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How many of those who have rendered lip -service to the doctrine of
inspiration, even to its individual words, and echoed that they were
'convinced' have taken the trouble to verify their references? What must be
the attitude of mind when faced with the overwhelming evidence just
tabulated, which desires the truth of God uncoloured by theories of the best
of men? To quote the words of the writer whose views we have contested, we
too say with all our hearts, with just one necessary personal alteration:
'Real conviction concerning great truths can come only when we have
made our own personal studies and come to our own independent
conclusion. My own convictions that basileia means kingdom
("government" in our friend's statement) are the result of my own
studies in the Word. I believe the reader will come to the same
conclusion if he makes his own study of the subject'.
There speaks the true Berean; may the truth prevail.
Returning to our introductory notes on Prophecy, we continue to
assemble our key passages:
'When the Lord shall build up Zion He shall appear in His glory'.
A grand crisis is awaiting the world; but it is a Jewish crisis wherein the
Holy One of Israel is to be placed in exaltation with His people:
'There are three great eras of visitation, wherein God has as many
times appointed a term to His controversy with mankind. The first was
the deluge ... the second is to be the coming of the Lord Jesus in the
power of His dominion, when the Antichrist and those with him, will be
destroyed ... the last controversy is at the end of the millennium,
when sentence is carried out upon the rebel nations of that period' (T.
L. Strange).
To observe and record these converging crises, will form a part of our
immediate inquiry.
To attain to some fairly comprehensive understanding of the converging
lines of prophecy will enable us to
see with some measure of clarity the place that less pronounced and
problematic portions occupy.
Ecclesiastes says:
'Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof' (Eccles.
7:8).
Asaph attained to peace, and a solution of his problems, when he went
within the sanctuary of God, for then he 'understood their End', and
understanding the end of
the wicked, he no longer envied them their transient exemption from 'trouble'
(Psa. 73). Daniel was intensely interested to discover 'the end' of the
things revealed to him:
'O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things?' (Dan. 12:8),
and speaks too of the 'time of the end'. Let us pause, therefore, in our
pursuit of the great goal of prophecy to consider more carefully the import