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"these kings from the risings of the sun. rising is to be in the East, and his own people come to its brightness: "For he is a light to lighten the Gentiles, but the glory of his people Israel." Those who come to the brightness of his rising are called kings, in the passage of Isaiah. We ought not to wonder, then, at their being called kings in the Apocalypse. But observe, for confirmation of this at the 10th verse, "The sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee." Again, at the 11th verse, "That men may bring unto them the forces of the Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought; for the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish." Again in the xlix th chapter, verse 23; "And kings shall be thy nursing fathers and queens thy nursing mothers: they shall bow down with their faces toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet." This state of prophecy belongeth unto those who shall be rulers of kings, and who therefore may with all propriety be themselves styled kings. But that there may be no doubt left on this subject I refer again to the xlv th Psalm, which treats of the marriage of the great king with the Jewish Church; where it is said of him, that "king's daughters were amongst his honourable women" to attend upon his queen, who standeth at his right hand in gold of Ophir. And further it is said unto him, Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children, whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth." And in the lxviiith Psalm, which describeth the glorious jubilee of the returning tribes it is thus written, "There is little Benjamin with their ruler, the princes of Judah and their council, the princes of Zebulon

and the princes of Naphtali. And this is the style in which the Lord addresseth them the first time he spoke to them by the mouth of Moses after they came out of Egypt, saying, (Exodus xix. 5,) "Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people, for all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." In the most ancient and famous Targum of Onkelos, this passage is "kings and priests." Now I have no doubt this will be fulfilled in the day of that new covenant in which the Lord hath promised to put his laws into their hearts, and to write them on their minds;" which is the day of the rising of the sun, when accordingly we find them designated as kings. And even we who have had faith given us to believe in Christ under the present dispensation have the same style given to us in the first chapter of the Apocalypse: "Unto Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and made us to be kings and priests unto our God." And the saints in glory adopt the same style; adding to it, " and we shall reign with him on the earth;" which hath led some to believe that the risen saints are the kings from the rising of the sun. But to prepare the way of such would require no wasting away of Euphrates; for when they come they will come in the glory and irresistible strength of the resurrection, which flesh and blood can never withstand. Perhaps the strongest reason of all for using this style of the Jewish people is derived from Daniel's famous prophecy of the five monarchies, where the progress of the Lord's providence is set forth

under the figure of a great colossal image; whose head of gold was Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom, and his breast and arms of silver the Persian, and his belly and thighs of brass the Greek, and his legs and his toes of iron and clay the Roman territory in the ten Gothic kingdoms. This statue is now in the toes; and in the battle of Armageddon, these and all the rest of it are ground into dust by the smiting of the stone cut out without hands after which it is said that the God of heaven shall set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all their kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. And who the rulers of this fifth kingdom are, we are told in the vision of the four beasts, which represents the same fourfold succession of brutal power. After which it is said, that the kingdom, and dominion, and greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. And again, the saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom, and shall possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever. This is the kingdom of God to which the Jews looked, and of which they inquired in the days of our Lord: to which they still look, and which shall be given them as surely as it is written everywhere in the word of God. To them therefore belongs the state of kings, if it belonged to the Babylonian head of gold, and to the Roman toes of iron, the kings of the earth, which now are in being. And this state which belongeth unto them it was proper to bestow upon them under this sixth vial, which is preparing for the destruction of

the ten kingdoms, with all power and dominion under the whole heavens. When the possessor is notified as about to be removed, it was proper for the King of kings to notify also those into whose hands the possession was about to come. When the kings of the earth and of the whole world are preparing to be destroyed, it is proper to prepare the way for the kings who are to take the government of the world in hand. And, to guard against mistake, they are not called kings of any place or with any possession, nor, as I think,kings from any place, but deriving their origin from an event, "the rising of the sun," which all throughout Scripture is assigned both as the cause and the consequence of their coming to their universal and everlasting kingdom. For all these reasons I see no impropriety, but rather, on the other hand, much beauty and propriety, in taking this symbol," kings from the risings of the sun, to represent the Jewish people, who in that day shall be used by the Lord to trample upon and tread down many kings as heretofore they did in the days of Joshua, when they came up to possess the land of promise. They are kings of the earth by the most ancient constitution of God, who, speaking of Abraham and the nation with

chapter of Isaiah;

these words, in the xlist "Who raised up the righteous man from the East, called him to his foot, gave the nations before him, and made him rule over kings? He gave them as dust to his sword, and as driven stubble to his bow." Which was fulfilled in the overthrow of Chedorlaomer and his five kings by Abraham: then in the overthrow of so many kings by Joshua; and, finally, is to be fulfilled in the destruction of all anti

christian thrones and dominions, by the restored tribes, of whom it is written in the same glorious prophecy (ver. 15); "Behold I will make thee a new sharp thrashing instrument having teeth: thou shalt thrash the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff. Thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them and thou shalt rejoice in the Lord, and shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel." Let these things suffice for shewing the propriety of the symbol which is here given to the restored tribes: and let us now proceed to shew our grounds for believing that the Jewish people, and none but they, can be understood under it.

The largeness and unbounded magnificence of those blessings pronounced by the patriarch Jacob upon the head of Joseph and his son Ephraim, and which Moses afterwards reiterated upon the twin tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, the two sons of Joseph, is best observed by comparing them with the blessings pronounced at the same time upon the other patriarchs, and upon their tribes; which, with the exception of Judah, in Jacob's roll, and of Levi, in that of Moses, are, as you will perceive by reading them, nothing more than local definitions of their borders, and characteristic features of their several ways of life, but contain in them none of that exceeding great mightiness of power, and royal function of honour and glory which are assigned unto Ephraim. And between the blessings of Judah and Ephraim, there is this characteristic difference, that while to the former is given the sceptre and the sovereignty, to the latter is given the fruitfulness and the warlike

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