01.01.05. The Ends of the Ages

Part I. Chapter V. THE ENDS OF THE AGES.

Three consecutive ends of ages come into view in the New Testament: First (Hebrews 9:26), “Once in the end of the ages hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself,” Christ’s first coming, terminating the Jewish economy in the judgment and rejection of the house of Israel, and opening the door of grace to the Gentiles; second, (Matthew 13:49), “At the end of the age the angels shall come forth and sever the wicked from among the just,” Christ’s second coming, attended by the first resurrection and the rap­ture of the Church, terminating the dispensation of grace in the judgment of apostate Christen­dom, restoring Israel, and introducing the millennium; third (1 Corinthians 15:24, R.V.), “Then cometh the end, when He shall deliver up the kingdom to God even the Father,” the close of the millen­nium, the resurrection of the rest of the dead, and the last judgment.

Observe with what dramatic solemnity each of these successive ages is brought to a close. On the cross of Golgotha, amid the rending of the temple veil, the shock of earthquake, and the darkening of the sun, Christ ended the first with that mighty cry: “It is finished,” (John 19:30). Amid voices, and thunders and lightnings, and an earthquake, and the outpouring of the sev­enth vial, the present age is closed, a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying: “It is done,” (Revelation 16:17). With the passing away of the first heaven and the first earth, and the abolishing of death and sorrow and crying and pain, the millennial age is brought to an end, He that sitteth on the throne saying: “It is done, I am Alpha and Omega, the begin­ning and the end,” (Revelation 21:6).

What is called the post-millennial theory—the doctrine that Christ’s return is at the end of the millennium instead of the beginning—maintains its position by telescoping the ages, running the second and third together, and so making their principal events to synchronize. It is agreed that a resurrection takes place at the advent of Christ. But pre-millennialists hold that this is “the first resurrection,” — the rising of the just, —and that a chiliad will elapse between it and the second resurrection, during which period Christ will reign over the earth with His glorified Church, and that therefore His coming must be pre-millennial. This might not appear to one whose eye is not trained by a diligent study of the Word to apprehend the perspective of prophecy. But will our readers follow us care­fully, and see whether the position is not justi­fied by an appeal to Scripture. The following text we regard as having to do with three consecutive ages (1 Corinthians 15:22-29): “In Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the first-fruits,” —at the close of the Jewish dispensation, —“after­ward they that are Christ’s at His coming,” — at the close of the present dispensation, —“then cometh the end,” — at the close of the millennial dispensation. This last “end,” however, is held by post-millenarians to mean the time of Christ’s coming and the resurrection of all, both righteous and wicked; so that there is no considerable period between the advent and the final consum­mation. But observe the significant adverbs “after­wards” and “then,” —eteita; eita. 1 They are cor­relatives; and as we know that one describes an era of at least nearly nineteen hundred years, it is quite impossible to suppose that the other indi­cates no considerable period of time. And this is not all. Scripture is like a dissected map, whose scattered parts we must fit together if we would discover what is the divine pattern of the ages. And, turning to the Apocalypse, we find that it gives us the period and the events with which to fill up this disputed space between the resurrection of them that are Christ’s at His com­ing and the end. For in its pages we have a vision of “the first resurrection” —that which all Scripture teaches us to connect with Christ’s second advent—and then the statement that “the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were ended;” and between these two, the glorified saints reigning with Christ a thousand years, (Revelation 20:4-6). If plain language may be plainly interpreted, this gives us the filling up of the outline revealed in Corinthians, and verifies the schedule of the ages with which we begin this chapter.

