chap, xl-xlviii.
And this takes away all historical ground for the assumption that by the beloved city in Rev. xx. 9, against which Satan leads Gog and Magog to war with the heathen from the four corners of the earth, we can only understand the earthly Jerusalem of the last times. If, however, we look more closely at Rev. xx., there are three events described in vers. 1-10, — viz. (1) the binding of Satan and his confinement in the abyss for a thousand years (vers. 1-3); (2) the resurrection of the believers, and their reigning with Christ for a thousand years, called the a first resurrection " (vers. 4-6); (3) after the termination of the thousand years, the releasing of Satan from his prison, his going out to lead the heathen with Gog and Magog to war against " the camp of the saints and the beloved city," the destruction of this army by fire from heaven, and the casting of Satan into the lake of fire, where the beast and the false prophet already are (vers. 7-10). According to the millenarian exposition of the Apocalypse, these three events will none of them take place till after the fall of Babylon and the casting of the beast into the lake of fire; not merely the final casting of Satan into the lake of fire, but even the binding of Satan and the confining of him in the abyss. The latter is not stated in the text, however, but is merely an inference drawn from the fact that all three events are seen by John and related in his Apocalypse after the fall of Babylon, etc., — an inference for which there is just the same warrant as for the conclusion drawn, for example, by the traditional exposition of the Old Testament by the Jews, that because the death of Terah is related in Gen. xi., and the call and migration of Abram to Canaan in Gen. xii., therefore Terah died before the migration of Abraham, in opposition to the chronological data of Genesis. All that is stated in the text of the Apocalypse is, that Satan is cast into the lake of fire, where the beast and the false prophet are (ver. 10), so that the final overthrow of Satan will not take place till after the fall of Babylon and the overthrow of the beast and the false prophet. That this is not to happen till a thousand years later, cannot be inferred from the position of ch. xx. 10 after ch. xix. 20, 21, but must be gathered from some other source if it is to be determined at all. The assumption that the contents of Rev. xx. are chronologically posterior to ch. xviii. and xix., which the millenarian interpretation of the Apocalypse has adopted from the earlier orthodox exposition, is at variance with the plan of the whole book. It is now admitted by all scientific expositors of the Apocalypse, that the visions contained therein do not form such a continuous series as to present the leading features of the conflict between the powers at enmity against God and the kingdom of God in chronological order, but rather that they are arranged in groups, each rounded off within itself, every one of which reaches to the end or closes with the last judgment, while those which follow go back again and expand more fully the several events which prepare the way for and introduce the last judgment; so that, for example, after the last judgment upon the living and the dead has been announced in ch. xi. 15 sqq. by the seventh trumpet, the conflict between Satan and the kingdom of God on the birth and ascension of Christ is not shown to the seer till the following chapter (ch. xii.). And the events set forth in the last group commencing with ch. xix. must be interpreted in a manner analogous to this. The contents of this group have been correctly explained by Hofmann (II. 2, p. 720) as follows: "The whole series of visions, from ch. xix. 11 onwards, is merely intended to exhibit the victory of Christ over His foes. There is first a victory over Satan, through which the army of the enemies of His people by which he is served is destroyed; secondly, a victory over Satan, by which the possibility of leading the nations astray any more to fight against His church is taken from him; thirdly, a victory over Satan, by which he is deprived of the power to keep those who have died with faith in their Saviour in death any longer; and, fourthly, a victory over Satan, by which his last attack upon the saints of
God issues in his final destruction." That the second and third victories are not to be separated from each other in point of time, is indicated by the sameness in the period assigned to each, viz. " a thousand years." But the time when these thousand years commence, cannot be determined from the Apocalypse itself; it must be gathered from the teaching of the rest of the New Testament concerning the first resurrection. According to the statements made by the Apostle Paul in 1 Cor. xv., every one will be raised "in his own order: Christ the first-fruits, afterward they that are Christ's at His coming;" then the end, i.e. the resurrection of all the dead, the last judgment, the destruction of the world, and the new creation of heaven and earth. Consequently the first resurrection takes place along with the coming of Christ. But, according to the teaching of the New Testament, the parusia of Christ is not to be deferred till the last day of the present world, but commences, as the Lord Himself has said, not long after His ascension, so that some of His own contemporaries will not taste of death till they see the Son of man come in His kingdom (Matt. xvi. 28). The Lord repeats this in Matt. xxiv. 34, in the elaborate discourse concerning His parusia to judgment, with the solemn asseveration: "Verily I say unto you, this generation (fj yevea avrrj) will not pass till all these things be fulfilled." And, as Hofmann has correctly observed (p. 640), the idea that " this generation " signifies the church of Christ, does not deserve refutation. We therefore understand that the contemporaries of Christ would live to see the things of which He says, "that they will be the heralding tokens of His second appearance;" and, still further (p. 641): "We have already seen, from Matt. xvi. 28, that the Lord has solemnly affirmed that His own contemporaries will live to see His royal coming." * Concerning this royal coming of the Son
1 Luthardt also says just the same (pp. 94, 95): " Undoubtedly the age
of which the Lord is speaking is not the whole of the present era, nor the nation of Israel, but the generation then existiug. And yet the Lord's of man in the glory of His Father with His angels, which some of His contemporaries live to see (Matt. xvi. 27 and 28), Paul writes, in 1 Thess. iv. 15, 16: "We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not anticipate them which are asleep; for the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, etc., and the dead in Christ will rise first," etc. Consequently the New Testament teaches quite clearly that the first resurrection commences with the coming of Christ, which began with the judgment executed through the Romans upon the ancient Jerusalem. This was preceded only by the resurrection of Christ as " the first-fruits," and the resurrection of the " many bodies of the saints which slept," that arose from the graves at the resurrection of Christ, and appeared to many in the holy eity (Matt, xxvii. 52, 53), as a practical testimony that through the resurrection of Christ death is deprived of its power, and a resurrection from the grave secured for all believers. — According to this distinct teaching of Christ and the apostles, the popular opinion, that the resurrection of the dead as a whole will not take place till the last day of this world, must be rectified. The New Testament does not teach anywhere that all the dead, even those who have fallen asleep in Christ, will remain in the grave, or in Hades, till the last judgment immediately before the destruction of heaven and earth, and that the souls which have entered heaven at their death will be with Christ till then unclothed and without the body. This traditional view merely rests upon the unscriptural idea of the coming of Christ as not taking place till the end of the era, and as an act restricted to a single day of twenty-four hours. According to the Scriptures, the parusia takes place on the day of the Lord, njn> DV, 7) jj/xipa tov Kvplov. But this day is not an earthly day of twelve or twenty-four hours; but, as Peter says (2 Pet. iii. 8), " one
prophecy goes to the very end, and reaches far beyond the destruction of Jerusalem.... The existing generation was to live to see the beginniag of the end, and did live to see it."
