redemption, by the entrance of a new life into the heart. What we have is a great military revolution in which the saints under their leader are successful. Now they occupy the places of rule. Outward opposition is put down though sin still remains, with whole nations only outwardly submissive. A military victory, an autocratic reign, a Jesus content to restrain rebellious peoples by threat, where he has not already slain them by the sword, and to accept a pretended obedience; and a new and more terrible rebellion to close it all: this is the premillennial kingdom.

CHAPTER VII

PREMILLENNIALISM AND THE BIBLE

THE hold that premillennialism has upon its followers rests mainly upon two grounds. The first is its answer to the problem of evil and the longing for a new world. To men whose hearts are burdened with the evil of the world and who see no hope in the present outlook it declares that God by a deed of irresistible power shall some time destroy the evil and set up the good. The second appeal rests upon its theory and use of the Bible. For that reason this subject demands special consideration. It is here that the opponents of premillennialism have failed, including the most recent, Dr. J. H. Snowden, in his valuable book The Coming of the Lord. Dean Shailer Mathews' pamphlet must be cited as an exception, as also Frank Ballard's fine booklet Why Not Russellism? which applies at this point to all forms of Adventism. All readers of premillennialism in its various forms, including Russellism, Dowieism, SeventhDay Adventism, as well as the modern premillennialism of the Moody and Los Angeles Institute type, which we are considering, know the insistent claim of loyalty to the Scriptures, the long and impressive lists of Scripture citation, and the vigorous denunciation of those who disagree as enemies of the Bible. Premillennialism claims to be nothing more than a transcript of what the Bible itself says. As a matter of fact its theory of the Bible is crude and false, its use of the Bible is mechanical, arbitrary, and violent, and the consequence of its theory

is the sacrifice of what is highest in Christianity to the lower levels of an earlier belief.

THE PREMILLENNIAL THEORY OF THE BIBLE

We may call the modern conception of the Bible the vital-historical view. It is not dogmatic. It bids us understand the Bible not in the light of an imposed theory but by going to the Bible and studying it. Its conception of the Bible is historical; it sees not words dropped down from heaven but a great collection of writings from many ages coming up out of the deepest life of mankind. It is a religious conception; it magnifies rather than minimizes God's part in all this. It begins not with a set of writings but with the living God. This God is no distant being reaching down into the world once in a while to impart some message or work some deed; he is the ever-present, indwelling, redeeming God. All faith and love and righteousness are the movement of his Spirit in men's hearts. Through the long ages he has ever been seeking to reveal himself to men, to redeem them from sin, to give them his life, to establish his way of love and righteousness. Through these ages he has found men who respond in special manner to his quickening Spirit. These men knew God in their hearts, saw him in the nation's history, and interpreted him to others. From this living presence of God, through these men thus inspired, there have come the writings gathered together in our Bible.

Directly opposed to this is the theory of verbal inspiration. According to this we have not so much the inspiration of men as the communication of words. The Bible is a book communicated by God "to the smallest

word, and inflection of a word." (See the widely circulated statement of faith issued by the Niagara Conference, a group of recognized premillennial leaders.) Insistently Dr. Torrey declares that there were given to the writers of the Bible "the very words," "the precise language." To state the arguments against such a theory will seem to many a sheer waste of time; the careful study of the Bible itself is the chief reason why this conception has long since been left behind by scholars, and why it is rapidly disappearing even in popular thought. But the fact of modern premillennialism is sufficient reason for our consideration. The foundation of this whole doctrine is involved in literal infallibility, as is that of Russellism, Dowieism, and similar aberrations. All of them work on the same theory, quoting prooftexts, building on words and phrases. Remove this theory, and "the complicated structure of theological details built upon it comes clattering down to a mere heap of religious verbiage." Further this verbal-inspiration theory reveals the character of the premillennial theology-dualistic, mechanical, unethical.

The first criticism to be made is that this theory is mechanical. There are just two ways of conceiving the work of God's Spirit in man. The one is mechanical: the Spirit is an external force that overrides and compels the human spirit. This is the primitive idea. The other conception is vital and ethical: the divine Spirit is an indwelling Presence working through man's thought and feeling and will, not dispossessing or overwhelming, but elevating and transforming. Premillennialism stands for the mechanical idea in its thought of inspiration as in that of the world's final salvation. Verbal

inspiration is of necessity mechanical. Where the very word is given the writer becomes, to use the old figure of its advocates, simply the pen that is driven by another power, calamus Spiritus sancti. In modern picture, he is no more than the lifeless machine upon which these words are being written. Consistently then when Dr. R. A. Torrey insists upon the very words being given he goes on to minimize the human and reduce the writer to this passive machine. The prophet, we are told, was "carried along in his utterance, regardless of his own will and thought," never speaking "from his own consciousness," ofttimes not understanding what he wrote and being compelled to study his own words.1 The same position essentially is expressed, through more baldly, by J. H. Brookes, a noted premillennialist writer of the last generation: "The apostles had nothing more to do in preparing the New Testament than the pen of the writer has to do in giving us the production of the author's brain" (The Lord Cometh, p. 316). In similar vein writes A. C. Gaebelein: "The prophets were visited by the Spirit of Christ, and he prophesied through them. After they had written down their prophecies they began to read them, and were not able to understand them fully" (Harmony of the Prophetic Word, p. 14).

The dualism of this theory is apparent, and like its mechanical character it underlies the whole premillennial theology. God and man stand sharply opposed to each other. If the Spirit of God be present, then, in so far forth, the spirit of man is excluded, and human thought and consciousness must be minimized or shut 1 Fundamental Doctrines, Chapter I.