of God cannot fail: Abraham, together with the heirs of the same promises, died in the faith and hope of receiving them in the resurrection of the dead; for this the apostle assures us was "the hope of the promise made of God unto the fathers," and fulfilled unto us their children, "in that he hath raised up Jesus again." And this promise is "sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham." It is important to mark the firmness with which the natural seed have ever clung to this promise, as if this world were to be conferred on them for a carnal possession forever! But Abraham understood that the promise had respect to the heavenly country in Paradise regained, with immortality in the resurrection. His seed should follow in his steps. The meek have also the promise with Abraham, that they shall inherit the earth: but it is not Judea, says Jerome, "not this world, not the earth under a curse, producing thorns and briers, which rather the bloodiest warriors possess; but it is the earth which the Psalmist describes: I hope to see the Lord's goodness in the land of eternal life." For this world is a land whose cities have not foundations, and whose inhabitants have no inheritance in it, but that of Abraham in the cave of the field of Macphelah.|| *Acts xxiii. 6. † Ib. xiii. 32. Rom. iv. 16. § Matt. v. 5. I confirm this view of the promise made unto the fathers, by reciting from Mr. Mede, Dr. Gill, and others, certain opinions of learned Rabbis, going to show that they also received the promise in the sense it is expounded here. The promise is of the inheritance of the land forever. Rabbi Eleazar, who lived just after the second temple was built, writes thus: "As I live, saith the Lord, I will awake you hereafter in the resurrection of the dead, and will gather you with all Israel into the land of Israel." Jonathan the Paraphrast, who lived before the christian era, says on Hos. xiv. 8, "They shall be gathered from their captivity; they shall live under the shadow of Messiah; the dead shall rise, and good shall increase in the earth," &c. "Where does the (Mosaic) law teach the resurrection of the dead? Truly, where it says, Ex. vi. 4, ' And I have also established my covenant with them, that I will give to them the land of Canaan:' for it is said not to you but to them. Again, the Sadducees asked Rabbi Gamaliel, (Paul's teacher,) whence he could prove that God would raise the dead. Nor would they rest, until he had brought them this verse, Deut. xi. 21, ' Which land the Lord sware to your fathers that he would give THEM." God covenanted with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give them the land in which they were strangers, for an inheritance; and not having received the inheritance, they must needs live again, or in respect to them the promise has failed, which is impossible. ་ The above are found in Mede, with the following also: "Rabbi Kimchi, on Obadiah, says, When Rome shall be laid waste, there shall be redemption for Israel. And on Is. xxvi. 19, The holy blessed God will raise the dead at the time of deliverance.-And on Jer. xxiii. 20, In that he saith ye shall consider it, and not they shall consider it, he intimateth the resurrection." Dr. Gill furnishes the following, 1 Cor. xv. 54: "When the King Messiah comes, the holy blessed God will raise up those that sleep, as it is written, He shall swallow up death in victory." The third and last promise which I notice, is that made with an oath to David, "That of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ, to sit on his throne."* All believers of this promise have regarded Christ's kingdom as the era of human bliss; but few, however, regard it as belonging solely to the resurrection of the dead. The natural Israel have always expected it to be a temporal kingdom, of which they are to be royal princes. The very apostles apprehended it so, while the Lord tarried on the earth; and the populace would have crowned Jesus, while they hailed him, Blessed be the King! But when he refused their kingdom, they refused him. Bent on having the millennium in this world, they rejected Jesus, as a deceiver, who would seem to be the Messiah, and yet rejected the crown!-He triumphed, he arose from the dead, and brought to light the immortality which Adam lost, and the eternal life in the Paradise of God, from which Adam fell, and also the everlasting kingdom promised to David for his Son, to whom belong salvation, dominion, and glory, in the restitution of all things, after this world has gone, with that before the flood, to final destruction in the resurrection of the dead. In the same spirit the ingrafted Israel, also, look on the gospel dispensation, which is committed to the Gentile church, as Messiah's kingdom;† and they are expecting to see its victorious banner waving over all nations in the closecoming millennium: they are expecting this gospel dispensation to subdue, and convert, and overturn all opposition, and to govern the whole world; precisely as the natural Israel expected of the Mosaic dispensation. But the Mosaic dispensation was not Messiah's kingdom; it was only a faint shadow of it: neither is the gospel dispensation Messiah's On Matt. xxii. 31, "The holy blessed God promised to our fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that he would give them the land of Israel. We learn from hence that they shall be raised, and that God will hereafter give them the land of Israel." It will greatly increase our interest in the prophets, if we observe, from Moses to Malachi, that the promises and threatenings are directly to you and to us, who read and hear, and not to them who may come after us. In all the glorious prophecies of Israel's restoration, scattered up and down the sacred page, the word is to you, and is not to them; the word is spoken to you in the second, and not to them in the third person: and in order to be fulfilled to the persons to whom it has in past ages been spoken, they must revive, and come out of the grave, and live again; which assuredly they will at the coming and kingdom of Christ in the resurrection of the dead. *Acts ii. 30. 