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THE THOUSAND YEARS IN BOTH TESTAMENTS
By
NATHANIEL WEST
PART 1
It is a very common opinion, widely spread throughout
Christendom, and in most cases believed to be true, that
“the thousand years” of
which John speaks in the Apocalypse,
Rev. 20: 1-7, are
mentioned nowhere else in the sacred Scriptures.
The doctrine of a millennial kingdom on earth,
introduced by the advent of Christ in His glory, is a
Jewish fable without support from the word of God.
A deeper study of the sacred volume dissipates
this false prejudice and reveals the fact that, not only
are “the thousand years”
of which John speaks found everywhere in both
Testaments, but that next to the eternal state, the
millennial blessedness of God’s people on earth, and of
the nations, is the one high point in all prophecy, from
Moses to John, the bright, broad tableland of all
eschatology.
The prejudice against the study of a theme so
sublime and far-reaching, and occupying so much space in
the revelation of God has been pleased to give us, is as
remarkable in our age, as
[Page 2]
it is inexcusable, although by no means surprising.
To use the words of
Prof. Van
Oosterzee, “We
cannot be surprised that the inner discrepancy between
the modern theological philosophy and the prophetic and
apostolic Scriptures should perhaps, on no point come
forth so clearly, and
apparently so irreconcilably, as precisely in reference
to the doctrine of the ‘Last
Things’ – Eschatology.
Here, especially are the terms, ‘Jewish
conception,’ ‘oriental garb,’ ‘poetic imagery,’
‘accommodation to the narrow ideas of the age,’ etc.,
etc., the order of the day, and the doctrine of the
consummation of the ages is ordinarily regarded as a
moderately insignificant appendix to some
philosophico-dogmatic
system. In
Scripture, on the contrary, it is distinctly presented
in the foreground, and for the believer it attains, with
every year and every century, increased significance, so
that what for a time seems to be an appendix, becomes
eventually the
main question!”
*[*
Person and work of the Redeemer, 450.]
Every faithful student of the Scriptures, unbiased by
false theories of interpretation, will attest these
words as true.
What we find in the New Testament as its outcome
in respect to the ages and the
kingdom, has already lain in the bosom of the Old
Testament from the beginning.
The closing part of the New Testament is but the
full flower of which the opening part of the Old
Testament was the precious seed, the kingdom one and the
same, in essence, all the way.
Nothing appears in the latter revelation that was
not hid in the earlier, nothing in John that was not in
Moses. This
is what Augustine meant by his golden maxim, “Novum
Testamentum in
Vetrere
latet,
Vetus in Novo
patet.”
“In the
[page 3] Old Testament
the New is
concealed;
in the New the Old is
revealed.”
We shall find “the
thousand years” in many places of God’s word,
long before the Rabbis ever had a being or a name.
We shall be obliged in this investigation to make use of
what men call “technical”
terms, in order to save circumlocution.
We speak of the “Last
Things.”
The Greek term for this is “Eschata,”
and by these are meant what should “come
to pass,” not in the “latter,”
as oftentimes King James’ version has it, but in the “last”
days, as Moses, Joel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Peter,
Paul and John, preferred to have it.
If we study the eschatology of the Old Testament,
we will find the
Eschata
there identical with the
Eschata
of the New Testament, and the
Eschatology of both Testaments the same, only the New is
more developed than the Old.
Such is the organic and genetic character of
revelation and of prophecy that if “the
thousand years” are not in Moses, the Psalms, and
the Prophets, they have no right to be in John.
To understand the prophets it is necessary,
however, to understand the Apocalypse, and to understand
the Apocalypse it is necessary to understand the
prophets.
The one is light to the other, and reciprocally.
In order to attain a clear conception of Old
testament prophecy and its fulfilment, we must combine
both Advents of Messiah, remembering that the first only
brought the
partial
fulfilment of the prophetic word which yet awaits the
second in order to secure its
plenary
accomplishment.
Joel’s prophecy as to the outpouring of the Spirit in
the last days, and of the great and notable day of the
Lord, with all its terrestrial and celestial phenomena,
the final redemption of Israel, and the transfiguration
of the Holy Land, was only incipiently and partly
[page 4]
fulfilled to a few, an election out of Israel, at the
first coming of Christ, and awaits a far larger
fulfilment at His second appearing.
So the prediction of Amos, in reference to the
dispersion and sifting of Israel the “Sinful
Kingdom,” and God’s visitation of the Gentiles, “after
this,” to take out of them a people for His name,
met a partial and precursive
fulfilment in the first calling of the Gentiles to the
knowledge of Christ, in the days of the apostles, as
James in the first council at Jerusalem assures us.
We see that by comparing
Acts 15: 13-18 with
Amos 9: 8-12.
But there is to be a grander fulfilment still in
coming days, when, now that a Second Dispersion and
Sifting of Israel has occurred, since James spoke, there
shall be a fullness of the Gentiles “after
this,” also, and finally the fallen Booth of
David, or Israel’s proper Kingdom, as the prophets
picture it, will be re-erected with the fullness of
Israel converted to God, and the glorious millennial age
heave into view.
So it is with reference to Isaiah’s Redeemer
coming to
THE KINGDOM AND PROPHECY.
From first to last, the kingdom of God on earth, its
inception, progress, conduct, and consummation in glory,
is the one theme of Old Testament prophecy.
To this end were the converts with Christ, Adam,
[page 5]
Noah,
The division of the Davidic kingdom into two, laid the
ground for all the prophecies concerning the “Kingdom
of Israel” and the “Kingdom
of Judah,”
i.e., the ten-tribed
Israel, called “Ephraim,”
and the two-tribed Israel,
called “Judah,” as
distinguished from “all
[page 6]
Israel,”
or the twelve-tribed Israel,
an election from those children shall one day form the
national nucleus of the millennial kingdom.
The catastrophe that brought destruction to
As a further help to our investigation, it is necessary
we should know that
the
The six pre-exile prophets form a connected chain ending
with Nahum.
Of these, Isaiah is the chief, his radius of vision
spanning all horizons, near, remote, and between and
losing itself in the breast of eternal glory.
He sees all things, however, in one divine
perspective, one divine light, one divine picture,
Messiah the centre of all,
It is among the “Eschata,”
or “Last
Things,” the things to “come
to pass in the last days,” or “End
Time,” that we find the Millennial Age.
It lies, as we shall see, between the “Yom
Yehovah,” or “Day
of the Lord,” which, in the New Testament, is
called “The Apocalypse of Jesus
Christ,” and the endless age of the “New
Jerusalem” in the final “New
heaven and earth.”
It is bounded by two distinct judgments, one at
the opening, one at the close of the Millennial Age, the
opening judgment being that of the Nations, and of all
powers, terrestrial and super-terrestrial, opposed to
Christ and His reign, as only by a judgment upon
To understand this, however, it is necessary to know
first, the manner in which the prophets divided the
whole course of time, and the way in which the ages and
ends are represented in prophecy, as also the relation
in which the
Eschata
stand to these ends and ages, first in pre-exile
prophecy, and next in exile prophecy.
GENERAL DISTRIBUTION OF TIME.
PRE-EXILE PROPHECY.
And first, as to the division of time, in pre-exile
prophecy.
The whole course of time, from the creation of
the heaven and earth to the re-creation of the same, is
divided into
two great ages,
the bisecting epoch between which is called the “End.”
In this End is placed the “Yom
Yehovah,”
during which the personal self-revelation of Jehovah in
glory, for the deliverance of
The character of this Messianic age is painted in
colours the most gorgeous and brilliant in the prophets,
even as it is sung in strains the most inspiring, in the
Psalms.
When the Lord has come and brought salvation with His
own right arm, and Jacob’s tribulation is past,
everything puts on a new appearance.
Under the New Covenant, sin is pardoned through
Messiah’s death, the gospel is preached, the Gentiles
are gathered, the Spirit is poured from on high, and
streams of knowledge, holiness and life, perpetually
overflow.
Showers of blessing continually fall.
The people are all righteous, and the righteous
shine. The
City of
If we represent, in schematic form, the manner
[page 15]
and ends as seen, in general, in pre-exile prophecy, the
diagram will stand thus:
[Pre-Messianic Age.]
<<<>>>
[Advent. / End.]
<<<>>>
[Messianic Age.]
That is, two ages and one end between, the last age the
everlasting one, or age that has no end.
EXILE PROPHECY
Let us come now to speak of exile prophecy.
Here we find a marked difference from all
preceding prophecy, in respect to the ages and the ends,
and the disposition of the Eschata.
Events that stood together in one picture, in the
earlier prophets, begin to be parted here.
The hints in Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah, of such a
possible development, and of which we shall speak later
on, receive now their true significance.
We learn how the great epochs of
Something new has occurred.
The synthesis of ends and ages in pre-exile
prophecy gives place to their analysis in post-exile
prophecy.
The one end parts into two, each part closing itself up
again, the space between becoming that an intermediate
age, though still foreshortened, the age that is endless
lying behind the last of these ends.
Instead of two ages and one end, as in pre-exile
prophecy, we have three ages and two ends, schematized
thus:
[Jewish Age.]
>>><<<
[1st. Advent. / End.]
>>><<<
[Christian Age.]
>>><<<
[2nd.
Advent. / End.]
>>><<<
[Millennial Age.]
At the end of the pre-Messianic or Jewish Age Messiah
comes, but not in glory.
He is “cut off,”
and there is “nothing for Him”
– no kingdom in the form predicted, no crown.
He is rooted out by a violent death, and
But this is not all.
Ezekiel develops the ends and ages still more
than Daniel does.
He has nothing to say of the first Advent, as
Daniel has, and nothing of the Antichrist.
He has nothing to say of the missionary
proclamation of the Gospel, or
But the peculiarity of Ezekiel is this, that even to
this coming age of
[Jewish Age.]
>>><<<
[1st. Advent. / End.
]
>>><<<
[Christian Age.]
>>><<<
[2nd.
Advent. / End.]
>>><<< [Millennial Age.]
>>><<<
[White Throne. / End.]
>>><<<
[Endless Age.]
What to us is now the “world to
come,” will be to its own inhabitants “the
present world,” even as our present age was the
world to come, to pre-christian
Judaism.
As time wears away, and the future comes to make
the present, then glides into the past.
Olam
Habba becomes
Olam
Hazzeh, even on the
other side of the second
Advent. In
other words, the Messianic or everlasting age, which, in
pre-exile prophecy, was
[page 20]
but one age following Messiah’s one Advent, and which in
Daniel became two ages, by reason of the clear
separation of the comings, has, in Ezekiel, become three
ages by reason of the new end introduced: so making four
in all, if we begin with the Jewish Age, viz.: (1) The
period of Old Testament times; (2) the Church-historical
period; (3) the Millennial Age of Israel in the kingdom;
and (4) the Eternal State or New Jerusalem in the “New
Heaven and Earth.”
The end of the Jewish Age brought resurrection,
judgment, and a new age succeeding.
The end of our present age will do the same.
The end of the Millennial
age will do the same.
In each case the kingdom receives a
re-establishment in new form.
There is a re-creation.
A personal advent of Messiah marks the close of
each age, save the Millennial.
No third advent at the judgment of
Gog and
Magog is intimated in Ezekiel’s nor even in
John’s Apocalypse, for the final resurrection and the
judgment of the wicked, into which the judgment of
Gog extends itself, for the
reason that no second departure of Christ from His
people is revealed.
As in the Old Testament, so in the New, the last
judgment is perspectively
covered and connected with the judgment at the second
coming of the Son of Man.
Such is the entire development of the ages and the ends
in prophecy, - the Biblical
AEonology and Teleology – from Genesis to
Regenesis; the whole time
prior to the first coming being regarded as the
pre-Messianic Age.
Our own age is a parenthetic one.
The age next beyond that of our own is that of
THE SUB-DISTRIBUTION OF TIME.
The Scriptures give us not only the ages and the ends,
but also a sub-distribution of prophetic and historic
time, from the period of the exile or blotting out of
the visible kingdom of God on earth, down to its
re-establishment,
i.e., from the time of Israel’s subjection to the
Gentile power to the time of Israel’s redemption from
the same: or until the “mystery
of God”
concerning Israel’s blindness and rejection, and
Israel’s new sight and recovery, is “finished,”
under the sounding of the seventh trumpet.
Beyond that we find no sub-distribution, save the
judgment on Gog already
mentioned, and which, in connection with
Isaiah 24:22
and
Isaiah 65:17,
extends itself to the final resurrection and judgment,
and the New Heaven and Earth.
The sub-distribution we refer to is found first
of all, in the vision of the great metallic image, or
Monarchy-Colossus, Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream (B.C.
604) eighteen years before the destruction of Jerusalem
(B.C. 586), that image being a symbol of the Gentile
power standing on Israel’s prostrate body; or, if we
combine the visions of Daniel with those of Ezekiel,
then the Colossus stands erect in the midst of Israel’s
national graveyard – “Habbikah
Melcah
Atsamoth” – “the
valley full of bones, and very dry,”
– and remains standing, while national Israel remains
dead, until that image is overthrown.
In short, that Colossus represents a series of
four Gentile empires, appearing and disappearing in
successional order, - four
different forms or phases of the one God-opposed
world-power, as it comes in contact with Israel; from
the time of the Babylonian Empire down to the
Cloud-Comer from Heaven to overthrow the world-power,
erect His kingdom on its ruins, and restore the lost
sovereignty
[page 22]
to Israel.
The vision of the four-empired
image and its fate was given to humiliate the monarch’s
pride and inspire afresh the sinking hope of
Again, the same distribution of the period of Israel’s
national sepulture and
corruption, the high Colossus standing as the tombstone,
with a “hic
jacet Israel,” as it
were, upon its breast, is given to Daniel in a new
vision of four beasts (B.C. 541) forty-five years after
Jerusalem’s fall, - a vision parts of which were
expanded two years earlier (B.C. 539) under the symbols
of the Ram and Goat.
The design of the beast vision was not merely to
show how differently from men God looks upon the phases
of the world power, they regarding the world-kingdoms as
the concentration of all material wealth, splendour, and
might. He
regarded them as predacious beasts, but also to allow a
further
development from the symbol of the ten horns
which would have been unnatural in the ten toes.
Careering on through Babylonian,
Medo-Persian, Greek and
Roman Empires, down to the last outcome of the Roman
power, divided, lost, and yet revived and reappearing in
the “Little
Horn,”
Gentile power shall wend its way – Israel still
underneath its feet, - until the Mountain-Stone strikes
the Image in its toes, and the Cloud-Comer smites the
Horn on its head, the one sent whirling like the chaff
to the wind, the other tossed, living,
[page 23]
to the flame, while Israel, resurgent from the grave,
appears a mighty host, and wields the empire of the
world. The
radius of prophetic vision reaches to the Second Coming
of the Son of Man.
Till then
Once more.
Still another sub-distribution of the same
stretch of time is given in the celebrated prophecy of
the “Seventy
Weeks”
(Chapter
9),
the last week
[page 24]
of which is eschatological, since it follows the
interval that follows the Roman or second destruction of
Jerusalem, consequent upon the national rejection of
Messiah “cut
off”
by the Jews, - a week divided into two equal periods of
three and one-half years, or forty-two months, or 1,260
days each, during which we have the rise, reign and ruin
of the last Antichrist, the “prince
that shall come”
(Nagid
Habba), the “Desolator”
(Meshomen),
who perishes beneath the outpoured vials of divine
wrath. It
is of supreme importance to recognize this fact.
The 70th.
of Daniel’s seventy weeks is
not
immediately sequent upon the 69th.
week at whose close Messiah
was “cut
off.”
The Jews nailed the “King
of the Jews”
to the cross, and while at the First Advent the kingdom
came in its
spiritual inward
power on the day of Pentecost – a “tasting
of the powers of the world to come,”
– it was postponed in its
outward, visible
and glorious part, as a polity and public
sovereignty, until Messiah’s Second Coming; and this
because of Israel’s unbelief.
This is the sun-clear statement of prophecy.
The 70th.
week stands in the midst of
the Yom
Yehovah, or day of the
Lord. It
precedes the Second Advent, the destruction of
Antichrist, the Resurrection, and
Thus do the visions of the empires, beasts, and
[page 27]
seventy weeks, concur harmoniously and, with their
corresponding intervals, span the course of ages from
the Babylonian time down to the
second Advent.
All, without exception, overleap the interval of
The contrary view which makes a “figure”
of the Second Advent, would
break down the whole Apocalypse of John which is built
up, line for line, on Old Testament prophecy, and the
words of our Lord in His Olivet discourse, and puts the
crown and consummation on
If we sum up, therefore, the result of our study, the
whole subject will shine out with a
clearness equal to the brilliance of the noonday.
What we have is the development, in prophecy, of
God’s kingdom on earth, by means of
POST-EXILE PROPHECY.
A word here must suffice.
