Well, this morning we are in our 23rd session on what it means to be reformed. I wanted to begin our time by showing you a couple of books, old books, that I have and I read from occasionally. One is called The Puritan Hope by Ian Murray, which talks about the post-millennial scheme of prophecy, that is that Christ is not only ruling presently, as one of us was praying here this morning, in the hearts of his people and in his church, but that someday that the church itself shall come to reign upon the earth and that there will be a great deal of conversion work that will take place in this old sad and dark world in the years to come before Christ comes back. This truth is not generally known, neither is it pursued. by most Christians today, sadly, because all the promises of God point towards it. And yet, for the last 150 years or more, there has been the premillennial dispensational scheme of prophecy, which has taken over the Christian world. And sadly, it has really nothing to offer us that is biblical. There is only one coming of Jesus Christ, and it will not be secret. It will be public. And God is well able to save the nations in His own time, and He will. But the real question is, is will we work and labor toward that end, that Christ might reign in righteousness through the church here upon the earth? Not just in a general sense, which He does already, and which each of us ought to know and understand. but that he would actually come and set up his kingdom in a more glorious sense than he ever has before, which we trust him that the promises of God all point to that. If you've never read this book, The Puritan Home, I would recommend it to you. It's not, I don't think it's even being published at this time, but get online to Amazon, order yourself a copy, or you can borrow mine and read this blessed book. It shows how the Puritans were the ones who discovered these blessed promises and truths and brought them to light and taught on them, but they did not systematize them. And as a result of that, that's why we are in the state that we are today as a church at large. This book I found very interesting. I bought this book years ago. It's called The Mission of Inquiry to the Jews. And it's written by Andrew Bonar, who himself is historic pre-millennial, but it was also written by Robert Murray McShane. At least he was involved in this. In 1839 they conducted a mission of inquiry to the Jews, where they went over all the whole area of Europe where Jews were. And they were trying to figure out whether God was doing a great work to save them because they certainly they most certainly expected that God would at some point in the future save the Jews as a nation according to Romans chapter 11 verses 25 and 26 and so they went on this long journey of inquiry well you you never hear of these things anymore and yet God has not changed his mind about any of these things Last week I tried to persuade you by reading to you from Romans chapter 11 verses 25 and 26. In fact, I read the whole chapter to you that God has a glorious future for the Jews. Now, He's always saved Jews in this present church age. He always has saved. He's always had a small remnant of Jews who were saved all the way down through the generations. But that's not what Romans 11, 25, and 26 is talking about. In fact, maybe we ought to go back and look at that just for a moment again, because I want to talk to you this morning about the latter-day glory of the church. As we have a few minutes here, that's what we will do. Romans chapter 11, and I read this whole chapter for you last Sunday, I'm not going to do it again, but I wanted to read to you verses 25 to 29. It says here, For I do not desire, brethren, that you be ignorant, you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion. That blindness, in part, has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, and so all Israel will be saved. As it is written, the deliverer will come out of Zion, and he will turn away ungodliness from Jacob, for this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins. Concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election They are beloved for the sake of the fathers. Now I would remind you that I'm speaking to you of these things in terms of the doctrine of election. The doctrine of election, I have said to you, is not just simply that God before the foundation of the world has chosen a certain indefinite number of people to save and that he would in time and space bring that about according to his own goodwill and pleasure. That is very definitely true. But what is not generally known and understood is that God is not limited to save by many or by few. Indeed, I showed you last Sunday that God saves whole households of people and did so in the time of the early church. In fact, God saved 3,000 people under one sermon on the day of Pentecost. That was really the first fruits of what God intends to do later on in this church age. This present evil age Why is it that people think that things are going to get worse and worse? It's because things do get worse and worse if God does not intervene. But when God intervenes and brings revival, and He can choose to bring it on whatever level He wants to bring it, then great and mighty things take place which we do not understand and can hardly believe that God could do these great things. But you notice how Paul says here, for I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, this mysterion. Now it's not meant to be mysterious, but it is something that's not really understood too well at that time, and wouldn't be unless Paul would have said something as an apostle about it, but he did. but he did. And in fact, he's talking about the ethnic Jews, his countrymen after the flesh, from chapters 9 all the way through the end of chapter 11, if you'll notice. He's not talking about the church in general, he's talking about the Jews. And in fact, many people have tried to insert into verse 25 where it says, and so all Israel will be saved, the church there at that point. But let me ask you this question concerning what it says there in verse 25. It says, I don't want you to be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part, has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in." Now if that refers to the elect or to the church spiritually, as some have suggested, then how would it read then? Can you tell me? How would it read? It doesn't read naturally at all to insert spiritual Israel into verse 25 or verse 26. It does not read well. Let me see if I can help you there. In verse 25 it says, For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, unless you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to the church, or blindness in part has happened to spiritual Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in. Now does that make sense to you? It does not make sense to you if you're reading this naturally and correctly. And yet people have tried to do it. Why? Because they do not believe that God has any dealings any longer with the Jews as an ethnic people, that He cast them off and cut them off in 70 AD, and He will never have any more dealings with them except in mercy to a very small number, a remnant. My brethren, I would like to declare to you that that is not true, and that you and I need to believe better things of God's promises, which he says here in verse 29, for the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. In