by Rev. K. D. MacLeod
(Continued from Page 268)
We have already tried to demonstrate, in opposition to A-Millennialism, that there is an extensive period of world-wide blessedness before the church of God. We must now consider explicitly the relation of the Millennium to the second coming of Christ, which is where we find the dividing line between Pre-Millennialism and Post-Millennialism. The question is, Will Christ come again before the Millennium, as Pre-Millennialists believe, or afterwards, which is the Post-Millennial view? A minor detail surely, one might think. On the contrary, “Pre-millennialism,” to quote David Brown, “is no barren speculation — useless though true, and innocuous though false. . . . It impinges upon and affects some of the most commanding points of the Christian faith; and, when suffered to work its unimpeded way, it stops not till it has pervaded with its own genius the entire system of one’s theology and the whole world of his spiritual character, constructing, I had almost said, a world of its own”.13
I do not propose to discuss in any detail that particular variety of Pre-millennialism known as Dispensationalism. Its name derives from the idea that the history of the world can be divided into seven dispensations, some of which turn out to be perfectly arbitrary. Dispensationalists hold, in particular, that the present dispensation is that of the Church, an institution which they are quite unable to trace in the whole of Old Testament prophecy. On their theory the Church has come into existence only because the Jews refused the offer by Christ of the Kingdom, while He was on earth, and the Kingdom was accordingly postponed until after the second advent. Dispensationalism teaches also that no part of Revelation, chapters 4-19, has yet been fulfilled. There must first be the Rapture, when Christ will come to raise the righteous dead and, at the same time, and equally unnoticed by the wicked, He will carry the living saints away to meet Him in the air, where they will all remain with Him for seven years. These seven years form what they call the Tribulation period, when they believe all the woes of those 16 chapters in Revelation will fall on the world. At the end of this period they expect Christ to return to earth with His saints; Antichrist and his forces are to be destroyed in the battle of Armageddon, and the Kingdom is to be set up on earth. The Jews are then to be converted, simply by seeing Christ physically, and are to have a specially favoured place in Christ’s Kingdom.
These ideas are largely unique to Dispensationalism and are opposed by more traditional forms of Pre-millennialism. We are not going to wait to answer them; in any case, if Pre-millennialism is itself in error in believing that the Millennium is to be brought about through Christ’s physical presence in the world, then the whole system of Dispensationalism falls to the ground with it.
Literal interpretation of Scriptures is the watchword of Pre-millennialism. It is often applied to the prophecies in a way that ignores the clear teaching of other parts of Scripture. So if Ezekiel speaks of the temple and of sacrifices they feel bound to interpret the temple as a literal Millennial temple at which actual animal sacrifices are to be offered. Even a respected commentator like Andrew Bonar can speak like this, albeit conjecturally, about Ezekiel’s temple: “Believing nations may frequent that temple in order to get understanding in these types and shadows. They may go up to the mountain of the Lord’s house to be taught there His ways. In that temple they may learn how not one title of the law has failed. . . . At all events, it is probable that this much-neglected book of Leviticus shall be fully appreciated”.14
Yet take a verse like, “And it shall come to pass that every one that is left of all the nations that came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles” (Zec. 14: 16). In the face of the sheer practical difficulty of the people of all these nations descending on one city at one particular point in every year, what happens to Pre-millennial literalism?
Evidently then the principle of literal interpretation is not inviolate. And at least some varieties of this type of thought allow themselves to interpret Peter’s prediction of the end of the world, for instance, without any regard for its literal and evident meaning: “The heavens and the earth 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 Pet. 3: 10). Such interpreters say that only some nations are to be destroyed. Thus T. R. Birks, a nineteenth-century Pre-Millennial writer, speaks of endless “successive generations of the redeemed throughout the course of the ages to come,” and he claims that at the day of judgement “the faithful that are then living are passed over in silence, and the natural conclusion seems to be, that from them the new earth is peopled with holy and righteous generations”.15 Ideas of this kind are in direct opposition to the plain teaching that we are given in Scripture of the absolute finality of the day of judgement, “for we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ” (2 Cor. 5: 10). It is not necessarily an easy matter to determine whether particular passages are to be interpreted literally or figuratively, but when a particular approach to a passage leads one to say what is contrary to the clear teaching of some plain passage of the Bible then that approach, be it figurative or literal, is obviously wrong.
