THE

MILLENNIAL HARBINGER,

NEW SERIES.

VOLUME 11.. -NUMBER VIII.

BETHANY, VA. AUGUST, 1838.

PROPHECIES-No. XIII.

STRICTURES ON THE ESSAYS OF "A REFORMED CLERGYMAN”. -BY S. M. M'CORKLE, a layman.

Brother Campbell-Ar the solicitations of some of your friends and mine, I take up my pen to address you and your readers. As a matter of justice I should be heard in another epistle. If not out of justice to me, the cause for which I plead demands another hearing.

Long have I waited in patient silence to see the Reformed Clergyman cast anchor; but he seems to be no nearer port than when he set sail. He has done my views injustice-probably undesignedly: and for the sake of his hearers and himself, he should be corrected,

He has mistaken me if he supposes that I do not believe the world is to undergo a deluge of fire. We differ relative to the time and great design. He places it at the close of time-its object, the dissolution of our ponderous world! I place it at the close of the present dispensation-the last display of Heaven's indignation against universal corruption; and, like the flood, is to rid the world of ungodly men. It may, like the flood, produce some physical changes on the face of our globe in places. No doubt but the seat of the Beast is to be made an everlasting memento: its smoke is to ascend up for ever and ever, from generation to generation. How is this to be, if the whole earth is to be destroyed by fire?

Our brother says, "Need I labor to show that it was not a dispensation that was deluged in water?" What was it? Need I labor to show that a dispensation cannot exist without subjects? Did not the Jewish dispensation close in blood? But our brother will say it was not the dispensation that suffered! I have but little inclination for drawing such nice distinctions between a

government and its subjects. The one cannot very well exist without the other!

Our friend says, "If it was literal and proper water that deluged the first heavens and earth, it must by all means be literal and proper fire which will deiuge the present heavens and earth." So say ! The controversy does not rest on this fact, but on the fact that the "literal and proper fire" is, or is not, to have the same kind of mission to perform which the waters had on earth's wicked inhabitants! So must Peter be understood, or do violence to his comparisons and references. In the deluge of water the literal earth suffered not-vegetation and the soil remained the same. Such is to be the fact under the deluge of fire.

I could easily prove from my essays that I as truly believe in a deluge of fire as our friend does: he has overlooked this fact, and has made issue on the possibility of burning our ponderous globe composed of earth and water, provided the Lord will separate the oxygen and nitrogen gasses!! Truly philosophical! Is a fact performed upon philosophical principles when omnipotent power is exerted contrary to the common laws of nature! I am as ready as the Clergyman to admit the potency of creating power to destroy! I have no arguments against omnipotent power! And if he will give me a thus saith the Lord for it, I will instantly be a most unqualified believer in the doctrine of worldburning!

The Reformed Clergyman has done me injustice, as well as the subject and the public too, by making issue on a point not fairly that on which I suspended the argument. The debate was suspended on these propositions: "Does prophecy point to the dissolution of nature, or does it point to the dissolution of the church?" "Is the dispensation to close, or is it to remain in its present form till the end of time?"

Instead of taking up the propositions in the plain way in which they were stated, and proving from the Book that the dispensation is to remain in its present form till the end of time-that it is not to close as has been the fate of former ones; he makes a triumphant display of philosophy, proving that our world can be burned up, provided the Lord will separate certain affinities which have been inviolably associated since the creation—sus. pend or violate the laws of nature-make the elements air, earth, and water, what they are not!! Admirable philosophy!! The Layman's system of expounding prophecy by relative prophecies is triumphantly demolished by a chemical apparatus, instead of proof drawn from the sacred oracles! Meanwhile, not a particle of matter destroyed-nothing more than a change in qualityponderous as it was in the day of its creation-a ruined mass,

performing its senseless revolutions in perpetual darkness, and without a new creation-another act of omnipotent power, entirely unfit for the purposes proposed after this tremendous burning has been consummated-such as vineyards, culture, grazing, &c.!!

How perfectly in keeping with the absurdities of the day is the quotation from Dr. Dick, by which our brother proves his favorite theory of burning the air and earth! No one acquainted with the effect that fire must have on the atmosphere, coming up to the propositions of the learned author, can expect it to be very well adapted to breathing afterward. But this is a small matter: a new creation of oxygen, &c. of water, soil, and vegetation-of men, women, and children-animals, &c can all be performed in a moment at the command of Omnipotence!

The learned anthor alluded to above, says, "Fire does not annihilate, but only changes the forms of matter; and [the earth] may come forth from the flames of the general conflagration, purified from all its physical evils." "For, though the heavens, or the atmosphere, shall be dissolved," &c. "whether (says he) after being thus renovated, it shall be allotted as the residence of the redeemed, is beyond our province at this time to determine. But if not, it will, in all probability, be allotted as the abode of other rational beings, who may be transported from other regions to contemplate a new province of the divine empire, or who may be immediately created for the purpose of taking possession of this renovated world."

