This Treatise
Is Affectionately Dedicated
To The Memory Of
My Mother
Whose Deep Piety and Earnest Prayers
Have Had So Much To Do With Determining
The Course Of My Life: At Whose Knee Also
I First Gave Myself In Penitence
To God In Christ

PART 1 OF 2

The King Is Coming

“Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him; and they also which pierced him; and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.” — Rev. 1:7.

“After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them. Watch therefore, for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.” — Matt. 25:19; 24:42.

The following short treatise or Scripture exposition on the Kingdom of God in its Messianic aspect has been written with thoughtful, spiritually minded Christians in view, particularly those who love their Lord’s “appearing” and earnestly desire to understand its relationship to His “Kingdom.” We say “spiritually minded,” because “the nature man” (not necessarily the sensual man, but man as unregenerated, even at his best) simply cannot accept or understand the things with which the Spirit of God deals. 1 Cor. 2:14.

Our many Bible quotations generally follow the King James Authorized Version, as being the most familiar to English readers, as well as being likely to continue to be for a long time yet the Bible of the common people, despite its antiquated phraseology and style in many places. Which defect, it would seem, has been sufficiently corrected in the American Standard version of 1901, than which for students wishing to follow the original closely, no better English version of the scriptures is at all likely to appear in our day.

It is further suggested that the student of this treatise first read it straight through at least once without pausing to look up the many Scripture references given, and then go through it again more carefully, considering all of these. The experience should be found rewarding, if only one can take the time for it, or is sufficiently interested in the matter to do so.

Basic Truths

To come at once to our subject then, we have first to note that the Kingdom of God is not a mere concept of the religious mind. That is to say, it is not an imaginary thing. It is real; just as real as God Himself is. Though, unfortunately, even He appears not to be very real to some people. They are not God-conscious souls. They lack spiritual sensitivity. Become deaf to God, blind to God, and also insensitive to His presence, how can they ever see or sense His spiritual kingdom? I say “spiritual kingdom” because, since God is a Spirit, or, more correctly, since He is spirit and not flesh, and since even the human body of His Christ has now become heavenly and spiritual in its nature and He is, therefore, not to be known any more “after the flesh” (1 Cor. 15:44–49; 2 Cor. 5:16; Phil. 3:21); it follows that His kingdom, both in its present as well as in its future aspect, must in its nature be in accord with himself and so be heavenly and spiritual too.

Its subjects may be visible (as planets, or kingdoms, or men); or they may be invisible, as angels and whatever else may exist in the world of spirit. But in all God rules as “the King eternal, immortal, (and from our side) invisible, the only wise God” our Savior. So also with the Messiah and the kingdom given to him. It is visible as to the bodies of his subject, but not as to his throne or the sphere of his activity, the hearts of his people. “Flesh and blood” are not of its nature.

Thus it happens that the only definition which the Bible anywhere specifically gives us of it in its present phase, which is the one that directly concerns us now, makes it to be an essentially spiritual reality. “The kingdom of God,” says the great apostle, “is not eating and drinking,”—“eating and drinking, and making merry,” as at Solomon’s inauguration in 1 Kings 4:20. It is not that, he says, not fleshly indulgence and enjoyment, “but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17); which is quite possibly the real reason for our Lord’s saying on one occasion that there were some of his hearers who would “in no wise taste of death till they had seen the kingdom of God come with power.” Mark 9:1. [* As against the view that the saying was fulfilled just one week later in the Transfiguration (verse 2), it ought to be enough to point out that a mere week was quite too short a time to suit the language used. And besides, while the Transfiguration brought honor and glory to Jesus personally (2 Peter. 1:17–18), it could not be said to have brought the kingdom of God. But the careful student will also wish to consider the applicability of Matthew’s rendering of Jesus’ words: “till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” Matthew 16:28.]

Whether we take Him here as referring directly to the Pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit, which filled believers with a deluge of those spiritual qualities in which the kingdom, as defined by the apostle, becomes manifest, or as thinking of that mighty influx of believers into the Christian Church which was to come about in the years immediately following that great formative event; the meaning in either case is the same; the kingdom of God was to Jesus a great spiritual movement. It meant to him the entry into human life of a great saving spiritual force, directed, not toward political or social reform, but toward the deliverance of men and women from sin and the power of the devil in both soul and body, as individuals plucked like brands from the burning (Amos 4:11), so that they would live to “give thanks to the Father, who had delivered them from the power of darkness and had translated them into the kingdom of his dear Son.” Col. 1:12, 13.

