CHAPTER XXI
THE RULERS IN THE COMING KINGDOM.
IN the glorious predictions as to time coming kingdom of God on earth,
much is revealed, but more is left in obscurity and involved in utmost
mystery. When we have focussed on these predictions the light that streams
from many other parts of Scripture, we yet feel that only the salient
features become visible, and that the detail lies buried still in deep
shadow. Eager imagination with her ready wings will fly unbidden forward,
seeking some twig on which to alight, but she finds only a sea of mystery,
and the fogs of ignorance soon drive her back to the shore of revelation,
where faith may find firm foothold. That a multitude of difficulties should
confront us when we try to conceive in detail the condition of society
and of the earth during this millennial reign of Christ is only what might
be expected.
Could the Jews of the Old Testament conceive the state of things now existing
in the gospel dispensation: God dwelling in the hearts of men instead
of a temple made with hands; national distinctions abolished, and Gentiles
more highly privileged than Jews; religion independent of external observances,
and the law replaced by the gospel? Could they conceive how Messianic
prophecy would be fulfilled? With what apparent contradictions it must
to their minds have abounded!
How could the ’everlasting Father’, ’the mighty God’
[to become Ed.] , be born as a child and given as a son? How was the throne
and government of David to be ordered and established with judgment and
with justice for ever as predicted, when it was foretold elsewhere that
restored Jerusalem was to be destroyed by "the people of a prince
that should come" against it, and made desolate on account of its
sins? How could David’s Son be David’s Lord, or a virgin conceive
and bear a child? Above all, how could the Messiah, the elect Servant
of God, be exalted and extolled and very high, and at the same time despised
and rejected, wounded and bruised, stricken, smitten, and laid in a grave?
That these difficulties could not be explained beforehand was however
no reason why the predictions which suggested them should not be received
and believed. And similarly-that we cannot conceive how the Divine predictions
about the coming kingdom can be accomplished, is no good ground for our
hesitating to believe that accomplished they will be. Messianic prophecy
is all fulfilled, and the facts of gospel history shed back upon the ancient
predictions such clear light, that to our minds they present little or
no perplexity.
So shall future fulfilments explain all that seems dark and difficult
in millennial prediction. Its difficulties are not as great as those involved
in the doctrine of the resurrection, which is assuredly held by all Christians,
for none such think of making the difficulties attending a belief of this
doctrine a reason for rejecting it; why then should the slighter difficulties
attending the statements of Scripture as to the future kingdom make us
hesitate to receive them?
Fully recognising therefore the existence of difficulties which are for
the present insoluble, let us seek to gather up the light that is afforded,
both by the Old and New Testaments, as to that kingdom, for whose coming
we daily pray.
The best and brightest characteristic of this glorious period is, that
during its course the Son of man will again be personally manifested on
earth. We do not say that His presence will be confined to earth as in
the days of His flesh; He that liveth and was dead is now alive for evermore,
incarnate still, though not in flesh and blood, but in a spiritual resurrection
body, a glorified humanity. He can never again of course be subject to
the conditions of time and space and material existence, as formerly,
and therefore the statement that He will reign on this earth does not
exclude His presence elsewhere. Even in the days of His flesh, and while
on earth, He spoke of Himself as "the Son of man who is in heaven."
How impossible then to limit His presence to any one sphere now or in
the future In the forty days which elapsed after His resurrection we have
proof that the powers of the spiritual body transcend all our conceptions;
on the first day of His resurrection our Lord spoke to the woman in the
morning, ascended to His Father and our Father, to His God and our God,
in the day, and was present the same evening in the upper chamber in Jerusalem
in the midst of His disciples. His personal reign on earth must be understood
as affirming nothing further than that He will be visibly manifested on
earth during that period as He is not now; in what way and to what extent
it is not for us to say, because it is not revealed. He is now seated
on His Father’s throne in heaven; He is then to ascend His own throne
on the earth He has redeemed-the throne of His father David in Jerusalem;
and hence it is said, "The name of the city from that day shall be,
The Lord is there." If He is not to be personally manifested on earth,
why does the millennial vision represent Him as coming from heaven to
earth at its commencement ?. and why do all the passages which speak of
it associate it with His personal epiphany? "Behold, He cometh with
clouds, and every eye shall see Him," can refer only to a personal
advent. "Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion: for, lo, I come and
will dwell in the midst of thee. saith the Lord." "Cry out and
shout, thou inhabitant of Zion: for great is the Holy One of Israel in
the midst of thee." "The Lord God will give unto Him the throne
of His father David," said the angel to Mary before the birth of
Jesus; "and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and
of His kingdom there shall be no end." "I saw in the night visions,"
says Daniel, "and, behold, one like unto the Son of man came with
the clouds of heaven . . . And there was given Him dominion, and glory,
and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages, should serve
Him: His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away,
and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed."
