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THE TEACHING OF THE SCRIPTURE.

      God would be summed up in a person. What He said to the Church after His ascension respecting the beast and false prophet, will be considered when The Revelation is before us.

      This brief surrey of the Lord's words will serve to shew the importance of His Person and work as dis- tinguished from His teachings. These were neces- sarily adapted to the spiritual and mental under- standing of those to whom He spake. But He Him- self was the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The salvation of the world was not to be effected by the mere enlargement of its religious knowledge, but by its acceptance of Him as the Saviour. Not by His words, but by His works must it be saved. What He said was to explain who He was, and what He was then doing, and what He was still to do; and one stage of His work prepared the way for another; the Cross for His priesthood, the priesthood for His Kingdom; all must be done by Him personally. To substitute His teachings, spiritual or ethical, as the means of saving society or the world, is to hide Him and His future work from sight, and thus tends powerfully, as we shall see, to prepare the way for the Antichrist.

      THE TEACHINGS OF THE APOSTLES

      COLLECTIVELY.

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      Before entering upon the enquiry aa to the teaching of the Beveral Apostles, whose Epistles we have, in regard to the Antichrist, and the spiritual condition of the Church before the coming of the Lord, let us first note what they all have in common. And in our examination we must bear in mind that they all looked for the return of the Lord in their own life- time, or in the lifetime of some then living. This must affect our interpretation of their words so far that we may not impute to them a conception of a long period as interrening.*

      Accepting their Lord's words as the very truth of God, the Apostles make them the rule of all their teachings to the Church. What He said of the future of the Jewish people, and of His Church, they repeat ; and as time went on, and His words became more and more clear through their partial fulfilment ; and the Holy Ghost also gave new light through the Christian prophets (John xvi, 18 ; 1 Tim. iv, 1), they bring forth some particulars which He had not made known. This gradual enlargement of prophetic knowledge need not surprise us, for it lies in the very nature of prophecy that, as the purpose of God goes on from stage to stage. He makes known to His children what He is about to do, that they may be His helpers.

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      * It Is well said by Bengel: "Gradatim profetica procedit, apocalypsis explicatius loquitur quam Paulus; Paulus explicatius quam Dominus ante glorificationem.

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      22 THE TEACHINGS OF THE SCRIPTURE.

      1. The Apostles agree in affirming that the return of the Lord was to be continually watched for by the Church as an event that might occur at any moment. This was only to repeat His express teach- ings. (Matt, xxiv, 44; Luke xii, 35—.) They, therefore, so taught the Church. St. Peter said: "The end of all things is at hand; be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer." "The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night. . . What manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy con- versation and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God."

      St. Paul said: "The day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night . . therefore, let us not sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober." "The night is far spent, the day is at hand; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light." St. James said: "Be ye patient, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh: the Judge standeth before the door."

      It is often said that in their expectation of the nearness of the Lord's return, the Apostles were mis- taken, as the long centuries since have shown. Mis- taken in this, they may also have been mistaken in other matters. The objection is invalid. The Lord commanded them to watch for Him alway on the ground that of the day of His return neither Him- self, nor any man, nor any angel knew, but the Father only. (Matt. xxiv, 36; Acts 1, 7.) Not to have watched for Him, and not to have taught the disciples to do so, would have been in the face of His command; and would have brought upon them the judgment pronounced upon the evil servant, who said: "My Lord delayeth His coming." (Matt.

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      xxiv, 48.) But the Apostles also knew from the Lord's own words, and from the light given them by the Holy Spirit, that, as the harvest is not reaped until it is ripe, so there must be a certain spiritual ripening, a going on unto perfection, in those ready for His appearing. Not upon the unready and un- prepared could the great and sudden change from the mortal to the immortal pass. (1 Cor. xv, 51 —.)

      So great is the dislike now felt to the Lord's return by many, and so little the faith in it, that His command to watch must be explained away. By some it is said that the Apostles misunderstood Him. He used words in the spiritual, not literal, sense; and did not mean that He would ever return to earth, but that at their death they would come to Him. Thus Prof. Jowett ("Essay on Belief in the Coming of Christ,") says: "St. Paul at first was waiting for and hastening to the day of the Lord, but in the course of years He grew up into a higher truth, that to die and to be with the Lord is far better." *But

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      *How wholly foreign the patient waiting for the Lord is to the modern spirit, may be seen in Jowett's words: "The language which is attributed in the epistle of St. Peter (3 Pet. iii, 8— ) to the unbelievers of that age, has become the lan- guage of believers in our own. . . No one can now be daily looking for the visible coming of Christ, any more than in a land where nature is at rest, he would live in expectation of an earthquake. The experience of eighteen hundred years has made it impossible, consistently with the laws of the human mind, that the belief of the first Christians should continue among ourselves." Prof. Jowett overlooks the essential distinction that to wait for the Lord is to wait for a living Person who has promised to return, and therefore may be daily looked for; but an earthquake is an event which may or may not be, and of the time of its occurrence we know, and can know, nothing.

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      others more bold say, that the Lord was Himself mistaken. He shared the common but erroneous Messianic expectations of His day. He thus led the Apostles into error, and they led the Church.

      It was when the Apostles discerned that the churches under them did not, as a whole, leave the things that were behind, and press onward toward the mark, the goal, the perfected likeness to Christ, that they knew that the Lord, though "not slack concerning His promise,'' would delay His return, "not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." But how long He would delay, they did not know. They, therefore, did not cease to hold up before the Church His speedy return, for this was ever the highest incentive to spiritual sobriety and watchfulness. Whilst there was the growing consciousness that they them- selves would not be able to present the Church as one body to Christ, yet they knew not but some might be made ready through His special spiritual dealings with them. The Lord had taught them in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, that some at His return would be ready, and some not ready to meet Him; and, as in the wheat field, some stalks ripened before others, so would it be in the Church; and they knew not when His all-discerning eye would see His wise virgins. His first ripe fruits, and come to take them to Himself. This done, an interval might elapse during which He would purify those not ready yet not apostate, by the fires of the great tribulation. These last, many or few, would, like the builders of wood, hay, and stubble, "suffer loss, but be saved, yet so as by fire." (1 Cor. iii, 12 —.)

      Of the two chief Apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul,

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      the first knew from His Lord's words (John xxi, 18) that he himself would not live to His return. But his knowledge of his own death did not prevent him from keeping the Lord's speedy coming before the Church, rather it made him more earnestly do so. (2 Peter i, 18—.) So St. Paul knew that he

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