Why Fuss About Eschatological Differences?

This is not just a rhetorical question, but one that finds deep responses from the emotions and pragmatic interests of many Christians today. We all should be sadly sensitive to the tragic fact that friends, families, churches and denominations are torn asunder and turned into cruel, critical antagonists against others of their own kind, over questions for which, very often, neither side can prove to unbiased jurors that they have right answers. Friends who could be wonderfully helpful to each other on other points, shun and suspect their opposites because eschatological differences cause critical polarization and bitterness. Pained and perplexed believers and troubled outsiders note that churches that desperately need the full instructional and inspirational potential of every member and prospective co-worker in their community, are shattered into bickering factions, because we hold a dozen different guesses about the millennium and each group insists that its theory should be a touch­stone for inflexible and uncharitable judgments and tests of fellowship.

So why fuss at all over prophecy? The person sponsoring this question also observes that this difficulty does not develop because there is necessarily a lack of sincerity, at least in some cases. Some have suffered irreparable loss and unspeakable pain, rather than change their convictions about future events, though oft times their views are baseless and wrong. Others, of course, have not been fully honest, when they were sincerely urged to re-search the Bible on matters of age-old and general debate about things to come. Too many of them lazily fear the work and studying that honest exploration and adjustment to new and larger views of truth would involve. Such people seem to love ease more than truth and fanciful speculations better than facts.

Dishonesty is so camouflaged in some that they cannot or will not admit that their long and loud arguing was wrong from their earliest days of teaching. But that is precisely what true repentance is all about. Admitting our mistakes and constant adjusting to truth are inescapable elements in the process of growing in knowledge and grace. Saul of Tarsus was as sure as anyone could be that he was right in his understanding of Scripture, when he frothed in rage like a mad dog against Christ and Christians; yet part of Stephen's duty, as a believer of truth, was to do all he could to shatter both the erroneous ideas and the pride that supported them.

Well, Why Fuss?

Are you still ready to pursue our question, "Why Fuss About Eschatology?" Our first reply is, Because Christ commanded teachers, even the most confident, to research prophecy. He said, "Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me." (John 5:39). Or again, He said, "If you continue to hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8:31, 32). His hearers had clear, plausible, pleasant ideas about MMessianic predictions in the Old Testament. They could quote hundreds of respected teachers, who for centuries had repeatedly and concurrently interpreted all the inspired prophets as expectantly anticipating an earthly empire, a world-wide Monarchy, in which the Messiah would be a holy terror to all those who would dare to dispute the Jews' right to highest honour and greatest possible wealth. But the sovereign Saviour, the Teacher Who spoke with final authority, the all-seeing Observer, Who saw perfectly the proper and inseparable connections

between the prophecies of the past, the facts of the present and the prospects of the future, said, "Go and re-search the Scriptures." He said in effect, "You and your rule-setters are all wrong, so wrong that you have no hope for the future unless you abandon your confidence in your teachers, your own past teaching and your present assurance." You see, they had their Dr. Scofields, their J.N. Darbys and William Irvings, men who had claimed superior insights based on their visions, their skills in science, or their special schemes for foretelling the future by the doings of the past; but the Master said, "If you want to be respected as reliable teachers, go back to the beginning of the Word and re-think its prophetic predictions and see how many of them match what is now seen in me and how many of them are being fulfilled in what is so evident in yourselves and your circumstances." We fuss because so many hypnotic teachers, in our day, like those to whom Christ spoke, are looking upon the sure signs of impending judgment as fore-glowings of earthly glory. The obsessions which many have with concepts that present false Christs, the Christ whose attractiveness consists in His coommitment to heal, to pamper emotions and please with a carnal kingdom, or the Christ Who will conquer with earthly weapons and not the Word of truth, all this calls for repeated attempts to get people to see the real Christ as He is indeed and as He will be as Judge and High Priest in the eternal ages yet to come. The prejudice against unlearned truth, the contemptuous unreadiness to search and accept descriptive and true revelations from Christ and about His Kingship and Kingdom, are far too reminiscent of Pilate's attitude, when he scornfully retorted, "What is truth!" when the suffering Sovereign made the way of salvation so sublimely simple to that supine sinner.

