PRE-MILLENNIAL ADVENT.—No. 5.
By Charles Beecher
The canons of criticism I have shown to be logically necessary to the denial of the pre-millennial advent are substantially explained in one, viz.: “Whatever is for pre-millennial advent, spiritualize; whatever is against it, leave literal.” I now proceed to show the manifest infidelity of this principle. Not that I suppose, or would imply, that the opposers of the pre-millennial advent are infidel in heart. By no means. I mean to show that it is to the piety of their hearts alone we are indebted for escape from general infidelity. I have shown that of all passages relating either to advent, resurrection, judgment, or conflagration, the largest part, and those most unequivocal, are to be spiritualized, while but a small class remains to be treated as literal. I now add that the course pursued in spiritualizing the former class, and the liberties taken, furnish ample preparation for spiritualizing the latter, and thus eradicating the obnoxious ideas of a “coming resurrection” and “Judgment” from the whole Bible. For there are no passages in the latter class more difficult to subject to this process than others already disposed of. And why not be consistent? Take for example our Saviour’s words, Matt. 24:30: “And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man, coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” Now Prof. Bush, the Universalists, et id genus omne, find all this to be spiritual. And how can you reprove them who have just been spiritualizing the very same words in Daniel? You spiritualized the words to escape a pre-millennial, they to escape a post-millennial, and both with equal reason. 2. Will you cling to 1 Cor. 15? “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,” &c., &c. But Prof. Bush and the Swedenborgians find in all this chapter no allusion to the resurrection of the body at all. It is all spiritual. And how can you reprove them when they apply the very process you furnish in Isaiah 25, from which Paul here quotes? If Paul identifies the two passages as he does, and you spiritualize one, blame not Prof. Bush for being more consistent than you are willing to be and spiritualizing both. And why should 1 Thess. 4:16, give you any qualms of conscience? Having swallowed many a camel, are you now straining at a gnat? Having disposed of Isa. 25, Hos. 13, Rev. 20, &c., shall this stand in your way? 3. But suppose we turn to 2 Pet. 3, will you repose here? Does not Prof. Bush spiritualize all this with as much apparent satisfaction as you did similar expressions in Isa. 65 and 66? or in Ps. 97? And why regard the mote in the Professor’s eye? 4. And will you cherish a regard for the antiquated notion that there is ever to be such a thing as a “great white throne,” Rev. 20:11, and One sitting thereon, “from whose face earth and heaven fled away”? Has not Prof. Bush, aided by the principles furnished by you in the beginning of this very chapter, satisfactorily changed all this? When you have spiritualized the resurrection of part of the dead, called “THE FIRST RESURRECTION,” why chide him for spiritualizing what is said of “the rest of the dead,” where no resurrection is mentioned? And why cling to early prejudices here, you who have dissolved into mist that THRONE which Daniel saw, whence came the “fiery stream,” before which myriads ministered, where “judgment was set” and “books opened”? Are you now bent on literally interpreting similar imagery, and that in so dark and symbolical a book as in the first part of the chapter you pronounced Revelations to be? Will you now cast away that allegoric wand which has been your scepter of power from the beginning of the Bible, and which has dissipated more substantial seeming texts than this? By no means. Or if you piously prefer to halt here, you cannot stop others who have followed your leading. Rising generations of uncatechized scoffers will tread your steps, and say, “Where is the promise of his coming?” And you can find no answer.—Charles Beecher, in Letter to Henry Ward Beecher.