At a time like the present, when Europe is being devastated by the greatest war the world has ever witnessed, it is not surprising that many Christians should turn with more than usual interest to the prophetic scriptures to see what God has said as to the future. Is there any light in scripture concerning the events now taking place, and what will they lead to?
One effect of the study of prophecy, when taken up with a true motive and in a right spirit, is to steady and establish the soul with regard to whatever may take place in this world. It takes us into a region outside of the mere speculations of men, and gives us the certainty of divine revelation.
Then, again, we shall find that whatever may happen can but contribute to the working out of the ultimate purpose of God, which is the setting up of the kingdom under Christ. God's king will, surely be set upon His holy hill of Zion, in spite of the rage of the nations and the opposition of the kings of the earth (Psa. 2).
When pouring out His heart in prayer to the Father on behalf of “His own which were in the world,” Jesus says that He did not then ask for dominion over the world (John 17:99I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. (John 17:9)), the time had not yet come for that. But when God's time does come, He will ask and get universal dominion; “Ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession” (Psa. 2:88Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. (Psalm 2:8). R.V.).
Whatever may take place in the meantime, we may rest in the absolute certainty that the counsels and purposes of God must be carried out. All the ambitious designs of the world's emperors and rulers, the rise and fall of empires, are but events which take place on the way to the accomplishment of the ultimate design God has in view, namely, that evil shall be put down and everything brought under the rule of Christ who shall reign in righteousness and assured peace. Meantime, as the prophet says, God will “overturn, overturn, overturn it; and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is, and I will give it to him” (Ezek. 21:2727I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him. (Ezekiel 21:27)).
There never will be lasting peace till then. All the hopes that a permanent peace will follow on the close of the present war are doomed to be disappointed. No, the nations will again prepare for war. There can be no settled peace till God's king comes in power and glory, to put down His enemies, and to reign in righteousness as well as in peace.
In the following pages we desire briefly to trace the course of events as delineated in the prophetic scriptures. The bearing of the principles which we find in the word of God on the present condition of the world-powers, will, we trust, be of interest and profit to the reader.
We never can rightly understand the Bible—unless we know at least something of what is sometimes called “dispensational truth,” that is, the truth concerning God's ways with men in the various dispensations or periods of time. If, for example, we apply to the church of God now, passages in the prophets which unfold God's dealings with Israel in the past or in a future day, we shall get into utter confusion, and misinterpret much of the Old Testament scripture. We may see an illustration of this mistaken application of scripture in some of the printed headings in our Bibles, such as in Isaiah, “God revengeth His church,” “Restoration of the church,” etc., placed over chapters which apply not to the church, but to Israel in a day still future.
Then it is well to bear in mind that, in the study of prophecy, as in every other branch of truth, we need the guidance and instruction of the Holy Spirit who alone can unfold the word for God's glory and our blessing. “They shall be all taught of God” is a principle true at all times, and it is only thus we shall be kept from the mere speculations and fancies of the human mind, into which even learned men not unfrequently fall.
Prophecy, as indeed all scripture, circles round the person of Christ, who is ever the center of God's ways and counsels; and all things, both in heaven and on earth, are to be headed up in Him. Peter tells us that the scope of no prophecy of scripture is had from its own particular interpretation; that is, it cannot be isolated from the whole scope of God's mind and counsels, the ultimate aim of which is to exalt Christ, crowning. Him with glory and honor, and setting Him over all the works of God's hands.
Then again, the Christian (whose whole heart and soul must respond to everything that glorifies Christ) is, through divine grace, instructed beforehand by the prophetic word as to that wonderful series of events which will prepare the way for the establishment of the kingdom of the Son of man, who must reign over this world, till, every enemy being put down and His mediatorial kingdom finished, He voluntarily gives up the kingdom to God the Father, that God may be all in all. Moreover, the study of prophetic truth, though neglected by many earnest people, is important, because it shows us what the world is and what will be its end, and thus it should help to detach the Christian from the spirit and principles of this age, which is fast going on to judgment. May God grant us the light of the Holy Spirit's teaching on the divine word, so that we may truly value it and profit by its prophetic teachings, so instructive to us at any time, but especially at the present serious moment.
THE PRESENT PERIOD AND THE COMING OF THE LORD
Now this present period of grace, which has already lasted more than 1900 years, may come to a close at any moment, but we should never fix dates, because, in this connection, scripture never does so.
Christ is coming first for His people; He is coming afterward with His people in power and glory, and there is a certain interval between these two events. When he comes for His saints, He will be, as far as scripture shows, unseen by the world, and He will not come actually to the earth, but into the air: when He appears with His saints, every eye shall see Him, and all the kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him, for He is coming in judgment. Then He will come to the earth; His feet shall stand upon the Mount of Olives (Zech. 14:44And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south. (Zechariah 14:4)).
But we shall never understand the subject unless we see that the present period, when God is gathering out His church, is a distinct parenthesis in His ways with Israel as a nation. Israel as a nation had, and will have, a very special place in the ways of God. He gave promises to the fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and He fulfilled them to their children. He brought a vine out of Egypt and planted it in His inheritance in the land of Canaan; and He looked that it should bring forth grapes, but it brought forth only wild grapes.