It is a strange thing that the learned can never take the scripture for its own expositor, but must for ever be indulging in some nonsensical conjecture! "Transported from other regions!" From where? From the Moon, Jupiter, or Saturn, I suppose!! Why not suffer the present "rational beings" to remain? But this would look too much like plain common sense! Forsooth, are the wolf and the lamb, lions, bullocks, and serpents to be transported also?! Not one solitary word in all the Book about a new creation of "rational beings"-no, nor transportations; yet the absurdity passes current on the credit of a learned philosopher!! Suppose we admit our friend's theory-sun, moon, and stars extinguished—our earth with all its appendages burned up; a new creation of men, animals, and vegetation must take place before you can reconcile Peter and Isaiah; for the promise to which Peter refers, found in Isaiah and no where else, calls for men, women, and children-houses, lands, and vineyardssun, moon, animals, sabbaths, and worship-yes, and sinners too, either directly or indirectly, after our world is burned up— -sun, moon, and stars extinguished, according to the theory of our friend and popular opinion!! And yet in the face of all

these incongruities, our brother exclaims, "But why the effort or the wish to allegorize this awfully sublime passage in Peter?" Just for the simple reason-the wish to make the scripture agree itself! Admirable system of expounding the word of life, that sets at odds the living oracles-that makes inspiration war with inspiration-placing Prophets and Apostles at irreconcileable contradiction! And such is the system for which our brother pleads. For I defy all the clergy on earth, reformed or unreformed, learned or rude, with all the ponderous volumes of dull divinity and expositions which have shed darkness on the messages of Heaven, to reconcile Peter and Isaiah, according to the popular theory of expounding prophecy.

I care nothing about a learned criticism on a single word: the ge or kosmos of the original weighs not a feather with me-it is the propositions. Peter agreed with Isaiah when penning his predictions; therefore, Isaiah must be the best commentator on Peter that is to be found this side of the invisible world. If the earth, the ge, the mountains, the rivers, had never been addressed in Holy Writ when the inhabitants of the earth were inteuded, there might have been some excuse for the confidence of our friend the reliance which he places on the Greek word ge. Now, brother, go into the sacred oracles and stick to your principles of interpretation; see what havoc you will make of the meaning of God's word-of common sense. Stick to the one literal construction by which you govern the "sublime passage" in Peter; keep in mind the reliance which you place on the word ge, the land. Try your criticism and knowledge of Greek gibberish on the following passages: "And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth," the ge. The ge of John in the Apocalypse is the ge of Peter; therefore the beast rose out of the land, the soil, the literal earth!! Logical conclusionl Try your rule of interpretation with Jeremiah xxii. 29.-"O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord." The same unconquerable ge stands in bold relief before you in Jeremiah. What kind of conclusion must follow, according to your criticism on the ge in Peter? See Genesis vi. 11, 12, 13, &c. The earth [the ge] was also corrupt before God. And God looked upon the earth, [the ge, the land, the soil, according to our friend's criticism,] and behold it was corrupt." I might multiply passages beyond all bounds where the word ge is used relative to the living being on earth, and not the literal land, the soil. Learning is by no means a security against the most rude mistakes, which, coming from the learned, are mostly pardonable by a credulous world, although at times a perfect outrage on common sense.

Our friend who has so long and triumphantly occupied the field in the prophetic department, lest he should be exalted above

measure, or claim the arena as a kind of fee simple, should, for his own good and the good of his readers, have some of his other inconsistencies brought to the light. Perhaps I have already adverted to the fact of his having obliterated sun, moon, and stars, in his exposition of the seventh vial, while the Book is entirely silent on the subject.

Suppose we admit his proposition-"sun, moon, and stars extinguished"*-not a ray of light illuminating our globe: anon, it is made the theatre of action-"voices, thunders, and an earthquake unparalleled before-the city falls into three piecesevery island disappears-from heaven falls a great hail." Of Babylon, "an angel announces her ruin complete. From heaven a voice commands, Come out of her, my people." Is this all to take place after sun, moon, and stars are blotted out? But this is in perfect keeping with the popular system of darkening the moral luminary of the world! After all our friend has written, I cannot see how he is to evangelize the world. Judgments and the propositions of the gospel are to bring this about according to his theory, and fail to do it according to his own showing; "yet men blaspheme God on account of the hail!!"_ -a convincing proof that even in the day of the last plague the Lord appears not in person: for can any one think that even his presence in this awful crisis fails to suppress this blasphemy and to subdue men to repentance?" No repentance under the last plague! Is there any expedient with our brother to bring men to repentance? Our friend in disproving the personal return of Christ, has disproved his own theory of evangelizing the world! Because men blaspheme under the last vial, our friend argues that the Lord has not come in person; therefore, will not: and has thus disproved the personal coming of the Lord? Another logical conclusion! The Book gives no intimation of a coming under this vial, nor do the advocates of the system plead for it; but that Babylon comes into remembrance before God. Our learned brother should attend more closely to the scriptural history of these terrible things: a superficial view lays the foundation for erroneous conclusions. Plagues are the scourges of Heaven: when they prove ineffectual in bringing men to repentance, the work of vengeance follows. Plagues are the harbingers of the fatal blow that blots Babylon from the face of creation, except that which is to be read in the terrible fact-the smoke of her burning, which is to ascend for ever and ever. Here an unexpected witness presents itself in favor of our system: for how can the smoke of Babylon ascend up for ever and ever, if the earth, the ge, the land, is to be burned up? Here our brother will be compelled to go into qualifying the assertions of the

VOL. II.-N. S.

* See Millennial Harbinger, Vol. vi. No. 3.

29*