Robert Dabney was in no doubt that Pre-Millennialism is an unbelieving response to the lack of progress which the Church has yet made in evangelising the world. For the Pre-Millennial conclusion quite blatantly is that the present agencies committed to the Church are manifestly inadequate for the spiritual conquest of mankind. In opposition to this Dabney points out that “the temper which Christ enjoins on us is one of humble, faithful, believing diligence in the use of those agencies, relying on His faithfulness and power to make them do their glorious work.”16 In disparaging the means already at the disposal of the church there is a disparagement also of the Holy Spirit, whereas, as Dabney also points out, “Christ represents the presence of the Holy Ghost, and this His dispensation, as so desirable, that it was expedient for Him to go away that the Paraclete might come.”17
The Saviour went on to declare that “when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.” (Jn 16: 8), which surely makes it crystal clear that, if the world has not yet yielded allegiance to Christ, it is not because the power at present available is insufficient. The same conclusion follows from the final commission given by the Saviour to His disciples, “Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matt. 28: 19f). Quite clearly Christ is still present on earth, though not physically so. And if we consider seriously the power of the Holy Spirit — for it is through the Spirit that Christ applies redemption — there can be no limit to the effects of the preaching of the gospel and the reading of the Scriptures.
The Scriptural basis claimed for Pre-Millennialism is to be found in commands like, “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh” (Matt. 15: 13), and in statements like, “The coming of the Lord draweth nigh” (Jas. 5: 8). How can we take such commands and statements seriously, it is argued, unless we believe that Christ may come personally to this world at any moment? The fact is, however, that the Bible speaks of the coming of Christ in more than one sense. Having spoken Himself of “the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory”, Christ went on to say, “This generation shall not pass away till all these things be fulfilled” (Matt. 24: 30,34). It is clear that the Saviour was there referring to His coming in providence to judge Jerusalem, in AD 70. Such a coming of Christ is, however, typical of His coming at the end of time to judge the whole world. On the other hand Paul declares how Christ “came and preached peace” in Ephesus, (Eph. 2: 17), evidently not in person, but by His ambassadors. Fairbairn points out that all such descriptions “are alike in connecting the Lord’s personal presence with events, whether of mercy or of judgment, which bore materially on the well-being of His people, or on the power and policy of their enemies.”18 Clearly they do not necessarily imply Christ’s physical presence on earth, which, in particular, is not to be the cause of the spiritual prosperity of His church during the Millennium.
Solely on the strength of the passage we have referred to in Revelation, chapter 20, pre-Millennialists hold that there will be two resurrections from the dead, first a resurrection before the Millennium of all the righteous who have lived before then, and a second resurrection afterwards of everyone else. In spite of the fact that there is no mention elsewhere in Scripture of more than one resurrection, they insist on interpreting the first resurrection as a bodily resurrection. There is indeed no difficulty about interpreting this as a spiritual resurrection, for Christ describes the beginning of new life in the soul as a resurrection (see John 5: 24f). The picture is further complicated by those who believe in the continued presence of generations of the righteous on earth after the Millennium. So complicated can these schemes become, and so various are these schemes, that this endless complication and variation itself makes it unlikely that the Pre-Millennial system is true. But it is, in fact, inconsistent with the Westminster Confession of Faith statement, “At the last day such as are found alive shall not die, but be changed; and all the dead shall be raised up with the self-same bodies, and none other, although with different qualities, which shall be united again to their souls for ever” (32: 2). And the Confession of Faith is just summarising the teaching of Scripture.