In due time Christ came, the true Messiah, King of Israel. He “came to his own, but his own (people) received him not,” they, so to speak, cast Him out of the vineyard and slew Him. Not only so, but, when the Holy Ghost came, they resisted Him; as their fathers did, so did they. But God's resources were not limited. He brought in something which was far higher as to the place of blessing bestowed than ever Israel as a nation enjoyed. This new thing was the church of God. Israel's blessings were national blessings in the land, in the store, etc.; the church of God is an entirely different thing, it is a gathering out from all nations of a people whose calling and hopes are, not of an earthly character as Israel's were, but essentially heavenly. When Christ, the Head, took His place in heaven, the Holy Ghost came down at Pentecost to form the body on earth, which consists of a people united by the Spirit to the Head in heaven.
It is perfectly clear, therefore, that, on the rejection of Christ, God, for the time being, broke off His dealings with Israel as a nation, as we read, “Blindness in part is happened to Israel"; and this will continue “until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.” The church of God, therefore, began at Pentecost and ends with the coming of the Lord. As already remarked, it is a parenthesis in the dealings of God with Israel as a nation. After the close of this parenthesis, God will again take up Israel for blessing; and then “all Israel (i.e., not, as at present, individuals here or there, but the people as a nation, the whole remnant of Israel) shall be saved” (Rom. 11).
We may here remark that when we view this present period as a parenthesis, it explains many passages of scripture which we could not otherwise understand. For example, Matt. 10:2323But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come. (Matthew 10:23), “Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.” The same work of preaching the kingdom of heaven, which the disciples were then sent out to do, will be resumed again, after the Lord has come and this present period is over, by the godly remnant of Israel in that day. Again, “This generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled” (Matt. 24:3434Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. (Matthew 24:34)). –the same race of men who then rejected Him, characterized by the same unbelief, will be found again at the end. In these and many other passages the present period is entirely passed over.
It is by the Lord's coming for His saints that this period of grace will be brought to a close. This blessed hope was ever intended to be the true and proper and immediate hope of the Christian according to the teaching of the Holy Spirit in the scriptures.
We learn from the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, which was the first inspired epistle Paul wrote, that he himself preached the truth of the Lord's coming as a part of the gospel which he announced. The consequence was that these simple converts, who had been so short a time converted (he was only preaching there three weeks or so, see Acts 17:22And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures, (Acts 17:2)), were “waiting for God's Son from heaven whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivered us from the wrath to come.” It was not that they were waiting for deliverance from the wrath itself, they had already got that, but they were waiting for the Deliverer. The end of the chapter 4 gives us, doubtless, the most complete and detailed explanation of this subject which we find in scripture.
In this aspect of the Lord's coming (which has sometimes, and we believe rightly, been called the “rapture") it is not a question of His visible manifestation in glory; in fact there is nothing to show that He will be seen by the world when He comes for His church. When the Lord Himself ascended He was not seen by any but His own disciples; nor, indeed, was He seen after His resurrection, except by those chosen witnesses to whom He manifested Himself by many infallible proofs. So it will be with us. We shall disappear from the world, unseen as He was. What grace and what a privilege for His people to be thus identified with Him!
The saints are divided into two classes in this passage— “those who have fallen asleep through Jesus,” and “we, the living, who remain” (this latter phrase occurs twice). It does not say that the Lord comes to the earth exactly, but He descends “from heaven,” and both those who sleep in Jesus and those who are alive and remain, are caught up together in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. He Himself conducts them to the Father's house. His “shout” it is which effectuates the resurrection of the dead and the changing of the living. The word here translated “shout” is only used this once in the New Testament, it was the word of command given to the oarsmen on the galleys, and by a commander to his troops; here it is used for the assembling together of the saints to meet the Lord in the air. The Thessalonians thought that those who had died had missed the blessing not so, says the apostle, on the contrary, the living ones will “in no wise anticipate (or go before) those who are fallen asleep,” i.e., the ones who had died. The “dead in Christ,” would have the priority.
So also 1 Corinthians 15 confirms this, “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.” It is but an instant of time between the raising of the dead and the changing of the living, and this takes place “at the last trump,” which, we know is a military allusion, referring to the trump for the starting off of the whole army, after all had fallen into line of march.
It is remarkable that the apostle should use the word “we” in both the epistles we have referred to— “we, the living who remain,” and “we shall not all sleep.” It is just as though he put himself amongst the number of those who might be alive when the Lord would come, and this because it was intended to be always the proper and immediate hope of the believer. Well may he add, in Thessalonians, “Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” Do we sorrow over some dear departed saint of God? Many, indeed, do sorrow at the present moment, Thank God we sorrow “not as others which have no hope"; and the time is coming when both we and they shall hear that assembling shout, and shall be caught up to meet Him in the air, and so to be forever with the Lord. What a meeting, and what a consolation)
(To be continued)
[F.G.B.]