In other words, it meant to him, not the establishment of a Christianized social order, with death still regnant in it (as must always be the case in this world with any human society, however perfect), but the present spiritual regeneration of individuals, looking forward to a completely new order of things which required for its realization not only this present deliverance “from the power of darkness,” but also the Second Coming of Christ in glory to resurrect the dead, change the bodies of all living believers into His likeness, judge the world of mankind, and usher in the eternal state. Such, according to the clear teaching of the New Testament, was the final objective of the kingdom which Christ and his apostles preached and brought to men. And they did bring it, even as he said, “If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you.” Mt. 12:28. See also Acts 8:12, 13 and 20:25, with all of ch. 19.

Finally, in addition to these three basic truths of the reality, spirituality and power of the kingdom Christ preached, a fourth basic truth concerning it, and a very important one indeed for us to see, is that in the wisdom of God it was a special subject of divinely-given prophecy in the writings of the Old Testament. This means that when in due time it came in with Christ (Mk. 1:14, 15), everything of importance about it and its King could be verified by its accord with what the Holy Spirit had caused holy men of God to write concerning it many centuries before; yet not with too great verbal exactness, lest faith be made to rest upon too mechanical a basis. A measure of obscurity is entirely compatible with a true Divine communication, as the Lord himself showed in Num. 12:5–8 by what he said to Aaron and his sister about the difference between Moses and other prophets, and as also he showed in his own resort to the parabolic method in his teaching and preaching of the kingdom “in the days of his flesh”.

“An unction from the Holy One”, giving spiritual understanding, must always be a requisite to the discerning of the Spirit’s meaning in the writings of the prophets [* For a valuable discussion of the nature of prophecy, see first two chapters of Dr. O. T. Allis’ “The Unity of Isaiah”, published by the Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., Philadelphia, Pa.] and applying them. For, as against the Higher Critics, the great question is not what meaning the prophets or their hearers may have attached to the words they uttered, but what the Spirit of Christ which was in the prophets and moved them to speak, meant in what they said, as all the writers of the New Testament very well understood after the same Spirit of Christ had come to dwell in and move them. See Acts 4:25; 2 Sam. 23:1, 2; 1 Pet. 1:10–12; 2 Pet. 1:20–21.

“According To The Scriptures”

And so we turn now to consider briefly the nature of those Old Testament scriptures themselves, upon which the true doctrine of the Messianic kingdom must ultimately rest, and to note how wonderfully they were seen to have been fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. For, in the view of all the New Testament writers, everything in the life and work of Jesus had to be “according to the scriptures” (rightly interpreted, of course) for him to be the Messiah, “him of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write.” Jn. 1:41, 45.

Without attempting here to define inspiration, or to prove the Divinely-given character of those ancient Hebrew writings, the present writer would simply state his own hearty and intelligent acceptance of it as a fact, and that primarily on the authority of his Lord’s own example, being well assured that neither He nor His apostles would in so important a matter as this, ever have allowed themselves to hold or to follow an erroneous contemporary belief. It is also his assured conviction that since God must foreknow and foresee all events, it should not be thought at all strange, but rather a thing to be expected, that not only in regard to important secular events related to the life of his chosen people, but especially in regard to events in the life and work of the promised Saviour of the world, God’s Spirit should so direct and move in chosen men of God that the things which were later to come to pass would be written of by them in a suitable manner and with a fullness far beyond the power of any natural foresight or insight of their own to predict and also even beyond their own immediate personal concern or conscious intention in writing.

Which is exactly what our Lord and all the New Testament writers regard Israel’s prophets as having done; for in that light they quote and refer to them repeatedly.

It was not that in what was “written” in the Old Testament they merely discovered some analogies of thought or language which seemed to them to be suitable to apply to current events, and so they applied them, saying “as it is written”, or “that it might be fulfilled [* This expression does not mean that events were actually framed to fulfil certain prophecies, but that they occurred according to the Divine purpose as shadowed forth or foretold in earlier days. Acts 2:23; 4:28.] which was spoken by” this or that prophet; as we today might quote or apply to some current incident a statement or remark we happened to find in Shakespeare, for instance. Their God-given spiritual insight into the nature of those O.T. writings went far deeper than anything of that sort. By the enlightenment and under the guidance of the same Spirit of Christ which was in the prophets (and without whose illumination the things of God can be discerned by no man, as we are told in 1 Cor. 2:11, 14), they were led to see in those treasured “holy writings” the Spirit’s own intended references to the Divinely foreseen and foreknown events, and so quoted them, and (what to the sophisticated and scholarly mind of today is the still more remarkable and even discerting fact) they often did so without any regard whatever to the immediate verbal context! Can it be that there is some sort of spiritual context or continuity in the Word of God which mere scholarship is missing in its insistence upon the importance of the verbal context for right scripture interpretation, but which the New Testament writers under the guidance of the Holy Spirit were led to ignore? It is an interesting question. We must remember that the Word of God written is something more than ordinary human literature, to be read and judged by our common laws of syntax. Those laws simply do not always apply, because the writers themselves do not follow them, as every reader must often have noticed in the prophetical writings and wondered at. Anyhow, and whatever be our explanation of the phenomenon, it is certain that it was not mere analogies of language which our Lord and all the New Testament writers believed they saw in the Old Testament scriptures, but Spirit-given intimations and predictive prophecies of what they were now in the midst of or were dealing with historically. For “this and that” was not only “written”, as they said, but specifically “written of” someone or some event, whoever or whatever it might be. In this connection all of the following passages will very well repay reverent and careful study, and there are many more like them. Mt. 11:10; 26:24; Mk. 9:12, 13; Lu. 24:44–47; Jn. 12:14–16; Acts 1:16; 2:25–31; 13:47, 1 Pet. 1:10, 11.

