The Holy Scripture - english version B.indd - Sabbat

Interpretation in post-Reformation Times.395her futurist interpretation of prophecy. Ribera was a Jesuit priest of Salamanca.In 1585 he published a commentary on the Apocalypse, denying the applicationof the prophecies concerning antichrist to the existing Church of Rome. He wasfollowed by Cardinal Bellarmine, a nephew of Pope Marcellus II., who was bornin Tuscany in 1542, and died in Rome 1621. Bellarmine was not only a man ofgreat learning, but “the most powerful controversialist in defence of Popery thatthe Roman Church ever produced.” Clemt VIII. used these remarkable words onhis nomination: “We choose him, because the Church of God does not posses hisequal learning.” Bellarmine, like Ribera, advocated the futurist interpretation ofprophecy. He taught that antichrist would be one particular man, that he wouldbe a Jew, that he would be preceded by the reappearance of the literal Enoch andElias, that he would rebuild the Jewish temple at Jerusalem, compel circumcision,abolish the Christian sacraments, abolish every other form of religion, wouldmanifestly and avowedly deny Christ, would assume to be Christ, and would bereceived by the Jews as their Messiah, would pretend to be God, would make aliteral image speak, would feign himself dead and rise again, and would conquerthe whole world - Christian, Mohammedan, and heathen ; and all this in the spaceof three and a half years. He insisted that the prophecies of Daniel, Paul, andJohn, with reference to the antichrist, had no application whatever to the Papalpower.The futurist writings of Ribera and Bellarmine were ably answered byBrightman, of whose work on the Apocalypse, published about the year 1600, thisis a copy ; and they have been answered since his time in a succession of learnedworks which I cannot stop to enumerate : for I desire to dwell upon another,and, as I regard it, a more important phase of prophetic interpretation markingthe last three centuries, a phase not of a negative but of a positive character.Protestant interpreters have done more than answer the false futurismof the Church of Rome. They have built up the truehistoric interpretation of prophecy ; they have built up asolid and symmetrical system, a system which has developed slowly, whichhas progressed constantly, which has been born not of diligent investigationonly, but of pro-found experience ; a system whose truth has been sealed anddemonstrated by its ever-growing correspondence with the actual course ofevents. True theology, like true science, is slow in development. The growth ofastronomy, for example, has extended through six thousand years. The system ofPtolemy was corrected by that of Copernicus ; that of Copernicus was advancedby the laws of Kepler and the wonderful discoveries of Newton ; and then furtherperfected by the Herschels and many others in recent times.Keeping strictly to the prophecies relating to Romanism and the Reformation,I will now endeavour to show you some of the analogous progress which hasbeen made in their comprehension during the last 250 years. The following namesrepresent a complete pillar of prophetic interpretation: Josef Mede, Sir IsaacNewton, Jurieu, Vitringa, Daubuz, Fleming, De Cheseaux, Bishop Newton,Faber, Cunninghame, Keith, Bickersteth, Wordsworth, Elliott, and Birks. Theirprincipal works are on this table, and I will now briefly trace the progress theyexhibit in prophetic interpretation made in the last two and a half centuries.