After all, the best works to be obtained as helps to understand the
prophetic parts of Scripture, will be found in the labors of those who,
from age to age, have obeyed the gracious call of Christ,--who have
"come out from mystic Babylon," from the Romish communion,--from the
mother and her harlot daughters, and who have associated more or less
intimately with the _witnesses_. Among these may be consulted with
profit the works of Durham, Mason and M'Leod. But while searching after
the mind of God revealed in this part of his word, let us never exercise
implicit faith in the teachings of any fallible expositor. Let us always
regard the injunction of our apostle:--"Beloved, believe not every
spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God." Of course, the
only infallible standard by which we can try the spirits is the whole
word of God,--"comparing spiritual things with spiritual."
THE FIRST RESURRECTION.
Bishop Newton, among those divines distinguished in ecclesiastical
history as Millenarians, may be regarded as one of the most learned,
judicious and cautious. The amount of the deductions which this class of
writers draw from the scripture phrase "first resurrection," and its
context, confirmed as they suppose by many other parts of Scripture,
appears to be the following:--All the righteous shall be raised from
their graves to meet our Saviour coming from heaven at the beginning of
the Millennium: he and these saints, clothed in real human bodies, are
to dwell and reign together upon a renovated earth during that happy
period. Indeed, writers on this interesting subject differ so much in
details, that no well-defined theory or system can be discovered among
them. The _literal resurrection_ of the bodies of the saints, and the
_corporeal presence_ of Christ among them, seem to be the cardinal
points of agreement with this class of expositors; and from this literal
interpretation of the resurrection of the righteous and bodily
appearance of the Saviour, they either took or received the name
_Millenarians_. Other Christians, however, who differ from them in the
interpretation of symbols, are no less believers in a millennium than
they,--a thousand years of righteousness and peace _on the earth_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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