Moreover, if we observe the events which are connected with the “end” in the Corinthian prophecy, we see how clearly they define it. “Then cometh the end when He shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father,” (1 Corinthians 15:24, R.V.). But on Christ’s appearing at the close of the present age, He takes the kingdom from the Father. As Daniel sees One like unto the Son of man coming with the clouds of heaven, he beholds Him invested with kingship by the “An­cient of Days:” “And there was given Him do­minion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples and nations and languages should serve Him,” (Daniel 7:13-14). Can our Lord’s receiving the kingdom from the Father mean the same thing as His delivering up the kingdom to the Father? 2 In Revelation the representation is precisely the same. As the seventh angel sounds—the angel of the last trump under which the righteous dead are raised, (1 Corinthians 15:52) —there are great voices in heaven saying: “The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ; “and the response from the four and twenty elders is: “We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art and wast and art to come,” —this is the title of the glorified Christ (1:8), — “because Thou hast taken to Thyself Thy great power and hast reigned.” This certainly is Christ’s assumption of the kingdom rather than His surrender of it. Not only does He receive the kingdom at His advent, but, ac­cording to this same prophecy of Daniel, His redeemed people share its reign and judgment with Him: “And the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom,” (Daniel 7:22). But this time is shown in Revelation to extend from the first resurrection to the second resurrection: “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years,” (Revelation 20:6). Observe, again, that the last end which we are considering is “the end…when He shall have put down all rule and author­ity and power.” Does He not begin this work at His advent, when He destroys Antichrist, and all his vast array of allied wickedness, by the bright­ness of His coming? “For He must reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet.” But at His coming for the first resurrection, He finds His enemies unsubdued, the nations angry, the apos­tasy ripe for judgment. This cannot be the time of the completed subjection of His foes. “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” Yet it is only at the end of the millennium, at the termination of the thousand years’ reign of the saints, and after the white-throne judgment, that the announcements are heard: “And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire;” “And there shall be no more death,” (Revelation 20:14; Revelation 21:4). We find therefore, an entire era of the conquest and reign of Immanuel and His saints between the resurrection at His glorious appearing and the end when He shall surrender His kingdom. These considerations would seem to establish conclusively the pre-millennial order of Christ’s coming; but there are others. The present age is everywhere set forth in Scripture as one of mingled darkness and light, towards the end of which the shadows rather deepen into judgment than break away before a triumphant millennial dawn. The parables of the kingdom, contained in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, are decisive in their teaching. These parables are seven; and we hold that—like the seven prophetic pictures of the Apocalyptic churches—they portray the successive eras of the history of Christendom from the beginning of the dispensation to its close. 3 In them we have a vivid delineation of the trials and resistance which the kingdom of heaven was to encounter from the Adversary, from its first introduction into the world until the end of the age; and if, in their exposition, we are guided by the light which other Scriptures throw upon them, we seem to discover both a logical and a chronological order in the teaching which they set forth. In the first parable, the seed is “the word of the kingdom.” As it is sown, three parts fall into unfruitful soil, and only one part into good ground. Does not this harmonize with the uni­versal experience of the preachers of the Gospel, from the day of our Lord’s ministry until this present, that only the smaller fraction of their hearers give fruitful heed to the Word? In the second parable, we take the field that is really receptive, and into which good seed has been cast, and, lo! tares are found to have been sown therein by the Adversary, which now appear growing together with the wheat. This our Lord explains to mean the mingling of “the children of the Wicked One” with “the children of the kingdom.” And is not this exactly what came to pass in the first stages of the apostasy, the bring­ing of unregenerated men into the Church of Christ and mixing them with true saints? With this second parable of the kingdom harmonizes most strikingly the second stage of prophetic Christian history as exhibited in the Church of Smyrna (Revelation 2:9), —“I know the blasphemy of them that say they are Jews and are not, but are of the synagogue of Satan;” false professors per­sonating the true, the children of the Wicked One palming themselves off as children of the king­dom (see Romans 2:28). The third parable shows the result. The king­dom of heaven becomes a lofty and overshadow­ing world-church. 