E. W. Bullinger
E. W. Bullinger
Philologos Religious Online Books
Philologos.org
September, 1897 | Vol. IV July 1897 - June 1898 | Main Index
The Official Organ of Prophetic Conferences.
E. W. Bullinger
September, 1897
Question No. 154
H.H., Harrow. "Are we not misled when we apply Revelation 20:4-6 to the Church of this dispensation?
Does it not rather apply to Israel? See Matthew 19:28, Daniel 7:9 and 27, etc. Should we not
regard the Church, which is one body and perfect man in Christ, as so closely connected with
Christ that it is hidden in Him in the Revelation?
Your suggestion is attractive only at first sight, and what it propounds cannot long be held comfortably in the heart. The fallacy underlying it is the very same one as has entrapped those who mix up the Body and the Bride, mutually repellent as those two views appear. Discernment of the relations subsisting between what is corporate and what is individual, i.e., between any given whole and its parts, disposes of both views at once.
Their mistake is the hasty assumption of the identity of two corporate communities without their previously resolving each of them into is constituent elements, and comparing those elements accordingly. What your suggestion would do is import something corporate into a text that treats of individuals only. The essential character of the passage is that it gathers together, for purposes of summing up, in order to a specific result, individuals previously dealt with in Scripture in other aspects—we must neither say, gathers together individuals plus something corporate, or treat "Christ" here as involving the corporate when He is manifestly regarded in His individuality only. Note further, we are never said to reign "in Christ," but "reign with Him" (2 Tim 2:12), the very words used in Revelation 20:4-6, and we never speak of "the reign of the Church," "the reign of the saints" being the only truly scriptural phrase.
The conclusion of the whole matter, then, is that as the text in Timothy concerns individuals only, and the one in Revelation also concerns individuals only, in our study of the latter we have a proper basis to start with, and thus both fallacies can be avoided.
Those seated on thrones are we therefore, apprehend, the saints composing the Church and the Old Testament sayings (cf. Heb 12:18-24), together with the 144,000 of Revelation 7 to 14. There are then enumerated two further collections (to complete the heavenly company), the former comprising those slain since the opening of the Seals (which are the wars and pestilences of Matt 24:7-9), being those martyred by Pseudo-Jerusalem, the Harlot, that (in the purpose of God) she may be caught redhanded at her old crimes, and the latter consisting of those who, after the overthrow of the Harlot, are murdered for refusing to worship the Beast. The whole make up the collection of individuals who will have part in the resurrection of the righteous.
This, you will see, does not bring the Church in corporately, as such; it merely leaves room for an application of the promise in 2 Timothy 2:12, and does so in a natural manner, with all respect both to canons of interpretation and canons of logic.
September, 1897 | Vol. IV July 1897 - June 1898 | Main Index
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