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amidst his saints, being manifested chiefly in the Holy Land, and at Jerusalem; but the whole earth partaking of the blessedness and thus the regeneration of all things, and the world's redemption from the curse, having their accomplishment, according to the promise, at the manifestation of the sons of God.3

Such seems to me to be in brief the appointed order of events, introductory to the Millennium. I pray the reader to believe that it is in no presumptuous or light spirit that I have ventured on these awful and mysterious subjects. I have done so only under a sense of the necessity laid on me as an expositor: and offer what has been said, simply as suggestions of what I infer to be most probable from Scripture; but which, I fully allow, must in respect of details, be in no inconsiderable measure conjectural and uncertain.

It has long been a disputed question among prophetic expositors, (as my sketch of the chief millennial theories, given in the preceding Chapter, will have shown already,) where precisely the New Jerusalem of the 21st and 22nd chapters of the Apocalypse is to have its po

eternal reign. As the point has often been misstated of late, I add another further testimony from Irenæus, v. 26. "Christus est lapis qui præcisus est sine manibus ; qui destruet temporalia regna, et æternum inducet, quæ est justorum resurrectio."

It is to be observed that Mr. Faber, and other anti-premillennarians, constrained by the force of scripture evidence, allow very much of all that has been said in this Chapter: and that a mighty earthquake, a volcanic conflagration, a millennium of blessedness, and even the Shechinah, or visible revelation of Christ's glory, are to follow on the destruction of Antichrist. It is only the fact of this being the glory of Christ's second advent, and the saint's concomitant resurrection, that Mr. F. contravenes. 2 Matt. xix. 28. 3 Rom. viii. 9.

4 Apoc. xxi. 1. "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. 2. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them; and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. 4. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. 5. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write for these words are true and faithful. 6. And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

I will give unto

7. He that over

sition, whether during or after the Millennium; and, if synchronous with it, whether as identical, or not, with the glorified Jerusalem prophesied of in the Old Testament. We have seen that Augustine explained this glorified Jerusalem of Old Testament prophecy as identical with the Apocalyptic New Jerusalem; and both the one and the other as simply symbols of the heavenly and

cometh shall inherit all things: and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. 8. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

9. And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb's wife. 10. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God; 11. Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal; 12. And it had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel: 13. On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates. 14. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. 15. And he that talked with me had a golden reed, to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof. 16. And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth; and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal. 17. And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel. 18. And the building of the wall of it was of jasper; and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass. 19. And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald; 20. The fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, a topaz: the tenth, a chrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth; the twelfth, an amethyst. 21. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. 22. And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. 23. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. 24. And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it. 25. And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day for there shall be no night there. : 26. And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it. 27. And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie : but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.

xxii. 1. And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. 2. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3. And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him: 4. And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads. 5. And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, nor light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light and they shall reign for ever and ever."

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everlasting blessedness of the risen saints :'-that on the other hand Whitby and Vitringa, while also identifying the two figurations, did not explain them to signify, alike the one and the other, the millennial earthly blessedness of the Christian Church: 2-and that Mr. Faber would separate the two, and make the Old Testament Jerusalem of the latter day alone millennial. To which I may add, that some expositors, while explaining one or both to predict earthly glories destined for God's people, make the restored and converted Jews nationally, not the Church Catholic generally, the grand object and chief intended recipients of the coming glory. So does the great question about the Jews' restoration intermix itself with that respecting the New Jerusalem; and force upon us at this point the consideration of the Jewish people's destiny in the coming future.

And let me just observe here, with reference to the literal Israel's part in the matter, that there has been a very general abandonment on the part of modern commentators, of the decided anti-judaizing views of the patristic anti-millennarian school. It was laid down by Origen, Augustine, and others, that though the Jews would be converted to Christ before the final judgment, its result would be only their becoming part and parcel of the Church Universal; and being then so merged in it as to lose all national distinctness, and of course to have no national restoration to their own land and their ancient city. But after the Reformation, other views gradually obtained more and more on the subject: and Whitby, in common with others of the same, as well as of differ1 See p. 180. 2 See p. 183. 4 So Mr. Burgh, &c. Whitby in his Appendix to the Epistle to the Romans, thus speaks of Origen's view. "In his (Origen's) Book against Celsus, he saith not, 'They shall never be converted to the Christian faith,' but that they should never be restored to their own worship or country: 'We confidently affirm (óтı 88' añoкаTasafnσovTai) that they shall never again be restored to Jerusalem, or the land of promise, which before they were.'"-So too Augustine only speaks of their conversion: never, I believe, of their national restoration in Palestine. (See p. 179 suprà.) And when Jerom, on Habak. iii, speaking of the cursed fig-tree in Matt. xxi. 19, as signifying a curse on the Jews, adds, "Sed cùm sæculum istud pertransierit, et intraverit plenitudo gentium, tunc etiam hæc ficus afferet fructus suos, et omnis Israel salvabitur," he means similarly, I believe, only the conversion, not the national restoration of the Jews.

3 Ibid.

ent prophetic views,' declares himself compelled by force of Scripture evidence to admit that, on the times of the Gentiles being fulfilled, the Jews will, as a distinct people, re-occupy the Holy Land and Jerusalem. And indeed, admitting their conversion, (which who can doubt?) the strength of evidence on this point seems irresistible.3 So that we cannot eliminate this condition out of our problem. We cannot admit into the list of possible hypo

1 Prideaux in his Inaug. Orat. vi. 7, notes "inter recentiores P. Martyr, Beza, Grinæus, Paræus, et in Hexaplâ suâ Willetus." So too Prideaux himself, though a decided anti-premillennarian, the learned Dr. Owen, &c.