Biblical Aspects Of God’s Kingdom

Now, both in the Bible and coming before our minds as we think of it, we see not only one but three different forms or aspects of God’s kingdom or rule—the terms being interchangeable. For in Scripture God’s “kingdom” always means God’s “rule”, or where He rules.

1. The first form or aspect of it then, and the one in which we see it most clearly, is in the material universe round about us everywhere. The regularly recurring seasons, the planetary revolutions in the sky, and the whole established order of Nature, all proclaim in reason’s ear God Almighty’s sovereign rule. “The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom ruleth over all.” Psa. 103:19. Nothing anywhere goes round of itself; not even the weather-vane on the housetop, the hands of the watch upon your wrist, or the blood that circulates in all your body. Everything moves under power. 2. A second aspect of God’s kingdom or rule, which the Scriptures everywhere acknowledge and sometimes even stress for our instruction, is in the domain of human government. Even here, where men imagine they can do so much and are so often found boasting of their freedom and their power, even here, the Bible assures us, GOD is KING. Ps. 47:7, 8. Yes, “the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will.” Dan. 4:17.

We imagine that men rule, because so few of us ever live long enough for history to show us the truth. But we may read it in the history books if we will; and for the comfort and edification of His people God has made it very clear in His own written Word. Let just two outstanding examples of it suffice for us here; the one, of His humbling the exalted, and the other of His exalting the humble, in the domain of the kingdom of men.

I refer, of course, to the humbling of proud Nebuchadnezzar and the exalting of David the shepherd lad. In the one case God showed that he rules by depriving a great man of his kingdom; and in the other he showed it by giving to a humble man a throne and kingdom that was unique among dominions, in that it was over a specially covenanted people of God, and, like many other things about that people, such as their deliverance from Egypt and their desert pilgrimage, their Canaan inheritance and seventh day rest, and their tabernacle with its priestly services, was divinely intended to have definite typical significance. That is to say, it was meant to point forward to something similar but much greater and of a more spiritual nature, as is the case with all true Scripture types. One physical thing never typified another purely physical thing. In other words, the kingdom of David and Solomon was designed to serve, like the Mosaic order of things, “for a testimony of those (spiritual) things which were afterward to be spoken” or revealed. Heb. 3:5. 3. Then, last of all, there is the Messianic Kingdom itself, the rule of God which was to be established under his Christ, of which the Palestinian Davidic kingdom was a designed earthly prefigurement, and which the Bible throughout, from its first book clear through to its last, is the most concerned with, first as a thing of promise, then as a subject of prophecy, and finally as a realized actuality.

And this, as the New Testament everywhere testifies, is the kingdom given to Jesus the son of David and Son of God, our exalted Saviour and Lord both now and for ever; “the kingdom of God’s dear Son” (Col. 1:13); who therefore bears in the New Testament the tremendous titles of “Lord of All”, “King of Kings”, and “Prince (archon or ruler) of the kings of the earth”, Acts 10:36; Rev. 17:14; 1:5.

The Time Of Christ’s Enthronement

And now comes the all-important question, just when did our Saviour receive the exalted position which called for and justifies the application to him of such tremendous titles? Just when did He become what they declare?

If we would do Him full justice, we will have to reach into eternity; for thus it is written: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.… All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.” And “Thou Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth to me who is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting”, or “from the days of eternity.” John 1:1, 3; Micah 5:2.

Even the Jews of Christ’s time were well aware that the prophet Micah had spoken here of their king Messiah. Mt. 2:1–6; Jn. 7:42. But we are specially concerned right now with the time of the fulfillment of the prophecy, when he was actually made “ruler in Israel” and at the same time set over all the kings and judges of the earth, as David by the Spirit (2 Sam. 23:2) had so clearly said he would be. Psa. 2:6–12.