We fuss over misuse of God's prophetic Word, because distortions of what He promised in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the first hundred years of the A.D. era, are shamefully dishonouring God and are helping to push our western world into commitments and undertakings that are completely unjustified and suicidal.

God has kept His promises about re-gathering His chosen a second time to Himself and Jerusalem. The first fulfilment was in Ezra and Nehemiah's time and the second was when He drew an almost equal number of His elect from the Gentile nations, during the first ten or fifteen years of the church age. The first re-gathering was to prepare the earthly city and temple for their temporary functions, in connection with Christ's ministry, death and resurrection, as well as for the founding, development and sending out of the church agents. The first saw the short-lived Temple and the second, the house not made with hands, His eternal habitation. The first re-gathering brought back priests and scribes to serve until the royal priesthood of believers and the final order of inspired scribes should come to do their work.

Only truth can match with truth, but the true prophecies of the Old Testament were seen by Christ and His enlightened apostles as matching each other perfectly. See how this was exemplified in the birth of Christ.

Truth is not just a giant jigsaw puzzle, although that fascinating invention, bears several points of resemblance between itself and the pattern and the technique for understanding God's complicated picture that all His revelations present, when pro­perly seen. We should never use the word, "Truths", when referring to the doctrines or various phases of Divine revelation. Truth, in that sense, is singular, since every segment or aspect of authentic revelation is part of the one, great body of perfect-fitting, and compounded elements of one reality. When all the related parts of truth are seen in place and right relationship to each other, they present the full portrait

 

view is the eternal Godhead, and within the infinite compass of Deity all else is seen, each part in its place and every detail in its relationship with both the diversity and totality of the whole. Hence, the self-evident fact just stated that "Only truth can match with truth." Hence too, the inescapable necessity of watching against presen­ting a distorted jumble of disjointed and conflicting details and calling it, "The whole counsel of God." Some pieces of a jigsaw puzzle look beautiful by themselves, but their intended purpose is served only as they are set and seen in their proper relation­ship to the whole picture. So it is with Scripture, but with one important difference. There are features in the Bible's panorama that belong in one place and time only, and there are others that appear in every age and in many different settings. Spirits never die and never cease to be vital and significant realities in the drama of time and eternity. People dash acrosss the stage of time and fade from view; but principles appear and re-appear, but never become extinct or cease to play their parts in time's unending performance. Falsehood has a vast and varied wardrobe. Greed has had ten thousand different agents and forms of camouflage. Pride can take great pleasure in playing the role of lowest humility. It is easy to be proud of our make-believe meekness, but the cleverest of fforgeries never fit well in the whole framework of truth. Only truth can match with truth.

See how this is exemplified in the incarnation and work of Christ. The Old Testa­ment forecast One Who showed so many characteristics that even the best of students found it impossible to assemble all the forms, colours and qualities into one, consis­tent design. It depicted both a slave and a Sovereign, both an endless Ruler and a dying sacrifice. We see Him as the tenderest of Saviour and the severest of merciless Avenger of wrong. He never speaks on His Own and yet always does exactly as He chooses. Only when we see the suffering, sovereign Son, as He reveals all the attributes of both God and perfect man, can we match all the predicted features with the characteristics found in one Person. But when we compare New Testament accounts of what Christ was with what the Old Testament said the Messiah would be, we have no pieces of either picture left over. Each perfectly matches the other, so we know we properly interpret the Old Teestament Scriptures when we see them identified in the historical descriptions of Christ in the New Testament. Prophecy and history equal each other in no other combination. We fuss about any concept of Christ that does not measure up in every detail with what the Old Testament forecasts said He would be.