2 "I dare not absolutely deny, what the Millennarians all positively affirm, that the city of Jerusalem shall be then rebuilt, and the converted Jews return to it; because this may probably be collected from those words of Christ, 'Jerusalem shall be trodden down till the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled:' and all the prophets seem to declare that the Jews shall then return to their own land. See Jer. xxxi. 38-40. Yet do I confidently deny that the temple of Jerusalem shall be then built again:

" &c.

Even Archbishop Whately does not deny that there may be a political or national restoration of the Jews; though strongly denying that there will be any religious distinction. See his Chapter on the Millennium, in the Essays on a

Future State.

3 Deut. xxx. 1-6. seems to me almost by itself decisive on the point. "When all these things have come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, and thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations whither the Lord thy God hath driven thee, and shalt return unto the Lord, thou and thy children, then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion on thee, and gather thee from all the nations whither the Lord hath scattered thee. If any of thine be driven out to the utmost parts of heaven, from hence will the Lord thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee; and will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possest, and thou shalt possess it; and he will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers. And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord with all thine heart and all thy soul, that thou mayest live."-So that the only ground on which a denial of Israel's national restoration to Palestine seems maintainable, is a denial of their national conversion. A denial which who can make after St Paul's declaration, Rom. xi. 25, 26, &c.; not to say of nearly all the prophets?

As a late and eminent testimony to this effect, I may refer to the present Bishop of London's Sermon before the Jews' Society. "That which is here spoken of as a possible contingency," (viz. the repossession of their own land, &c, as predicted in Deut. xxx. 3, &c.) "is distinctly foretold by later prophets, as an event which will assuredly come to pass. The eighth and three last chapters of Zechariah cannot, we think, without doing violence to all the laws of interpretation, be so explained as not to imply a future restoration of the Jews to their ancient and covenanted inheritance, and the re-establishment of their national polity. This is of necessity connected with a re-instatement of the holy city of Jerusalem in splendour and strength. 'Jerusalem,' says the prophet, shall be safely inhabited; it shall be lifted up, and inhabited in her place: and men shall dwell in it; and there shall be no more utter destruction.'' Then, after observing that these words can scarce by possibility be understood in a purely spiritual sense, of the heavenly Jerusalem,-the Bishop adds, that any such spiritual interpretation is positively precluded by Christ's prophecy about Jerusalem being trodden down by the Gentiles till the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. For, as the city of Jerusalem is to be trodden down, so the city of Jerusalem shall be built up."

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theses, so as we might otherwise have done not without much plausibility, that the Jerusalem of the latter-day glory, predicted in the Old Testament, is to be construed either with Irenæus as figuring the millennial glory of the Christian Church on earth, or with Augustine the eternal glory of the Church of the resurrection, in a still higher and heavenly state of blessedness. It must be confessed, I think, that the literal Israel, in its national character, and its city the literal Jerusalem, enter, beyond what these old patristic expositors taught, into Old Testament prophecies of the future blessedness.2 And the only question for the Apocalyptic expositor is, where to place them in his scheme of unfulfilled prophecy; and how to associate the blessedness of Israel's national restoration with, or how dissociate it from, the predicted glories of the Millennium and of the New Jerusalem.

Now, that we are not to identify the restored Jewish

1 This last without any yet future earthly Millennium of righteousness first intervening. As to the idea of the Millennium being past, its Apocalyptic position between Antichrist's destruction and the general resurrection (see p. 184 suprà) is a difficulty that the Protestant advocates of this view can never overcome.

2 I am surprised to find, however, as this sheet is passing through the press, that some writers still deny this; for example, the Author of the "Rector in Search of a Curate." His theory, is that wherever a national or local restoration of the Jews is predicted, it either means the first restoration from Babylon; or a restoration conditionally promised, and which, from the circumstance of the Jews not fulfilling the conditions, has not been, and will not be, fulfilled. (Of prophe cies, such as in Deut. xxx. and Zech. xii., where God promises his Spirit's effusion in order to enable them to fulfil the conditions, he says nothing.) In all other prophecies he applies what is said of the latter-day glory of Jerusalem to the Christian Church.-It will, I think, suffice to satisfy the reader on this theory's unsoundness, if he try it simply by those chapters of Zechariah which the Bishop of London refers to.

Let me just add, with regard to this writer, that in supposing the principle of uniform literalism of interpretation, to be essential to the premillennial system, he has been under a misapprehension, as the present Apocalyptic Commentary may suffice to show :-that in deprecating all supposition of a twofold fulfilment of certain prophecies, or of predictions about Babylon in the Old Testament . sometimes referring to the New Testament Babylon, he will find few expositors of repute to support him :-that in admitting with Whitby the truth of a yet future Millennium of universal righteousness on earth (preceding the Jews' conversion, he argues, under the misconception noticed by me at p. 230 respecting St. Paul's Anpaμɑ τwv €0vwv, not following it) he involves himself and his theory in all the main difficulties of Whitby's finally that in admitting that if the Jews' national restoration to their own land be a fact predicted, Christ's personal reign must be a fact predicted also, he makes an admission that many as adverse to the personal reign as himself will deem suicidal; e. g. Mr. Scott, who fully admits the truth of the Jews' restoration.

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