36-CHAPTER XXX "THE PERSONAL RETURN OF CHRIST WILL BE AT THE END, NOT AT THE BEGINNING OF THE MIL...
CHAPTER XXX "THE PERSONAL RETURN OF CHRIST WILL BE AT THE END, NOT AT THE BEGINNING OF THE MILLENNIUM"
"A twice repeated appearing of the Lord in glory, first at the beginning and a second time at the close of the coming visible kingdom of God on earth, is not to be expected. The kingdom of God comes through development and progress, through Christianizing of civilization, through improvement of mankind, and the infiltration of all personal, social, and political life with the ideals of the gospel. Only after this golden age of righteousness, peace, and general brotherliness is attained will Christ appear and the final glorifying of mankind be effected and men pass into eternity. Therefore a return of Christ to commence and set up the Millennium will not occur." This belief in progress stands in contradiction to experience and to the Scriptures. Until 1914 this doctrine (the Post- Millennial) won very many adherents. But since the fightings and catastrophes of two world wars, and especially today in the age of the atom bomb, there is observable an essential change in the whole philosophical attitude and disposition of mankind, and this is ever increasing quite apart from the negative or positive attitude of individual men to the Christian faith. In place of the age of optimistic cultural happiness and enthusiasm over the glorious acquisitions of civilization and culture, and of self-confidence in evolution and progress, there has come widely an age of anxiety and fear. Will mankind not fall finally into the madness of self-destruction and collective suicide? Is it not already only a question of time? For how long can it perhaps be deferred? And will not the end be the collapse of the West as certainly as of the East, the collapse of Europe and America, and at last of all civilization?
Only Utopian fanatics and feeble-witted theorists, strangers to reality, can today defend with conviction the belief in progress. The end of the humanistic illusion is come. World history, precisely with its modern advance in invention and discovery, commerce and technique, in the face of its wickedness, indeed of the increasing godlessness of whole groups of peoples, is an irrefutable disproof of this theory.
(b) To this proof from experience is added that from Scripture.
"It is the unmistakable teaching of the Bible that the goal of history is not the product of history, that the kingdom of God does not reach sovereignty through growth and ascent but only after world-wide collapse and catastrophe. Lawlessness will take the upper hand, the love of many will wax cold (Matthew 24:12), and when the Son of Man comes He will find but little faith on earth (Luke 18:8). Not Christianizing of the world with consequent Christianizing of civilization, but increasing enmity of the world unto the expulsion of Christianity by civilization—this is the path foretold by Biblical prophecy (Revelation 13:2; 2 Timothy 3:1-4; 2 Peter 3:3). Let no one mislead you, for the day of the Lord will not come except the apostasy come in advance and the Manofsin be manifested, theSonofperdition,theOpposer,theWickedOne, whom the Lord Jesus, when He comes, will destroy by the breath of His mouth (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4; 2 Thessalonians 2:8).
"‘Thus not by reconciliation but byintensifyingoftheconflicttotheend, not by the glorifying of human development but by its collapse, not by a compact between God and civilization, but by the shattering of the kingdom of the world by the kingdom of God —this is the manner by which the affairs of the Lord will triumph’ TheTriumphoftheCrucified, p. 117)."
(c) The parable of the leaven offers no contradiction to this (Matthew 13:33). Of course it must be explained in agreement with the whole prophetic teaching of the New Testament.
Leaven is a symbol of the principle of permeation. In all other places in Holy Scripture it is employed as a symbol of evil (e.g. 1 Corinthians 5:6-8; Matthew 16:12; Mark 8:15). If now it is meant to be understood in this sense in the present parable (of the inroad of evil doctrine and evil conduct in the development of the kingdom of God), then in advance this parable cannot be regarded as proof that the "leaven of the gospel," by way of progress and Christianizing society, will gradually permeate the whole world. But even if, as others explain, the leaven is, as an exception, a symbol here of good (the kingdom of God itself being here compared to leaven), yet is this no proof of the supposed Christian cultural development. For even then the parable must be explained in harmony with the whole prophetic announcement and cannot be set in opposition to the otherwise plain testimonies of Scripture of increasing enmity against God, of an advancing-Christianizing of civilization on to the arrival of Christianity, with its universal (!) acceptance by civilized mankind apostatized from God (Revelation 13:1-18). But then this increasing progress of the good, which in such case this parable would assert, can apply only to individual life, not to collective world-development. It would then declare that the royal rule of God, like unto leaven, would permeate and fill the whole life of individuals, till Christ, through the extension of sanctification, would permeate and govern the whole individual personality in spirit, soul, and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23).
Therefore whether one takes the symbol of leaven in the good or the evil sense, in no case is the parable a proof that the whole remaining prophecies of the New Testament of the increasing apostasy of mankind from God were at all incorrect. At the end of cultural development and progress there stands, not a Christianized civilization, but the world rule of Antichristianity. That in spite of this the kingdom of God will then conquer, will come to pass, according to the express testimony of the Lord Himself, and of Paul and John, only through the mighty manifestation of Christ the Victor returning in glory (Matthew 24:29-31; 2 Thessalonians 2:8; Revelation 19:11-21).
It is in the light of such clear testimonies of the New Testament that a symbolic passage such as the parable of the leaven must be explained. Symbolic passages of Holy Scripture must be interpreted by the light of plain passages. One must explain Scripture by Scripture, dark passages by clear, such as admit of more than one meaning by such as allow of only one meaning, symbolic utterances by direct statements, and therefore parables by non-parabolic passages. This is an indispensable principle of all sound exposition of Scripture. To the question itself whether in this parable leaven represents good or evil we take here no attitude. In our present connection it is enough to prove that, whichever sense one here gives to the symbol, the doctrine of the cultural progress of Christianity as above defined cannot appeal to this passage as a Biblical basis.