In this lecture we propose to deal with the eschatology of victory from Dortch, 1618, down to 1750, by which time even Dutch Calvinism was beginning to degenerate with the rise of the Aufklärung from Germany, the Enlightenment, to result in the French Revolution, and the fall of Holland to the Batavian liberal republic. Now, this is a very important time frame. A few of the significant dates would be the Senate of Dort, 1619, at which the five points of Calvinism were canonized. In 1620, the following year, the departure from England via Holland in many cases of the Pilgrim Fathers to North America and then some 17 years later in 1637 the completion of the translation of the Bible into Dutch and the completion of the footnotes that we looked at last night of the Dort Dutch Bible as commissioned some 20 years earlier by the International Synod of Dort and then 15 years after that the arrival of Dutch and German settlers in South Africa in 1652. It's important for us to realize that the Dort Dutch Bible completed just 15 years before The colonization of South Africa was undertaken under the general editorship of Marnix of St. Aldegonde, whom we dealt with yesterday, who wanted to take a very hard line in favor of the establishment of true religion and undefiled, and against the toleration of all idolatry and of all revolutionary brands of heresy and sedition. The co-editor of the Dort Dutch Bible was the great Calvinist geographer Peter Plankius, a man who made great name for himself, especially in the construction of maps for navigational purposes, which were used in the extension of the dimension of Christopher Columbus by the Dutch, but this time to go around the world from the west to the east, rather than to go around the world via the Americas. And then, there were lesser editors and contributors to the system of footnotes to the Dort Dutch Bible. There were the men of the Synopsis of Pure Theology, Willius and Theseus, and Festus Homius, who had been the moderator at the International General Assembly, or Synod of Dort, and also the great Herman Falkelius, who composed the compendium of the Christian religion being a kind of shorter catechism of the Heidelberg catechism which was used in preparing the seat of the church on maturity to come to the Lord's table. And it is then against this background of heavy theological artillery that we see the glorious century of Dutch Calvinism from the very heart of which the colonization of South Africa was born. Now, many of these people that we've been mentioning were, in fact, what we would today call post-millennialists. A very important person who's sometimes, I believe, wrongly been called a pre-millennialist is the great Johann Henry Alsted, a German. I should point out that when I use the expression Dutch and German, it's sometimes a little hard to figure out whether the man was a Dutchman or a German. The Dutch at that point were calling themselves officially Low Germans and the Germans were calling themselves High Germans and there was a border area between Holland and Germany where they freely intermingled and where you really never knew whether a man was Dutch or whether he was German. And when you get to the colonization of South Africa Um, a lot of the people that went there who are called Dutch were really Deutsch. And Deutsch, of course, means German and not Dutch. Well, anyway, Johann Henry Alsted wrote a very important work called The Beloved City or The Saints Reign on Earth a Thousand Years. It was published in London in 1643. And we see in his thoughts both an optimistic eschatology coupled not only to the law of God as an instrument to achieve it, but also coupled to the rise and extension of education as a tool to achieve it. And it is especially from this time onward, and especially in Holland, that we find a tremendous emphasis on a comprehensive encyclopedic education as one of the important tools necessary to advance the kingdom of Jesus Christ in the world. well looking first at the goal toward which Johann Heinrich Alsted was heading he says in his book whether there shall be any happiness of the church here upon earth before the last day and of what kind it shall be let us search through the monuments of histories and then let us examine whether this fulfillment of Psalm 22 and 86 and 117 have been or no We shall find indeed in some newfound lands, detected in ours and our father's memory, that the works of the conversion of the nations hath had some beginning and small progress. But in many parts of the East to this day we shall find so little progress that not so much as a beginning thereof will anywhere yet appear. The city of God is however to be purged, purified and cleansed of papal persecution which at this day it suffers so that by this means it may be by little and little prepared for that great reformation which the epoch or account of those thousand years shall bring. Now many of the writers of the former and of this present age have published many things concerning a great reformation and the conversion of the Jews and the like. See Theophrastus Parakelsus, Michael Sendivogius in his treatise of Sulphur, Stephanus Pannonius's Of the Circle of the Works and Judgments of God, and John Debriscius' notable book entitled The Interpreter of Times. Here Alsted is seeing the expansion of encyclopedic education as a sign of the advance and the progress of Christ's kingdom here on