, into the kingdom established in the Holy Land, and the final overthrow of Gog.  Micah, as well as Isaiah, forecasts “the thousand years” of John.  Not before, but only “after the thousand years,” when Gog is judged, is the ultimate glory of the kingdom.  In other words, the view of the total End-Time, in the widest and most comprehensive scope, as seen by the prophets, and embracing the perfect victory of Messiah for Israel’s complete deliverance and complete establishment of the kingdom of glory on earth, in the latter days, is represented as that of two great acts or phases of judgment between which lie the “many days” of Ezekiel which are “the thousand years” of John.  In other words again, the “End of the Days” of which Ezekiel and Isaiah speak, in the texts already referred to, is the end of “the thousand years,” the “end” which Paul has in view, in 1 Cor. 15: 34, when Messiah’s victory is complete, and, all rule, authority and power being put down, and [page 60] death itself destroyed, the kingdom is surrendered to the Father, and God is all in all. 1 Cor 15: 24-26.  The harmony and unity of Isaiah, Micah, Ezekiel, Paul and John, herein, are both demonstratable and indestructible.  Their testimony to the location of the Millennial Kingdom the other side of the Second Coming of Christ, is final.  Pastor Koch, therefore, in his admirable work on “The Thousand Years’ Kingdom,” eminent not less for its logic than for its critical ability and thorough knowledge of the Scriptures, is right when, discussing Ezekiel’s “Many Days,” says: “This period of Israel’s peace and blessedness can be no other than ‘the thousand years’ kingdom treated of Rev. 19: 11-21.  Between the overthrow of Antichrist and Gog’s march lies the period of Rev. 20: 1-6 which is nothing else than ‘The Thousand Years.’  The march of Gog follows only ‘after the thousand years are finished,’ ” * [* Das tausendjuhrige Reich, p. 65.]

 

C.  LEOLAM.  FOREVER.

 

 In the extract from Schroeder, quoted above, it was said that the term “Leolam,” “forever,” Ezek. 37: 25, 26, 28, applied to the duration of the times of Israel in the kingdom, in future days, “can be interpreted by the Chilia Ete, or ‘The Thousand Years,’ in Rev. 20: 1-7.”  This is exegetically true as it is theologically important, and rests upon the Biblical use of the term itself.  It refutes the vain charge that Chiliasm denies the “everlasting” character of Messiah’s kingdom, because it asserts its temporal form in a Millennial Age. [page 61]

 

A better knowledge of the usus loquendi, and of the term “forever,” would render this, like many other similar objections, impossible.  The kingdom of Messiah is, as the Scriptures everywhere declare, everlasting in its essence and existence.  It has “no end.”  Isa. 9: 7; Heb. 1: 8-12.  Messiah’s throne is “forever.”  Ps. 89: 4, 29, 36; Heb. 1: 8; 72: 77.  Throughout its several forms of dispensations, it is an everlasting kingdom also, but yet to each of these forms there is an “end.”  Matt. 24: 14; Heb. 9: 26; 1 Cor. 15: 24.  It is olamic aeonian in both, but in a different sense; in the first, absolutely so; in the second, relatively so; unlimited as to its essence, limited as to its forms.  As to its essence, no external event can limit it.  As to its form, external events do limit it.  Viewed in its essence it is eternal only.  Viewed in its essence and form, together, it is both temporal and eternal, yet called eternal in its relative sense, that is, “age-abiding.” * [*See NOTES at Emd – Ed] Essentially it is one, and endures forever in an absolute sense.  Circumstantially, or dispensationally, it is many, its forms evanescent, though each is age-abiding.  This rests upon the nature of the case, and the Biblical expression is accommodated to the fact.  The wise man tells us God has sent “Olam,” “eternity,” in the heart of man, and he knows “that whatever God doeth it should be Leolam, forever.” Eccl. 3: 11, 14.  No man can find, out the work of God from its beginning, or in its end, no man can conceive an absolute beginning or an absolute end, for no man can conceive an absolute beginning or an absolute end, because “God has set Olam in the heart of man.”  Eternity transcends human thought, and yet it is the innermost core of man’s spiritual constitution, writes vanity on all things perishable, and bespeaks man’s immorality.  In spite of the world’s fading fashion which attracts and [page 62] in the eternal state, will differ as greatly from its previous form in the millennial state, as that millennial form will differ from our present form, and as ours again differs from the old Mosaic, or as that did from the patriarchal tent.

 

Schroeder is right, therefore, as are Kliefoth, Oehler, Kuper, and many others, when saying that Ezekiel’s Leolam, Forever, in 37: 25, 26, 28, is the equivalent of John’s Chilia Ete, or “one thousand years,” in Rev. 20: 1-7.  Isaiah’s everlasting age concealed in its bosom all the relative ages of the great development, and their termini, even as Joel’s prophecy was “generic” and contained the two judgments of the double end, the judgment on antichrist and the nations, and the judgment on Gog.  And in the whole development, all things are connected with temporal and terrestrial relations.  From first to last, even in the New Testament, the ages and the kingdom of the heavens are associated with our planet.  Nowhere in the Old Testament, as nowhere in the New, can our popular idea of “an end to the world,” as the terminus where Time and Eternity meet, or Time passes into Eternity, and “our planet is no more,” to be found.  Such conceptions are unbiblical, Manichean, Origenistic, Shakesperean and pessimistic.  The “hills of Olam” abide for ever and forever.  Materiality is glorified, not annihilated, in God’s Kingdom.  The creation is recreated.  A new heaven and earth supplant the old, and this begins with the “many days,” “the one thousand years.”

 

D. HOSEA 3: 4.

 

