PRE-MILLENNIAL ADVENT.—NO. 6.
By Chas. Beecher
I will offer one more illustration of the indispensableness of the following canons to the successful denial of the pre-millennial advent. Canon I. All passages uniting the advent, resurrection, Judgment, or conflagration, with millennial descriptions, must be spiritualized. Canon II. All passages mentioning these events, without alluding to the millennium, may be taken literally. There is to be a Judgment-day—a literal Judgment-day. However, this may75distress the Universalist, the Swedenborgian, or the scoffing infidel, or the indifferent scientific theorist; to the Christian it is a matter of solemn joy. “God hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness, by that Man whom he hath ordained.” So every Christian heart would have it. It will be a literal Judgment. Christ, in person, will be present. “The Lord himself shall descend from Heaven.” It will be a great day—the great day of the Lord. So we would have it. Thanks to God for the assurance! Creation is not always to groan. There is to be a winding up. There is to be a last assize. The Judgment shall sit and the books be opened. Concerning this we never feel disposed to cavil. We never think it derogatory to Christ. We leave that to scoffers. To us it is sublimely appropriate that the crucified should be revealed in flaming fire with mighty angels. No matter how small this globe is. No matter what astronomy thinks. No matter what geology is disposed to allow. God Incarnate has seen fit to be crucified here. We can believe him when he says he will here sit a Judge upon the throne of his glory. And yet how strange that we should discover his personal coming to Judgment, before the millennium, to be highly derogatory and incredible; so incredible as that we must needs spiritualize most of the strongest descriptions of such Judgment to be found in the Bible! How is this? What peculiar impropriety is there in Christ’s coming to judgment before the millennium, rather than after? I confess that it has seemed to me as if some of my brethren were secretly opposed to any personal coming to Judgment; so opposed that the only shield to their orthodoxy was found in a millennial respite. Put far away the great day of the Lord, and make it literal as you will. Bring it nigh, so that it shall be possible for us really to do as St. Peter bids us, “Look for, and haste unto his coming,” and then we will none of it. Then we discover its impropriety. We feel and act about it, if near, just as the Universalists feel and act about it anywhere. And thus, as I showed before, we secretly open the way to Universalism. Compare, for example, the two following descriptions of a day of Judgment. Matt. 25.
“WHEN THE SON OF MAN SHALL COME IN HIS GLORY,
“AND ALL THE HOLY ANGELS WITH HIM,
“THEN SHALL HE SIT UPON THE THRONE OF HIS GLORY.”
AND BEFORE HIM
SHALL BE
GATHERED
ALL
NATIONS.
“And he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.
“Then shall the King say to those on his left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.
“Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these [my brethren], ye did it not to me.”
Matt. 24:29: “Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.”
Luke 21:28: “And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.” Joel 3.
“The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem.
“Thither shall the Lord bring down all his mighty ones.”
“For there [in the Valley of Jehovah’s Judgment] will I sit to judge all the heathen round about.”
“I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the Valley of Jehovah’s Judgment.” “Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about.” “Let the heathen be wakened and come up to the Valley of Jehovah’s Judgment.” “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision, for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.”
“And will plead with them there for my people, and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.” “Behold I will raise them out of the place where ye have sold them, and will return your recompense upon your own head, but the Lord will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel.”
“The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining.” “And the heavens and the earth shall shake.”
“But the Lord will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel.” Now I will ask any unprejudiced reader to compare these two descriptions of a day of Judgment, and tell me which is most likely to be literal. Which would you most naturally attempt to spiritualize? turn into an allegory or parable? Would not that be as easily done with the left hand column as the right? How comes it then that this of Matthew has always been treated as the literal Judgment-day, and that of Joel allegorized? For no other reason than that contained in the canons at the head of this article, viz.: It will not do to consider a literal Judgment-day under such connections. . . . A literal Judgment-day here would be too alarming. People would really begin to “look for, and haste unto it.” Which, however it might do for Peter’s intellectual age, is now plainly stupid and in controversion of all hermeneutical law. And this Judgment, moreover, is too obviously followed by the millennium. “So shall ye know that I am the Lord your God dwelling in Zion my holy mountain; then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her any more, and it shall come to pass in that day that the mountains shall drop down new wine and the hills shall flow with milk,” &c. A vivid millennial picture. To place a literal Judgment here would be too alarming. It might beget some strong excitements. We might be led to imagine that that great advent of our Lord in fire, to Judgment, was really an advent of rational expectation. Hence, it is necessary to spiritualize this passage; to pour some lethean wave upon it, and baptize it into somnolence. As to that of Matt. 25, however, the case is different. There, it is easy to neglect the important item of chronology furnished by Luke 21:24, by which we are brought down to modern times. . . . There, moreover, no allusion being made to any elapsed millennium, it is easy to take one for granted, and so arriving by one long, logical leap, at the end of time, to permit the Judgment to be literal. Thus gotten far enough away, thus safely sequestered behind a millennial mist, and seen through the rosy illusions of a thousand peaceful years—the dire phantom of a great white throne, no longer jars upon the nerves of a sensitive refinement. Polished compromise with worldliness goes on, and asks complacently, “Where is the promise of his coming?”—Chas. Beecher, in Letter to Henry Ward Beecher.