earth. From this it appears, he says, that our opinion concerning these thousand years is not new and unheard of, for it was also advocated by the Italian reformer Alphonsus Conradus of Mantua, in his 1574 Commentary on Revelation. And the Nuremberg Reformer, Andreas Osiander's son, Lucas, prophesied the future overturning of the Romish papacy in his Commentary on Daniel. And the advent of a future Golden Age was also described by the French Reformed theologians, Mathieu Cotillier, of Tours and Pierre Dumoulin, by the Danish astronomer Tishel Brahe, and by the Leyden professor Carolus Gallus. Now, this German Calvinist theologian, Johann Heinrich Auschted, in 1620, one year after the Synod of Dort adjourned, published his course of philosophic encyclopedia. This was the first time that the word encyclopedia had ever been used in this sense. And it covered and gave a Calvinistic approach to archaeology, hexillogy, technology, didactics, metaphysics, pneumatics, physics, arithmetic, geometry, cosmography, astronomy, geography, optics, music, architecture, ethics, economics, politics, scholastics, history, and of the seven liberal arts. He also published his seven-volume distinct encyclopedia, covering philology, grammar, rhetoric, logic, oratory, poetry, theoretical philosophy, practical philosophy, theology, jurisprudence, mechanics, medicine, dealing with the first treatise, especially on the subject of tobacco, interestingly enough, as well as a whole handful of specifically theological works on scholastics, didactics, polemics, dogmatics, ethics, and prophecy, etc. Quite a man. He supplemented and elaborated the views of Xanchi, the author of Absolute Predestination, and Xanchius and Ercinus, one of the two co-authors of the Heidelberg Catechism. Alsted regarded theology, jurisprudence, and medicine as the three principal disciplines. He was interested in the health of man's soul, the health of man's body, medicine, the health of man's society, jurisprudence. And he sought to derive all three disciplines from Holy Scripture. He discussed them after his section on theoretical and practical philosophy in his highly esteemed 1630 Encyclopedia of the Sciences. He described philosophy as a divine gift which teaches one a knowledge of God, increases one's love for him, and which is indispensable even for the formal systematic treatment of theology. All theologians, he felt, should be forced to study philosophy in general and logic, physics, mathematics, metaphysics, ethics, economics, politics, the scholastics, and history in particular. But I believe it was his co-worker and contemporary and fellow German, Johannes Althusias, that has played an even greater role than this in the political development of Calvinism. Johannes Althusias was professor of ethics and of law. Note the conjunction of the two disciplines. Professor of ethics and of law at Herborn University in Germany. He wrote the first treatise on politics ever produced in Germany. He was a Calvinist and he claimed that the rights of man derived directly from God and not from the state. but they came down from God through the social consent of the people and not by grace of the state he defended the people and the covenanting contractual abilities of the people over against all statist usurpation of rights and he anticipated free labor associations and the doctrine of sphere sovereignty, better termable sphere autonomy, developed by Dorotheus in later years. As a matter of fact, the great Christian philosopher who just died, Hermann Dorotheus, gives Althusias the credit for the inception and development of the doctrine of sphere sovereignty. Now one of the delegates at The Synod of Dort, who later became a world-famous Christian philosopher of law and a theologian, was the great Gaisbert Futsius, V-O-E-T-I-U-S, Futsius, 1588 through 1676. Futsius was the thoroughly Calvinistic professor of Oriental science of Leyden, and he stoutly resisted the advance of Descartes' rationalism. He was a godly man and a strict Sabbath keeper, a man of encyclopedic knowledge, and he set a very high standard of academic achievement as the prerequisite for theological study from his students. In his Executia et Bibliotheca Studiosi Theologiae, his exercises and his library of theological studies, he set out a comprehensive curriculum for the study by pre-theological students of languages such as Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Samaritan, Arabic, Ethiopian, Persian, Turkish, Armenian, Coptic, Italian, Spanish, French, English, High German, and Low German or Dutch. He insisted that they know rhetoric, poetry, history, archaeology, theoretical philosophy, and by that he meant logic, mnemonics, metaphysics, physics, including medicine, and mathematics, including arithmetic, geometry, statics, architecture, cosmography, astronomy, geography, optics, acoustics, music, painting, sculpture, and that they should also learn practical philosophy in ethics, economics, politics, and jurisprudence. And only if they made the grade there were they to be permitted to start the study of theology. You can see how sick our church and our pulpit is today when we compare it to the standards of 1650. Now, this man, the great Futsius, wrote a very interesting dissertation concerning the Sabbath and the feasts. In his massive work, Selected Disputations, he sharply distinguished between ecclesiastical feast days, such as