Our Lord likens Himself to a nobleman who went into a far country to receive
for himself a kingdom (that is, the investiture of a kingdom as from a
higher court), and to return, to reward the faithful, punish the unfaithful,
destroy the rebellious, and establish His dominion. After the ascension
the angels assured the disciples, whose minds were full of the Messianic
kingdom, about the time of which they had just been inquiring-a kingdom
which, as they well knew, was yet to be established on earth-that this
same Jesus who had just ascended to heaven in the clouds in their sight
would in like manner, i.e., visibly and personally, return. The hope of
the kingdom on earth was not lost, only postponed by the intervening age
of gospel grace to the Gentile world When "the times of the restitution
of all things arrive," the heavens which received the risen Son of
man will retain Him no longer; He returns to reign on the earth, where
He was despised and rejected, to be crowned where He was crucified, to
set up His throne where Pilate set up the cross, and inscribed over it,
"This is the King of the Jews."
And He returns not alone. Scripture constantly states that in His train
are to be, not only His mighty angels, but His risen and transformed saints.
"When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty
angels"; "Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His
saints"; or, as Zechariah expresses it, "The Lord my God shall
come, and all the saints with thee. . And every one that is left of all
the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even come up from year
to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts."
The share which His saints are to have in His coming kingdom was often
alluded to by our Lord when on earth, and is perhaps too little dwelt
upon in the joyous anticipations of His people. Its definiteness, its
tangible character, remove this hope widely from the vague and shadowy
anticipations of "heaven," which constitute the main idea entertained
by many of their future portion. Heavenly rest is not all that will be
brought to us at the coming of the Lord, but blessed and active ministry,
high and holy service. "To you who are troubled, rest with us, when
the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven," means, as the context
shows, rest from persecution, not an inglorious and uninteresting repose,
but a glorious living and reigning with Christ. His risen saints are to
share with Him the active administration of His kingdom, the actual government
of the world.
Ye are they who have continued with Me in My temptations," said our
Lord to His apostles, "and I appoint unto you a kingdom, as My Father
hath appointed unto Me, that ye may eat and drink with Me at My table
in My kingdom, and sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of
Israel." In #Isa 32. we read not only that "a King shall reign
in righteousness," but that "princes shall rule in judgment,"
or in the figurative language of Psalm lxxii., that "the mountains
shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills by righteousness."
"Let the saints be joyful in glory: let them sing aloud upon their
resting-places. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged
sword in their hand; to execute upon the nations the judgment written:
this honour have all His saints." [#Psa 149:5-9.]
As a king or great minister calls to his cabinet his specially trusted
and valued friends, and appoints to the most responsible posts those of
the most approved fidelity and ability, both for their reward and for
the benefit of the kingdom, so as regards Christ and His saints. The holy
martyrs are to be enthroned beside the faithful and true Witness: those
who have suffered are to reign with Him. We must not regard this as a
figure of speech, but as the description of an actual reality. The supreme
and. distinctive feature of the millennium, the personal government of
Christ and His saints, must not be explained away because of certain difficulties
which it presents. This reign of the risen Christ and His risen saints
over the nations of the millennial earth is the very essence of all the
predictions of Scripture on the subject, and it is reasonable and harmonious
with all we know of the Divine counsels and dispensations. To make it
a spiritual kingdom is to miss its character altogether. For first, as
we must again recall, this kingdom is one of a series of earthly monarchies,
standing fifth after four preceding ones. This shows that in the main
it must resemble them in its nature, although having many points of total
contrast. Now if the millennial reign were spiritual, it would have no
resemblance whatever in its nature to Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome.
