The Approaching Advent Of Christ

(A critical, post-tribulational examination of the teachings of J.N. Darby)

Alexander Reese*

Note: remaining chapters 13-16 and appendices  to be added

Contents:

PREFACE
CHAPTER 1: THE QUESTION STATED
Excursus On The Seventy Weeks Of Daniel
CHAPTER 2: THE RESURRECTION OF THE SAINTS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
Excursus To Chapter 2 The Resurrection in Ezekiel 37:1-14
CHAPTER 3 THE RESURRECTION OF THE SAINTS IN THE GOSPELS
CHAPTER 4: THE RESURRECTION OF THE SAINTS IN ST. PAUL’S EPISTLES
Excursus To Chapter IV: Dr. E.W. Bullinger's Scheme Of Thr Saint's Resurrection
CHAPTER V: THE RESURRECTION OF THE SAINTS IN THE APOCALYPSE
CHAPTER VI: THE PARABLE OF THE TARES AND THE WHEAT
CHAPTER VII THE GREAT MISSIONARY COMMISSION AND ITS FULFILLMENT
CHAPTER VIII: THE CHURCH AND THE END IN THE EPISTLES
CHAPTER IX: THE CHURCH AND THE GLORIOUS APPEARING
CHAPTER X: THE UNVEILING OF THE SON
CHAPTER XI: THE PAROUSIA OF THE KING
CHAPTER XII: MESSIAH'S DAY

PREFACE

This volume is not intended to add to those crying, "Lo here," "Lo there," at every outbreak of war, of famine, and of pestilence in our distracted world. Nor does it aim at expounding the doctrine of the Second Advent according to its natural content and implications. It is simply an examination of prophetic theories that have gained a large acceptance among Evangelical Anglicans, Fundamentalists in all the Protestant Churches, Plymouth Brethren, Keswick and similar movements, freelance Bible-teachers and evangelists and all whose leanings are toward a realistic program of the End, and a belief, sometimes true, that Providence is with the small battalions and the Wee Frees.

These views, which began to be propagated a little over one hundred years ago in the separatist movements of Edward Irving and J. N. Darby, have spread to the remotest corners of the earth, and enlisted supporters in most of the Reformed Churches in Christendom, including the Mission field. They are held and spread with conviction and tenacity, and occasionally with overbearing confidence. They have had the advantage of being outstanding tenets in all sections of a denomination, which has had the satisfaction of seeing the peaceful penetration of other communions by their theories of the End.[1] So much so that an increasing number of pastors feel called upon to leave the ordered work of the pastorate, to stir up interest in what is called the "imminent" or impending Coming of Christ. Some of these at a few hours notice can fill the largest Churches with audiences anxious to hear of the latest signs of the times, though it is a fundamental presupposition of the school that the Imminent Advent awaits the fulfillment of no signs whatever. Some of this interest is wholesome; more of it would be if all of what is taught were true.

These prophetic theories have often been examined, but usually in tracts and booklets of an adventitious character, which have generally been ignored, or not taken seriously. It has been like bowling to Bradman, or pitching to "Babe" Ruth, with a ping-pong ball, and against the wind. The time seems to have come for a more congruous effort.

The reader’s attention is drawn to one or two features of the work. First, written for people who are largely strangers to the great commentaries, it aims at illuminating the discussion of disputed texts by drawing freely on those works. Writers on the prophetic future sometimes furthered the acceptance of their views by strong denunciations of commentaries, introductions, and "traditional exegesis." People’s minds were thus prepared for accepting peculiar views. I think on the contrary that ministers and educated laymen ought to thank God devoutly for the Golden Age of exegesis that entered with the publication of Winer’s Grammar of the Greek Testament in 1822, and continues in the issue of all kinds of learned helps to our own day. It is an extraordinary gain that commentators have abandoned denominational and party exegesis, and in dry light aim at telling us what the text is saying: not what it ought to say, on "the analogy of truth" and similar presuppositions, but what it says in the new light from all departments of research.

When, therefore, someone has a freak interpretation to commend to us, I have drawn on the great exegetes to give us their view of it, trusting that the average educated reader will see that a natural interpretation, backed by scholars of the highest standing, is preferable to a freak one backed by dogmatism and the requirements of a system.

These selections will indicate my debt to the writers mentioned; but I feel that no acknowledgement will reveal the debt I owe to the writings of Dr. Theodore Zahn. Dr. Stalker once said that Conybeare and Howson’s Life and Epistles of St. Paul was a "gift from God" to the English people. And one reader of it has felt like that about Zahn’s Introduction to The New Testament (E.T., 1909, 3 vols.), of which Dr. Jacobus of Hartford Seminary (U.S.A.), the able scholar to whose initiative and interest we owe this gift in an English dress, said that it is "an unexampled treasury." Of the criticism I am not competent to say anything; but any pastor with a taste for such things might say of one feature of the work, What could be more magnificent than the paraphrases and summaries of book after book of the N.T., beginning with "The Circumstances of the Readers" of the Epistle of James, and "The Personality of James," continuing through the earlier Epistles of Paul, reaching "The Contents, Plan, and Purpose of Matthew’s Gospel" (a wonderful chapter), and concluding with eighty pages on the Apocalypse that are worth their weight in gold, for the appreciation and understanding of that difficult book.

This feature of Dr. Zahn’s work evoked praise from Dr. E. Nestle as an aid to the textual criticism of the N.T. It merits the attention of very many pastors who have had their faith undermined by the too hasty acceptance of a criticism that makes large part of the N.T. writings the work of "anonymous or fictitious authors" (Ramsay), and this without their even knowing the great strength of the case for the N.T. of tradition. It was Dr. P. T. Forsyth who wrote a generation ago, that "certain nimble popular journals live on the delusion" that all the ability and knowledge are on the critical side. "They have not so much as heard whether there be alongside of brilliants like Wernle or Schmiedel, giants like Kahler or Zahn. It would not be too much to say that the latter two are among the most powerful minds of the world in the region—one of theology, and one of scholarship. Yet in this country, and certainly to our preachers, they are almost unknown" (Person and Place of Jesus Christ: preface).

I should add that in learned quotations I have often given the English for the Greek and Hebrew in Scripture quotations. Sometimes I have translated Latin quotations. It should be said also that, unless otherwise stated, italics are by the present writer, though there may be a slip or two here, owing to the circumstances in which the quotations have been checked. It may be remarked that Meyer used italics a great deal; so did A. T. Robertson, though in his case it was a typographical device.

If any reader thinks that I have dealt with the subject in too great detail, I may as well confess that my own view is decidedly the same. It would be fortunate if Christians could reach agreement on a few leading aspects of the Second Coming, instead of stirring up disunity by prophetic speculation on many others that call for patience and tolerance. Nevertheless, I must decline to make any change in the form of presentation. The only possible hope of reaching a decision in the debate is by paying Darbyists [see ADDITIONAL NOTE at end of Preface] the compliment of answering with thoroughness all their principal arguments. Their long reign has been due to the fact that no one has ever attempted this before.

For another feature of my book I feel almost like apologizing to any scholarly reader who picks up this volume. Provost Salmon said once that "it is always irksome to be offered proof of something that it has never occurred to you to doubt." I have to confess that all through I have been conscious of that accusing statement: I frequently labor to prove things—like the promise of immortality in Daniel 12:2, and Isaiah 26:19, that few or no cultivated readers ever doubted. My only plea is an anticipation that for a handful of readers who never doubted such things, my book will have hundreds who do this because of a whole system of interpretation that they have accepted and that has never been properly examined. Here again I have had to decline to make any alteration in my approach to the subject, though I realize that some few readers may have cause of complaint.

I have drawn freely on modern revisions of the N.T., from Darby to Dr. G. W. Wade. This is done simply because they frequently light up texts that have been misunderstood, often from their very familiarity. Friends have warned me that this feature will not go down with some of my readers; they are prejudiced against Dr. Moffatt, because of his critical position on the N.T. He is called a "Modernist" and so on. Dr. Moffatt, I judge, would prefer to be called a "Liberal," which is usually applied to one who, like him, accepts the critical view of the Bible, together with the central truths of the Incarnation and Resurrection of our Lord. I think it sufficient to say that I am not a Modernist, and critics should limit themselves to seizing on any rationalism that I may introduce from any source whatever. My belief is that a student who has not learned the value of Dr. Moffatt’s translation for unraveling the difficulties of an epistle like 2 Corinthians, or Galatians, or Hebrews, is shutting his eyes to the light, and losing much.

I have refrained from giving a bibliography; a long list of learned works is apt to convey the impression that the author is a scholar or a theologian; as I am neither I have omitted it.

A few works will be found mentioned under a column of abbreviations; this was drawn up only to permit the use of shortened titles in the text.

On a matter that may provoke criticism—the controversial spirit of the book—I may refer the reader to the paragraph from Dr. Stalker, a revered teacher of the whole Church, on the title-sheet of this volume. I may say also that I agree with Dr. H. L. Goudge in his excellent British-Israel Theory, that a writer is not always under obligation to suppress his amusement at his opponent’s arguments. And the author of 1 Corinthians 13 did not feel that he was called upon to suppress all his irony and indignation when dealing with grave matters in 2 Corinthians and Galatians.

In the present volume one with no such position as those of the writers just mentioned, is seeking to save large tracts of the N.T. from extremely harmful principles of interpretation, very widely held, and increasingly held. There is a medium, surely, between the crudities of controversy in Milton’s time, and a meekness that, up till now, has only given the impression of a case so weak that it cannot command vigor, and can safely be ignored.

Hazlitt is reported to have indicated "animated moderation" as the ideal in controversy. I hope that the controversial method in the present volume is not far removed from that.

Perhaps I may add, to explain references in the text, that a second volume, all of which (except a few pages) was written in the first months of the World War, is about ready. It aims at examining thoroughly the pre-trib interpretation of Mark 13 and Matthew 24-25, and deals with the prophetic and dispensational theories of Sir R. Anderson, E. W. Bullinger, J. N. Darby, A. C. Gaebelein, W. Kelly, D. M. Panton, and C. I. Scofield.

It remains to express my deep obligations to three or four friends whose help has lightened greatly the work of preparing this volume for the publisher. The late Miss Maude Herriott, M.A., formerly of the Department of Biology at Canterbury University College, Christchurch, New Zealand, rendered extremely valuable help of every kind when the MS. was first prepared in 1914. Only after this preface was drafted did the news come that this gifted and cultured woman, so fully representative of all that is best in Brethren saintliness, had passed to her rest in the Lord.

Criticisms by the Rev. G. H. Jupp, a life-long friend, and editor of "The Outlook," the official organ of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, were serviceable in ridding the 1914 MS. of many defects.

The Rev. Harold H. Cook, of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, did cheerfully a lot of work that would have been a burden to the writer. He also made a special trip to England and North America to arrange publication, correct the proof-sheets, and prepare the indexes.

My thanks are due also to my friend Mr. K. Howell Fountain of Christchurch, New Zealand, without whose counsel, energy, and enthusiasm the volume would never have got into print. He has maintained interest in the venture for over twenty years.

I cannot thank these four friends sufficiently for all the time and attention that they have bestowed on my work.

It should be added that, whilst the counsel and criticism of these friends have improved the book, they are not to be held responsible for defects that remain. Nor is it to be understood that they endorse all the views put forward, or presupposed in the writing of it.

On a particular point in Appendix I, I am indebted for suggestions to Mr. Andrew R. Kirk, of Christchurch, New Zealand, and to my brother, Mr. Daniel Reese, of the same city.

ALEXANDER REESE

American Presbyterian Mission,
Itabuna, Estado da Bahia, Brazil.
19th March 1937

ADDITIONAL NOTE

Throughout the book I have used the term "Darbyist" and Mr. W. B. Neatby’s term, "Brethrenism." Without some such terms one can make no progress, unless one used intolerable circumlocutions. I may say that, although the term appeared in print some years ago, it was coined by me in 1914 so as to avoid "Darbyite," which had offensive associations. I hope this will be sufficient to persuade Brethren that the new term is not used churlishly. People are not offended at being called Calvinists or Arminians, and people, in or out of the Churches, who accept J. N. Darby’s ideas on the Second Advent, should not take it amiss if they are called "Darbyists". This word, I may explain, is the anglicized form of the Portuguese "Darbystas."

ENDNOTES:

[1] This is furthered by the worldwide circulation of The Scofield Reference Edition of the Bible (over a million copies). There is much sound divinity, admirably collated, in it; but it is a pity that an alternative edition is not available with the text of The 1911 Bible, which was about the best of all attempts made to correct the Family Bible of the English‑speaking world. It was done by a company of American scholars and Dr. Scofield acted as secretary. It is a pity also that highly‑debatable theories of the End were set down alongside the sacred text as if they were assured results of modern knowledge. More use might also have been made of the magnificent expository material in the works of great scholars like J. A. Alexander, Delitzsch, Skinner, and Sir G. A. Smith.

CHAPTER 1: THE QUESTION STATED

Until the second quarter of the nineteenth century general agreement existed among pre-millennial advocates of our Lord’s Coming concerning the main outlines of the prophetic future: amidst differences of opinion on the interpretation of the Apocalypse and other portions of Scripture, the following scheme stood out as fairly representative of the school:

Such is a fair statement of the fundamentals of Premillennialism as it has obtained since the close of the Apostolic Age. There have been differences of opinion on details and subsidiary points, but the main outline is as I have given it.

These views were held in the main by Irenæus, the "grand-pupil" of the Apostle John, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and the primitive Christians generally until the rise of the Catholic, political Church in the West, and of allegorical exegesis at Alexandria (Harnack). In later times they were also held and propagated by Mede and Bengel, who did so much to revive the primitive hope of Christ’s Coming. And since the beginning of the last century what a galaxy of preachers, theologians, and expositors have appeared to maintain the ancient faith! In Britain and America the names of Alford, Andrews, David Baron, Birks, Bonar, Ellicott, Erdman, Gordon, Guinness, Kellogg, Moorehead, Müller, Maitland, B. W. Newton, Ryle, Saphir, Stifler, Tregelles, Trench, and West pass before us; whilst in Germany and the Continent generally, we meet with an imposing list of exegetes and theologians such as Auberlen, Bleek, Christlieb, Delitzsch, De Wette, Düsterdieck, Ebrard, Ewald, Godet, Hofmann, Lange, Luthardt, Orelli, Rothe, Stier, Van Oosterzee, Volck, and Zahn, who assented to, and expounded, the pre-millennial doctrine set forth above.[1]

The fact that so many eminent men, after independent study of the Scriptures, reached similar conclusions regarding the subject of Christ’s Coming and Kingdom, creates a strong presumption—on pre-millennial presuppositions—that such views are scriptural, and that nothing plainly taught in Scripture, and essential to the Church’s hope, was overlooked. About 1830, however, a new school arose within the fold of Premillennialism that sought to overthrow what, since the Apostolic Age, have been considered by all premillennialists as established results, and to institute in their place a series of doctrines that had never been heard of before. The school I refer to is that of "The Brethren" or "Plymouth Brethren," founded by J. N. Darby.

It will be convenient to give a summary of the new doctrines, with extracts from the writings of the four pioneer writers who filled Evangelical Christendom with their teaching. I refer to Darby’s Lectures on the Second Coming and Notes on the Apocalypse, Kelly’s Lectures on the Second Coming and Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, Christ’s Coming Again, and Lectures on the Book of Revelation, Trotter’s Plain Papers on Prophetic Subjects, and C. H. M.’s (Charles Henry Mackintosh) Papers on the Lord’s Coming.

In America the new teachings were spread abroad through W. E. Blackstone’s Jesus Is Coming, and numerous writings of F. W. Grant, J. M. Gray, A. C. Gaebelein, F. C. Ottman and C. I  Scofield, but all these followed the lead of the British (or Irish) pioneers. Scofield’s Reference Bible represents a lifelong study of the Scriptures, and is hailed in all the world by Brethren as setting forth their views on the interpretation of Scripture, especially of prophecy and "dispensational truth." And naturally: Scofield was for a generation an assiduous and admiring student of Darby’s writings. In A. C. Gaebelein’s many writings the influence and spirit of William Kelly are everywhere evident. These things are not said churlishly, but only to explain our confining the quotations, at this juncture, to primary authorities.

(a) The Second Coming of Christ is to take place in two distinct stages; the first, which concerns the Church alone, occurs at the beginning of, or prior to, the last or apocalyptic Week of Daniel (See note at the end of this chapter); the second, which concerns Israel and the world, takes place at the close of that Week. Between Christ’s Coming in relation to the Church, and His Coming in relation to the world, there thus intervenes a period of at least seven years—the period of the apocalyptic Week, during which Antichrist is manifested. At the first stage of the Advent all the dead in Christ, together with the righteous dead of the O.T., will be raised in the image and glory of Christ; these, together with those Christians who live to see the Lord’s Coming, will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. This is the Coming of the Lord, and is the true hope of the Church. At the second stage, seven or more years later, Antichrist will be destroyed, Israel converted and renewed, and the millennial Kingdom set up. This is the Day, Appearing, or Revelation of Christ, and is entirely distinct from the Coming, for it concerns the world and Israel, whilst the Coming concerns the Church alone. The second stage of the Advent has this, and this only, that concerns the Church, that it will be the time for the judgment and rewarding of the heavenly saints for their service on earth. Some, however, refer the rewarding to the time of the Coming, or Rapture, as the first stage is generally called.

C.H.M. says (Charles Henry Mackintosh):

Having, as we trust fully established the fact of the Lord’s coming, we have now to place before the reader the double bearing of that fact—its bearing upon the Lord’s people, and its bearing upon the world. The former is presented in the New Testament, as the coming of Christ to receive His people to Himself; the latter is spoken of as "The Day of the Lord" —a term of frequent use also in Old Testament Scriptures.

These things are never confounded in Scripture, as we shall see when we come to look at the various passages. Christians do confound them and hence it is that we often find "that blessed hope" overcast with heavy clouds, and associated in the mind with circumstances of terror, wrath, and judgment, which have nothing whatever to do with the coming of Christ for His people, but are intimately bound up with "The Day of the Lord" (Papers on the Lord’s Coming, p. 23).

Again, the same writer says:

The great object of the enemy is to drag down the Church of God to an earthly level—to set Christians entirely astray as to their divinely appointed hope—to lead them to confound things which God has made to differ, to occupy them with earthly things—to cause them to so mix up the coming of Christ for His people with His appearing in judgment upon the world, that they may not be able to cultivate those bridal affections and heavenly aspirations which become them as members of the body of Christ (Papers on the Lord’s Coming, pp. 31-32).

Again,

Wherever we turn, in whatever way we look at the subject, we are more and more confirmed in the truth of the clear distinction between our Lord’s coming, or "state of presence," and His "appearing" or "day." The former is ever held up before the heart as the bright and blessed hope of the believer, which may be realized at any moment. The latter is pressed upon the conscience in deep solemnity, as bearing upon the entire practical career of those who are set in this world to work and witness for an absent Lord. Scripture never confounds these things, however much we may do it (Papers on the Lord’s Coming, p. 45),

Referring to the Church’s hope and the Day of the Lord, William Trotter says:

She looks for Him, however, in a previous stage of His return. She looks for Him not as the Son of Man who comes to execute judgment on the ungodly, but as the Son of God, the Head and Bridegroom of His Church, who comes to receive to nuptial joys and heavenly glory, the Church which has known and confessed Him, in whatever weakness during His rejection by a proud and unbelieving world. She knows that when He comes in judgment she shall be the companion of His triumphs, and the sharer in His glories (Plain Papers on Prophetic Scriptures, p. 22).

Again:

The coming of Jesus and our gathering together to Him in the air, is the Church’s portion: the day comes upon the world. He (the Apostle) beseeches them by the one not to be distracted about the other. The day cannot burst with its terrors on the world till the saints have been gathered to the Lord Jesus in the air. Then he further shows that "the day" cannot come till there come a falling away first (literally, the apostasy), and that man of sin be revealed—that wicked whom the Lord shall consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. It is on the man of sin that the judgments of the day of Christ first fall. It is by the epiphany of His coming, or presence, that the man of sin is destroyed. Clearly, then "the day" cannot come till the man of sin has come. But the apostle does not say that CHRIST cannot come till then. He distinguishes between "the coming (parousia) of our Lord Jesus Christ" and "the brightness (epiphaneia) of his coming (parousia)." It is His parousia that gathers the saints in the air. It is the epiphaneia of His parousia that destroys the man of sin. The day commences with the epiphaneia of Christ’s coming—that is, with His appearing to the world. The day comes not till the man of sin has come. But we have no warrant to say this of the parousia of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together to Him. That may be any day, any hour. Nothing that has been considered presents any obstacle to that (Plain Papers on Prophetic Scriptures , p. 288).