Haggai sees the final glory of the Messianic
kingdom and connects it immediately with the
In the clearest manner
Zechariah
distinguishes Two Advents, two Ends, and the Millennial
Age following the second, but without
Gog and
Magog at its termination.
He sees Zion’s king coming meek and lowly riding
on a colt,
9: 9,
then pierced with cruel hands, Jehovah’s Fellow smitten
by the sword of justice,
13:7; 12: 10.
as a result of this, he sees the “Suspension
of the Covenant of God with Israel,”
not God’s Covenant of Grace, which is eternal, but the
“Suspension
of the National Covenant of God with Israel as a People,”
(Delitzsch,
Hofmann, Kohler, Auberlen,
Luthardt,
Godet, Wright,
Pember, Anderson,
Seiss,) by the breaking
of the two staves of “Beauty
and Bands,”
Zech. 11: 7-10,
[page 33]
Israel’s existence as a covenant Nation forfeited,
because of Israel’s rejection of Messiah, until the time
of Israel’s penitence, travail, reunion, and
resurrection,
Micah 5: 1-3.
Ezekiel 37: 1-28.
He sees Him again descending on the Mount of
Olives in His Majesty, with all His “holy
ones”
for
We come to
Malachi,
the last of the prophets.
As he stands nearest the First Coming of Christ,
and in the midst of deepening apostasy, the “Glory”
retreats into the background, night comes on with the
storm attending, and the picture of
PART 2
A.
THE THOUSAND YEARS
It
remains now to speak definitely of the different
times
given to the Millennial Age in the Old Testament, and
point out the passages where John found his “1,000
years.”
In this we shall admire still more the unity of
both Testaments, and learn that John understood the
prophets better than most of his expositors.
It will fasten upon us the conviction that the
New Testament “Apocalypse of
Jesus Christ” is but the Old Testament
Yom Yehovah,
in which the Lord reveals Himself for the redemption of
His people, and that the
Eschata in
that Apocalypse are only what we elsewhere find in Old
Testament predictions, in the words of Christ Himself,
and in the utterances of His Apostles; and that in all
these Eschata
Israel still holds his place, as in all the prophets,
and still waits the promised glory in the Millennial
Kingdom.
While what we have said concerning pre-exile prophecy is
true, there are yet not wanting intimations, or, if we
may so call them, “Germs”
of the later
[page
36]
development of the ages and ends we find in exile and
post-exile prophecy.
These belong to the organic nature of prophecy,
and in them we find the names of the age which John
describes as “the 1,000 years.”
Apoc. 20: 1-7.
There is a text in what is known among scholars
as the “little Apocalypse of
Isaiah,” a section consisting of
chapters 24-27.
It is found in
Isaiah 24: 21-23.
referring to
Yom Yehovah,
or Day of the Lord, in which Messiah comes to hold
judgment and restore the kingdom to Israel, the prophet
says, It shall come to pass, in that day, that the Lord
shall visit upon (punish) the Host of the High Ones on
high, and the kings of the earth on the earth.
And they shall be gathered together as prisoners
are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in prison.
And after a multitude of days –
Rov Yammin –
they shall be visited (released for final judgment).
“Then shall the moon be
confounded and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of Hosts
shall reign in Mount Zion, and the glory shall be in
presence of His ancient ones,”
The “Day of the Lord”
is, as already seen, that which closes our present age,
the day of the Second Coming of Christ.
The judgment predicted in the preceding context
is that of the proud nations, and
The time when this dejection of Satan and his legions
occurs is said to be “in that
day,” the time when Michael stands up to fight
for Israel, Dan. 12: 1;
Rev. 12: 7, the time when, in the vision of John,
“the angel, having the key of
the abyss, and a great chain in his hand, laid hold of
the dragon, the Old Serpent, which is the Devil and
Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and cast him
into the abyss, and shut and sealed it over him that he
should deceive the nations no more, until the thousand
years should be finished, after which he must be loosed
for a little season.”
Rev. 20: 1-3.
The
time of
this casting down of Satan and his hosts from their
aerial mansions to earth, is that mentioned also in
Rev. 12: 7, 8, 12, 13,
when the dragon, in great rage, having but “short
time” to work upon earth before he is sent to the
abyss, “makes war with the
woman, and with the remnant of her seed
who keep the commandments of
God, and have the testimony of Jesus.”
That is, it is the time of
But this is not all.
The imprisonment of Satan and his demonic powers
is not their final judgment.
The prophet speaks of a reckoning “after”
this. He
fixes the duration of the imprisonment at whose close
the reckoning comes.
He defines the length of that duration as a “multitude
of days,”
Rov Yamin.
He says that “after”
this long period which follows Antichrist’s overthrow
and Satan’s captivity, the final reckoning shall come.
“After a multitude of
days they shall be visited,” or as the verb here
properly means, “they shall be
looked after for final retribution.”
This implies, as is admitted, their future
unchaining and letting loose again.
“They do not escape
from prison, but are released, or let out, to meet their
final award.”
In this, all scholars agree.
To this, corresponds the account in John’s
Apocalypse, Rev. 20: 1-7,
where we read that “After the
thousand years are finished, Satan shall be loosed out
of his prison” to play his old game.
As, after his casting down from the heavenlies,
and before his imprisonment in the abyss, the “short
time” of 1,260 days was allowed him to assail the
saints, so between his release from prison and his final
casting into the lake of fire, he is allowed “a
little time” in which to muster the nations, and
make his last effort against the Kingdom of God.
This we read in the Apocalypse of John who
separates
the events Isaiah
combines
in one general expression.
The demonstration is inductively
[page
39]
complete that the definite period of time called
Rov Yamin, by
Isaiah, or the “Multitude of
days,” is identical with the period called
Chilia Ete,
or “the thousand years”
by John.
The judgments which precede this period are the same.
The “First Resurrection”
which occurs at the same time, also; the resurrection of
the faithful dead, as is clear from
Deut. 32: 39; Ps. 49: 14;
Hos. 13: 14; Isa. 25: 8; 26: 14, 19; Ezek. 37: 12; Dan.
12: 1-3; 1 Cor. 15: 54, 55; Rev. 11: 18; 20: 5.
And the time of these judgments and this
resurrection is the
Yom Yehovah
or “the Day of the Lord,”
in which the “Lord Himself”
visibly reveals His person to effect these events.
The succeeding long period of the “Multitude
of Days,” or “The
Thousand Years” is the same.
And the judgments at the close of this period are
the same.
What confirms this all the more is the fact that unless
the “visiting” of the
imprisoned Anti-christian hosts, at the end of the “Multitude
of Days” involves their resurrection – the
resurrection of the wicked unto final judgment – there
is no text in the Old Testament that does.
Isa. 24: 21, 22,
is the
only
passage; since Dan. 12: 2,
properly translated, speaks only of the resurrection of
the righteous.
But that Isaiah 24: 22
does involve the resurrection of the wicked, at the
close of the “Multitude of Days,”
is clear from this, that John interprets Isaiah’s
prophecy by his own vision of the resurrection of the
wicked at the
close of
“the thousand years”
which, as we have seen, are identical with the “Multitude
of Days.”
It stands exegetically fast, that John’s
Millennial Age is Isaiah’s “Multitude
of Days,” dating from the Second Advent; that
epoch of time which runs into the age following; the
epoch when Israel is redeemed, and nationally restored;
when Jerusalem,
[page
40]
the “beloved city”
becomes the middle point of the Millennial Kingdom
during “the thousand years,”
Rev. 20: 9, and “the
Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, even in
Jerusalem, and glory shall be in presence of His ancient
ones.”
Isa. 24: 23.
It
is the time when, as the context in Isaiah shows, the
sleeping saints of God are raised, the veil is taken off
the nations, and
It
will perhaps, assist our understanding, to see how this
exegesis of the passage in Isaiah, so little understood
by many, is supported by a scholarship than which none
better can be found.
“The binding of Satan,”
says Auberlen,
“is, like the thousand years,
peculiar to the Apocalypse, although, strictly speaking,
Isaiah prophecies the same thing in
chap. 24: 21-23.”
*
[*
Der Prophet Daniel, p. 330.]
Better still are the words of
Nagelsbach
upon the passage: “The
prophet’s eye here sees what will take place at the end
of the world.
The invincible extra-mundane heads of the worldly
powers, as well as their earthly visible organs, will,
according to the prophet, be collected as prisoners in
the pit, and shut up in it.
But not merely the binding of these angelic and
worldly powers, but their being let loose for a time, is
also announced.
Only by a brief obscure word, perhaps not seen
through by the prophet himself, does the prophet
intimate this.
We would not, perhaps, have understood this word,
if the New Testament revelation, which is nearer the
time of the fulfilment, did not throw light on this dark
point. It
declares expressly that, after a thousand years, Satan
should be loosed from his prison.
Rev. 20: 7.
Isaiah
[page
41]
uses here an indefinite announcement of time, ‘After
a multitude of days.’
And an indefinite verb, ‘pakad,’
stands here as in
Isa. 23: 17,
of a ‘visiting’
which consists in a looking again after some one who,
long time, has remained neglected.
Jer. 27: 22.
The word is here taken in the sense of a
visitation for judgment, as is seen in the place in the
revelation by John.
“The letting loose of Satan is only the prelude to his
total destruction,
Rev. 20: 10.
Then follows the last, highest, and grandest
revelation of God.
The earth becomes now what it ought originally to
have been, but was hindered from being by the sin of
man, the common dwelling place of God and men.
The heavenly
And even better still is the comment of
Weber on the
passage.
After showing that the context the prophet predicts (1)
the judgment on the earth, and plagues on men in
general, in the end time, to which the sixth seal in the
Apocalypse refers; (2) the judgment on the world-city or
Babylon of the future; (3) the final judgment on
Jerusalem and all who deal treacherously with Israel’s
remnant, he continues thus: “The
Lord will hold ‘in that
day,’ another judgment.
He will ‘visit
the Most High Ones in the height, and the kings of the
earth on the earth.’
The earthly and heavenly powers, who have
deceived mankind into apostasy, shall receive their
punishment.
They shall both be visited on that same day.
The host of
[page
42]
the high ones on high includes the angels of the nations
and kingdoms of which Daniel speaks,
10: 13, 21; 12: 1,
and John,
Rev. 12: 7.
They have exercised over the nations a
God-opposing influence, and shall be judged with them.
What the punishment of these aerial powers is we
are told.
They shall be thrust into a pit, as prisoners are into a
dungeon, and ‘after
a multitude of days,’
shall be visited.
A time comes when once more they shall be
released and allowed to begin their earlier practice of
deception.
But it shall not continue long; for, after a brief last
conflict, that
These extracts might suffice to show the meaning of the
prophet, and vindicate the Apostle John from the empty
charge made so often, that he was indebted to the
Apocryphal legends and literature of the Rabbis for his
conception of “the thousand
years!”
But there is a testimony yet more sublime than
all the rest, which ought here to be produced.
It is the comment of the childlike, deeply
devout, and gifted man,
Dr. Christian
August Crusius, Professor of Theology in Leipsic
forty years during the last century (the successful
antagonist of Leibnitz), a man of whom
Bahrdt said,
“He is the greatest
philosopher and richest thinker of our times,”
and of whom Kant
said he felt it an honour to be allowed to testify that
“he is the clearest
philosopher, and second to none in the promotion of
philosophy, in our age.”
In his work, “Decaelo
per Adventum Christi commoto,” A.D. 1757, he says, “With
the gradual development of the
From the last commentary on Isaiah, we venture to quote
the following admirable words by
Prof. Von Orelli
of Basle – words that will be welcomed by all: “Not
the angelic host ministering to Jehovah is here intended,”
says Orelli, “but the
host of the spirit world accountable to Jehovah, and
which like the possessors of earthly power, is subject
to His judgment.
The figure is that of the arrest of State
criminals who at first, without regard to the extent of
their demerit, are thrown into prison, then afterward,
at the day of judgment, are dealt with according to the
measure of their guilt.”
“The world-judgment here presented, is pictured
as a cosmical catastrophe, like the deluge, which once
swept away mankind, but yet more fruitful of good.
The earth shall altogether lose its hold, and be
broken under the weight of its sin.
The judgment shall not merely strike the rulers
of the earth, but shall reach the super-earthly powers,
also, who are not blameless before God.
Between these, and the sinful world-powers there
is a close connection, as the book of Daniel shows, and
which is here asserted through the fact that they both
are judged together.
As common criminals, these highest rulers shall
be ignominiously arrested and imprisoned in order that,
after a long time,
they may receive their sentence which shall be
pronounced by the Lord enthroned on Mount Zion, and His
glorious judgment host there assembled.
Sun and moon shall lose their splendour in token
of His great indignation against the world, while His
people, redeemed on Mount Zion, dwell in the clearest
light,
[page
47]
their elders deemed worthy to behold the glory of God;
so that, according to
chapter 4: 5, 6,
and far more gloriously than in Moses’ time,
Ex. 24: 9, 10,
they shall be permitted to enjoy, permanently, the
protection of the Shekinah-Cloud as the residence of the
Lord who has now taken to Himself the sovereignty of the
world.”
“After this world-judgment, in which Antichrist and his
hosts are destroyed, as also Satan and his legions
judged, and both imprisoned in the abyss, and Israel is
redeemed and delivered, comes the blessed time of the “Multitude
of days,”
the Millennial Age,”
on which Orelli
remarks,
“then following this judgment, comes the
Triumphlied
of the redeemed,
chap. 25,
as at
chap. 12,
an exalted echo of Israel’s song at the Red Sea,
Ex. Chap. 15.
To all nations who do homage to the Lord in the
end of the days, and undulate like swelling billows to
the holy mountain to worship there, the Lord Himself
will prepare a wondrous feast of joy.
It shall be to them a divine surprise when now He
takes away the covering which, long enough already, has
veiled the eyes of the nations.
They shall behold Him as the Dispenser of all
life and grace, and taste how good He is to those who
bend before His majesty.
“By a second act of almighty love and power, not less
miraculous, He will abolish death with all the woe that
wrung from man uncounted tears, and lift the curse
which, from the beginning, has weighed so heavily upon
the human race.
Here is, indeed, the end of the ways of God with
men, of which the New Covenant in Christ, the Risen One,
has unveiled the aim.
As the remnant of Israel, so also the remainder
of mankind, spared through the judgment on the nations,
shall be destined to unexpected blessedness by Him the
All-Merciful
[page
48]
One, and this shall be, of itself, the most beautiful
apology for Israel, while the pride of Gentile power,
the odious rival of God’s people, shall be crushed
forever.”
And in conclusion, on
chapter 26, the last of the “Little
Apocalypse of Isaiah,” he gives us this: “The
songs of victory which first we heard far off in
24: 14,
and were next intoned from
Such is the exposition of the contents, in part, of the
“Little
Apocalypse”
of Isaiah, by
Orelli – a picture of the World Judgment at the
Second Advent and of the Millennial Age, the “Multitude
of Days,”
the “long
time”
following that judgment; a period of blessedness opened
by the restoration of Israel, the judgment on Antichrist
and Satan, the resurrection of the
faithful
dead, and the revelation of the glory of Christ to the
nations, the companion piece of John’s Apocalypse,
chapters 19
and
20.
It is not possible to place the Millennial Age
before the coming of Christ, except by an open
contradiction of the Word of God.
B.
EZEKIEL
38.
An exile passage also claims our attention, in proof
that “the
thousand years”
of John’s Apocalypse are found in the Old Testament
itself. It
is the strangely introduced yet significant prediction
concerning “Gog
and Magog,”
in
Ezek. 38: 8.
It comes upon the reader suddenly, as an
independent prediction of judgment due to Gog “after
many days,”
and stands isolated, as it were, in the text.
It seems to be a parenthetic expression.
It is a brief oracle, and yet it is the one word
on which John’s whole representation of the order of the
Eschata is
pivoted, in the twelth chapter of his Apocalypse.
“After
many days
– Rabbim Yamim
–
thou shalt be visited.”
The verb (tippakedh)
its tense form and import are the same as in
Isaiah 24: 22; 29: 6,
not merely a testing by divine judgment, but a
destruction.
Smend’s
rendering “Thou
shalt be
mustered,”
and the rendering “Thou
shalt be
commissioned,”
[page
50]
are insufficient.
The verb imports here judicial visitation for
destruction.
What the prophet here predicts is Satan’s last
attempt, through Gog and Magog, in the latter years,
against the
The
time of
the visitation on Gog is said to be “after”
these “many
days,”
which belong to “the
later years.”
(1) The
terminus a quo of these “many
years”
is Israel’s restoration, conversion to Christ as a
people and a nation, and the repossession of their land;
the epoch of the resurrection of their faithful dead, an
event included in the promise made
37: 12,
as is proved by
Deut. 32: 39; Ps. 17: 15; 49: 14, 15; Hos. 13: 14; Isa.
25: 6-9; 26: 14, 19; Dan. 12: 1-3,
all of which passages refer directly to this same epoch,
and fore-announce the literal resurrection of Israel’s
faithful dead,
[page
51]
and non-resurrection of the wicked “at
that time,”
and “in
that day.”