Because Pre-Millennialists believe in a resurrection of the righteous before the Millennium, it is not surprising to find them arguing for a day of judgment at the same time, exclusively for the righteous. But if there is to be but one resurrection there can be only one judgment day, which is the teaching of the verse already quoted, “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” It is teaching which also appears in that oldest of confessional documents, the Apostle’s Creed, which states that Christ “ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead,” that is, to hold one judgment and one only.
The Larger Catechism teaches equally emphatically that the last day is the time of the one resurrection and the one judgment: “The members of the invisible church . . . rest in their graves as in their beds, till at the last day they be again united to their souls. Whereas the souls of the wicked . . . remain in torments and utter darkness, and their bodies kept in their graves as in their prisons, till the resurrection and judgment of the great day” (Q 86). And in an earlier answer it is quite as explicit about Christ’s second coming: “Christ . . . shall come again at the last day” (Q 56).
The revelations in Scripture concerning the glory of the latter days have not been given merely to instruct us intellectually. The design of prophecy, to quote Charles Hodge, “was not to anticipate history, to enable us to read the future as we do the records of the past. Its great object was to keep alive and active the faith and hopes of the people in the exceeding great and precious promises which had already been made.”19
It is therefore no surprise to find John Owen thus instructing his hearers as to how they might meet with God’s design of casting down all opposition to the kingdom of His Son:
“First. By faith. Believe the promises, close with them, act faith upon them, and you will believe the beast unto destruction, antichrist into the pit and Magog to ruin. Believe that the enemies of Christ shall be made His footstool, that the nations shall be His inheritance, that He shall reign gloriously in beauty, that He shall smite in pieces the heads over divers nations. Live in the faith of these things, and, as it will give you the sweetness of them before they come, so it will hasten their coming beyond the endeavours of thousands, yea, millions of armed men.
“Secondly. Meet Him with your supplications. Cry unto Him as Psalm 45: 3-5, ‘Gird Thy sword upon Thy thigh, O most Mighty, with Thy glory and Thy majesty. And in Thy majesty ride prosperously, because of truth and meekness and righteousness; and Thy right hand shall teach Thee terrible things. Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the King’s enemies, whereby the people fall under Thee’. This will make you be the armies of heaven, that follow Him in His great undertakings (Rev. 19: 14). It is His praying people that are His conquering armies that follow Him. Now you find it coming, leave not pulling with all your strength, lest it roll back again. Shoot not two or three arrows and so give over; but never leave shooting till the enemies of the Lord be all destroyed.”20
But, beyond it all, it is especially to the second coming of Christ that we are to look, that day in Paul’s expression, against which he had committed the keeping of his soul to Christ. So he speaks of “looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Titus 2: 13). And beyond the judgment there is for the believer the everlasting blessedness of heaven, to be enjoyed in his complete person, body and soul having been brought together again at the resurrection. As Jonathan Edwards points out, “All the glory of the glorious times of the Church on earth is but a faint shadow of this her consummate glory in heaven.”21 Yet in a dark day what encouragement there is in looking forward to a time when the gospel will be so clearly seen as the power of God unto salvation, because of the great multitudes who throughout the world will become sincerely obedient to this gospel of the grace of God. For, as John Howe so aptly expressed it, “Religion shall not be an inglorious thing in the world always.”22
13 Brown, p 6.
14 Bonar on Leviticus, 1972 reprint, p 6f. In spite of this remark Bonar has provided a first-class exposition of a difficult part of Scripture.
15 Quoted by Brown, p 171.
16 Dabney, Systematic Theology, 1985 reprint, p 839.
17 Ibid.
18 Fairbairn, p 446.
19 In his introduction to J. B. Ramsey on Revelation, 1977 reprint, p 29.
20 Owen’s Works, vol 8, 1851 edition, p 335.
21 Edwards, p 342.
22 Quoted in Iain H. Murray, The Puritan Hope, 1971, p 254. This highly readable book shows clearly that the Puritans as a body very definitely believed in the future world-wide prosperity of Christianity. Murray also shows how this view lay behind the beginning of the modern missionary movement, and how support for this view only faded with the general weakening of Scriptural Christianity in the nineteenth century.