Pastor David B. Curtis
Pastor David B. Curtis
By a process of reasoning the astronomer Adams discovered the planet Neptune before it had been seen by human eyes. He knew that there must he such a planet,because its existence was essential for the explanation of other undoubted facts. In the same way, although it cannot be proved from history that the Lord Jesus personally and visibly returned to the earth at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem i n 70 A. D., yet relying on His solemn teaching we may be morally certain that He did so return. The past Second Advent is the key to the understanding of the whole New Testament. In the light of this one event a world of mystery vanishes and a new world of truth stands revealed.
For instance, there is the vexed question of Future retribution. In this case the past Second Advent goes far towards solving a problem which many thoughtful Christians have reckoned not capable of being solved. In Matt. xxv.31-46, we have a detailed account of the judgment previously referred to in Matt. xvi. 27, 28, which was to take place when the Son of man came in glory with His holy angels to render to every man according to his deeds. Our Lord had solemnly declared that some of those who listened to Him during His earthly ministry would live to see Him thus coming in His Kingdom. The parable of the Sheep and the Goats must therefore refer not to the world wide judgment, still future but to the spiritual Judgment of the Jews, which followed the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. [1] This may seem irreconcilable with the use of the words "all nations" or "all the nations" (Matt. xxv. 32). Yet exactly the same words occur in 2 Tim. iv. 17, where the meaning obviously is individuals out of every nation. Paul, speaking of His first appearance before Nero, declares: "The Lord stood by me, and strengthened me; that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and that all the Gentiles might hear," i.e., persons of various nationalities then present in Rome. Certain it is that the phrase conveyed a narrower signification to the Jews who first heard it, than that, which we have been accustomed to attach to it. It, may have meant " all the tribes of Palestine," for Josephus uses the same word when He speaks of the "nation" of the Galileans and the "nation" of the Samaritans.
It is also worthy of remark that although our Lord bade His apostles make disciples of "all the nations" Peter did not, know until several years afterwards that it was right and obligatory to preach the gospel to the Gentiles (Acts x. 14). When found fault with for so preaching he did not reply as otherwise we should certainly have expected him to do:
"These are the very people to whom the Lord Jesus, in His parting words, commanded us to Preach !" An examination of the parable itself in the light of these facts will clear away various difficulties which are unanswered by any other interpretation, and will deepen the conviction that we have here an account of the spiritual judgment which took place at Christ's Second Advent in 70 A.D.
The division into two classes - The separation of men, spiritually and morally, into two and only two classes is not true to human nature as we ordinarily find it. Human nature as we ordinarily find it is a strange admixture of good and evil. Little as theologiaiis have recognized this truth, the mass of men are neither saints nor devils! Often the bad man is not so bad as he seems, and the good man is not so good. Some of our best hopes for the world are based on the fact that, in countries where the gospel has been preached, human society as generally constituted may be divided morally and spiritually into four classes. (1) Christians (a, small minority) who are living really saintly and approximately Christlike lives-sons of God with out, rebuke-the light of the world and the salt of the earth. (2) Christians (the majority) who are real believers and true servants of God , yet having many faults unconquered, and living, it may be, very inconsistent lives. [2] Their experience has been aptly portrayed in Romans vii., but they have not yet attained to the full blessedness and complete liberty described in Romans viii. The good which they would, they do not, and the evil which they would not, that they practise.They delight in the law of' God after the inward man ; but they find a mighty principle, of evil still at work within them, warring against the Christ and still enslave them (Romans vii. 19, 22, 23). (3) Unbelievers (the majority) who, like the young ruler whom Jesus loved, lead outwardly moral lives and have in them exceedingly much that is good. (4) Hardened unbelevers (a small minority) in whom all goodness is tending to become extinct.. They sin out of sheer wickedness and perversity, and are in danger or becoming children of the devil.
We are never at a standstill spiritually and morally. Every experience in life has an influence, perceptible or imperceptible, on our characters; and none, leaves us quite the same men as it found us. The struggle between the principles of good and evil within us cannot cease until one or the other gains a complete victory. Thus each individual must, ultimately, either attain to the perfect image of the Christ, or sink into complete and therefore irrecoverable evil. Then we are ripe for final judgment and final separation. This explains the division of men, according to the parable, into two and only two classes. Suffering either melts a man's heart or hardens it ; and the intense unparalleled sufferings which fell on believers and unbelievers alike, in the last days of the Jewish dispensation, must have made their characters develop very quickly, [3] and have gone far to turn at last every individual either into a saint-fit to be welcomed to the heavenly Kingdom, the Father's house of many mansions; or into a devil-fit only to be burned up and consunled in the quenchless flames of Gehenna.