IT WAS WHEN He said to His disciples, “ALL AUTHORITY has been given to me, in heaven and ON EARTH [* Observe how clearly Zacharias had grasped the spiritual character of the work which the “horn of salvation”, raised up of God “in the house of his servant David”, was to perform. Lu. 1:67–79. There was to him absolutely nothing political about it, but only the concept of a salvation that was to enable God’s people to “serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all their days”, as pictured so beautifully, and “sign”-ified by the prophets in such passages as Isa. 11:6–9; 35:8–10; Eze. 34:22–28; Hos. 2:18–23.] Go ye therefore into all the world and preach the gospel to all the nations; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” Mt. 28:18–20. See also Lu. 10:22–24 ASV, and Jn. 17:2. [* It is, of course, one thing to have all authority, and thus be “King over all the earth” (Zech. 14:9), and quite another thing to manifest that fact to men, so that they can see it. Everything is to be in its own time and manner, according to the Divine will. 1 Tim. 6:14, 15.]

IT WAS WHEN God the Father “crowned him with glory and honor” (Heb. 2:9), seating him at his own right hand in the heavens as “the head of all principality and power” (Col. 2:10), high over “all might and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.” Eph. 1:20, 21; Phil. 2:9–11; 1 Pet. 3:22. And what greater exaltation than that could possibly ever be given Him?

Thus his own positive declarations, together with those of his apostles as recorded in the New Testament, give Bible believing Christians absolutely no room for any uncertainty whatsoever as to this all-important point of the time of the Saviour’s exaltation to the throne of universal sovereignty, as King of all kings and Lord of all lords, as well as of all angels and powers in the spirit world. “ALL authority” is His, as He said, “in heaven and in earth.”

The trouble here, and the weakness, lies with us, in that we are so slow to believe the truth, really, and are so forgetful of it even after we have seemed to believe it and even with our lips have extolled Him as “Lord of All” in our songs of praise. Or is it that we are really imagining with so many today that it could ever be any additional honor to Him to be given an earthly throne for a thousand years, or any period, only in the end to have the devil gather the nations together in a world-wide rebellion against him at its close? Rev. 20:7–10. Impossible! There must be, and there is, some more consistent explanation of the meaning of that famous passage, which does not involve such another humiliation for the Son of God. So we shall be referring to this later on.

The Messianic Kingdom Foreseen And Foretold

The trouble with too many of the Lord’s people is and has been too much earthly-mindedness. We are too unspiritual in our outlook and thinking. When someone says “kingdom” why should we at once have to start visualizing something earthly and political? Do we not know that the whole “king” and “kingdom” idea as applied to the relationship between God and his people actually took its rise in the carnal mind of Israel, which made them want to be “like all the nations” and was such a grief both to the Lord and to His servant Samuel? 1 Sam. 8:5–9; 12:17–19.

For God’s mind in regard to his relationship to his people never was that it should be like that of a king to his subjects, which was altogether too cold and distant for the love of God. His desire always was that the relationship should be that of a father with his children, his “sons and daughters”. Exod. 4:22, 23; 2 Cor. 6:17, 18.

But that was too spiritual a condition for the tribes of Israel to rise to at that time. It had to wait for another day. And so, as the prophet tells us, he gave them a king in his anger, even Saul, but soon had to take him away in his wrath. Hos. 13:11. And then, over-ruling for good the unsavory situation, he gave them David and the special promises concerning the Messiah, who was to come of his line and would do all His pleasure. In and through Him therefore God’s mind would at last be fully realized; for in Him divine “kingship”, at least in so far as God’s redeemed are concerned, is finally and for ever to be lost in the Divine “Fatherhood” at the end of the present age; even as He said, “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” Mt. 13:40–43. Praise His wonderful name! Isa. 9:6.

To Jesus personally God was always Father rather than King. Jn. 20:17. He was indeed a “servant” Mt. 12:18. He “took on” himself that form of being. Phil. 2:7. But He was inherently and eternally the Son. Mt. 11:27. In union with Him therefore we are more than servants: we are sons. Gal. 3:26, 27; 4:4–6. But all these things had to be spiritually discerned. They did not lie plainly upon the surface of the prophetic word. They were not of its “letter”: they would need to be interpreted to be understood aright. Lu. 24:25–27 ASV. To see them, man needed the inner light of a spiritual life which is not naturally his. He has to be “born again”, of the Spirit; as Nicodemus should have known, but to the need of which he became awakened only late in his life, when he visited the Nazarene one night and was told “in words true and plain” that except a man were born from above he could neither see nor enter the kingdom of God. He can neither understand its nature nor share its blessedness. Jn. 3:3–10. Clearly, then, the kingdom that Jesus was preaching was a spiritual reality. From which it just as clearly follows that to the extent that it had been a subject of Old Testament prophecy (which it certainly was, according to all schools of interpretation) it must have been of spiritual things that the prophets wrote when they spoke of it, whatever might be the nature of the terms they used in doing so.