Here we have the quintessence of the new eschatology, the new exegesis, and the new reasoning: a single phrase—"the manifestation of His coming" (2 Thess. 2:8), is interpreted as meaning that a secret coming (parousia) takes place at the beginning of the Seventieth Week of Daniel (or perhaps even long before it), and another public parousia or epiphany at the Day of Christ, when the millennium is established. Not all is said; but what is not said is in the background, with the whole school approving. Soon all will be said.

Let us have another extract from the same primary source of the new teaching:

Certain events are indeed predicted as inevitably to occur before "the day of Christ" arrives; but Scripture was seen most clearly to distinguish between the coming of Christ for His saints, and the day of Christ which brings judgment on the world. All that must occur prior to the day may transpire between the descent into the air and the return of Christ with all His saints to execute judgment on the earth: and this latter event it is that brings "the day of Christ" (Plain Papers on Prophetic Scriptures, p. 527, italics his).

The reader is asked to note the significance of this explanation of the phrase "Day of Christ," for it represented the view of the whole school till about the end of the century.[2] It was Messiah’s glorious Day, when He comes to set up His kingly rule, after routing His foes. Perfect clarity here will help us to avoid misunderstanding all through our inquiry; so I give an extract on this point from C.H.M., and then a brief one from Darby. The former writes:

We are plainly and expressly told the "day is at hand" (Rom. 13:12). What "day"? The day of the Lord, most surely, which is always the term used in connection with our individual responsibility in walk and service. This, we may remark in passing, is a point of much interest and practical value. If the reader will take the trouble to examine the various passages in which "the day" is spoken of, he will find that they have reference, more or less to the question of work, service or responsibility. For instance, "That ye may be blameless (not at the coming, but) in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 1:8). Again, "Every man’s work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it" (1 Cor. 3:13). "Without offence till the day of Christ" (Phil. 1:10). "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day" (2Tim. 4:8). From all these passages and many more which might be adduced, we learn that "the day of the Lord" will be the grand time for reckoning with the workers; for the appraisal of service; for the settling of all questions of personal responsibility; for the distribution of rewards—the "ten cities" and the "five cities" (Papers on the Lord’s Coming, pp. 44-45; italics and brackets his).

On "Christ’s day" in Philippians 2:16, Darby says in the same vein: "The apostle thus unites his work and the reward in the day of Christ with the blessing of the assembly" (Synopsis of the Books of the Bible). So Kelly, Revelation, p. 236.

The pith of which is that Christ’s Coming or Parousia brings the Rapture, and Christ’s Day the judgment, the reward, and the Kingdom, several years later.

(b) The Coming of Christ " for the Church," the resurrection of the sleeping saints, and the translation of the living, together with them, to meet the descending Lord, will take place secretly: none of the unconverted will witness them. Not so, however, the Day of Christ, seven or more years later; for the Lord will then come forth in visible glory, and every eye shall see Him. Referring to the Ascension in Acts 1:10-11, C. H. M. says: —

And here we may ask—though it be rather anticipating what may come before us in a future paper—Who saw the blessed Lord as He went up? Did the world? Nay; not one unconverted person ever laid his eyes upon our precious Lord from the moment that He was laid in the tomb. The last sight the world got of Jesus was as He hung on the cross, a spectacle to angels, men, and devils. The next sight they will get He shall come forth to execute judgment, and tread, in terrible vengeance, the winepress of the wrath of Almighty God...

Is it possible for testimony to be more distinct or satisfactory? Could proof be more clear or conclusive? How can any counter-argument stand for a moment, or any objection be raised? Either those two men in white apparel were false witnesses, or our Jesus shall come again in the exact manner in which He went away. There is no middle ground between these two conclusions. We read in Scripture that, "in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established;" and therefore in the mouth of two heavenly messengers—two heralds from the region of light and truth, we have the word established that our Lord Jesus Christ shall come again in actual bodily form, to be seen by His own first of all, apart from all others, in the holy intimacy and profound retirement which characterized His departure from this world. All this, blessed be God, is wrapped up in the two little words "as" and "so" (Papers on the Lord’s Coming, pp. 17-18).

In expounding 2 Thessalonians 4:16, (William) Kelly, the acknowledged theologian of the movement, writes thus in his Second Coming:

It is mere and ignorant unbelief to press the fact that the Lord so shouts and then to conclude that all the world must hear Him at that epoch. It is contrary to every analogy, that the world will be witnesses of the Lord’s coming to take away the believers. It is easy to conceive that the Lord could conceal it if He pleased. Of course the world may be alarmed and astonished for a while by the fact of the disappearance of so many. That there will be a great effect produced in the world by it I am not in the least disposed to deny; but I believe that the simple and natural interpretation of the terms employed in this Scripture (1 Thess. 4) supposes a special connection between the Lord and those for whom He comes, and that the choice of the expressions limits His action in sight and sound too, as well as in effects of deeper moment, to those whom it all concerns. No more at present would I deduce or assert (pp. 171-172).

On the same passage Darby writes in his Second Coming:

The only persons who hear it are "the dead in Christ," Christ being represented as in this way gathering together His own troops...At the proper time the Lord comes—it is not said appears—and calls us up to be for ever with the Lord, to take our place associated with Christ (pp. 44-5).

(c) Christ, having come secretly to the air and received His waiting or sleeping people to Himself, returns with them to heaven, and there awaits the Day or Revelation. They remain in heaven for an undetermined period, but it is almost universally recognized to be at least seven years, the period of the last of Daniel’s Seventy Weeks. When the Day of the Lord arrives Christ will appear in glory from heaven, accompanied by the previously-raptured saints. Every eye shall see them. This is called Christ’s Coming with His saints, as distinguished from the earlier, secret Coming for his saints. The distinction is insisted upon as most vital.

(d)The realization of the Coming of Christ for His saints is quite independent of the fulfillment of all or any signs and predicted events; it awaits no progress in the evangelization of the world on the one hand; no spread of apostasy in the professing Church on the other. It is independent of the return of the Jews to their own land, of the emergence of the Concert of the Ten Kings, and of the rise and reign of the last Antichrist—for all these events take place after the Secret Rapture, which is conditioned by nothing except the conversion of the last member of Christ’s mystical Body.

When, therefore, we read in the Gospels or Epistles that certain events have to be fulfilled before the Return of Christ, we are to understand at once that it is the second stage—the Day, or Revelation, or Appearing of Christ, and not the secret Coming that is so conditioned. With his usual lucidity Kelly says in his Second Coming:—

The Lord keeps His coming to receive His saints as a distinct hope of the heart, apart from earthly events. When they are, at His coming, translated to heaven, then the earthly tide of events begins to flow. Hence, a further stage of Christ’s coming is called "the appearing," the "revelation of Christ," and the other terms which imply manifestation among the rest, "the day of the Lord" (p. 183).

Again:

I have no hesitation in affirming from these inspired statements that we have come to the second act, so to speak in which the Lord manifests His presence. He appears from heaven, and the saints, already risen and changed, already taken up to be with Him above, come along with Him from heaven. It is between His coming for the saints and His coming with them from heaven, that the earthly events transpire, with various signs and tokens never of His coming to receive the saints, but of His coming to judge the world. In short there are no defined periods or visible harbingers to intimate that He is coming to receive us, but there are manifold and manifest signs before He comes with the saints in the execution of His judgment upon the world (p. 184).

(e)During the interval of seven years or more that will elapse between the Coming and the Day of Christ, God will resume His purposes with the Jews. Whilst many will return in unbelief to Palestine, and yield to the seduction of Antichrist, a small Remnant will remain faithful to the true God. Their relation to Christianity will be unique; they may have some knowledge of Christ’s person,[3] but little or none of His saving work; they may recognize Jesus as Messiah, yet because of the removal of the Holy Spirit from the earth at the Rapture of the Church, they will be unable to appropriate the benefits of His redemption. Hence they will have no real knowledge of salvation until Christ comes in His glory, when they will repent and be saved. In a word, their state until then might be described as semi-Christian.

The spiritual experience of this Remnant is believed by pre-tribs to be mirrored to us in scores of the Psalms; even the Imprecatory Psalms, with their cries for vengeance on the godly, are applied to the future Jewish Remnant; so are several of the Beatitudes of our Lord.

During the second half of Daniel’s apocalyptic Week this Remnant of Jews will take up the Great Missionary Commission of Matthew 28, and go far and wide preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom. Extraordinary power and success will accompany their labors, for an immense number possibly the vast majority—of the inhabitants of the world will be brought to God through their labors, prior to the Day of the Lord. According to many teachers—including Darby, Anderson, and Gaebelein—this will be the true intent and fulfillment of our Lord’s Missionary Commission in Matthew 28, but this is not urged by all. Many other portions of our Lord’s discourses are also referred to this Jewish Remnant of the Last Days, instead of to members of the Christian Church: the Lord’s Prayer, most of the Sermon on The Mount, and the prophecy of the End in Matthew 24-25, are so applied.

For a convenient exposition of pre-trib teaching on the Jewish Remnant the reader is referred to the two chapters, "The Spared Remnant" and "The Martyred Remnant," in Trotter’s work (Plain Papers on Prophetic Subjects), and to Gaebelein’s volume, Hath God Cast Away His People?.

Darby’s Synopsis contains scattered references to this subject, which is handled systematically in his Collected Writings, and in the two works just mentioned. Anderson’s view of Matthew 28:18-20 is found in an appendix to his Buddha of Christendom and The Bible or The Church?Scofieldtreated of the subject in his Bible Correspondence Course;there the position is taken up that the sealed of Israel are "144,000 Pauls" sent into all the world to evangelize the nations after the removal of the Holy Spirit to heaven,[4] and during the 1,260 days of Antichrist’s triumph: a big order, yet they succeed in converting "the overwhelming majority" of earth’s inhabitants to God. (Sect. 2, pp. 112-113).

(f) From the fact that the Church will be removed to heaven prior to the rise of Antichrist it follows that no member of the Christian Church will suffer in the Great Tribulation, instigated by him (Matthew 24:21; Rev. 7:14; etc.). No single point in the new scheme is more earnestly contended for than this one, and every year sees new tracts issuing from the Press in support of it. Anyone who denies the Church’s immunity from the Antichristian persecution of the Last Days is looked upon as having departed seriously from the faith once delivered to the saints, and is received coldly or not at all by pre-tribs. Thrice welcome is he who has written a tract affirming it.

