SERMON XII.
USES OF THIS INQUIRY INTO THE PROPHECIES.
Rev. xxii. 7.
Behold, I come quickly: Blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book.
Before we engage in a work of time and difficulty, we naturally ask, “Cui Bono, to what considerable end and purpose, are our labours to be referred?”
Although it may, then, be presumed, that enough hath been said on the prophecies to excite a reasonable desire of looking further into them, and even to produce a general persuasion, that they have been, or may be, understood; yet, it may quicken your attention to this argument, and support your industry in the prosecution of it, to set before you the USES, which may result from a full and final conviction (if such should be the issue of your inquiries), That these prophecies are not intelligible only, but have, in many instances, been rightly applied, and clearly fulfilled.
These USES are very many. I shall collect, only, two or three of the more important, for your consideration.
Though every period of prophecy be instructive, that which takes in the great events and revolutions, which have come to pass in the Christian Church, is, for obvious reasons, more especially interesting to us, who live in these latter ages of the world.
Of the numerous predictions, contained in either Testament, which, it is presumed, respect these events, the most considerable by far, because the most minute and circumstantial, are those of St. John in the Revelations; which treat professedly of such things as were to befall the servants of Jesus[231], from the prophet’s own days, down to that awful period, when all the mysterious councils of God, in regard to the Christian dispensation, shall be finally shut up in the day of judgment. To these predictions, then, a more particular attention is due, the rather because they have been fulfilling from the time of their delivery—behold, I come quickly—and, above all, because a blessing is pronounced on those, who keep, that is, who observe, who study and contemplate, the sayings of this book.
Assuredly, then, this study will be rewarded with signal benefits. And one sees immediately:
I. In the first place, that no small benefit must arise to those, who admit the completion of these prophecies, so far, I mean, as the tenour of the book makes it probable that they have been completed, from the awful sense, which this conviction must needs give them of the Christian dispensation itself.
That this dispensation, ushered in by so long a train of prophecies, should still be attended by others, through all the stages and periods of it; that secular empires should rise and fall, unnoticed, as it were, by the Spirit of God, while the kingdom of his Son is so peculiarly distinguished, and its whole history, in a manner, anticipated, by the most express predictions: that Jesus should be, as he says of himself, the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end[232], of all God’s religious dispensations to mankind: that his first coming, or personal appearance in the flesh, should be signified from the foundation of the world, and from time to time more explicitly declared in a variety of successive prophecies, till the great event, at length, fulfilled them all: and that, together with this event (the foundation of others, still more illustrious) his second coming, in the future and gradual manifestations of his power (for they were to be gradual) should be distinctly marked out, and duly accomplished, in the fortunes of the Christian church, or of that kingdom, which he came to erect in the world; while this subject, and no other, engaged the ultimate attention of all the prophets: There is, I say, in this scheme of things, something so astonishingly vast, something so much above and beyond the attention that was ever known to be paid to any other person or thing in the compass of universal history, as must strike an awe into the hearts of all men, who consider Christianity in this point of view; and must compel the most negligent to confess, or suspect at least, That such a dispensation is a matter of no light moment, but, indeed, the most important in the eyes of Providence, and the most interesting to mankind, that can be conceived, or expressed.