4 The mustard-seed springs up, but not according to its kind; from an herb it grows into a great tree, and the birds of the air that once sought to destroy the seed of the kingdom now lodge in its branches; the em­perors and kings who had striven to uproot the pure Church find shelter in this secular Church, which, in its changed condition, overspreads the earth with marvelous rapidity. Let one read this parable in the light of the same representation as given by the prophets, (Ezekiel 31:3-4; Daniel 4:10-19), and he can hardly con­clude that our Lord intended herein to set forth a true spiritual growth of His Church. It is rather the Pergamos period of her development which the prophetico-historic interpreters have understood to be the era of the union of Church and State, wherein what was originally “not of this world” becomes a vast world-kingdom. The prophetic prefigurement in the Apocalypse is very striking, —Balaam conspiring with Balak, the prophet with the king, to seduce the children of Israel into idolatry, (Revelation 2:14), —even as, in the history of the Church, the bishops and the emperors by their ecclesiastical alliance pagan­ized Christianity. The fourth parable gives the result of this rank prosperity of the Church in the complete corrup­tion of her life and doctrine: “The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened.” Let those who affirm that this parable signifies the gradual penetration and sav­ing transformation of the whole world by the Gospel reflect that, in order to get this interpre­tation, they must give to leaven a directly oppo­site meaning from that which Scripture invariably assigns to it, since it is always employed in the Bible as a type of corruption, there being abso­lutely no exception to this usage in Old Testa­ment or New. 5 Hear our Lord’s admonition to “take heed and beware of the leaven of the Phari­sees and of the Sadducees,” meaning thereby their false doctrines, (Matthew 16:12). Listen to the exhortations of the apostle against “the leaven of malice and wickedness,” (1 Corinthians 5:8). Warning the Galatians of the doctrine of the Judaizers, he bids them remember that “a little leaven leaven­eth the whole lump,” (Galatians 5:9). Reproving the Corinthian Church for harboring fornicators, he uses the same phrase, and adds: “Purge out, therefore, the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are” —according to your calling and profession— “unleavened,” (1 Corinthians 5:7). Com­paring Scripture with Scripture, —the only method of interpreting difficult texts, —it seems clear that this parable of the leaven symbolizes the apostate Church, “which did corrupt the earth with her fornication,” (Revelation 19:2), and not the true Christianity, which was to transform the whole earth by the Gospel. The only instance where the use of leaven was commanded in Jewish worship affords a striking confirmation of this interpretation. Rigidly and repeatedly was its employment forbidden in the Passover service, because that service was for-typical of Christ, who should be without spot or blemish. But the wave-loaves of the feast of Pentecost were commanded to be “baken with leaven,” (Leviticus 23:17); and Pentecost is believed to have been fore-typical of the Church, as the Pass­over was of Christ; and its corruption by the leaven of false doctrine was thus possibly fore­shadowed even in a Jewish rite and ceremony. But could the kingdom of heaven be compared with an evil or corrupt thing? Not in its prim­itive and original condition certainly. But in its deteriorated state it might. “Then shall the king­dom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins: . . . five of them were wise and five were foolish,” (Matthew 25:1-2). Here the kingdom of heaven, as it will be immediately previous to the coming of Christ, is compared with what is semi-apostate, according to the invariable representation of the mixed condition prevailing at that period. If, as we believe, the parable of the leaven belongs to the Middle Ages, when the Church was com­pletely apostate, it is clearly reasonable that the kingdom should then be compared with leaven, which is the synonym of corruption. And can we fail to be struck with the exact correspond­ence between the fourth parable of the seven in Matthew and the fourth prophecy of the seven in the Apocalypse? As in the one a woman is seen hiding leaven in the meal, so in the other is pictured “that woman jezebel teaching and seducing Christ’s servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed to idols,” (Revelation 2:20); that is, the papacy disseminating false doctrine in the Church, and adulterating its worship with pagan rites and ceremonies.

