There are scriptures which contemplate a succession of eras, or times, all along the course of the earth's history from the time of the flood, I may say, to the days of antichrist, when there has been, or is to be, a judicial visitation under the hand of God upon the hearts, understandings, and consciences of men.
I might present the following instances (there are other instances of this judicial hardening, but they are of a private and not of a dispensational nature, and therefore I do not put them among these cases).
These scriptures show us this judicial hardening of which I am speaking; and they further show us that the fruit, or character, of it may be very startling, such as we could not easily have believed or feared.
Under it, men of refinement and intelligence may adopt all kinds of religious vanity; rulers and statesmen may be blinded to the plainest maxims of government. Did not Pharaoh persist in a course which in the mouth of witness after witness was sure to be the ruin of his kingdom? Did not the nations of Canaan tremble at the report of the conquests of Israel, and of what God had done for Israel? And yet, in spite of all that, did they not madly resist Israel? (see Joshua). And will not whole communities of intelligent, refined, advanced people, by-and-by, bow to the claims of one who shows himself to be God, setting himself up above all that is worshiped?
There has been thus, and will be thus still, under this judicial hardening; worldly men violate the clearest and most sensible means of their own interests, and religious men depart from the simplest instructions of the truth. We are not to wonder at anything. The very idols which men have taken as spoils of war, they have afterward bowed down to as their gods (2 Chron. 25:14). For what folly, what incredible blindness of understanding, will not the infatuated heart of man betray. But this hardening is never sent forth to visit man until he has righteously exposed himself to judgment. All the cases show this. Pharaoh, for instance, had in deepest ingratitude forgotten Joseph. The Amorites of Canaan had filled up the measure of their sins. The old Gentiles had brought this reprobate mind on themselves (Rom. 1:28). Israel "had not," Jerusalem "would not." (See Matt. 13:12; 23:37.) And the strong delusion is to be sent by-and-by abroad upon Christendom, only because they "believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness."
This hardening precedes destruction, but it comes after man has ripened his iniquity. God endures with all long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, as He fashions by His Spirit His own elect vessels of mercy ere He glorifies them. "Whom He will He hardeneth," is surely true; but He wills to show His wrath in this way of hardening of or prejudicial dementation, only in the case of those whom He has in much long-suffering endured. (Rom. 9:11-22.)