The Revelation of Jesus Christ - The Herald

This confession of faith adopted just after Mede's death was subsequently accepted by the
National Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
Sir Isaac Newton, who lived in the latter part of the seventeenth century, further advanced
the system of Historical interpretation. Contemporaneous with Sir Isaac Newton there
lived several other interpreters of the Apocalypse. Among these were Jurieu and Daubuz,
who were both exiled Huguenots, and "belonged to the five hundred thousand
Protestants," who were compelled to leave France by the persecuting edict of Louis XIV, in
revoking the edict of Nantes. Their sufferings under the Papal power turned their
attention to the prophetic Word and in it they found consolation. Jurieu, for example,
begins his prophetic work with the sentence: "The afflicted Church seeks for consolation.
Where can she find it but in the promises of God?" His work is entitled The Approaching
Deliverance of the Church. Therein he sets forth the thought "that the Papacy is the anti-
Christian kingdom, and that that kingdom is not far from its ruin; that the present
persecution may end in three years and a half, after which the destruction of Antichrist
shall begin, which shall be finished in the beginning of the next Age and then the
Kingdom of Christ shall come upon the earth." This was published in 1637. Apocalyptic
Historic interpretation continued to increase through the seventeenth, eighteenth, and
nineteenth centuries . . .
". . . and the sacred light of these prophecies is still guiding the Church of God across the
wide ocean of her dangerous way. Those steadfast stars of prophecy which lighted the
persecuted Waldenses through the darkness of the Middle Ages, which lighted the
progress of the Lollards and the Bohemians before the Reformation, which lighted the
noble Reformers through the gloom and tempest three hundred years ago, and which have
lighted watchful saints through troubled centuries, are shining still, in that high and holy
firmament, whence no mortal hand can pluck them down; and they shall shine on--those
glittering stars of prophecy--till they have fulfilled their glorious mission, till they have
guided the Church in safety to her celestial haven, and their long-enduring radiance melts
at last in the rising splendors of eternal day."
It is the teaching from analogy that the Church is a subject of prophecy. God's ancient
people were never left without the guidance of the "lamp of prophecy." Is it reasonable to
suppose that the Church of this dispensation would be left without this lamp? It was
because of a failure to give heed to these prophecies, which were read every Sabbath day
in their synagogues, and which were being fulfilled before their eyes, that the Jews
fulfilled them in rejecting and crucifying their Messiah. (Acts 13:27.) Indeed, their history,
as well as the condition of their home land during the last eighteen hundred years, was
foretold by their Prophets. Furthermore, their future restoration to favor, and the great
tribulations they are to encounter just prior to their conversion to the Messiah, are all
described by their Prophets, not simply in a general way, but in the most minute detail. It
is to the latter that Futurists wrongly apply the visions of the Revelation. We ask, Why
apply the visions of the Revelation to the Jews when their history was already so minutely
foretold by the Old Testament Prophets? It has been wisely asked: