By REV. J. P. MACQUEEN.
WHILE there has always been practical unanimity among true Christians as to the Scripture fact of Christ’s personal second coming, in visible form and in the glory of the Father, “for every eye shall see Him, and they also that pierced Him,” nevertheless there has been anything but unanimity as to the time, purpose, and significance of His second advent. So far as Scottish Church history since the Reformation is concerned, it can be asserted that the Christian people of our nation, generally, have interpreted the Scriptural passages, bearing on this all-important subject, in a post-millennialian sense, although, regrettably, of late years pre-millennialism has been gaining some ground in Scotland also, while on the other side of the Scottish border, and in the English-speaking nations overseas generally, pre-millennialism has become something approaching religious obsession among professed evangelicals, especially those with Arminian tendencies and leanings. In their petitions, therefore, one does not hear so much the words, “if it be Thy will,” but “till He come,” to reign.
To the uninitiated, we may say in passing that there are three main schools of interpretation relative to the doctrine of the second coming of Christ. The pre-millennarians, for instance, hold the view “that Christ will return to the world at least a thousand years before the end of time, and that He will establish a terrestrial kingdom; that the Jerusalem of Palestine will be the seat of His government, and that there the throne of David will be re-established; that upon this throne Christ will sit in bodily visible form, and He, together with those of the saints who shall have been raised, will reign over a world peopled by men who are still in the flesh, and who continue to follow the usual pursuits of mankind, and, finally, that this earthly reign of the Lord Jesus Christ will continue for a thousand years, or for a millennium.” The post-millennarians, on the other hand, hold “that Scripture teaches that the Second Coming will mark the end of time, that the millennium, and all other events which concern the earthly existence of man shall have then passed into history, and that the purpose of His coming will be to give to every man according as his work shall be.” The A-millennarians, or non-millennialists, do not believe there will be a millennium at all in this world, while they admit their difficulty, in view of this interpretation, in explaining Rev. xx, 4-6, which they generally explain away. Such pre-millennarians as discover the untenability of their theory usually go to the other extreme of A-millennarianism.
Dr. John Brown, of Haddington, comments on Rev. xx, 4-6:—”The glory and happiness of this thousand years’ reign of the saints is to be understood, not literally, but spiritually and figuratively, according to the common style of the book. It could not consist with the happiness of the saints to leave the heavenly mansions, and live in bodies needing meat and drink, nor, if their bodies were raised spiritual and incorruptible, would they need any such thing; and in vain would Satan instigate the wicked to war against, and cut off, spiritual and incorruptible bodies. The dead in Christ are also represented as all rising together at the last day. And a proper resurrection is never in Scripture represented as a reviving or living again of the soul, but of the body. The resurrection of the martyrs’ and confessors’ souls here spoken of therefore means, not the resurrection of these deceased persons, but the remarkable reformation, deliverance, comfort, and activity of the revived millennial church in their successors, Rom. xi, 15; Ezekiel xxxvii, 1-14; Psalm lxxxv, 6; Hosea vi, 2-3; Zechariah x, 1; and as Elijah is represented as living in John the Baptist, Matt. xi, 14, and xvii, 12, so the ancient martyrs will live in the Christians of this millennial period, being united to the same Head, members of the same Body, and of the same spirit, faith, patience, zeal, and fortitude, and professing, identically, the same Gospel truths.”
Dr. Owen says on this point:—”The Church in this life is no way meet, by the grace which it can be made partaker of, to converse with Him in the immediate manifestations of His glory. And, therefore, those who dream of His personal reign on the earth before the Day of Judgment, unless they suppose that all the saints shall be glorified also (which is only to bring down Heaven to the earth for a while, to no purpose) provide not at all for the edification and consolation of the church. For no present grace, advanced unto the highest degree whereof in this world it is capable, can make us meet for an immediate converse with Christ in His unveiled glory” (Owen’s Glory of Christ).
The pre-millennarian view is really Jewish, and not Christian in origin. It is derived from the old Jewish false, because carnal, anticipations of a mighty conquering hero who would liberate Palestine from the galling Roman yoke and establish a world-wide Jewish earthly kingdom. Immediately, therefore, after the departure of the Apostles of the first century of the Christian era, various false doctrines and heresies began to appear, propagated by those, with imitators and successors in every age, who imagined that they could make the Gospel of the grace of God a fitter instrument for the human hand than that fixedly and infallibly revealed in the Word of God. Consequently, this pre-millennarian view of the Second Advent gained very considerable currency in the early sub-apostolic period of Church history, though even then it never came to form a part of the general creed of the Church. At the Reformation period of Church history, the great Protestant confessions expressly condemned pre-millennialism, while the justly renowned John Calvin said concerning it, “Their fiction is too puerile to require or deserve refutation.”
