Daniel 7:27

And the kingdom and dominion shall be given to the people of the saints.

The Reign of the Saints

Attend to some preliminary remarks.

1. The doctrine of the text does not require us to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is, at some future time; to return in person to our world and set up a visible and theocratic empire upon all these continents. His kingdom is, and is to be, a spiritual kingdom: an empire that asks and needs no visible manifestation of its Lord, no earthly metropolis, or sceptre, or throne.

2. The Scriptures do not require us to teach or to believe this doctrine even in any absolute, extreme, and unexceptionable sense. The saints as persons, and their great Christian maxims as principles, shall ultimately win such an ascendency over all nations, interests, institutions, and affairs, that this whole world shall become an orderly and well-governed Christian empire.

3. As to the way in which this great conquest is to be achieved. Are the saints of the Most High, after a series of moral victories, wrought with peaceful weapons, and by the aid of the all-conquering Spirit of God, to change their tactics and go forth, in coming times, with their armies, to dislodge the wicked, and settle as victors on all the continents? The Scriptures everywhere discourage such conclusions. We have read history to little purpose if we have not seen that the only revolutions which are permanent and deep are those which take place underneath the surface--penetrating and reconstructing a nation’s thoughts. Accordingly, there are, in every community, natural processes and lawful methods by which to effect, first a moral, and then a civil revolution. It is a great law of nature, a law operating among all the orders of the animate creation, that the superior race shall win ultimate ascendency over the inferior. The earth is covered with a vast framework of social institutions, whose present and special office it is to guard, and administer, and conserve the temporal interests of nations. Will the saints of the Most High, as they advance and take possession of the world, overturn this great edifice of social order? Will they set up in their place the one great institution, the Church, making all offices spiritual? The Papist answers “Yes.” But the Scriptures hold no such language. Since civil order is as indispensable to social well-being as spiritual thrift, the State is an institution as truly Divine as the Church. The one is Christ’s authoritative organisation, for the control and government of things spiritual; the other is His twin organisation, for the management and direction of things temporal.

4. According to all Scriptural intimations, the conquest of the nations for Christ will be a very gradual conquest. Looking into the future, through the prophetic symbols, is like looking over the tops of the mountains to the distant sky. As we gaze we behold one summit behind another, and beyond the farthest the blue heavens. But how far it may be from the first peak to the second, and how far from the last to the firmament beyond, we cannot determine or tell.

5. We may say that the predicted conquest and reign of the saints is to be, and in a two-fold- sense, complete and universal. It will include all races, it will embrace all arts, sciences, trades, interests, governments, usages, compacts, relations. That the people of God will one day possess and govern the world might be conclusively argued:

(1) From the known nature of their religion. Who are the ultimate heirs of the world’s wealth? They who have, and shall continue to have, the qualities that acquire and preserve wealth. And who are these? Not the heathen. For their life is ever a life of idleness, and unthrift, and loss. Not the wicked or worldly, in Christian lands--for though a single generation of these may practice the industries, and observe the moderation, which insure an estate, they can never perpetuate these property-preserving habits. But the religion of the New Testament not only implants the qualities which acquire and retain wealth, it preserves them.

(2) From the actual history of the Church, since it has had its place among the nations. When the Saviour left the world, His disciples were indigent and helpless and weak.

(3) All the indications of Providence point, as with a prophetic finger, to the same grand consummation, the delivery of the world into the hands of the saints. The old religions of the heathen have become confessedly effete and decrepit. Not one of them can ever spread. What is to come when the various tottering systems reel in the tempest, and go down never again to rise? When Antichrist falls, then comes the reign of the saints.

Application.

1. In this great work of possessing and governing the world, the people of God must never allow themselves to confine their endeavours to any single achievement, but must preserve a breadth and amplitude of purpose equal to their universal mission.

2. Neglect or debility in any one department of this great work of saintly conquest and control, enfeebles and endangers the whole enterprise. (W. Clark, D.D.)