This is our guide line in respect to all scriptural prophecy. Someone asked recently what we understood, Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones to mean. (See Ezekiel ch. 37.) Obviously, in its widest and most general sense, it is a description of life's triumph over death. Hence, it is a portrayal of an eternal principle and finds fulfilment time after time throughout all history. Its immediate message to Ezekiel's original readers was a dramatized prediction that the nation of Israel, that was then nationally dead, disjointed and helpless, would be raised again to bodily unity, strength and usefulness. The principle had found expression hundreds of years before, when nearly a million seemingly lifeless or impotent slaves were buried in Egypt, until God breathed life and willpower into every national tissue and raised the whole host as one resurrected man, to throw off the grave clothes of and follow the call of Divine leadership to the victories and riches of the Promised Land. Moreover, both the ways and Word of God required that there should be another gathering of scattered bones after the resurrection of Ezra's Easter. (Please look up and read Isaiah chapter eleven in this connection and see how Ezekiel's vision was shown to Isaiah). But that second national resurrection was not the last such miracle. Zechariah was one of the scattered bones of Ezekiel's valley and he wrote his book after the Spirit and Word of God had opened the graves of the chosen Israelites in Ezra and Nehemiah's time. From his vantage point, he saw another scene of desolation a further world­wide graveyard of Israel's seed;; but he saw also what Amos had forecast before him, another gathering from all nations and a further and better campaign of resurrected Jews, not only coming to the Lord in Jerusalem, but going from Jerusalem as a conquering army to reap a harvest for the Eternal Kingdom from all parts of the heathen world. (Check Amos 9:11-15; Acts 15:13-17; Zech. 3:8; and chapters 12-14.) Now take Acts chapters 2-4 and see how the Jerusalem parts of those prophecies were fulfilled and see Acts 8-28 as tthe enlarged account of how the post-Pentecost residue went out to make permanent captives from all nations for the King of kings and Lord of lords. Is that the last fulfilment of Ezekiel's vision? Oh no! In keeping with God's way of making His wonder works to be increasingly greater, there will be at least one more re-enactment of the resurrection principle, when Death's last battle field will give up every bone and sinew and the Grim Reaper will not have a particle of lifeless dust from any human body to show for his age-long harvest. Every successive cycle of life-giving power has been and will be more glorious than all before.

We fuss about eschatology because too much of our interpretation of prophecy stops too soon and fails to note the on-going of the promise that, "The path of the just is as the shining light that groweth, (brightens, or broadens), more and more unto the perfect day." (Prov. 4:18). This promised, continuous betterment is true not only of the individual Christian life, but this broadening and brightening is characteristic of the whole highway of righteousness and of every successive stage of Kingdom progress.

The Christian life begins in the dust, when the sinner is smitten with conviction, when pride and self-confidence are given a mortal wound, and the wounded rebel raises empty and imploring hands as he motions for mercy. The almighty Spirit then moves into the vanquished soul and prepares to turn the seat of abject slavery into a citadel of power. Little by little victory is gained over passions, habits, circumstances and a host of evil opponents. In simultaneous developments of grace the child of God is given gradual authority over interests and influences outside himself. He has been made a king to reign with Christ, (See Rev. 1:6 and 1 Pet. 2:9.) so he not only gets increasing mastery over the "City of Mansoul," but he is given growing influence over other lives and situations, if he is faithful to the trust he has. This is the pattern shown in the first predictory diirective given to man, in Genesis 1:28. He was made and commissioned to be fruitful, to multiply, to keep the earth replenished and subdued. He was to have dominion over every other type of creature. No angel, devil, beast or bird was to have controlling power over man. To yield to any creature, as subservient to its will, was treason and a betrayal of his trust. That was man in relation to this world, but the later Old Testament Scriptures, even as early as those which tell of Abraham and Moses, reveal high realms, in which re-instated men were to have better benefits and rights. Abraham saw great areas of possessions here, but his real hopes were fixed on heavenly estates, where we see him, as he is now, according to Christ's account in Luke 16:119-31. David had similar previews of larger spheres of power, (see Ps.8 compared with Heb. 2:5-9; see Daniels visions in Dan. 2:44-49 and Dan. 7:13-18.) Like our last set of pictures of regenerated humans, here too we