Without, however, taking up too much time or space in multiplying instances of objections to the pre-millennial personal-literal-reign viewpoint of Christ’s Second Coming, the fact that it disparages the supernatural, divine, omnipotent operations of the Holy Spirit should suffice. From the time of Pentecost till now this has been, as I stated in the English Churchman on the 11th January, 1940, in a peculiar manner, the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, and I see nothing in the Word of God to justify the view that it will cease to be His peculiar dispensation till the end of time, when Christ will come, once and for all, to judge the quick and the dead. Is it not true of every Spirit-taught man and woman, from Pentecost to the present day, relative to their supernatural faith’s view of Christ, “Whom having not seen, ye love; in Whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory”?
Is, then, the evidence of sense, such as a literal personal advent and reign imply, superior, by way of certitude and confirmation, to a supernatural faith’s view? Is it not the case that those who heard the resurrection voice of Christ, calling them out of their grave in trespasses and sins, by His Word and Spirit, while simultaneously the Spirit, through the Word, caused the light to shine into their hearts (to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ), have the surest evidence and certainty of the Divine reality and supernatural origin and nature of Christianity and Gospel grace that can possibly be supplied? Can any evidence surpass that of the almighty, infallible, omniscient Holy Spirit bearing witness with the supernaturally regenerated spirit of the believer that he, or she, is a child of God. Such tremble ever afterwards at the Word of God, or, in other words, they bow submissively, with awe-inspired reverence before the heavenly almighty authority of God in His Word, the sure foundation of saving faith. They joyfully declare that this is “all their salvation and all their desire.”
On the other hand, how many who saw Christ with the bodily eye during His first advent believed in Him? What ground have we, therefore, for concluding that His second personal literal advent would prove more successful than the first in convincing and converting unregenerate men and women? As Christ is the second person in the Godhead, so is the Holy Spirit the third person in the same Godhead, equal in power and glory, and is it not His peculiar function, in the economy of redemption, to convince the world of sin, and to take of the things of Christ, supernaturally, sovereignly, omnipotently, and spiritually, and show them to the individual soul. As surely as He, the Holy Spirit, and He only, shall convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, so “He shall glorify Me, for He shall receive of Mine and shall show it unto you.” What more, therefore, than a world-wide reproduction of Pentecost is necessary to initiate and establish the millennium? He shall, then, appear in glory and majesty, building again Zion; the gathering of the people shall be unto Christ; all nations shall call Him blessed, and “the nations of this world shall become the nations of our Lord and of His Christ,” and they, as a consequence, “shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more,” for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ, as the waters cover the face of the deep, as Christ shall then have received “the heathen for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession.”
“And I will pour upon the House of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, and they shall look upon Me, Whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him as one mourneth for an only son, and they shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born” (Zechariah xii. 10). As this description of the evangelical repentance of the Jews, also describes the evangelical repentance of the Gentiles, I fail to see how the Holy Spirit is not equal to the blessed supernatural task of initiating and establishing the millennium, without the aid of the literal personal appearance of Christ, apart from the fact that, personally, I see nothing in Scripture to justify a different viewpoint, or interpretation. As Christ is the only Redeemer of God’s elect, so the Holy Spirit is the only Regenerator, Sanctifier, and Comforter of the same blessed elect, blood-bought, and regenerated people, while the functions of the three glorious Persons of the ever-adorable Trinity in unity are ordered in all things and sure, relative to the everlasting Covenant of grace, in relation to human salvation. As the Rev. Prof. R. J. G. McKnight, Ph.D., says in his pamphlet, “The Second Coming of Christ”:—”It is not charged that the pre-millennarians intentionally disparage the work of the Holy Spirit, but it is charged that disparagement of the work of the Holy Spirit is essentially involved in the system which pre-millennarians hold. Pre-millennarianism stamps the Gospel, the Church, and the Holy Spirit, as failures,” and it prevents its followers from praying ardently, perseveringly, and importunately, for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as they hold that nothing will be right in the Church in this world till Christ comes in person to reign. They are in this respect guilty of restraining prayer before God.
Nevertheless, it is a glorious fact that “the Lord God omnipotent reigneth,” and whatever judicial calamities may intervene between now and the glorious millennium for the poor, sin-deluded, Heaven-provoking nations of the earth, this world shall yet be visited with times of glorious refreshing from the presence of the Lord as “All the ends of the world shall remember, and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee” (Psalm xxii, 27), and so let the blood-bought regenerated Church continue singing the sixty-seventh Psalm, “that the earth Thy way, and nations all, may know Thy saving grace.”
“We know that all things work together for good to them that love God.” This promise is the compass which sets the course and directs the motions of all the afflictions of the people of God; and no ship at sea obeys the rudder so exactly as the troubles of the righteous do the direction of this promise. Possibly we cannot discern this at present, but rather prejudge the works of God, and say all these things are against us; but hereafter we shall see, and with joy acknowledge them to be the happy instruments of our salvation.—Flavel.