Such we believe to be the interpretation of this much-disputed parable which Scripture com­pels, and we may add also, which history con­firms. 6 For if one holds that here is a similitude of the transformation of the whole world by the Gospel, he can show no fulfillment in fact; since, after nearly twenty centuries, the vastly larger part of the world is still pagan, unchristian or antichristian. If the parable signifies the cor­ruption of the whole prophetic earth by the leaven of paganized Christianity, history gives a perfect confirmation of it; since, just before the dawn of the Reformation, it was proudly boasted by the Roman hierarchy that all opposition had at last been silenced, and the entire Christian world brought into acquiescence with the Apos­tate Church.

Having uttered these four parables in the pres­ence of the multitude, our Lord makes a signifi­cant break in His discourse and sends them away; then, entering into the house, He speaks the re­maining three to His disciples. What do these last signify? An eminent commentator, Dr. Schaff following a totally different exposition of the earlier parables from that we have indicated, when reaching the parable of the hid treasure remarks on the striking historical likeness which is presented to it in what occurred at the Refor­mation. We consider that this may be the in­tended prophetic reference. It is God’s elect people who are repeatedly called in Scripture His “peculiar treasure,” (Exodus 19:5; Psalms 125:4, etc.). In “the field “where the kingdom of heaven has been so resisted and thwarted by the Adversary this treasure now lies hid out of sight. “The kingdom of God is as it were buried beneath the clods of false Christianity, —of superstition, hu­man ordinances and ceremonies “(Roos). Is not this the Sardis period of the Church, nominal Christianity alone visible? “I know thy works, that thou hast a name that livest and art dead.” But there is a hidden remnant: 7 “A few names even in Sardis that have not defiled their gar­ments.” At what cost of martyr-blood and of the selling of all—property, friends, and life—was this hidden treasure recovered, and what bound­less joy resulted! So likewise of the sixth par­able, that of the pearl. The sixth Church of the Apocalypse, Philadelphia, which has been held to be the Church of the Reformation, has this as its distinctive honor: “Thou hast kept my Word.” By the hand of such as Wiclif, and Luther, and Tyndal, who heard the command of God, “Buy the truth and sell it not,” the priceless pearl of the Holy Scriptures, or, forsooth, that pearl of pearls, the doctrine of justification by faith, —long hidden from the people under the rubbish of the apostasy, —was again brought to light and held forth, at what countless cost of life and substance, but also amid what exultant rejoicing! The seventh parable is most striking in its fore­casting of the times in which we live: “Again the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind” —ek pantoV genouV— “out of every race.” Here is the draw-net of world-wide missions; and the fact that our Lord interprets the parable as applying to the close of the dispensation shows how per­fectly its teaching accords with His own prophecy that towards the end the Gospel of the kingdom should be preached among all nations. It will be seen thus that as the first parable, in which the Son of man is the sower, touches our Lord’s first advent, so the seventh touches His second ad­vent. And it is certainly natural to conclude—since seven is in Scripture the number of com­pleteness—that the others span the entire in­terim. The result of this net-casting is, accord­ing to the invariable teaching of Scripture, a mixed gathering, in which righteous and unright­eous are found together at last, awaiting the sepa­ration of judgment. Is there any likeness here to the seventh or Laodicean picture of the Church, “Because thou art lukewarm”? If we may credit the quaint suggestion of an expositor that “luke­warmness is the result of the mingling of ex­tremes of cold and heat in the same vessel,” there is. At all events, this picture agrees with the combined teaching of the Scriptures concern­ing the close of the dispensation. It will be an age of mingled zeal and formalism; evangelical fervor carrying the servants of Christ to the ends of the earth proclaiming the everlasting Gospel, and abounding iniquity causing the love of many to wax cold. The last period, however, does not seem to be the period of the widest and com­pletest apostasy of the Church, as some would teach. That era is the middle era, when the whole lump was leavened; subsequently to this, there is a partial and glorious recovery. This is for our joy, amid all in the outlook which is for our admonition. The sailors on the Southern Sea sing, “Midnight is past, the cross begins to bend.” And we, as voyagers through these trou­bled ages, in which are the sea and the waves roaring, and men’s hearts failing them for fear, may sing, “Midnight is past.” Let not those who are looking for the millennium instead of Christ paint a future for the Church of untinged brightness; let not those who are looking for Antichrist instead of Christ picture a future for the Church of unmitigated blackness: for neither representation is true to prophecy. “Watchman, what of the night? The Watchman said, “The morning cometh and also the night.”

Trace through whatever line we will, we find the same condition at the end of the dispensation. If from the seed-time of the world we look on to the reaping-time, we find the wheat and the tares, the children of the kingdom and the children of the Wicked One, growing together until the har­vest; then separated each for his destiny: “So shall it be at the end of the age,” (Matthew 13:40).

If we watch with joy the in-gatherings of the Gospel net as it sweeps through the nations, we find that, when it is full and drawn to the shore, the good are gathered into vessels, but the bad are cast away: “So shall it be at the end of the age,” (Matthew 13:49).

If we listen to our Lord’s great eschatological discourse, we hear prediction after prediction of wars, and famines, and pestilences, persecutions, and apostasies, and false christs, together with a world-wide preaching of the Gospel for a witness; but instead of any gleam of millennial glory in the solemn prophecy, we find it culminating in such a time “as it was in the days of Noah.” And all this is our Saviour’s answer to the ques­tion, “What shall be the sign of Thy coming and of the end of the age?” (Matthew 24:3).

If we question the Scriptures concerning the characteristics of the last time as set forth by the apostles, we are told that these shall be “perilous times” (2 Timothy 3:1), —times in which “some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to sedu­cing spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats,” (1 Timothy 4:1-3); that whereas in primitive days Christians lived in sober expectation of the Lord’s return, “there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the sign of His coming?” (2 Peter 3:3-4).

If we inquire concerning the dispensation as a whole, we learn that the purpose of our Re­deemer’s work was, not that He might transform this into a present golden age, but “that He might deliver us from this present evil age,” (Galatians 1:4); not that He might conform this age to us, but that we should “be not conformed to this age,” (Romans 12:2). Such statements suggestively in­dicate that it is not the divine purpose to millen­nialize the present dispensation, but rather to call out from it a holy Church, a separated people. For what, moreover, are the age-long character­istics as revealed in Scripture? Paul, in teaching the Thessalonians concerning the second coming of Christ, admonishes them that, before that day could arrive, there must first come a falling away and a revelation of the man of sin. And he tells them that this apostasy had even then begun, — “the mystery of iniquity doth already work,” —and that out of it “that Wicked “would be re­vealed, “whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming.” Here is a demonstration from Scripture that the predicted apos­tasy would stretch across the entire age from the days of Christ’s immediate apostles to the day of His second advent, when in its consummated development it would confront the descending Judge and meet its doom. Is it, then, a ripe mil­lennium that welcomes the returning Lord at His epiphany, or a ripe apostasy? Let him that read­eth understand.