Christmas Day, on the one hand, and the biblical Sabbath, on the other hand. Now, he stated the following, there must be a stated day of rest for Christians, this against the Anabaptists and the Sassanians. He said that the Jewish Sabbath on the seventh day has been altered and abolished, that against the Jews. Third, this alteration from Saturday to Sunday took place by divine right and not by ecclesiastical right, that against the Romanists. He further taught that the Lord's day derives not merely from tradition but from scripture, that too against the Romanists. He said that Sabbath observance does not exclude works of mercy on the Sabbath. That's against the Jews. Sixth, that not only servile works are forbidden, but also all that hinders the public and private divine service of God is forbidden. That's against the Romanists. Further, that not merely a part of Sunday is to be sanctified in the practice of piety, that against the Romanists, but the whole of the Sunday. He also stated that Sunday in itself is not holier than any other days and that the sanctification of one day in seven to the service of the Lord is a moral duty established by divine right. Sunday, he said, was sanctified by divine right operating through the example of the Apostolic Church It was not merely a free institution of the Apostolic Church for the sake of order. The Sabbath, he says, was instituted not at Sinai, but before Sinai, at the very beginning of the world. Although the Israelitic Sabbath, the Mosaic Sabbath, was typical, pointing to Calvary, the Edenic Sabbath, the Sabbath as instituted before Sinai in Eden, was not. because he said ante lapsum non patuit es etibus before the fall it is not possible to have a type which points to Calvary he then went on to deal with a few pertinent problems even where Sunday is regarded as a merely ecclesiastical ordinance he said the duty of the Sabbath rest would still remain Sunday should not be celebrated from Saturday evening onward, but from the midnight between Saturday and Sunday to the same point 24 hours later. The lighting of fires in homes, Exodus 35 verse 3, belongs to the strict rest of the Sabbath. Abstention from Sunday labor is not only for the purpose of avoiding giving offense, because Sunday observance is not just a matter of indifference. According to Futsius, Sunday labor must be avoided not only to prevent giving offense, but especially because the commandment is grounded in God's moral law and is no matter of indifference. Futsius denies that it is permissible to purchase on Sunday, to write business letters on Sunday, to clean out one's home on Sunday, to go hunting on Sunday or to study ordinary arts and sciences on Sunday because he says all of these activities are a hindrance to the exercise of religion. Now this futzius is perhaps the greatest authority of all times in the development of Roman Dutch law. Roman Dutch law is that system of law which then obtained in Holland until it was abolished by the French who occupied Holland under Napoleon, and which still obtains in South Africa, Rhodesia, Dutch Guiana, and so on, but nowhere else in the world. All places where there has been heavy Dutch influence at some time in the past. Roman Dutch law is an attempt to take the valuable tradition of Roman law, which of course was the world's finest system of the ancient world, apart from the Mosaic law, to refine it and to regard whatever is valuable in it as a product of God's common grace and then to screen it and to refine it in terms of mosaic law derived from God's special revelation in the Bible and to come up with a system of Roman Dutch law which would lay down the principles of the word of God and as derived by God's common grace and refined by special grace from Rome into a system of law suitable for the peoples of Northwestern Europe in general and the lands which they colonized such as the U.S. and South Africa and of Holland and its immediate colonies in particular and if you read Foutsias' writings and jurisprudence You'll be amazed to see how he deals with conflicts between neighbors as to whether a fruit tree growing on the border of a property between neighbors, the bough of which is hanging over the fence, whether the fruit of that tree belongs to the person in whose ground the fruit tree roots or over whose ground the bough of the fruit tree protrudes. and he deals with all kinds of things such as servitudes, servitus non altius tollendi, that is to say a restrictive covenant not to build on your property any higher than a certain pre-agreed height so as not to obstruct your neighbor's enjoyment of the sunshine and so forth. Fascinating legal problems necessary for a social cohesion that he develops. ultimately on the basis of the teaching of the Word of God. He took a very strong view against rape and other crimes as too did Calvin and Busser before him. Strictly prohibited incest with an appeal to the Levitical laws and also developed what later became known as the Honest Luctus. That is that if your wife dies If you're a decent Calvinist, you will not remarry until at least a year of mourning has passed. It's not entirely clear to me on the basis of which scripture he arrived at this, but in South Africa to this day, it's very frowned upon when a widower remarries within a year. He should decently allow the year to pass before he remarries. Well, all of this goes back to Futsius. He is very strongly