day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (cf. Ps. xc. 4). The day on which the Son of man comes in His glory commences with the appearing of the Lord to the judgment upon the hardened Israel at the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans; continues till His appearing to the last judgment, which is still future and will be visible to all nations; and closes with the day of God, on which the heavens will be dissolved with fire, and the elements will melt with heat, and the new heaven and new earth will be created, for which we wTait according to His promise (2 Pet. iii. 12, 13). To show how incorrect is the popular idea of the resurrection of the dead, wre may adduce not only the fact of the resurrection of many saints immediately after the resurrection of Christ (Matt, xxvii. 52, 53), but also the solemn declaration of the Lord: tl Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live," — the hour " in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, etc." (John v. 25, 28); and again the repeated word of Christ, that whosoever believeth on Him hath everlasting life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed from death unto life (John v. 24, vi. 40, 47, iii. 16, 18, 36); and lastly, what was seen by the sacred seer on the opening of the fifth seal (Rev. vi. 9-11), namely, that white robes were given to the souls that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held, and that wTere crying for the avenging of their blood, inasmuch as the putting on of the white robe involves or presupposes the clothing of the soul with the new bod}', so that this vision teaches that the deceased martyrs are translated into the state of those who have risen from the dead before the judgment upon Babylon. The word ^v^al, which is used to designate them, does not prove that disembodied souls are intended (compare, as evidence to the contrary, the oktq) yjrv^al of 1 Pet. iii. 20).
But as Rev. xx. 1-10 furnishes no information concerning the time of the first resurrection, so also this passage does not teach that they who are exalted to reign with Christ by the first resurrection will live and reign with Christ in the earthly Jerusalem, whether it be glorified or not. The place where the thrones stand, upon which they are seated, is not mentioned either in vers. 4-6 or vers. 1-3. The opinion that this will be in Jerusalem merely rests upon the twofold assumption, for which no evidence can be adduced, viz. (1) that, according to the prophetic utterances of the Old Testament, Jerusalem- or the holy land is the site for the appearance of the Lord to the judgment upon the world of nations (Hofmann, pp. 637, 638); and (2) that the beloved city which the heathen, under Gog and Ma£0£, will besiege, according to Rev. xx. 8. 9, is the earthly Jerusalem, from which it is still further inferred, that the saints besieged in the beloved city cannot be any others than those placed upon thrones through the first resurrection. But the inconceivable nature, not to say the absurdity, of such an assumption as that of a war between earthly men and those who have been raised from the dead and are glorified with spiritual bodies, precludes the identification, which is not expressed in the text, of the saints in Jerusalem with those sitting upon thrones and reigning with Christ, who have obtained eternal life through the resurrection. And as they are reigning with Christ, the Son of God, who has returned to the glory of His heavenly Father, would also be besieged along with them by the hosts of Gog and Magog. But where do the Scriptures teach anything of the kind? The fact that, according to the prophecy of the Old Testament, the Lord comes from Zion to judge the nations furnishes no proof of this, inasmuch as this Zion of the prophets is not the earthly and material, but the heavenly Jerusalem. The angels who come at the ascension of Christ to comfort His disciples with regard to the departure of their Master to the Father, merely say: u This Jesus, who has gone up from you to heaven, will so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go to heaven" (Acts i. 11); but they do not say at what place He will come again. And though the Apostle Paul says in 1 Thess. iv. 16, "the Lord will descend from heaven," he also says, they that are living then will be caught up together with those that have risen in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so be ever with the Lord. And as here the being caught up in the clouds into the air is not to be understood literally, but simply expresses the thought that those who are glorified will hasten with those who have risen from the dead to meet the Lord, to welcome Him and to be united with Him, and does not assume a permanent abiding in the air; so the expression, " descend from heaven," does not involve a coming to Jerusalem and remaining upon earth. The words are meant to be understood spiritually, like the rending of the heaven and coming down in Isa. lxiv. 1. Paul therefore uses the words airoKaXv-fyis air ovpavov, revelation from heaven, in 2 Thess. i. 7, with reference to the same event. The Lord has already descended from heaven to judgment upon the ancient Jerusalem, to take vengeance with flaming fire upon those who would not know God and obey the gospel (2 Thess. i. 8). Every manifestation of God which produces an actual effect upon the earth is a coming down from heaven, which does not involve a local abiding of the Lord upon the earth. As the coming of Christ to the judgment upon Jerusalem does not affect His sitting at the right hand of the Father, so we must not picture to ourselves the resurrection of those who have fallen asleep in the Lord, which commences with this coming, in any other way than that those who rise are received into heaven, and, as the church of the first-born, who are written in heaven, i.e. who have become citizens of heaven (Heb. xii. 23), sit on seats around the throne of God and reign with Christ. — Even the first resurrection is not to be thought of as an act occurring once and ending there; but as the coming of the Lord, which commenced with the judgment of the destruction of Jerusalem, is continued in the long series of judgments through which one hostile power after another is overthrown, until the destruction of the last enemy, so may we also assume, in analogy with this, that the resurrection of those who have fallen asleep in Christ, commencing with that parusia, is continued through the course of centuries; so that they who die in living faith in their Saviour are raised from the dead at the hour appointed by God according to His wisdom, and the souls received into heaven at death, together with those sown as seed-corn in the earth and ripened from corruption to incorruptibility, will be clothed with spiritual bodies, to reign with Christ. The thousand years are not to be reckoned chronologically, but commence with the coming of Christ to the judgment upon Jerusalem, and extend to the final casting of the beast and the false prophet into the lake of fire, perhaps still further. When they will end we cannot tell; for it is not for us to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath reserved in His own power (Acts i. 7).