Again, since God’s ancient people Israel are everywhere represented in Scripture as having a blessed share in the triumphs and joys of the millennial glory, let us ask what their condition is to be in this dispensation. In our Lord’s great prophecy concerning His second coming and the end of the age, He answers this question con­clusively. He describes in graphic outlines the destruction of Jerusalem, with the events preced­ing and portending it. After using language that can only apply to that appalling event, — “Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter,” — He adds, “For there shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, —no, nor ever shall be,” (Matthew 24:20-21). How long shall this tribulation continue? Until Christ’s second coming. For our Lord declares that “immediately after the tribulation of those days” the signs of the advent shall be witnessed, when “they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory,” (Matthew 24:30). So closely are these two events con­nected in the prediction that some have argued that Christ’s advent must have actually occurred at the destruction of Jerusalem, in a spiritual or providential sense. But a careful examination of the language employed proves beyond question that it is a literal coming that is here described, and that a literal immediateness after the great tribulation is affirmed by the word euqewV, “imme­diately.” If we turn to Luke’s Gospel, however, and read his parallel report of our Lord’s words, all becomes plain (Luke 21:23-27). For he makes the tribulation to include the dispersion of the Jews among all nations, and the treading down of their Holy City by the Gentiles, “until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” In other words, the great tribulation covers the entire age from Zion’s captivity to Messiah’s coming., To say that the millennium is to precede Christ’s advent, therefore, is to affirm the possibility of putting that era of unparalleled blessing into the same period which is occupied by this unequalled tribulation; in other words, it is to identify and synchronize the golden age of Israel’s triumph with the gloomy age of Israel’s trouble. This cannot be. For we see in prophecy that the great apostasy and the great tribulation so far pre­empt the present dispensation, that the Church’s millennium and Israel’s millennium are alike crowded out, and there is found no place for them, till the Lord descends in glory to destroy Anti­christ and restore Israel.

Endnotes:

1 “By the words xpeita and eita, two separate epochs are dis­tinctly marked; and it is a violation of all usage of terms to construe them otherwise. The interval of the first is stretching beyond 1,800 years; how many ages will intervene between the second and the third, who can tell?” — Kling.

2 “Is the object of Christ’s coming to surrender the kingdom to the Father, or does He come first of all to rightly enter upon it? Undoubtedly the latter. The appearing of Christ is at the same time the appearing of His Kingdom. This unquestioned, then it is clear that the return of Christ is rather for the purpose of assuming than assigning the kingdom, and therefore the pa­rousia of Christ and the End of the World do not coincide, but on the contrary are separated from each other.” — Luthardt, Lehre von den Letzten Dingen, p. 129.

3 The Epistles to the Seven Churches, besides describing what is undoubtedly historical, have so many allusions which are evi­dently figurative and mystical that there is the strongest reason for accepting the view advanced by Mede, one of the earliest Protestant Apocalyptic commentators, and received by many later expositors, that it was intended “that these seven churches should prophetically sample unto us a sevenfold temper and constitution of the whole Church according to the several ages thereof, answering the pattern of the churches named here.”

4 “As the mustard-seed even changes its species, passing from an herb to a sort of tree, so does the kingdom of heaven pass into the likeness of a great world-state.” Lange.

5 Even the heathen attached this significance to it, as shown by the following sentence of Plutarch, as cited by Wetstein: “Now leaven is both generated itself from corruption, and it cor­rupts the mass with which it is mingled.”

6 Some, who cannot admit that the parable of the leaven refers to the corruption of the Church, concede that it may bear this as a secondary meaning. Richter’s House Bible says: “The mixed degeneracy and sinfulness of the no longer apostoli­cally pure Church which now extends itself is at the same time meant.”

7 “The kingdom of heaven is represented as having once more become invisible in the visible Church; as hid like a treas­ure, erst concealed in a most unlikely place, in the midst of worldly things. It appears as a treasure-trove—a free gift of grace—discovered by a person in a fortunate hour while he was engaged in digging: true Christianity, when again dis­covered, a subject of great joy.” — Lange on The Parable of the Hid Treasure.