followed in South African uh... forensic jurisprudence in theory to this very day and uh... uh... his books uh... carry great weight in the south african courts but now why did he go into all of these legal and social details because for two years you see was a man who was committed to the calvinist conquest of the world uh... listen to this for two years says the great modern dutch Missiologist Vandenberg, Fritzius, saw as the nearest purposes of missionary work the conversion of sinners and the planting of the church. But these purposes were ultimately subordinated to the great goal of all missionary activity, the spreading of the glory of the Lord all over the earth. In his Vandenberg's work on eschatological expectations, He again refers to Futsius pointing out that Futsius remarked in his disputation De generale conversione judaeorum concerning the general conversion of the Jews which Futsius wrote in 1636 one year before the appearance of the Dutch Bible with its footnotes arguments plead for the interpretation favored by the majority of exegetes says Futsius and then Futsius expressly mentions the English Puritan theologians Futsius says that the text Romans 11.26 points toward a general and future conversion of the Jews according to Futsius this conversion of the Jews will certainly first be preceded by the reformation of Christianity in other words it is going to be a powerful revival of the christian church that is going to stimulate the jews of the jealousy and make them want to join the christian church uh... were other godly and uh... legally grounded eschatologians of victory in holland at this time such as john grunewagen g r o e n e w e g e n and john to train d o u t r e i n the famous Justice Eurneus, H-E-U-R-N-I-U-S, famous judge, theologian, colonizer, and botanist. And then in 1643 through 1647, the cousins of the Dutch Calvinists in Britain held the famous Westminster Assembly and set up the Westminster Standards. I would like to go into that but I'm not going to because it would take us too far afield from the focus of these lectures which is zeroing in on South Africa but I would like to say this that the basic content of the Westminster standards drawn up in Britain parallel very precisely what had been going on in Holland at the Synod of Dort and incorporating the pre-Dortian material from Calvin, the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession into it, not to speak of the Dutch Bible of 1637 with its system of footnotes which appeared just six years before the Westminster divines began to sit in England and there were all kinds of influences across the British Channel from Holland to England and England to Holland backward and forward the whole time and then three years after the Westminster assembly adjourned The decision was made by the Dutch to establish a colony in South Africa, which was done two years after that. We'll put South Africa at its inception in 1652 on hold at this point and detail rather quickly the subsequent development in Holland for this reason, that although the colonists that went from holland and germany and france to south africa speedily began to grow apart from their european motherland just as the englishman that went to north america in 1620 speedily began to grow apart from the british and both the americans and the british speedily began to grow apart from the Dutch Germans and the South Africans who all of them had a common root the fact is that the subsequent development of theology in Holland, Germany, France and to an increasing extent in Scotland but not at all to any extent in the United States has had a powerful effect on what happened in South Africa, even as it was growing culturally away from the motherlands. Unfortunately, the independent, indigenous development of South African reform thought has had very little influence on and feedback into Holland, Germany, France, Scotland, or least of all into the United States or Australia. But that's where, under God's Providence I would hope I come into the picture in 1980 because we need to borrow and to lend to one another But three years after the establishment of the colony in South Africa Johann Horenbeek, H-O-R-E-N-B-E-E-K professor at Utrecht in 1655 made the following statement and this was typical of the theologians in Holland and in South Africa at the time and so you can see the climate that they were thinking in then, Hurnbik said we must turn the more ardently to the Jews from whom sprang the fathers the old covenants, the glory and Christ concerning the flesh since we know that about the Jews promises have been made with regard to their liberation and conversion to God and Christ in the future the more these times are approaching let us the more fervently hope for this and then we reach the great Herman Witsius I'm sure you've all heard of Witsius W-I-T-S-U-I-U-S he wrote his famous work the Doctrine of the Covenants and also concerning the conversion of the Jews and the fullness of the Gentiles and in 1775 in his economy of the covenants Vitsios wrote the following when the fullness of the Gentiles is brought in all Israel shall be saved as our Dutch commentators well observed not a few but a very great number of Israelites and in a manner the whole Jewish nation in a full body to this restoration of Israel shall be joined the enrichment of the whole church and as it were life from the dead Romans 11 verse 12 