The Reformers’ Opinion of the World’s Conversion.
The leading Reformers, as individuals, have left their most decided testimony against all such notions. Luther says: “This is not true, and is really a trick of the devil, that people are led to believe that the whole world shall become Christian. It is the devil’s doing, in order to darken sound doctrine, and to prevent it from being rightly understood. * Therefore, it is not to be admitted that the whole world, and all mankind, shall believe on Christ; for we must perpetually bear the sacred cross, that they are the majority who persecute the saints.” (Walch’s Luther, vol. 11, cols. 1082–88.) A guest having suggested to him, that, if the world should last, there might yet be many improvements, Luther exclaimed: God forbid! it would be worse than all the past. There would arise many other sects, which are now hidden within the hearts of men. May the Lord come and cut all short, for there is no hope of improvement! Again, he says, “That the Papal Church should reform is an impossibility; neither will the Turks and Jews. * I see nothing else to be done but to say, Lord, thy kingdom come!” And again: “You will ere long see wickedness prevail to such an extent that life will become a heavy burden, and everywhere the cry will be raised, God, come with thy last judgments!” A millennium of blessedness on this side of the day of Judgment was heresy to him. Melanchthon’s views were equally unmistakable. His own words are: “The true Church will always suffer persecution from the wicked to the end of time, and in the church itself the good and the evil will continue blended together.” He believed and affirmed, with Luther, that the world was rapidly approximating the day of Judgment, so rapidly that the idea of a millennium first he could only regard as utterly heretical. The Mahometan empire and the Papacy he identified with antichrist, and claimed that they would stand till Christ himself should come. Calvin calls Luke 18: 8 “a clear prediction of Christ; that from his ascension into Heaven until his return, men will everywhere remain in unbelief.” On Matthew 24: 30, he says: “There is no reason why any person should expect the conversion of the world; for at length (when it will be too late, and will yield them no advantage) they shall look on him whom they have pierced.” And on 1 Corinthians 15: 51, 1 Thessalonians 4: 15, 2 Thessalonians 2: 2, &c., he shows plainly how adverse was his understanding of the Scriptures to the notion under consideration. Knox thus expresses himself in his treatise on Fasting: “What were this but to reform the face of the whole earth, which never was, nor yet shall be, till that righteous King and Judge appear for the restoration of all things.”—Prophetic Times.