The chaining and imprisonment of Satan in the abyss during the thousand years can also be brought into harmony with this view of the millennium, provided that the words are not taken in a grossly materialistic sense, and we bear in mind that nearly all the pictures of the Apocalypse are of a very drastic character. The key to the interpretation of Eev. xx. 1-3 and 7-10 is to be found in the words of Christ in John xii. 31, when just before His passion He is about to bring His addresses to the people to a close, for the purpose of completing the work of the world's redemption by His death and resurrection. When the Lord says, just at this moment, " now is the judgment passing over the world; now will the prince of this world be cast out," namely, out of the sphere of his dominion, He designates the completion of the work of redemption by His death as a judgment upon the world, through which the rule of Satan in the world is brought to nought, or the kingdom of the devil destroyed. This casting out of the prince of this world, which is accomplished in the establishment and spread of the kingdom of Christ on earth, is shown to the sacred seer in
Patmoa in the visions of the conflict of Michael with the dragon, which ends in the casting out of Satan into the earth (Rev. xii. 7 sqq.), and of the chaining and imprisonment of Satan in the abyss for a thousand years (Rev. xx. 1 sqq.). The conflict of Michael with the dragon, which is called the Devil and Satanas, commences when the dragon begins to persecute the woman clothed with the sun after the birth of her child, and its being caught up into heaven, i.e. after the work of Christ on earth has terminated with His ascension to heaven. John receives an explanation of the way in which the victory of Michael, through which Satan is cast out of heaven upon the earth, is to be interpreted, from the voice, which says in heaven, "Now is come the salvation, and the strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ; for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accused us day and night before God" (ver. 10). With the casting of Satan out of heaven, the kingdom of God and the power of His anointed are established, and Satan is thereby deprived of the power to rule any longer as the prince of the world. It is true that, when he sees himself cast from heaven to earth, i.e. hurled from his throne, he persecutes the woman; but the woman receives eagles' wings, so that she flies into the wilderness to the place prepared for her by God, and is there nourished for three times and a half, away from the face of the serpent (Rev. xii. 8, 13, 14). After the casting out of Satan from heaven, there follow the chaining and shutting up in the abyss, or in hell; so that during this time he is no more able to seduce the heathen to make war upon the camp of the saints (Rev. xx. 1-3 and 8). All influence upon earth is not thereby taken from him; he is simply deprived of the power to rule on the earth as apyjsv among the heathen, and to restore the i^ovala wrested from him.1 We
1 Hofmarm (Schriftbeweis, II. 2, p. 722) understands the binding of Satan in a similar manner, and writes as follows on the subject: " That which is
rendered impossible to Satan, through his being bound and imprisoned in the nether world, and therefore through his exclusion from the upper
may therefore say that the binding of Satan began with the fall of heathenism as the religion of the world, through the elevation of Christianity to be the state-religion of the Roman empire, and that it will last so long as Christianity continues to be the state-religion of the kingdoms which rule the world.
It is impossible, therefore, to prove from Rev. xx. that there will be a kingdom of glory in the earthly Jerusalem before the last judgment; and the New Testament generally neither teaches the return of the people of Israel to Palestine on their conversion to Christ, — which will take place according to Rom. xi 25 sqq., — nor the rebuilding of the temple and restoration of Levitical sacrifices. But if this be the case, then Ezekiel's vision of the new temple and sacrificial worship, and the new division of the land of Canaan, cannot be understood literally, but only in a symbolico-typical sense. The following question, therefore, is the only one that remains to be answered: —
III. How are we to understand the vision of the new kingdom of God in Ezek. xl.-xlviii? — In other words, What opinion are we to form concerning the fulfilment of this prophetic picture? The first reply to be given to this is, that this vision does not depict the coming into existence, or the successive stages in the rise and development, of the new kingdom of God. For Ezekiel sees the temple as a finished building, the component parts of which are so measured before his eyes that he is led about within the building. He sees the glory of Jehovah enter into the temple, and hears the voice of the Lord, who declares
world, where the history of mankind is proceeding, is simply that kind of activity which exerts a determining influence upon the course of history."
And Flacius, in his Glossa to the New Testament, gives this explanation:
11 But Satan is not then so bound or shut up in hell that he cannot do anything, or cause any injury, more especially disobedience in his children; but simply that he cannot act any more either so powerfully or with such success as before." He also reckons the thousand years " from the resur-
rection and ascension of the Lord, when Christ began in the most powerful manner to triumph over devils and ungodly men throughout the world," etc.