Another expression, similar to those already noted, is found on Hosea when predicting God’s watchful care over Israel in their dispersion and lonliness; - [page 65] the time  of Lo Ammi and Lo Ruhamam – “Not my people,” and “Not my beloved;” the time when harlot Israel, divorced from God, yet separated from idolatry, is still in desolation and concealment and providentially preserved for God.  Hos. 1: 6, 9, 10; 2: 20-23.  The words of punishment and grace are the alike remarkable.  “Thou shalt abide for me many days – Yamin Rabbim.  Thou shalt not play the healot.  Thou shalt not be any man’s wife.  So will I also be for thee!”  God’s pledge to the sinful Jewish Church, to apostate Israel!  To divorced Lo Ammi and Lo Ruhamah!  This is grace amazing.  It tells the topmost mercy, boundless love, and bottomless compassion of God.  This is surely immeasurable.  “For the children of Israel shall abide (dwell, yeshbhn) many days, - Yamin Rabbim, - no king and no prince, and no sacrifice, and no obelisk, and no ephod and terraphim.  Afterward (achar) shall the children of Israel return (convert, yashubhu) and seek the Lord their God and David their King, and shall come with fear to the Lord and His goodness, in the afterness of the days,” Hosea 3: 3-5.  If we ask what are these “many days” of Israel’s loneliness and isolation, and strangely-pledged preservation for God, we can only answer promptly, with Delitzsch, “The many days here are the long period of the exile, the condition in which the Jewish people is, even now; - a people, but not a State with a King; - a still worshiping congregation, but with no sacrifices, a people so radically alienated from polytheism that it regards itself as the pillar of monotheism; - a people who, at length, shall be seized with a repentant desire for Jehovah, and David its King, that is, as the Targum translates, ‘for Messiah the Son of David,’ the king David of the final period.  Jer. 30: 9; [page 66] Ezek. 34: 23-31; 37: 24-28;” and then he adds: “The entire Old Testament can exhibit no brighter prophecy respecting the conversion of Israel than this companion piece to Rom. 11: 25, and which received its full spiritual signification, first of all, in the light of the New.” * [* Messianic Prophecies, p. 61].  It is a photograph of the condition of Israel to-day, and as certain a prediction of what their end will be, as a people, in a few short years.  But this is not all.  There is another aspect of this period.  Contrary to Pusey’s inadequate comment, the “many days” here are gathered into two great days, two historic days, covering the whole time of Israel’s national decease and rest, as a nation, in the grave; the whole time of the existence of the Valley of the Dry Bones; at the expiration of which returning Israel’s resurrection shall take place, i.e., on the third historic day. “Come and let us return unto the Lord, for He hath torn and will heal us; He hath smitten and will bind us up.  After two days, - Miyyomayim, - He will requicken us.  On the third day, - Bayom Hashshelishi, - He will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight,” i.e., “before Him.”  Hos. 6: 1, 2.  Then follows the age of perpetual sunshine and spiritual showers, v. 3, the summer for the just, the resurrection glory.

 

If we ask what these two historic days are, we can only say again, with Delitzsch, “The prophecy refers to the people, after the second day of whose death a resurrection day follows.”  Rom. 11: 15.  “The two days of their death are, in the history of fulfilment, the Assyrian and Babylonian exile, and the Roman exile, in which the Jewish people still are.” [*ibid, p. 62.]  That is, the first day of Israel’s national death is the Old Testament [page 67] period of Israel’s destruction as a nation, the people carried captive, Jerusalem destroyed, the Temple gone, the land depopulated, and the outward kingdom blotted out; the second day is the New Testament period, with the like catastrophe repeated, the first day reaching to the First Coming of Christ, beginning with a new dispensation, the Roman or second day reaching to the Second Coming, the total period being the time of Israel, as a nation, in the Valley of Dry Bones, the Monarchy-Colossus still standing unstruck.

 

Then comes the “third,” the resurrection day, in whose “morning” Israel arises, the time of Israel’s repentance and home-coming, the time when the Colossus falls, and the Dry Bones stand up erect, reanimated, clothed with flesh, a host exceeding great!  What we have here is a spiritual resurrection first, Ezek. 36: 25; a national and political resurrection next, Ezek. 37: 1-28; a literal corporal resurrection of the faithful dead of Israel last, Ps. 49: 14, 15; Isa. 26: 19; Dan. 12: 1-3.  The apostle Paul quotes the words of Hosea 13: 14, “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death.  O death, where are thy plagues?  O grave, where is thy destruction?”  in proof of a literal destruction of the body, 1 Cor. 15: 55, and, in his letter to the Romans, tells us that this time of Israel’s conversion and re-establishment will bring no less an event than “life out from the dead.”  Rom. 11: 15.

 

What Hosea gives us here, at the beginning of the third day, is precisely what Moses gives us, Deut. 32: 39; and David gives us, Ps. 49: 14, 15; and Isaiah gives us, 25: 8; 26: 19; and Daniel gives us, 12: 1-3; and Ezekiel gives us, 37: 1-28; and John’s Apocalypse gives us, 11: 11, 18; 12: 5; 10: 11; 20: 4-6. [page 68]   Then after these mighty events that mark the end of our present age, or end of Israel’s second day of national death, comes the Millennial Age of Israel’s blessedness, pictured beautifully, as the times of perennial reviving and refreshing, the age of Israel’s Dew, and Blossoming, and Lily growth, and deepening roots like the Cedar tree, and spreading branches like the olive tree; the age of blessing to the Nations, when they, too, dwelling under Israel’s shadow, shall revive as the corn, and bloom as the vine, and be fragrant as wine of Lebannon; and Israel, all holy to the Lord, will have no more to do with idols, but, unwithering, like the fir tree, bear holy fruit to God.  Hosea 14: 4-8.

 

The demonstration, then, is clear, inductively. Hosea’s “many days” reach from the Assyrian captivity down to the Second Advent of Christ.  During this whole period Israel as a nation lies buried in the grave with the Colossus on its breast.  Israel’s resurrection as a nation is on the “morning” of the “third day.”  “In the history of Christ the history of Israel is recapitulated.” (Delitzsch.)  Israel must die as a nation in order to live.  From death to life is the path for Israel to the kingdom.” (Orelli.)  Equally clear is it that the “Multitude of Days” in Isa. 24: 22, and the “Many Days” in Ezek. 38: 8, are identical with “the Thousand Years” in John, Rev. 20: 1-7, and reach from the Second Coming of Christ to the destruction of Gog.

 

These two vast periods, taken together, cover, therefore, the whole time from the Assyrian captivity to the Last Judgment and the final New Heaven and Earth.  The age next before us is that of the “Third Day,” the “Sabbatism” of the world.  Not at the First Coming of Christ was Hosea’s prediction fulfilled, as is clear [page 69]  from John’s Apocalypse, where, under the sixth vial, the Euphrates, beyond which the ten tribes roved into concealment among the nations, is “dried up” to make way for the return of Israel, under the care of the princes from the sun rising.  Rev. 16: 12; 2 Kings 17: 6; Isa. 11: 16; 24: 16; 66: 19, 20; 41: 2, 25; Zeph. 3: 10.  It is true that the terms “Afterward” and the “Last Days” are standing eschatological formulae for the whole Messianic time covered by Isaiah’s everlasting age, as well as for the time next preceding the “Yom Yehovah,” or “Day of the Lord;” and that, as is clear from Joel and Peter, they include the first as well as the second appearing of Messiah. !sa. 2: 2; Joel 2: 28; Acts 2: 17; the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, as well as the still future outpouring predicted by Paul.  Rom. 11: 27, and parallels; Isa. 59: 21; Ezek. 36: 24, 25; and both which are wrapped up in Zechariah’s oracle, Zech. 12: 10-14; 13: 1, 6.  Compare Rev. 1: 7.  But it is equally true that whatever conversion of Jews occurred on the day of Pentecost, or of any Israelites since, it is only the initial, not the final, redemption of that people, since Israel, as a nation, is still cast away, not gathered, their house desolate, and their land still trodden under Gentile feet.  The “afterness of the days” is the end-time at the second coming of Christ.  It refers to the epoch of Israel’s entrance into the kingdom restored, the time when Israel seeks and welcomes Christ the King.  Luke 13: 34, 35; Rev. 15: 3; and also to those super-natural days of Messiah, called “his days,” in Psalm 72: 7, when Israel’s “handful of corn,” or saved remnant, “shall shake like Lebanon,” and “they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth,” 72: 16; the time when those words, so bitter and sad, “Lo Ammi[page 70] and “Lo Ruhamah,” shall no more be spoken.  Down to this very hour Israel has remained pure from the sin of “Idolatry” since the day their national exile began, and, as a people, will so abide, reserved for the Kingdom of Christ at His Coming.  The same race, punished for sin, is the race reclaimed by grace.  Nationally, as well as personally, God deals with the Jewish people.

