04. THE THREE LINES OF PROPHECY

BEFORE we can attempt to interpret the prophecies of Scripture, it is necessary to ascertain to whom they severally belong: for God is now dealing with three distinct classes of men upon earth, and with each of them on lines peculiar to itself.

Until the close of the third age He seems to have given all His revelations, and to have issued every command, to the whole human race without distinction. But by the covenant with Abraham He called out one tribe from among the families of the world to be peculiarly His own. And some two thousand years later He proclaimed the formation of another elect body, and men of every kindred and tongue and people and nation were invited to join the Church of Christ, and so to become separate from Israelites as well as Gentiles.

Thus the population of the earth is at present divided into three great orders, each of which will be found to have its own laws, covenant, sovereignty, and prophecies.

I. To the Gentiles, or world at large, belong those primal laws which were given from the creation of Adam to the call of Abraham.

Their covenant is the Noachian, which God made between Himself "and all flesh that is upon the earth,"¹ are needed to bring them to a realisation of their true condition; and yet how often, when the burden which has bowed them down to the dust is removed, do they rise from their lowliness and join the company of the confidant, until another affliction repeats the lesson they have so quickly forgotten.

¹ Gen. ix. 17.

THE THREE LINES OF PROPHECY.

and the conditions of which are still in force in the case of those who are neither Israelites nor members of the Church. Indeed God's great controversy with the Gentiles, after the translation of waiting believers and before the Kingdom is restored to Israel, has special reference to breaches of this covenant, as we may fairly infer from the appearance of its tokens about the judgment throne, which is encircled with a rainbow and attended by the Cherubim.¹

Their sovereignty is earthly: it has failed once already, and they are now nearing the end of their second trial. In the times of the early Babylonian monarchy they were permitted to exercise dominion, and the result was a general revolt against God. Yet again, because of Israel's idolatry, the supremacy reverted to them in the person of Nebuchadnezzar, and has ever since remained in their hands.

Their prophecies—apart from those primeval utterances which belong to all mankind—are very easily distinguished, since they are written, not in the usual Hebrew of the Old Testament, but in Chaldee, the language of the first great Gentile world-power. Six chapters of Daniel are thus marked off for the nations,² and in the book of Jeremiah there is a still more significant instance. God sends a short message through the prophet to the Gentiles, and this message, though occupying but a single verse, is, nevertheless, expressed in Chaldee.³

II. Passing on to the second division, we know that

¹ Rev. iv. 3. 6-8. For an exposition of the Cherubim and their connection with the Noachian covenant, see the author's "Earth's Earliest Ages," chap. viii.

² Chapp. ii.—vii.

³ Jer. x. 11.

PROLEGOMENIA.

the hope of Israel lies in the covenant with Abraham, and that their law was given through Moses.

Once already the Kingdom has been within their grasp, but they proved unworthy to possess it, and were, therefore, cast out for discipline. At the close of the times of the Gentiles the sovereignty will be restored to them, but not until they have become regenerate through the Spirit of God, so that there will be no fear of a second failure.

All the Old Testament prophecies are theirs, save the few mentioned above as belonging to the Gentiles;¹ while, in the New, predictions which concern them may be readily distinguished, either by the context, or by some indication which connects their fulfilment with the Jewish economy and excludes it from our own.

III. For the Church, whose calling is heavenly, laws have been laid down by the Lord Himself and by those apostles who received from Him the power to bind and to loose. Her covenant is that of grace, the glorious Gospel of the blessed God. The Kingdom, which in her case is heavenly, has never yet been delivered to her; but the time will presently come for the Saints of the High Places to take it, and then her reign will be with Christ. Her prophecies are all contained in the New Testament.

Such, then, are the three great divisions of our race, to one of which every human being belongs. And it

¹ The Church, as we shall presently show, was a mystery hidden from the ages until it was made known by the Lord and His Apostles. There are, therefore, no direct prophecies of the heavenly election in the Old Testament, but only a few allusions which could not have been understood without further revelation, and will always be found to have reference to the connection between Israel and the Church.