(g) The resurrection of the saints at the Coming of Christ prior to the Seventieth Week of Daniel will be succeeded by another resurrection of saints at its close. This is the resurrection of the immense number of martyrs who die, ex hypothesi, between the previous resurrection and rapture, and the Day of the Lord. But these martyrs—converted by the preaching of the Remnant—have no connection with the Church of God. It should be said also that the martyred portion of the semi-converted and semi-Christian Jewish Remnant, which enters heaven, [sic] at death, is also raised at this time to share the image of the heavenly. "A martyr’s death is for them the passage to heavenly glory, and to association with Christ when He shall reign over the earth" (Trotter, Plain Papers on Prophetic Subjects, p. 402). It is contended by pre-tribs that this second resurrection is really part of the first resurrection, which, ex hypothesi, takes place some years or decades previously, at the Rapture.

It will be understood, of course, that the kingly rule of Christ and His saints, the resurrection and judgment of the unrighteous dead, and the creation of a new world at the close of His reign, are firmly held in the new school.

I have thus sought fairly and accurately to set forth the pre-trib scheme of the prophetic future. It must not be supposed, however, that all among Brethren accepted the new views. On the contrary, some of their weightiest members repudiated them as innovations. Not only accomplished scholars like S. P. Tregelles and B. W. Newton, but also devout men like George Müller and James Wright of Bristol, Robert Chapman, and Dan Crawford, resisted the new theories of Darby. The following extract from Müller’s writings will show how the group I have mentioned adhered to the early pre-millennial views set forth above. Asked, shortly before his death, whether Christians are to expect our Lord’s Return at any moment, or whether certain events must be fulfilled before He comes again, Müller replied as follows:—

I know that on this subject there is great diversity of judgment, and I do not wish to force on other persons the light I have myself. The subject however, is not new to me; for, having been a careful, diligent student of the Bible for nearly fifty years, my mind has long been settled on this point, and I have not the shadow of a doubt about it. The Scripture declares plainly that the Lord Jesus will not come until the Apostasy shall have taken place, the Man of Sin, the "son of perdition" (or personal Antichrist), shall have been revealed as seen in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5. Many other portions also of the Word of God distinctly teach that certain events are to be fulfilled before the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. This does not, however, alter the fact that the Coming of Christ, and not death, is the great Hope of the Church and, if in a right state of heart, we (as the Thessalonian believers did) shall "serve the living and true God, and wait for His Son from Heaven" (Cited by Frank H. White in The Saint’s Rest and Rapture).

Müller’s teaching, however, despite the enormous prestige of his name, is rejected, even among "Open Brethren"—the movement that originated in his breach with Darby over ecclesiastical contamination at Bristol and Plymouth. On Missions and Baptism, Müller’s influence prevailed; on prophecy and prophetic speculation, Darby’s.

It must be kept clearly in view, moreover, that I have described only the original, parent scheme, as formulated by Darby and his associates. This scheme is still in the ascendant today. Adaptations and developments of Darby’s original scheme by J. A. Seiss, G. H. Pember, E.W. Bullinger, and Sir Robert Anderson, will be duly noticed in the sequel. Suffice it to say here that Seiss and Pember, followed by Hudson Taylor, D. M. Panton, and others, taught that only really faithful Christians will be raptured prior to the Great Tribulation: all others will be left behind to be purified in that trial. Bullinger, among other peculiarities, excluded the Pentecostal Church from the mystical Body of Christ, and limited the Lord’s action at the first stage of the Advent to the Body alone: only members of the Body will be raised and raptured; the holy dead of ancient times, and all Christians prior to Paul, will not be raised until the Day of the Lord. Bullinger, moreover, found more than one rapture in the N.T. Anderson does not accept the distinction between the Coming, Appearing, Revelation, and Day of Christ, but teaches a doctrine of a series of comings or appearings at the End; this has found little acceptance. He also disclaims the idea of secrecy at the Rapture; so also R. A. Torrey and a growing number of writers.

For these aberrations from Darby’s scheme the reader is referred to Hudson Taylor’s Union and Communion, Seiss’ Apocalypse, Panton’s Rapture, Anderson’s Coming Prince, Forgotten Truths, and Unfulfilled Prophecy (2nd ed.), and Bullinger’s Ten Sermons on The Second Advent, The Apocalypse and The Mystery. Moreover, changes are still going on. In Touching the Coming, Messrs. Hogg and Vine, two Brethren expositors of note today, repudiate the pioneers’ distinctions between the Coming and the Appearing, Revelation and Day of Christ, which gave early Brethren songs in the night, and which, C. H. M. told us above with such certitude, it was a design of Satan to confound and mix up, and they find exegetical salvation in adopting everywhere the translation presence for the Greek word Parousia; so that the period or age, ex hypothesi, between the Rapture and the Appearing, which some think may be only three and a half years, others seven, others about seventy, but which Anderson thinks may possibly be a thousand years, gives the true meaning of the Apostolic references to the Coming of our Lord. He is then present. (Chart & app., 152-155.)

And now in the year of grace, 1932, which marks the centenary of the first Brethren assembly in England, C.F. Hogg, one of the authors of the volume just referred to, proposes a further retreat from dispensational orthodoxy, with no diminution of confidence and certainty. Writing officially, I take it, in the Brethren publication, "The Witness," for June, 1932, he thinks that confusion is only avoided, and adherence to truth promoted, by accepting his suggestion that the Rapture is not really the Lord’s Coming, but "our going to be with Him" —the levitation of the scattered saints through space to the Lord’s presence: "The second Advent, or Coming, of the Lord is His coming to the earth in power and great glory for the overthrow of His enemies and the establishing of His Kingdom" (p. 135). And this, he tells us elsewhere,[5] is "the Blessed Hope" of the Church. The levitation of the saints to Christ secures for them the blessed immunity from the Great Tribulation; but the Blessed Hope of Christ’s Second Coming belongs to the Day of the Lord, after the time of tribulation.

It was as necessary as it was desirable to exhibit the new theories at a single view, because misrepresentations and misconceptions of them abound, and some there are who may read this volume who are little acquainted with Darby and his school of prophetic interpretation. Experience shows, moreover, that some very intelligent people, although initiated into the new methods of exegesis, have never grasped the new plan in all its bearings—such are its astonishing intricacies. As an example, I mention that even well-taught ministers, who maintained the new views, have applied Matthew 24:40-41 and Luke 17:34-35 ("the one shall be taken and the other left"), to the Rapture of 1 Thessalonians 4:17. Not so leaders like Darby, Kelly and Gaebelein, who, seeing the inconvenient proximity of the Glorious Appearing at Matthew 24: and Luke 17:30, did not admit a rapture in the context; and naturally.

The question that now concerns us is whether the pre-trib theories are true and scriptural, and thus entitled to supplant the former scheme outlined.

It matters not that they are new and novel, and have never been heard of in the whole history of the Christian Church since the Apostolic Age. What men call heresy sometimes proves to be the truth of God. It matters not that the great pre-millennial scholars and theologians—Alford, Bengel, Delitzsch, Zahn, and others—found no trace in the N.T. of the teachings raised by Darby, for they may be all wrong, and he alone right. Reluctant as some may be to admit it, it is quite possible that the very men who fought and won the battle of Premillennialism in the modern Church, may all have been—to borrow a phrase of William Kelly—"antagonists of the truth," inasmuch as they missed the distinction between the Coming of Christ, and the Revelation seven or more years later; and because they made the Day of Christ the day for the realization of the Church’s hope.

Let us therefore be candid and open-minded for fear lest, in resisting the new theories, we resist the Spirit of God Himself.

But there is another side to this: Darby and his followers may be wrong, and the hundred-and-one famous advocates of the older premillennial school right; in which case the "brayings of ignorance" (Kelly), the "hotch-potch system of exegesis" (Anderson), and other terms applied by some advocates of the new, to those of the old, school, will prove rather inept, for, if the new theories are not true and scriptural, then we must class them with the "noble errors" —to use a phrase of Gladstone’s—that devout men have sometimes sincerely propagated.

To the examination of this issue the rest of the present volume will be devoted.

Excursus On The Seventy Weeks Of Daniel

To its credit, historical criticism is now admitting that archaeology has strikingly vindicated historical statements in the Book of Daniel that were formerly impugned with much confidence. In ICC (International Critical Commentary)on Daniel, Dr. Montgomery makes acknowledgement of the brilliant discoveries of Pinches, Dougherty, and Sidney Smith: "The Bible story is correct as to the rank of kingship given to Belshassar" (See pp. 67, 72, and 109). The lessons of the new discoveries are driven home effectively by Boutflower, In and Around the Book of Daniel (1923), and R.D. Wilson, The Book of Daniel (1917). Cf. C. H. H. Wright, Daniel and His Prophecies (1906).

More encouraging still is Dr. Montgomery’s finding that Daniel 1-6 originated in Babylon in the third century B.C., and not in Palestine or Syria in the second. This warrants the conclusion that the author of chapter 2 was a seer who foresaw the triumph of the Roman Empire as the fourth power in the Great Image, and its division before the End.

Again, "The Expository Times" (Nov., 1929, pp. 61-62) reviewed favorably the work of the eminent American archaeologist, Prof. Dougherty, of Yale, Nabonidus and Belshazzar (Milford), and concluded: "It is of peculiar interest to hear so competent an investigator announce that ‘of all neo-Babylonian records dealing with the situation at the close of the neo-Babylonian empire the fifth chapter of Daniel ranks next to the cuneiform literature in accuracy so far as outstanding events are concerned.’ It begins to look as if Biblical traditions deserve more credence than critics have sometimes been willing to concede to them."

Many will think that a similar remark applies to the prophecies of Daniel. Undoubtedly our Lord and all His Apostles viewed Daniel as a prophet. Ordinary Christians, unaffected by presuppositions against the supernatural, will always think that they were right. In his commentary on Thessalonians in CGT, Dr. G. G. Findlay concludes a valuable paragraph on our Lord’s use of Daniel: "The use made by Jesus Christ of this obscure and suspected Book of Scripture has raised it to high honor in the esteem of the Church" (p. 219).

