him-To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." Although the thief may have meant an earthly kingdom; yet Christ's reply points to a spiritual one in a spiritual world. The whole of Christ's conversation with Nicodemus proves the same fact. The expressions-" Except a mạn be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God "--"That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit "—"If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things,"-are very pointed. Christ again, in answer to Pilate says-" My kingdom is not of this world;" as if he were to say-my government is a spiritual one over the souls of men, interfering not in any manner with the worldly affairs of the Romans and Jews. In the same manner do the Apostles represent the kingdom of the Messiah. -Paul says that "the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." Christ on all occasions disclaimed all pretensions to worldly dominion and sovereignty upon earth. Not only did he withdraw when the populace attempted to "take him by force to make him a king,"§ but, in order to avoid all appearance of setting up for a temporal sovereignty, when a certain person desired him to speak to his brother to divide the inheritance with him, he answered-" Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you." He also severely rebuked the ambitious contentions of his disciples as to who should be greatest in his kingdom; and, instead of enhancing their expectations. of any worldly advantages, declared to them that they should be hated and persecuted of all men for his name's sake," and that "in the world" they should have tribulation. The rewards which he promised to those that should believe and obey him, were not the riches and emoluments of the present world, but the spiritual and eternal rewards of a future state. While, however, he disclaimed all pretentions to be an earthly king, he boldly claimed to be the Messiah foretold by the prophets. Accordingly, when upon his trial before the Jewish council, and when the High-priest abjured him by the living God to tell them whether he was "the Christ. the son of the Blessed," he promptly answered, "I am." When Peter, and also Martha, declared he was the Son of God, he received their confession with approbation. Such was the distinction he continually made between his earthly and and heavenly power,-clearly showing that, by "the kingdom of God," we are not to understand an earthly dominion, but the empire of righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost," which he came to establish on earth, and the subjects of which are delivered from the thraldom of sin-are introduced into the glorious liberty of the children of God, and are prepared to enjoy perfect and eternal bliss in a future and spiritual state of existence! Accordingly, in the New Testament, we meet with the expressions— "kingdom of God," and "kingdom of heaven," signifying, sometimes, the present state of believers in this world, and sometimes their state after death in a world of eternal happiness. Both these conditions of believers have reference to that Messianic kingdom touching which the angel, foretelling, in metaphorical terms, the birth of Christ, said, "The Lord shall John xviii. 36. Luke xxiii. 42. 43. Rom. xiv. 17. + John iii. 1-21. Lake xii. 14. 66 give unto him the throne of his father David; and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end."* Hence he is called the Son of David, and described as sitting on the right hand of God, till his enemies are made his footstool; † or-as Paul expresses it-reigning "till he hath put all enemies under his feet." It is clear from the Scripture doctrines that Christ, as a mediator between God and man, has been entrusted by his Father with the government of his Church, till he shall have accomplished the design of his mediation. In this capacity, he shall "put down all rule, and all authority and power." What is meant by all rule and authority" is, evidently, his final conquest over all his, and his Church's enemies. For the Apostle adds that he must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all."§ Before Paul gave the foregoing explanation of the nature of Christ's mediatorial reign, he had made the following statement :- -"Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father."-The end of time-the end of all the opposition which has been made to the Church of God,-when the resurrection, as here described by the Apostle, shall take place,-when the last judgment and the second death, spoken of by John, shall come to pass,-when Christ will deliver into his Father an account of the administration of his kingdom, or the economy of human redemption, when he shall present his Church faultless before the presence of the glory of the eternal God; and when the fulness of the Deity in Christ will become an object of worship and service for ever and ever! At this momentous period, which the apostle terms, "the end," the economy of human redemption will cease, by Christ giving up his mediatorial kingdom; for the administration of it will no longer be necessary, as there will be no sin to expiate and no sinner for whom to intercede. But the giving up of his mediatorial kingdom by no means implies that he will not reign for ever in heaven, as the object of the homage and adoration of all the human and angelic hosts; so that as the angel declared-" of his kingdom there shall be no end." The Scriptures fully sanction the doctrine that, in him God will be seen by his Church, through the countless ages of eternity, and that the administration of God's government over glorified saints will be carried on by Him, to whom every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." For this is evidently the design of God," that in the dispensation of the fulness of time, he might gather together in one, all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in him." * Luke i. 32, 33. § 1 Cor. xv. 24-28. † Matth. xxii. 42-45. 1 Cor. xv. 25. Phil. ii. 10, 11. ** Eph. i. 10. See Cox's Lectures on the Harmony of Scriptures, p. 119, et seq. Lond. 1823; from which much of the above matter has been extracted. It is trusted that the foregoing remarks will amply suffice to show that the words" kingdom of God" and "kingdom of heaven," employed by Christ, as well as by his apostles, in whose writings they frequently occur -refer exclusively to a spiritual kingdom-the gracious sovereignty which Christ exercises over the souls of his saints, both while in this world and in a glorified state hereafter. SECTION VII.