THE THREE LINES OF PROPHECY.

must be remembered that all unfaithful Jews and merely nominal Christians are included in the first class, the only difference between these and absolute Pagans being that an awful responsibility rests upon the former from which the latter are free. Consequently, two-thirds of the Jews will perish in the great tribulation;¹ and when the Lord appears to plead with all flesh by fire and by His sword, the rebellious peoples of Christendom will be destroyed:² but He will send messengers of peace to the nations that have not heard His fame nor seen His glory.³

There are many allusions in the Bible to the three-fold division of mankind, and it will be well, before we dismiss the subject, to call attention to some of them.

First, then, a notable instance occurs in the fiftieth Psalm, the commencing verses of which run as follows.

1. "The God of gods, Jehovah, hath spoken,

And called the earth from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof.

2. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined.

3. Our God will come, and will not keep silence:

A fire will devour before Him,

And it will be very tempestuous round about Him.

4. He shall call to the heavens above,

And to the earth, that He may judge His people.

5. Gather My saints together unto Me,

Those that have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice!

6. And the heavens shall declare His righteousness,

For God Himself is Judge. (Selah.)"

The general meaning of these verses is sufficiently evident, they set before us a grand description of the coming of the Lord. His summons to the heaven

¹ Zech. xiii. 8. ² Matt. xiii. 40-42. ³ Isa. lxvi. 15-19.

above and to the earth beneath seems to refer, as the context indicates, to the gathering to Him of New Testament saints, whether they chance to be then waiting in the Paradise of God, or are still alive upon earth. These have made with Him a covenant founded upon sacrifice: that is, they have confessed their need of atonement, and have accepted Christ as the propitiation for their sins. And they are assembled from earth and sky in order that God may judge His people, that is, Israel: for as soon as the Church is removed from earth, Israel will again become His people.

The Church, then, is summoned to meet the Lord in the air, and the heavens declare the justice of God in so exalting her: for Christ who knew no sin has been made sin for her, and now she must needs be manifested as the righteousness of God in Him. The destiny of the first of the three classes is made clear and the solemn pause indicated by the word Selah shows that the subject is about to change.

The remainder of the Psalm may be divided, at the close of the fifteenth verse, into two sections.

Of these, the first contains a tender appeal to the sons of Jacob, exhorting them to trust no longer in mere outward and formal sacrifices, but to bring spiritual offerings to their God. And it ends with the gracious promise that, if they hearken to His voice, they shall call upon Him in the day of trouble, that is, in the great tribulation, and He will deliver them, and they shall glorify Him.

But the sixteenth verse begins a very different strain, an address to "the wicked," those who, whatever they may deem themselves, can in God's judgment

THE THREE LINES OF IROPHECY.

be ranked neither with Jews nor Christians, and are, consequently, in danger of the impending wrath. Their hypocrisy is denounced in scathing terms: they are disobedient ones who know the Lord's will and do it not; nay, who even dare to preach it to others, though they are themselves workers of iniquity. Such conduct God abhors, and in special detestation does He hold the deceit by which they rid themselves of His fear, that is, by representing His attributes according to their own depraved conceptions, and not according to His revelation. Therefore, utter destruction is before them, unless they quickly repent, and bring forth fruits meet for repentance by giving glory to God.

Again, the three classes are set before us just as clearly in the seventh chapter of Daniel, where we find mention of the Four Beasts, or Gentile World-powers; of the Saints of the High Places, or the Church, so called because they are destined to reign in the High or Heavenly Places with Christ; and, lastly, of the People of the Saints of the High Places, that is, of the Israelites, who will be in intimate connection with the Church during the Millennial period.

Yet another instance occurs in Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, where, according to our Authorised Version, we read;—"Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the Church of God."¹ Thus translated the passage needs no comment: but upon referring to the original, we find that Paul wrote "Greeks," and not "Gentiles." This fact does not, however, appear to affect the sense: for in warning

¹ Cor. x. 32 the Corinthians not to put a stumbling-block before individuals belonging to any of the great divisions of the world, the apostle terms the second class "Greeks" merely because the Gentiles in contact with the Corinthians were mainly of that nationality. Moreover, the term Greeks was then applied to all civilized nations in opposition to the rest of mankind who were characterised as Barbarians.

Other passages might be cited, but these will suffice to show how distinctly the Scriptures recognise that threefold division of the human race upon which the interpretation of the present book is founded.

V.