The utmost confusion also prevails in the views of pre-millennarians as to the nature of the kingdom of Christ. According to one view Christ and his risen and glorified saints are to dwell visibly on the earth and reign for a thousand years; according to another, the risen saints are to be in heaven, and not on earth my more than the angels now are; nevertheless the subjects of the first resurrection, although dwelling in heaven, are to govern the earth; according to another it is the converted Jewish nation restored to their own land, who are to be the governors of the world; according to another, the Bible divides men into three classes: the Gentiles, the Jews, and the Church of God. The prophecies relating to the millennium are understood to refer to the relative condition of the Jews and Gentiles in this world, and not to the risen and glorified believers. Another view seems to be, that this earth, changed no more by the fires of the last day than it was by the waters of the deluge, is to be the only heaven of the redeemed. Dr. Cumming and Dr. Seiss say they wish no better heaven than this earth free from the curse and from sin. The latter says:¹¹ “My faith is, that these very hills and valleys shall yet be made glad with the songs of a finished redemption, and this earth yet become the bright, blessed, and everlasting homestead of men made glorious and immortal in body and in soul.” Still another view is that there are two heavens, one here and one above; two Jerusalems, both to continue forever, the one on earth and the other in heaven; the one made with hands, the other without hands; both glorious and blessed, but the earthly far inferior to the heavenly; they are like concentric circles, one within the other; both endless. Men will continue forever, on earth, living and dying; happy but not perfect, needing regeneration and sanctification; and, when they die, will be translated to the kingdom which is above.

It seems therefore that the torch of the literalist is an “ignis fatuus,” leading those who follow it, they know not whither. Is it not better to abide by the plain doctrinal teaching of the Bible, rather than to trust to the uncertain expositions of unfulfilled prophecies? What almost all Christians believe is: (1.) That all nations shall be converted unto God. Jesus shall reign from the rising to the setting of the sun. (2.) That the Jews shall be reingrafted into their own olive-tree and acknowledge our Lord to be their God and Saviour. (3.) That all Antichristian powers shall be destroyed. (4.) That Christ shall come again in person and with great glory; the dead shall be raised, those who have done good unto the resurrection of life, those who have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation; and, (5.) That the righteous clothed in their glorified bodies shall then inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world; and the wicked be consigned to their final doom.

Did the Apostles expect the Second Advent in their Day?

The simple facts on this subject are: (1.) That the coming of the Messiah and the establishment of his kingdom was the great object of expectation and desire for the people of God from the beginning of the world. It was the great subject of prophecy and promise under the old dispensation. The ancient saints are described (as Christians now are) as those who were constantly hoping for the coming of the Lord. (Eph. ii. 12; Acts xxvi. 6, 7.) The dying thief said: “Lord, remember me, when thou comest into thy kingdom.” The last question put to our Lord by his disciples was: “Lord wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel.” (2.) As the Messiah came at first as a man of sorrows, to make Himself a sacrifice for sin, He promised to come a second time without sin unto salvation, to raise the dead and to gather all his people into his everlasting home. His second coming therefore was to Christians what his first coming was to the Old Testament saints; the constant object of expectation and desire. (3.) As the time of the second advent was unrevealed either to men or angels, the early Christians hoped it might occur in their day. The Apostles themselves no doubt at first cherished that expectation. (4.) To the Apostle Paul, however, it was revealed that the day of the Lord was not to come until a great apostasy had occurred. (5.) Nevertheless as the Apostolic Christians did not know how long that apostasy was to continue, their constant prayer was, O Lord come quickly. The Apostles continued to hold up the second advent as an impending event, the moral impression of which ought to be to raise the affections of the people from the world and fix them on the things unseen and eternal. Those who urge the fact that the New Testament writers speak of the day of the Lord as at hand, and exhort believers to watch and pray for his advent, as a proof that the Apostles believed that it might occur at once, that no events then future must come to pass before Christ came, forget that what inspired men said God said. If God, who knew that Christ was not to come for at least eighteen centuries after his ascension, could say to his people: “The day of the Lord is at hand.” “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of Man cometh,” then that language was appropriate even on the assumption that those who used it knew that the second advent was not to occur for thousands of years; for a thousand years are with God as one day, and one day as a thousand years. The Church waited four thousand years for the fist advent; we may be content to wait God’s time for the second.¹²