 

Israel’s identity abides through all the ages.  From the genesis of Israel in Abraham to the re-genesis of Israel in Christ, Israel “abides,” Israel, untarnsmuted, and, from Sennacherib down to the last Antichrist, will so “abide,” kept for that day when the “Branch of Jehovah shall become an ornament and glory, and He the Fruit of the Land be a pride and a boast for the escaped of Israel.” Isa. 4: 2.  So sing the prophetic Blessing of Judah, the Oracles of Balaam, the Dying Song of Moses, and the Words of David, preluding the fortunes of the chosen people down to, and into, the “Last Days.”  So sing Hosea and Amos, the two prophets of the ten tribes, in concert with all the rest.  In God’s strange providence Israel “abides” for Him, and not another, unobelisked and unteraphimed, and He is “toward them,” and will yet “have mercy on them.”  Then, in that day of Israel’s home-coming, the Jewish Church of the end time will be revived.  The Lord will renew the Covenant of His love with “Lo Ruhamah,” take away any ambiguous “Baali” from her mouth, and put the loving “Ishi” there.  He will betroth her Himself in righteousness and judgment, in loving kindness and in mercies, even in faithfulness forevermore.  In her final tribulation He will allure her to the wilderness, as John’s Apocalypse also shows us.  Rev. 12: 6, 14; and nourish her, and tenderly repeat His “Ammi[page 71] to her heart, and breathe “Rumamah!”  He will accept her penitence and tears, and give her again “the Valley of Trouble” for a door of hope, and make her sing her old Egyptian song.  There will not only be a Wedding Day, but a Day of Victory.  When David’s fallen Booth is re-erected, in more than ancient splendour, Israel and Judah, reunited, as “one nation,” and marching under “One Head,” shall “come up from the land,” victorious, across the plain of Megiddo, where Barak fought and Deborah sang, and “Great will be the Day of Jezreel!”  Hos. 1: 11.

 

 

E. MOSES.

 

But Moses demands a hearing.  The Prophets have said nothing on this great matter that even Moses had not already said before them.  Let it be enough, just here, to say that Moses himself defines the time during which Israel shall be nationally cast away, and at whose close Israel shall be nationally restored, and made glorious in their fatherland.  If we turn to Leviticus 27: 18, 21, 24, 28, we shall hear God saying what He will do  to Israel in case of their apostasy,  “If ye will not hearken unto me, but will walk contrary to me, then I will add to smite you Seven Times (Sheba) upon your sins.”  When, however, in the Acharith Hayyamin, or Last Days, Israel repents, accepting the justice of their punishment, nationally, then, says God. “I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, my covenant I made with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, and I will remember the land.” Lev. 26: 42, 45.  Who cannot see that the Sheba or Seven Times of Israel’s national punishment are the whole stretch of time in Israel’s chastisement, from the smiting of Israel and Judah, as kingdoms, down to the [page 72] “Last Days” when Israel nationally repents, i.e., down to the Second Coming of Christ?  They are the measure of the duration of Israel in the lion’s den, and furnace of affliction, seven times hot, the whole period of the “Times of the Gentiles,” the period of the Colossus standing erect on Israel’s grave; the “Many Days” of Hosea, his “Two Days,” at whose close Israel’s resurrection and redemption occur, and the Millennial Age begins.

 

Listen to the “Song of Moses,” Deut. 32: 39-43.  It predicts Israel’s apostasy, and final recovery, as a nation, in the Acharith Hayyamin or Last Days, the “End of the Days,” still future to us.  The faithful of that oracle, in Moses, has never yet taken place.  Its radius of vision reaches to the Second Advent, as all successive prophecy shows, and all history confirms.  Both Testaments conspire to prove this.  It points, in clearest terms, to the Great Tribulation, the interposition of Christ, and the “making alive” of Israel’s faithful dead by Him who “kills” Israel’s adversaries.  To spiritualize this into a subjective redemption of all God’s people, or of the New Testament Church, is to mock the Scriptures.  He who, in Moses, swares, as He lifts His hand, “I am He, I kill and I make alive, I live forver,” and vows to “avenge the blood” of His martyred ones, and calls the nations to “rejoice with His people” (the Jews) in that crisis, is He who in John, Rev. 10: 7, lifts His hand and swears that, with the seventh trumpet, the Tribulation shall come to an end, and Antichrist be destroyed, Israel be delivered, and not only Moses, but Daniel also predicted (Dan. 12: 1-3) and the righteous dead be restored to life.  Such is the organic unity of all prophecy from Moses to John.  Then the “mystery of God” foreshown to the prophets [page 73] “shall be finished” and the kingdom come.  John is only repeating and filling out Moses and the Prophets! * Look at Deut. 31: 28, 29; 32: 39-43; Rev. 6: 10; 10: 7; 15: 3, 4; 19: 11-21; 20: 1-7.  Sunlight is not clearer than that the Age of Israel’s glory in the kingdom is placed, by Moses, after the Seven Times of punishment which reach down to the very “End of the Days,” or “Acharith Hayyamin” in their utmost development, that is, after Hosea’s “two days.”  In other words, Moses puts it precisely where Hosea’s “third day” stands, and John’s 1,000 years belong.  It follows Israel’s national conversion to Christ.  Deut. 30: 1-4.  And he who studies Paul, will find him teaching the same truth when discussing the “Jewish Problem,” as men call it.  In Rom. 10: 6-10; 11: 25, 29, he puts Israel’s conversion, as a people, even as Isaiah does, Isa. 59: 16-21, and Peter does, Acts 3: 19-21, at the Second Coming of Christ.

 

[* “ANI-HU” (I AM HE) is the covenant name of Christ, in the Old Testament, Deut. 32: 39; Isa. 43: 10; 46: 3, 5; 48: 12.  It is the name of the Second Person of the Trinity (1) making Himself equal in Essence with God (HE), while yet asserting a distinct Personality.  It is the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, of the Word of God, and is the ground of John’s Logos doctrine.  John 1: 1.  He who here speaks, to Moses, is the personal “Word of God,” who appears as the diademed Rider on the White Horse, Rev. 19: 11, and as the Angel of the Covenant, or Maleach Habberith, coming, the second time to Israel, to wake His people out of the Valley of Dry Bones, and appearing with solar-face, rainbow-crown, His shoulders in cloud, and His feet in pillars of fire, Rev. 10: 1, and swearing the same words to John that He swore to Moses.  It was ANI-HU who dwelt in the Pillar of Cloud by day, and Fire by night.  It was ANI –HU who spoke to Moses in the “Bush.”  It was ANI-HU HAMMIDDABBER, I AM HE, the Speaking One, a motto Stier has taken for his “Words of Jesus.”  It was a name asserting the deity, eternity, personality, majesty, and real presence and glory of Christ, in Old Testament History.  ANI-HU is the “Alpha and Omega” in the Apocalypse, Isaiah’s “Immanu-EL” or “With-us-God.”  The Christ who talked to Moses upon the same subject, and in reference to the same time.]