this house to be the seat of His throne in the midst of His people; and commands the prophet to make known to the people the form of the house, and its arrangement and ordinances, that they may consider the building, and be ashamed of their evil deeds (eh. xliii. 4—12). The new order of worship also (eh. xliii. 13-xlvi. 15) does not refer to the building of the temple, but to the service which Israel is to render to God, who is enthroned in this temple. Only the directions concerning the boundaries and the division of the land presuppose that Israel has still to take possession of Canaan, though it has already been brought back out of the heathen lands, and is about to divide it by lot and take possession of it as its own inheritance, to dwell there, and to sustain and delight itself with the fulness of its blessings. It follows from this that the prophetic picture does not furnish a typical exhibition of the church of Christ in its gradual development, but sets forth the kingdom of God established by Christ in its perfect form, and is partly to be regarded as the Old Testament outline of the New Testament picture of the heavenly Jerusalem in Rev. xxi. and xxii. For the river of the water of life is common to both visions. According to Ezekiel, it springs from the threshold of the temple, in which the Lord has ascended His throne, flows through the land to the Arabah, and pours into the Dead Sea, to make the water thereof sound; and according to Rev. xxii. 1 sqq., it proceeds from the throne of God and of the Lamb, and flows through the midst of the street of the New Jerusalem. According to Ezek. xlvii. 7, 12, as well as Rev. xxii. 2, there are trees growing upon its banks which bear edible fruits every month, that is to say, twelve times a year, and the leaves of which serve for the healing of the nations. But Ezekiel's picture of the new kingdom of God comes short of the picture of the New Jerusalem in this respect, that in Ezekiel the city and temple are separated, although the temple stands upon a high mountain in the centre of the holy terumah in the midst of the land of Canaan, and the city of Jerusalem reaches to the holy termuah with the northern side of its territory; whereas the new heavenly Jerusalem has no temple, and, in its perfect cubic form of equal length, breadth, and height, has itself become the holy of holies, in which there stands the throne of God and of the Lamb (Rev. xxi. 16, xxii. 4). Ezekiel could not rise to such an eminence of vision as this. The kingdom of God seen by him has a preponderatingly Old Testament stamp, and is a perfect Israelitish Canaan, answering to the idea of the Old Covenant, in the midst of which Jehovah dwrells in His temple, and the water of life flows down from His throne and pours over all the land, to give prosperity to His people. The temple of Ezekiel is simply a new Solomon's temple, built in perfect accordance with the holiness of the house of God, in the courts of which Israel appears before Jehovah to offer burnt-offerings and slain-offerings, and to worship; and although the city of Jerusalem does indeed form a perfect square, with three gates on every side bearing the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, like the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem, it has not yet the form of a cube as the stamp of the holy of holies, in which Jehovah the almighty God is enthroned, though its name is, " henceforth Jehovah thither." Still less does the attack of Gog with his peoples, gathered together from the ends of the earth, apply to the heavenly Jerusalem. It is true that, according to the formal arrangement of our prophet's book, it stands before the vision of the new kingdom of God; but chronologically its proper place is within it, and it does not even fall at the commencement of it, but at the end of the years, after Israel has been gathered out of the nations and brought back into its own land, and has dwelt there for a long time in security (ch. xxxviii. 8, 16). This attack on the part of the heathen nations is only conceivable as directed against the people of God still dwelling in the earthly Canaan.
How then are we to remove the discrepancy, that on the one hand the river of the water of life proceeding from the temple indicate! ■ glorification of Canaan, and on the other hand the land and people appear to be still unglorified, and the latter are living in circumstances which conform to the earlier condition of Israeli Doc> not this picture suggest a state of earthly gl< on the part o\ the nation of Israel in its own land, which has sed through a paradisaical transformation before the new creation of the heaven and the earth I Isaiah also predicts a new time, in which the patriarchal length of life of the primeval era shall return, when death shall no mor p men prematurely away, and not only shall war cease among men, but mutual destruction in the animal world shall also come to an end (Isa. Ixv. 19—23 compared with eh. si. 6-9). When shall this take place 1 Delitzsch, w1k> asks this question (Isa. vol. 11. p. 492, transl.), gives the following reply: " Certainly not in the blessed life bevond the grave, to which it would be both impossible and absurd to refer these promises, since they presuppose a continued mixture of sinners with the righteous, and merely a limitation of the power of death, not its destruction." From this he then draws the conclusion that the description is only applicable to the state of the millennium. But the creation of a new heaven and a new earth precedes this description (eh. Ixv. 17, 18). Does not this point to the heavenly Jerusalem of the new earth? To this Delitzsch replies that " the Old Testament prophet was not yet able to distinguish from one another the things which the author of the Apocalypse separates into distinct periods. From the Old Testament point of view generally, nothing wTas known of a state of blessedness beyond the grave. — In the Old Testament prophecy, the idea of the new cosmos is blended with the millennium. It is only in the New Testament that the new creation intervenes as a party wall between this life and the life beyond; whereas the Old Testament prophecy brings the new creation itself into the present life, and knows nothing of any Jerusalem of the blessed life to come, as distinct from the new Jerusalem of the millennium." But even if there were a better foundation for the chiliastic idea of the millennium (Rev. xx.) than there is according to our discussion of the question above, the passage just quoted would not suffice to remove the difficulty before us. For if Isaiah is describing the Jerusalem of the millennium in ch. lxv. 19—23, he has not merely brought the new creation of heaven and earth into the present life, but he has also transferred the so-called millennium to the new earth, i.e. to the other side of the new creation of heaven and earth. Delitzsch himself acknowledges this on page 517 (transl.), where he observes in his commentary on Isa. Ixvi. 22-24 that "the object of the prophecy" (namely, that from new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh will come to worship before Jehovah, and they will go out to look at the corpses of the men that have rebelled against Him, whose worm will not die, nor their fire be quenched) a is no other than the new Jerusalem of the world to come, and the eternal torment of the damned." Isaiah " is speaking of the other side, but he speaks of it as on this side." But if Isaiah is speaking of the other side as on this side in ch. Ixvi., he has done the same in ch. lxv. 19-23; and the Jerusalem depicted in ch.lxv. cannot be the Jerusalem of the millennium on this side, but can only be the New Jerusalem of the other side coming down from heaven, as the description is the same in both chapters, and therefore must refer to one and the same object. The description in Isa. lxv., like that in ch. Ixvi., can be perfectly comprehended from the fact that the prophet is speaking of that which is on the other side as on this side, without there being any necessity for the hypothesis of a thousand years' earthly kingdom of glory. It is quite correct that the Old Testament knows nothing whatever of a blessed state beyond the grave, or rather merely teaches nothing with regard to it, and that the Old Testament prophecy transfers the state beyond to this side, in other words, depicts the eternal life after the last judgment in colours taken from the happiness of the Israelitish life in Canaan. And this is also correct, u that the Old Testament depicts both this life and the life to come as an endless extension of this life; whilst the New Testament depicts it as a continuous line in two halves, the last point in this present finite state being the first point of the infinite state beyond: that the Old Testament preserves the continuity of this life and the life to come, by transferring the outer side, the form, the appearance of this life, to the life to come; the New Testament by making the inner side, the nature, the reality of the life to come, the 8vvdfieL<; fieWovros ala)vo<;, immanent in this life." But it is only to the doctrinal writings of the New Testament that this absolutely applies. Of the prophetical pictures of the New Testament, on the other hand, and especially the Apocalypse, it can only be affirmed with considerable limitations. Not only is the New Jerusalem of Isaiah, which has a new heaven above it and a new earth beneath, simply the old earthly Jerusalem, which has attained to the highest glory and happiness; but in the Apocalypse also, the Jerusalem which has come down from heaven is an earthly city with great walls of jasper and pure gold, founded upon twelve precious stones, with twelve gates consisting of pearls, that are not shut by day, in order that the kings of the earth may bring their glory into the city, into which nothing common and no abomination enter. The whole picture rests upon those of Isaiah and Ezekiel, and merely rises above these Old Testament types by the fact that the most costly minerals of the earth are selected, to indicate the exceeding glory of the heavenly nature of this city of God. What, then, is the heavenly Jerusalem of the new earth? Is it actually a city of the new world, or the capital of the kingdom of heaven? Is it not rather a picture of the many mansions in the Father's house in heaven, which Jesus entered at His ascension to heaven, to prepare a place for us (John xiv. 2)? Is it not a picture of the heavenly kingdom (2 Tim. iv. 18), into which all the blessed in that world enter whose names are written in the book of life? And its brilliant glory, is it not a picture of the unspeakable glory of the eternal life, which no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and which has not entered into the heart of any man (1 Cor. ii. 9)?
And if the state beyond the grave is transferred to this side, i.e. depicted in colours and imagery drawn from this side, not only in the Old Testament prophecy, but in that of the New Testament also, we must not seek the reason for this prophetic mode of describing the circumstances of the everlasting life, or the world to come, in the fact that the Old Testament knows nothing of a blessed state beyond the grave, is ignorant of a heaven with men that are saved. The reason is rather to be found in the fact, that heavenly things and circumstances lie beyond our idea and comprehension; so that we can only represent to ourselves the kingdom of God after the analogy of earthly circumstances and conditions, just as we are unable to form any other conception of eternal blessedness than as a life without end in heavenly glory and joy, set free from all the imperfections and evils of this earthly world. So long as we are walking here below by faith and not by sight, we must be content with those pictures of the future blessings of eternal life with the Lord in His heavenly kingdom which the Scriptures have borrowed from the divinely ordered form of the Israelitish theocracy, presenting Jerusalem with its temple, and Canaan the abode of the covenant people of the Old Testament as types of the kingdom of heaven, and picturing the glory of the world to come as a city of God coming down from heaven upon the new earth, built of gold, precious stones, and pearls, and illumined with the light of the glory of the Lord. — To this there must no doubt be added, in the case of the Old Testament prophets, the fact that the division of the kingdom of the Messiah into a period of development on this side, and one of full completion on the other, had not yet been so clearly revealed to them as it has been to us by Christ in the New Testament; so that Isaiah is the only prophet who prophesies of the destruction of the present world and the creation of a new heaven and new earth. If we leave out of sight this culminating point of the Old Testament prophecy, all the prophets depict the glorification and completion of the kingdom of God established in Israel by the Messiah, on the one hand, as a continuous extension of His dominion on Zion from Jerusalem outwards over all the earth, through the execution of the judgment upon the heathen nations of the world; and, on the other hand, as a bursting of the land of Canaan into miraculous fruitful ness for the increase of His people's prosperity, and as a glorification of Jerusalem, to which all nations will go on pilgrimage to the house of the Lord on Zion, to worship the Lord and present their treasures to Him as offerings. Thus also in Ezekiel the bringing back of the people of Israel, who have been scattered by the Lord among the heathen on account of their apostasy, to the promised land, the restoration of Jerusalem and the temple, which have been destroyed, and the future blessing of Israel with the most abundant supply of earthly good from the land which has been glorified into paradisaical fruitfulness; form a continuity, in which the small beginnings of the return of the people from Babylon and the deliverance and blessing which are still in the future, lie folded in one another, and the present state and that beyond are blended together. And accordingly he depicts the glory and completion of the restored and renovated kingdom of God under the figure of a new division of Canaan among the twelve tribes of all Israel, united under the sceptre of the second David for ever, and forming one single nation, by which all the incongruities of the former times are removed, and also of a new sanctuary built upon a very high mountain in the centre of Canaan, in which the people walking in the commandments and rights of their God offer sacrifice, and come to worship before the Lord in His courts on the Sabbaths, new moons, and yearly feasts. This blessedness of Israel also is not permanently disturbed through the invasion of the restored land by Gog and his hordes, but rather perfected and everlastingly established by the fact that the Lord God destroys this last enemy, and causes him to perish by self-immolation. But however strongly the Old Testament drapery of the Messianic prophecy stands out even in Ezekiel, there are traits to be met with even in this form, by which we may recognise the fact that the Israelitish theocratical form simply constitutes the clothing in which the New Testament constitution of the kingdom of God is veiled.1 Among these traits we reckon not only the description given in ch. xl.-xlviii., which can only be interpreted in a typical sense, but also the vision of the raising to life of the dry bones in ch. xxxvii. 1-14, the ultimate fulfilment of which will not take place till the general resurrection, and more especially the prophecy of the restoration not only of Jerusalem, but also of Samaria and Sodom, to their original condition (ch. xvi. 53 sqq.), which, as we have already shown, will not be perfectly fulfilled till the Traktyyeveala, i.e. the general renovation of the world after the last judgment. From this last-named