All this we have in
chapter 37.
It is the
terminus a quo.
It is the same epoch, also, of the judgment upon
Antichrist and his armies, and upon Satan and his
angels, that we find in
Isaiah 24: 21, 22; Daniel 12: 1; Revelation 12: 7-9; 20:
1-3.
(2) The period, or age, that follows this
terminus a quo
is plainly the
Rabbim Yamim or “many
days,”
whose glory, peace and blessedness are described in
chapters 40-48,
which are the expansion of
38: 1-28, and of what Isaiah has predicted; Isa. 2: 2-5;
11: 6-9; 24: 23 25: 6-9; 40: 1-22; 61: 4-11; 62: 2-12;
65: 17-25; 66: 20-23.
They are the period “after”
Israel has been “gathered
out from many nations,”
“brought
back from the sword,”
is “dwelling
safely, and at rest, in unwalled villages having neither
bars nor gates,”
– God alone their protection, - abundant in wealth and
all possessions.
Exekiel 38: 8-12, 14.
They are the period of the new indwelling glory
in New Israel,
chapters 40-53;
of the New Service following the entrance of the Glory
in the Temple, which He makes the place of His throne
and of the soles of His feet,
44-46;
of the life and healing to the land from the flowing of
the temple waters; and of the splendour to the city
whose name is
Jehovah Shammah, “The
Lord is there!”
47-48. (3)
The
terminus ad quem of these “many
days”
is expressly said to be the judgment on Gog, precisely
as John makes the judgment on Gog to be the close of “the
thousand years.”
Rev. 20: 7.
“After
many days thou shalt be visited.”
The
termini in
Isa. 24: 22,
and
Ezek. 39: 8,
are, therefore, identical.
The passages are parallel, supplementary, and
mutually explanatory.
The character of the “visitation”
at the end of the “many
days”
is the same in both.
The parties
[page
52]
“visited”
are different, but this is due to the fact that
Ezekiel’s prophecy is an advance upon Isaiah’s word, and
brings to light new things occurring at the same time
with those of which Isaiah speaks.
In Isaiah, the parties visited after “many
days”
are Satan and his angels let loose from their
imprisonment, and the Anti-Christian wicked raised from
their graves for the last judgment.
In Ezekiel, they are the living nations outlying
on the extreme borders of the glorified
If we turn to John’s Apocalypse we shall find his
Eschata
concerning
Amid the vast variety in the unveiling of the word and
plan of God, the unity remains the same from age to age.
The ends and ages are the same in the New as in
the Old Testaments.
The Advents there are the Advents here.
Antichrist there is Antichrist here.
Gog there is Gog here.
The judgments there are the judgments here. The
resurrections there are the resurrections here. The
power, the kingdom, and the glory there are the power,
the kingdom, and the glory here.
And the times of the Gentiles first, and the
times of
In John, we have the period of “the
1,000 years.”
Their commencing date, or
terminus a quo,
is identified with that in
Isa. 24: 22,
and
Ezekiel 38: 8.
The
Eschata that open “the
1,000 years,”
prove this.
We have (1) the gathering, sealing, conversion, and
restoration of
Chapters 10, 11,
and part of
12,
introduce us to Ezekiel’s
From what has been said it must be clear that the
So Schroeder speaks.
And we add that, if indeed, as is the fact, the
binding of Satan
precedes
the judgment on Gog; if it occurs at the Second Coming
of Christ when the resurrection from the dead takes
place; if Israel’s political resurrection precedes this
personal one; if “Leolam,”
“forever,”
is used in its qualified sense as equivalent to “the
thousand years”
of John, the “long
time”
or “outstanding”
period, next preceding the consummation of the kingdom
and the world; if all this is conceded, then it is hard
to see how any who accept these conclusions could find
relief from their force, by resort to the allegorical,
spiritual, or symbolical theories of interpretation.
The
relations
of the events must, at least, remain the same, and
the “Many
Days”
must come in
between
the Second Coming of Christ and the judgment on Gog.
If, moreover, we allegorize one event, to be
consistent we must allegorize all.
This wrecks the whole prediction, and denies the
vast body of literal Scripture elsewhere with which it
stands connected.
Riehm,
as an exegete, though seeking to avoid the literal
interpretation of prophecy in reference to
Clearly, then, even according to
Riehm’s
view, the
[page
59]
“many
days”
in Ezekiel, are the period of Israel’s blessedness in
the Messianic Kingdom on earth, and are bounded at their
opening, by the “first
judgments”
which bring deliverance to Israel and the establishment
of Israel in the Messianic kingdom on earth, and at
their close are bounded by the “destruction
of Gog.”
The period between these different and separated
judgments, which stand apart “rather
widely,”
is a “long
time,”
when “a
thousand years,”
and Micah, Ezekiel and John, herein agree.
The millennium announced by John is only what the
prophets, pre-exile and exile, have foretold, and the
duration of which they measure by the “many
days”
between Israel’s introduction, by means of the Messianic
judgment, into the kingdom established in the Holy Land,
and the final overthrow of Gog.
Micah, as well as Isaiah, forecasts “the
thousand years”
of John.
Not before, but only “after
the thousand years,”
when Gog is judged, is the ultimate glory of the
kingdom. In
other words, the view of the
total End-Time,
in the widest and most comprehensive scope, as seen by
the prophets, and embracing the perfect victory of
Messiah for Israel’s complete deliverance and complete
establishment of the kingdom of glory on earth, in the
latter days, is represented as that of two great acts or
phases of judgment between which lie the “many
days”
of Ezekiel which are “the
thousand years”
of John. In
other words again, the “End
of the Days”
of which Ezekiel and Isaiah speak, in the texts already
referred to, is the end of “the
thousand years,”
the “end”
which Paul has in view, in
1 Cor. 15: 34,
when Messiah’s victory is complete, and, all rule,
authority and power being put down, and
[page
60]
death itself destroyed, the kingdom is surrendered to
the Father, and God is all in all.
1 Cor 15: 24-26.
The harmony and unity of Isaiah, Micah, Ezekiel,
Paul and John, herein, are both demonstratable and
indestructible.
Their testimony to the location of the
C.
LEOLAM.
FOREVER.
In
the extract from Schroeder, quoted above, it was said
that the term “Leolam,”
“forever,”
Ezek. 37: 25, 26, 28,
applied to the duration of the times of
A better knowledge of the
usus loquendi,
and of the term “forever,”
would render this, like many other similar objections,
impossible.
The
Schroeder is right, therefore, as are Kliefoth, Oehler,
Kuper, and many others, when saying that Ezekiel’s
Leolam,
Forever, in
37: 25, 26, 28,
is the equivalent of John’s
Chilia Ete,
or “one
thousand years,”
in
Rev. 20: 1-7.
Isaiah’s everlasting age concealed in its bosom
all the relative ages of the great development, and
their
termini,
even as Joel’s prophecy was “generic”
and contained the two judgments of the double end, the
judgment on antichrist and the nations, and the judgment
on Gog. And
in the whole development, all things are connected with
temporal and terrestrial relations.
From first to last, even in the New Testament,
the ages and the kingdom of the heavens are associated
with our planet.
Nowhere in the Old Testament, as nowhere in the
New, can our popular idea of “an
end to the world,”
as the
terminus
where Time and Eternity meet, or Time passes into
Eternity, and “our
planet is no more,”
to be found.
Such conceptions are unbiblical, Manichean,
Origenistic, Shakesperean and pessimistic.
The “hills
of Olam”
abide for ever and forever.
Materiality is glorified, not annihilated, in
God’s Kingdom.
The creation is recreated.
A new heaven and earth supplant the old, and this
begins
with the “many
days,”
“the
one thousand years.”
D.
HOSEA 3: 4.
Another expression, similar to those already noted, is
found on Hosea when predicting God’s watchful care over
Israel in their dispersion and lonliness; -
[page
65]
the time of
Lo Ammi and
Lo Ruhamam –
“Not my people,” and “Not
my beloved;” the time when harlot Israel,
divorced from God, yet separated from idolatry, is still
in desolation and concealment and providentially
preserved for God.
Hos. 1: 6, 9, 10; 2:
20-23.
The words of punishment and grace are the alike
remarkable.
“Thou shalt abide for me many
days –
Yamin Rabbim.
Thou shalt not play the
healot.
Thou shalt not be any man’s wife.
So will I also be for thee!”
God’s pledge
to the sinful
Jewish Church, to apostate
If we ask what these two historic days are, we can only
say again, with
Delitzsch, “The
prophecy refers to the people, after the second day of
whose death a resurrection day follows.”
Rom. 11: 15.
“The
two days of their death are, in the history of
fulfilment, the Assyrian and Babylonian exile, and the
Roman exile, in which the Jewish people still are.”
[*ibid,
p. 62.]
That is, the first day of Israel’s national death
is the Old Testament
[page
67]
period of Israel’s destruction as a nation, the people
carried captive, Jerusalem destroyed, the Temple gone,
the land depopulated, and the outward kingdom blotted
out; the second day is the New Testament period, with
the like catastrophe repeated, the first day reaching to
the First Coming of Christ, beginning with a new
dispensation, the Roman or second day reaching to the
Second Coming, the total period being the time of
Israel, as a nation, in the Valley of Dry Bones, the
Monarchy-Colossus still standing unstruck.
Then comes the “third,”
the resurrection day, in whose “morning”
What Hosea gives us here, at the beginning of the third
day, is precisely what Moses gives us,
Deut. 32: 39;
and David gives us,
Ps. 49: 14, 15;
and Isaiah gives us,
25: 8; 26: 19;
and Daniel gives us,
12: 1-3;
and Ezekiel gives us,
37: 1-28;
and John’s Apocalypse gives us,
11: 11, 18; 12: 5; 10: 11; 20: 4-6.
[page
68]
Then after these mighty events that mark the end
of our present age, or end of Israel’s second day of
national death, comes the Millennial Age of Israel’s
blessedness, pictured beautifully, as the times of
perennial reviving and refreshing, the age of Israel’s
Dew, and Blossoming, and Lily growth, and deepening
roots like the Cedar tree, and spreading branches like
the olive tree; the age of blessing to the Nations, when
they, too, dwelling under Israel’s shadow, shall revive
as the corn, and bloom as the vine, and be fragrant as
wine of Lebannon; and Israel, all holy to the Lord, will
have no more to do with idols, but, unwithering, like
the fir tree, bear holy fruit to God.
Hosea 14: 4-8.
The demonstration, then, is clear, inductively. Hosea’s
“many
days”
reach from the Assyrian captivity down to the Second
Advent of Christ.
During this whole period
These two vast periods, taken together, cover,
therefore, the whole time from the Assyrian captivity to
the Last Judgment and the final New Heaven and Earth.
The age next before us is that of the “Third
Day,”
the “Sabbatism”
of the world.
Not at the First Coming of Christ was Hosea’s
prediction fulfilled, as is clear
[page
69]
from John’s Apocalypse, where, under the sixth
vial, the Euphrates, beyond which the ten tribes roved
into concealment among the nations, is “dried
up”
to make way for the return of Israel, under the care of
the princes from the sun rising.
Rev. 16: 12; 2 Kings 17: 6; Isa. 11: 16; 24: 16; 66: 19,
20; 41: 2, 25; Zeph. 3: 10.
It is true that the terms “Afterward”
and the “Last
Days”
are standing eschatological formulae for the whole
Messianic time covered by Isaiah’s everlasting age, as
well as for the time next preceding the “Yom
Yehovah,” or “Day
of the Lord;”
and that, as is clear from Joel and Peter, they include
the first as well as the second appearing of Messiah.
!sa. 2: 2; Joel 2: 28; Acts 2: 17;
the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, as
well as the still future outpouring predicted by Paul.
Rom. 11: 27,
and parallels;
Isa. 59: 21; Ezek. 36: 24, 25;
and both which are wrapped up in Zechariah’s oracle,
Zech. 12: 10-14; 13: 1, 6.
Compare
Rev. 1: 7.
But it is equally true that whatever conversion
of Jews occurred on the day of Pentecost, or of any
Israelites since, it is only the initial, not the final,
redemption of that people, since Israel, as a nation, is
still cast away, not gathered, their house desolate, and
their land still trodden under Gentile feet.
The “afterness
of the days”
is the end-time at the second coming of Christ.
It refers to the epoch of
E.
MOSES.
But Moses demands a hearing.
The Prophets have said nothing on this great
matter that even Moses had not already said before them.
Let it be enough, just here, to say that Moses
himself defines the time during which
Listen to the “Song
of Moses,”
Deut. 32: 39-43.
It predicts
[*
“ANI-HU” (I AM HE) is the covenant name of Christ, in
the Old Testament,
Deut. 32: 39; Isa. 43: 10; 46: 3, 5; 48: 12.
It is the name of the Second Person of the
Trinity (1) making Himself equal in Essence with God
(HE), while yet asserting a distinct Personality.
It is the consubstantiality of the Son with the
Father, of the Word of God, and is the ground of John’s
Logos doctrine.
John 1: 1.
He who here speaks, to Moses, is the personal “Word
of God,”
who appears as the diademed Rider on the White Horse,
Rev. 19: 11,
and as the Angel of the Covenant, or
Maleach Habberith,
coming, the second time to Israel, to wake His people
out of the Valley of Dry Bones, and appearing with
solar-face, rainbow-crown, His shoulders in cloud, and
His feet in pillars of fire,
Rev. 10: 1,
and swearing the same words to John that He swore to
Moses. It
was ANI-HU who dwelt in the Pillar of Cloud by day, and
Fire by night.
It was ANI –HU who spoke to Moses in the “Bush.”
It was ANI-HU HAMMIDDABBER, I AM HE,
the Speaking One,
a motto Stier has taken for his “Words
of Jesus.”
It was a name asserting the deity, eternity,
personality, majesty, and real presence and glory of
Christ, in Old Testament History.
ANI-HU is the “Alpha
and Omega”
in the Apocalypse, Isaiah’s “Immanu-EL”
or “With-us-God.”
The Christ who talked to Moses upon the same
subject, and in reference to the same time.]
F.
THE PSALTER.
Nor is the Psalter silent.
All the sweet singers of
What is the
97th. Psalm
but a catalogue of the nations whose individuals are put
on the burgess roll as born citizens of metropolitan
G.
SUMMING UP.
If we sum up the results of our investigation, we shall
find that the Spirit of Prophecy has furnished us
various time-designations which span the whole
development of the
Rov Yamin.
Multitude of Days.
Isa. 24: 22.
Rabbin Yamin.
Many days.
Ezek. 38: 8.
Yom Hashshelishi.
Third Day.
Hos. 3: 4, 5.
His Days.
Psa. 72: 7
Leolam.
Forever.
Ezek. 37: 25, 26, 28.
Chila Ete.
Thousand Years.
Rev. 20: 1-7.
All descriptive of the same period of time, bounded
[page
77]
on each side by the same events, the period
between
the Second Advent and the destruction of Gog, or
between
the binding and loosing of Satan.
It is important to observe that the “Many
Days”
of Hosea, are a very different period from the “Many
Days”
of Ezekiel, and the “Multitude
of Days”
of Isaiah.
The former are the “Times
of the Gentiles,”
the times of the Colossus, the Four Beasts,
And what we find further, is that no prophet of the Old
Testament gives a complete, but only a partial picture
of the End-Time, even as neither Christ, nor any Apostle
does, but that the work of John, under the guidance of
the Spirit of Prophecy, was to
combine
the
[page
78]
Eschata of Joel, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah, Isaiah,
Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah; in short, the Eschata of all
the prophets,
and arrange them
in their temporal order and succession, supplementing by
one prophet the partial picture of the End drawn by
another, until all the Eschata fall into their places,
as they shall occur in history, so furnishing to us one
grand tableau of the End Time.
This is what the Holy Ghost did with the seer in
the “isle
that is called
H
It does seem strange that any student of God’s word
should doubt, for one moment, the truth that blazes
everywhere so clearly in the Old as well as the New
Testaments, viz., that the Second Coming of Christ
precedes
the Millennium.
And it does seem criminal that such an
unreasoning prejudice should exist in the minds of any
against the use of the term as Spiritual as are the
terms “Baptism,” “Baptist,” “Episcopalian,”
“Presbyterian;” words which the objectors themselves
have chosen to consecrate as the names of their several
denominations, and in which they glory.
How unreasonable is man’s opposition, even to
God’s own word!
“Man
would,”
as Bengel
says, “take
the very words of God out of His own mouth!”
We coin the word “Millennialist,” in Latin, from
the words “Mille” and “annos,” which are simply the
Roman equivalents for the Greek “Chilia Ete” of John in
Rev. 20: 1-7,
the English translation of which is a “thousand
Years.”
It is Scriptural.
We coin the word “Chiliast” from these same
inspired words.
It is as Scriptural a term, as is “Baptist,”
[page
80]
“Presbyterian,” or “Episcopalian,” or “Christian,” and
as “Orthodox” as any of these!