the Apostle intimates that much greater and more extensive benefits shall then redound to the Christian church from the fullness and restoration of the Jews than did to the Gentiles from the fall and diminution of the Jews previously greater I say intensively or with respect to degrees and larger with respect to extent for there is a certain fullness of the Gentiles to be gathered together by the successful preaching of the gospel which goes before the restoration of Israel of which Romans 11 verse 25 speaks and there is also yet another richness of the Gentiles That comes after the recovery of Israel. And then in his book, The Conversion of the Jews and the Fullness of the Gentiles, Vitzius goes on to say, many nations which had formerly embraced the gospel with much zeal, afterwards almost to be extinguished by the venom of Mohammedanism, Popery, Libertarianism, and Atheism, will verify John's prophecy in Revelation 3 verses 1 through 2. But upon the restoration of the Jews, these many nations will suddenly arise again as out of the grave. A new light will break upon them, a new zeal will be kindled up. The life of Christ will again be manifested in his mystical body, more lively perhaps and vigorous than ever before. an almost innumerable multitude of Jews today reside in Asia and Africa among the Persians, Turks, Indians, Chinese, Japanese and Tartars when therefore by the almighty hand of God these Jews shall be brought to the communion of the Messiah their love to him will be the more sweet than their hatred against him had been formerly more bitter and it is not more than probable that the nations among whom they live, being excited by their example and admonitions, shall then come into the fellowship of the same faith. Certainly, the words of the apostle lead us to this. What is more evident than that prophecy in Isaiah? The prophet, in chapter 59, having foretold the restoration of Israel according to the apostle's commentary, immediately in chapter 60 exclaims, Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of Jehovah is risen upon thee. The Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. Moreover, the riches of the church at that time are described, Instead of brass I will bring forth gold, instead of iron I will bring forth silver, and in the place of wood I will bring forth brass, and in the place of stones I will bring forth iron. The most magnificent words to the same purpose follow these. From the consideration of which Peter Martyr has said that indeed according to almost all the prophets, especially Isaiah, the happiness of the church will then be great. which happiness the church has not yet attained to but it is probable that it will then on the conversion of the Jews attain to it the Dutch government had the policy of sending a reformed preacher to its embassies and consulates throughout Europe and wherever else they were stationed one such preacher attached to the Dutch embassy in Denmark was the reverend Jacob Koeman K-O-E-L-M-A-N 1690 he wrote in his book the key to the translation to the revelation of John's revelation quote after the destruction of the city of Rome and the overthrow of Turkish or Mohammedan rule, and in particular after the glorious conversion of Israel, very many of the Gentiles will be converted. And through them, in that time, the whole world will receive the spiritual good. Meantime, back in Holland, in 1695, there was a great Dutch professor at Franeker and a successor of the English Puritan William Ames. who had settled there, Amnesius, whom we dealt with last night. This man, Campedius Vitrungae, a great authority on the book of Revelation, in his analysis of the Apocalypse, wrote the following, and also in his work on Daniel, chapter 7, at verse 27. The judgment or rulership shall be given to the saints, Daniel 7.27. This will take place uh... when false religions and superstitions will have been suppressed and when the christian religion will have become paramount in the world if we contemplate the most tenuous beginnings of christianity and the condition of the present time this promise clearly appears to be incredible and beyond all hope nevertheless the saints taught by the word of God, foresee this great catastrophic event, which at length began to develop under Constantine, and which they anticipated in hope, and which they desired to learn about from this great revelation. Whence it thus clearly follows that the heavenly scene here described should be expounded as referring to the state of the Church here on Earth. And then, at the turn of the century, 1705, just as this virile orthodoxy was beginning to cool down with the rise of Kantian supernaturalism and the Enlightenment, the Aufklärung, which finally became Illuminism and the Illuminati, and brought about the French Revolution and the decapitalization and the dechristianization of much of Europe we find a strong bright light still shining in Holland William Brackel B-R-A-K-E-L the Dutch theologian of Rotterdam if you go into the history of South Africa you will find that the writings of this man accompanied the white pioneers with their Bibles as they trekked up into the sparsely inhabited interior of Africa. They were steeped in the writings of people like this. Says Brackel in his important work, The Economy of the Covenant, the Church has passed through three major periods of history since the giving of the Revelation to John. the