They say “David” when the person the Spirit moving them had in mind was not David himself, but the one he typified, even Jesus Christ. See Isa. 55:3, 4; Jer. 30:9; Eze. 34:23, 24; Hos. 3:5. For Jesus said their writings spoke of him. Jn. 5:39.

They might say “Jerusalem” and “Zion” and “My Holy Mountain”, when the Spirit’s reference was not to the literal city or mountain at all but to something spiritually analogous, which they typified or were suitable figures of. See, for example, Ps. 87:1–3, 5, 6; Isa. 11:9; 28:16; 40:1–11; chs. 59–62; Jer. 3:14–17; Joel 3:16–21; Mic. 4:1, 2; Gal. 4:26, 27; Heb. 12:22.

They often spoke of what was distant in the terms of what was present; as in Gen. 3:15, where a direct reference to enmity between mankind and snakes looked forward to Christ’s victory over Satan, the dark power behind the scene; or 2 Sam. 7:12–16, where promises made to David concerning Solomon looked forward far beyond him to David’s greater son, the Lord Jesus Christ; or Isa. 7:14–16, where a sign to the house of David in the days of King Ahaz looked forward and referred to the birth of Jesus; or Hos. 1:6–10; 2:23, where words plainly addressed to Israel by the prophet are by both Paul and Peter seen to apply to Christians, the former even seeing in them the calling of the Gentiles! Rom. 9:25, 26; 1 Pet. 2:10.

Thus we can see how Peter could say that those ancient Hebrew prophets greatly desired to understand the full significance of their prophecies of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that was to follow for him and for others—for they had spoken wiser than they knew. To whom it was made clear, says the apostle, that they were not speaking of matters which concerned themselves, but us Christians, as had been made plain by those who by the same Spirit had preached to us the gospel. 1 Pet. 1:10–12. Compare Mt. 13:17.

A Striking Parallelism

Behold, then, reader friend, the striking parallelism between the New Testament method of Christ in speaking of the kingdom, and the way the prophets of the Old Testament spoke of it.

As a heavenly reality come to earth, both had to speak of it in earthly terms. The Son of God himself had to become a man to reveal the Father to us. Similarly, spiritual truth can be made known to us only by being clothed in the language of material things. If God would speak to us of heavenly things he must do so in figures taken from earthly scenes, for those are all we are acquainted with and God always leads us to new knowledge by means of what we already know. There is no other way. The things of pure spirit cannot be humanly uttered. Jn. 3:12; 2 Cor. 12:1–4.

We are therefore told that our Lord spoke of the kingdom to the public only in parables. “Without a parable spake he not (of it) unto them.” Mk. 4:34. The reason of course being this difficulty of revealing spiritual things to unspiritual people, or even speaking of them to such people.

His interesting parables, which were specifically parables of the Kingdom, served a three-fold purpose. They captured the attention of the common people, even of children, causing them to think in the direction of spiritual matters; they revealed to prepared minds and hearts the spiritual nature of the kingdom he was preaching; and at the same time they held the truth about it in solution, so to speak, until such time as even the unspiritual among His hearers might perchance become able to receive it.

Likewise the Spirit of Christ in earlier days, being confronted in the case of Israel with exactly the same problem of how to convey a knowledge of spiritual things to an unspiritual people, used the symbolism of the Tabernacle and its services to do so (Heb. 8:5), and correspondingly led the prophets to clothe in the familiar and attractive terms of Israel’s national life and earthly inheritance in Canaan whatever He said by them in regard to the Messianic kingdom. Under which form also the spiritual truth could be discerned by those among the people who were spiritually minded, like Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist and the aged Simeon (Lu. 2:25–35), and at the same time would also be preserved to be unfolded and interpreted when Christ should come (Jn. 4:25) and his people be able to receive it. Mk. 4:33; Jn. 16:12.

Thus also our Lord’s apostles, through the newly given understanding which his expositions of the Scriptures had given them after his resurrection, and especially after they themselves had experienced Pentecost, were able to find in those Old Testament writings all those spiritual truths which they afterwards preached and taught throughout the churches as being “according to the scriptures.”

“Who Hath Believed Our Report?”

The greater part of Isaiah, in fact, is taken up with this figurative presentation of essentially Christian truth; which explains why that book of prophecy is so often quoted or alluded to in the New Testament (over 130 times), and why it, along with the Book of Psalms (quoted or referred to over 120 times), is and always has been such a delight and store of truth to the Christian soul.

And the same is true, though in lesser measure, of all the other prophets also, as Peter testified when he said, “Yea, and all the prophets from Samuel and those that followed after, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these days,” the Christian era. Acts 3:24. For indeed of what could the Spirit of Christ in the prophets have been more concerned to speak than of Christian things? Even as now it is the chief work of the Spirit to do so, to testify of Christ and to lead us into all the truth regarding him and his great salvation. Indeed, the “very spirit of prophecy” is “the testimony of Jesus”. Rev. 19:10.