1 Of all such pictures it may certainly be said that we " cannot see how an Old Testament prophet, when speaking of Canaan, Jerusalem, Zion, and their future glorification, can have thought of anything else than the earthly sites of the Old Testament kingdom of God " (Volck); but this objection proves nothing against their typical explanation, as we know that the prophets of the Old Testament, who prophesied of the grace that was to come to us, inquired and searched diligently what, and what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ that was in them did signify (1 Pet. i. 10, 11). Even, therefore, if the prophets in their uninspired meditation upon that which they had prophesied, when moved by the Holy Ghost, did not discern the typical meaning of their own utterances, we, who are living in the times of the fulfilment, and are acquainted not only with the commencement of the fulfilment in the coming of our Lord, in His life, sufferings, and death, and His resurrection and ascension to heaven, as well as in His utterances concerning His second coming, but also with a long course of fulfilment in the extension for eighteen hundred years of the kingdom of heaven established by Him on earth, have not so much to inquire what the Old Testament prophets thought in their searching into the prophecies which they were inspired to utter by the Spirit of Christ, even if it were possible to discover what their thoughts really were, but rather, in the light of the fulfilment that has already taken place, to inquire what the Spirit of Christ, which enabled the prophets to see and to predict the coining of His kingdom in pictures drawn from the Old Testament kingdom of God, has foretold and revealed to us through the medium of these figures.
prophecy, to winch the healing of the waters of the Dead Sea in ch. xlvii. 9 sqq. supplies a parallel, pointing as it does to the renewal of the earth after the destruction of the present world, it clearly follows that the tribes of Israel which receive Canaan for a perpetual possession are not the Jewish people converted to Christ, but the Israel of God, i.e. the people of God of the new covenant gathered from among both Jews and Gentiles; and that Canaan, in which they are to dwell, is not the earthly Canaan or Palestine between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, but the New Testament Canaan, i.e. the territory of the kingdom of God, whose boundaries reach from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. And the temple upon a very high mountain in the midst of this Canaan, in which the Lord is enthroned, and causes the river of the water of life to flow down from His throne over His kingdom, so that the earth produces the tree of life with leaves as medicine for men, and the Dead Sea is filled with fishes and living creatures, is a figurative representation and type of the gracious presence of the Lord in His church, which is realized in the present period of the earthly development of the kingdom of heaven in the form of the Christian church in a spiritual and invisible manner in the indwelling of the Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers, and in a spiritual and invisible operation in the church, but which will eventually manifest itself when our Lord shall appear in the glory of the Father, to translate His church into the kingdom of glory, in such a manner that we shall see the almighty God and the Lamb with the eyes of our glorified body, and worship before His throne.
This worship is described in our vision (ch. xliii. 13-xlvi. 24) as the offering of sacrifice according to the Israelitish form of divine worship under the Old Testament; and in accordance with the mode peculiar to Ezekiel of carrying out all the pictures in detail, the leading instructions concerning the Levitical sacrifices are repeated and modified in harmony with the new circumstances. As the Mosaic worship after the building of the tabernacle commenced with the consecration of the altar, so Ezekiel's description of the new worship commences with the consecration of the altar of burnt-offering, and then spreads over the entering into and exit from the temple, the things requisite for the service at the altar, the duties and rights of the worshippers at the altar, and the quantity and quality of the sacrifices to be offered on the Sabbaths, new moons, and yearly feasts, as well as every day. From a comparison of the new sacrificial thorah with that of Moses in our exposition of these chapters, we have observed various distinctions which essentially modified the character of the whole service, viz. a thorough alteration in the order and celebration of the feasts, and a complete change in the proportion between the material of the meat-offering and the animal sacrifices. So far as the first distinction is concerned, the daily sacrifice is reduced to a morning burnt- and meat-offering, and the evening sacrifice of the Mosaic law is abolished; on the other hand, the Sabbath offering is more than tripled in quantity; again, in the case of the new-moon offerings, the sin-offering is omitted and the burnt-offering diminished; in the yearly feasts, the offerings prescribed for the seven days of the feast of unleavened bread and of the feast of tabernacles are equalized in quantity and quality, and the daily burnt- and meat-offerings of the feast of unleavened bread are considerably increased; on the other hand, the daily sacrifices of the least of tabernacles are diminished in proportion to those prescribed by the Mosaic law. Moreover, the feast of weeks, or harvest-feast, and in the seventh month the day of trumpets and the feast of atonement, with its great atoning sacrifices, are dropt. In the place of these, copious sin-offerings are appointed for the first, seventh, and fourteenth days of the first month. To do justice to the meaning of these changes, we must keep in mind the idea of the Mosaic cycle of feasts. (For this, see my BibL ArchcioL I. § 76 sqq.) The ceremonial worship prescribed by the Mosaic law, in addition to the daily sacrifice, consisted of a cycle of feast days and festal seasons regulated according to the number seven, which had its root in the Sabbath, and was organized in accordance with the division of time, based upon the creation, into weeks, months, and years. As the Lord God created the world in six days, and ended the creation on the seventh day by blessing and sanctifying that day through resting from His works, so also were His people to sanctify every seventh day of the week to Him by resting from all work, and by a special burnt- and meat-offering. And, like the seventh day of the week, so also was the seventh month of the year to be sanctified by the keeping of the new moon with sabbatical rest and special sacrifices, and every seventh year to be a sabbatical year. Into this cycle of holy days, arranged according to the number seven, the yearly feasts consecrated to the remembrance of the mighty acts of the Lord for the establishment, preservation, and