2 Sam. vii. 12, 13. † Villipand, a Jesuit of the year 1600, expressly says, "The church militant, which is called the kingdom of heaven, and is descended from heaven," &c Vol. i. 217. E. i. kingdom; it is only the good news of it: "The kingdom of heaven is at hand," and is yet to come. THE PROPHECIES OF THIS HEAVENLY MILLENNIUM. I classify the prophecies under three heads, without discoursing of either. The first class are those which relate to the great King, who obtains this promised land of bliss in Eden, and in eternal life regained. "The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." He is the KING. The second class are those which relate to the "restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.' This is the KING DOM OF HEAVEN. The third class are those which relate to the Israel of God, the chosen generation, the saints, who are the heirs of this kingdom. Their restoration is by all regarded as belonging to the millennium; and they are HIS PEOPLE out of every nation, in the resurrection of the dead; even the house of Jacob," and "the whole house of Israel." The prophecies show that the King should pass through the grave to his throne, and that his kingdom also must itself rise from the ashes of this world,† and that his citizens also must arise from the dust, to reach the inheritance of the exalted Son of God in his heavenly kingdom.‡ Under the ancient dispensation, every sacrifice on holy altars slain pointed to his death, and, under the present dispensation, every communion of his holy supper commemorates it, until he comes in the dispensation of the fulness of times, to receive the inheritance of the purchased possession, and to give it to the chosen seed, the saints in light, and to bruise Satan under their feet. Then is the blissful millennium; for the prophecies of a latter-day glory are the inheritance of all the faithful in Christ, whether they be sons of the natural Israel or of the Gentiles; that being now revealed by the Spirit "which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men-that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ."** Accordingly, the Gentiles are no longer "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenant of promise;"++ but are by the blood of Christ made "fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the *Ps. xvi. 10. Isa. liii. 8. Dan. ix. 26. Ezek. xxxvii. 12-14. Isa. xxiv. 19, 20, 23. 2 Pet. iii. 12, 13. ** Eph. iii. 5, 6. household of God;"* not to receive a perishable kingdom in this world, but to be gathered into the kingdom of heaven in the world to come, never more to be rooted out of their land it is their everlasting possession, and David is our king forever. It is not a new thing for Israel to exclaim, "What portion have we in David? Neither have we inheritance in the Son of Jesse." And yet the ancient example affords small inducement for moderns to follow. We are resolved to follow David, and to worship in Zion; and not in either Bethel or Dan. It is not a new thing for the natural seed to exclaim, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved." And they trouble the church with their dissension; but now "faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster;" to whom we give "place by subjection, no, not for an hour." We yield not our claims to the natural seed. "For ye are all the children of God by faith of Jesus Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus:" by faith now, and in fact in the world to come; "and if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise :" heirs of the holy city in the heavenly land under the dominion of the Lord our King. THE GOSPEL OF THIS FUTURE BLISS. The gospel is glad tidings of the near approach of this kingdom, which was by promise made known unto the fathers, and was by prophecy unfolded to their children. The gospel is glad tidings of the kingdom at hand, which kingdom Adam lost, and the Lord Jesus regained.|| The gospel is glad tidings of salvation; good news of the triumph over the prince of this world, which the Redeemer has wrought in his own person, and will shortly manifest in the persons of all believers, who are found worthy to attain that world, and the resurrection of the dead, at his coming and kingdom. The theme of the gospel is the kingdom of heaven, or the recovery of the joys which Adam forfeited in Eden, with warning now of another death, answering the penalty of its broken law with the second death. The gospel is the joyful sound of the near approach of the happy. state, in which the blind shall receive their sight, the ears * Eph. ii. 19. † 1 Kings xii. 16. + Acts xv. 1. Gal. iii. 25-29. Phil. ii. 9. Heb. i. 2. ii. 8. Col. i. 20. Eph. i. 21, 22. 2 Tim. iv, 1. 1 John iii. 2. Rom. xiv. 9. John xvi. 11. of the deaf shall be unstopped, the lame man shall leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing; glad tidings of the near coming restoration of the innocence and peace of which Satan robbed man in the garden of the blessed, and of the removal of the curse which, for Adam's sake, was imposed on creation, and of the renovation of the carth, to make it the promised holy land, "the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel.* Then shall the merciful obtain mercy, and the pure in heart shall see God. Then is the millennium, the sabbath, or rest, which remains for the people of God, not in this wilderness of our pilgrimage, but in the heavenly Canaan. Neither the four Gospels, nor the Acts, nor the Epistles, speak of any other millennium: all the promises and prophecies can be interpreted of this, and of no other. This is the hope of the promise made unto the fathers, both Adam and Abraham,† and also the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, the appointed heir of all things. These prophecies the Lord came to fulfil, and to redeem these promises, and to preach the gospel of this kingdom at hand, a kingdom first set forth to sight in his own person on the mount of transfiguration, and hereafter to be manifested in all his faithful at his coming with clouds to the judgment. Such a millennium has been looked for since the fall of Adam; a sabbath of holy joy and glorious immortality in the earth, the new earth, redeemed from the power of Satan, and the plague of sin, and the curse of death, for which creation unites her groanings with the prayers of the saints, from the first transgression to this day: that these heavens and this earth may be restored from the bondage of corruption to the glorious liberty of the sons of God, in the likeness of the Lord our elder Brother, and the first-fruits of the dead. THE TELESCOPE OF FAITH. The telescope is an instrument of vision, by which remote objects are brought near, and laid open to the natural eye. Various kinds are known by various names; but three radical principles are common to all; viz. 1. A small eye glass; 2. A large object glass; 3. A rectifying medium, through which the image made by the object glass may be presented to the eye of the beholder at the eye glass in an upright position. For with two lenses only, a telescope presents every object to the eye inverted; the world is seen turned upside down, and men † Acts xxvi. 6, 7, 8. + Heb. i. 2. * Is. lx. 14. |