 

H.        THE PSALTER.

 

Nor is the Psalter silent.  All the sweet singers of Israel, from David to Ezra, pre-celebrate the same future for Israel.  They sing in concert with Moses.  The “Set Time” to favour Zion, as it stands in the prophetic outlook, Psalm 102: 13-22, is demonstrably the “End Time” when the Angel of Jehovah, the Lord Himself, throned on the “Clouds,” comes with His holy “Angels” to “appear in His glory and build up Zion,” to “judge the people, the world, the earth, in righteousness,” to give the righteous “dominion in the morning,” to cause them to “wake in His likeness,” to “send the rod of His strength out of Zion,” “rule in the midst of His enemies,” “smite kings in the Day of His wrath,” “redeem Israel,” “make known His Salvation in the eyes of all nations,” and “fill the earth with His glory.”  It is all eschatological.  Those marvellous Psalms, 102, 97, 18, 96, 49, 110, 72, show this at once.  The expression “His Days” in Psalm 72: 7, denotes plainly the days of Messianic or Millennial glory on earth, foretold by the prophets, and as following the “Seven Times” of Moses.  These “Days” are the “Third Day” of Hosea, the “Many Days” of Isaiah and Ezekiel, and the “Thousand Years” of John.  Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets, all sing the same thing concerning Israel and Messiah, both as to their sufferings and glory, all idealizing critics to the contrary notwithstanding.  A pre-advent Millennium is unknown to the Psalter.  That bright constellation of five Psalms closing with the 100th Psalm, is a chorus of Second Adnent songs.  Delitzsch calls them “Apocalyptic Psalms.”  Prof. Binnie of Aberdeen styles them “Songs of the Millennium.”  Herder named them a “Group of Millennial Psalms.”  Tholuck adorned [page 75] them with the title “Millennial Anthems.”  What is it they celebrate?  The Glorious kingdom of the Messiah, the kingdom restored to Israel, after the Second Coming, or personal Self- Revelation of Jehovah, to judge the world.  Like so many others, they teach as the Prophets do, the pre-millennial Advent of Christ, and the “Shower Seasons,” or “Times of Reviving” following, when “He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass, and as showers that water the earth;” the very “times of refreshing” of which Peter spoke, when the first Christian Pentecost, their pledge, was fully come.  Paul tells the Hebrews in his first chapter that the 97th Psalm relates to the Second Advent when the First-Born Heir of all things is publicly installed in His inheritance amid the homage of all angels.  The Old Hundredth Psalm is simply an anticipation of the Millennial Age when “All the people that on earth do dwell” unite to praise the Lord.  What is the 45th Psalm but an “Advent Hymn” as the great Crusius called it, “Celebrating the victories of the Bridegroom-Warrior coming to His kingdom?”

 

What is the 97th. Psalm but a catalogue of the nations whose individuals are put on the burgess roll as born citizens of metropolitan Zion when God establishes her in universal empire?  That the 37th Psalm refers to the Millennial Age, when “the meek shall inherit the earth,” is our Lord’s own teaching.  The 68th Psalm is a “Great War-Hymn of the Conqueror of the World-Power.”  The 50th Psalm opens with the “Advent of Christ to judgment.”  The Hebrew Poets are all Pre-millennialists, as are the Hebrew Prophets, and the Psalter has to do with “the 1,000 years” as plainly as has the Apostle John. [page 76]

 

I.            SUMMING UP.

 

If we sum up the results of our investigation, we shall find that the Spirit of Prophecy has furnished us various time-designations which span the whole development of the Kingdom of God on earth from the Assyrian captivity down to the final New Heaven and Earth.  Israel’s fate is the measure of all prophecy.  Of these designations to cover the whole period from the Assyrian exile down to the Second Coming of Christ, viz., the “Many Days” in Hosea 3: 4, 5, during which Israel “abides,” waiting for Jehovah, and which in Hosea 6: 2, are summed up in “Two Days” the two great historic periods of national death for Israel, viz., (1) the Old Testament Day of Assyrian and Babylonian captivity and dispersion, and (2) the New Testament Day of Roman captivity and dispersion, these two days reaching down to the time of Israel’s predicted return, resurrection, and national rehabilitation in their fatherland, at the Second Coming of Christ or in the morning of Hosea’s “Third Day,” Hosea 6: 2; the history of “Israel” the national Messiah, and “Israel” the personal Messiah, being modelled on the same divine plan.  What we further find is that the Messianic Kingdom and Glory on earth, i.e., the Millennial age, this side the final Regenesis of all things, is defined, in the Scriptures, by no less than six different equivalent expressions, viz.:

 

Rov Yamin.  Multitude of Days.  Isa. 24: 22.

 

Rabbin Yamin.  Many days. Ezek. 38: 8.

 

Yom Hashshelishi.  Third Day.  Hos. 3: 4, 5.

 

His Days.  Psa. 72: 7

 

Leolam.  Forever.  Ezek. 37: 25, 26, 28.

 

Chila Ete. Thousand Years.  Rev. 20: 1-7.

 

All descriptive of the same period of time, bounded [page 77] on each side by the same events, the period between the Second Advent and the destruction of Gog, or between the binding and loosing of Satan.  It is important to observe that the “Many Days” of Hosea, are a very different period from the “Many Days” of Ezekiel, and the “Multitude of Days” of Isaiah.  The former are the “Times of the Gentiles,” the times of the Colossus, the Four Beasts, Israel’s Graveyard, 69 weeks, with at least 1890 years of the Interval following the period of Israel’s national Rejection and Death.  The latter are the Millennial Age itself, introduced by the Second Advent, the gathering and judgment of the nations, the downfall of the Colossus, the destruction of the Antichrist, the 70th week, and the resurrection of Israel.  What we further find is that the 70th of Daniel’s 70 weeks is divided into twice 1260 days for the Rise, Reign, and Ruin, of Antichrist, and that the formula, 70 years, plus 7 year-weeks, plus 62 year-weeks, plus our Interval, plus I year-week, all of which make the “Two Days” of Hosea, spans the whole time from the Destruction of the visible kingdom of God on earth to its setting up again; that the “Many Days” of Hosea, which are his “Third Day,” span “the 1,000 years” of John; and that all, taken together, exhaust the whole prophetic calendar if we add, hereto, Gog’’s “little season,” at the close of the Millennial Age.  The formula of the total AEonology is 70 years plus 69 year-weeks, plus our Interval, plus 1 year-week, plus the 1,000 years, plus Gog’s little season.