Worth noting is the position of Dr. Zahn; accepting (Introduction to the N.T., vol. 3, pp. 387-378) the pseudepigraphical character of Daniel, and a late date for its composition, he yet treats its prophecies as genuine products of divine inspiration, and has frequent references to them that are full of unusual insight. His laying aside a plan to expound Daniel’s prophecies at length in his great commentary on Revelation (in the Zahn-Kommentar) isto be deeply regretted.

As the eschatological character of the Seventieth Week is assumed throughout this volume a note should be added on the prophecy of the Seventy Weeks (Dan. 9:24-27). Daniel was informed that seventy weeks (= 490 years) would intervene between the promulgation of a decree to rebuild Jerusalem and the fulfillment of the divine purpose concerning the chosen city and the chosen people. This period is divided into three parts, namely, seven weeks (49 years), sixty-two weeks (434 years), and one week (7 years), which elapse in the order named. After thesixty-two weeks (see R.V.)—that is, after sixty-nine, weeks (483 years) in all, for the seven weeks (49 years) are first fulfilled—Messiah the Prince is cut off and has nothing for Himself (see mg.). Thereupon the people of the Coming Prince (the Romans, not the Prince himself) destroy the city and the Sanctuary (i.e., Jerusalem). An undetermined interval follows, which is characterized by war and desolations; it is the present time. Then comes the last or Seventieth Week, which begins with a covenant between the Coming Prince (Antichrist) and the multitude of Daniel’s people, the Jews. In the middle of the week, that is, after three and a half years, the Prince breaks the league or covenant, and causes sacrifice and oblation to cease. Then, as hinted here, and clearly taught elsewhere, the Prince initiates a brief period (3 1/2 years) of persecution and blasphemy. Thereupon wrath is poured out upon the desolator and, the Seventy Weeks being accomplished, Messiah and His saints possess the sovereignty (Dan. 7:22).

To Dr. Tregelles (Daniel, pp.93-127) and Sir Robert Anderson (The Coming Prince) we owe the best interpretation of the prophecy; but this is said with due reserve, and with full recognition of the fact that there are a hundred rival solutions; and that there is difficulty in determining with absolute certainty both the terminus a quo (starting point), and the terminus ad quem (terminal point), of the prophecy. Nevertheless Sir R. Anderson has shown in a volume of conspicuous ability and sanity that, from the edict to rebuild Jerusalem (Nehemiah 2:5-8), in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes (14th March, 445 B.C.), to the day of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem (6th April, A.D. 32), was exactly and to the very day sixty-nine weeks (173,880 days or 483 prophetic years of 360 days). See chapter 10; and also his Daniel in the Critic’s Den. Valuable popular expositions on the same lines will be found in W. Kelly’s Notes on Daniel, Dr. Campbell Morgan’s God’s Methods With Man (pp. 47-65), and Dr. Robert Sinker’s notes on Daniel in the Temple Bible series (pp. 192-193).

It is noteworthy that when Anderson wrote his Coming Prince (1881) his date for the Crucifixion (A.D. 32) seemed too late; tradition and scholarship placed it in 29 or 30. Today investigation is slowly coming round to a later date, viz., 33. This is the date adopted in Bishop Headlam’s Life and Teaching of Jesus Christ (p.320), also in a recent learned article by Dr. Fotheringham, an eminent authority ("The Journal of Theological Studies," April, 1934), and by the Pope for the nineteenth centenary of the Crucifixion (April 3rd, 1933). This date, if correct, involves an error of one year in Anderson’s calculation. Dr. Fotheringham, working on seventy astronomical observations made at Athens by Julius Schmidt, declares that 32 is an impossible date for the Crucifixion, because the 14th Nisan fell on Sunday, April 13th, or Monday the 14th, instead of the previous Thursday or Friday. Perhaps this is so, but the interested reader may be reminded that Anderson (pp. 99-105) anticipated the objections to the 32 date on the ground of the Paschal moon’s not falling on a Friday, and dealt vigorously with them. To one reader his reasoning seems convincing; see p. 102 especially.

I may add that in "The Expository Times" for February, 1937, there is an interesting article by the Rev. D. R. Fotheringham, M.A., brother of the late Dr. J. K. Fotheringham, on "Bible Chronology;" in it he draws attention, justifiably, to the great value of his brother’s researches, and gives his principal conclusions in reference to the date of the Nativity.

The date adopted by Bishop Headlam, Dr. Fotheringhan, and the Roman Church involves a Ministry of five passovers, which is pretty well an innovation. The strength and simplicity of the 32 date is that, by adding four passovers (the almost universally accepted length of the Ministry) to the one certain date afforded us the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar (Luke 3:1),i.e., August 19th, 28—we get 32 as the date for the Crucifixion.

That the Seventieth Week is eschatological is a view as old as the primitive Fathers, and is rendered certain by John in the Revelation, where Antichrist (the Prince of Dan. 9:26) persecutes the saints for three and a half years (=42 months or 1260 days, or 31 times)—precisely the closing portion of Daniel’s Seventieth Week of seven years. During the interval between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks Israel is set aside, and God is gathering out of the Nations a people for His Name (Acts. 15:14; Rom. 11:25). It is, broadly, the present Dispensation.

In his Thousand Years (1889), and in an appendix to Premillennial Essays, edited by him (1879), Dr. Nathaniel West, who gave a great part of his life to the literature of the Last Things, cites numerous exegetes on the Continent who treated the Seventieth Week or the last half of it as eschatological. Two present-day outstanding names may be added: Zahn, in his INT. and comments on Matthew 24:15 and Revelation 11-13 (Zahn-Kommentar), andDr. Adolph Schlatter, of Tubingen in his well-known Erldulerungen zum N.T. (1928), on the same passages. On the limits set to Jerusalem’s trial in Revelation 11:2, Schlatter says: "John had already read this in Daniel, whence he borrows the number that is employed for the duration of the last conflict and its tribulation—42 months or, what is the same thing, 1260 days, that is, 3 1/2 Jewish years, the last half-week of Daniel’s vision."

West (Thousand Years,pp.175 ff.) accepting the Cyrus date (536) as the a quo, and the birth of Christ as the ad quem, finds an interval of fifty-seven years between the first three and the last four of the 7 sevens in Daniel 9:5. But, as he himself admits, such an interval is "not even hinted at there" (p. 199); nor is it anywhere; it is otherwise with the gap between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks. Daniel 9:26a furnishes good ground for making the Crucifixion approximately, and not the birth of Christ, the ad quem of the sixty-ninth week. West’s handling of the seventieth week, however, is beyond praise; see his Thousand Years, and Daniel’s Great Prophecy—two of the greatest works in English on the Last Things, though one differs from the author on some points.

I think it was a true instinct that led Sir R. Anderson to choose our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem as the day on which the prophecy "unto Messiah the Prince" (Dan. 9:25; Luke 19:37-38) and the sixty-nine weeks were fulfilled. In his Light From the Ancient East Dr. Adolph Deissmann writes: "We may now say that the best interpretation of the Primitive Christian hope of the Parusia is the old Advent text, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee" (p. 372. And see our discussion of "Parousia," chapter 11 Deissmann always spells "Parousia" without the "o").

It is presupposed here and elsewhere in the volume that Antichrist is a person yet to arise in Roman Europe or the Near East in the Last Days, at the head of an ancient kingdom; also that this person and his kingdom are signified by the first Beast of Revelation 13, not the second; and that Antichrist is also identical with the "Little Horn" of Daniel 7 and the "Man of Sin" of 2 Thessalonians 2. There is an informing article on Antichrist by Canon Meyrick in Smith’s Bible Dictionary (4vols. 2nd Eng. edition 1893). In Bousset’s Antichrist Legend (E.T.) there is valuable light on Antichrist and the periods of prophecy, though written in unbelief. Newman’s sermons in Tracts for the Times (No. 83) give an interesting presentation of the Fathers’ views on Antichrist; whilst with vast learning Dollinger, perhaps the greatest of Catholic divines sets forth the history of the interpretation of the passage about the Man of Sin in 2 Thessalonians (The First Century of Christianity and the Church, Appendix I, E.T.). Dr. Samuel J. Andrews, author of an important Life of Christ, wrote Christianity and Antichristianity in Their Final Conflict, wherein he expounds the relevant passages on Antichrist and analyses keenly the trends of modern thought both within and without the Church. But it is in Dr. G.G. Findlay’s commentary on Thessalonians in CGT (Appendix) that one meets the most satisfactory treatment of the subject in English. In the face of modern research and unbelief, Dr. Findlay avowed his belief in the appearing of a personal Antichrist in the Last Days, and expounded the Scripture doctrine in a way that leaves nothing to be desired.

On the "Year-day" system, once popular, whereby the period of 1260 days in the Revelation of John was interpreted in the sense of years, and applied to a part of the present period of Church history, the reader is referred to a completely satisfactory refutation of it in Tregelles’ work on Daniel, and S.R. Maitland’s First and Second Inquiries. Itis to be noted that the new era of scientific exegesis has driven the theory, and most of the Protestant anti Roman interpretation, out of consideration. See the commentaries of Beckwith, Charles, Moffatt, Anderson Scott, and Simcox.

West (Thousand Years, p. 164), followed by F. W. Grant (Numerical Bible, Rev., p. 287), makes the strong point that if the Year-day theory is applicable to the second half of the Seventieth Week (= the 1260days), it is to be applied to the whole period of the Seventy Weeks; so that we get a period of 176,400years to elapse before the arrival of the promised blessings on the chosen city and people! Beyond question they are right. Further, without accepting the idea that all the "seals" of Revelation are still future one may say that there is a crushing refutation of the extravagances of the Historical School (on the sixth seal) in Sir R. Anderson’s Coming Prince pp. 291-304. Nothing better has been written in small compass. On the Futurist side the present writer knows nothing to compare with Zahn’s section on the Revelation in Volume 3 of his Introduction to the N.T. and parts 2-6 of West’s Thousand Years.

It is a pleasure to admit that the Historical School has produced one of the best of all books on the Lord’s Second Coming—Ecce Venit,by a true American saint, Dr. A.J. Gordon of Boston. It has recently been reprinted under the title Behold He Cometh (Thynne & Co., Ltd., 3s. 6d.).Dr. Gordon was formerly a Futurist; the book is to be recommended though one differs from him in referring so much in Scripture to the Roman Church, and in his acceptance of the Year-day theory, which is quite exploded.