The test of character - Their treatment of the Lord's sit, ring brethren is the standard or criterion by which, in the parable, men are Judged and their true characters made manifest. This was a test peculiarly appropriate to the times of fierce persecution which accompanied the last, years of the Jewish dispensation. But it is hard to understand its application to the world in general, when we remember the myriads in Africa. India, China, and elsewhere who have lived and died without ever having seen a Christian, or even heard the name of the Saviour.
The severity of the punishment - In the parable those on the left hand are commanded to depart into the eternal fire. A divine instinct within us revolts against the conclusion that this is to be the indiscriminate destiny of all men, in every period of the world's history, who have died without cherishing faith in the historic Christ. Yet the awful severity of the sentence, and the apparent finality of the Doom pronounced, harmonize well with the belief that the parable describes the retribution. meted out to that evil generation of the Jews, and with the reception of the Church of the Firstborn into the heavenly Kingdom (Heb. xii. 23). It is true that wrongdoing of every description carries with it, when unrepented of, its own most bitter curse and suffering Yet we have to reconize that besides the sin against the Holy Spirit (Matt. xii. 31) involved in the deliberate and persistent., rejection of God's Messiah, and constituting a sin unto death (I John v. 16) which can never be forgiven, there are also offences, committed in ignorance and frailty, which are not sins unto death. The sharp distinction between the two sorts of punishment that await the impenitent is also seen from our Lord's words in Luke xx. 18: "Every one that falleth on that stone shall be broken in pieces, but" -more awful destiny still- "on whomsoever it shall fall, it shall scatter him as dust." It is quite certain that the most terrible denunciations of woe recorded in the New Testament, denunciations which it has been usual to apply to all unbelievers alike, were in reality directed against a specially guilty and hardened class of sinners. Thus, whilst we are repeatedly taught that God will render to each man according to his deserts, yet we know that it, was to be more tolerable for Sodom and Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum (Luke x. 13-15). Of ,Judas alone, who had come to be a complete incarnation of evil, [4] is it recorded that it would have been well for him if he had not been born (Matt. xxvi. 24). It was false and hypocritical Scribes and Pharisees who were designated " offspring of vipers (Matt. xxiii. 33) and "children of the devil" (John viii. .14), and solemnly warned that they were in danger or falling under the severest form of God's judgement, the judgement of Gehenna. It was the pronounced enemies of Jesus and the cruel persecution of His people against whom eternal destruction was threatened at His Second Advent (2 Thess. i. 9). Further, in the parable of the pounds (Luke xix. 27), those whom the nobleman on His return as King ordered to be slain were men who hated Him and were in definite and insolent rebellion against His authority. It was also adversaries whom the fiery indignation would devour (Heb.x. 27), and the open and avowed enemies of the cross of Christ of whom we are told that their end is destruction (Phil. iii. 18). And here, in the parable of the sheep and the goats, the exceptional wickedness of the last generation of the Jewish nation explains the awful severity of the sentence pronounced upon them and the apparent finality of their doom. These men did not sin in blind ignorance. If Jesus Himself had not previously come and spoken unto them and done among them works which none other ever did, their sin might not have been of the heinous and unpardonable character that it was (John ix. 41 ; xv. 22, 24 ; xvi. 9). But, as things were, they had not the faintest excuse nor palliation for their final rejection of Him. The times of ignorance God in His infinite mercy overlooks (Acts xvii. 30). But this was the judgment, that light came into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light, because their works were evil (John iii. 19). Our Lord's contemporaries had fondly hoped, and passionately desired, that, the Christ at His coming would prove a great earthly King. Cherishing this expectation, it was at first, only natural that they should be shocked and disappointed by the appearance of a Messiah of such a different sort. Neither God nor man would have, judged them severely merely because at first they were disposed to reject Jesus. But the lives and ministries of Himself and His apostles completely changed the aspect of the matter. Jesus Himself was, as He has been ever since, the one unanswerable proof of His own divine inission. As they listened to Him all bare Him witness and marvelled at the words of grace which proceeded out of His mouth (Luke iv. 22), and they were compelled to admit: " Never man so spake " (John vii. 46). The worst taunt which his fellow townsmen at Nazareth could bring against Him, after narrowly watching, His daily life for thirty years, was that He was a poor man a carpenter, and the son of a carpenter (Matt. xiii. 55-57). He boldly told His bitterest, enemies that He always did the divine will (John viii. 29), and He challenged thein in vain to convict, Him of a single sin (John viii. 46). Having been gradually made to see the truth concerning Him by the Holy Spirit, within them (Matt. xii. 3 1) for them to hate Him (John xv. 23) was to hate God and all goodness, and definitely to reject Him was definitely to reject Him that sent Him (Luke x. 16, Revised Bible). They who had seen Him, had seen the Father! (John xiv. 9). They were thus in open revolt against God's Messiah. Not in ignorance but out of sheer wickedness and perversity they had resisted the evidence furnished them by the life and miracles and teaching of Jesus and His apostles and by the witness of the Holy Spirit in their own souls.