But the earthly-minded majority of the Jews had their eyes fixed upon the mere letter of the Scriptures and quite missed the mind of the Spirit in them. Mt. 22:29. So they looked for the kind of a Messiah and Messianic kingdom which they were doomed never to see; for God’s thoughts regarding these things were far above theirs, and His ways too high for them in their unspiritual state to appreciate.

In them therefore, as Jesus said, was fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which read, “By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive; for this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their hearts, and should be converted, and I should heal them.” Mt. 13:14, 15.

Knowing neither him, nor yet the voices of the prophets which were read in the synagogues every sabbath day, the Jews of Jerusalem, with their rulers, finally fulfilled them in condemning him. Acts 13:27. And to this day the veil is still upon the Jewish heart when the scriptures are read. “Nevertheless, when it (that proud stiff heart) shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away” (2 Cor. 3:15, 16) and through faith in Christ they will become accepted as Abraham’s true seed (Gal. 3:29) and heirs with him of the heavenly country and eternal city, prepared of God for all who are his, whom he accounts righteous. Heb. 11:13–16.

The Temporal And The Eternal

We need to remember that with God it is always the spiritual that is the real, because it is the abiding; not the earthly and material, which are but a passing show. 2 Cor. 4:18. Therefore the more we, as his people, live in and by the Spirit, the more we shall tend to become like him in our concepts and our hope, just as in our characters.

And since, as we have seen, it was in and by the Spirit that the Hebrew prophets spoke of Christ and Christian things, it is evident that attention upon our part to the already mentioned point in regard to the way they did so, must hold for us the true key to a right understanding of much in their writings which, if taken in strict literalness, would oblige us both to violate the spiritual principles of interpretation exemplified everywhere in the New Testament and to take up with ideas that are wholly inconsistent with the manifestly spiritual character of everything preached or promised to us there, whether we be Jews or Gentiles.

Thus even in, spite of themselves, so to speak, we often hear the most positive literalists, when in the Spirit, singing heartily of “Beulah Land”, and of “Marching through Immanuel’s ground”, happily confessing that the “hill of Zion” is yielding them even now “a thousand sacred sweets”! We may be pardoned for wondering sometimes if they really mean what they say or know what they are doing.

Yes, it is only the truth we utter when we sing with John Newton:

“Glorious things of thee are spoken,
Zion, City of our God!
He whose word cannot be broken
Formed thee for his own abode.
On the Rock of Ages founded,
What can shake thy sure repose?
With salvation’s walls surrounded,
Thou canst smile at all thy foes.”

“See, the streams of living waters,
Springing from Eternal Love,
Well supply thy sons and daughters,
And all fear of want remove.
Who can faint, while such a river
Ever flows their thirst t’assuage?
Grace, which, like the Lord, the Giver,
Never fails from age to age.”

Three Fundamental Messianic Prophecies

For an extended and reliable study of this whole subject of the relationship of Old Testament prophecy to Christ and the Church, —for the prophets can hardly be thought to have written of Him and not of His members too (Psa. 139:15, 16), the reader must be referred to Dr. Patrick Fairbairn’s great standard work on Prophecy, out of print now but again to be on the market by Zondervans of Grand Rapids, Mich.

Meanwhile it must suffice for us here to cite just three of the clearest and most fundamental of those prophecies which have always, even among the Jews, been regarded as being definitely Messianic, and which are quoted or referred to as such in the New Testament and there applied to Jesus of Nazareth. There are others too which refer to his “brethren”, the people composing the New Testament church, as we see from Heb. 2:11–13 and Rom 9:24–26.

For anyone to say that the Spirit of Christ in the prophets did not see and therefore by the prophets did not speak of the Church of Christ, is for him to say what simply is not true. Nor is it even reasonable. Or will he say that it was the literal Zion which was to travail and bring forth children? Isa. 66:8. Surely not. It was the Church of the new covenant the Jerusalem that is “above the hills” and is “free”, which is “our mother”. Gal. 4:26. One has to read the Word of God, especially the prophets, with some spiritual insight and “imagination”. For as surely as Christ and the Church, his mystical body, are one, so surely must the Church be in the prophets if Christ is.

1. However, it is particularly with prophecies concerning Christ himself that we are just now directly concerned, and the first great fundamental utterance of this character that I have in mind is that by David in the Second Psalm, and which in the New Testament is directly applied to the Lord Jesus as having its fulfillment in Him. Acts 4:25, 26; Heb. 5:5.

“Why do the nations rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the LORD and against his Christ, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.