People who are confident that they have identified the Apostate Church anywhere, except in their own—would do well to bear in mind a remark of Adolph Saphir’s. He observed how beautiful it was in the Apostles that, when the Lord announced that one of themselves would betray Him they all replied, "Lord, is it I?" He makes the point that Churches would do well to imitate the humility of the Apostles, and examine themselves, when they read of the Apostasy. There are distressing things in Rome, but it is the same Saphir who says that things are now said in Protestant Churches about our Lord that the "older Socinians would not have dared, nor even wished, to say."

Chapter 1 Endnotes:

[1] For the teaching of the Fathers I am indebted to C. D. Maitland’s Apostolic School of Prophetic Interpretation, and J. H. Newman’s Sermons on Antichrist in Tracts for the Times; the views of continental scholars (up to 1897) on the crucial passage of the millenarian controversy (Rev. 19-20) will be found in Dr. Nathaniel West’s Thousand Years in Both Testaments, and in Pre‑millennial Essays (Appendix), edited by him.

It will be understood that I am not committing all the writers mentioned to uniformity in interpreting the events under (6). Thus Bengel had a peculiar doctrine of a second millennium following that in verse 3 of Rev. 20.

There is a learned summary of the controversy in Harnack’s article in the Encycl. Brit. (“Millennium “). See also the article by Dr. C. A. Briggs in the New Schaff‑Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge.

The names of Bp. Ellicott and Abp. Trench are included on the strength of the article Millennium in Chambers’ Encyclopedia (revised ed.).

[2] The application of the phrase to the Rapture (by Anderson, Gaebelein, and Scofield) is examined in the chapter “Messiah’s Day.”

[3] This is not admitted, however, by others; see E. Dennett, an interpreter of Darby: The Blessed Hope, pp. 55 and 81.

[4] Darbyists interpret the difficult verses, 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7, of the removal of the Holy Spirit at the Rapture; evil then comes in like a flood. I deal with the point in the last chapter but one of this volume. Kelly deals with the theory in Christ’s Coming Again, vol. 2, p. 99, etc.

[5] “The Morning Star,” August 1, 1912; Touching the Coming (pp. 141-142). In their commentary on Thessalonians the authors say: “Where it is used prophetically, parousia refers to a period beginning with the descent of the Lord from Heaven to the air, 1 Thessalonians 4:16,17, and ending with His revelation and manifestation to the world” (p. 88). The extract from Mr. Hogg’s article is given at length in the last chapter of this volume. Anderson’s view of the interval between the Rapture and the millennium is to be found in his Coming Prince, p. 289, and is quoted later.

CHAPTER 2: THE RESURRECTION OF THE SAINTS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

The fundamental point in our inquiry concerns the relation of the Rapture of the risen and transfigured saints to the Day of the Lord: does the one precede the other by a period of several years? Now concerning the Rapture there are only three undisputed texts in the Bible that deal with it, namely 1 Thessalonians 4:17, 2 Thessalonians 2:1, and John 14:3; but there are many passages in both the Old and New Testaments that speak of the resurrection of the holy dead, which, Darbyists assure us, takes place in immediate connection with the Rapture. For the present, therefore, we may dismiss the Rapture from our minds, and confine our attention to the first resurrection, for wheresoever the resurrection is, there will the Rapture be also. All admit this except Bullinger and Miss. Habershon, whose view we shall examine later.

But it is necessary to explain that, in going to the O.T., we do so with no misapprehension concerning the nature and calling of the Church of the N.T. We shall not look for N.T. revelations there: we aim merely at finding out when "the world’s grey fathers," and the rest of the holy dead of O.T. times, awake to life. Pre-trib writers themselves assert that if we can fix the epoch of this resurrection, we can know the time of the resurrection of the Church, since the two synchronize. Hence the relevancy of the inquiry.

We shall consider first a passage that, as A. B. Davidson has said in his Isaiah, contains "the first clear statement of a resurrection" (p. 194).

(1) Isaiah 26:19 (R.V.).

Thy dead shall live; my dead bodies shall arise.
Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust;
For thy dew is as the dew of herbs,
And the earth shall cast forth the dead.

This beautiful verse occurs in one of the most remarkable of all Isaiah’s prophecies; the section that is found in—Isaiah 24-27—is known as "the little Apocalypse of Isaiah." From end to end it shows, in the words of Theodoret (cited by Kelly) "what shall be in the consummation of the present age." And Kelly himself says, in his Isaiah: "The grand aim of the Spirit is to portray that mighty and universal catastrophe which is succeeded by the times of refreshing for Israel and the earth, of which God has spoken by His holy prophets since the world began" (p. 247).

In chapter 25 we hear the song of redemption, for the Redeemer has come to Zion, and Israel, looking to Him alone, is saved. There follows from restored Israel a hymn of thanksgiving, mingled with a sense of disappointment at the smallness of her numbers. "The answer to these disappointed hopes is the resurrection, verse 19" (Skinner, Isaiah, p. 197).

Eloquent and beautiful are the words of Sir G. A. Smith:

Now the question that concerns us is whether we have any indication in this section of Isaiah concerning the time when this momentous event takes place? To an impartial mind there can be no doubt about the answer; this resurrection is to take place at the Day of the Lord, when Jehovah shall come, and Israel shall be reconciled to Him. The proofs of this are incontestable. The principal signs and events of the whole prophecy move, to use figurative language, within the cycle of the sixth and seventh seals of the Apocalypse. Here we have the Coming of the Lord, the conversion of Israel, the establishment of the Messianic Kingdom, and the sidereal signs in heaven that immediately precede them. Living Israel is restored, and the sleeping saints are brought to life, at the beginning of the Messianic Reign, not some years or decades before, as the new theories require.

The reader may be interested to know what explanation pre-tribs give of this passage. Their answer is a flat denial that a bodily resurrection is referred to. Kelly’s explanation may be taken as the best available. In his Isaiah (p. 267), he deals with the matter; according to him the prophecy in chapter 26:19 has nothing to do with a literal resurrection from the dead, but is merely a symbolical representation of the restoration of the nation to Palestine. "It is no question of bodily death" he would have us believe, "but of national revival." But there are insuperable objections to this interpretation.

(a) The ordinary reader feels that the language can bear only one interpretation, namely: that here we have a resurrection of the dead in the ordinary meaning of the term. The wording of the promise indicates unmistakably that this is so. Phrases are used, one after another, that preclude all possibility of spiritualizing:

If terms such as these do not signify a literal resurrection from the dead, what terms can? Throughout the whole Bible we meet with no passage that gives, in the same compass, so unequivocal a testimony to the doctrine of a bodily resurrection. Sir G. A. Smith remarks:

In the same vein Cheyne comments on verse 19: "The descriptions in Hosea and Ezekiel are allegorical (comp. Hosea 6:1, Ezek. 36:27, 37:11-14), whereas the whole context of our passage (especially v. 14) shows that the language of the writer is to be taken literally." He then quotes Matthew Arnold: "Sublimely recovering himself, the prophet cries that God’s saints, though they are dead, shall live," and Cheyne himself concludes, "and shall share the duties and the privileges of regenerate Israel" (Isaiah, vol. 1., p. 156). Delitzsch says: "Compared with what is stated in the Apocalypse of the New Testament, it is the ‘first resurrection’ which is here predicted" (Isaiah, vol. 1., p. 448). And Skinner remarks: "It is a promise of life from the dead in the most literal sense, a resurrection of those members of the community whom death had seemed to rob of their share in the hope of Israel" (Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, p. 192).

These quotations from what are recognized to be the four best commentaries on Isaiah in the English language, certainly give a more adequate interpretation than those who, like Kelly, explain away the prophecy as "highly figurative language."

(b) If it is legitimate to spiritualize so clear a text as Isaiah 26:19 on the resurrection of the dead, then those of us who insist upon the literal interpretation of the first resurrection in Revelation 20:4, are placed in circumstances of peculiar difficulty when arguing with Post-millennialists. These, in opposing Pre-millennialism, have explained the first resurrection of the Apocalypse in a figurative way; they would have us believe that it signifies the revival of the martyr spirit in the Church, or the reign of the saints in life at the present time. And if pre-tribs are at liberty to spiritualize the first resurrection in the O.T., then it is clearly the hollowest inconsistency to cavil at those who explain away that resurrection in the New.

If the expressions under consideration mean only the gathering of the Jews to Palestine, then, to borrow the forceful words of Dean Alford in regard to the post-millennialists’ treatment of Revelation 20:4, "there is an end of all significance in language, and Scripture is wiped out as a definite testimony to anything."

(c) It is observable also that the theory that the resurrection in Isaiah 26:19 merely signifies the national revival of Israel is clearly inadmissible, because the resurrection in that passage, as we have seen, takes place after the Great Tribulation, and consequent upon the Coming of Jehovah. But we know from all Scripture that the national revival and restoration of the people precede it, for the Seventieth Week opens with the nation of Israel already restored to the land, and in league with the Coming Prince (Dan. 9:24). In other words, the national restoration predicted in Ezekiel 37:1-14 takes place years before the fulfillment of the resurrection in Isaiah 26:19. As Salmond says in his Immortality: "The theme of this great passage is a personal resurrection, not a corporate. The national resurrection is accomplished, and this is the restoration of her dead members to revived Israel" (p. 212).

Kelly raises a further objection to the literal interpretation of verse 19 by urging that, if we so interpret the resurrection there, we must likewise interpret verse 14 literally; but this, he maintains, leads to a heterodox doctrine, namely: that the wicked dead will not rise at the resurrection of judgment. But this is a wrong conclusion. We may certainly interpret verse 14 literally without committing Isaiah to the dogma of annihilation. The objection urged springs from a failure to observe carefully the context, and from a hasty appeal to the chance reading of our English version. The prophet is not dealing with the eternal destiny of the wicked, but only with the security of Israel against her former oppressors. The following is a more accurate translation and comment by Delitzsch, one of the greatest of Isaiah’s interpreters. (See R.V., mg.)

It will be clear, therefore, to thoughtful readers, that what the prophet has in mind in verse 14 is not the destiny of unbelievers, but the impossibility of Israel’s former lords’ coming back to life by any means of self-resuscitation. They are locked up in Sheol and cannot come back to life. This was the very purpose of God in sweeping them off the earth. Skinner says: "The long heathen domination is now a thing of the past; the oppressors have gone to the realms of shades, and shall trouble the world no more" (Isaiah, p. 195).