They had deliberately rejected and murdered Him whom many of them in their secret hearts had been compelled to recognize as the embodiment of truth and goodness. They had also cruelly persecuted to the death a multitude of His innocent and saintly followers. The Jewish historian Josephus, writing eighteen hundred years ago, describes the mass of his fellow-countrymen as having been far more ungodly than the people of Sodom. He expresses his conviction that if the Romans had not opportunely come and destroyed them, the earth would have been likely toopen and swallow them up, or another deluge might have been expected to sweep them away (Wars. v. 10. 5; 13. 6; vii. 8. 1). Jesus also in the parable of the Sower (Matt. xiii) had plainly taught that in the case of the majority of His contempories the good impression and moral reformation produced by His teaching would prove temporary. On another occasion He had predicted that, as time went on, their condition would come to resemble that of a man possessed by eight evil spirits (Matt. xii. 45). [5] The parable of judgment thus viewed throws great light on tile problem of future punishment, and has solemn significance for humanity in every age.
(1) It increases the certainty of retribution - In John v. 29 (" The hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice and shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have practised ill unto the resurrection of judgment and Rev. xx. 12 (When 'the thousand years' were finished, " I saw the dead-the great and the small-standing before the throne ") we have predictions of a world-wide resurrection and a world-wide Judgement yet to come. But even if these predictions had been lacking, the fact that God has punished sin in the past would be an indication that He will surely do so in the future. If this parable describes the judgment of the last generation of the Jewish people, then it takes its place along with the deluge and the destruction of Sodom and the cities of Canaan and with a thousand other events in history in impressing upon us the absolute certainty of the fearful retribution which always pursues impenitent sinners. (It is to be remembered that we are deterred from wrong-doing far more by the certanty of punishment than by its severity.)
(2) Some men for ever lost - By proving that some men are for ever lost., the parable is fatal to the doctrine or final Universal restoration These Jews involved themselves not only in fearful suffering but also in irreparable loss and ruin There is not one of us who may not be guilty of the same mad folly, if, like them, we persistently sin against light and knowledge and quenching within us the witness of the Holy Spirit deliberately harden ourselves in rebellion against God's Messiah. " Be not high-minded, but fear; for if God spared not the natural branches, neither will He spare thee. Behold then the goodness and severity of God: toward them that fell severity; but toward thee God's goodness, if thou continue in His goodness otherwise thoualso shalt be cut off " (Romans xi. 21, 22).
(3) Being burnt up as refuse - The mention of an eternal (or age-long) fire does not necessitate belief in never ending suffering. The literal Gehenna, or Valley of Hinnom, with its quenchless flames, was a receptacle just outside Jerusalem for what was utterly bad and worthless. Rubbish and refuse were cast therein, not for their own sake to be purified as gold is purified of its dross but in order that by their complete destruction the city as a whole might be rendered clean and sweet. In like manner it is natural to infer from this parable, and from Matt. xxiii. 33 ("Ye serpents, ye offspring of vipers, how shall ye escape the judgment of Gehenna?") that all goodness and every remnant of a better nature became extinct in the unbelievers of the last g eneration of the Jewish nation. They had completely silenced within them the Sirit of God,and they thus became as the refuse and offscouring of the world. At, this, the first judgement, they were cast into the fire of the spiritual Gehenna, not for their own sake, nor that they might be perpetually tortured ; but in order, without further prolonged delay, to rid the universe of their existence. [6] The name " Valley of Slaughter " given in Jerem. vii. 32, and xix. 6, to the Valley or Hinnom, and the use in the New Testament [7] of such phrases as " the furnace of fire," "destruction," "a consuming fire," "the lake of fire," " the Second death," "perishing," also points strongly to probability of fearful anguish, followed by extinction of being, as the doom that awaits impenitent sinners who prove themselves utterly and therefore irremediably bad.
