Dr. Brown arranges his evidence against the premillennial advent under a series of propositions, the first of which is, the church will be absolutely complete at Christ's coming. “If this can be established, the whole system falls to the ground. If all that are to be saved, will be brought in before Christ comes, of course there can be none to come in after his advent, and in that case, the lower department of the expected kingdom disappears.”
Now, the fact is, that the mass of pre-millenarians hold the unbroken completeness of the church at the second advent, no less strenuously than Dr. B. How then comes it, that they and their adversary appear to hold the same thing? Because “the church” has a different sense in their lips and in his. They hold that Scripture limits the term, in its proper application, to the saints that are now being gathered by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Dr. 13. extends it equally to “all that are to be saved,” the millennial saints included. Were this true, the question would be at an end: for it is admitted on all hands, that, when Christ comes, his body, the bride, is complete. If scripture proved on the other hand, that the church of God is exclusive of the millennial saints, that others, after the church is formed, may be and shall be saved, who stand in quite different relationships, the reasoning is at least good for nothing.
Our Lord, in Matt. 16:18,18And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16:18) decides the question. Salvation was not a new thing, though the work which procured it had still to be accomplished. But his church was not yet built. “Upon this rock I WILL build my church.” It was not even building. The foundation had to be laid in his own death and resurrection, himself, the revealed and confessed Son of the living God, its rock. Accordingly, for this new building—the Lord prescribed, in Matt. 18, an order of discipline equally new—not Jewish law and ordinance, but grace, practical grace, reigning through righteousness, acting after the pattern of the Father's will, and the Son's work. Accordingly for the first time, we have in Acts 2:47,47Praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved. (Acts 2:47) this body, the church, historically spoken of. It supposes two things: 1St, Christ crucified, risen and ascended; and 2nd, the Holy Ghost, “the promise of the Father,” sent down from heaven. It is of all importance to understand this last point; for confusion is here fatal to real intelligence as to this subject. It is not the regeneration of the Spirit; for that was true from the first, and will always be true of those who see, or enter the kingdom of God. It the gift, the personal presence of the Spirit, sealing the believers (now that there was not promise only, but accomplishment in Christ), the earnest of the inheritance, and above all, baptizing them, whether Jew or Gentile into one body—an altogether unprecedented work. Previous to the cross, such an union did not exist, and was contrary to God's command. Our Savior, during his earthly ministry, bound the disciples to seek Jews only, not Gentiles or Samaritans. Risen from the dead, he sends them expressly to disciple all nations.
But this is not all. The Holy Ghost, given by the ascended Lord, brings all the disciples, Jew or Gentile, into one body or corporation on earth. When we say “one body,” we do not mean that all the members of the church necessarily assembled in a single locality, but that, whether they met in one chamber or in twenty, in one city or over the world, they formed a united society in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, of which the Holy Ghost, dwelling in and with them, was the bond. To this body, all the believers, all the saved since Pentecost, belong; but it would be a false inference that God can never terminate its existence here below, nor introduce a totally different thing for the display of his own ways and glory. As there were saved persons in the Old Testament times, who were not, and could not be members of a society then future, so there is no reason why there should not be a fresh class of witnesses raised up by and by, and called to a different work. Nay, we can go farther. Scripture is explicit, that Jewish and Gentile distinctions are to reappear in the Millennium. The Psalms and prophets which reveal this glorious time, reveal as plainly, that it essentially differs from the present dispensation, because God will not then be gathering Jew and Gentile into one. Jews and Gentiles are to be blessed richly, but in unequal measure; the former being the nearest to the Lord, and enjoying his presence and honor most, the grand link between him and the Gentiles. This, we need scarcely say, is as different as possible from the present time, when, in Christ, all earthly and fleshly distinctions disappear: all is of grace and above nature, and as free, consequently, to the Gentile as to the Jew.
These differences of dispensation are so patent in the Old. and New Testaments as to render the citation of particular proof-texts a work of supererogation. We defy any Christian to produce a single passage to the contrary. Nevertheless Dr. B. ignores all. To him, “all the saved” are the church; the Old Testament saints, those of the New Testament, and those of the Millennium, all compose “the church.” We ask for Scripture; he can produce none. He supposes and affirms that they are all one and the same body; but he has not a tittle of divine evidence, not a single text which implies that God regards them all as his church. The burden of proof lies on him; for such is his assertion, and it is essential to the greater part of his book. He is absolutely without any other proof than common, loose, traditional notions, the language of many ancient and modern theologians, but no such statement or insinuation in the word of God. If it be, where? If it be not, Dr. B.'s reasoning rests on an unscriptural assumption. The church of God, in the proper New Testament use of the expression, means not the aggregate of the saved from the beginning to the end, but those who, since Christ's ascension, are being builded together, whether Jew or Gentile, for an habitation of God through the Spirit, baptized by the Spirit into one body, of which Christ glorified is the Head. Such a basis did not exist during our Lord's life, much less before. Hence, though possessed of life, through faith, as all preceding saints were, even the apostles had not the baptism of the Spirit which forms the one body, till Jesus was glorified and sent down the Holy Ghost in a way never before experienced by man (John 14-16.) “Ye shall be,” says the Lord, just before he was taken up, “baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.” Pentecost saw his word fulfilled. Now it is by this operation that the body, the church, is formed, not by regeneration merely, which is common to all saints of all ages, but by the baptism of the Holy Ghost, which was unknown to any before Christ was by the right hand of God exalted. Outward signs accompanied the gift and announced it visibly to the world. But it is not to be confounded with the miraculous powers which were its external vouchers; for before he was given, the Lord said that this other Paraclete should abide with the disciples forever, which was never said of the sign-gifts. For indeed, this baptism of the Spirit is the formative and perpetuative power of the church's existence; so that where he was not thus given, the church would not be; and so long as the church exists here below, so does this baptism of the Spirit last. “For by one Spirit,” says Paul (1 Cor. 12:1313For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:13)), “are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.”
Undoubtedly then, as all agree there were saints, saved persons born of the Spirit, before Pentecost, so all agree there shall be during the Millennium. But Scripture is plain and decisive that the baptism of the Spirit, gathering believing Jews and Gentiles into one body on earth, was not the state of things which existed before Pentecost; It is equally clear that it will not exist after the Millennium begins. Jews and Gentiles were saved before Christ, as they will be on a still grander scale in the Millennium; but there is no such thing described as union in one body, where all distinctions in the flesh vanish away.
These principles will enable the reader to judge how far the following passages decide the matter.
From 1 Cor. 15:23,23But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. (1 Corinthians 15:23) Dr. B. deduces that “they that are Christ's” mean the whole federal offspring of the second Adam. But he forgets that the question is one of resurrection. This is so true that a special added revelation comes in, towards the close of the chapter, so as to meet the case of the saints whom Christ will find living when he comes. Thus the previous statement (in verse 23), which Dr. B. alleges to be so universal as to embrace all the saved of every dispensation, is in reality so restricted as not to admit all the saints of the present dispensation. Hence, it was needful for the Holy Ghost to supplement the general argument of the chapter, with a particular unfolding of what, in the Old Testament, was a secret. “Behold, I show you a mystery: We shall not ALL sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” Dr. B. says quite correctly, as opposed to Mr. Birks, that the burden of this chapter as a whole, and of verse 23rd especially, is the RESURRECTION of believers; but, for that reason, it does not include in its general scope, the saints who survive at the second advent; and accordingly another statement, as to their portion as connected with those who rise from the dead is furnished by the Spirit from verses 51 et seq. But the same principle still more emphatically excludes the millennial saints; for it has never been shown that they, as a class, are to die at all. Nay, Isa. 65 seems to us decisive, not that death is destroyed, but that saints will not die during the millennium, that none will die save those judicially accursed of God. Hence, 1 Cor. 15:23,23But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. (1 Corinthians 15:23) could not apply to these saints; for it speaks solely of those who die and rise again, whereas the saved of the millennium, it would appear, shall never see death. 1 Cor. 15:5151Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, (1 Corinthians 15:51) proves that the text on which the chief stress is laid, so far from comprehending “the whole saving fruit of Christ's work,” leaves out all the members of the church who shall be alive and remaining when the Lord comes. The argument of Dr. B. is then absolutely null and clearly refuted by the chapter itself.
Still less need such texts as Eph. 5:2, 25-272And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savor. (Ephesians 5:2)
25Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; 26That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, 27That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. (Ephesians 5:25‑27); Thess. 1:10, Jude 24,24Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, (Jude 24) Col. 1:21, 22,21And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled 22In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight: (Colossians 1:21‑22) and 1 Thess. 3:13,13To the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints. (1 Thessalonians 3:13) perplex any one. How do statements of the church's glory and purity, any more than its completeness, prove that none else are to be blessed? Doubtless the church will be to the praise and admiration of Christ at his revelation from heaven; doubtless all will be regarded with ineffable complacency by “God, even our Father.” Nevertheless, the questions remain: Is not the millennium a time of exceeding blessing for the world, for countless souls among Jews and Gentiles, according to the Old Testament? and is it not, according to the New Testament, the special season for the reign of Christ and the heavenly saints manifested over the earth? These propositions we, affirm to be equally true, and mutually consistent. But if they are, Dr. B.'S theory, which sets the completeness, &c., of the church at Christ's advent in opposition to the ingathering of saints subsequently upon the earth, is, if he will forgive our saying it, confusion arising from ignorance of the Scriptures.
It is a question of the Bible in general, and not merely of two or three texts like Zech. 14:5,5And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal: yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee. (Zechariah 14:5) Rev. 19:6; 9,6And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. (Revelation 19:6)
6And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. (Revelation 9:6) and 21:2-1; though these do plainly indicate the calling of other saints after, and distinct from, the church.
Dr. B. tries to defeat the application of Zech. 14 to the advent partly by questioning whether “saints” here may not mean angels, and chiefly, because the “coming” is not a personal advent, but perhaps the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, or even the conflicts before the millennium. The minute literal details, are, to his mind, irreconcilable with 2 Peter 3:1010But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. (2 Peter 3:10). Evidently here, as elsewhere, Christ's coming is confounded with his day. There are connecting links between the subjects; but it is an error to suppose that the burning up of the earth signalizes his coming (Brown, p. 59). That tremendous catastrophe occurs within the day of the Lord, and, as we learn from other Scriptures, at its close, not at its commencement. There is no reason, therefore, from 2 Peter 3:10,10But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. (2 Peter 3:10) to deny that Zech. 14:55And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal: yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee. (Zechariah 14:5) speaks of Christ's literal coming again to inaugurate the millennium; and if so, there are certainly men on earth subsequently saved and blessed.
This is confirmed by Rev. 19:6- 9,6And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. 7Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. 8And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. 9And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God. (Revelation 19:6‑9) where no ingenuity can fairly dispose of the fact that the marriage of the Lamb with the church takes place before the millennium, when confessedly the elect are not complete. “In reply to this,” says Dr. B., “it may be enough to say that this cannot be the actual consummation of the marriage between Christ and his church in glory, because in the two last chapters of this book (which most of my opponents agree with me in referring to the everlasting state) the church is described as “descending,” after the millennium is all over, “as a bride adorned for her husband;” and it is rather awkward to suppose a bridal preparation and a presentation of the parties to each other, a thousand years after the union has been consummated.” But this is totally to misconceive the bearing of these Scriptures. The marriage, beyond a doubt, takes place not, in Rev. 21, after the millennium, but in Rev. 19, before it. The latter chapter merely describes the descent of the glorified church, already long married, and now entering on the eternal state, in relation to the new heavens and earth in the fullest sense, invested after the 1,000 years with the same bridal beauty which characterized her when made ready for the wedding. What is to hinder one from speaking of his wife, ten years after the marriage, and setting out on some grand occasion “as a bride adorned for her husband?” How absurd to infer, from such a simile, that the parties were only presented to each other so many years after the union was consummated!
As to Rev. 21:24,24And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it. (Revelation 21:24) there is not the slightest need that the object and the payers of the homage, the New Jerusalem, and the nations with their kings, should be homogeneous, or in the same state. It is the very thing we deny, the very thing Dr. B. ought to prove and not assume. Why should not the nations and their kings be in an earthly condition, the New Jerusalem being surely glorified? Why should not the latter answer to the transfigured Moses and Elias, and the former to the disciples, still unchanged upon the Holy Mount (especially as the word εις may mean the vague unto, the context so requiring it, no less than the mole precise “into,” which Dr. B. aπpears to allow, as indeed he must)? The simple, unforced meaning of the passage presents the conjunction of two different states: a higher and heavenly one; a subordinate, though blessed, earthly one or can this be got rid of by the pretense that it is merely a mysterious prophecy which discloses the co-existence of two different conditions, so abhorrent to Dr. B. One might fairly ask where else it could be so naturally expected as in a hook which expressly lifts the veil from the future. Still it is not made known there only. “Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?” Dr. B. cannot here argue that the “saints” mean angels, for the next verse positively distinguishes and contrasts them. “Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” There would be no sense if the terms were interchangeable. “Unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world οἰκουμένην to come whereof, we speak.” This must be in millennial times; for no such order of things can possibly exist after the millennium, and it is clearly contrary to the suffering and subject place which Scripture assigns to the saints before the millennium. The inference is plain and sure. It is the millennial relation of the heavenly saints, not of men in flesh and blood on earth. “Know ye not, that we shall judge angels?” Assuredly it is not our employment in this dispensation, or throughout eternity. The teaching of Eph. 1:1010That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him: (Ephesians 1:10) is similar. God hath purposed in himself, in (for or against) the dispensation of the fullness of times, to gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in him in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, &c. Clearly the apostle speaks not of the present, but of a future period, and of a grand gathering of all things, earthly and heavenly, under the headship of Christ, we being associated with him as Eve with Adam in his dominion. That is, it is the millennial and not the eternal state; for the millennium is the special display before the world of Christ's exaltation as King: that over, Christ gives up the kingdom that GOD (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) should be all in all here, then, we have two states, the things which are in heaven, and the things which are on earth, united in a system of glory; not the earthly things sublimated into heavenly, much less the heavenly things reduced to the earthly level, but both, in their several spheres, under the sway of Christ and his bridal co-heir. Probably Dr. B. might tell us here too, as well as in Rev. 21:2424And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it. (Revelation 21:24) (p. 62), that the commentators agree in applying the verse to one or other of these states, but not to both. We regret it of course; but this does not lessen our conviction that the word is against them, and that no serious Christian should allow modern tradition, any more than ancient, to make Scripture of none effect.
We have no space for dwelling on Dr. B.'s exposure of such vagaries as those of Homes, Burnet, Perry, and Burchell. If we were called on to analyze them, we might find grounds for a deeper tone of censure than what marks his criticisms. Their common difficulty is the Gentile army which Satan musters at the end of all, Rev. 20: their solutions, a mere choice of fable; for the first two take the rebels to be mortal men, and one of these two thinks that they may probably be generated from the slime of the ground and heat of the sun the third conceived them to be the wicked when raised out of their graves, and the fourth, evil spirits. In reality they agree, or differ, quite as much with Dr. B.'s scheme as with ours.
