Daily Verse
“ I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge—” ( 1 Corinthians 1:4-5)
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Kingdom Studies
 This is the introduction to our article section. We'll have a list of the best articles on different topics here...topics on spiritual maturity and things not generally covered in other Churches/studies.
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INQUIRE OF THE FORMER AGE
by G. H. Lang
8
It has been
remarked above that the Enemy of all truth has always studied to confuse good
men upon the two great subjects of the church of God
and the return of the Lord. As to the latter matter the Lord very specially
warned us that false prophets would seek to lead astray the very elect, and
Paul warned the Thessalonian believers against this attempt by spirit agents
(Matt. 21:4; Luke 21:8; 2 Thess. 2:2). It was therefore to be expected that an
attack would be launched against that fresh search into prophecy a century ago.
It soon
transpired that two of the most learned and powerful men in that notable group
(J. N. Darby and B. W. Newton) held divergent views. They agreed upon such
major matters as that the kingdom of God could not be established on earth
until the return of the King; that His return to the earth would be preceded by
the rise and reign of the Antichrist and the persecution of the godly by him;
that his destruction, the deliverance of the godly, the overthrow of Gentile
world rule, the reinstatement of the Jewish people as the chief nation on
earth, would all attend this descent of Christ to the earth. And they both
expected that the descent of the Lord would effect a resurrection of dead saints
and be accompanied by a rapture of the living.
They differed
however upon the subordinate question of whether that removal of the church to
heaven by resurrection and rapture would be before the rise of Antichrist or at
the close of his reign. As their respective views upon prophecy became
systematized, this divergence developed other differences, and in the course of
some ten years these close friends had become estranged, brotherly agreement
failed, and out of the original minor disagreement there grew contention and
division, bitterness and strife. "The beginning of strife is as when one lets
out water: therefore leave off contention before there be quarrelling" (Prov.
17:14).
After this
most lamentable controversy had passed its climax, Tregelles wrote in 1849: "You
appear to be so perfectly aware that the opposition to Mr. Newton arose
entirely from his prophetic views being disliked by Mr. Darby that I need not
insist on the point. Out of this sprang all the charges against Mr. Newton, and
the endeavour to condemn him on every possible ground. Had he accorded with Mr.
Darby on prophecy, we should never have heard his voice raised against him as
to ministry or church order; his writings would not have been scrutinized with
severity in order to glean matter of accusation."
This statement
was written while Darby was alive to contradict it, and it seems to have been
justified. Only it should be added that Newton
just as intensely disliked Darby's views on prophecy, and opposed him with
equal vigour, though more courteously.
This unhappy
contention presently extended among the assemblies of Christians they
influenced. It is not our present purpose to pursue this history. We remark
only that here again is felt the breath of that Spirit that now works for the
obscuring of truth. For many onlookers the whole topic of prophecy was
prejudiced, as being apparently a cause of contention.
This so
lamentable and ungodly spirit has, alas, persisted; dogmatism and intolerance
have too much marked the advocates of these systems of interpretation,
especially that initiated by Darby. One ponders ruefully what might have been
the happy results had those two great scholars and Christians continued in the
original brotherly search and inquiry, until the reasons for divergence had
become evident and the reconciling factors apparent. "The sons of this age are
for their generation wiser than the sons of light" (Luke 16:8). Scientists
faced by contradictions in theory or experiment would set themselves to
discover errors in theory or mistakes in practice, and thus seek harmony and
progress. Why was it otherwise with those searchers into the meaning of God's
Word? One can but attribute this finally to the subtle unperceived influence
upon their spirits of the great Deceiver. If the spirit of a Christian
deteriorates, so that love is chilled, and humility, patience and forbearance
decline, then it is easy for the Enemy to blind the mind and stiffen the will
into antagonism. From then on it becomes possible to love what one honestly
thinks to be truth (and which may be truth) more than one loves the brother who
differs in opinion; subtle reasons are found to justify strife, such as the
duty to contend for the faith or to safeguard fellow saints from error. But not
even right steps can be taken if brotherly love has declined. "Let all that you
do be done in love" (1 Cor. 16:14).
9
As Darby's
views and prophetic scheme mightily prevailed and have very widely dominated
evangelical thought, it may be helpful to examine some of his basic grounds,
especially as his system is the foundation of the notes of the widely accepted
Scofield Bible.