It means that he who wears it believes that the “Day
of the Lord”
in which Christ comes
precedes
the Millennium.
The Advent is
before
the Millennium.
That is, he is a “Pre-Millennialist.”
It denies what the Scriptures everywhere deny,
viz., the fiction of a
pre-advent
Millennium.
With equal justice, we might coin the word
Ravyamist
from the Hebrew terms “Rov
Yamin” and “Rabbim
Yamim,” In Hosea, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, there used to
denote the same truth.
Every prophet was a
Ravyamist.
He believed in a period of time, “after”
Messiah’s Coming to judge the Nations, in which Israel,
re-gathered, redeemed, restored, renewed, resurrected,
and renationalized, should enjoy the Messianic glory in
the kingdom on earth – a period of time called “Many
Days,”
or as John has it, a “thousand
years,”
and prior to the Last Judgment and the final New Heaven
and earth.
And Christ Himself was a “Ravyamist,” or, as
Auberlen
somewhere truly says, “Jesus
was a Chiliast.”
All the Apostles were the same.
All the early Apologists for Christianity were
the same.
Can we imagine when we hear such a man as
Delitzsch
say, “I
am a Chiliast,”
and “Chiliasm
was the faith of the early Church,”
and when also we hear the greatest modern patristic
scholar, Harnack,
say, “Chiliasm
is inseparably associated with the gospel, and this is
its defence,”
that these men are either heretics or foolish?
On the contrary, that great martyr and scholar, “Irenaeus
the Great,”
like “Justin
the most learned man of his time,”
catalogued and held as “Promoters
of heresy,”
and even of “blasphemy,”
all who denied the Chiliastic faith which, in their day,
was the “test
of an orthodox church.”
It is a proposition no honest critic dare deny
[page
81]
that, if
the early church, having such teachers as Irenaeus,
Justin, and others of the same apostolic faith and
influence, and knowing what Hosea, Isaiah, Micah,
Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah, John, our Lord, and His
Apostles, had taught, had
not been
Chiliastic in her creed, she
ought to
have been so, and her failure to have been so would have
convicted her as recreant to what Moses and the
Prophets, and Christ and His Apostles, had revealed of
the course of history, and the outcome of God’s kingdom
on earth.
It was impossible, however, that, standing next to
Christ and His Apostles, and with the Psalms and
Prophets in her hand, the Jew nationally cast away yet
only for a time, and the Gentile erect on Israel’s
grave, and even persecuting the church itself, she could
have been anything else than she was in her creed, and
the proof is perfect, and increases more and more, with
every fresh investigation of the early history of the
church, that,
only by means of apostasy from the Word of God, did she
surrender for the sake of opulence and power, money and
prosperity, extension in the empire, and freedom from
fagot and flame, that blessed truth whose defence from
Moses and John, God has made the mark of a faithful, a
suffering, and a witnessing church.
And, surely, if the pious Hebrew held the Hope of
Christ’s Coming to judge the nations, restore Israel,
and set up His Kingdom on earth, as the only Hope for
the world’s redemption, the only way by which gentile
politics and power could be overthrown, the Antichrist
destroyed, and the
faithful
dead awakened to
share the promise of the kingdom, much more ought it to
be our Hope, bound up as it is with our own
deliverance, as well as the deliverance of Israel, and
the final glory of the world.
What a stupendous absurdity, in flat
contradiction to
[page
82]
every prophet, that the Millennial Age will come prior
to the “Yom
Yehovah,”
or “Day
of the Lord,”
in which Messiah appears for
I
A closing word is demanded as to
A glance is enough to confirm this.
John has nothing here the prophets have not.
He has nothing Christ has not, for the Apocalypse
was given him of God, and does not mean a literary
production, or book, but the “Revelation
of Jesus Christ”
(Rev.
1: 1),
as He comes the second time, in the clouds of heaven (Rev.
1: 7),
and to His Covenant people, Israel of Old Testament
Prophecy, to fulfil the word of His promise to them, to
deliver them, to restore their state, and give them the
kingdom. He
comes, indeed, to judge the professing Church and the
world, but He comes to Israel as the “Malakh
Habberith” or “Angel
of the Covenant”
the “Lord
Himself;”
and “Who
may abide the day of His Coming, or stand when He
appeareth?”
(Rev.
7: 17; 7: 1-8,
Malachi 3: 2-4).
John has nothing, the Apostles have not.
His Eschatology is the same as that of Peter and
Paul. Peter
binds
If we combine all these in one picture,
what we shall get as a result is Antichrist destroyed,
Israel redeemed, the
[faithful]
saints raised, the Inheritance glorified, all at the
Second Coming of Christ, and the Millennial Interval
between
that Coming of Christ to
assume
the kingdom and the remote End when He shall have
surrendered
the Kingdom of God, even the Father, having abolished
all rule, and all authority and power, and annihilated
Hades and Death, “that
God may be all in all.”
1 Cor. 15: 24-28.
In short, we get precisely what John has given us
in the Apocalypse, with this difference, that, whereas
Peter and Paul discuss the points separately, John
discusses nothing, but combines all in a total tableau
of the End-Time, glowing under the highest light of the
inspiration of the Holy Ghost.
And so
[page
87]
will every student of God’s word find it, if only he
comes to that word with an humble heart, free from
prejudice, and false theories of interpretation, and
prays that God will open his eyes to see light in God’s
light alone, accounting all other light as but darkness.
Blessed book is the Bible, the living word of the
living God, one word from beginning to end, the work of
one infinite mind, full of the wonders of wisdom, love
and power!
And from Moses to John, the Eschatology is one, because
God’s plan is one, the “Thousand
Years”
in John, following the Second Advent, and preceding the
Last Judgment, being the very Interval Paul himself has
acknowledged in
1 Cor. 15: 24,
and none other than that period of time, called by
Hosea, the “Third
Day,”
by Isaiah a “Multitude
of Days,”
and by Ezekiel “Many
Days”
– in every case, in both Old and New Testaments,
associated with the Glory of Israel in the Kingdom, and
the redemption of the Nations, accomplished at the
Second Coming of Christ.
The holy penmen mutually supplement each other.
The Lord
open the eyes of His Church to see it, love it, and
teach it, and to Him be the glory forever.
-------
NOTES
[Selected by the editor from Nathaniel West’s
“Supplementry Discussions.]
1.
“Olam,”
“Ever.”
The word “Olam,”
“Ever,”
does not, of itself, and by fixed necessity, always
denote the annihilation of time, but as frequently, in
Hebrew usage, denotes simply unbroken continuance up to
a special epoch in history, or to a certain natural
termination.
It has a relative as well as an absolute sense, a
finite as well as an infinite length.
It means “Here”
as well as “Beyond,”
and applies to a kingdom that comes to “an
End,”
as well as to one that has “no
End.”
For this reason, a great World-Period, or Age,
are called “Olam,”
and in World-Periods, or Ages, are called “Olammim,”
and in order to express infinite time, the reduplication
is used, “Ages
of Ages,”
“Olammim
Olammim.”
It is therefore a false conclusion to say that
because the term “Le
Olam,” “Forever,”
is applied to the Messianic kingdom, therefore the
Hebrews contradicted themselves, when they assigned to
it limits at the same time.
Messiah’s kingdom is Temporal and also Eternal,
and in both senses,
Olamic.
The bondsman’s free covenant to serve his master
lasted “forever,”
but that only meant “till
Jubilee.”
The Levitical economy
was established to be “forever,”
but that only meant till “the
time of reformation.”
The Christian Church is “forever,”
in its present form, but that only means “till
He comes.”
True to this view, the Jewish Teachers ever held
to a
*4th
Ezra, VII. 48
**Baruch,
XLVIII.
MILLENNIAL, NOT ETERNAL
That the Millennial Age is not the
Final Age
is made clear in both Testaments.
The kingdom of 1,000 years stands in relation to
an Age beyond its own limits, the
Endless
Age. It is
a false construction if the word “Until”
in the expression “Until
the 1,000 years are finished,”
Rev. 20: 3, 5, 7
to say that the
end of these
years is the end of the
kingdom of Christ,
or of the blessedness of Israel, or of the Risen Saints’
reign with Christ, or of the distinction between Israel
and the Nations, or between the Holy City and the
outside dwellers.
Even after the Judgment of the “Great
White Throne,”
and the surrender of the Messianic Kingdom to the
father, the priestly co-regency of Christ and His saints
still exist.
There is still a dominion of Christ and His
Bride, “the
2. MODE OF LIFE AMONG THE RISEN.
As to the mode of intercourse between the glorified and
un-glorified, there are many vain speculations.
We only “know in part,”
and time will bring the answer to our various
askings.
The whole discussion binds itself to our
conceptions of the Resurrection-Body, - what it needs,
and what its functions, are.
From the very first, the Jewish teachers were
embarrassed here, and much divided in their views.
The later Jews are not more
clear.
Saadias
and
Maimonides
maintained that “they
who rise in the resurrection,
eat, drink
and
marry,
and their bodily members serve them, for these are not
in vain and they die again.”*
It was an ancient view, and founded on the
cases of the resurrection of the son of the
Shunamite, and the son of
the widow of Zarepta, “both
whom,” says
Saddis,
“ate and drank and doubtless
took wives.”
On the other hand,
Bechai
and
Abarnanel
maintained that “they who
rise in the resurrection
neither eat, nor
drink, nor marry, for there is no further need
of these, after the resurrection,
nor do the risen
righteous ones return to dust again.
They have their bodies, in which the fleshly
functions have ceased, as in the case of Moses, when in
the Mount with God.”
** Our Lord corrects
both these views when, confuting to the Sadducees, He
replies that “they
who shall be
accounted worthy to obtain that world (Olam
Habba)
and
the
resurrection
out from the dead,
- [therefore, they cannot
return again to the death state and remain in Hades
until the millennium has ended, - Ed.] -
neither marry nor are given in marriage,
NEITHER CAN THEY
DIE ANY MORE; for they are equal to the angels,
- [that is, able to
ascend to
heaven or
descend
upon earth; and therefore able to rule in
both
spheres during the Millennium, - Ed.] -
and are sons of God, being sons of the
RESURRECTION.”
Luke 20: 35, 36.
Saadis
and Ben
Maimon said that the
Risen “eat,
drink, marry, die.”
Bechai,
Abarbanel, Talmud and
Cabbala,
aver they “neither
marry nor are given in marriage, neither can they die
any more,” but says nothing as the
“eating” or “drinking.”
What he teaches is that the children of the
resurrection are as the sexless angels.
Beyond the fact that Lazarus ate after his
resurrection, John 12: 1, 2,
remains the fact that our Lord Himself,
after His
resurrection, had a tangible and visible material body,
already free from the limitations of His former
humiliation, and possessed of resurrection-life, and yet
“ate” food in Jerusalem
and at the shore of Galilee,
Luke 24: 30, 41, 42; John
21: 12, and not only promised to the Twelve to “drink
of the fruit of the vine, new in the Kingdom of God,”
Matt. 26: 29, but
“appointed” them “a Kingdom,”
in which, said He, “ye may eat
and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on 12
thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel.”
Luke 22: 29, 30.
We can grossly carnalize
this, on the one hand, and as ethereally spiritualize it
on the other.
The fact remains that the Resurrection kingdom is
“ON
THE EARTH,” and that the “children
of the resurrection” have material bodies,
adapted to spiritual uses, and free from certain
physical functions.
While we must shun an Ebonite Chiliasm on the one
hand, we must equally avoid a Gnostic Chiliasm on the
other, and not rob corporeity of its rights in the
resurrection, or dissolve, under the idea of “Glory,”
the resurrection body into a gauzy texture ballooning in
the sky.
Such a
conception is foreign to the whole word of God.
The risen ones shall have a human body, like
their Lord’s, know each
other, and be known, and live in relation to the saints
UPON
the earth, and to the Nations.
Their mode of immorality and intercourse are not
revealed.
It is enough for us to know that not more difficult is
the faith of Christ’s companionship with His disciples
during the 40 days next
following
His resurrection.
It is enough to know that Death is robbed of his
empire, and that, as
Professor
Milligan himself admits in his able work on the
resurrection, our lord’s body was a true spiritual,
glorified body, immediately upon His rising, and not
first after His ascension, and that our bodies are to
take the form and equality of His.
Equal to the “angels”
we shall be, in one respect.
Like “Him,” we
shall be, in another.
As
both, in
all.
“Flesh
and blood” cannot inherit God’s Kingdom,
because “corruption”
cannot “inherit
incorruption,”
1
Cor. 15: 50.
And yet “flesh
and bones,” pervaded by the Spirit, and
made incorruptible, is what our Lord’s body was in His
resurrection, Luke 24: 26,
a “glorious body,” and “like”
which – not “equal” to
which – ours shall be at His coming.
Phil. 3: 21.
In such
bodies, the Risen Saints shall have fellowship with the
unrisen in the Millennial
Age.
For the rest, our curiosity must be restrained, and will
be, if we listen to the Angel’s voice to Daniel, “Go
thy way, Daniel, till the End shall be!”
Inquire no more.
Be content with what is already spoken.
Leave the unrevealed
future to God.
Sure we are of one thing.
“We shall behold God’s
face in righteousness,” and “be
satisfied when we awake with His likeness!”
Ps. 17: 15.
Even so,
Lord Jesus!
*Eisenmenger.
Eut.
Jud. II. 943.
**
Ibid 495.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
. . . “The Lord’s Advent is not to annihilate the
existence of the Nations, as such, but to overthrow
their politics and rule, and scatter both like chaff,
and then transfer the sovereignty to
(1) The Risen saints –
[ That is, the ‘faithful’
dead or the “accounted
worthy” from
both
Testaments, for, “apart
from us they
(the afore mentioned Old
Testament saints – Ed.)
- should not be made perfect,”
Heb. 11: 40.
– Ed.].
(2) New-Born Israel
in the flesh,
(3) The Favoured Nations
in the flesh.
. . . Such is the clear representation of the whole word
of God.
Earth is beginning to realize the “pattern
shown in the Mount,” and prepare for the full
accomplishment in the final “new
Heaven and Earth,” at the close of the 1000
years. The
Nations are the Fore-Court of the Temple; Israel and
their Holy Land, are the Holy Place; the Holy City and
the Risen BRIDE are the Holiest of All; no veil
existing.
To the perfect realization of this, all things are
tending.
The invisible is the source of all Realities, and what
has been
in history is the Beginning and Type of what
will be,
only in greater perfection.
David’s kingdom shall be restored, and among the
“sure mercies” to David
is the gathering of Israel, and the resurrection of the
faithful [dead] to enjoy that kingdom together; and
therein all Christians [whom
our Lord will ‘account
worthy’ – Ed.]
shall share, at Messiah’s Second coming. . .
. . . as to the alleged “incongruity
of the glorified among the
unglorified,” and “how
they will live,” and “what
they will do,” and “what
their condition,” and “daily
occupation,” – questions revived by
Kliefoth,
and repeated by others, though raised and answered ages
ago; and, further, “will there
be flies, and bees, and mosquitoes, in the Millennial
Age,” as still others have sportingly asked; and,
yet others again, as to “the
habit of nature” – they all belong to that same
unbelieving spirit, and cast of mind, that made a
Socinus, some Schoolmen, and
later profane wits, inquire “whether
our Lord rose from the grave with His digestive organs?”
“Whether,” as Cleopatra wanted to know, “the
Saints will rise with raiment”?
and “whence
came the raiment our Lord wore when He rose?” and
so, conclude, from all, to a denial of the literal
resurrection of the body.
Such inquisition, it becomes us to repel, with
force, and rebuke into silence, holding, in spite of a
thousand questions all men can ask and none can answer,
in reference to every doctrine of Scripture, that
it is far more
Christian to believe what God has spoken, and give him
the glory, as “Doer of
wonderous things,”
than it is to idealize the prophecy, to suit our vain
thoughts, and land ourselves at last into open rejection
of the Word of God.
The Lord knoweth the
thoughts of the wise that they are vain.
Painful to the last degree is the ever-recurring
style of objection we meet with in certain writers, as “It
is
unreasonable?”
“How
remote from reasonable brobability!”
It is “Inconceivable,”
“incredible,”
and “far
from probable,” and everything the mere natural
man can object to the supernatural.
We dismiss it all with the divine words, “O
man, who art thou that repliest
against God?”
“Should it be a
marvellous thing in my eyes, saith
the Lord?”
“The zeal of the Lord of
Hosts will perform this.”
“The mouth of the Lord
hath spoken it!”
“It is the utterance of
Jehovah, Doer of these things!”
It must be so, as God has said.
As to the Risen Saints, we know what their
perfection is, and how near they are to Christ.
It is
the righteous man raised from the dead, who is
the perfect man, ordained to dominion, in the Age to
come.”