period of persecutions under the pagan Roman Emperor the period of Antichrist who seated himself in God's temple and overflowed everything with his dominating heresies and the period under the church's own government with the Reformation when the outpouring of the seven vials of God's wrath on Antichrist has begun for his destruction great parallel here between Brackle and John Cotton in New England the pouring out of the vials. When the outpouring and destruction shall have been completed the thousand years of a glorious church on earth will follow. That the power of Rome is Antichrist we have shown on the basis of the fourfold proof from his name Latinos equal in numerical value to the number 666 Compare Revelation 13 verse 18. We have shown it from his throne or seat or chair in the temple of God. Compare 2 Thessalonians 2 verse 4. We have shown it from Rome with her seven mountains. Revelation 17 verses 3, 9 and 18. We have shown it from Rome's succession and the time of his public appearance following upon the rulers of Rome and the appearing at the same time with the crowning of the ten horns, that is, ten kings, which resulted from the destruction of the Roman Empire, through whom the Romish Pope exercises his power. Daniel 7, verses 7 through 25. We can say of the Church that in the time of the domination of Antichrist, that is, the Romish Popes, the Church was dead. Not dead in herself, for in the church there was spiritual life but dead with respect to her publicity and glorious appearance in the world as indeed in that respect the two witnesses of Revelation chapter 11 verse 17 are said to have been killed the emergence from that condition and the glorious appearance of the church was a resurrection a life from the dead Romans 11 15 You see what he's saying, he's saying the Protestant Reformation was the resurrection of the Church. This, the first death, is the condition under Antichrist and under his enmity. The first resurrection is the glorious condition of the Church after the Battle of Armageddon and the destruction of Antichrist. It is not true that at the beginning of the thousand years Christ shall come personally in his human nature from heaven to rule in the body visibly on earth during the thousand years. He says premillennialism is not true. Nor will the marches rise in a bodily resurrection at the beginning of the millennium to live and to rule here on earth during the thousand years. Nor will the church during the thousand years consist solely of regenerate persons without any admixture of unconverted people. the binding of Satan is not absolute as if in that period of a thousand years there were to be absolutely no devil anymore on the earth the devil shall always go about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour but it has reference to publicity the devil shall not constitute a public standing opposition to the church as he did first by means of the pagan emperors and thereupon by means of antichrist well that takes us to seventeen hundred and five things were beginning to move toward the french revolution uh... well first towards the french atheistic encyclopedists Delbacq, Helvetius, Voltaire, Rousseau 1770 and then finally the french revolution of 1789 which was a severe setback for Christianity throughout Europe. But there were still one or two bright lights in Holland and elsewhere, while South Africa was merrily and gaily going along in the reformed tradition, isolated and oblivious to the decapitalization of Europe, thank God, we find two last bright Calvinist lights that burned brightly in Holland even as late as 1750. First of all, the great Bernard de Moore who wrote a tremendous commentary on the book of Revelation in which he acknowledged and demanded that political government have the right if necessary even to punish violent, seditious, treasonous heretics by death or by lesser penalties But I think the foremost theologian in the world, and certainly in Europe at this period, was the great John Amark, A-M-A-R-C-K, who wrote many works including his Mark of Christian Divinity. And in this work, Amark states that the preachers of the church and the political governments must give all care to moving against the heresies of Papists, of Sicilians or Unitarians, and of Libertines who disturb all law and order. On the other hand, says Amark, people cannot be compelled to accept the true religion internally, nor should one try to compel them to accept the true religion. He says we can never approve of the Roman Catholic method of trying to promote the church by engaging in physical wars and violence such as, for example, we see in the so-called Holy Wars of the Papists against the Mohammedans. That procedure, said Amark, is contrary to the teaching of 2 Corinthians 10 verses 4 and 5, that our weapons are spiritual unto the pulling down of strongholds. Not, therefore, through the blade of the sword, but through the sword of the Lord, which is the word of God, are the enemies to be won, converted, and, as much as possible, turned into friends of the Lord Jesus. That, he said. Nevertheless, blasphemous and seditious heretics who disturb law and order in society are to be restricted even by corporal punishment and if necessary by lifelong punishments on account of the greatness of these evils according to the example of the Mosaic Law Leviticus 14, Deuteronomy 13, and according to the civil rights in Western