blessing of His people, were so dovetailed that the number of these yearly feasts amounted to seven, — the Passover, feast of unleavened bread, feast of weeks, day of trumpets, day of atonement, feast of tabernacles, and conclusion of this feast, — of which the feasts of unleavened bread and tabernacles were kept for seven days each. These seven feasts formed two festal circles, the first of which with three feasts referred to the raising of Israel into the people of God and to its earthly subsistence; whilst the second, which fell in the seventh month, and was introduced by the day of trumpets, had for its object the preservation of Israel in a state of grace, and its happiness in the full enjoyment of the blessings of salvation, and commenced with the day of atonement, culminated in the feast of tabernacles, and ended with the octave of that feast. In the festal thorah of Ezekiel, on the other hand, the weekly Sabbath did indeed form the foundation of all the festal seasons, and the keeping of the new moon as the monthly Sabbath corresponds to this; but the number of yearly feasts is reduced to the Passover, the seven days' feast of unleavened bread, and the seven days' feast of the seventh month (the feast of tabernacles). The feast of weeks and the presentation of the sheaf of firstfruits on the second day of the feast of unleavened bread are omitted; and thus the allusion in these two feasts to the harvest, or to their earthly maintenance, is abolished. Of still greater importance are the abolition both of the day of trumpets and of the day of atonement, and the octave of the feast of tabernacles, and the institution of three great sin-offerings in the first month, by which the seventh month is divested of the sabbatical character which it had in the Mosaic ilwrah. According to the Mosaic order of feasts, Israel was to consecrate its life to the Lord and to His service, by keeping the feast of Passover and the seven days' feast of unleavened bread every year in the month of its deliverance from Egypt as the first month of the year, in commemoration of this act of divine mercy, — by appropriating to itself afresh the sparing of its firstborn, and its reception into the covenant with the Lord, in the sacrifice of the paschal lamb and in the paschal meal, — and by renewing its transportation from the old condition in Egypt into the new life of divine grace in the feast of unleavened bread, — then by its receiving every month absolution for the sins of weakness committed in the previous month, by means of a sin-offering presented on the new moon, — and by keeping the seventh month of the year in a sabbatical manner, by observing the new moon with sabbatical rest and the tenth day as a day of atonement, on which it received forgiveness of all the sins that had remained without expiation during the course of the year through the blood of the great sin-offering, and the purification of its sanctuary from all the uncleanness of those who approached it, so that, on the feast of tabernacles which followed, they could not only thank the Lord their God for their gracious preservation in the way through the wilderness, and their introduction into the Canaan so abounding in blessings, but could also taste the happiness of vital fellowship with their God. The yearly feasts of Israel, which commenced with the celebration of the memorial of their reception into the Lord's covenant of grace, culminated in the two high feasts of the seventh month, the great day of atonement, and the joyous feast of tabernacles, to indicate that the people living under the law needed, in addition to the expiation required from month to month, another great and comprehensive expiation in the seventh month of the year, in order to be able to enjoy the blessing consequent upon its introduction into Canaan, the blessedness of the sonship of God. According to Ezekiel's order of feasts and sacrifices, on the other hand, Israel was to be<^in every new year of its life with a great sin-offering on the first, seventh, and fourteenth days of the first month, and through the blood of these sin-offerings procure for itself forgiveness of all sins, and the removal of all the uncleanness of its sanctuary, before it renewed the covenant of grace with the Lord in the paschal meal, and its transposition into the new life of grace in the days of unleavened bread, and throughout the year consecrated its life to the Lord in the daily burntoffering, through increased Sabbath-offerings and the regular sacrifices of the new moon; and lastly, through the feast in commemoration of its entrance into Canaan, in order to live before Him a blameless, righteous, and happy life. In the Mosaic order of the feasts and sacrifices the most comprehensive act of expiation, and the most perfect reconciliation of the people to God which the old covenant could offer, lay in the seventh month, the Sabbath month of the year, by which it was indicated that the Sinaitic covenant led the people toward reconciliation, and only offered it to them in the middle of the year; whereas Ezekiel's new order of worship offers to Israel, now returning to its God, reconciliation through the forgiveness of its sins and purification from its uncleannesses at the beginning of the year, so that it can walk before God in righteousness in the strength of the blood of the atoning sacrifice throughout the year, and rejoice in the blessings of His grace. Now, inasmuch as the great atoning sacrifice of the day of atonement pointed typically to the eternally availing atoning sacrifice which Christ was to offer in the midst of the years of the world through His death upon the cross on Golgotha, the transposition of the chief atoning sacrifices to the commencement of the year by Ezekiel indicates that, for the Israel of the new covenant, this eternally-availing atoning sacrifice would form the foundation for all its acts of worship and keeping of feasts, as well as for the whole course of its life. It is in this that we find the Messianic feature of Ezekiel's order of sacrifices and feasts, by which it acquires a character more in accordance with the New Testament completion of the sacrificial service, which also presents itself to us in the other and still more deeply penetrating modifications of the Mosaic thorali of sacrifice on the part of Ezekiel, both in the fact that the daily sacrifice is reduced to a morning sacrifice, and also in the fact that the quantities are tripled in the Sabbath-offerings and those of the feast of unleavened bread as compared with the Mosaic institutes, and more especially in the change in the relative proportion of the quantity of the meat-offering to that of the burnt-offering. For example, as the burnt-offering shadows forth the reconciliation and surrender to the Lord of the person offering the sacrifice, whilst the meat-offering shadows forth the fruit of this surrender, the sanctification of the life in good works, the increase in the quantity of the meatoffering connected with the burnt-offering, indicates that the people offering these sacrifices will bring forth more of the fruit of sanctification in good works upon the ground of the reconciliation which it has received. We do not venture to carry out to any greater length the interpretation of the differences between the Mosaic law of sacrifice and that of Ezekiel, or to point out any Messianic allusions either in the number of victims prescribed for the several feast days, or in the fact that a different quantity is prescribed for the meat-offering connected with the daily burnt-offering from that enjoined for the festal sacrifices, or in any other things of a similar nature.