-------
THOUSAND YEARS IN BOTH TESTAMENTS
By
NATHANIEL WEST
PART 1
It is a very common opinion, widely spread throughout
Christendom, and in most cases believed to be true, that
“the thousand years” of which John speaks in the
Apocalypse, Rev. 20: 1-7, are mentioned nowhere else in
the sacred Scriptures.
The doctrine of a millennial kingdom on earth,
introduced by the advent of Christ in His glory, is a
Jewish fable without support from the word of God.
A deeper study of the sacred volume dissipates
this false prejudice and reveals the fact that, not only
are “the thousand years” of which John speaks found
everywhere in both Testaments, but that next to the
eternal state, the millennial blessedness of God’s
people on earth, and of the nations, is the one high
point in all prophecy, from Moses to John, the bright,
broad tableland of all eschatology.
The prejudice against the study of a theme so
sublime and far-reaching, and occupying so much space in
the revelation of God has been pleased to give us, is as
remarkable in our age, as
[Page 2]
it is inexcusable, although by no means surprising.
To use the words of
Prof. Van
Oosterzee, “We cannot be
surprised that the inner discrepancy between the modern
theological philosophy and the prophetic and apostolic
Scriptures should perhaps, on no point come forth so
clearly, and apparently so
irreconcilably, as precisely in reference to the
doctrine of the ‘Last
Things’ – Eschatology.
Here, especially are the terms, ‘Jewish
conception,’ ‘oriental garb,’ ‘poetic imagery,’
‘accommodation to the narrow ideas of the age,’ etc.,
etc., the order of the day, and the doctrine of the
consummation of the ages is ordinarily regarded as a
moderately insignificant appendix to some
philosophico-dogmatic
system. In
Scripture, on the contrary, it is distinctly presented
in the foreground, and for the believer it attains, with
every year and every century, increased significance, so
that what for a time seems to be an appendix, becomes
eventually the
main question!”
*[*
Person and work of the Redeemer, 450.]
Every faithful student of the Scriptures, unbiased by
false theories of interpretation, will attest these
words as true.
What we find in the New Testament as its outcome
in respect to the ages and the
kingdom, has already lain in the bosom of the Old
Testament from the beginning.
The closing part of the New Testament is but the
full flower of which the opening part of the Old
Testament was the precious seed, the kingdom one and the
same, in essence, all the way.
Nothing appears in the latter revelation that was
not hid in the earlier, nothing in John that was not in
Moses. This
is what Augustine meant by his golden maxim, “Novum
Testamentum in
Vetrere
latet,
Vetus in Novo
patet.”
“In the
[page 3] Old
Testament the New is
concealed;
in the New the Old is
revealed.”
We shall find “the thousand years” in many places
of God’s word, long before the Rabbis ever had a being
or a name.
We shall be obliged in this investigation to make use of
what men call “technical” terms, in order to save
circumlocution.
We speak of the “Last
Things.”
The Greek term for this is “Eschata,”
and by these are meant what should “come to pass,” not
in the “latter,” as oftentimes King James’ version has
it, but in the “last” days, as Moses, Joel, Isaiah,
Ezekiel, Daniel, Peter, Paul and John, preferred to have
it. If we
study the eschatology of the Old Testament, we will find
the
Eschata
there identical with the
Eschata
of the New Testament, and the
Eschatology of both Testaments the same, only the New is
more developed than the Old.
Such is the organic and genetic character of
revelation and of prophecy that if “the thousand years”
are not in Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets, they
have no right to be in John.
To understand the prophets it is necessary,
however, to understand the Apocalypse, and to understand
the Apocalypse it is necessary to understand the
prophets.
The one is light to the other, and reciprocally.
In order to attain a clear conception of Old
testament prophecy and its fulfilment, we must combine
both Advents of Messiah, remembering that the first only
brought the
partial
fulfilment of the prophetic word which yet awaits the
second in order to secure its
plenary
accomplishment.
Joel’s prophecy as to the outpouring of the Spirit in
the last days, and of the great and notable day of the
Lord, with all its terrestrial and celestial phenomena,
the final redemption of Israel, and the transfiguration
of the Holy Land, was only incipiently and partly
[page 4]
fulfilled to a few, an election out of Israel, at the
first coming of Christ, and awaits a far larger
fulfilment at His second appearing.
So the prediction of Amos, in reference to the
dispersion and sifting of Israel the “Sinful Kingdom,”
and God’s visitation of the Gentiles, “after this,” to
take out of them a people for His name, met a partial
and precursive fulfilment in
the first calling of the Gentiles to the knowledge of
Christ, in the days of the apostles, as James in the
first council at Jerusalem assures us.
We see that by comparing Acts 15: 13-18 with Amos
9: 8-12.
But there is to be a grander fulfilment still in coming
days, when, now that a Second Dispersion and Sifting of
Israel has occurred, since James spoke, there shall be a
fullness of the Gentiles “after this,” also, and finally
the fallen Booth of David, or Israel’s proper Kingdom,
as the prophets picture it, will be re-erected with the
fullness of Israel converted to God, and the glorious
millennial age heave into view.
So it is with reference to Isaiah’s Redeemer
coming to
THE KINGDOM AND PROPHECY.
From first to last, the kingdom of God on earth, its
inception, progress, conduct, and consummation in glory,
is the one theme of Old Testament prophecy.
To this end were the converts with Christ, Adam,
[page 5]
Noah,
The division of the Davidic kingdom into two, laid the
ground for all the prophecies concerning the “Kingdom of
Israel” and the “Kingdom of Judah,”
i.e., the
ten-tribed Israel, called
“Ephraim,” and the two-tribed
Israel, called “Judah,” as distinguished from “all
[page 6]
Israel,” or the twelve-tribed
Israel, an election from those children shall one day
form the national nucleus of the millennial kingdom.
The catastrophe that brought destruction to
As a further help to our investigation, it is necessary
we should know that
the
The six pre-exile prophets form a connected chain ending
with Nahum.
Of these, Isaiah is the chief, his radius of vision
spanning all horizons, near, remote, and between and
losing itself in the breast of eternal glory.
He sees all things, however, in one divine
perspective, one divine light, one divine picture,
Messiah the centre of all,
It is among the “Eschata,”
or “Last
Things,” the things to “come to pass in the last
days,” or “End Time,” that we find the Millennial Age.
It lies, as we shall see, between the “Yom
Yehovah,” or “Day of
the Lord,” which, in the New Testament, is called “The
Apocalypse of Jesus Christ,” and the endless age of the
“New Jerusalem” in the final “New heaven and earth.”
It is bounded by two distinct judgments, one at
the opening, one at the close of the Millennial Age, the
opening judgment being that of the Nations, and of all
powers, terrestrial and super-terrestrial, opposed to
Christ and His reign, as only by a judgment upon
To understand this, however, it is necessary to know
first, the manner in which the prophets divided the
whole course of time, and the way in which the ages and
ends are represented in prophecy, as also the relation
in which the
Eschata
stand to these ends and ages, first in pre-exile
prophecy, and next in exile prophecy.
GENERAL DISTRIBUTION OF TIME.
PRE-EXILE PROPHECY.
And first, as to the division of time, in pre-exile
prophecy.
The whole course of time, from the creation of
the heaven and earth to the re-creation of the same, is
divided into
two great ages,
the bisecting epoch between which is called the “End.”
In this End is placed the “Yom
Yehovah,” during
which the personal self-revelation of Jehovah in glory,
for the deliverance of
The character of this Messianic age is painted in
colours the most gorgeous and brilliant in the prophets,
even as it is sung in strains the most inspiring, in the
Psalms.
When the Lord has come and brought salvation with His
own right arm, and Jacob’s tribulation is past,
everything puts on a new appearance.
Under the New Covenant, sin is pardoned through
Messiah’s death, the gospel is preached, the Gentiles
are gathered, the Spirit is poured from on high, and
streams of knowledge, holiness and life, perpetually
overflow.
Showers of blessing continually fall.
The people are all righteous, and the righteous
shine. The
City of
If we represent, in schematic form, the manner
[page 15]
and ends as seen, in general, in pre-exile prophecy, the
diagram will stand thus:
[Pre-Messianic Age.]
<<<>>>
[Advent. / End.]
<<<>>>
[Messianic Age.]
That is, two ages and one end between, the last age the
everlasting one, or age that has no end.
EXILE PROPHECY
Let us come now to speak of exile prophecy.
Here we find a marked difference from all
preceding prophecy, in respect to the ages and the ends,
and the disposition of the Eschata.
Events that stood together in one picture, in the
earlier prophets, begin to be parted here.
The hints in Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah, of such a
possible development, and of which we shall speak later
on, receive now their true significance.
We learn how the great epochs of
Something new has occurred.
The synthesis of ends and ages in pre-exile
prophecy gives place to their analysis in post-exile
prophecy.
The one end parts into two, each part closing itself up
again, the space between becoming that an intermediate
age, though still foreshortened, the age that is endless
lying behind the last of these ends.
Instead of two ages and one end, as in pre-exile
prophecy, we have three ages and two ends, schematized
thus:
[Jewish Age.]
>>><<<
[1st. Advent. / End.]
>>><<<
[Christian Age.]
>>><<<
[2nd.
Advent. / End.]
>>><<<
[Millennial Age.]
At the end of the pre-Messianic or Jewish Age Messiah
comes, but not in glory.
He is “cut off,” and there is “nothing for Him” –
no kingdom in the form predicted, no crown.
He is rooted out by a violent death, and
But this is not all.
Ezekiel develops the ends and ages still more
than Daniel does.
He has nothing to say of the first Advent, as
Daniel has, and nothing of the Antichrist.
He has nothing to say of the missionary
proclamation of the Gospel, or
But the peculiarity of Ezekiel is this, that even to
this coming age of
[Jewish Age.]
>>><<<
[1st. Advent. / End.
]
>>><<<
[Christian Age.]
>>><<<
[2nd.
Advent. / End.]
>>><<< [Millennial Age.]
>>><<<
[White Throne. / End.]
>>><<<
[Endless Age.]
What to us is now the “world to come,” will be to its
own inhabitants “the present world,” even as our present
age was the world to come, to pre-christian
Judaism.
As time wears away, and the future comes to make
the present, then glides into the past.
Olam
Habba becomes
Olam
Hazzeh, even on the
other side of the second
Advent. In
other words, the Messianic or everlasting age, which, in
pre-exile prophecy, was
[page 20]
but one age following Messiah’s one Advent, and which in
Daniel became two ages, by reason of the clear
separation of the comings, has, in Ezekiel, become three
ages by reason of the new end introduced: so making four
in all, if we begin with the Jewish Age, viz.: (1) The
period of Old Testament times; (2) the Church-historical
period; (3) the Millennial Age of Israel in the kingdom;
and (4) the Eternal State or New Jerusalem in the “New
Heaven and Earth.”
The end of the Jewish Age brought resurrection,
judgment, and a new age succeeding.
The end of our present age will do the same.
The end of the Millennial
age will do the same.
In each case the kingdom receives a
re-establishment in new form.
There is a re-creation.
A personal advent of Messiah marks the close of
each age, save the Millennial.
No third advent at the judgment of
Gog and
Magog is intimated in Ezekiel’s nor even in
John’s Apocalypse, for the final resurrection and the
judgment of the wicked, into which the judgment of
Gog extends itself, for the
reason that no second departure of Christ from His
people is revealed.
As in the Old Testament, so in the New, the last
judgment is perspectively
covered and connected with the judgment at the second
coming of the Son of Man.
Such is the entire development of the ages and the ends
in prophecy, - the Biblical
AEonology and Teleology – from Genesis to
Regenesis; the whole time
prior to the first coming being regarded as the
pre-Messianic Age.
Our own age is a parenthetic one.
The age next beyond that of our own is that of
THE SUB-DISTRIBUTION OF TIME.
The Scriptures give us not only the ages and the ends,
but also a sub-distribution of prophetic and historic
time, from the period of the exile or blotting out of
the visible kingdom of God on earth, down to its
re-establishment,
i.e., from the time of Israel’s subjection to the
Gentile power to the time of Israel’s redemption from
the same: or until the “mystery of God” concerning
Israel’s blindness and rejection, and Israel’s new sight
and recovery, is “finished,” under the sounding of the
seventh trumpet.
Beyond that we find no sub-distribution, save the
judgment on Gog already
mentioned, and which, in connection with Isaiah 24:22
and Isaiah 65:17, extends itself to the final
resurrection and judgment, and the New Heaven and Earth.
The sub-distribution we refer to is found first
of all, in the vision of the great metallic image, or
Monarchy-Colossus, Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream (B.C.
604) eighteen years before the destruction of Jerusalem
(B.C. 586), that image being a symbol of the Gentile
power standing on Israel’s prostrate body; or, if we
combine the visions of Daniel with those of Ezekiel,
then the Colossus stands erect in the midst of Israel’s
national graveyard – “Habbikah
Melcah
Atsamoth” – “the valley full of bones,
and very dry,” – and remains standing, while national
Israel remains dead, until that image is overthrown.
In short, that Colossus represents a series of
four Gentile empires, appearing and disappearing in
successional order, - four
different forms or phases of the one God-opposed
world-power, as it comes in contact with Israel; from
the time of the Babylonian Empire down to the
Cloud-Comer from Heaven to overthrow the world-power,
erect His kingdom on its ruins, and restore the lost
sovereignty
[page 22]
to Israel.
The vision of the four-empired
image and its fate was given to humiliate the monarch’s
pride and inspire afresh the sinking hope of
Again, the same distribution of the period of Israel’s
national sepulture and
corruption, the high Colossus standing as the tombstone,
with a “hic
jacet Israel,” as it
were, upon its breast, is given to Daniel in a new
vision of four beasts (B.C. 541) forty-five years after
Jerusalem’s fall, - a vision parts of which were
expanded two years earlier (B.C. 539) under the symbols
of the Ram and Goat.
The design of the beast vision was not merely to
show how differently from men God looks upon the phases
of the world power, they regarding the world-kingdoms as
the concentration of all material wealth, splendour, and
might. He
regarded them as predacious beasts, but also to allow a
further
development from the symbol of the ten horns
which would have been unnatural in the ten toes.
Careering on through Babylonian,
Medo-Persian, Greek and
Roman Empires, down to the last outcome of the Roman
power, divided, lost, and yet revived and reappearing in
the “Little Horn,” Gentile power shall wend its way –
Israel still underneath its feet, - until the
Mountain-Stone strikes the Image in its toes, and the
Cloud-Comer smites the Horn on its head, the one sent
whirling like the chaff to the wind, the other tossed,
living,
[page 23]
to the flame, while Israel, resurgent from the grave,
appears a mighty host, and wields the empire of the
world. The
radius of prophetic vision reaches to the Second Coming
of the Son of Man.
Till then
Once more.
Still another sub-distribution of the same
stretch of time is given in the celebrated prophecy of
the “Seventy Weeks” (Chapter 9), the last week
[page 24]
of which is eschatological, since it follows the
interval that follows the Roman or second destruction of
Jerusalem, consequent upon the national rejection of
Messiah “cut off” by the Jews, - a week divided into two
equal periods of three and one-half years, or forty-two
months, or 1,260 days each, during which we have the
rise, reign and ruin of the last Antichrist, the “prince
that shall come” (Nagid
Habba), the “Desolator”
(Meshomen),
who perishes beneath the outpoured vials of divine
wrath. It
is of supreme importance to recognize this fact.
The 70th.
of Daniel’s seventy weeks is
not
immediately sequent upon the 69th.
week at whose close Messiah
was “cut off.”
The Jews nailed the “King of the Jews” to the
cross, and while at the First Advent the kingdom came in
its
spiritual inward
power on the day of Pentecost – a “tasting of
the powers of the world to come,” – it was postponed in
its
outward, visible
and glorious part, as a polity and public
sovereignty, until Messiah’s Second Coming; and this
because of Israel’s unbelief.
This is the sun-clear statement of prophecy.
The 70th.
week stands in the midst of
the Yom
Yehovah, or day of the
Lord. It
precedes the Second Advent, the destruction of
Antichrist, the Resurrection, and
Thus do the visions of the empires, beasts, and
[page 27]
seventy weeks, concur harmoniously and, with their
corresponding intervals, span the course of ages from
the Babylonian time down to the
second Advent.
All, without exception, overleap the interval of
The contrary view which makes a “figure” of the Second
Advent, would break down the
whole Apocalypse of John which is built up, line for
line, on Old Testament prophecy, and the words of our
Lord in His Olivet discourse, and puts the crown and
consummation on
If we sum up, therefore, the result of our study, the
whole subject will shine out with a
clearness equal to the brilliance of the noonday.
What we have is the development, in prophecy, of
God’s kingdom on earth, by means of
POST-EXILE PROPHECY.
A word here must suffice.
Haggai sees the final glory of the Messianic
kingdom and connects it immediately with the
In the clearest manner Zechariah distinguishes Two
Advents, two Ends, and the Millennial Age following the
second, but without Gog and
Magog at its termination.
