310
T h e K i n g ’ s
July 1931
B u s i n e s s
STRUCTURE SCRIPTURE By NORMAN B. HARRISON, Minneapolis, M innesota........Ail R ights Reserved
( f j n e ( f e a s t s o f t h e cJ2o rc l.. . (S o n iin u e d
many for one week : and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate” (Dan. 9:27). Resuming the narrative of Revelation 11, we find this very happening recorded in verses 3 to 14, causing God to intervene on behalf of His people. There is one more trumpet to sound (v. 15). It is the last trumpet; none subsequent to this is mentioned in Scripture. From this fact, coupled with the consideration that “last” implies a series, it is natural to conclude that this is the trumpet to which Paul by inspiration refers as the signal for the gathering together of God’s heavenly people in resurrection and rapture. See 1 Corinthians 15: 51, 52 and 1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17. Many scholars, however, object to this identification, on the ground that it would require the church to go through the tribulation. But this objection is scarcely valid if we understand the Day of Atonement to connote the tribulation period. (1) The Trumpets antedate the Day of Atonement by nine days (Lev. 23:24, 27) ; this must be the order in the fulfillment. (2) In Revelation 11, the sounding of the last trumpet carries the announcement: “Thy wrath is come” (v. 18). The tribulation is God’s wrath, answering to the wrath of the nations and of Satan, leading them to combine in the Beast’s assault upon God’s people and worship (vs. 7-10). Now it was this final overt act that Jesus singled out as inaugurating the tribu lation. See Matthew 24:15, 21. It is also the act that marks the break in the middle of the “week” (Dan. 9:27) to which Jesus refers. (3) In Leviticus 25 :9, we find the provision that in the jubilee year, the great prophetic year now before us, a trumpet should sound, the very last in the calendar, to herald the Day of Atonement. This is, indeed, the twofold message of the last trumpet in Revela tion 11—-tribulation for some, jubilee for others. Read carefully verses 17 and 18. If this is so, we can better understand the wording of Jesus’ promise, issued from the glory: “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth” (Rev. 3: 10); and again, His warning admonition to His own: “Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be ac counted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man” (Lk. 21 :36). 6. Day of Atonement (Lev. 23 :26-32). Let us note four things: (1) The popular misconception that this refers wholly or primarily to Christ’s atoning work on Calvary. That was accomplished in the Passover, in the spring of the year. This is in the fall of the year ; and while its great sweep harks back to the cross, its chief concern is His high-priestly work in the heavenlies, culminating in His coming forth as Kinsman-Avenger. (2) Its name, the Day of Atonement, is a purposed parallelism with Scripture’s most frequent designation of
m gain we remind ourselves of the utmost importance attaching to Leviticus 23, a section of Scripture in which God has been pleased to reveal in prophetic foreview the successive steps of His redemptive program. Our studies thus far have taken us just half way through the schedule of feasts, the half that has already been enacted in history—Passover, Firstfruits, Pentecost. While in a sense they are past, they are also present-tense feasts, forming the warp and woof of Christian expe rience. As we turn to the second half of the program, we may feel ourselves plunging into deep water, possibly finding ourselves at times wholly submerged. We are now in the realm of unfulfilled prophecy, where no one can afford to be dogmatic lest future fulfillment prove him to be at fault. T h e F easts of th e F uture These three feasts are in a closely grouped sequence, even more so than the three previous ones. They occur in the fall of the year; that is, the season of harvest. And such, indeed, is their significance; they are the feasts of ingathering. In the diagram, they stand most fittingly in an ascend ing scale. Their movement is not merely forward, but upward. They lead on into the glory of eternity. It will help the student to orient his thinking if he holds constantly in mind that the second of these three is not a feast but a fast. (The feast has been transferred to heaven. See diagram.) It is the tribulation period. Earlier in this series we were forced to the position that the tribulation is one of the dispensations; we are now to meet corroborating proof of this. 5. Trumpets (Lev. 23:23-25). This was a very sim ple festival, of which we note: (1) It occurred on the first day of the seventh month; that is, the civil new year. It was the beginning of national life, as the Passover was the beginning of spiritual life. (2) It is in the plural, strik ingly suggestive of the same use of the word in the series of trumpets in the Revelation. (3) The trumpets, in their sounding, served to announce the new year and to sum mon God’s people for its celebration. Turning to the trumpets mentioned in the Revelation, we find that in them God begins again to speak “in the Hebrew tongue” (Rev. 9:11), and that a view is forth with given of the Jewish people, returned to Jerusalem and carrying on the worship of the temple (Rev. 11:1, 2). They serve to usher in a new chapter of Jewish history, which Bible students know as Daniel’s seventieth week. We trust that our readers are free from the popular mis conception that synchronizes this “week,” or seven, with the tribulation, whereas Scripture makes clear that, in the first half of the period, the Jews are prosperous under treaty protection. It is the breaking of that treaty in the middle of the week that marks the bursting of the storm: “And he [Antichrist] shall confirm the covenant with
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