The Church of the Future

Around the grand mosque of Damascus there clusters a vast accumulation of history. On the spot where it stands to-day, after a lapse of nearly 1,400 years, there was originally erected, in the first century of our era, a heathen temple. In the middle of the fourth century this temple was destroyed by the Roman general Theodosius the Great, and on its ruins, in the beginning of the fifth century, Arcadius, the elder son of Theodosius, built a Christian house of worship. This latter house, though for 300 years the Cathedral of Damascus, became in the eighth century a Moslem possession, and far some thousand years it has been used as a Mohammedan mosque. No visit to Damascus is quite complete without a sight of this historic structure. The most interesting feature, however, of this curious building is not its age, nor its history, nor its present prominence, but rather a single sentence engraved upon the vestibule. The inscription is in Greek characters and reads thus: “Thy kingdom, O Christ, is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generations.” There, on this Mohammedan mosque, and after ten centuries of Moslem occupation, cut deep in the enduring stone, the Christian record remains--a record of faith, of hope and of confidence on the part of the Damascus Christians in the ultimate triumph of the Kingdom of God. Almost 2,000 years have rolled away since Jesus Christ opened in Bethlehem the marvellous scene of Divinity in humanity, and still the Church of His grace abides. Other kingdoms have perished, mowed down by the resistless scythe of time--Babylon, Media, Macedonia, Persia, Syria, Egypt, Greece, Rome--each swept away almost as though it had never flourished, while the Church founded on the rock by the humble Nazarene lives and grown And the Church of the future will be more glorious than the Church of the past. “Let us believe and know that Christianity is advancing all the time; that, though men’s hearts may fail them through fear, the Church goes on in God-guided and irresistible movements.” To this happy conclusion of Mr. Gladstone’s must come every intelligent student of history. The world grows bettor from century to century, because God reigns supreme from generation to generation. The golden age of the Church is not in the yesterday of the past, nor in the to-day of the present, but in the to-morrow of the future.

I. In the first place, what will be the attitude of the Church of the future in relation to the PUBLIC WORSHIP? With all confidence may we not say that the Church, come what may, will never cease to worship? The worshipful impulse is as deep as it is universal, as pervasive as it is prevalent. Worshipfulness is a differentiating characteristic of the rightly-constituted soul. And this instinctive worshipful impulse will be more intelligently educated and more reverently developed in the future days of Christianity’s evolution. With the developing years shall come to the Church of God clearer visions and broader outlooks, and a deepened sense of righteousness, with profounder awe in the presence of spiritual realities; and along with this there cannot fail to be developed a more noble, God-pleasing, eternity-piercing worship in the hearts of God’s children.

II. In the second place, what will be the attitude of the Church of the future in relation to the BIBLE as the final and authoritative revelation of God’s will and way to men? Of all the books that fill our libraries and thrill our hearts this is the most wonderful. It is the fullest and richest thesaurus of Divine wisdom and human knowledge. All books, it has been said, are of two classes--books made from other books, and books from which other books are made--and to the latter class, in a pre-eminent degree, belongs this Word of God. And it seems to the truest and most intelligent supporters of the old Book that things are shaping themselves to-day, as never before, for unlimited victories for the Word of God. Certain facts and conditions there are which appear a sure prelude to a superb Biblical renaissance; the publication and distribution of the revised Scriptures, the profound delving and exhaustive research o| historical critics, the patient investigation of modern science; the recent discovery and explorations of ancient cities by faithful archaeologists, and, along with all this, the growing intelligence of the modern Christian Church, which is rejecting, as never before, man-made creeds and formulas. Fear not the controversies now raging about the Bible. The ages of theological agitation and discussion have always been the ages of progress and promise. Better the agitations of the days of Augustine and Athanasius and Luther than the tranquility of the Middle Ages.