He sees Zion’s king coming meek and lowly riding
on a colt, 9: 9, then pierced with cruel hands,
Jehovah’s Fellow smitten by the sword of justice, 13:7;
12: 10. as
a result of this, he sees the “Suspension
of the Covenant of God with Israel,” not God’s
Covenant of Grace, which is eternal, but the “Suspension
of the National Covenant of God with Israel as a People,”
(Delitzsch,
Hofmann, Kohler, Auberlen,
Luthardt,
Godet, Wright,
Pember, Anderson,
Seiss,) by the breaking
of the two staves of “Beauty and Bands,” Zech. 11: 7-10,
[page 33]
Israel’s existence as a covenant Nation forfeited,
because of Israel’s rejection of Messiah, until the time
of Israel’s penitence, travail, reunion, and
resurrection, Micah 5: 1-3.
Ezekiel 37: 1-28.
He sees Him again descending on the Mount of
Olives in His Majesty, with all His “holy ones” for
We come to Malachi, the last of the prophets.
As he stands nearest the First Coming of Christ,
and in the midst of deepening apostasy, the “Glory”
retreats into the background, night comes on with the
storm attending, and the picture of
PART 2
A.
THE THOUSAND YEARS
It remains now to speak definitely of the different
times
given to the Millennial Age in the Old Testament, and
point out the passages where John found his “1,000
years.” In
this we shall admire still more the unity of both
Testaments, and learn that John understood the prophets
better than most of his expositors.
It will fasten upon us the conviction that the
New Testament “Apocalypse of Jesus Christ” is but the
Old Testament Yom
Yehovah, in which the Lord reveals Himself for the
redemption of His people, and that the
Eschata in
that Apocalypse are only what we elsewhere find in Old
Testament predictions, in the words of Christ Himself,
and in the utterances of His Apostles; and that in all
these Eschata
Israel still holds his place, as in all the prophets,
and still waits the promised glory in the Millennial
Kingdom.
While what we have said concerning pre-exile prophecy is
true, there are yet not wanting intimations, or, if we
may so call them, “Germs” of the later
[page
36]
development of the ages and ends we find in exile and
post-exile prophecy.
These belong to the organic nature of prophecy,
and in them we find the names of the age which John
describes as “the 1,000 years.” Apoc. 20: 1-7.
There is a text in what is known among scholars
as the “little Apocalypse of Isaiah,” a section
consisting of chapters 24-27.
It is found in Isaiah 24: 21-23.
referring to
Yom Yehovah,
or Day of the Lord, in which Messiah comes to hold
judgment and restore the kingdom to Israel, the prophet
says, It shall come to pass, in that day, that the Lord
shall visit upon (punish) the Host of the High Ones on
high, and the kings of the earth on the earth.
And they shall be gathered together as prisoners
are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in prison.
And after a multitude of days –
Rov Yammin –
they shall be visited (released for final judgment).
“Then shall the moon be confounded and the sun
ashamed, when the Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount
Zion, and the glory shall be in presence of His ancient
ones,” The
“Day of the Lord” is, as already seen, that which closes
our present age, the day of the Second Coming of Christ.
The judgment predicted in the preceding context
is that of the proud nations, and
The time when this dejection of Satan and his legions
occurs is said to be “in that day,” the time when
Michael stands up to fight for Israel, Dan. 12: 1; Rev.
12: 7, the time when, in the vision of John, “the angel,
having the key of the abyss, and a great chain in his
hand, laid hold of the dragon, the Old Serpent, which is
the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years,
and cast him into the abyss, and shut and sealed it over
him that he should deceive the nations no more, until
the thousand years should be finished, after which he
must be loosed for a little season.” Rev. 20: 1-3.
The
time of
this casting down of Satan and his hosts from their
aerial mansions to earth, is that mentioned also in Rev.
12: 7, 8, 12, 13, when the dragon, in great rage, having
but “short time” to work upon earth before he is sent to
the abyss, “makes war with the woman, and with the
remnant of her seed who keep the commandments of God,
and have the testimony of Jesus.”
That is, it is the time of Israel’s conversion,
Rev. 12: 7-11, the time of the close of the testimony of
the two witnesses, the end of the first three and a half
years (1,260 days) of Daniel’s 70th. week; in
short, the beginning of the great tribulation, Rev. 11:
7, 13: 12, at whose end Satan is imprisoned in the
abyss, Rev. 20: 1-3.
And this time of the judgment upon “the Host of
the High Ones on High,” is the time of the judgment of
the “kings of the earth on the earth,” or Antichrist and
his armies, who are destroyed at the close of the last
three and a half years (1,260 days) at the Second Coming
of Christ from “Heaven
[page
38]
opened,” Rev. 19: 11-21.
There is nothing clearer than that the visions of
John, in the text referred to, are the companion pieces
of the prophecy of Isaiah just quoted.
The judgments upon Antichrist and his armies, and
upon Satan and his hosts, are identical in Isaiah and
John, and occur “in that day,” the day of the Second
Coming of Christ.
But this is not all.
The imprisonment of Satan and his demonic powers
is not their final judgment.
The prophet speaks of a reckoning “after” this.
He fixes the duration of the imprisonment at
whose close the reckoning comes.
He defines the length of that duration as a
“multitude of days,”
Rov Yamin.
He says that “after” this long period which
follows Antichrist’s overthrow and Satan’s captivity,
the final reckoning shall come.
“After a multitude of days they shall be
visited,” or as the verb here properly means, “they
shall be looked after for final retribution.”
This implies, as is admitted, their future
unchaining and letting loose again.
“They do not escape from prison, but are
released, or let out, to meet their final award.”
In this, all scholars agree.
To this, corresponds the account in John’s
Apocalypse, Rev. 20: 1-7, where we read that “After the
thousand years are finished, Satan shall be loosed out
of his prison” to play his old game.
As, after his casting down from the heavenlies,
and before his imprisonment in the abyss, the “short
time” of 1,260 days was allowed him to assail the
saints, so between his release from prison and his final
casting into the lake of fire, he is allowed “a little
time” in which to muster the nations, and make his last
effort against the Kingdom of God.
This we read in the Apocalypse of John who
separates
the events Isaiah
combines
in one general expression.
The demonstration is inductively
[page
39]
complete that the definite period of time called
Rov Yamin, by
Isaiah, or the “Multitude of days,” is identical with
the period called
Chilia Ete, or “the thousand years” by John.
The judgments which precede this period are the
same. The
“First Resurrection” which occurs at the same time,
also; the resurrection of the faithful dead, as is clear
from Deut. 32: 39; Ps. 49: 14; Hos. 13: 14; Isa. 25: 8;
26: 14, 19; Ezek. 37: 12; Dan. 12: 1-3; 1 Cor. 15: 54,
55; Rev. 11: 18; 20: 5.
And the time of these judgments and this
resurrection is the
Yom Yehovah
or “the Day of the Lord,” in which the “Lord Himself”
visibly reveals His person to effect these events.
The succeeding long period of the “Multitude of
Days,” or “The Thousand Years” is the same.
And the judgments at the close of this period are
the same.
What confirms this all the more is the fact that unless
the “visiting” of the imprisoned Anti-christian hosts,
at the end of the “Multitude of Days” involves their
resurrection – the resurrection of the wicked unto final
judgment – there is no text in the Old Testament that
does. Isa.
24: 21, 22, is the
only
passage; since Dan. 12: 2, properly translated, speaks
only of the resurrection of the righteous.
But that Isaiah 24: 22 does involve the resurrection of
the wicked, at the close of the “Multitude of Days,” is
clear from this, that John interprets Isaiah’s prophecy
by his own vision of the resurrection of the wicked at
the
close of
“the thousand years” which, as we have seen, are
identical with the “Multitude of Days.”
It stands exegetically fast, that John’s
Millennial Age is Isaiah’s “Multitude of Days,” dating
from the Second Advent; that epoch of time which runs
into the age following; the epoch when Israel is
redeemed, and nationally restored; when Jerusalem,
[page 40]
the “beloved city” becomes the middle point of the
Millennial Kingdom during “the thousand years,” Rev. 20:
9, and “the Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount Zion,
even in Jerusalem, and glory shall be in presence of His
ancient ones.”
Isa. 24: 23.
It is the time when, as the context in Isaiah shows, the
sleeping saints of God are raised, the veil is taken off
the nations, and
It will perhaps, assist our understanding, to see how
this exegesis of the passage in Isaiah, so little
understood by many, is supported by a scholarship than
which none better can be found.
“The binding of Satan,” says
Auberlen,
“is, like the thousand years, peculiar to the
Apocalypse, although, strictly speaking, Isaiah
prophecies the same thing in chap. 24: 21-23.” *
[* Der
Prophet Daniel, p. 330.]
Better still are the words of
Nagelsbach
upon the passage: “The prophet’s eye here sees what will
take place at the end of the world.
The invincible extra-mundane heads of the worldly
powers, as well as their earthly visible organs, will,
according to the prophet, be collected as prisoners in
the pit, and shut up in it.
But not merely the binding of these angelic and
worldly powers, but their being let loose for a time, is
also announced.
Only by a brief obscure word, perhaps not seen
through by the prophet himself, does the prophet
intimate this.
We would not, perhaps, have understood this word,
if the New Testament revelation, which is nearer the
time of the fulfilment, did not throw light on this dark
point. It
declares expressly that, after a thousand years, Satan
should be loosed from his prison. Rev. 20: 7.
Isaiah
[page
41]
uses here an indefinite announcement of time, ‘After a
multitude of days.’ And an indefinite verb, ‘pakad,’
stands here as in Isa. 23: 17, of a ‘visiting’ which
consists in a looking again after some one who, long
time, has remained neglected.
Jer. 27: 22.
The word is here taken in the sense of a
visitation for judgment, as is seen in the place in the
revelation by John.
“The letting loose of Satan is only the prelude to his
total destruction, Rev. 20: 10.
Then follows the last, highest, and grandest
revelation of God.
The earth becomes now what it ought originally to
have been, but was hindered from being by the sin of
man, the common dwelling place of God and men.
The heavenly
And even better still is the comment of
Weber on the
passage.
After showing that the context the prophet predicts (1)
the judgment on the earth, and plagues on men in
general, in the end time, to which the sixth seal in the
Apocalypse refers; (2) the judgment on the world-city or
Babylon of the future; (3) the final judgment on
Jerusalem and all who deal treacherously with Israel’s
remnant, he continues thus: “The Lord will hold ‘in that
day,’ another judgment.
He will ‘visit the Most High Ones in the height,
and the kings of the earth on the earth.’
The earthly and heavenly powers, who have
deceived mankind into apostasy, shall receive their
punishment.
They shall both be visited on that same day.
The host of
[page
42]
the high ones on high includes the angels of the nations
and kingdoms of which Daniel speaks, 10: 13, 21; 12: 1,
and John, Rev. 12: 7.
They have exercised over the nations a
God-opposing influence, and shall be judged with them.
What the punishment of these aerial powers is we
are told.
They shall be thrust into a pit, as prisoners are into a
dungeon, and ‘after a multitude of days,’ shall be
visited. A
time comes when once more they shall be released and
allowed to begin their earlier practice of deception.
But it shall not continue long; for, after a
brief last conflict, that
These extracts might suffice to show the meaning of the
prophet, and vindicate the Apostle John from the empty
charge made so often, that he was indebted to the
Apocryphal legends and literature of the Rabbis for his
conception of “the thousand years!”
But there is a testimony yet more sublime than
all the rest, which ought here to be produced.
It is the comment of the childlike, deeply
devout, and gifted man,
Dr. Christian
August Crusius, Professor of Theology in Leipsic
forty years during the last century (the successful
antagonist of Leibnitz), a man of whom
Bahrdt said,
“He is the greatest philosopher and richest thinker of
our times,” and of whom
Kant said he
felt it an honour to be allowed to testify that “he is
the clearest philosopher, and second to none in the
promotion of philosophy, in our age.”
In his work, “Decaelo
per Adventum Christi commoto,” A.D. 1757, he says,
“With the gradual development of the
From the last commentary on Isaiah, we venture to quote
the following admirable words by
Prof. Von Orelli
of Basle – words that will be welcomed by all: “Not the
angelic host ministering to Jehovah is here intended,”
says Orelli, “but the host of the spirit world
accountable to Jehovah, and which like the possessors of
earthly power, is subject to His judgment.
The figure is that of the arrest of State
criminals who at first, without regard to the extent of
their demerit, are thrown into prison, then afterward,
at the day of judgment, are dealt with according to the
measure of their guilt.”
“The world-judgment here presented, is pictured
as a cosmical catastrophe, like the deluge, which once
swept away mankind, but yet more fruitful of good.
The earth shall altogether lose its hold, and be
broken under the weight of its sin.
The judgment shall not merely strike the rulers
of the earth, but shall reach the super-earthly powers,
also, who are not blameless before God.
Between these, and the sinful world-powers there
is a close connection, as the book of Daniel shows, and
which is here asserted through the fact that they both
are judged together. As
common criminals, these highest rulers shall be
ignominiously arrested and imprisoned in order that,
after a long time,
they may receive their sentence which shall be
pronounced by the Lord enthroned on Mount Zion, and His
glorious judgment host there assembled.
Sun and moon shall lose their splendour in token
of His great indignation against the world, while His
people, redeemed on Mount Zion, dwell in the clearest
light,
[page
47]
their elders deemed worthy to behold the glory of God;
so that, according to chapter 4: 5, 6, and far more
gloriously than in Moses’ time, Ex. 24: 9, 10, they
shall be permitted to enjoy, permanently, the protection
of the Shekinah-Cloud as the residence of the Lord who
has now taken to Himself the sovereignty of the world.”
“After this world-judgment, in which Antichrist and his
hosts are destroyed, as also Satan and his legions
judged, and both imprisoned in the abyss, and Israel is
redeemed and delivered, comes the blessed time of the
“Multitude of days,” the Millennial Age,” on which
Orelli
remarks, “then following this judgment, comes the
Triumphlied
of the redeemed, chap. 25, as at chap. 12, an
exalted echo of Israel’s song at the Red Sea, Ex. Chap.
15. To all
nations who do homage to the Lord in the end of the
days, and undulate like swelling billows to the holy
mountain to worship there, the Lord Himself will prepare
a wondrous feast of joy.
It shall be to them a divine surprise when now He
takes away the covering which, long enough already, has
veiled the eyes of the nations.
They shall behold Him as the Dispenser of all
life and grace, and taste how good He is to those who
bend before His majesty.
“By a second act of almighty love and power, not less
miraculous, He will abolish death with all the woe that
wrung from man uncounted tears, and lift the curse
which, from the beginning, has weighed so heavily upon
the human race.
Here is, indeed, the end of the ways of God with
men, of which the New Covenant in Christ, the Risen One,
has unveiled the aim.
As the remnant of Israel, so also the remainder
of mankind, spared through the judgment on the nations,
shall be destined to unexpected blessedness by Him the
All-Merciful
[page
48]
One, and this shall be, of itself, the most beautiful
apology for Israel, while the pride of Gentile power,
the odious rival of God’s people, shall be crushed
forever.”
And in conclusion, on chapter 26, the last of the
“Little Apocalypse of Isaiah,” he gives us this: “The
songs of victory which first we heard far off in 24: 14,
and were next intoned from
Such is the exposition of the contents, in part, of the
“Little Apocalypse” of Isaiah, by
Orelli – a
picture of the World Judgment at the Second Advent and
of the Millennial Age, the “Multitude of Days,” the
“long time” following that judgment; a period of
blessedness opened by the restoration of Israel, the
judgment on Antichrist and Satan, the resurrection of
the faithful
dead, and the revelation of the glory of Christ to the
nations, the companion piece of John’s Apocalypse,
chapters 19 and 20.
It is not possible to place the Millennial Age
before the coming of Christ, except by an open
contradiction of the Word of God.
B.
EZEKIEL
38.
An exile passage also claims our attention, in proof
that “the thousand years” of John’s Apocalypse are found
in the Old Testament itself.
It is the strangely introduced yet significant
prediction concerning “Gog and Magog,” in Ezek. 38: 8.
It comes upon the reader suddenly, as an
independent prediction of judgment due to Gog “after
many days,” and stands isolated, as it were, in the
text. It
seems to be a parenthetic expression.
It is a brief oracle, and yet it is the one word
on which John’s whole representation of the order of the
Eschata is
pivoted, in the twelth chapter of his Apocalypse.
“After many days –
Rabbim Yamim
– thou shalt be visited.”
The verb (tippakedh)
its tense form and import are the same as in Isaiah 24:
22; 29: 6, not merely a testing by divine judgment, but
a destruction.
Smend’s
rendering “Thou shalt be
mustered,”
and the rendering “Thou shalt be
commissioned,”
[page 50]
are insufficient.
The verb imports here judicial visitation for
destruction.
What the prophet here predicts is Satan’s last
attempt, through Gog and Magog, in the latter years,
against the
The
time of
the visitation on Gog is said to be “after”
these “many days,” which belong to “the later years.”