“Then shall he speak to them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure”, as indeed He surely did begin to do in the political upheavals in both Palestine and the Roman Empire generally, within a generation of the resurrection and enthronement of the Lord Jesus at His own right hand in the heavens, as the Spirit of Christ in David goes on to say:

“Yet I have set my King upon my holy hill of Zion”; or, as the Septuagint reads, “Yet have I been made king by him on Sion, his holy mountain.” “I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” And so on to the psalm’s victorious conclusion.

Truly a sublime and dramatic Psalm, for the composition of which no appropriate historical occasion has ever been discovered. Its language and scope transcend the earthly. It is Messianic and Divine from beginning to end, as the Scriptures themselves declare.

2. The second great Messianic prophecy I have in mind is also by David, the 110th Psalm, which is also directly applied to our exalted Saviour in the New Testament. Acts 2:34, 35; 1 Cor. 15:25; Heb. 1:13; 7:21.

“The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand until I make thy enemies thy footstool. The LORD shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion: rule thou in the midst of thy enemies”. Which is exactly what Jesus Christ is doing now. “Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power … The LORD hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.”

Continuing, the Spirit says, “The Lord (Messiah) at thy right hand (that is, Jehovah’s right hand) shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath”, just as we are told that Christ will do at the last when the time has come for it, because they have refused to obey His gospel. 2 Thess. 1:7–10. He shall “dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel”, and bring all their kingdoms to an end. Psa. 2:9; Dan. 2:44, 45; Mt. 21:44. Which is but one of several reasons why they all shall “wail” at His Coming. Rev. 1:7.

Let the reader make no mistake: the Second Coming of Jesus Christ will bring no gladness and will offer no hope to the unbelieving and disobedient anywhere. The day of the LORD can only be darkness to such, and not light, “even very dark, and no brightness in it.” Amos 5:18–20; 1 Thess. 5:1–3.

3. A third Messianic prophecy, which is very clear and also includes the Church, under the figure of “the temple of the Lord”, is Zech. 6:12, 13. “Behold the man whose name is The BRANCH. He shall grow up out of his place (the house of David), and he shall build the temple of the LORD (which temple, Paul says, we Christians are, 1 Cor. 3:17). Even he shall build the temple of the LORD (Psa. 127:1; Mt. 16:18); and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne.” That is, He shall be both king and priest at the same time, like Melchizedek. Gen. 14:18; Heb. 6:20–7:1.

All of which has been and is right now being fulfilled to the letter in the present heavenly reign and ministry of Jesus Christ our glorified Lord, “of the seed of David, raised from the dead”, as Paul exhorted Timothy to “remember”. For everything turns upon that. His Messiahship or Messianic kingship rests upon his being not only the Son of God but also the son of David, raised from the dead the third day “according to the Scriptures”, and therefore according to Paul’s gospel. 2 Tim. 2:8. Paul was a Scriptural preacher; and he tells us why, in Rom. 16:25, 26. It was “according to the command of the eternal God.”

“The King Of Israel”
John 1:47–51

Of all the Old Testament prophets it was David who had the greatest personal interest in the promised Messianic king and kingdom, because it was specifically to him as reigning over all the covenanted people of God at that time that the promise was made that of his descendants God would surely raise up One to sit on his throne to reign over God’s people for ever.

This however meant God’s people under the Gospel covenant, since the Law covenant, mediated by Moses, which was in force in David’s day, was to “wax old” (Heb. 8:31) and, because of its “weakness” (Rom. 8:3), be superseded by the “new, and better covenant” mediated by Christ, as foretold in Jer. 31:31–33 and fulfilled in Mt. 26:26–28 and Heb. 8:7–13. So that those who now are accounted God’s covenant people are the Christians, not the Jews. God is no bigamist, with two wives, two covenant peoples.

Thus the apostle could say positively that “he is not a Jew who is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; whose circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.” Rom. 2:28, 29. And since this is so, and really always has been so, he declares that not all Israel are God’s “Israel”, but only those whom He is now calling out to Himself from among both Jews and Gentiles under the covenant of the Gospel. Rom. 9:6, 24; Phil. 3:3.

These are his “elect”, his people “whom he foreknew”. Of this company those who lived before Christ came are redeemed by the same identical sacrifice that has redeemed us who live since Christ has come. He wrought “eternal redemption” for us both. Heb. 9:12, 15.

It was therefore with reference to these and these alone, that in due time the angel Gabriel was to be sent to Nazareth to say to a Virgin there, “Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David; and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever.” Lu. 1:31–33. Thus, be it noted, fulfilling the faithful promise of God that David should never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel. Jer. 33:17.