culture built on the Mosaic Law as we rightly see in the trial of Michael Serditus in Switzerland at the time of Calvin, says Amarkus. Well, there were also other figures. There's the great and godly Andreas Asenius. Dutch professor at Utrecht. He said in his blessed reports and consolation for the Jews, let the whole of Israel be saved and may one day life come from the dead that the Turks or Mohammedans and other Gentiles may notice and fear and the multitude of the elect may turn to thee and live. The great Johann Koch or Kokius, German professor at Bremen University in Germany is quoted in Vanderburg's eschatological expectations as having said, quote, peace will come, the Jews will be converted, Babel, that is the Romish church, will perish and the kingdom of Christ will appear in which all the nations will serve him and in which the gospel will be preached throughout the whole world and that all of this will come about suddenly At precisely the time when the self-confidence of the Antichrist power shall have reached its highest point, though we know not when this will be, the Reformation was the beginning of the downfall of the power of the Antichrist. On the sounding of the seventh trumpet, the kingdom of God will reveal itself and will receive shape in history. This will be the time of the conversion of the Gentiles and the salvation of Israel. The time of the proclamation of the eternal gospel all over the world. I wish to close with two final quotes of John Amark that I referred to earlier. He wrote many works. A work on the history of paradise in which the moral law of God figures very prominently his theological dogmatic work but let me close with a quotation from his commentary in Revelation he tells us nothing is denoted by Revelation 20 verse 1's statement that the angel has a great chain in his hands except it means the all-sufficient power of Christ to bridle Satan, and at Christ's pleasure to keep Satan in like a captive whom Christ will not allow to escape or to stir. With this power, if you join the word and the spirit of Christ by which he works, we willingly agree, and we think this better than introducing here the whole passion of Christ by which he obtained authority over Satan. And so from this golden age of Dutch Reformed theology stretching from the International's Synod or General Assembly of Dort in 1618 down to 1750 as the ominous shadow of the French Revolution, premonitions of the revolution and French atheistic encyclopedism began to extend its ugly hand from France over Europe and even in some circles in the United States itself, what later became the United States. We find the strong protest of victorious Calvinism, which looked as if it might die in the French Revolution, but, as the great French Calvinist Auguste Le Cerf said in the 20th century, Voila, she has risen from the dead and it is in the next lecture that we will consider the horrible impact of the French Revolution and God's raising up in Holland those mighty men of God Grunewald Prinstra and Abram Kuyper to beat back the revolution with the new reformation of Christianity. Thank you. This Reformation audio track is a production of Stillwater's Revival Books. You are welcome to make copies and give them to those in need. SWRB makes thousands of classic Reformation resources available, free and for sale, in audio, video, and printed formats. It is likely that the sermon or book that you just listened to is also available on cassette or video, or as a printed book or booklet. Our many free resources, as well as our complete mail-order catalog, containing thousands of classic and contemporary Puritan and Reformed books, tapes, and videos at great discounts is on the web at www.swrb.com. We can also be reached by email at swrb at swrb.com, by phone at 780-450-8333, 3730 by fax at 780-468-1096 or by mail at 4710-37A Avenue Edmonton that's E-D-M-O-N-T-O-N Alberta abbreviated capital A capital B Canada T-6-L-3-T-5 you may also request a free printed catalog and remember that John Kelvin in defending the Reformation's regulative principle of worship, or what is sometimes called the scriptural law of worship, commenting on the words of God, which I commanded them not, neither came into my heart. From his commentary on Jeremiah 731, writes, God here cuts off from men every occasion for making evasions, since he condemns by this one phrase, I have not commanded them, whatever the Jews devise. There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstitions than that they are not commanded by God. For when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to His commands, they pervert true religion. And if this principle was adopted by the Papists, all those fictitious modes of worship in which they absurdly exercise themselves would fall to the ground. It is indeed a horrible thing for the Papists to seek to discharge their duties towards God, by performing their own superstitions. There is an immense number of them, as it is well known, and as it manifestly appears. Were they to admit this principle, that we cannot rightly worship God except by obeying His word, they would be delivered from their deep abyss of error. The Prophet's words, then, are very important, when he says that God had commanded no such thing, and that it never came to his mind. As though he had said, that men assume too much wisdom when they devise what he never required, nay, what he never knew.