other words, what God began to do with the Jews, He's going to finish, and He is going to finish it in a very mighty way. And it's mentioned in many places in the Old Testament Scriptures. It's called here a mystery. And the reason it is so is because God hides things sometimes in truth, brethren. And He hides them so that He can fulfill His glorious purposes in all of the world, among all of the nations, in a tremendous way. The kingdom of Christ is going to come. in the latter-day glory of the church. Listen to John Gill on this. Why is it that Reformed Baptists won't read John Gill anymore? Let's go back to John Gill. He says, And so all Israel shall be saved, meaning not the mystical, spiritual Israel of God, consisting both of Jews and Gentiles, who shall appear to be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation, when all gods elect among the latter, that is, among the Gentiles, are gathered in, which is the sense many give unto, but the people of the Jews, the generality of them, the body of that nation, called the fullness of them, in Romans 11, 12, and relates to the latter day, when a nation of them shall be born again at once, when their number, being as the sand of the sea, they shall come up out of the lands where they are dispersed, and appoint them one head Christ, And great shall be the day of Jezreel, when they as a body, even the far greater part of them, that shall be in being, shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their King, and shall acknowledge Jesus to be the true Messiah, and shall look to Him and believe on Him, and be saved by Him from the wrath to come. Wow. I tell you, people don't write like that anymore. I sure wish they did. I sure wish they did. I want you to turn with me over to Isaiah 26 here for a minute. I want to give you a couple more verses before I close. Isaiah chapter 26. I've got verses stacked up here that I've not been able to get to for the past few Sundays. And I really would like to get to them all and through them all. I think maybe next Sunday I actually will. But I'm going to try to get as far as I can today. Isaiah 26, it says, in that day, verse 1, this song will be sung in the land of Judah. We have a strong city and God will appoint salvation for walls and bulwarks. Open the gates that the righteous nation which keeps the truth may enter in. You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind has stayed on thee. Now this is a very precious verse, and it ought to be precious to you as an individual, but God speaks on different levels. This is what I've tried to talk to you about in prophecy. It is true, He saves His elect one at a time, but He's not confined to save them one at a time. He can go at households, or He can go at whole tribes, or nations even, if He so desires to raise it up to that level there. All God has to do, and I've said this to you before in times past, but I hope you'll remember it, all God has to do is turn up the light That's all He has to do. Just turn up the light, Lord. Pour out Your Spirit, Lord. Grant to us Your grace. Let us know Your power. Come down and make it like fire consuming brushwood, like it says in the book of Isaiah. Let it be the case, O God. Let us not languish here with no power. The power of the Holy Spirit is so unutterably great that if His presence were here in power this morning, we would all be trembling for joy, and trembling at the goodness of the Lord. Now notice what it says here in Isaiah 26, "'Open the gates that the righteous nation which keeps the truth may enter.'" Notice the wording there. He's talking about a nation. Is he just talking about the elect in general? No, I don't think so. I think he could be referring to it that way. It can be interpreted that way. It can be seen that way individually. But listen to John Gilligan on Isaiah 26 too. He says that the righteous nation which keeps the truth may enter in, not all the world, for there is none righteous, not one of them naturally. or of themselves, nor the Jewish nation, though they sought after righteousness, they did not attain it." Watch this. Unless it refers to when they will be converted in the latter day. And then they and all the Lord's people will be righteous and appear to be a holy nation and a peculiar people, Isaiah 60, 21. And being made righteous by the righteousness of Christ, imputed to them and sanctified by the Spirit, will be fit persons to be admitted through the gates into the city. See Psalm 118 verse 19, and because there will be great numbers of such, especially when a nation shall be born in a day, a nation shall be born at once, hence they are so called, and these will be a set of men that will keep the truth. I just find that really good. I find that really, really heartening and refreshing to know that God is well able and certainly will in his own good time bring these tremendous things about. What I'm describing here is not dispensationalism. You need to understand that. Dispensationalism is the system which tries to biblically establish two different programs of God, one for Israel and the other for the church. And premillennial dispensationalism asserts that there will be a millennium only after a secret rapture, a seven-year tribulation, and a second coming of Christ to destroy the Antichrist and to set up his kingdom to establish it. That's the prevalent view of today. The fallacy of this is that the Bible only teaches one second coming. Please remember that, dear Christian. Hebrews 9.28, 2 Thessalonians 1.6-2.1. You can look at these verses later on, I haven't time to go into them, but I'm saying how can a world exist with saints who have been resurrected from the dead, because that's what happens when Jesus returns, mingling with sinners who have not been raised from the dead. Now that's what's going to happen in a premillennial millennium. You're going to have resurrected saints along with un-resurrected sinners living together in the same time period. Does the Bible teach anything like that? Not at all. So there's no room for a millennium after Christ's second coming, because that is the beginning of the eternal state. but rather the millennium or the latter day glory takes place before Christ's second coming and it is the extension of God's electing work in this present evil age to a greater level of saving many people even to the extent of a majority of whole nation groups so that they shall be generally seen as Christian nations in the latter times of this present dispensation. The millennium, or the thousand years of Revelation 20, will take place toward the latter part of this church age and before Satan's little season and Christ's second coming." And I wish I had more time to talk about these things, but I don't. I could preach for hours about this, but I won't. So let's pray together. Lord, we thank you for this short study in your word. We pray that our hearts would be excited about these things, that we would not be dull or listless or sluggardly in the word of God when it comes to receiving the promises of what you will do during this church age. Help us to grasp these things spiritually. Help us to look into them deeply. Help us to pray for them fervently. And help us to work towards the end that we're striving towards, which is that Your Kingdom would conquer among the nations. May it be so that Your Kingdom comes in our hearts today. In Jesus' name, Amen. You're dismissed.