Appeal is first made to Matt. xxiv. 13, a passage throwing no light upon
the point. It is otherwise with many prophecies of the Old Testament
next referred to, which describe the coming dispensation of the Gospel:
"They shall not hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun smite
them: for He that hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by the
springs of water shall He guide them;" "He will swallow up death in
victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces;" "And
it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations
which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to
worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the Feast of
Tabernacles."[187] To passages such as these have to be added the
promises of our Lord as to fountains of living waters even now opened to
the believer, that he may drink and never thirst again: "Jesus answered
and said unto her, Every one that drinketh of this water shall thirst
again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall
never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a
springing fountain of water, unto eternal life;" "Now on the last day,
the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man
thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the
Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water."[188] St. John, too, it is urged, teaches us to look for a
Tabernacle Feast on earth[189]; while at the same time throughout all
his writings eternal life is set before us as a present possession. Nor
is this the case only in the writings of St. John. In the Epistle to the
Hebrews we meet the same line of thought: "Ye are come" (not Ye shall
come) "unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the
heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable hosts of angels, to the general
assembly and Church of the first-born, who are enrolled in heaven."[190]
Influenced by these considerations, the writer to whom we have referred
is led, "though not without some hesitation," to conclude that the
vision of the palm-bearing multitude is to be understood of the Church
on earth, and not of the Church in heaven.