The pre-trib suggestion of spiritualizing the resurrection in Isaiah 26:19, having been found untenable, we conclude that the passage teaches a literal resurrection of the just, and, secondly, that this resurrection will occur, not before the apocalyptic Week, but at its close.[1]

T. Newberry (Englishman’s Bible, p. 71) admits that the resurrection of Isaiah 26:19, is literal, but seeks to save the pre-trib position by maintaining that the dead raised are only those of "the martyred Remnant," who are raised, ex hypothesi, seven years after the holy dead of O.T. times. Without anticipating questions to be discussed later, it is to be said that there is no warrant whatever for limiting this resurrection to semi-converted Jews slain in the Great Tribulation. In the next place, it is the doctrine of Scripture[2] that the Jewish Remnant is converted only at the appearing of Messiah; if, therefore, any of its members die before the Day of the Lord, they will rise, not in the first resurrection, but the last. But, thirdly, to speak of a martyred "Remnant" is a ludicrous contradiction in terms. The Remnant of prophecy consists of those who escape uninjured the desolations of the Last Days. They will not die. And we do not usually speak of drowned "survivors" of a shipwreck. Just as incongruous is it to speak of a martyred "Remnant." This is the first of several fictions.

(2) Isaiah 25:7-8 (R.V.).

Happily there is no controversy with our opponents on the import of this passage; they all admit, in view of N.T. usage, that we are to understand a bodily resurrection in the most definite sense. "This, we know from God Himself," says Kelly in his Isaiah, "will be realized in the literal resurrection of the body, when the saints are raised" (p. 265). The only question, therefore, that concerns us, is the time of the resurrection.

According to the new theories the resurrection of Israel’s holy dead takes place years before the conversion of living Israel, the Coming of Jehovah, and the inauguration of the Kingdom; but according to Isaiah that resurrection is inseparably bound up with these momentous events. When living Israel turns to Jehovah, sleeping Israel awakes from the dead. Chapter 25 relates the establishment in power of Jehovah’s Kingdom (v. 6). We then have the resurrection of the dead (vv. 7-8); and in verse 9 we read, "and it shall be said in that day—(the day of the Kingdom and resurrection) Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for Him, we, will be glad and rejoice in His salvation." Here we have the Advent of Jehovah, and the new welcome He receives from repentant Israel. But these take place on the day of resurrection, as the great Apostle conclusively shows in 1 Corinthians 15:54.

Kelly, after making the damaging admission (Isaiah, p. 257), that "the resurrection synchronizes with the deliverance of Israel," quietly proceeds to argue on the presupposition that it precedes it by a period of several years! Darby and Trotter also,[3] when arguing against the post-millennalists, quote Isaiah 25:8, as decisive proof that the resurrection of the saints is "indissolubly linked" with the commencement of the reign of Christ; yet when defending their theories on the Rapture they calmly tell us that the resurrection precedes the millennium by several years, and perhaps decades. But they cannot be allowed to blow hot and cold over the prophecy if Isaiah 25:8 establishes the truth that the resurrection introduces the renewal of Israel and the reign of Christ, it necessarily overthrows the fiction that the same resurrection is to be followed by the rise and the reign of Antichrist, and the deepest degradation that the Nation has ever known. Pre-tribs can have one or the other; they cannot have it both ways.

Here again, therefore, we have found the theories under review in hopeless contradiction with Scripture, and this, not on some trivial point, but on the central position of the whole ingenious system.

(3) Daniel 12:1-3.

Here is a passage that, until yesterday, was almost universally applied to the resurrection of the dead in the ordinary sense. Alike among Jewish and Christian expositors, the belief has been general that here we meet with the doctrine of a bodily resurrection. And the reason for this unanimity is not far to seek: the plain sense of the language points clearly in that direction. We are told that many of them that "sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake;" here are the ordinary idioms for bodily death and resurrection. And in the words that follow we find exalted terms in reference to the resultant glory of the saints who rise. The import of the passage is so clear that Orr, in The Christian View of God and the World, remarks—"this needs no comment" (p. 210). And Salmond in his Immortality observes: "This is the most definite, the most literal, the largest expression of the hope of a resurrection. It is the resurrection of the individual" (p. 213).

That, it is safe to say, is not only the judgment of modern Christian scholars of all schools, but the impression of the general reader who approaches the passage without any preconceptions.

Nevertheless, we are challenged on our interpretation. Pre-tribs insist that we greatly err in referring this passage to a bodily resurrection, for, they say, it relates to nothing more than the future restoration of Israel to Palestine. Kelly in his Daniel says: "The passage has no direct reference to a bodily resurrection, which simply furnishes a figure for the national revival of Israel, who are described as sleeping in the dust, to express the greatness of their degradation" (p. 224).

The same view is maintained, as usual, with much energy and dogmatism by Gaebelein in his Daniel (p. 200).

And these are the writers who contemn the spiritualizing of O.T. prophecies, and tell us how unpardonable is the fault of those who explain away the first resurrection in Revelation 20:4! Yet they themselves, when their theories require it, are free to adopt the mischievous canon that they condemn in others. It is pitiable that whilst modern critical scholars are unanimous in insisting on the literal and miraculous character of the resurrection in Daniel 12:2, the theorists join hands with Sadducees and rationalists in reducing it to thin air. I say rationalists, though a stronger term might have been employed, for it was the infidel Porphyry who first set the fashion in Christendom of "spiritualizing" the resurrection in Daniel. Now beyond question pre-tribs, believe in resurrection, and their motive for explaining away Daniel 12:1-3 is different from Porphyry’s, but the fact remains that their spiritualizing principle "belongs to that mad Prophyry."[4] However, let us now examine the pre-trib interpretation of the resurrection.

(a) I must again remind the reader that we are not looking for the resurrection of the Church in this passage. We are concerned only with the question whether the text teaches the resurrection of the holy dead of Daniel’s people, the Jews. This disposes of several pages of adroit reasoning by Kelly and his American interpreter. It will be sufficient if we can prove that the righteous dead in Israel are raised, for it is these writers who tell us that the Church will be raised at the same time.

(b) If the terms used in Daniel 12:2-3 do not describe a literal resurrection, with the heavenly glory that follows, can our opponents tell us what terms can describe such a resurrection? We read of "sleepers" in the "dust of the earth" "awaking" to "everlasting life," and then of their "shining" like the brightness of the stars in the firmament. If these expressions do not mean literal resurrection from the dead, then literal resurrection must be something different from the idea usually entertained.

In his Daniel Tregelles writes:

(c) That the idea of resurrection may be used in a figurative sense is not at all unreasonable. Indeed, we shall see presently that it is used in the O.T. to signify, as these writers urge, the national gathering and restoration of Israel to Palestine. There can be no logical objection, therefore, to considering the application of this principle to the passage in Daniel. But let us beware of supposing that because the figurative interpretation holds good in one case, therefore it maybe applied indiscriminately to all. That would be bad logic, and worse theology, for it would rob us of the hope of resurrection altogether. Every passage must be considered on its merits.

Now if the theory of a figurative interpretation is to hold good, it must be able to give a good account of itself. The figurative resurrection must not only free us from the difficulty that the literal interpretation is supposed to involve us in, but must be consistent with itself, and in harmony with the general teaching of the prophetic Scriptures. Can the pre-trib interpretation stand this test? It cannot. A single consideration will prove this conclusively. The whole teaching of Scripture, and certainly of Daniel, is that Israel is gathered to Palestine some considerable time before the beginning of the "time of trouble" mentioned in verse 1. Indeed, that trial is within the period of Antichrist’s covenant with the mass of the Jews already in the land (Dan. 9:27). That is Israel as a nation when the time of tribulation opens, is already raised and gathered in the sense that the Darbyist interpretation of Daniel 12:2-3 presupposes. But according to Daniel 12:2-3 the resurrection takes place at the conclusion of the Great Tribulation, for it synchronizes with Israel’s deliverance from her last great struggle. The same insuperable difficulty that barred the way to their allegorizing Isaiah 26:19, confronts pre-tribs here.

Referring to the resurrection of Daniel 12:2, Kelly in his Revelation says: "It is evidently before the time of deliverance and blessing.... This resurrection, literal or figurative, is before the millennium, and after it is a time of greater trouble than Israel ever knew" (p. 456).

But a blind man can see that the exact contrary is the truth. The resurrection follows the tribulation. The angel tells Daniel that at that time Israel would be delivered—that is, delivered from the time of trouble just mentioned. Then it is that the sleepers in the dust awake to inherit eternal life, and the glory of the resurrection. The two events synchronize. And the veriest tyro of a prophetic student knows that Israel is delivered at the Day of the Lord,[5] —that is, at the close of Daniel’s apocalyptic Week, as Kelly himself argues in the same volume (Revelation, p. 456). Only the exigencies of a fallacious system could have led a devout teacher to go in the teeth of the plain wording of Scripture.

In view, therefore, of the insurmountable difficulty in the way of allegorizing the interpretation of Daniel 12:2-3, we come back to the view that it refers to the resurrection of the body, more than ever convinced that this is the only interpretation that can stand. And in adopting the literal interpretation of the passage we not only have the support of almost every ancient and modern scholar of diverse schools,[6] but also of some of the weightiest advocates of pre-trib theories. Newberry and Scofield in their editions of the Bible take the resurrection literally, and Trotter defends the same view.

It may be objected by some who accept the literal interpretation in Isaiah 26:19 and Daniel 12:2-3, that the passages do not commit us to a strict sequence of events at the time of the End. No doubt it was on this assumption that Scofield and others gave their support to the literal interpretation. But the plea will not avail. The prophecies in Isaiah and Daniel associate the resurrection of the holy dead with the deliverance of living Israel, the Appearing of Jehovah, and the Coming of the Kingdom. Most clearly is this the case in Isaiah 25:8 and 26:19, which occur in the same vision of the "consummation of the Age." And Daniel’s visions are a valuable aid in sorting out the leading events of the End-time. To be sure there are questions on which we await light, and concerning which we must remain in suspense, but the time of the resurrection is not one of them. It shines out like a beacon to guide us on our way.

The second half of Daniel 11 deals chiefly with the events of the second half of the apocalyptic Week. The principal personage is the Antichrist of the Last Days. Just at what verse he is introduced is uncertain, because of the well-known characteristic of prophecy to unite events on a near, and a distant horizon. Verse 45 at any rate gives us the destruction of Antichrist, and this brings us to the close of the Week. But the revealing angel, having shown Daniel the closing events of Antichrist’s career, now turns, in keeping with a well-known law of prophecy, to deal with the issues of the apocalyptic Week as they affect the people of God.