William Kelly
was another fine scholar. He came into the Movement in the early forties. It is
said that a tutor at Trinity
College, told him that if
he would settle there as a coach he could make his fortune. He answered, "Yes,
but for which world?" In a pamphlet entitled The Rapture of the Saints: Who suggested it,
or Rather on What Scripture? he gives Darby's own account of how he came to
believe that that Rapture would be before the day of the Lord. Kelly does not
give the reference to Darby's writings where the statement is found. He quotes
it as follows:
"It is this
passage which twenty years ago (i.e. from 1850 when he wrote) made me understand
the rapture of the saints before - perhaps a considerable time before - the day
of the Lord (that is, before the judgment of the living)."
This shows
that by 1830, in
the middle period of the gatherings at Powerscourt House, Darby had reached the
conclusion that the rapture of the church would be before, and perhaps a
considerable time before, the advent of the Lord to judge the wicked alive on
the earth at His coming. Newton,
on the contrary, held that the descent of the Lord to the air, with the gathering
of the church to Him in the clouds, is to be one instantaneous act on His way
down to the earth to destroy Antichrist.
It seems that
Darby was in part right, in part wrong. In the statement quoted he does not say
what in the passage cited showed him that the removal of the church must
precede the coming of Christ to the earth for judgment, and he only hints at
the reason in his Synopsis written some years later. The hint is that the
saints are to appear with Christ when He comes in glory and therefore must have
been taken to Him in advance. But with this Newton's view agreed. The difference between
them was as to the length of the interval between the removal and the descent
to the earth. Newton
regarded it as but the "twinkling of an eye" (1 Cor. 15:52), Darby that it was
a period of some length. Darby was right. I do not know whether he had already
seen that the word parousia ("as touching the coming, the parousia of the Lord")
implied some period, but it is now well known that this is its force. It covers
not only the arrival of a person but also the duration of his stay, and
therefore implies a period.
But Darby's
program of the end days required, or was developed to require, that the removal
of the church must be before the end days set in; that is, that the parousia
must extend over at least the seven years of the supremacy of Antichrist, that
is, the Seventieth Seven of Daniel's prophecy (Daniel 9); and, in this early
statement quoted, he speaks of "the rapture of the saints before - perhaps a
considerable time before - the day of the Lord." I have looked steadily,
repeatedly, I hope dispassionately at 2 Thess. 2:1,2, and I fail to see the
slightest hint in the words used as to the length of the interval, i.e. of the
parousia. Yet Darby says that the passage gave him ground to think that the
interval might be "considerable." But this he ought to have tested, and have
proved, if possible, from other passages. It looks as if it was the assumption
of this idea that was the point where his thinking on this subject was subtly
side-tracked. From the very next verse it is plain that the event mentioned in
verses 1 and 2 cannot take place "except the falling away come first, and the
man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition."
On the other
hand, Newton's
thinking was inaccurate from want of discerning that the word parousia demands
some period and cannot mean only an instantaneous event. That is to say,
between the moment when the Lord will descend to the air and the saints rise to
Him there, and the hour when He will come to the Mount of
Olives in judgment on the Beast, there is an interval: but Darby
had no warrant for considering that it will be "considerable," covering seven
years or more. In my commentary on Revelation it is suggested that the parousia
will begin during the Seventh Trumpet (thus according with 1 Cor. 15:52, "the
last trump"), in which case the descent to the earth will be at the close of
that Trumpet judgment. Thus (as against Newton
) the parousia will be a period, but it will not be at all as long as Darby's
scheme requires.
On this matter
Kelly wrote words that ought still to be pondered by supporters of his and
Darby's views, as well as by other. He said: "Granted the great truth of His
coming for the saints in sovereign grace before they follow Him from heaven for
His overwhelming judgments on the earth, the interval is quite secondary; but
this too can only be learned satisfactorily from scripture. Surely acrimony
might well be spared in searching into such a detail, though of no small
interest and importance."
Supporters of
Darby's scheme assert that the coming of Christ for the church before the end
days is taught in 1 Thess. 4 and 1 Cor. 15. These are the chief passages they
use. Thus the late W. E. Vine said that the prophetic parables of the Lord and
the book of Revelation are hard to understand, but that these two passages are
simple, and we do well to base our beliefs on the plain scriptures rather than
the difficult. This is a tacit admission that the view in question is not found
in the chief prophetic portions of the New Testament, the Gospels and the
Revelation. Yet in fact the two passages cited yield no light whatever as to
whether the events they mention are to take place before the Tribulation under
Antichrist or after it. The relation of time between the two events is not
alluded to even remotely.
