LECTURE V.

THE PERSONAL REIGN OF MESSIAH,

AND HIS GLORIFIED SAINTS ON THE REGENERATED EARTH,

"THE LORD GOD SHALL GIVE UNTO HIM THE THRONE OF HIS FATHER DAVID, AND HE SHALL REIGN OVER THE HOUSE Of Jacob forever, and of HIS KINGDOM THERE SHALI. BE NO END." Luke i. 32, 33.

Introduction-a kingdom promised to Christ as the Son of Man.--The storm of vengeance precedes the full establishment of Messiah's kingdom and the blessedness of millennial rest.--A statement of the point in debate.--Short argument for the personal reign from the personal and pre-millennial advent of Christ.--The personal reign argued from Luke i. 32, 33.-Meaning of the expression "David's throne."-Argument from the original grant of dominion to Adam, Gen. i. 26-28.. Other arguments.-The doctrine sanctioned and encouraged by our Savior himself.-Objections answered.--Various passages examined. The reign of Christ and his saints is on the earth-Jerusalem the metro-polis of the world --Note on Mr. Begg's view of the city in Ez. xlviii., and the New Jerusalem of St. John.--Mr. Sirr's explanation of the difficulty, "no more sea."--- -Bickersteth and Brgg.-The question answered who are the king and princes, and who the subjects of the millennial reign.-Pre-eminence of the restored Jewish nation over othernations in the flesh.--Conclusion.

This portion of Scripture is a part of the salutation of the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary. Let us examine it in its connexion. Commencing with the narrative at the 26th verse of the chapter, we read: "And in the sixth month, (i. e. the month immediately after the five months mentioned in the preceding verses) the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the

house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favor with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto HIM, (i. e. to the Man Christ Jesus, the incarnate Immanuel, who was to be born of the Virgin. Mary) the throne of his father David. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end." This kingdom, you will observe, is promised to Christ, as the Son of Man,* the offspring of the Virgin Mary, the lineal descendant of king David, and as such the heir to David's throne. This accords with what we read in the 7th chapter of Daniel, 13th and 14th verses: I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him nearbefore him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and lan-guages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed:" and in Dan. ii. 44, “And in the days of these kings (i. e. the kings who rule over the territories of the ancient Roman empire, after it has been divided into ten parts, cf. Dan. ii. and vii.) in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a king dom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom. shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in

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**It could not be promised to him as God, for in his divine nature he' was already Lord of the universe, having created all things. Johni. 3.

pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever." The reign of Messiah is not to be ushered in peaceably by the gradual conversion of mankind, but the stone representing Messiah's kingdom dashes against the colossal image representing the kingdoms of the earth, grinds it to powder, and the wind sweeps it away like chaff. It is therefore a work of tremendous violence, of fierce judgment, as we have already shown in the preceding lecture. And when the earth shall have reached the last climax of wickedness, and the storm of vengeance shall have descended under the direction of Messiah and his glorified saints, then and not till then shall we experience the blessedness of millennial rest.

It is agreed by all who profess to believe in the Bible, that Messiah is to reign spiritually in the hearts of men, the question is, whether in addition to this, he shall reign personally on the earth, with external, visible power, as the great civil and ecclesiastical ruler over the world. Our own opinion is that all such passages as the following onefrom Zechariah refer to a personal as well as to a spiritual reign: "The Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one.” (Zech. xiv. 9.)

We have already shown, that Christ is to return in person to the earth previous to the millennium-and as the Scriptures no where state that he leaves the earth after his. return and as it is acknowledged that he exercises some kind of reign during the millennium, the inference would seem to be unavoidable, that his reign is personal, and not merely spiritual.

But not to rest the question here, I argue the personal reign of Christ in the first place from the promise contained in the text, which is the same in substance with what is often mentioned in the Old Testament. The promise is: that the Messiah, the man. Christ Jesus, God manifest in

the flesh, in the visible glories of his humanity, shall sit upon the throne of David. For, as we have already stated, the promise is made to Christ as Man, as the incarnate Immanuel, the offspring of the Virgin Mary, and the lineal descendant of David, and consequently the rightful heir to David's throne. Now what is the meaning of the expression "David's throne?" It cannot mean a throne in some distant part of the universe `called heaven, for David never had a throne there. For what says Peter in his sermon on the day of Pentecost, recorded in the 2d chapter of the Acts of the Apostles? He says that "David is not ascended into the heavens." (Acts ii. 34.) Of course if he had not ascended into heaven, but was still in the separate state of departed spirits, he could not have had a throne in heaven. Nor can the expression before us mean a throne in the Gentile church, for David never had a throne there. Indeed, in David's time the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles had not occurred. It was not till the death of Christ, that the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile was broken down. Now suppose it had been said to the mother of George IV. that the Lord should give to him the throne of his father, George III., or to the mother of Edward VI. that the Lord should give to him the throne of his grandfather, Henry VII., what would have been meant by such language? It would obviously have meant the throne of England; and to sit upon the throne of a kingdom, signifies, according to the established use of language, to reign personally over that kingdom. In like manner, agreeably to the fair import of words, when it was promised to the Virgin Mary, that her son, the Lord Jesus Christ, should sit upon the throne of his father David, the angel Gabriel meant,—and the mother of the man Christ Jesus, accustomed as she was to Jewish phraseology, could have understood him to mean nothing else,-the angel meant, I say,

that the Messiah should reign in person where David reigned, that is, in the literal land of Palestine, over the twelve tribes of Israel. To this agree the words of Ezekiel, who prophecied that when the Jewish people should be restored to their own land, they should no more be divided into two kingdoms, but one king should reign over them all on the beautiful mountains of Palestine. (Ez. Xxxvii. 21-28.) Such is the import of the promise con tained in our text. There are many passages, however, which promise a more extended dominion: and according to these, Messiah is to reign not only over the house of Jacob, but over the whole habitable earth. (See the 2d, the 8th, and the 72d Psalms, and Zech. ix. 9, 10.)

This leads me to recur to the original grant of dominion given to Adam. You will find it in the first chapter of Genesis, the 26th, 27th, and 28th verses, where we read as follows: "And God said, Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth on the earth." This was the original grant of dominion to Adam the first man. He lost it in the fall. It was then usurped by Satan, who is called the God of this world, and the Prince of the power of the air. But the second Man, the Lord from heaven, as the Scriptures inform us, is to restore all that was lost in the fall, and hence in the 8th Psalm, which has been always applied to the Messiah, we read: "O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy