It is evident then that the grand defect of theology, and even for pious souls otherwise sound in the faith, is the failure to see the purpose of God for His glory in Christ: a purpose for administration of the fullness of the times. And this is, as the apostle explains, to head or sum up the universe in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, in Him in Whom we also were given inheritance, being fore-ordained according to purpose of Him that works the whole according to the counsel of His will.
The epoch is not in the present, any more than in the past; nor is it the unchanging eternity, when Christ will have delivered up the kingdom to the Father, and God shall be all in all. Its essential character is Christ administering the universe as the glorified Man, and the church glorified with Him and sharing that vast inheritance, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. The eternal state neither admits of “administration,” such as is here shown to be God's purpose; nor does it consist with “the fullness of the seasons,” which will then have passed away instead of being in accomplishment. Eternity is not the kingdom in which the risen Man must reign, till He shall have put all the enemies under His feet, death as last enemy being brought to naught. In eternity the Son, instead of being thus displayed at the head of all and bringing to naught all rule and all authority and power, shall Himself be in subjection to the Father that subjected all things to Him.
On the other hand that administration is in no sense going on now, though Christ personally is both risen and exalted as head over all things to the church which is His body. By His death there is, as all must admit (John 11:52), a gathering together into one of the children of God that were scattered abroad; a baptizing, as Paul adds, into one body, in the power of one Spirit, of all believers whether Jews or Greeks. For they are His co-heirs; and when He shall be manifested, then shall they also be manifested with Him in glory (Col. 3:4). Meanwhile we suffer with Him (a state but like His on earth, wholly opposed to that coming administration), that we may be also glorified together. Faithful is the saying; for if we died with Him, we shall also live together; if we endure, we shall also reign together. But our present state is in contrast with our hope, yet is there fellowship with Christ in both.
Grace is now gathering into union with the Head the members of His body; and the Holy Spirit is in our hearts earnest of the future inheritance, as well as unction and seal. But as the members are not yet complete, so Christ is still on the Father's throne. When the administration of the fullness of the seasons is come, He will not only receive His own throne, but give us to sit with Him there. Then it will be God not taking out of mankind a people for His name, a work distinctively of the elect, but gathering “all things” under Christ's headship. The things in heaven and the things on earth are in no way gathered together or summed up in Him now: this is the expression of God's purpose to put the universe under Christ as head over all, which only gross ignorance can confound with His headship of His body. It is the inheritance of Him Who is Heir of all things, as Heb. 1 says, and Reconciler of all things whether the things on the earth or the things in the heavens, as says Col. 1. But this very passage distinguishes our reconciliation (who once were alienated and enemies in mind by wicked works) as already effected, from that which awaits all the creation.
So does Rom. 8 show that we have now the Spirit of adoption (ver. 15), not only that we may cry Abba, Father, but while we groan, ourselves delivered (ver. 2), our bodies not yet, any more than creation around, as we await adoption, the redemption of our body (ver. 23). For the coming glory is to be revealed to usward in that day. And the revelation of the sons of God, which hinges on that of Christ, is the signal for the deliverance of creation itself also from the bondage of corruption (vers. 18-21).
No doubt the truth has suffered from its professing friends who have entered feebly, faultily, or at least imperfectly, into this immense and glorious purpose of God, and dwelt most if not altogether on its least and lowest part, the happy and holy change that awaits the earth, when Christ and the glorified reign over it. They have exposed their testimony to the taunts of those that object to the view of the glorified Christ coming personally and administering “a monarchical state of a kingdom here on earth” visibly in power and glory. To this Bishop Hall, as the first paradox ยง 8, opposes the words, My kingdom is not of this world (John 18). But it is written again (Rev. 11:15), “The kingdom of the world is become [that] of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign unto the ages of the ages.” This certainly is not the present state of things, nor is it eternity, but the kingdom which He is to receive from Him Who is God and Father, and will deliver up to Him at the end for that unchanging and everlasting state. It is not the supremacy of God; nor yet a question of His peace ruling or arbitrating in the heart; any more than of His headship of the church. It is, what even the penitent robber anticipated, Christ coming in His kingdom, when the glorified shall reign with Him, and His enemies, according to the parable, be slain before Him. This is the coming of His world-kingdom, which theology ignores, and its votaries think “very strange news.” If Fathers and Doctors of Christendom dropt it (some few in the third century, most since then), none ought to be surprised who remembers the apostolic warnings. The apostles themselves bear clear and ample testimony to Christ's coming and kingdom; as did the holy prophets since the world began. But how could even saints testify to a truth which condemned their abandonment of suffering with Christ and seeking to rule the world, which really means the world ruling them? Such a revolution the fourth century saw an accomplished fact; as the worldliness of previous centuries, even before the apostles passed away, paved the way for it.
What can be plainer than Peter's own words in that very context of Acts 3, the use of which so astonished the good prelate “Repent ye therefore,” he preached to the Jews, “and be converted, for the blotting out of your sins; so that seasons of refreshing may come from the Lord's presence, and He may send Jesus Christ that hath been fore-appointed for you, Whom heaven must receive till times of restoration of all things, whereof God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets since time began” (vers. 19-21). How evident that the repentance of the Jew, in the mind of the inspired apostle, must precede the mission of the Lord from heaven to introduce times of universal restoration, according to the prophets! These times coalesce with the administration of which we have heard in Eph. 1; only, as is Paul's wont, in a still grander and more comprehensive form. And how absurd to confound this period of universal blessedness for heaven and earth with “the end,” when Christ shall deliver up the kingdom! It is neither more nor less than Christendom's unbelief as to the kingdom spoken of here and elsewhere. These Doctors do not know that the saints shall judge the world (1 Cor. 6:2); still less that we shall judge angels (ver. 3). They do not really believe in Christ's administering the universe at a period which is after the gospel and the church as now on earth, and before the eternal state, when there shall be no such thing as the world-kingdom of Christ, still less Israel, the nations, or kings.
Hence the importance of understanding Rev. 21:1-8, the fullest description of the eternal state in the scriptures; with which may be compared 1 Cor. 15:24 and 28, and 2 Peter 3:12. Nothing temporal is found in any of these passages. What has led many into error, and some of them able men and believers, is that they regarded Rev. 21:9-27, 22:1-5, as continuing to tell us of eternity. But it is demonstrable that this is not so. In fact the first eight verses of chap. 21. alone give that information, as the sequel of the successive events in Rev. 19; 20 Whereas in Rev. 21:9, &c., we are taken back by a marked break in the vision, when one of the seven angels that had the seven bowls came and talked with John for an important retrospective purpose here, as was done before in Rev. 17:1, et seqq. In the latter case it was Come hither, I will show thee the judgment of the great harlot; in the former, Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the wife of the Lamb. They have the analogy of most striking contrasts: the corrupt and corrupting city Babylon; and the holy city new Jerusalem. And, as I am here alleging, they both go back to describe objects of the deepest moment, which had been noticed historically before now but called for a full description later, that we might know their true character, and their relationships: the one to “the beast” and the kings of the earth who committed fornication with her; the other to the Lamb, and the kings of the earth who bring their glory unto it, as the nations do when they walk by her light which excludes all uncleanness, and lying, and abomination.
No wonder that the power of the Pentecostal Spirit only led the apostle to yearn for that blessed time, which is altogether distinct from the present one of the Savior's absence, as well as from the eternal state when His administration closes and God is all in all. It is high time that these things should no longer be strange news to Christian ears. Our Lord affirmed to Pilate that His kingdom is not of (bc) this world as its source. He receives it from God, and such is its character as no other is, all the rest being merely providential after He ceased to rule in Israel or Judah. Christ's kingdom is of Him immediately; and accordingly, as all may see, He assuredly did not deny in John 18 what He asked of the Father in John 17:22, 23, “that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and lovedst them (i.e. the saints composing the church), even as Thou lovedst Me.” It is in vain to argue that this will be in the gospel day of believing as in ver. 21. It is on the contrary a day of knowing, when the glory, of which the Lord speaks in those two verses, is revealed with its overwhelming proofs. Thus all hangs together, whether John 17; 18, Rev. 11, or 21. It is the administration of the fullness of the seasons, also times of restoration, the universal testimony of the O.T. prophets, on which John impresses the final seal of the N. T.
It is indeed a feigned gloss of men that a single one of these scriptures speaks of Christ's judgment of the dead before the great white throne, which is represented there as taking place more than a thousand years after He comes in His kingdom. Never does God's word say or imply that Christ comes for that final judgment. It speaks generally of His judging living and dead (2 Tim. 4:1), of His being ready to judge both (1 Peter 4:5), and of the season being come when the seventh trumpet is blown (Rev. 11:18); but when details are given, the dead are shown to be judged only at “the end” when He delivers up His millennial kingdom, not when He receives it as He does to establish and administer it over the earth, and the universe indeed, when He comes on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. The scene of the great white throne and the judgment of the dead is long after His coming, and coincidently with it the fleeing away from His face of the earth and the heaven. Hence for this judgment His coming is out of the question: there is no earth at that solemn moment for Him to come to. The dead stand before the throne to be judged severally according to their works; but it is not His coming here, but their going before His throne, when the earth and the heaven flee which now are, and no place is found for them. This therefore is in no true sense His coming, any more than is a saint's departure at any time to be with Christ; though both are so called in that imaginary view which has no being but in theological tradition. Yet we are assured that this Jesus that was received up into heaven shall so come in the manner in which He was beheld going into heaven. Hence the Revelation puts the Lord's issuing for the judgment of the quick in chap. 19:11 et seqq.; then His reign of peace for a thousand years and of the glorified with Him over the earth in chap. 20.; and (after a brief manifestation of man deceived once more and for the last time by Satan, which is not without special and profound moral value) the judgment of the dead when the heavens and earth that are now are dissolved (2 Peter 3, Rev. 20), followed by the new heaven and new earth for eternity (Rev. 21:1-8). It is well that pious men do not attempt a formal confutation of all this; for God's word is too strong alike for their light touches or their heaviest threats.