 

And what we find further, is that no prophet of the Old Testament gives a complete, but only a partial picture of the End-Time, even as neither Christ, nor any Apostle does, but that the work of John, under the guidance of the Spirit of Prophecy, was to combine the [page 78] Eschata of Joel, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah; in short, the Eschata of all the prophets, and arrange them in their temporal order and succession, supplementing by one prophet the partial picture of the End drawn by another, until all the Eschata fall into their places, as they shall occur in history, so furnishing to us one grand tableau of the End Time.  This is what the Holy Ghost did with the seer in the “isle that is called Patmos.”  Nothing is clearer than that “the 1,000 years” of John are found in the Old Testament prophets, and that Hosea’s “Third Day,” Isaiah’s “Multitude of Days,” Ezekiel’s “Many Days,” bounded by two resurrections, two conflagrations, and two judgments, each distinguished from one another, and between which the Millennial Kingdom lies.  The New Testament Apocalypse answers herein, to the Old, as face answers to face in water, and it belongs to the shame and reproach due to the superficial knowledge of so many in our day, who pretend to greater things, that they have not recognized this fact, in their study of the Scriptures, but still keep harping on the old and timeless string that “the Millennium is found in only one passage of the Bible, and that in a very obscure book called the Apocalypse!” a boast and a blindness which have happened in part of many Gentile interpreters who inform us that Israel of Old Testament Prophecy, “Daniel’s People” brought out of Egypt, and to whom a future so glorious is reserved, after a punishment so great, means believers in Christ, the Old and the New Testament “Church,” from the “first man Adam,” down to the “Second Adam, the Lord from heaven,” a grand spiritual company gathered not only from Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and dwellers in Mesopotamia, but from Greeks, Turks, Germans, Saxons, Romans, Arabs, [page 79] Frenchmen, Esquimaux and Indians.  What a perversion, or as Delitzsch calls it, a “destruction and negatation of the prophecies not effected!  Or what is more humiliating to a scholar than the allegorizing “Anglo-Israelism” of some of our times!  On the Contrary, if we only let God speak for Himself – allowing Israel to “abide” Israel, till the Lord comes, that “Genea” not passing away, how bright the unclouded Apocalypses of Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah and John!  How clear the Millennial age following the Advent!  How false the common view entertained by the Church, and blindly advocated by so many of her teachers!

 

H

 

It does seem strange that any student of God’s word should doubt, for one moment, the truth that blazes everywhere so clearly in the Old as well as the New Testaments, viz., that the Second Coming of Christ precedes the Millennium.  And it does seem criminal that such an unreasoning prejudice should exist in the minds of any against the use of the term as Spiritual as are the terms “Baptism,” “Baptist,” “Episcopalian,” “Presbyterian;” words which the objectors themselves have chosen to consecrate as the names of their several denominations, and in which they glory.  How unreasonable is man’s opposition, even to God’s own word!  “Man would,” as Bengel says, “take the very words of God out of His own mouth!”  We coin the word “Millennialist,” in Latin, from the words “Mille” and “annos,” which are simply the Roman equivalents for the Greek “Chilia Ete” of John in Rev. 20: 1-7, the English translation of which is a “thousand Years.”  It is Scriptural.  We coin the word “Chiliast” from these same inspired words.  It is as Scriptural a term, as is “Baptist,” [page 80] “Presbyterian,” or “Episcopalian,” or “Christian,” and as “Orthodox” as any of these!  It means that he who wears it believes that the “Day of the Lord” in which Christ comes precedes the Millennium.  The Advent is before the Millennium.  That is, he is a “Pre-Millennialist.”  It denies what the Scriptures everywhere deny, viz., the fiction of a pre-advent Millennium.  With equal justice, we might coin the word Ravyamist from the Hebrew terms “Rov Yamin” and “Rabbim Yamim,” In Hosea, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, there used to denote the same truth.  Every prophet was a Ravyamist.  He believed in a period of time, “after” Messiah’s Coming to judge the Nations, in which Israel, re-gathered, redeemed, restored, renewed, resurrected, and renationalized, should enjoy the Messianic glory in the kingdom on earth – a period of time called “Many Days,” or as John has it, a “thousand years,” and prior to the Last Judgment and the final New Heaven and earth.  And Christ Himself was a “Ravyamist,” or, as Auberlen somewhere truly says, “Jesus was a Chiliast.”  All the Apostles were the same.  All the early Apologists for Christianity were the same.  Can we imagine when we hear such a man as Delitzsch say, “I am a Chiliast,” and “Chiliasm was the faith of the early Church,” and when also we hear the greatest modern patristic scholar, Harnack, say, “Chiliasm is inseparably associated with the gospel, and this is its defence,” that these men are either heretics or foolish?  On the contrary, that great martyr and scholar, “Irenaeus the Great,” like “Justin the most learned man of his time,” catalogued and held as “Promoters of heresy,” and even of “blasphemy,” all who denied the Chiliastic faith which, in their day, was the “test of an orthodox church.”  It is a proposition no honest critic dare deny [page 81] that, if  the early church, having such teachers as Irenaeus, Justin, and others of the same apostolic faith and influence, and knowing what Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah, John, our Lord, and His Apostles, had taught, had not been Chiliastic in her creed, she ought to have been so, and her failure to have been so would have convicted her as recreant to what Moses and the Prophets, and Christ and His Apostles, had revealed of the course of history, and the outcome of God’s kingdom on earth.  It was impossible, however, that, standing next to Christ and His Apostles, and with the Psalms and Prophets in her hand, the Jew nationally cast away yet only for a time, and the Gentile erect on Israel’s grave, and even persecuting the church itself, she could have been anything else than she was in her creed, and the proof is perfect, and increases more and more, with every fresh investigation of the early history of the church, that, only by means of apostasy from the Word of God, did she surrender for the sake of opulence and power, money and prosperity, extension in the empire, and freedom from fagot and flame, that blessed truth whose defence from Moses and John, God has made the mark of a faithful, a suffering, and a witnessing church.  And, surely, if the pious Hebrew held the Hope of Christ’s Coming to judge the nations, restore Israel, and set up His Kingdom on earth, as the only Hope for the world’s redemption, the only way by which gentile politics and power could be overthrown, the Antichrist destroyed, and the faithful dead awakened to share the promise of the kingdom, much more ought it to be our Hope, bound up as it is with our own deliverance, as well as the deliverance of Israel, and the final glory of the world.  What a stupendous absurdity, in flat contradiction to [page 82] every prophet, that the Millennial Age will come prior to the “Yom Yehovah,” or “Day of the Lord,” in which Messiah appears for Israel’s final recovery!  Such an idea simply inverts, perverts and distorts, Moses and the Prophets, Christ and the Apostles.  The whole testimony of prophecy, pre-exile, exile, and post-exile, is against it.  The entire New Testament is against it.  Never, till the Colossus comes down my means of judgment, and the Bones of Israel awake in the Valley, and the Antichrist is destroyed, and Satan is bound, and God’s sleeping saints are raised, and heaven, earth, sea, dry land, and the nations are shaken, can the kingdom come, as predicted.  And that none of these marvels can occur apart from the Second Coming of Christ, the merest tyro in Biblical knowledge must recognize as a first principle and truth in the interpretation of prophecy.

