LApril 1, 1868. presence of the King is constantly represented as the preface to his universal reign. It is upon "the holy hill of Zion" that the God-man will "declare the decree" giving him "the heathen for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession." (Psa. ii.) "All the ends of the earth are to see the salvation of our God," when "he cometh to judge the earth." (Psa. xcviii.) "The idols he will utterly abolish" when he ariseth "to shake terribly the earth." (Isa. ii. 18, 19.) The new heavens and new earth wherein peace and righteousness shall triumph (Isa. lxv. 17-25) will follow the coming of the great day of fire (2 Pet. iii. 10-13). "The Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee," and then the Lord shall be King over all the earth." (Zech. xiv. 5-9.) "The Son of Man coming with power and great glory," will be the sign that "the kingdom of God is nigh at hand." (Luke xxi. 27-31.) The Lamb must be enthroned on Zion with the firstfruits-the Church of the firstborn-and then the harvest of the world shall be reaped. (Rev. xiv.) The King of kings descending with his white-robed followers through the open gates of heaven is the prelude to the glorious thousand years. (Rev. xix. 20.) The kingdoms of the world will become Christ's when the dead are judged, and He gives reward to the prophets, and to all that fear his name. (Rev. xi. 15-18.) Not through the kingdom to the advent, but through the advent to the kingdom, is the Bible programme. Paul lays down the order to the lasting rebuke of modern theology, saying that the Lord will "judge the quick and the dead at his "appearing and his kingdom. (2 Tim. iv. 1.) Thus the prayer, "thy kingdom come," is the outgrowth of the other prayer, " Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly." The brightness which will chase away the long night of earthly darkness and usher in the millennial morn, will be the sunlight of Jesus's presence-the music that will hush the sighings of earth into everlasting peace, will be the sound of Emmanuel's voice. The glory that shall flood the whole earth, will first gild the hill top of Zion, and glisten around the throne of Him who there shall reign for ever and ever. First the King, then the kingdom. "Watch," brethren, for the coming kingdom, but rather for the coming King! Watch! the Master's advent is not 1,000 years distant, for He has bidden us watch for it! Watch! for ye know not the day nor the hour when the Son of Man cometh ! "And what I say unto you I say unto all, watch ! IV. But observe what is said in the vision as to the changes necessary to the establishing of the promised universal kingdom. "It shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms;" they will "become as the chaff of the summer threshing floor," and "no place shall be found for them." In order to establish the universal kingdom of Christ, therefore, all others must be moved out of the way, that it may occupy their place. But the preaching of the Gospel alone would not necessitate this. The whole world might be converted, and yet the divisions into empires and kingdoms would remain. The coming kingdom, therefore, must be more than this. If literal kingdoms have to be removed to allow its existence, it must itself be a literal kingdom. The prediction of Haggai (chap. ii. 6, 7) as interpreted by Paul (Heb. xii. 27, 28) is abundant confirmation of this idea. Haggai predicts the shaking of the heavens, the earth, the nations. Paul April 1, 1868. interprets this to mean the removal of the things that are shaken, and foretells the receipt by the saints of a kingdom which cannot be shaken, which will never be removed. All the kingdoms of earth will be removed, and the kingdom of the saints occupy their place. It must therefore be an actual literal kingdom. The analogy of the visions would suggest the same conclusion. The predictions of the former portions were fulfilled in the history of four literal empires; naturally we suppose the one predicted at the close will be literal also. As with the first four, so with the fifth which will supplant them. Just as really as Nebuchadnezzar ruled the empire of Babylon, will God's Son and God's saints ere long rule the empire of the world. Repeatedly in the Old Testament do we read predictions that the Christ will occupy the throne of David; and when He was about to appear on earth, the promise was uttered by an angel's voice, "The Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever." (Luke i. 32, 33.) David ruled over an earthly kingdom, exercised visible earthly authority; so, therefore, will the great Son of David. He, too, will reign in Mount Zion (Isa. xxiv. 23) over the re-gathered people of Israel (Mic. iv. 6, 7): and the superscription once hung in mockery over the cross shall be emblazoned in letters of gold about the throne, "This is the King of the Jews." And it is only by a remembrance of the truth revealed to Daniel in these visions, that the saints are destined to exercise kingly authority and power upon the world, that we can understand those numerous predictions which associate their future glory with a kingdom on the earth. When the seer of Patmos was permitted for a while to hear the music of the Church in heaven, this was the burden of their melody. "Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; and hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth." (Rev. v. 9, 10.) The Church on earth longs to be in heaven; but the Church in heaven longs to be on earth. So in the Saviour's picture of the judgment scene, He represents Himself as saying to the righteous: "Come and inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." The foundation of the world was the foundation of the kingdom of the saints, the kingdom into which they will be ushered "when the Son of Man shall come in his glory." When the Lord desired to animate the hopes of his apostles, He pointed them to the glory of an earthly kingdom, and promised that" when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory" (that is at his advent; see Matt. xxv. 31); "they also shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." And, strange to say, He did not add any "notes, explanatory and practical," to declare that this "figurative." Addressing the Church at Thyatira, our Lord promises to every overcomer power over the nations as his reward; language which can only be fulfilled in the resurrection of those who overcome, and their reign on the earth. So also with the Psalmist's prediction of power of the saints over kings and peoples (Psa. cxlviii. 6, 9) of which he says, "This honour have all his saints;" all of every clime, LApril 1, 1868. all of every age of the world. All the saints who have fallen asleep must rise again, and exercise with the changed living the promised kingly power on earth. Such, then, shall be the kingdom of the future. Not a mere extension of the mingled good and evil of the professing Church; not the universal proclamation of the Gospel; not even the general conversion of the world; it will secure this, but it will be more. It is a kingdom yet to be set up; a kingdom which shall be established without human agency; a kingdom which will follow the second advent of the world's Redeemer; a kingdom which shall destroy and supplant all merely earthly kingdoms; an actual literal reign of Christ and his saints. Such is to be the portion of God's believing people. The kingdom to which we journey is not a dreamy and incomprehensible phantasy, it will be a reality. This earth, where now we suffer, shall be the scene of our glory; this earth where now we battle for the right, shall echo our shout of victory; this earth now heaving and throbbing under the huge burden of sin shall be transformed and beautified, shall reflect the glory of the heavenly city which shall descend from God out of heaven, shall leap with joy at the tread of ransomed immortals, and burst the chains of death asunder before the presence of Him who is the Resurrection and the Life. The kingdom thus established will be universal. The stone cut out without hands shall "fill the whole earth"; "The kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, and all dominions shall serve and obey him." Wheresoever the foot of man shall tread, shall the sceptre of King Jesus extend, and the worldling's dream of universal empire shall be completely realized in the reign of God's anointed King. We And this kingdom shall be everlasting. Every earthly empire is doomed to dissolution, but this shall know no end. The universe shall be its boundary line; all eternity the term of its duration. describe it sometimes as "the millennium," but the term is apt to be misleading. The thousand years' reign is but the first chapter in the volume of our everlasting royalty; but the title-page to eternity. The millennium shall pass away, but the kingdom shall continue, more glorious and triumphant than before. "The saints shall possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever." Such was the angel's language, as though he desired to pile word on word, and phrase on phrase, to express the fullness of his meaning. The empires of Babylon and Greece were dependent upon the lives of their founders; and so will it be with the kingdom of Christ, and He is immortal as the Godhead. Hence his kingdom shall endure for ever. No wave of revolution shall rise so high as the steps of his throne; no shaking of kings or dynasties shall make his kingdom totter; all eternity shall not dim the lustre of its brightness, but like the ransomed spirit it shall remain "Secure unhurt amidst the war of elements, Hampden Grove, Patricroft. WILLIAM W. SKEMP. April 1, 1868. THE CHURCH AND THE ADVENT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. By Rev. RICHARD CHESTER. THAT the Christian Church as a corporate body, consisting of Gentile converts grafted in amongst believing Jews (and so making "of twain one new man," Ephes. ii. 15), not only did not exist in Old Testament times, but was not revealed during the Old Testament dispensation, is a fact so explicitly stated by the apostle Paul in his epistle to the Ephesians, that it seems strange indeed how it should ever have been either overlooked or questioned. It is one of those wondrous developments of the depth of the riches of the wisdom, and goodness, and grace of God which it took time to unfold, and which it will occupy eternity to understand and to admire. The peculiar closeness and blessedness of the relationship to God in Christ into which it brings the believer, the inestimable privileges which it confers upon him, had to become matters of actual experience before they could be adequately realized or expressed. Many