(1) The
terminus a quo of these “many years” is Israel’s
restoration, conversion to Christ as a people and a
nation, and the repossession of their land; the epoch of
the resurrection of their faithful dead, an event
included in the promise made 37: 12, as is proved by
Deut. 32: 39; Ps. 17: 15; 49: 14, 15; Hos. 13: 14; Isa.
25: 6-9; 26: 14, 19; Dan. 12: 1-3, all of which passages
refer directly to this same epoch, and fore-announce the
literal resurrection of Israel’s faithful dead,
[page
51]
and non-resurrection of the wicked “at that time,” and
“in that day.”
All this we have in chapter 37.
It is the
terminus a quo.
It is the same epoch, also, of the judgment upon
Antichrist and his armies, and upon Satan and his
angels, that we find in Isaiah 24: 21, 22; Daniel 12: 1;
Revelation 12: 7-9; 20: 1-3.
(2) The period, or age, that follows this
terminus a quo
is plainly the
Rabbim Yamim or “many days,” whose glory, peace and
blessedness are described in chapters 40-48, which are
the expansion of 38: 1-28, and of what Isaiah has
predicted; Isa. 2: 2-5; 11: 6-9; 24: 23 25: 6-9; 40:
1-22; 61: 4-11; 62: 2-12; 65: 17-25; 66: 20-23.
They are the period “after” Israel has been
“gathered out from many nations,” “brought back from the
sword,” is “dwelling safely, and at rest, in unwalled
villages having neither bars nor gates,” – God alone
their protection, - abundant in wealth and all
possessions.
Exekiel 38: 8-12, 14.
They are the period of the new indwelling glory
in New Israel, chapters 40-53; of the New Service
following the entrance of the Glory in the Temple, which
He makes the place of His throne and of the soles of His
feet, 44-46; of the life and healing to the land from
the flowing of the temple waters; and of the splendour
to the city whose name is
Jehovah Shammah,
“The Lord is there!”
47-48. (3)
The
terminus ad quem of these “many days” is expressly
said to be the judgment on Gog, precisely as John makes
the judgment on Gog to be the close of “the thousand
years.”
Rev. 20: 7.
“After many days thou shalt be visited.”
The
termini in Isa. 24: 22, and Ezek. 39: 8, are,
therefore, identical.
The passages are parallel, supplementary, and
mutually explanatory.
The character of the “visitation” at the end of
the “many days” is the same in both.
The parties
[page
52]
“visited” are different, but this is due to the fact
that Ezekiel’s prophecy is an advance upon Isaiah’s
word, and brings to light new things occurring at the
same time with those of which Isaiah speaks.
In Isaiah, the parties visited after “many days”
are Satan and his angels let loose from their
imprisonment, and the Anti-Christian wicked raised from
their graves for the last judgment.
In Ezekiel, they are the living nations outlying
on the extreme borders of the glorified
If we turn to John’s Apocalypse we shall find his
Eschata
concerning
Amid the vast variety in the unveiling of the word and
plan of God, the unity remains the same from age to age.
The ends and ages are the same in the New as in
the Old Testaments.
The Advents there are the Advents here.
Antichrist there is Antichrist here.
Gog there is Gog here.
The judgments there are the judgments here. The
resurrections there are the resurrections here. The
power, the kingdom, and the glory there are the power,
the kingdom, and the glory here.
And the times of the Gentiles first, and the
times of
In John, we have the period of “the 1,000 years.”
Their commencing date, or
terminus a quo,
is identified with that in Isa. 24: 22, and Ezekiel 38:
8. The
Eschata that
open “the 1,000 years,” prove this.
We have (1) the gathering, sealing, conversion,
and restoration of
Chapters 10, 11, and part of 12, introduce us to
Ezekiel’s
From what has been said it must be clear that the
So Schroeder speaks.
And we add that, if indeed, as is the fact, the
binding of Satan
precedes
the judgment on Gog; if it occurs at the Second Coming
of Christ when the resurrection from the dead takes
place; if Israel’s political resurrection precedes this
personal one; if “Leolam,”
“forever,” is used in its qualified sense as equivalent
to “the thousand years” of John, the “long time” or
“outstanding” period, next preceding the consummation of
the kingdom and the world; if all this is conceded, then
it is hard to see how any who accept these conclusions
could find relief from their force, by resort to the
allegorical, spiritual, or symbolical theories of
interpretation.
The
relations
of the events must, at least, remain the same, and
the “Many Days” must come in
between
the Second Coming of Christ and the judgment on Gog.
If, moreover, we allegorize one event, to be
consistent we must allegorize all.
This wrecks the whole prediction, and denies the
vast body of literal Scripture elsewhere with which it
stands connected.
Riehm,
as an exegete, though seeking to avoid the literal
interpretation of prophecy in reference to
Clearly, then, even according to
Riehm’s
view, the
[page
59]
“many days” in Ezekiel, are the period of Israel’s
blessedness in the Messianic Kingdom on earth, and are
bounded at their opening, by the “first judgments” which
bring deliverance to Israel and the establishment of
Israel in the Messianic kingdom on earth, and at their
close are bounded by the “destruction of Gog.”
The period between these different and separated
judgments, which stand apart “rather widely,” is a “long
time,” when “a thousand years,” and Micah, Ezekiel and
John, herein agree.
The millennium announced by John is only what the
prophets, pre-exile and exile, have foretold, and the
duration of which they measure by the “many days”
between Israel’s introduction, by means of the Messianic
judgment, into the kingdom established in the Holy Land,
and the final overthrow of Gog.
Micah, as well as Isaiah, forecasts “the thousand
years” of John.
Not before, but only “after the thousand years,”
when Gog is judged, is the ultimate glory of the
kingdom. In
other words, the view of the
total End-Time,
in the widest and most comprehensive scope, as seen by
the prophets, and embracing the perfect victory of
Messiah for Israel’s complete deliverance and complete
establishment of the kingdom of glory on earth, in the
latter days, is represented as that of two great acts or
phases of judgment between which lie the “many days” of
Ezekiel which are “the thousand years” of John.
In other words again, the “End of the Days” of
which Ezekiel and Isaiah speak, in the texts already
referred to, is the end of “the thousand years,” the
“end” which Paul has in view, in 1 Cor. 15: 34, when
Messiah’s victory is complete, and, all rule, authority
and power being put down, and
[page
60]
death itself destroyed, the kingdom is surrendered to
the Father, and God is all in all. 1 Cor 15: 24-26.
The harmony and unity of Isaiah, Micah, Ezekiel,
Paul and John, herein, are both demonstratable and
indestructible.
Their testimony to the location of the
C.
LEOLAM.
FOREVER.
In
the extract from Schroeder, quoted above, it was said
that the term “Leolam,”
“forever,” Ezek. 37: 25, 26, 28, applied to the duration
of the times of
A better knowledge of the
usus loquendi,
and of the term “forever,” would render this, like many
other similar objections, impossible.
The
Schroeder is right, therefore, as are Kliefoth, Oehler,
Kuper, and many others, when saying that Ezekiel’s
Leolam,
Forever, in 37: 25, 26, 28, is the equivalent of John’s
Chilia Ete,
or “one thousand years,” in Rev. 20: 1-7.
Isaiah’s everlasting age concealed in its bosom
all the relative ages of the great development, and
their
termini,
even as Joel’s prophecy was “generic” and contained the
two judgments of the double end, the judgment on
antichrist and the nations, and the judgment on Gog.
And in the whole development, all things are
connected with temporal and terrestrial relations.
From first to last, even in the New Testament,
the ages and the kingdom of the heavens are associated
with our planet.
Nowhere in the Old Testament, as nowhere in the
New, can our popular idea of “an end to the world,” as
the
terminus
where Time and Eternity meet, or Time passes into
Eternity, and “our planet is no more,” to be found.
Such conceptions are unbiblical, Manichean,
Origenistic, Shakesperean and pessimistic.
The “hills of Olam” abide for ever and forever.
Materiality is glorified, not annihilated, in
God’s Kingdom.
The creation is recreated.
A new heaven and earth supplant the old, and this
begins
with the “many days,” “the one thousand years.”
D.
HOSEA 3: 4.
Another expression, similar to those already noted, is
found on Hosea when predicting God’s watchful care over
Israel in their dispersion and lonliness; -
[page
65]
the time of
Lo Ammi and
Lo Ruhamam –
“Not my people,” and “Not my beloved;” the time when
harlot Israel, divorced from God, yet separated from
idolatry, is still in desolation and concealment and
providentially preserved for God.
Hos. 1: 6, 9, 10; 2: 20-23.
The words of punishment and grace are the alike
remarkable.
“Thou shalt abide for me many days –
Yamin Rabbim.
Thou shalt not play the healot.
Thou shalt not be any man’s wife.
So will I also be for thee!”
God’s pledge
to the sinful
Jewish Church, to apostate
If we ask what these two historic days are, we can only
say again, with
Delitzsch, “The prophecy refers to the people, after
the second day of whose death a resurrection day
follows.”
Rom. 11: 15.
“The two days of their death are, in the history
of fulfilment, the Assyrian and Babylonian exile, and
the Roman exile, in which the Jewish people still are.”
[*ibid, p. 62.]
That is, the first day of Israel’s national death
is the Old Testament
[page
67]
period of Israel’s destruction as a nation, the people
carried captive, Jerusalem destroyed, the Temple gone,
the land depopulated, and the outward kingdom blotted
out; the second day is the New Testament period, with
the like catastrophe repeated, the first day reaching to
the First Coming of Christ, beginning with a new
dispensation, the Roman or second day reaching to the
Second Coming, the total period being the time of
Israel, as a nation, in the Valley of Dry Bones, the
Monarchy-Colossus still standing unstruck.
Then comes the “third,” the resurrection day, in whose
“morning”
What Hosea gives us here, at the beginning of the third
day, is precisely what Moses gives us, Deut. 32: 39; and
David gives us, Ps. 49: 14, 15; and Isaiah gives us, 25:
8; 26: 19; and Daniel gives us, 12: 1-3; and Ezekiel
gives us, 37: 1-28; and John’s Apocalypse gives us, 11:
11, 18; 12: 5; 10: 11; 20: 4-6.
[page
68]
Then after these mighty events that mark the end
of our present age, or end of Israel’s second day of
national death, comes the Millennial Age of Israel’s
blessedness, pictured beautifully, as the times of
perennial reviving and refreshing, the age of Israel’s
Dew, and Blossoming, and Lily growth, and deepening
roots like the Cedar tree, and spreading branches like
the olive tree; the age of blessing to the Nations, when
they, too, dwelling under Israel’s shadow, shall revive
as the corn, and bloom as the vine, and be fragrant as
wine of Lebannon; and Israel, all holy to the Lord, will
have no more to do with idols, but, unwithering, like
the fir tree, bear holy fruit to God.
Hosea 14: 4-8.
The demonstration, then, is clear, inductively. Hosea’s
“many days” reach from the Assyrian captivity down to
the Second Advent of Christ.
During this whole period
These two vast periods, taken together, cover,
therefore, the whole time from the Assyrian captivity to
the Last Judgment and the final New Heaven and Earth.
The age next before us is that of the “Third
Day,” the “Sabbatism” of the world.
Not at the First Coming of Christ was Hosea’s
prediction fulfilled, as is clear
[page
69]
from John’s Apocalypse, where, under the sixth
vial, the Euphrates, beyond which the ten tribes roved
into concealment among the nations, is “dried up” to
make way for the return of Israel, under the care of the
princes from the sun rising.
Rev. 16: 12; 2 Kings 17: 6; Isa. 11: 16; 24: 16;
66: 19, 20; 41: 2, 25; Zeph. 3: 10.
It is true that the terms “Afterward” and the
“Last Days” are standing eschatological formulae for the
whole Messianic time covered by Isaiah’s everlasting
age, as well as for the time next preceding the “Yom
Yehovah,” or “Day of the Lord;” and that, as is
clear from Joel and Peter, they include the first as
well as the second appearing of Messiah. !sa. 2: 2; Joel
2: 28; Acts 2: 17; the outpouring of the Spirit on the
day of Pentecost, as well as the still future outpouring
predicted by Paul.
Rom. 11: 27, and parallels; Isa. 59: 21; Ezek.
36: 24, 25; and both which are wrapped up in Zechariah’s
oracle, Zech. 12: 10-14; 13: 1, 6.
Compare Rev. 1: 7.
But it is equally true that whatever conversion
of Jews occurred on the day of Pentecost, or of any
Israelites since, it is only the initial, not the final,
redemption of that people, since Israel, as a nation, is
still cast away, not gathered, their house desolate, and
their land still trodden under Gentile feet.
The “afterness of the days” is the end-time at
the second coming of Christ.
It refers to the epoch of
E. MOSES.
But Moses demands a hearing.
The Prophets have said nothing on this great
matter that even Moses had not already said before them.
Let it be enough, just here, to say that Moses
himself defines the time during which
Listen to the “Song of Moses,” Deut. 32: 39-43.
It predicts
[* “ANI-HU” (I AM HE) is the covenant name of Christ, in
the Old Testament, Deut. 32: 39; Isa. 43: 10; 46: 3, 5;
48: 12. It
is the name of the Second Person of the Trinity (1)
making Himself equal in Essence with God (HE), while yet
asserting a distinct Personality.
It is the consubstantiality of the Son with the
Father, of the Word of God, and is the ground of John’s
Logos doctrine.
John 1: 1.
He who here speaks, to Moses, is the personal
“Word of God,” who appears as the diademed Rider on the
White Horse, Rev. 19: 11, and as the Angel of the
Covenant, or
Maleach Habberith, coming, the second time to
Israel, to wake His people out of the Valley of Dry
Bones, and appearing with solar-face, rainbow-crown, His
shoulders in cloud, and His feet in pillars of fire,
Rev. 10: 1, and swearing the same words to John that He
swore to Moses.
It was ANI-HU who dwelt in the Pillar of Cloud by
day, and Fire by night.
It was ANI –HU who spoke to Moses in the “Bush.”
It was ANI-HU HAMMIDDABBER, I AM HE,
the Speaking One,
a motto Stier has taken for his “Words
of Jesus.”
It was a name asserting the deity, eternity,
personality, majesty, and real presence and glory of
Christ, in Old Testament History.
ANI-HU is the “Alpha and Omega” in the
Apocalypse, Isaiah’s “Immanu-EL” or “With-us-God.”
The Christ who talked to Moses upon the same
subject, and in reference to the same time.]
H.
THE PSALTER.
Nor is the Psalter silent.
All the sweet singers of
What is the 97th. Psalm but a catalogue of
the nations whose individuals are put on the burgess
roll as born citizens of metropolitan
I.
SUMMING UP.
If we sum up the results of our investigation, we shall
find that the Spirit of Prophecy has furnished us
various time-designations which span the whole
development of the
Rov Yamin.
Multitude of Days.
Isa. 24: 22.
Rabbin Yamin.
Many days. Ezek. 38: 8.
Yom Hashshelishi.
Third Day.
Hos. 3: 4, 5.
His Days.
Psa. 72: 7
Leolam.
Forever.
Ezek. 37: 25, 26, 28.
Chila Ete.
Thousand Years.
Rev. 20: 1-7.
All descriptive of the same period of time, bounded
[page 77]
on each side by the same events, the period
between
the Second Advent and the destruction of Gog, or
between
the binding and loosing of Satan.
It is important to observe that the “Many Days”
of Hosea, are a very different period from the “Many
Days” of Ezekiel, and the “Multitude of Days” of Isaiah.
The former are the “Times of the Gentiles,” the
times of the Colossus, the Four Beasts,
And what we find further, is that no prophet of the Old
Testament gives a complete, but only a partial picture
of the End-Time, even as neither Christ, nor any Apostle
does, but that the work of John, under the guidance of
the Spirit of Prophecy, was to
combine
the
[page
78]
Eschata of Joel, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah, Isaiah,
Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah; in short, the Eschata of all
the prophets,
and arrange them
in their temporal order and succession, supplementing by
one prophet the partial picture of the End drawn by
another, until all the Eschata fall into their places,
as they shall occur in history, so furnishing to us one
grand tableau of the End Time.
This is what the Holy Ghost did with the seer in
the “isle that is called
H
It does seem strange that any student of God’s word
should doubt, for one moment, the truth that blazes
everywhere so clearly in the Old as well as the New
Testaments, viz., that the Second Coming of Christ
precedes
the Millennium.
And it does seem criminal that such an
unreasoning prejudice should exist in the minds of any
against the use of the term as Spiritual as are the
terms “Baptism,” “Baptist,” “Episcopalian,”
“Presbyterian;” words which the objectors themselves
have chosen to consecrate as the names of their several
denominations, and in which they glory.
How unreasonable is man’s opposition, even to
God’s own word! “Man
would,” as
Bengel says, “take the very words of God out of His
own mouth!”
We coin the word “Millennialist,” in Latin, from the
words “Mille” and “annos,” which are simply the Roman
equivalents for the Greek “Chilia Ete” of John in Rev.