 

I

 

A closing word is demanded as to Israel in the Apocalypse.  That wonderful Book is capable of many “applications,” but only the one organic “interpretation,” based upon the entire unity, analogy, and identity of prophecy.  We may “apply” its symbols to the times of early Pagan persecution, and also to later Papal persecutions.  This is the figurative “application” based upon the equation of “Israel” with the “Christian Church.”  The Apocalypse was a book of comfort to the early church.  It was a comfort, also, to the witnesses of Christ in the Middle Age, and during the Reformation.  But as surely as Israel “abides” Israel, and Daniel’s “people” are not the “Church,” so surely is Israel the key for the true and final interpretation of the closing prophecy of the New Testament.  It sums up in itself all the unfulfilled predictions respecting that chosen and predestined race.  We meet [page 83] Israel everywhere. The very announcement of the Theme of the book.  “Behold He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him; they also who pierced Him,” Rev. 1: 7, i.e., the Jewish nation, as Zechariah assures us.  The text is a combination of two passages, one from Zechariah, the other from Daniel, both in strict textual connection, in the prophets, with Israel’s deliverance at the second Advent of Messiah.  We encounter Israel again in the promise made to the Philadelphian Church, Rev. 3: 7-11, by Him who is the “Lion of Judah’s tribe,” and has “the Key of David.”  Israel shall be converted in the last time, and in connection with the coming of Christ.  Again we find Israel in the sealing of the 144,000 out of all the tribes, Rev. 7: 1-8, just before the Trumpet Judgments occur, and the tribulation begins.  Again, we see Israel in chapters 10, 11, and 12, chapters that place us in the very midst of Ezekiel’s Valley of Dry Bones, and show us the prophet’s word, and the Spirit of Life from God, with attending earthquake, beginning that work of spiritual, personal and national, conversion and resurrection foretold by the prophets.  The oath-taking Angel of the Covenant, Solar-faced, and Rainbow-crowned, whose shoulders are robed in cloud and feet like pillars of fire, reminds us of the Pillar of Cloud in the Wilderness, and Him who dwelt in it coming to his people again.  The “little book” is the matter of the testimony of the “two witnesses.”  Their 1260 days of witness is the first half of Daniel’s 70th week.  The slaughter of the witnesses is in the middle of that week, and is the first public persecuting act of the last Antichrist.  The succeeding 1260 days is the second half of that week, the time of the tribulation.  The “Worshippers,” 11: 1, the sun-clothed woman, or [page 84] daughter of Zion, 12: 1, the “Our Brethren,” 12: 10, the “Woman” fled to the wilderness, are all the same, the Jewish Christian Church of the End-Time, or 70th week of Daniel.  The “Remnant of her seed, who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus,” and whom Satan, through the Antichrist, persecutes 1260 days, 12: 17, 13: 1, 5, 7, are either Gentile believers, or the remainder of Israel returning from the East under the care of eastern princes, doubtless both, 16: 12.  The 144,000 in 14: 1-5 are Israel again, secure with Messiah returned to Zion, after the Trumpet judgments are over.  Again, Israel stands triumphant, in 15: 3, 4, singing “the Song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb,” blending their first and last deliveries in one, and declaring that the time for national Christianity on earth has come, now that Israel is victorious, and is a nation converted to Christ.  What we see in 19: 11-21, is the Armageddon conflict, closed out, in the valley of Jehashapat, outside Jerusalem, the Lord Himself descending from “Heaven Opened” to destroy the Antichrist, bind Satan, raise the faithful dead, and begin the “thousand years” blessed kingdom of glory on earth, Rev. 20: 1-7.  And what shines before us in Rev. 20: 9, is the “Beloved City,” Jerusalem restored, the home of the Daughter of Zion, which, for a “thousand years” has enjoyed the uninterrupted peace and glory, foretold by the prophets.  He who cannot see “Israel” here, in this book as distinct from the “Church” and the “Nations,” will see nothing.  Wonderful is the regularity of Israel’s recurrence!  After the 6th verse of the 1st chapter; in the 6th of the seven Epistles to the Churches; between the 6th and 7th seals; between the 6th and 7th trumpets; between the 6th and 7th vials; in the Wilderness [page 85] here; on Mount Zion there; a worshiping part in the city now; a multitude pressing into the land from the east; a shelter, a victory, a triumph, a glory, an effect on the nations, and all at the Second Coming of Christ!  He who cannot see this will see nothing!  It is the Eschatology of all the prophets.  It is the Eschatology of Christ.  It is the Eschatology of the Apostles, - one eschatology, from first to last, built and based on the one eternal plan and purpose of God with respect to Israel, an interpretation grounded in the unity, continuity, organic structure, and genetic development of all prophecy, divine, infallible, sure, a light forever.

 

A glance is enough to confirm this.  John has nothing here the prophets have not.  He has nothing Christ has not, for the Apocalypse was given him of God, and does not mean a literary production, or book, but the “Revelation of Jesus Christ” (Rev. 1: 1), as He comes the second time, in the clouds of heaven (Rev. 1: 7), and to His Covenant people, Israel of Old Testament Prophecy, to fulfil the word of His promise to them, to deliver them, to restore their state, and give them the kingdom.  He comes, indeed, to judge the professing Church and the world, but He comes to Israel as the “Malakh Habberith” or “Angel of the Covenant” the “Lord Himself;” and “Who may abide the day of His Coming, or stand when He appeareth?”  (Rev. 7: 17; 7: 1-8, Malachi 3: 2-4).  John has nothing, the Apostles have not.  His Eschatology is the same as that of Peter and Paul.  Peter binds Israel’s national repentance and the Second Coming of Christ together, Acts 3: 19-21.  He tells of scoffers in the last days, of the World-Judgment, the day of the Lord, the resurrection and glory, the visible kingdom, and the New Heaven and Earth. [page 86]   He sees judgment at the beginning and at the End of the Millennium in one, and overleaps the Millennial Age as a “Day,” in order to speak of the final New Heaven and Earth.  The whole future was before him in one view, and is crouched on one all-comprehending expression.  The Conflagration blazes in front, the Glory shines beyond.  Paul also takes up each eschatological point, and discusses it separately.  In 2 Thess. 2: 8, we have the Antichrist and Second Coming of the Lord, but nothing is said to Israel.  In Romans chapter 11, we have Israel’s conversion and the Second Coming, but nothing is said about antichrist.  In 1 Cor. 15: 12-57, we have him discussing the first resurrection at the Second Coming, but not a word about either Israel or Antichrist.  In Romans 8: 17-23, we have him dilating upon the glorified inheritance on earth, to be received at the redemption of the body from the grave, when Christ comes, but nothing about any of the other points.