commentators upon the Word of God, unaccountably overlooking or ignoring this fact, have in consequence made strange confusion in their attempted interpretations of the Old Testament prophets. They have been unmindful of the express statements of the apostle that the Jew, not the Gentile, is he "to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the promises" (Rom. ix. 4); and that consequently it is only by being "grafted in among" Jewish "branches," in the room of "some" of these Jewish branches "broken off" for unbelief; and by, "with them" (i.e., the believing Jewish branches) "partaking of the root and fatness of the olive tree" (Rom. xi. 17), that Gentiles acquire salvation, and blessing, and privilege in this present dispensation. They have been equally unmindful of the fact that the Gospel was in the first instance preached exclusively to Jews; that the first converts to Christianity, the first five or six thousand members of the Christian Church, were, every individual of them, circumcised members of the house of Israel. They have practically ignored the teaching of the Holy Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles, whence we learn that it was not until after the wonderful vision, thrice repeated, of the "great sheet, knit at the four corners, let down from heaven to the earth," and full of "all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts and creeping things, and fowls of the air," had been vouchsafed to him, together with the remarkable combination of attendant circumstances, that Peter had the smallest idea that the Christian Church-then in the eighth year from its birth upon the memorable day of Pentecost-was to consist of any other than exclusively Jewish members. It was only by the irresistible evidence of that vision, combined with that of the corresponding one seen by Cornelius, that he was led, and that subsequently the other apostles and brethren that were in Judæa were led, to the conclusion, that "God had also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto April 1, 1868. life." (Acts X., xi. 1-18.) Unmindful of all this, these commentators have regarded and portrayed the Christian Church as altogether Gentile in its character and aspect; they have looked upon Jews, if entering it, as so doing by becoming Gentile proselytes, in like manner as occasional Gentiles became Jewish proselytes of old. They have, as it were, crowned all this ignorance and misconception by utterly ignoring the assertion of the Spirit of God by the mouth of the apostle Paul that Gentile fellow-heirship, and incorporation, and mutual participation of the promise in Christ by the Gospel, is "a mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit;" a "mystery which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God." (Ephes. iii. 4, 5, 6, 9.) They have accordingly taken and applied to Gentiles all the glowing descriptions given by Old Testament prophets of the yet future restoration and blessedness of the nation of Israel. They have in their interpretation of these prophecies erased and excluded from them the Jew, and substituted for him the Gentile. Where God with his pen of light and truth has written "the nation of Israel," they, with their pens of darkness and error, have drawn a blot across his handwriting, and have written over it, and instead of it, in their own handwriting, "the (so-called) Gentile Christian Church!" To say only that by such mode of procedure many have been altogether repelled from the study of prophecy, were to make comparatively light of the mischief which this school of interpreters have done. In addition to this they have falsified God's Word of Truth. They have "darkened counsel by words without knowledge." They have given a character of doubtful meaning to the predictions of the Most High, like that which belonged of old to the vaticinations of the Sybil. Moreover they have cast the national hope of the Jew to the ground, and trampled it under foot; treating the people whom God "has chosen to himself to be unto him a peculiar treasure above all the nations of the earth" as though the one sole object of all their marvellous existence had been to typify a Gentile Church, to furnish the prophets of Jehovah with an allegorical name under which to predict the future supremacy and glory of a people to be gathered from amongst the heathen nations. In doing this they have further given occasion to the Gentile members of the professing Christian Church to look for earthly exaltation and triumph when their calling is to be "not of the world even as HE is not of the world;" and when desolating judgment for wilful neglect of this calling, and for consequent corruption and apostasy, is what God has denounced, and is about to execute upon them. Happily this monstrous evil belongs rather to the past than to the present; we possess it rather as an heirloom handed down to us, than as the actual product of the present generation. God has graciously been pleased to raise up amongst us a very different class of interpreters of his Holy Word, men who do Him the common justice of believing that He speaks to be understood, and means what He says; and who have accordingly assigned to Jew and Gentile their proper respective places in Old Testament prophecy. What we have now, perhaps, the greatest reason to apprehend is an |