This present spiritual kingdom of God does not consequently appear at
all in Daniel’s fore-view of earthly empires; it is a thing apart,
not of this world, not established by wars and victories, not maintained
by military power, nor administered by laws having the sanction of present
rewards and penalties. It exists, and has existed from its birth, alongside
of the great Roman dominion, interfering with it as little as did Christ
when on earth with Caesar. The saints have suffered from Rome, but have
never even sought to overthrow its power. The growth of the true Church
has not troubled the kingdoms of this world. It has been and is distinct
and wholly alien from them in nature. It is no part of the image; it is
a part rather of that mysterious "stone cut out without hands"
which ultimately destroys the image. The spiritual dominion of Christ
in His true Church, and the temporal dominion of kings and rulers on earth
are, both in their intrinsic nature and in their outward manifestation,
sundered wide as the poles.
The apostate Church with its temporal dominion tried to unite them, but
succeeded only in producing Babel-confusion -" Babylon the Great";
but the millennial kingdom of Christ and His saints is in no sense a continuation
of this present spiritual kingdom, of this Church age of mystery and forbearance.
It is a new thing in the earth, a new dispensation, wholly unlike the
present. It is a manifest kingdom, as earthly as any of the previous four
in its sphere, only more universal in its extent. Each one of the previous
four has been larger than its predecessor, and this embraces the entire
world. The stone which destroyed time image of Gentile power takes its
place, succeeds it, becomes a mountain, and fills the whole earth. This
clearly symbolises a visible outward, earthly kingdom, universal in its
extent, towering in its proportions, permanent in its duration, firm and
immutable in its foundations. It is an empire which rests not on the narrow,
fragile, unstable basis of clay and iron feet easily fractured and overthrown,
but on a foundation broad and stable as that of a mountain. To conceive
of it as a spiritual reign of an absent and invisible monarch is to miss
the entire point of the prophecy. It is not a universal church, but a
universal kingdom. True, its King is also the Head of "the Church,
which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all;" true,
the Church is the Eve of the second Adam, the bride of the Lamb, long
betrothed as a chaste virgin to Christ, and united to Him for ever in
resurrection. But His relation to her must never be confounded with His
relation to the world. The risen saints are the associates of His glory,
the sharers of His throne, the joint administrators of the kingdom, not
its subjects.
In considering therefore the future of the inhabitants of the millennial
earth, we who are Christians, members of "the Church of the first
born," are not considering our own future, but that of others, that
of those over whom it is our destiny to reign with Christ. Our own future
is to be "for ever with the Lord," wherever He may be. He said,
" I will come again, and receive you unto Myself, that where I am,
there ye may be also"; and again, "Where I am, there shall also
My servant be."
Unless therefore we are to limit the Christ to one spot in His universe
during the coming eternity, we must not so limit ourselves. By His infinite
grace we are destined to be sharers of His glory, and of His Father’s
peculiar love; ["The glory which Thou gayest Me I have given them.
. Thou hast loved them, as Thou hast loved Me" (#Joh 17:22, 23).]
and sharers also of His work of reigning for ever and ever over the ransomed
earth, and redeemed race of man. This is the revealed future of the Saints
of the true Christian Church of this dispensation, and all we know of
the nature of the spiritual bodies with which we are to he clothed at
the resurrection, makes this wonderful and unspeakably glorious prospect
seem a possible one. To bodies of flesh and blood it were of course impossible,
but spiritual bodies are independent of time and space and material conditions;
their motion swift as the glance of the mind, their appearance various
as that of the angels, or as that of the Lord Himself after His resurrection;
their constitution immaterial as that of the form that entered through
closed doors, and was taken up and lost to sight in the clouds of heaven.