From the
first, the advocates of that pre-Tribulation coming of the Lord were faced with
the formidable facts that the only coming of Christ known to the Gospels and
the Revelation is accompanied by power and great glory, being as brilliant and
visible as a flash of lightning, and that these portions of Scripture do not
speak of a pre-Tribulation coming of Christ. The attempt to meet this obstacle
involved various assumptions; for example:
1) The pure
assumption that although in Revelation 3 the churches are seen on earth, in
chapter 4 they are regarded as caught up to heaven in the person of John, and
as seen enthroned there in the twenty-four Elders, who are assumed to be
representative of the glorified saints. In my treatise on Revelation, this is
examined in full detail, and it is proved (I venture to think conclusively)
that the Elders do not "represent" any one, but are simply the twenty-four
senior angelic rulers of the universe. Kelly's learned exposition of that book,
as far as it affects the church
of God, and the meaning
of the term "saints," depends entirely upon the assumption that the Elders
represent the church, and falls without it.
2) Inasmuch as
the coming of the Lord is presented in the Gospels and the Revelation as public
and open, it was unavoidable that the supposed pre-Tribulation coming, not
being mentioned, should be a secret event, not known to the world.
In 1864 Dr.
Tregelles, who was one of those earliest students of prophecy and acquainted
intimately with the whole of the developments now being reviewed, published his
discussion The Hope of Christ's Second Coming. He stated that the theory of a
secret coming of Christ was first brought forward about the year 1832, which
means that it was introduced during the period of the Powerscourt meetings. In
a footnote he added: "I am not aware that there was any definite teaching that
there would be a secret rapture of the church at a secret coming, until this
was given forth as an ‘utterance' in Mr. Irving's Church, from what was there
received as being the voice of the Spirit. But whether any one ever asserted
such a thing or not, it was from that supposed revelation that the modern
doctrine and the modern phraseology respecting it arose. It came not from Holy
Scripture, but from that which falsely pretended to be the Spirit of God, while
not owning the true doctrine of our Lord's incarnation in the same flesh and
blood as His brethren, but without taint of sin."
Baxter's
Narrative of Facts concerning the Irvingite movement throws some light on this.
It was in August 1831 that he himself first fell under the "power" energizing
that movement; but he mentions that some time before this his sister had "heard
several utterances from Miss E. C. (the chief prophetess among the Irvingites)
in which she most emphatically pronounced that Christ would come at an hour
when even His own people would not be looking for Him - that the time of His
coming would not be known to His own people." Certainly that would be a secret
coming.
It is
therefore clear that in the Irvingite circle emphasis had been laid upon the
secrecy of the Coming before it had been advanced in the other circle.
Tregelles was very well read in Christian literature, ancient and modern, and
he had a phenomenal memory. As he had no recollection of having read of this
doctrine before, it is probable that it was not advanced before the Irvingite
days. Yet too much must not be made of this, for (1) it is the cunning of
seducing spirits to co-mingle truth with error, and so to confuse the former
and commend the latter. Thus a demon-inspired utterance may contain an element
of truth. (2) No evidence is available that any of the Powerscourt circle took the
idea of a secret rapture from the Irvingite utterances, no evidence beyond
Tregelles's assertion, and for this he gives no proofs. Yet even if it was from
them that this idea was taken, no more can be said than that they ought to have
tested it very thoroughly from Scripture.
William Kelly
repudiated with indignation the suggestion Tregelles made. But Kelly was not in
the circle until some years after the Powerscourt time and he may not have
known how the idea first arose. In any case he laboured in vain to repudiate
Tregelles, for his argument was directed to prove only that the doctrine of the
rapture of the saints was held before the Irvingite days, and that the word had
been used in that sense by accredited English writers. But Tregelles had not questioned
this. He was far too well-informed to have challenged it. It was of a secret
rapture that he wrote, the word being in italics. This issue Kelly merely
avoided, though the italicized word is in the extract he gives form Tregelles.
He did not deny the assertion that the idea of a secret rapture originated in
the Irvingite circle, nor did he offer any other account of its origin.
These two
examples from two such trained minds illustrate how the statements of the best
scholars need to be scrutinized. Tregelles implies more than the fact he
mentions fully warrants, and Kelly argues beside the point. This is the more to
be noted because it has been, and is, deplorably common for the rank and file
to accept unhesitatingly, and to repeat very positively, whatever some revered
leader may assert. But as a Bishop said to his clergy, "Remember, brethren,
that none of you is infallible, not even the youngest of you."