As to the renewed asseverations that the church means “the universal family of the redeemed,” a few words must suffice:-
1. “They that are Christ's at his coming,” and all like texts, are necessarily limited to the dead saints. Such passages, therefore, CANNOT refer to the saints of the millennium who are never said to die.
2. Such views, being true to the letter and spirit of these scriptures, are just what ought to be looked for from those who rightly interpret the word of God. Those who argue from the use of figurative language, against the facts thereby announced, are as little to be trusted, ofttimes, in dealing with the plainest declarations in the Bible. The pre-millennial advent is a truth which loosens their system. It is no wonder then to witness the pertinacity with which it is rejected till God teach them better.
3. The inconsistency of pre-millenarians (pp. 72-77) is not so great, in the extracts cited, as Dr. B. imagines; and even if it were real rather than apparent, it would evince the badness, not of the cause, but of its advocates. We humbly think that we have in hand something more important than the justification of the Bloomsbury lecturers.
The pre-millennial scheme reconciles the doctrine of the completeness of the church at Christ's coming with a harvest of saints during the millennium. There is no dilemma, no shade of difficulty, save to him who starts with ignoring the scriptural definition and account of the church of God. And the notion of Christ's coming to the earth only after the millennium, so far from being “the belief which clears all up,” (p. 79), is sheer error. For the vision of the great White Throne judgment is in fact no coming of Christ, but a going of the dead before Him—no return of the Lord or of any one else to the earth, for there is no earth to come to. “I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and heaven fed away; and there was found no place for them.”
The “Supplementary Remarks” demand small notice front us; for we have already stated the sound view of “the church,” and it differs too decidedly from that of Messrs. Bickersteth and A. Bonar, and even from the Duke of Manchester's, to claim our interposition in their battles. For, although his Grace rightly made its starting-point to be the ascension of Christ, he very wrongly uses Archdeacon Hare's citation of Olshausen to prove that regeneration belongs essentially to the New Testament—a delusion which one had hoped was confined to the author of “Nehushtan,” and his wretched “Teaching of the Types.” Salvation is not possible, in any dispensation, by external operations of the Spirit; he always quickened souls, as he ever will, by the word of God. Nor is it a question of excluding the Old Testament saints from the scene of glory which we shall enjoy with them in the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 8:1111And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 8:11)). But common privileges, either of grace or of glory, cannot disprove the plain testimony of the word, that the baptism of the Spirit (as distinct from regeneration) was not experienced before Pentecost; that on that baptism depends the body, the church, wherein Jewish and Gentile differences are unknown—the distinguishing feature of the present economy; and that the millennium will see another condition where these distinctions reappear, with many features of the times before Pentecost, and with others peculiar to the new age. There are, thank God, many mercies which essentially pertain to all saints of all ages; but these must not be abused to deny differences which God's sovereignty has affixed to the various dispensations as it has pleased him. Heb. 11:40,40God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. (Hebrews 11:40) taken naturally, stands in the way of Dr. B. How, (will the reader guess) does he explain it away They without us could not be made perfect—that is, without Christ and the Spirit! whose proper economy ours certainly is. (p. 84.) Well, this is no pleasant fruit of post-millennial interpretation. It is a bold figure, in expounding a plain doctrinal statement, to treat “without us,” as equivalent to without Christ and the Spirit. Besides, it is in no way the meaning even thus: for the Holy Ghost lays down two things; 1St, that God has provided some better thing for us (i.e. clearly something better than “the promise,” precious as it was, for which all the Old Testament saints were waiting); and 2nd, that the Old Testament saints were not to be perfected, (viz., by resurrection glory,) apart from us.
Thus, the word of God, while showing ample ground where we all meet, is decisive that the elect are not to be jumbled together in a single indiscriminate mass, and proves most important distinctions, not merely between the church and the millennial saints, but between those of the Old Testament and either. It never speaks, on our view any more than Dr. Brown's, of any portion of the church not rising and reigning with Christ. On the contrary, it proves that many saints besides the church shall reign with Christ when he comes.