“But do you not remember”, it is said, “that God holds the times and
seasons in His own power? Does not this shew that He may arrange events as He
willeth? that He may re-dispose their order? And is not the definite formation
of expectations, as if God must bring events to pass in one way and not in
another, a limiting of the Holy One of
Israel?” God has all things in His power; but when once He has spoken, He
will fulfil; and thus, without irreverence, we may say that such events will
occur, and such will not. When once God has promised, He is concluded by His
own words: He cannot deny Himself. Thus we may, with all confidence, say, that
if God has revealed that a portion of His Church shall be found in unbroken
continuity on the earth up to the harvest, when the wicked shall be severed
from the midst of them, then so it will be. If He has said that Antichrist's
appearance and power shall precede the coming of Christ, then this must be the
order of events. If He tells us that it is after, and not before, the time of
special tribulation that Christ shall come, then we must not discredit God by
the imagination that it may be previous. If the Lord Jesus has told us that His
shall not be a secret coming, then we must take heed and not accept the
teaching that bids us expect a secret advent. If He tells us to watch for His
appointed signs, then we must not imagine that this can be inconsistent with
the hope of seeing the Lord, or that it can have any evil effect morally; nay,
we must be sure that such an expectation, held in the Spirit, is that which
will produce the right effect of watchfulness and waiting in every one who
rests on the word of Christ, because it is His.
However much God may do in grace and mercy beyond what He has promised,
of this we may be sure, that whatever He has promised shall be fulfilled; and
that every revealed circumstance in connection with the time or order shall
have a perfect accomplishment. In unrevealed things, it behoves us to avoid
speculation; but where the Scripture speaks, it is for us, whether we
understand or not, to listen and to receive.
In any inquiry what God can do, or will do, there are two principles
which must be borne in mind: Firstly,
God is “the faithful God”; “God that cannot lie”. This is part of His own
essential character; and we know, too, that as to His revelation in Christ, “all
the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God by us”
(2 Corinthians 1:20). Secondly,
besides this (or rather consequent on this), “the Scripture must be fulfilled”.
What can prove this more fully than our Lord's prayer and agony in the garden,
and His betrayal? “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me:
nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39). “O my Father, if
this cup may not pass from me, except I drink it, thy will be done” (42). “Thinkest
thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and He shall presently give me more
than twelve legions of angels? But how
then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” (53,54). “But
all this was done that the Scriptures of
the prophets might be fulfilled” (56).
If there are points which are not certainly or definitely stated in Scripture,
some conclusion may, perhaps, be formed from analogy or probable inference; but
when the Scripture tells the events and their order, then what is called “free
enquiry” has no place whatever. Those who sit in judgment on Scripture, and
question or deny what it conclusively says, are not fitting persons to be
listened to as teachers in the Church of Christ, whatever be their claims as to
wisdom or holiness.
The question of the apostles to the Lord in Acts 1:6 is, “Lord, wilt
thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” To this He replies, “It
is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in
His own power”. He then tells them what their service should be as witnesses
for Him - in fact, referring them back to His own previous instruction in Matthew
24:6,14: “The end is not yet”. “And
this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness
unto all nations; and then shall the end come”. They are thus reminded that the
restoration of the kingdom to Israel could not be in the ordering of God until
the events of that chapter were brought to pass; it was thus that He had put
these times and seasons in His own power. We cannot measure these events by a
century or by a thousand years, but we may know their order as revealed and recorded
in Holy Scripture.
When the Apostle says, “I would not, brethren, that ye should be
ignorant of this mystery...that blindness
in part is happened to Israel, UNTIL the
fulness of the Gentiles be come in” (Romans 11:25), the following words, “And
so all Israel shall be saved”, prove that the blindness shall be altogether
taken away. But when shall this be? When the fulness of the Gentiles is
gathered. How could the Scripture speak of a “blindness in part until” that time, if Israel's greatest blindness,
in the depth of anti-Christian evil, is not till after the removal of the
Church? But the order of these events has been revealed for our instruction. It
is when He cometh with clouds, when every eye shall see Him, that Israel shall look
on Him whom they pierced--when the spirit of grace and of supplications shall be
poured upon them. Until that day the fulness of the Gentiles will not have come
in. The resurrection of the Church and the removal of the blindness are at the same
time.