(4) Yet many other degrees of guilt and punishment - That, servant which knew his Lord's will and made not ready nor did according to His will, shall be beaten with many stripes; but, he which knew not and did things worthy of stripes shall be beaten with few stripes. And to whomsoever much is given, of him Shall much be required and to whom they commit much or him will they ask the more" (Luke xii. 47, 48). [8] This principle forbids us to regard utter destruction as being necessarily the fate of all who die in unbelief, for all are not so monstrously wicked as that generation of Jews. Lack of sympathy with Christianity as it is humanly presented to us does not in every case amount to deliberate rejection of the Saviour Himself Unbelief and wrongdoing always involve us in suffering and loss, but God is pitiful and longsuffering towards men who offend mainly in ignorance. He is a consuming fire only towards those whose sins, by being knowingly persisted in, have ceased to have anything of the character of disease and misfortune, and have become heinous by being made the deliberate choice of the individual. The life to come is the exact counterpart of the life that now is. An impenitent sinner reaps just what he has sown. The law of few or many stripes is fatal to the theory of Conditional Immortality which regards utter destruction as the doom which awaits all impenitent sinners alike. The fact of the past second advent establishes on a firm Scriptural basis the Wider Hope. We may confidently anticipate the final salvation and restoration of the majority of men. Yet comparatively few will share in the full glory and blessedness of the Kingdom of heaven. As in the past, so now, and so in the future, some may resist all that even God Himself, in this or any world, can do for their salvation. We cannot but fear that they who tbus prove themselves utterly and irreclaimably bad will be for ever lost, and will pass out of existence. We are therefore compelled to definitely stop short of Universalism.
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This world I deem but a beautiful dream Of shadows
that are not what they seem, Where visions arise,
giving faint surmise Of the things that shall meet our
waking eyes.I gaze aloof on the tissued roof, Where time and
space are the warp and woof Which the King of
kings, as a curtain flings, O'er the dreadfulness of
eternal things.But could I see, as in truth they be, The glories of
Heaven that encompass me, I should lightly hold
the tissued fold Of that marvellous curtain of blue
and gold.Soon the whole, like a parched-up scroll, Shall
before my amazed eyes uproll; And, without a
screen, at one burst be seen THE PRESENCE
wherein I have ever been.Oh who shall bear the blinding glare Of the Majesty that
shall meet us there ? What eye may gaze on the unveiled
blaze Of the light-girdled throne of THE ANCIENT OF DAYS?
CHRIST us aid! HIMSELF be our shade,
That in that dread day we be not dismayed!Thomas Whytehead.
[1] That His second advent was to be accompanied by a spiritual judgement is declared in various passages, e.g., "Behold I come quickly, and My reward is with Me to render to each, man according as his work is." Rev. xxii. 12. The parable, of the Tares and of the Dragnet are a further proof that, at the close of the Jewish dispensation, a severance of the, wicked from among the righteous was to take place and a harvest to be reaped. "The harvest is the end of the. age. "So shall it be in the end of the age" (Matt. xiii. 39, 49).
[2] See Appendix F, page195.
[3] "He that is unrighteous, let him do unrighteousness yet more. He that is righteousness, let him do righteousness yet more" (Rev. xxii. 11). Compare :1 Tim. iii. 13: "Evil men shall wax worse and worse."
[4] "And after the sop then entered Satan into him" (John xiii. 27). "Did I not choose you the twelve, and one of you is a devil? " (John vi. 70)
[5] The angel speaking of the destruction of ancient Jerusalem cried with a mighty voice, saying : "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, and is become a habitation of demons and a prison of every unclean spirit (Rev. xviii.2).
[6] Compare I Kings xiv. 10: "I will utterly sweep away the house of Jeroboam, (is a man sweepeth away dung, till it be all gone! "
[7] "The Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His Kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire " (Matt. xiii. 41, 42). "In flaming fire, rendering vengeance to them that know not God and to them that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus; who shall suffer punishment even eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of His might " (2 Thess. i. 8, 9) . " Our God is a consuming fire " (Heb. xii. 29) -Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death, even the lake of fire " (Rev. xx. 14).
[8] That there will be degrees of future retribution exactly corresponding to degrees of guilt, our Lord also taught in Matt. v. 22: "I say unto you, that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the Judgment. And whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council. And whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of the Gehenna of fire,"