see previews of what Paul describes more fully in his accounts of our present positions in Christ, in Ephesians and Colossians.  We are seated in heavenly places, with power to reign over principalities and every kind of evil authority. But we do not stop here. Only as we see our prospects in Heaven, after our ascension at death and our eternal joint control of all the new Heavens and new Earth can we match the previews of the Old Testament. Only very few of the early Old Testament saints were able to penetrate the vail of mystery that hung like a canopy of darkness around this world; but Abraham sensed that there was "a city that hath foundations whose builder and maker is God." He was so sure of a place in Heaven that he gladly gave up his claims to property and rights he had in Ur, Haran and Canaan and traveled always as a pilgrim to his heavenly home. Moses also refused to covet or claim any title to Egypt's riches or power, because he too had his eyes and heart fixed on heavenly values and the honour he now shares, as the choirs of Glory sing to his credit in the music ascribed to Moses and the Lamb, (see Rev. 15:1-3.) Certainly David had something better than sleep of the darkness of the grave in mind as he wrote of being able always to see the Lord, (Ps. 16:8), and of dwelling with Him, in His house, forever, (Ps. 23:6.) Daniel saw a place where he would stand in security and honour when his work on earth was finished, (Dan. 12:13), and according to Hebrews 11:16 all the patriarchs were impelled and sustained, not by earthly gain, but by heavenly prospects.

Sometimes a light surprises

The Christian while he sings; It is the Lord who rises

With healing in His wings. When comforts are declining,

He grants the soul again A season of clear shining,

To cheer it after rain.

In holy contemplation,

We sweetly then pursue The theme of God's salvation,

And find it ever new; Set free from present sorrow,

We cheerfully can say-E'en let th' unknown to-morrow

Bring with it what it may:

It can bring with it nothing

But He will bear us through; Who gives the lilies clothing,

Will clothe His people too: Beneath the spreading heavens

No creature but is fed; And He who feeds the ravens

Will give His children bread.

Though vine nor fig tree neither

Their wonted fruit should bear; Though all the fields should wither,

Nor flocks nor herds be there: Yet God the same abiding,

His praise shall tune my voice; For, while in Him confiding,

I cannot but rejoice.

Yes, we hope that God will keep us fussing about eschatology as long as there re distortions among Christians about the extent of Christ's victory and power, or tie terms upon which full kingdom rights are granted to all believers. We hope we an stimulate Christ's heirs to search their titles and claim all their legacies or blood-ought privileges over Satan, death, fear and defeat. We hope our emphasis will effectively serve to make our readers to be better duplicates of the Christianity which Paul described when he said, "We are saved (preserved, sustained, or renewed) by hope; but hope that is seen is not (real, biblical) hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience endurance) wait for it," (Rom. 8:24, 25). We need to help our fellow-believers to

endure, be looking always unto Jesus as He is, and by being absorbed with eternal realities, not merely at either our temporal sufferings or our short-lived rewards in this life. No number of grape vines or big grapes, no enforced peace by extended rod-of-iron rule will satisfy saints in our post-resurrection perfection, during the millennial imperfections of Dr. Scofield's phoney picture, and no observation of Jews ruling this still-crumbling world will equal the real joy of reigning personally with Christ in the harmonious environment of the new, and incorruptible splendors of the New Heavens and the New Earth. Let us fuss against fakes, but glory in righteous realities forever.

The Mother's Trust

"They shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, A LAMB FOR A HOUSE. It is the Lord's pass-over. The BLOOD, I will pass over you." (Ex. xii. 3, 11, 13.)

BENEATH the blood-stained lintel I with my children stand;

A messenger of evil is passing through the land. There is no other refuge from the destroyer's face; Beneath the blood-stained lintel shall be our hiding-place.

The lamb of God has suffered our sins and griefs He bore; By faith the blood is sprinkled above our dwelling's door. The foe who seeks to enter doth fear that sacred sign; To-night the blood-stained lintel shall shelter me and mine.

My Saviour, for my dear ones I claim Thy promise true; The Lamb is "for the household"—the children's Saviour too. On earth the little children once felt Thy touch divine; Beneath the blood-stained lintel Thy blessing give to mine.

O Thou who gave them, guard them—those wayward little feet, The wilderness before them, the ills of life to meet. My mother-love is helpless, I trust them to Thy care! Beneath the blood-stained lintel, Oh keep me ever there!

The Faith I'll rest upon Thee, Thou wilt not disappoint; With wisdom, Lord, to train them my shrinking heart anoint. Without my children, Father, I dare not see Thy face; I plead the blood-of Jesus, Thy covenant of grace.

Oh, wonderful Redeemer, who suffered for our sake, When o'er the guilty nations the judgment storm shall break, With joy from that safe shelter may we then meet Thine eye, Beneath the blood-stained lintel, my children, Lord and I.

 

Previous Article Winter 2005 Front Page Next Article