At this point
Kelly gives a piece of information not otherwise available. Speaking of Darby's
statement above as to the meaning he saw in 2 Thess. 2:1,2, Kelly added that "during
a visit to Plymouth in the summer of 1845, Mr. B. W. Newton told me that, many
years before, Mr. Darby wrote to him a letter in which he said that a
suggestion was made to him by Mr. T. Tweedy (a spiritual man and most devoted
ex-clergyman amongst the Irish brethren) which to his mind quite cleared up the
difficulty previously felt on this very question" It was new, however, to hear
that Mr. Tweedy "was the one who first suggested, as a decisive proof from
scripture, 2 Thess. 2:1,2."
Here there
seems another instance of the need to watch strictly what good and able men
say. The first statement, does not aver that Tweedy spoke to Darby about 2
Thess. 2:1,2; it says merely that he made a suggestion, but what that was is
not recorded. Later Kelly added that it was about that passage; but he was
writing from memory in 1903, when he was 82 (fifty-eight years after the
conversation with Newton),
when Tregelles's statement first came to his notice.
In any case
this suggestion, whatever it was, did not come to Darby as a personal
illumination through meditating upon Scripture but from another believer. It
did, however, suffice to settle for him a matter before in doubt, and it reached
him at the time when the formidable difficulty stated had to be faced, namely,
that the Gospels and the Revelation know nothing of a secret coming of Christ
and a secret rapture of the saints. This idea involved another basic
assumption, namely:
3) That the
reason why the three Synoptic Gospels and the Revelation do not even hint at
this secret event is that they are not addressed to believers as Christians,
but as Jews. Whoever first suggested this idea (and I have sometimes wondered
whether this was what Tweedy proposed to Darby), it is absolutely basic to
Darby's whole scheme; and it came in, not as a result of direct and careful
exegesis of the New Testament, as a truth itself discoverable there, but as an
expedient to resolve a difficulty to a dispensational scheme then being
formulated. It was not a notion lying clearly in scripture, only long
overlooked, but was a human explanation to dispose of an awkward fact.
The subject
will not be argued here at length, the present object being simply to glean
lessons from the original years in which these subjects were investigated in
modern time, and this is one of the facts which emerge.
Of necessity
much else developed from this assumption, such as that:
a) There is to
be in the last days a remnant of Jews who will believe in Jesus as Messiah,
after the church has been removed. Of such a company we find no word in
Scripture, though it does picture a small remnant of that people who in those
times will fear the God of Israel and be called upon to keep the law of Moses
(Isa. 1:9; Rom. 9:27,29; Mal. 4:4-6; etc.). But the very fact that they will be
under the law of Moses shows that they will not have reached the liberty that
is in Christ. To these are wrongly applied passages which speak of "saints" as holding
"the faith of Jesus" (e.g. Rev. 14:12). It is not until the nations attacking Jerusalem are being
destroyed by the Lord that that godly remnant will "look unto Him they pierced"
and "mourn" (Zech. 12:8-11).
b) It has to
be assumed that the Lord, when addressing His apostles, spoke to them as
representing the believing remnant. Yet He knew perfectly well that He had
chosen them out of and separated them from the world, both the Jewish world
that had rejected Him and the Gentile world that would do so (John 17). And He
knew that they were the men who were to lay the foundation of that new society,
the church, that He had told them He would build, and would be its most
distinguished members. In the whole of their writings is there a hint that they
looked upon themselves as connected with a Jewish company of the end days?
c) From this
theory it followed that the Sermon on the Mount, and other precepts and
commandments of the Lord given when on earth, do not apply directly to
Christians, but only by way of indirect application. The effect of this has
been adverse to discipleship, as was foretold form the first by those who
rejected Darby's views on this matter. Yet the final direction of the Lord
before He ascended was that the apostles were to make disciples and teach them
to observe all things whatsoever He had commanded themselves to do (Mat.
28:18-20). Their epistles, by their use of Christ's sayings, show that they did
this.
d) To avoid
this plain command the theory required assuming that the direction to spread
the gospel, with other commands involved, such as baptism and the Lord's
Supper, are not for observance in this age, but for that Jewish remnant when
they engage (as is supposed) in the work of evangelizing the nations in the end
days.
These
ramifications of this dispensational scheme were not developed fully by its
first exponents. This was done logically and to the bitter end by E. W.
Bullinger, the outcome being that only Paul's prison epistles belong properly
to the church, and all the rest of the New Testament, like the Old Testament,
is "Jewish".
It is of
spiritual significance and importance that the falsity of this line of teaching
was exposed about the time it had become widely spread, and by one who never
mentioned it. In the Bampton Lectures for 1864, T. D. Bernard showed
conclusively that all the teachings of the apostles were rooted in and by the
instruction of the Spirit, grew out of germinal sayings by Christ when He was
with them. This is the antithesis of the dispensational division of the New
Testament propagated by Darby and perfected by Bullinger.