These points of detail apparently belong merely to the individualizing of the matter. And so also, in the fact that the provision of the people's sacrifices for the Sabbath, new moon, and feasts devolves upon the prince, and in the appointment of the place where the prince is to stand and worship in the temple, and to hold the sacrificial meal, we are unable to detect any Messianic elements, for the simple reason that the position which David and Solomon assumed in relation to the temple and its ritual furnished Ezekiel with a model for these regulations. And, in a similar manner, the precept concerning the hereditary property of the prince and its transmission to his sons (ch. xlvi. 16 sqq.) is to be explained from the fact that the future David is thought of as a king, like the son of Jesse, who will be the prince of Israel for ever, not in his own person, but in his family. The only thing that still appears worthy of consideration is the circumstance that throughout the whole of Ezekiel's order of worship no allusion is made to the high priest, but the same holiness is demanded of all the priests which was required of the high priesc in the Mosaic law. This points to the fact that the Israel of the future will answer to its calling to be a holy people of the Lord in a more perfect manner than in past times. In this respect the new temple will also differ from the old temple of Solomon. The very elaborate description of the gates and courts, with their buildings, in the new temple has no other object than to show how the future sanctuary will answer in all its parts to the holiness of the Lord's house, and will be so arranged that no person uncircumcised in heart and flesh, will be able to enter it. — But all these things belong to the " shadow of things to come/ which were to pass away when "the body of Christ" appeared (Col. ii. 17; Heb. x. 1). When, therefore, M. Baumgarten, Auberlen, and other millenarians, express the opinion that this shadow-work will be restored after the eventual conversion of Israel to Christ, in support of which Baumgarten even appeals to the authority of the apostle of the Gentiles, they have altogether disregarded the warning of this very apostle: a Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ" (Col. ii. 8, 16, 20, 21).
Lastly, with regard to the prophecy concerning Gog, the prince of Magog, and his expedition against the restored land and people of Israel (Ezek. xxxviii. and xxxix.), and its relation to the new conformation of the kingdom of God depicted in ch. xl.-xlviii., the assumption of Hengstenberg (on Rev. xx. 7), " that Gog and Magog represent generally all the future enemies of the kingdom of God, and that we have here embraced in one large picture all that has been developing itself in a long series of events, so that the explanations which take them as referring to the Syrian kings, the Goths and Vandals, or the Turks, are all alike true, and only false in their exclusiveness," — is not in harmony with the contents of this prophecy, and cannot be reconciled with the position which it occupies in Ezekiel and in the Apocalypse. For the prophecy concerning Gog, though it is indeed essentially different from those which concern themselves with the Assyrians, Chaldeans, Egyptians, and other smaller or larger nations of the world, has nothing " Utopian" about it, which indicates " a thoroughly ideal and comprehensive character." Even if the name Gog be formed by Ezekiel in the freest manner from Magog, and however remote the peoples led by Gog from the ends of the earth to make war upon Israel, when restored and living in the deepest peace, may be; yet Magog, Meshech, Tubal, Pharaz, Cush, and Phut are not Utopian nations, but the names of historical tribes of whose existence there is no doubt, although their settlements lie outside the known civilised world. Whether there be any foundation for the old Jewish interpretation of the name Magog as referring to a great Scythian tribe, or not, we leave undecided; but so much is certain, that Magog was a people settled in the extreme north of the world known to the ancients. Nor will we attempt to decide whether the invasion of Hither Asia by the Scythians forma the historical starting-point or connecting link for Ezekiel's prophecy concerning Gog; but there can be no doubt that this prophecy does not refer to an invasion on the part of the Scythians, but foretells a last great conflict, in which the heathen dwelling on the borders of the globe will eniraa-e against the kingdom of God, after the kingdom of the world in its organized national forms, as Asshur, Babel, Javan, shall have been destroyed, and the kingdom of Christ shall have spread over the whole of the civilised world. Gog of Magog is the last hostile phase of the world-power opposed to God, which will wacre war on earth against the kingdom of God, and that the rude force of the uncivilised heathen world, which will not rise up and attack the church of Christ till after the fall of the world-power bearing the name of Babylon in the Apocalypse, i.e. till towards the end of the present course of the world, when it will attempt to lay it waste and destroy it, but will be itself annihilated by the Lord by miracles of His almighty power. In the " conglomerate of nations," which Gog leads against the people of Israel at the end of the years, there is a combination of all that is ungodly in the heathen world, and that has become ripe for casting into the great wine-press of the wrath of God, to be destroyed by the storms of divine judgment (ch. xxxviii. 21, 22, xxxix. 6). But, as Baumgarten has correctlyobserved (in Herzog's Cyclopaedia), u inasmuch as the undisguised and final malice of the world of nations against the kingdom of God is exhibited here, Ezekiel could truly say that the prophets of the former times had already prophesied of this enemy (ch. xxxviii. 17), and that the day of vengeance upon Gog and Magog is that of which Jehovah has already spoken (ch. xxxix. 8), — that is to say, all that has been stated concerning hostility on the part of the heathen towards the kingdom of Jehovah, and the judgment upon this hostility, finds its ultimate fulfilment in this the last and extremest opposition of all." This is in harmony not only writh the assumption of this prophecy in Rev. xx., but also with the declaration of the Apocalypse, that it is the Satan released from his prison who leads the heathen to battle against the camp of the saints and the beloved citv, and that fire from God out of heaven consumes these enemies, and the devil who has seduced them is cast into the lake of fire to be tormented for ever and ever. — According to all this, the appearing of Gog is still in the future, and the day alone can clearly show what form it will assume.