"And at that time," he says (i.e., the time of the career of the impious king)— shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time" (12:1).

That this occurs during the closing half of the Week no pre-trib disputes. Now the termination of the week is characterized by two events, among others, —first, the destruction of Antichrist, and, secondly, the deliverance of Daniel’s people. Antichrist is in the saddle; the Great Tribulation rages, and Daniel’s people suffer. But the Adversary comes to his end with none to help him, and the People are delivered, every one that is written in the Book of Life. Nothing can be surer than that here we are at the close of the tribulation. What happens then? The resurrection of the saints: "many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake" to everlasting life, and shine like the stars in the night expanse.

We may be sure that when writers like Scofield and Newberry adopted the literal interpretation of Isaiah 26:19 and Daniel 12:2-3, they did so because candor compelled them, and because the other interpretation was strained and unnatural. They should have seen that the obvious interpretation is fatal to their whole scheme of the prophetic future; for according to the prophet Daniel the resurrection of the holy dead in Israel is accompanied by the overthrow of Antichrist, the deliverance and renewal of the covenant People, and the inauguration of God’s kingly rule. But according to pre-tribs, the approaching resurrection of the saints is to be followed by the rise, reign and triumph of Antichrist, and the darkest night in Israel’s long history! "It is almost a miracle how people read Scripture without understanding it," remarked Darby on one occasion;[7] but a more prosaic source of misunderstanding God’s word is the being infatuated with some favorite theory, and reading into Scripture what pleases us. Then there is an application of an alleged saying of Goethe’s: "We are never deceived: we deceive ourselves."

With reference to verse 2 of chapter 12, it remains to deal with a difficulty that exists in connection with the current versions. These seem to teach that the resurrection is not limited to the just, but that certain of the wicked dead are raised at the same time "to suffer shame and everlasting contempt." This is a genuine difficulty to many in accepting the literal interpretation of the passage, for in all other Scriptures the first resurrection is limited to the righteous. The apparent discrepancy is also seized upon to warrant the spiritualizing of the resurrection. "If you interpret this resurrection literally," they insist, "you are shut up to believing that unbelievers arise at the first resurrection—an idea that contradicts the rest of Scripture." Well, we have found that Kelly’s figurative interpretation not only contradicts Scripture, but his own scheme as well. The question is, can the literal interpretation be shown to harmonize with the general teaching of Scripture on the first resurrection?

The answer is that it can. According to competent Hebraists the second verse of Daniel 12 is not happily translated in the English versions. Tregelles, in his Daniel, remarks:

Nathaniel West, another competent Hebrew scholar, says in his Thousand Years:

And in a note West adds:

Even Driver, who accepts the common rendering, admits that the limitation of the resurrection to the righteous became the prevalent view among Jewish teachers. He says: "The idea that the resurrection was to be limited to Israel appears also among the later Jews; indeed, it became the accepted doctrine that it was to be limited to righteous Israelites" (Daniel, p. 93).

This is of first importance, for it ought to be allowed that Jews are the best judges of their own language.

In view, therefore, of the evidence produced, I think it is clear that Daniel 12:2, read literally and correctly, is fully in harmony with the doctrine of Scripture upon the first resurrection.[8]

(4) Daniel 12:13 (R.V.).

One correction needs to be made in the ordinary versions, and that is the elimination of the words "thy way;" they do not exist in the Hebrew text. Their presence in the English version assists the thought that the end of Daniel’s life is meant. But this is not at all what is intended. The true sense is given by Driver in his Daniel:

In agreement with this Moffatt renders: "Go and wait for the end; you shall rest in the grave and then rise to enjoy your share at the end of the days."

Here, then, in the clearest manner, Daniel’s personal resurrection is associated with the End. What end? The end to which the Book of Daniel makes such frequent reference: the end of the pre-Messianic age; of the times of the Gentiles; of Israel’s great tribulation, and of her estrangement from God; the end of the career of the Prince that shall come. The first certain occurrence of the phrase in an eschatological sense is in Daniel 9:26: "and even unto the end shall be war; desolations are determined" (R.V.). This is the description of the age that we now live in; the age that succeeds the cutting off of Messiah the Prince, and the destruction of Daniel’s city by the Romans.

Now Daniel’s resurrection, as in 12:2-3, is distinctly connected with "the end." As Tregelles observes:

It remains only to summarize the results arrived at in this chapter.

(a) In Isaiah 26:19 "we have the first clear statement of a resurrection;" and this occurs in immediate association with the Coming of Jehovah, and the restoration and conversion of living Israel. In the most definite manner it is located at the Day of the Lord (v. 1).

(b) In Isaiah 25:8, which occurs in the same vision, the resurrection of Israel’s righteous dead, and the removal of the veil of death, again take place in immediate association with the Coming of Jehovah, the conversion of Israel, and the inauguration of the Messianic Kingdom.

(c) In Daniel 12:2-3, the resurrection of the saints follows the Great Tribulation, and is accompanied by the destruction of Antichrist, and the deliverance of Daniel’s people at the Day of the Lord.

(d) In Daniel 12:13, Daniel’s personal resurrection is associated with the End of the days of which his book speaks so much. When the End comes, Daniel’s rest will be finished, and he will rise and stand in his lot.

(e) In Hosea 6:2 and Ezekiel 37:1-14, the familiar idea of bodily resurrection is used to set forth the future national revival of Israel, and her restoration to the land of promise. They are manifestly to be interpreted as figurative. See Excursus below.

These conclusions are fatal to the new theories of the Second Advent, because it is a fundamental point in those theories that the sleeping saints of Israel will rise some years before the destruction of Antichrist, the deliverance of Israel, and the Coming of Jehovah and His Kingdom.

Excursus To Chapter 2 The Resurrection in Ezekiel 37:1-14

Before closing our consideration of the resurrection of the just in the O.T. it is necessary to advert to one other text relevant to the subject of resurrection. I refer to Ezekiel 37:1-14, where we have the resurrection of a valley of dry bones.[9] The almost universal, interpretation of this passage, alike among Jewish and Christian commentators, is that it depicts the regathering of Israel to the land of Palestine and the reconstitution of the national life. The Spirit of God makes use of the idea of resurrection to teach the resuscitation of Israel from their "graves" among the nations. There can be no doubt that the regathering of Israel to the land of Palestine is the significance of this passage. It is fitting to admit that here we have the idea of resurrection used in a symbolical way.

Seizing hold of this case of a figurative resurrection in Ezekiel 37, Kelly and others seek to justify their spiritualizing the resurrection in Isaiah 26:19, and Daniel 12:2-3. Again and again Kelly insists that the three passages stand or fall together.[10] He is most confident of this, and gravely informs us that, as the Spirit of God has already decided the question, we can have no option in the matter. In his Isaiah he says: "The explanation of the Holy Ghost is express and conclusive. Thus we can carry divine light back to Isaiah 26, where the very same allusion is found" (p. 268).

Now I have already shown that the principle of spiritualizing Daniel 12:2-3 originated with "that mad Porphyry;" and that even modern critics acknowledge that Daniel 12:2 contains a definite prophecy of the resurrection of the saints. It is worth noting also that Kelly’s dictum that Isaiah 26:19 and Daniel 12:2 must be spiritualized because the resurrection in Ezekiel 37 is to be so interpreted, is a reproduction of the stock-in-trade of the Sadducean heretics of old. They too had unscriptural theories of the resurrection to maintain; theories, too, that clashed with Isaiah 26:19 and Daniel 12:2-3. Their doctrine was that a resurrection of the body was not taught in the O.T. How, therefore, could they explain these two texts that the orthodox Pharisees pressed on them? Why, nothing was easier. They adopted the same tactics as Kelly and Gaebelein, and pressed Esekiel 37 to prove their theories.

Now Darbylsts undoubtedly believe in the resurrection, but if Ezekiel 37 is to be made the touchstone, as they, like the Sadducees, insist, then we shall have no texts on the resurrection left to us.

The question of importance is, are there any considerations that warrant our interpreting Isaiah 26:19 and Daniel 12:2-3 literally, and Ezekiel 37 in a figurative way? There are considerations of a cogent character.

1. Kelly admits that "we know from God Himself" that Isaiah 25:8 refers to a literal resurrection. Now Isaiah 26:19 occurs in the same vision, and the resurrection that it speaks of occurs at the same time (26:1 "in that day"). Is it reasonable that in the one verse we have a literal, and in the other a figurative, resurrection, when we know that the one is certainly literal? Kelly’s own words describe the case exactly: "We are not therefore at liberty to explain the vision according to our own thoughts. The explanation of the Holy Ghost is express and conclusive. Thus we can carry divine light to Isaiah 26, where the very same allusion is found."

2. Whilst there are one or two expressions in Ezekiel 37 that are thoroughly applicable to a literal resurrection, the passage taken as a whole is inconsistent with the N.T. doctrine of the resurrection of the body. Kelly says, "it is not at all the way in which the resurrection of the dead is presented." The Spirit of God, in the N.T., in reply to a question concerning the manner of the resurrection, replied, "Thou foolish one." Yet here in Ezekiel we have a literal description of bone coming to bone, sinew to sinew, flesh and skin covering them all. As a figure all this is deeply instructive of the resuscitation of Israel; we are seeing something of it in our own day. But as a description of the bodily resurrection of the righteous it is incongruous.

In Isaiah 26:19 and Daniel 12, on the other hand, we have the strongest possible idioms used to describe the dead and their resurrection; and yet there is nothing to offend the most advanced revelation of the N.T.

3. The results that follow from the resurrection in Daniel 12:2-3 and Ezekiel 37: are such as to indicate that they are absolutely different. What is the result of the resurrection in Daniel? Many sleepers in the dust awake to life everlasting; the wise shine forth as the brightness of the expanse, and soul-winners like stars for ever and ever.

Scarcely anything in the N.T. descriptions of the resurrection exceeds the glory that is here revealed to be the portion of those who rise in this resurrection. The glory is evidently of a heavenly character; they awake in Jehovah’s likeness.

What is the result of the resurrection in Ezekiel? The placing of the nation in the land of Palestine (vv. 12, 14 and 21). National revival is expressly asserted to be the meaning of the prophecy. These considerations are sufficient to settle the whole matter. As Salmond says in his Immortality:—

There is not so much as a syllable in Isaiah 26:19 and Daniel 12:2-3 to correspond to this. The teaching of these verses, as Skinner says, in his Commentary,