-the apostles, BOTH IN THEIR WRITINGS AND DISCOURSES, PROVE CHRIST'S PROPHECY TO MEAN, EXCLUSIVELY, THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. Another circumstance, which materially corroborates the proofs already given, that Christ prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem, is that the apostles, in their discourses and epistles, very frequently allude to this impending calamity, in words which can, if fairly construed, have no other meaning than that the Lord would shortly visit the Jews with punishment, abolish the Jewish economy, and fully establish a new dispensation of religion, the principles of which they were then actually engaged in disseminating. And it is very remarkable that in those epistles which were written nearest to-in a word, only few years before-the time of the overthrow of the Jewish polity and the dispersion of the Jewish nation, that these events are the most strenuously insisted upon, as being then close at hand. It was only by one or more of the following three means that the apostles could acquire knowledge of the future fate of the nation to which they belonged. Either by a direct communication from God, or by their acquaintance with the predictions of the ancient prophets on the point, or by having heard the prophecies of Christ himself on the same subject. The last alone of these three is, by far, the most likely, as will hereafter appear from the manner in which they express themselves on the point. It is to be observed that, according to the most generally received chronology of the events of those times, all the epistles were written before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman legions. In Peter's sermon, on the day of Pentecost, (about A.D. 37) as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles,† we find the following words :-" And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreains. And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out, in those days, of my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood and fire, and vapour of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come." It is true that Peter uses these words, confessedly, as those of the prophet Joel; but the two last verses quoted bear striking resemblance also to words used by Christ, in the predictions which form the subject of our present inquiry, and in which predictions, as already shown, Christ, for a wise purpose, imitated the symbolical style of the ancient prophets. But, what did Peter mean by the expressions See Dr. Leland's Divine Authority of the Old and New Testament, part 1, chap. 15, p. 260. Tegg's Edit. 1837. Chap. ii. ver. 30-31. Chap. ii. ver. 17-20. Epistle to them, written some few months before his second." For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep; for the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words. But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you; for yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief."* From this language of Paul, particularly the expression-" we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord"-the Thessalonians may have misapprehended him, and imagined that he had represented the Day of Judgment as an event to take place during the lives of those of them who then lived. Indeed, there are not wanting, in the present age, men who seem to misapprehend him, and even charge him with having, in his second epistle, contradicted what he had, on this point, written in his first. Both this charge and the misapprehension of the Thessalonians appear to have been occasioned by the same incident; namely, Paul's use of the first person plural-we, in the instance just cited. But, by the word we here. Paul means mankind at large,—or, at least, those Christians who will be alive when Christ shall make his second advent. He uses similar language in his first epistle to the Corinthians.-" We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trump.”‡ But, as it has justly been remarked, § "how common it is for us, when speaking of a society, an army, or a nation, to which we belong, to saywe went, or came, or did such a thing, or shall do so or so; though we ourselves neither had, nor shall have any personal concern in the matter; though the event happened before we were born, or is to happen after our decease." We find similar turns of expression in several places in the Old and New Testament.-David, in allusion to the Israelites crossing the Red Sea dry-shod, says-" they went through the flood on foot; there did we rejoice in him;" but this event happened nearly 300 years before the time of David, so that, personally, neither he nor the people of his age, had any part in it. Hosea says-"Jacob found God in Bethel, and there he spake with us;" yet there was more than a thousand years between the time of Jacob and that of Hosea. But what is still more conclusive that Paul, by the pronoun we, did not mean himself and fellow Christians of that age, is that, in another place, he says-"knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also."** Now, Paul could not, any more than another man, at the same time, believe two propositions which must, inevitably, appear to him contradictory, he could not believe that he should die, and that he should not die. These remarks, together with Paul's 1 Thess. iv. 15-18. + See Horne's 8th Letter, p. 37. Horne's Letters, Ib. * 2 Cor. iv. 14. Psal. Ixvi. 6. 1 Cor. xv. 51, 52. Hos, xii. 4. reproof to the Thessalonians for believing the speedy coming of the Day of the Lord, it is trusted, will serve to convince any candid mind that the apostle neither contradicted himself, nor represented the Day of Judgment as an event which was to take place in, or near the age in which he lived. Nor is it less strongly hoped that the instances produced in this section, are sufficiently clear and pointed to prove that the apostles frequently, in their discourses and epistles, alluded to the destruction of Jerusalem as an event which was shortly to take place—thus corroborating the fact that Christ had predicted this calamity. SECTION VIII.—A SUMMARY OF THE FOREGOING ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT OF THE TRUTH OF CHRIST'S PREDICTIONS. At the conclusion of this chapter it would not be amiss briefly to recapitulate all the arguments and proofs adduced to show that Christ actually prophesied-not the Destruction of the World and the Final Judgment— but solely the destruction of Jerusalem, with the concomitant calamities of its inhabitants, and that his predictions were minutely fulfilled; in order that the reader may the more advantageously, in a narrow compass, perceive therefrom how the train of reasoning pursued bears upon the subject, and to what extent it demonstrates the propositions laid down. Three of the four Evangelists record-with very slight verbal variations -a series of prophetic sayings delivered by Christ, who, in connection with these prophetic sayings, mentions the Jews, Judea, Jerusalem, the temple, &c., as the objects upon which the events he foretold would operate. Upon minute investigation, it is found that there is nothing in the language of these predictions which does not most naturally apply to the destruction of Jerusalem, and to the incidents concomitant with that destruction, by the Roman legions under Vespasian. Authentic history proves the destruction of Jerusalem to have taken place, about forty years after these prophecies had been uttered, in such a manner, under such circumstances, and attended with such consequences, as demonstrate them to have been fulfilled most minutely. As it will be admitted on all hands, that "a prophecy is demonstrated to be fulfilled when we can prove from unimpeachable authority that the event has actually taken place precisely according to the manner in which it was foretold," and as these predictions have thus been fulfilled, in the destruction of Jerusalem, they have, therefore, proved true, so that there is no necessity, in order to substantiate their veracity, to look for another fulfilment of them, in the Destruction of the World, or any other event whatever; and even if there were, there is nothing in the whole tenour of them which, by any fair mode of criticism, warrants their application to the End of the World. The proofs that these prophecies are really predictions of the destruction of Jerusalem, are further corroborated by the facts that, under Divine Inspiration, the ancient prophets, in different ages of the world, had foretold the same event; and that the apostles who were sent by Christ to promulgate the Gospel, and of whom many were present when he delivered these predictions-make E |