 

If we combine all these in one picture, what we shall get as a result is Antichrist destroyed, Israel redeemed, the [faithful] saints raised, the Inheritance glorified, all at the Second Coming of Christ, and the Millennial Interval between that Coming of Christ to assume the kingdom and the remote End when He shall have surrendered the Kingdom of God, even the Father, having abolished all rule, and all authority and power, and annihilated Hades and Death, “that God may be all in all.” 1 Cor. 15: 24-28.  In short, we get precisely what John has given us in the Apocalypse, with this difference, that, whereas Peter and Paul discuss the points separately, John discusses nothing, but combines all in a total tableau of the End-Time, glowing under the highest light of the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.  And so [page 87] will every student of God’s word find it, if only he comes to that word with an humble heart, free from prejudice, and false theories of interpretation, and prays that God will open his eyes to see light in God’s light alone, accounting all other light as but darkness.  Blessed book is the Bible, the living word of the living God, one word from beginning to end, the work of one infinite mind, full of the wonders of wisdom, love and power!  And from Moses to John, the Eschatology is one, because God’s plan is one, the “Thousand Years” in John, following the Second Advent, and preceding the Last Judgment, being the very Interval Paul himself has acknowledged in 1 Cor. 15: 24, and none other than that period of time, called by Hosea, the “Third Day,” by Isaiah a “Multitude of Days,” and by Ezekiel “Many Days” – in every case, in both Old and New Testaments, associated with the Glory of Israel in the Kingdom, and the redemption of the Nations, accomplished at the Second Coming of Christ.  The holy penmen mutually supplement each other.  The Lord open the eyes of His Church to see it, love it, and teach it, and to Him be the glory forever.

 

-------

 

NOTES

 

[Selected by the editor from Nathaniel West’s “Supplementry Discussions.]

 

 

1.Olam,” “Ever.”

 

The word “Olam,” “Ever,” does not, of itself, and by fixed necessity, always denote the annihilation of time, but as frequently, in Hebrew usage, denotes simply unbroken continuance up to a special epoch in history, or to a certain natural termination.  It has a relative as well as an absolute sense, a finite as well as an infinite length.  It means “Here” as well as “Beyond,” and applies to a kingdom that comes to “an End,” as well as to one that has “no End.”  For this reason, a great World-Period, or Age, are called “Olam,” and in World-Periods, or Ages, are called “Olammim,” and in order to express infinite time, the reduplication is used, “Ages of Ages,” “Olammim Olammim.”  It is therefore a false conclusion to say that because the term “Le Olam,” “Forever,” is applied to the Messianic kingdom, therefore the Hebrews contradicted themselves, when they assigned to it limits at the same time.  Messiah’s kingdom is Temporal and also Eternal, and in both senses, Olamic.  The bondsman’s free covenant to serve his master lasted “forever,” but that only meant “till Jubilee.”  The Levitical economy was established to be “forever,” but that only meant till “the time of reformation.”  The Christian Church is “forever,” in its present form, but that only means “till He comes.”  True to this view, the Jewish Teachers ever held to a Temporal Kingdom of glory on earth, in the “World to Come,” this side the Eternal State in the final New Heaven and Earth.  Therefore we read in Fourth Ezra (Second Esdras in the English Apocrypha) that Messiah’s kingdom is restrained “to 400 years,” * while in the Apocalypse of Baruch – both these productions written in the time of the Apostle John, - it is said to “stand forever,” yet only “until the corruptible world is ended.” **  All this instructs us in the flexible, as well as fixed, character of the tern “forever.”

 

*4th Ezra, VII. 48

**Baruch, XLVIII.

 

MILLENNIAL, NOT ETERNAL

 

That the Millennial Age is not the Final Age is made clear in both Testaments.  The kingdom of 1,000 years stands in relation to an Age beyond its own limits, the Endless Age.  It is a false construction if the word “Until” in the expression “Until the 1,000 years are finished,” Rev. 20: 3, 5, 7 to say that the end of these years is the end of the kingdom of Christ, or of the blessedness of Israel, or of the Risen Saints’ reign with Christ, or of the distinction between Israel and the Nations, or between the Holy City and the outside dwellers.  Even after the Judgment of the “Great White Throne,” and the surrender of the Messianic Kingdom to the father, the priestly co-regency of Christ and His saints still exist.  There is still a dominion of Christ and His Bride, “the Holy City,” over the outside “Nations” and the “Kings” in the New earth, who are distinguished from her, and “bring their glory and their honour into her.”  And there is a condition of things transcending that which we see in the Millennial times.  In the New Jerusalem there is “no temple,” and “no night.”  “They need no light of lamp, neither light of sun, for the Lord God gives them light, and the Lamp is the Lamb.”  Rev. 22: 23.  It is plainly said, “They shall reign for ever and ever,” verse 5.  This is the last word on the whole subject.  No more is spoken.  “FOREVER!”  And it confirms Paul’s word, “FOREVER,” in 1 Thess. 4: 17.  Their kingdom is an “everlasting kingdom,” Dan. 7: 25.  Christ’s dominion has “no end,” Isa. 9: 5.  “To the Son He saith, Thy throne, O God, is FOREVER,” Ps. 45: 6; Heb. 1: 8.  The Golden Age will disappear, Satan, let loose for a season, will cause to fade away the beauty of the vision from the eyes of all the nations girding Israel’s home and subdued so long to Israel’s sway.  Unmindful of the centuries when Israel was trodden down by Gentile pride, they will become restless and averse to all divine dominion.  Then, after a brief final test, come the closing Judgment and the farthest “End:” – the door that brings the Endless Age.  The last high point of the Apocalypse is gained, the Absolute End of the ways of God to men; - a vision of Eternal Glory toward those unveiling all previous revelation and all History have been the path, and on which the eyes of all prophets have been strained since the world began.

 

 

2. MODE OF LIFE AMONG THE RISEN.

 