It is not at all likely that Mary at once understood the full import of the angel’s words, though she must have “pondered them in her heart”. Lu. 2:19. But, being a Jewess, she would most naturally take them as referring to the national throne of her people. But, as events were soon to prove, such was not and could not be the case. The reference was to something far higher and better than that. For, as we already have had occasion to remark, God’s ways are always higher than our ways, and His thoughts than ours.

Now let the reader pause a moment to ask himself where “the house of Israel” or of “Jacob” is today, that Jesus might reign over them should He come tomorrow. And even if we were to say that the few million Jews in the world today are “the house of Jacob”, being as a people unbelievers in the gospel where would they stand when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that obey not the gospel, who are to be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power; when He shall come (not to reign over the house of Jacob, but) to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believe? 2 Thess. 1:7–10. I say, where would the unbelieving “house of Jacob” be then, that the Son of David might reign over them for ever?

Surely for anyone to try to answer that question honestly should make it clear enough to him that the angel’s words to Mary simply could not have referred to “Israel after the flesh” (1 Cor. 10:18), but must have referred to the true “Israel of God”, His born-again, new covenant, spiritual people, composed of all who are Christ’s, a people over whom He can reign for ever because they are to live for ever. Only in such a people could the angel’s words and those of the prophets be fulfilled, that of His kingdom there should be no end. Lu. 1:33; Isa. 9:7; Dan. 7:14; Mic. 4:7.

The sight of Christ’s coming in power and glory of course will not convert unbelivers to saving faith in Him, for a compelled belief must always lack the necessary ethical and spiritual qualities of saving faith.

The Promises To David

But let us see exactly what it was that God said to David concerning this descendant of his, who was to be so great and sit for ever upon his throne. We read about it in 2 Sam. 7:12–14. There God says to David, “When thy days are fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will raise up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever. I will be his father and he shall be my son.”

“Also,” continues the word of God in another place, “I will make him my firstborn higher than the kings of the earth. My mercy will I keep for him for evermore, and my covenant with him shall stand fast … Once have I sworn by my holiness, that I will not lie to David; his seed will I make to endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before me. It shall be established for ever as the moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven.” Psa. 89:27, 28, 35–37.

Such promises in their full meaning were never fulfilled in Solomon. Nor could they ever be fulfilled in any mortal man or fleshly people, but only in that son of David who was also the Son of God, of whom and of whose kingdom Solomon in all his glory was but a poor earthly type.

Their Fulfillment In Jesus Of Nazareth

Hear then the apostolic announcement of their fulfillment in Jesus of Nazareth, who was of the seed of David according to the flesh, but was declared to be the Son of God, not in humiliation, but “in power”, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. Rom. 1:3, 4.

Under the unction of that same Holy Spirit, the apostle Peter is preaching to the Jews on the Day of Pentecost, and he says, “Ye men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know: him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain; whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.

“For David saith concerning him (Psa. 16:8–11), I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand that I should not be moved. Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad. Moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope; because thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption …

“Men and brethren, let me freely speak to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulcher is with us unto this day.

Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his loins according to the flesh he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne; he, seeing this before, spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in Hades, neither his flesh did see corruption. This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses.

“Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear. For David is not ascended into the heavens: but he saith himself, The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand until I make thy foes thy footstool. Therefore let all the house of Israel (“the house of Jacob”) know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus whom ye crucified, both Lord and Christ.” Acts 2:22–36.

If that last sentence means anything at all, it means that Jesus is NOW set over the house of Jacob. He is NOW seated upon the throne of David over all God’s Israel, in the present phase of the Messianic kingdom. That is how Peter saw it; that is how Paul and Silas taught it (Acts 16:20, 21; 17:6, 7); and that is how it is. What its future form and nature is to be, in the age that is coming, we shall see presently. But we may be sure it will be no reversion to earthly things in violation of the Divine law of progression governing all of God’s dealings with us, by which that which is earthly and natural never follows that which is heavenly and spiritual, but just the reverse. 1 Cor. 15:46.

We can never understand the Messianic prophecies aright until, like the apostles after Pentecost, we have come to see that although given in earthly figures (like the famous passage in Zech. 14 about all the nations going up to Jerusalem from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles) they have to do with no earthly reign of Christ, but that at His Ascension there was for Him (just as Daniel had been shown) an actual enthronement at God’s right hand in a universal dominion to be exercised from an actual but heavenly and spiritual “Zion”, in a “Jerusalem” which (unlike the transient earthly city) is “above the hills”, as the prophets had said would be the case “in the last days”. And to the prophets “the last days” were simply the days of the Messiah, the present Christian era. Acts 2:16, 17; 1 Cor. 10:11; Heb. 1:2; 9:26. [* See Dan. 7:13, 14, where we have a vision of the heavenly side of that future scene on Olivet in Acts. 1:9, when a cloud received him out of the sight of his disciples. The one is the complement of the other.]

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