III. In the third place, what will be the attitude of the Church of the future in relation to JESUS CHRIST, as God’s Son and man’s Saviour? Here we confront the great problem of Christianity to-day, than which no greater can ever arise--the Lord of Glory; His Miraculous Incarnation, His Spotless Character, His Transcendent Teaching, His Majestic Deeds, His Sacrificial Death, His Glorious Resurrection, His Radiant Ascension, His Position at the Right Hand of the Majesty on High, and His Abiding Presence in human life and history. A truer and more pregnant sentence the great Christlieb never uttered than when he wrote that Christ is Christiania, as Plato was never Platonism, and Mohammed never Mohammedanism, and Buddha never Buddhism. We often speak of Christianity’s unparalleled power, and yet let us remember that, since the stream cannot rise higher than its source, Jesus Christ is the Living Personal Force because of whom all ages and races have been agitated and convulsed. Recall the splendid words of Dr. Wace, in his notable controversy with Huxley: “The strength of the Christian Church is not in its creed, but in its Christ. They see Him there; they hear His voice; they listen and they believe in Him. It is not so much that they accept certain doctrines taught by Him as that they accept Himself, their Lord and their God. It is with this living personal force that Agnosticism has to deal; and as long as the Gospels present Him to human hearts, so long will the Christian faith and the Christian Church, in their main characteristics, be vital and permanent forces in the Christian world.” Here is and ever shall be Christianity’s glory, the Son of God and the Son of Mary--the Christ who on earth matched every sermon with a service and every doctrine with a doing; the Christ who in Heaven is enthroned amid native scenes and clothed with Divine anthority, recognised more and more in the Church and world as the King of kings and the Lord of lords. And this Exalted Christ, let us never forget, is the once Crucified Christ. More in the Church of the future, if possible, than in the Church of the past will the Cross be emphasised and glorified. The richest theme of the Church’s future will be God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. Much of the preaching in our day, even in Evangelical pulpits, is struck to a lower key.

IV. In the fourth place, what will be the attitude of the Church of the future to the problem SOCIOLOGICAL? A most practical and important question this, also peculiarly suited to our day and generation. Ours is preeminently an age of practical benevolence and utilitarian tendencies. We are unlike all of our predecessors. The Roman craved the display of wondrous power and imperial sway. The Greek delighted to lose himself in the abstruse labyrinth of metaphysics. The Hebrew made it part of his religion to bow down before hoary rites and flaming sacrifice. We live in a stern age of fact; an age in which, as a scholarly master of Sociology has well said, Society is coming to itself and emphasising Sociology, Social ethics, Social politics; an age in which religion means the salvation of the soul, but also, as it meant with Jesus, the feeding of the hungry, the clothing of the naked, the healing of the sick, and relief, comfort, and help for the whole being. With the deeper life and broader outlook which the coming century will bring to the children of God there will be felt, with a new power, the truth that there is nothing secular which religion cannot both touch and glorify; that God never meant His saints to have one Gospel for Sunday and another for Monday, one religion for the Church and another for the world, one conscience for Caesar and another for Jehovah, that goodness is not a little island here and there in the great ocean of life, but rather the all-permeating salt that fills every part of the bright, broad sea.

V. In the fifth place, what will be the attitude of the Church of the future in relation to CHRISTIAN UNITY? To this interesting question it may be answered that there never was among God’s people, as to-day, such an unity of spirit in the bonds of peace. But the Church may never, should never, become organically one. Men differ too widely in birth and education for this ever to be accomplished. The universal law of God in grace, as in Nature, is unity in diversity. And yet, with absolute fidelity to the great fundamental truths of the Gospel, we shall more and more realise the prayer of the Master, “that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me and I in Thee”; not one in organic union, but one in heart and purpose, in will and work.

VI. In the sixth place, what will be the attitude of the Church of the future in relation to WORLD-WIDE EVANGELISATION? The spirit of missions, which is the Spirit of Christ, is recognised and actualised to-day as perhaps never before. The history of the sacred, self-sacrificing anointing of nineteen hundred years ago repeats itself from time to time. One hundred years ago the Church drew out of its hiding-place, where for centuries it had lain in almost absolute inutility, the glorious commission of its Lord. And to-day everywhere in Christian lands the orders of our Lord are being obeyed and appreciated with something of their far-reaching meaning and transcendent glory. To-day the Bible is within reach of 500,000,000 of the human race, and many things in connection with the missionary cause--the Word of God, the history of the past, the condition of the present, the promises of the future--appear to be hastening “that one Divine, far-off event to which the whole creation moves,” the conquest of the world by the King of Glory and the Prince of Peace! (K. B. Tupper, D.D.)

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