As to the mode of intercourse between the glorified and un-glorified, there are many vain speculations.  We only “know in part,” and time will bring the answer to our various askings.  The whole discussion binds itself to our conceptions of the Resurrection-Body, - what it needs, and what its functions, are.  From the very first, the Jewish teachers were embarrassed here, and much divided in their views.  The later Jews are not more clear.  Saadias and Maimonides maintained that “they who rise in the resurrection, eat, drink and marry, and their bodily members serve them, for these are not in vain and they die again.”*  It was an ancient view, and founded on the cases of the resurrection of the son of the Shunamite, and the son of the widow of Zarepta, “both whom,” says Saddis, “ate and drank and doubtless took wives.”  On the other hand, Bechai and Abarnanel maintained that “they who rise in the resurrection neither eat, nor drink, nor marry, for there is no further need of these, after the resurrection, nor do the risen righteous ones return to dust again.  They have their bodies, in which the fleshly functions have ceased, as in the case of Moses, when in the Mount with God.” ** Our Lord corrects both these views when, confuting to the Sadducees, He replies that “they who shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world (Olam Habba) and the resurrection out from the dead, - [therefore, they cannot return again to the death state and remain in Hades until the millennium has ended, - Ed.] - neither marry nor are given in marriage, NEITHER CAN THEY DIE ANY MORE; for they are equal to the angels, - [that is, able to ascend to heaven or descend upon earth; and therefore able to rule in both spheres during the Millennium, - Ed.] - and are sons of God, being sons of the RESURRECTION.”  Luke 20: 35, 36.  Saadis and Ben Maimon said that the Risen “eat, drink, marry, die.”  Bechai, Abarbanel, Talmud and Cabbala, aver they “neither marry nor are given in marriage, neither can they die any more,” but says nothing as the “eating” or “drinking.”  What he teaches is that the children of the resurrection are as the sexless angels.  Beyond the fact that Lazarus ate after his resurrection, John 12: 1, 2, remains the fact that our Lord Himself, after His resurrection, had a tangible and visible material body, already free from the limitations of His former humiliation, and possessed of resurrection-life, and yet “ate” food in Jerusalem and at the shore of Galilee, Luke 24: 30, 41, 42; John 21: 12, and not only promised to the Twelve to “drink of the fruit of the vine, new in the Kingdom of God,” Matt. 26: 29, but “appointed” them “a Kingdom,” in which, said He, “ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel.”  Luke 22: 29, 30.  We can grossly carnalize this, on the one hand, and as ethereally spiritualize it on the other.  The fact remains that the Resurrection kingdom is “ON THE EARTH,” and that the “children of the resurrection” have material bodies, adapted to spiritual uses, and free from certain physical functions.  While we must shun an Ebonite Chiliasm on the one hand, we must equally avoid a Gnostic Chiliasm on the other, and not rob corporeity of its rights in the resurrection, or dissolve, under the idea of “Glory,” the resurrection body into a gauzy texture ballooning in the sky.  Such a conception is foreign to the whole word of God.  The risen ones shall have a human body, like their Lord’s, know each other, and be known, and live in relation to the saints UPON the earth, and to the Nations.  Their mode of immorality and intercourse are not revealed.  It is enough for us to know that not more difficult is the faith of Christ’s companionship with His disciples during the 40 days next following His resurrection.  It is enough to know that Death is robbed of his empire, and that, as Professor Milligan himself admits in his able work on the resurrection, our lord’s body was a true spiritual, glorified body, immediately upon His rising, and not first after His ascension, and that our bodies are to take the form and equality of His.  Equal to the “angels” we shall be, in one respect.  Like “Him,” we shall be, in another.  As both, in all.  Flesh and blood” cannot inherit God’s Kingdom, because “corruption” cannot “inherit incorruption,  1 Cor. 15: 50.  And yet “flesh and bones,” pervaded by the Spirit, and made incorruptible, is what our Lord’s body was in His resurrection, Luke 24: 26, a “glorious body,” and “like” which – not “equal” to which – ours shall be at His coming.  Phil. 3: 21.  In such bodies, the Risen Saints shall have fellowship with the unrisen in the Millennial Age.  For the rest, our curiosity must be restrained, and will be, if we listen to the Angel’s voice to Daniel, “Go thy way, Daniel, till the End shall be!”  Inquire no more.  Be content with what is already spoken.  Leave the unrevealed future to God.  Sure we are of one thing.  “We shall behold God’s face in righteousness,” and “be satisfied when we awake with His likeness!”  Ps. 17: 15.  Even so, Lord Jesus!

 

*Eisenmenger. Eut. Jud. II. 943.

 

** Ibid 495.

 

CONCLUDING REMARKS

 

. . . “The Lord’s Advent is not to annihilate the existence of the Nations, as such, but to overthrow their politics and rule, and scatter both like chaff, and then transfer the sovereignty to Israel.  Dan. 2: 44; 7: 27; Rev. 11: 15, 18; 12: 10.  The three Great Parties of the 1000 years, are therefore:-

 

(1) The Risen saints – [ That is, the ‘faithful’ dead or the “accounted worthy” from both Testaments, for, “apart from us they (the afore mentioned Old Testament saints – Ed.) - should not be made perfect,” Heb. 11: 40. – Ed.].

 

(2) New-Born Israel in the flesh,

 

(3) The Favoured Nations in the flesh.

 

. . . Such is the clear representation of the whole word of God.  Earth is beginning to realize the “pattern shown in the Mount,” and prepare for the full accomplishment in the final “new Heaven and Earth,” at the close of the 1000 years.  The Nations are the Fore-Court of the Temple; Israel and their Holy Land, are the Holy Place; the Holy City and the Risen BRIDE are the Holiest of All; no veil existing.  To the perfect realization of this, all things are tending.  The invisible is the source of all Realities, and what has been in history is the Beginning and Type of what will be, only in greater perfection.  David’s kingdom shall be restored, and among the “sure mercies” to David is the gathering of Israel, and the resurrection of the faithful [dead] to enjoy that kingdom together; and therein all Christians [whom our Lord will ‘account worthy’ – Ed.] shall share, at Messiah’s Second coming. . .

 

. . . as to the alleged “incongruity of the glorified among the unglorified,” and “how they will live,” and “what they will do,” and “what their condition,” and “daily occupation,” – questions revived by Kliefoth, and repeated by others, though raised and answered ages ago; and, further, “will there be flies, and bees, and mosquitoes, in the Millennial Age,” as still others have sportingly asked; and, yet others again, as to “the habit of nature” – they all belong to that same unbelieving spirit, and cast of mind, that made a Socinus, some Schoolmen, and later profane wits, inquire “whether our Lord rose from the grave with His digestive organs?”  “Whether,” as Cleopatra wanted to know, “the Saints will rise with raiment”?  and “whence came the raiment our Lord wore when He rose?” and so, conclude, from all, to a denial of the literal resurrection of the body.  Such inquisition, it becomes us to repel, with force, and rebuke into silence, holding, in spite of a thousand questions all men can ask and none can answer, in reference to every doctrine of Scripture, that it is far more Christian to believe what God has spoken, and give him the glory, as “Doer of wonderous things,” than it is to idealize the prophecy, to suit our vain thoughts, and land ourselves at last into open rejection of the Word of God.

 

The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise that they are vain.  Painful to the last degree is the ever-recurring style of objection we meet with in certain writers, as “It is unreasonable?”  How remote from reasonable brobability!”  It is “Inconceivable,” “incredible,” and “far from probable,” and everything the mere natural man can object to the supernatural.  We dismiss it all with the divine words, “O man, who art thou that repliest against God?”  “Should it be a marvellous thing in my eyes, saith the Lord?”  “The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this.”  “The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it!”  “It is the utterance of Jehovah, Doer of these things!”  It must be so, as God has said.  As to the Risen Saints, we know what their perfection is, and how near they are to Christ.  It is the righteous man raised from the dead, who is the perfect man, ordained to dominion, in the Age to come.”

 

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