To beings clothed in the likeness of the risen Lord, it can be no impossibility
to rest in heaven and reign on earth at one and time same time. "We
shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is"; we shall bear
the image of the heavenly, as we have borne the image of the earthy. Why
we should have been elected to such peculiar honour is as little to be
explained as why it has pleased God to redeem men rather than fallen angels.
Not unto us be the glory, but unto Him who "raiseth up the poor out
of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill: to set them
among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory."
But it is objected that this doctrine involves the inconceivable anomaly
of intercourse between men in the flesh and those who are already clad
in spiritual bodies, risen and glorified. On what basis does this supposed
objection rest? Is there any inherent impossibility of intercourse between
heaven and earth-between God who is a spirit and His creature man? Have
not revelations from the unseen world been more or less the portion of
our race from the beginning? and without them would not all knowledge
of God have been impossible to us? Those revelations would doubtless have
been fuller and freer, more frequent and more prolonged, but for sin.
Incarnation closely linked heaven and earth for a time, for the Christ
belonged to both; and even death and resurrection did not sever that link,
for our Lord walked and talked and ate and drank with His people for forty
days subsequently. He afterwards withdrew from earth for "a little
while," because it was expedient for His Church that He should do
so; but it was only to send the Holy Spirit to take His place and abide
in the Church till His return. Communion between earth and heaven has
been widening and deepening daily ever since that day; and though it is
a spiritual communion during this age of mystery, this time of the Church’s
walk by faith, and of God’s long suffering with a sinful world, yet
there seems no reason in the nature of things, either from Scripture,
or from analogy, why personal intercourse between the risen Christ and
men on earth and in the flesh should not be resumed. If the risen Saviour
could so veil and lay aside His glory when occasion required it, as to
walk with the two disciples to Emmaus, and sit with them at their evening
meal, why should not both He and His risen and glorified saints do the
same in the future, when occasion requires?
It is quite true that flesh and blood cannot in its own strength stand
before the full effulgence of the heavenly glory, as we learn from its
overpowering effect on Isaiah, on Daniel, on the disciples on the mount
of transfiguration, and on John in Patmos; but men can he strengthened
to endure, on the one hand, and the glory can be veiled, on the other,
as these instances prove. Are we in respect of heavenly intercourse with
higher beings to limit the portion of mankind in the millennium, under
the direct reign of Christ, to that of this present evil world under the
direct rule of Satan? Are we to assume that because the privilege of constant
communion with beings clad in spiritual bodies is denied to men now, that
it must equally be denied in these days of heaven, upon earth?
As to the risen saints, on the other hand, is there anything contrary
to the most perfect spirituality and to the highest enjoyments of heavenly
bliss, in the thought of ministering to, instructing, guiding, and governing
beings here on earth in a lower state than that which will then be ours
? Are not angels and the Lord of angels evermore doing the same even now?
Would not such service be Christ-like? Is it not more blessed to give
than to receive, to minister than to be ministered unto? Is not government
the highest and noblest work to which intelligent beings can aspire? In
its most majestic form is it not God’s own work the government of
the universe ? Besides, does not Scripture expressly state that apostles
and saints are to do this very thing? Is not the millennial reign of Christ
on earth to be exercised through His people? "Have thou authority
over five cities, over ten cities."
We may banish the notion that this reign over the earth implies such a
perpetual presence of the rulers among the ruled as to involve exile from
heaven, or exclusion from the place which the Lord Jesus is gone to prepare
for us. There is no need to imagine that the children of the resurrection
will be confined to this earth because they reign over it, or that they
will be limited to any one of the "many mansions" of the Father’s
house. They may have a special home of their own, without occupying it
all the time, The countless stars of the midnight sky show us how numerous
and how glorious those many mansions are. Shall we not visit them all
by degrees as well as reign over this one, and enjoy our own prepared
place? Surely the Lord never intended to imply that because He is gone
to prepare a special residence for His bride, therefore she was to be
to all eternity confined to it alone!
All difficulties as to the conditions of existence during the millennium
and during the Eternal Kingdom of God which follows, will be found on
reflection to arise from our ignorance merely, and not from any inherent
impossibility. Now we know in part only-revelation is only partial. Then
shall we know as we are known.
Index Preface 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Appendix A Appendix B