20: 1-7, the English translation of which is a “thousand
Years.” It
is Scriptural.
We coin the word “Chiliast” from these same
inspired words.
It is as Scriptural a term, as is “Baptist,”
[page 80]
“Presbyterian,” or “Episcopalian,” or “Christian,” and
as “Orthodox” as any of these!
It means that he who wears it believes that the
“Day of the Lord” in which Christ comes
precedes
the Millennium.
The Advent is
before
the Millennium.
That is, he is a “Pre-Millennialist.”
It denies what the Scriptures everywhere deny,
viz., the fiction of a
pre-advent
Millennium.
With equal justice, we might coin the word
Ravyamist
from the Hebrew terms “Rov
Yamin” and “Rabbim
Yamim,” In Hosea, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, there used to
denote the same truth.
Every prophet was a
Ravyamist.
He believed in a
period of time, “after”
Messiah’s Coming to judge the Nations, in which Israel,
re-gathered, redeemed, restored, renewed, resurrected,
and renationalized, should enjoy the Messianic glory in
the kingdom on earth – a period of time called “Many
Days,” or as John has it, a “thousand years,” and prior
to the Last Judgment and the final New Heaven and earth.
And Christ Himself was a “Ravyamist,” or, as
Auberlen
somewhere truly says, “Jesus
was a Chiliast.”
All the Apostles were the same.
All the early Apologists for Christianity were
the same.
Can we imagine when we hear such a man as
Delitzsch
say, “I am a Chiliast,” and “Chiliasm was the faith of
the early Church,” and when also we hear the greatest
modern patristic scholar,
Harnack,
say, “Chiliasm is inseparably associated with the
gospel, and this is its defence,” that these men are
either heretics or foolish?
On the contrary, that great martyr and scholar, “Irenaeus
the Great,” like “Justin the most learned man of his
time,” catalogued and held as “Promoters of heresy,” and
even of “blasphemy,” all who denied the Chiliastic faith
which, in their day, was the “test of an orthodox
church.” It
is a proposition no honest critic dare deny
[page
81]
that, if
the early church, having such teachers as Irenaeus,
Justin, and others of the same apostolic faith and
influence, and knowing what Hosea, Isaiah, Micah,
Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah, John, our Lord, and His
Apostles, had taught, had
not been
Chiliastic in her creed, she
ought to
have been so, and her failure to have been so would have
convicted her as recreant to what Moses and the
Prophets, and Christ and His Apostles, had revealed of
the course of history, and the outcome of God’s kingdom
on earth.
It was impossible, however, that, standing next to
Christ and His Apostles, and with the Psalms and
Prophets in her hand, the Jew nationally cast away yet
only for a time, and the Gentile erect on Israel’s
grave, and even persecuting the church itself, she could
have been anything else than she was in her creed, and
the proof is perfect, and increases more and more, with
every fresh investigation of the early history of the
church, that,
only by means of apostasy from the Word of God, did she
surrender for the sake of opulence and power, money and
prosperity, extension in the empire, and freedom from
fagot and flame, that blessed truth whose defence from
Moses and John, God has made the mark of a faithful, a
suffering, and a witnessing church.
And, surely, if the pious Hebrew held the Hope of
Christ’s Coming to judge the nations, restore Israel,
and set up His Kingdom on earth, as the only Hope for
the world’s redemption, the only way by which gentile
politics and power could be overthrown, the Antichrist
destroyed, and the
faithful
dead awakened to
share the promise of the kingdom, much more ought it to
be our Hope, bound up as it is with our own
deliverance, as well as the deliverance of Israel, and
the final glory of the world.
What a stupendous absurdity, in flat
contradiction to
[page
82]
every prophet, that the Millennial Age will come prior
to the “Yom
Yehovah,” or “Day of the Lord,” in which Messiah
appears for
I
A closing word is demanded as to
A glance is enough to confirm this.
John has nothing here the prophets have not.
He has nothing Christ has not, for the Apocalypse
was given him of God, and does not mean a literary
production, or book, but the “Revelation of Jesus
Christ” (Rev. 1: 1), as He comes the second time, in the
clouds of heaven (Rev. 1: 7), and to His Covenant
people, Israel of Old Testament Prophecy, to fulfil the
word of His promise to them, to deliver them, to restore
their state, and give them the kingdom.
He comes, indeed, to judge the professing Church
and the world, but He comes to Israel as the “Malakh
Habberith” or “Angel of the Covenant” the “Lord
Himself;” and “Who may abide the day of His Coming, or
stand when He appeareth?”
(Rev. 7: 17; 7: 1-8, Malachi 3: 2-4).
John has nothing, the Apostles have not.
His Eschatology is the same as that of Peter and
Paul. Peter
binds
If we combine all these in one picture,
what we shall get as a result is Antichrist destroyed,
Israel redeemed, the [faithful] saints raised, the
Inheritance glorified, all at the Second Coming of
Christ, and the Millennial Interval
between
that Coming of Christ to
assume
the kingdom and the remote End when He shall have
surrendered
the Kingdom of God, even the Father, having abolished
all rule, and all authority and power, and annihilated
Hades and Death, “that God may be all in all.” 1 Cor.
15: 24-28.
In short, we get precisely what John has given us in the
Apocalypse, with this difference, that, whereas Peter
and Paul discuss the points separately, John discusses
nothing, but combines all in a total tableau of the
End-Time, glowing under the highest light of the
inspiration of the Holy Ghost.
And so
[page
87]
will every student of God’s word find it, if only he
comes to that word with an humble heart, free from
prejudice, and false theories of interpretation, and
prays that God will open his eyes to see light in God’s
light alone, accounting all other light as but darkness.
Blessed book is the Bible, the living word of the
living God, one word from beginning to end, the work of
one infinite mind, full of the wonders of wisdom, love
and power!
And from Moses to John, the Eschatology is one, because
God’s plan is one, the “Thousand
Years” in John, following the Second Advent, and
preceding the Last Judgment, being the very Interval
Paul himself has acknowledged in 1 Cor. 15: 24, and none
other than that period of time, called by Hosea, the
“Third Day,” by Isaiah a “Multitude of Days,” and by
Ezekiel “Many Days” – in every case, in both Old and New
Testaments, associated with the Glory of Israel in the
Kingdom, and the redemption of the Nations, accomplished
at the Second Coming of Christ.
The holy penmen mutually supplement each other.
The Lord
open the eyes of His Church to see it, love it, and
teach it, and to Him be the glory forever.
-------
NOTES
[Selected by the editor from Nathaniel West’s
“Supplementry Discussions.]
1.
“Olam,” “Ever.”
The word “Olam,”
“Ever,” does not, of itself, and by fixed necessity,
always denote the annihilation of time, but as
frequently, in Hebrew usage, denotes simply unbroken
continuance up to a special epoch in history, or to a
certain natural termination.
It has a relative as well as an absolute sense, a
finite as well as an infinite length.
It means “Here” as well as “Beyond,” and applies
to a kingdom that comes to “an End,” as well as to one
that has “no End.”
For this reason, a great World-Period, or Age,
are called “Olam,”
and in World-Periods, or Ages, are called “Olammim,”
and in order to express infinite time, the reduplication
is used, “Ages of Ages,” “Olammim
Olammim.”
It is therefore a false conclusion to say that
because the term “Le
Olam,” “Forever,” is
applied to the Messianic kingdom, therefore the Hebrews
contradicted themselves, when they assigned to it limits
at the same time.
Messiah’s kingdom is Temporal and also Eternal,
and in both senses,
Olamic.
The bondsman’s free covenant to serve his master
lasted “forever,” but that only meant “till Jubilee.”
The Levitical economy
was established to be “forever,” but that only meant
till “the time of reformation.”
The Christian Church is “forever,” in its present
form, but that only means “till He comes.”
True to this view, the Jewish Teachers ever held
to a
*4th Ezra, VII. 48
**Baruch, XLVIII.
MILLENNIAL, NOT ETERNAL
That the Millennial Age is not the
Final Age
is made clear in both Testaments.
The kingdom of 1,000 years stands in relation to
an Age beyond its own limits, the
Endless
Age. It is
a false construction if the word “Until” in the
expression “Until
the 1,000 years are finished,” Rev. 20: 3, 5, 7 to say
that the
end of these
years is the end of the
kingdom of Christ,
or of the blessedness of Israel, or of the Risen Saints’
reign with Christ, or of the distinction between Israel
and the Nations, or between the Holy City and the
outside dwellers.
Even after the Judgment of the “Great White
Throne,” and the surrender of the Messianic Kingdom to
the father, the priestly co-regency of Christ and His
saints still exist.
There is still a dominion of Christ and His
Bride, “the
2. MODE OF LIFE AMONG THE RISEN.
As to the mode of intercourse between the glorified and
un-glorified, there are many vain speculations.
We only “know in part,” and time will bring the
answer to our various askings.
The whole discussion binds itself to our
conceptions of the Resurrection-Body, - what it needs,
and what its functions, are.
From the very first, the Jewish teachers were
embarrassed here, and much divided in their views.
The later Jews are not more
clear.
Saadias
and
Maimonides
maintained that “they who
rise in the resurrection,
eat, drink
and
marry,
and their bodily members serve them, for these are not
in vain and they die again.”*
It was an ancient view, and founded on the
cases of the resurrection of the son of the
Shunamite, and the son of
the widow of Zarepta, “both
whom,” says
Saddis,
“ate and drank and doubtless took wives.”
On the other hand,
Bechai
and
Abarnanel
maintained that “they who rise in the resurrection
neither eat, nor
drink, nor marry, for there is no further need
of these, after the resurrection,
nor do the risen
righteous ones return to dust again.
They have their bodies, in which the fleshly
functions have ceased, as in the case of Moses, when in
the Mount with God.” ** Our Lord corrects both these
views when, confuting to the Sadducees, He replies that
“they who shall
be accounted worthy to obtain that world (Olam
Habba) and
the
resurrection
out from the dead, - [therefore, they cannot
return again to the death state and remain in Hades
until the millennium has ended, - Ed.] - neither marry
nor are given in marriage,
NEITHER CAN THEY
DIE ANY MORE; for they are equal to the angels, -
[that is, able to
ascend to
heaven or
descend
upon earth; and therefore able to rule in
both
spheres during the Millennium, - Ed.] - and are sons of
God, being sons of the
RESURRECTION.”
Luke 20: 35, 36.
Saadis
and Ben
Maimon said that the
Risen “eat,
drink, marry, die.”
Bechai,
Abarbanel, Talmud and
Cabbala,
aver they “neither
marry nor are given in marriage, neither can they die
any more,” but says nothing as the “eating” or
“drinking.”
What he teaches is that the children of the resurrection
are as the sexless angels.
Beyond the fact that Lazarus ate after his
resurrection, John 12: 1, 2, remains the fact that our
Lord Himself,
after His resurrection, had a tangible and visible
material body, already free from the limitations of His
former humiliation, and possessed of resurrection-life,
and yet “ate” food in Jerusalem and at the shore of
Galilee, Luke 24: 30, 41, 42; John 21: 12, and not only
promised to the Twelve to “drink
of the fruit of the vine, new in the Kingdom of God,”
Matt. 26: 29, but “appointed” them “a Kingdom,” in
which, said He, “ye may eat and drink at my table in my
kingdom, and sit on 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of
Israel.”
Luke 22: 29, 30.
We can grossly carnalize
this, on the one hand, and as ethereally spiritualize it
on the other.
The fact remains that the Resurrection kingdom is
“ON
THE EARTH,” and that the “children of the resurrection”
have material bodies, adapted to spiritual uses, and
free from certain physical functions.
While we must shun an Ebonite Chiliasm on the one
hand, we must equally avoid a Gnostic Chiliasm on the
other, and not rob corporeity of its rights in the
resurrection, or dissolve, under the idea of “Glory,”
the resurrection body into a gauzy texture ballooning in
the sky.
Such a
conception is foreign to the whole word of God.
The risen ones shall have a human body, like
their Lord’s, know each
other, and be known, and live in relation to the saints
UPON
the earth, and to the Nations.
Their mode of immorality and intercourse are not
revealed.
It is enough for us to know that not more difficult is
the faith of Christ’s companionship with His disciples
during the 40 days next
following
His resurrection.
It is enough to know that Death is robbed of his
empire, and that, as
Professor
Milligan himself admits in his able work on the
resurrection, our lord’s body was a true spiritual,
glorified body, immediately upon His rising, and not
first after His ascension, and that our bodies are to
take the form and equality of His.
Equal to the “angels” we shall be, in one
respect.
Like “Him,” we shall be, in another.
As
both, in
all.
“Flesh
and blood” cannot inherit God’s Kingdom, because
“corruption” cannot “inherit
incorruption,”
1 Cor. 15: 50.
And yet “flesh
and bones,” pervaded by the Spirit, and made
incorruptible, is what our Lord’s body was in His
resurrection, Luke 24: 26, a “glorious body,” and “like”
which – not “equal” to which – ours shall be at His
coming.
Phil. 3: 21.
In such
bodies, the Risen Saints shall have fellowship with the
unrisen in the Millennial
Age.
For the rest, our curiosity must be restrained, and will
be, if we listen to the Angel’s voice to Daniel, “Go thy
way, Daniel, till the End shall be!”
Inquire no more.
Be content with what is already spoken.
Leave the unrevealed
future to God.
Sure we are of one thing.
“We shall behold God’s face in righteousness,”
and “be satisfied when we awake with His likeness!”
Ps. 17: 15.
Even so,
Lord Jesus!
*Eisenmenger.
Eut.
Jud. II. 943.
** Ibid 495.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
. . . “The Lord’s Advent is not to annihilate the
existence of the Nations, as such, but to overthrow
their politics and rule, and scatter both like chaff,
and then transfer the sovereignty to
(1) The Risen saints – [ That
is, the ‘faithful’ dead or the “accounted worthy” from
both
Testaments, for, “apart
from us they (the afore mentioned Old
Testament saints – Ed.) - should not be made perfect,”
Heb. 11: 40. – Ed.].
(2) New-Born Israel
in the flesh,
(3) The Favoured Nations
in the flesh.
. . . Such is the clear representation of the whole word
of God.
Earth is beginning to realize the “pattern shown in the
Mount,” and prepare for the full accomplishment in the
final “new Heaven and Earth,” at the close of the 1000
years. The
Nations are the Fore-Court of the Temple; Israel and
their Holy Land, are the Holy Place; the Holy City and
the Risen BRIDE are the Holiest of All; no veil
existing.
To the perfect realization of this, all things are
tending.
The invisible is the source of all Realities, and what
has been
in history is the Beginning and Type of what
will be,
only in greater perfection.
David’s kingdom shall be restored, and among the
“sure mercies” to David is the gathering of Israel, and
the resurrection of the faithful [dead] to enjoy that
kingdom together; and therein all Christians [whom our
Lord will ‘account worthy’ – Ed.] shall share, at
Messiah’s Second coming. . .
. . . as to the alleged “incongruity of the glorified
among the unglorified,” and
“how they will live,” and “what they will do,” and “what
their condition,” and “daily occupation,” – questions
revived by
Kliefoth,
and repeated by others, though raised and answered ages
ago; and, further, “will there be flies, and bees, and
mosquitoes, in the Millennial Age,” as still others have
sportingly asked; and, yet others again, as to “the
habit of nature” – they all belong to that same
unbelieving spirit, and cast of mind, that made a
Socinus, some Schoolmen, and
later profane wits, inquire “whether our Lord rose from
the grave with His digestive organs?”
“Whether,” as Cleopatra wanted to know, “the
Saints will rise with raiment”?
and “whence came the
raiment our Lord wore when He rose?” and so, conclude,
from all, to a denial of the literal resurrection of the
body. Such
inquisition, it becomes us to repel, with force, and
rebuke into silence, holding, in spite of a thousand
questions all men can ask and none can answer, in
reference to every doctrine of Scripture, that
it is far more
Christian to believe what God has spoken, and give him
the glory, as “Doer of wonderous
things,” than it is to idealize the prophecy, to suit
our vain thoughts, and land ourselves at last into open
rejection of the Word of God.
The Lord knoweth the
thoughts of the wise that they are vain.
Painful to the last degree is the ever-recurring
style of objection we meet with in certain writers, as “It
is
unreasonable?”
“How
remote from reasonable brobability!”
It is “Inconceivable,”
“incredible,”
and “far
from probable,” and everything the mere natural
man can object to the supernatural.
We dismiss it all with the divine words, “O man,
who art thou that repliest
against God?”
“Should it be a marvellous thing in my eyes,
saith the Lord?”
“The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform
this.” “The
mouth of the Lord hath spoken it!”
“It is the utterance of Jehovah, Doer of these
things!” It
must be so, as God has said.
As to the Risen Saints, we know what their
perfection is, and how near they are to Christ.
It is
the righteous man raised from the dead, who is
the perfect man, ordained to dominion, in the Age to
come.”
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