The scheme may
be tested by one single passage, with which the whole Bible is in accord. It is
alleged that the parousia will commence with a secret pre-Tribulation coming of
Christ for His church, to be known at the time by them only; but that the
epiphany, the public outshining of His glory, will be at the manifestation of
that glory before all men. It has been taught that the former is that for which
Christians are to look as their true expectation. Yet Paul, who is supposed to
be the one who first received the revelation of that pre-Tribulation rapture,
is the very one who declares that the "blessed hope" of the church is "the
epiphany [the shining forth] of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus
Christ" (Tit. 2:13).
Involved in
the scheme are such further assertions as that the church is "above
dispensations" (whatever that may mean), and is so peculiarly the object of
grace that it would be wholly inconsistent for it to have to endure the great
Tribulation of the end days. Yet it has been permitted to experience the
indescribable horrors of the persecutions under the Roman Emperors, the
Inquisition, the Boxers in China
in 1900, the Bolsheviks, and now again in China. Those who so argue must
surely forget the Lord's statement to the apostles, "In the world you will have
tribulation" (John 16:33). That word was not merely prophetic, but general;
tribulation is your normal experience while I shall be away. The great Tribulation
will not be distinct in nature from the age-long tribulation, but will be its
climax and conclusion. The notion that the church will not have to meet it is
enfeebling. It would be wiser that we ask for some good reason why we should
escape what has been the constant portion of the people of Christ, and should
prepare our hearts to accept it, if God should so will.
It has been
mentioned above that one of the subjects discussed at Powerscourt House was
whether the promises of God to the church are conditional. It would have been
interesting to know the answers. At least some of those present were distinctly
Calvinistic in theology. They held firmly to the truth that the salvation from
wrath granted to the believer in Christ is eternal and so non-forfeitable.
Their tendency was to apply this to all post-conversion privileges also. Within
the area of the church glorified they allowed for differences of reward
according to merit, but the principle of reward must not be extended beyond
this. In particular, the church
of God is especially and
peculiarly the object of grace. This led to the adoption of the term "sovereign
grace." Thus Kelly wrote of "the great truth of His coming for the saints in
sovereign grace."
The idea
conveyed by the term "sovereign" is that the grace of God is absolute,
unfettered, and that the privileges it grants are free of conditions or limit.
Where is this term or an equivalent found in the New Testament? It is not
there. The grace of God is not unfettered. It is conditioned and balanced by
His other attribute of righteousness. It is blessedly true that "grace reigns,"
but it is not the rule of an absolute autocrat in disregard of all other
considerations. Rom. 5:21 shows this by saying "grace reigns through
righteousness." Grace cannot do anything inconsistent with righteousness.
Grace must
confer upon the guilty a righteousness which can be recognized by the righteous
Judge of all the earth. This grace works through the atoning work of Christ.
Grace must also produce in the justified a righteousness that a holy God can
acknowledge and reward. This grace works by forming in the believer the
character of Christ, by His dwelling in the heart. Now the sinner may refuse to
accept the grace that would grant him righteousness in Christ; in which case he
cannot obtain that saving benefit. Likewise the believer may thwart that inward
work by which the Spirit would develop in him the character of Christ; in which
case he will fall short of what the grace of God would have made him and conferred
upon him. Very true are Tauler's words that, when God gives the crowns, He will
not crown us, He will only crown Christ in us, for Christ alone is worthy of a
crown. Thus grace is conditioned not as to what it is willing to confer, but by
what we are willing to secure. In the whole range of its blessed activities it
must work through righteousness. The term "sovereign grace" blurs the
distinctness of this truth.
The common
mistake was adopted that the Lord had taught, that the apostles had believed and
taught, and that Christians in general had accepted, that His return might be
at any moment. It has been urged that he who believes that events must take
place first cannot be looking for the Lord. It is asserted that Scripture puts
no events as to precede that supposed secret rapture, for the church is "outside
prophecy." And when it is replied that Christ very distinctly told His
disciples that "when you see these things [of which He had been speaking]
coming to pass, know that the kingdom
of God is near" (Luke
21:31), the reply is made that this is "Jewish," the church is not the kingdom!
This assertion is discussed at length (and, I think, completely refuted) in my
book on the Revelation.
How could they
have done so seeing that the Lord expressly told them that His absence would be
long (Mat. 25:19; Luke 19:12), and that Peter had to live to be an old man and
then die (John 21:18,19)? In my Dissertation, I show that the New Testament use
of the terms "to look for," "to wait for" most certainly do allow the thought
of events intervening before the event expected.
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