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Footnotes

1. There recently appeared in the Presbyterian, a series of articles signed “Twisse,” understood to be from the pen of the Rev. Dr. Duffield of Princeton, New Jersey, designed to sustain the doctrine of the pre-millennial advent of Christ, and especially to disprove “the doctrine of a millennial era of universal righteousness and peace on earth before” the second coming of Christ. The arguments summarily stated by the writer as the following: “(1.) Were the doctrine true, it would undoubtedly be prominent in the New Testament, and especially in the Apostolical Epistles. The fact is, it is not only just prominent, but, so far as we are informed, the advocates of the doctrine do not pretend to find in the Epistles the slightest allusion to it. (2.) The uniform and abundant teaching of the New Testament as to the condition of the Church and of the world during the present dispensation — that is, until the advent — forbid the expectation of such a millennium. (3.) The advent itself, not the millennium, is prominently presented in the New Testament as ‘the blessed hope’ of the Church, and is uniformly referred to as an event near at hand, ever imminent, to be ‘looked for’ with longing expectation. (4.) The Saviour’s repeated command to ‘watch’ for his coming, because we ‘know not the hour,’ is inconsistent with the idea of a millennium intervening. (5.) The New Testament teaches repeatedly and unequivocally that the advent and the manifestation of the Messianic kingdom are to be synchronous events. (6.) The Apostolic Church, under the instruction of those holy men who spoke and wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, was millennarian. (7.) The Church, for two centuries immediately succeeding the Apostles was millennarian. (8.) The doctrine of a millennium before the advent is not to be found in the standards of any of the Churches of the Reformation; by several it is expressly repudiated. It is a modern novelty, suggested but one hundred and fifty years ago by Whitby, and avowedly as ‘a new hypothesis.’” ↩

2. It is true that pre-millennialists differ very much on this point. The common opinion in the early Church was that the risen saints are to live and reign a thousand years with Christ on earth; but some say that the glorified believers are to be in heaven; others, that they are to appear from time to time on earth, as Christ did, during the forty days which intervened between his resurrection and ascension; and others appear to teach that glorified saints are to rule over unglorified humanity without being revealed to those over whom they reign. ↩

3. See passages cited from distinguished millennarians on this point in Rev. David Brown’s Christ’s Second Coming, pp. 167-173. Mr. David N. Lord devotes to this subject two chapters of his book on The Coming and Reign of Christ. New York, 1858. He says (p. 151), that the Scriptures teach that the earth is “to continue forever, and that mankind are forever to occupy it, and multiply in an endless succession of generations; and that it is to be the scene of Christ’s everlasting kingdom and reign.” He argues this from the covenant made from Noah; from the promise made to Abraham that his seed should forever possess the land of Canaan; and from the promise made to David that his seed should sit on his throne and reign forever. This perpetuity of the human race on the earth and in the flesh, he considers one of the most clearly revealed purposes of God concerning the family of man. Instead of the number of the redeemed being nearly made up, he holds that they are to go on multiplying through all eternity. ↩

4. The Last Times and the Great Consummation. By Joseph A. Seiss, D. D. Philadelphia and London, 1866. p. 73. On p. 75, the author says, “The earth shall not pass away.” ↩

5. Seiss, ut supra, p. 211. ↩

6. Lectures on the Prophecies Relative to the Jewish Nation, 1st ed., 1830, p. 72. ↩

7. Elements of Prophetic Interpretation, pp. 227, 228. ↩

8. Defence of the Personal Reign of Christ, 1841, p. 41, 42. ↩

9. pp. 311-315. ↩

10. The Last Times, J. A. Seiss, D. D. p. 74. ↩

11. The Last Times, p. 72. ↩

12. Millennarians are not consistent in urging the objection considered in the text, as some at least of their own number teach that important events yet future must occur before the establishment of Christ’s kingdom. For example, Rev. John Cox, Minister of the Gospel, Woolwich, in his Thoughts on the Coming and Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, devotes the third chapter of that work to prove that the entire destruction of the Papacy, of Mohammedanism, and of the tyrannical kingdoms of the world, and the restoration of the Jews to their own land, must precede the kingdom of Christ. See The Literalist, vol. v. p. 26 ff. The Literalist is a collection, in five octavo volumes, of the publications of the leading English pre-millennarians. Published by Orrin Rogers, Philadelphia, 1840 and 1841. ↩