the general topic of the eschatology of the early church and then more specifically also the eschatology and theological views of Holland as it developed into those views held in the Republic of South Africa today. I thought that I would try to present this material which each segment of which really is self-containing around the general theme of the eschatology of victory from Adam to the Afrikaners. Now the Afrikaners are the white people who live in South Africa and who've been there since 1652 and who descended from Adam and they have been trying to maintain the revelation of Almighty God that they believed was handed to Adam and progressively revealed after that more and more to all of his descendants unto the ends of the earth. And I believe for us to understand the eschatological views of the early church it's very important indeed for us first to have a thorough understanding of the eschatological view of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha and to a lesser extent of the New Testament Because so much of this, in its correct interpretation I believe, is to be presupposed in the work of the early church fathers. And so, the general scheme of what I would like to present in these lectures, each unit of which will be self-containing, will be to start off at Adam, and then work through the Apocrypha, very briefly through the New Testament, and then give a major emphasis on the Apostolic Fathers, the Patristics, and the 3rd and the 5th centuries, very briefly to the Middle Ages and the Pre-Reformers, to lead up to John Calvin, because Calvin is absolutely fundamental for an understanding of Reformed thought in South Africa today. And then I want to trace the development of the eschatology of victory from Calvin to the decrees of Dort, and then from there through 17th century Dutch Calvinism, and then to deal with the revival of Calvinism in Holland from Koon van Prinsteren to Bafink, Heysink, and Van Ruller, And against that background, which is so important, I then want to concentrate in considerable detail in the peculiar development of the eschatology of victory as transplanted to 1652 South Africa and its further development in a variety of ways and mentioning some of the chief thinkers right up to this present day and then conclude in saying what I foresee is likely to be the future developments ahead and the significance of this development for the people of God worldwide. To borrow from this judiciously and to incorporate it into their own views as they should deem to be profitable in their own cultures. Well, I think it would be fair to say that Afrikaner's thought in South Africa places a tremendous emphasis upon the triune God and the doctrine of creation, absolutely fundamental in its approach. Especially in theology you will find there is an enormous emphasis on baptism, specifically on the triune name in which baptism is performed and the work of this glorious being in creation. in redemption and in consummation not only of the individual and of society but indeed of the whole cosmos. Two, there is a very great emphasis on the historical Adam as the federal head of the human race from whom all nations of people in all of their differences and similarities with one another have developed. And so The first element of the eschatology of victory, I believe, particularly as we zero in on the South African understanding of it, would be the perception that the triune God Elohim created the triune universe, or two heavens and one earth, in the beginning. The Father generated the universe in time, the Son, or the Divine Word, spoke the creatures into being, and the Spirit of God moved over the face of the deep and invigorated, and still invigorates, all matter, plants, animals, angels, and men, and that nothing short of a recognition of this fundamental point of departure is really sufficient for one who has been baptized in the name of the triune God. If we have a lesser appreciation of what I've just said, the baptism would need to be improved further, as the British Puritans would have put it. And then we read in the word of God that the triune Elohim said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. And so God created man in his image. In the image of God created he him. Male and female created he them, and God blessed them. And God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Here it would be perceived, particularly in South Africa, that the triune God created man. He created man as a trinity, as a husband, and as a wife, and as children that would proceed from the father through the wife, and that in this way God would use man as his image to subjugate the cosmos and to bring it to God as his reasonable religion. so that after man fell into sin, the image of God is to be restored in the work of the perfect man, prophet, priest, and king, Jesus Christ, and that this is sealed in holy baptism and covenantally administered to the people of God, which presupposes a Christian education in all of these glorious truths, indeed on a national scale. and, as God may move in the future, on an international scale. It would further be the perception that the Lord God then took man and put him into the Garden of Eden for the purpose of dressing it and to keep it. That is to say, positively to cultivate the ground, negatively to keep it, to guard it, to keep thugs such as Satan out of God's private province and domain. and then we're told that God brought all the creatures to Adam to see what he would call them and the names that Adam would give to the animals according to God's predestination would develop and unfold man's culture down through the future as history developed toward its consummation A very important perception, I believe, is that of the Sabbath, recorded in Genesis chapter 2, where we are told that God rested on the seventh day from all that he had made to make it, but then in the Hebrew it says, in order that he may make it. And it has for many, many years been the understanding that the meaning of that text would be that God creates man and then creates the ability in man to subjugate the earth for the specific purpose that man should make the earth further. God makes man and rests in order that man, in obedience to God, in obedience to the covenant of works, should make the universe further and to unfold it. And this covenant of works that God gives to man before the fall is essentially, do this and you shall live. Keep the Ten Commandments and in doing that, God will bless, break the Ten Commandments, and in breaking them, God will curse and God will punish. And the Ten Commandments, of course, are not perceived as having significance only for man's life in the church, but indeed they have significance for the total life of man in culture and in the Garden of Edom and as has also been pointed out by other thinkers such as the Puritan E. Fisher and others the tree of life in a positive way and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in a negative way and many other actions of man before the fall reflect a knowledge of each of the Ten Commandments later articulated on Mount Sinai so that we can indeed say that Adam heard of the Garden of Eden all that the people of Israel heard on Mount Sinai only without lightning and further it can be said that in breaking the root prohibition the prohibition against partaking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge, man at the same time broke all of the commandments of God. But we are told that right after the fall, God in his great mercy, as man's covenant ally against Satan, vindicated his covenant to protect man against the mutual enemy of God and man, Satan, and God would not permit man's treason against God to cancel or to annul God's treaty obligations to come to the rescue of man. And this, of course, was done in the first and greatest of all gospel promises, namely that God himself would put hatred between Satan and the woman, between the seed of Satan and the seed of a woman. and that the seed of the woman par excellence, our Lord Jesus Christ, God of God and man of man, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, will crush the serpent's skull. And at this point I think it's very significant to see the comment made by the Dutch Bible of 1637, commissioned by the Synod, the International Synod at Dort, which was, of course, the guiding line for many generations thereafter in Holland, but especially in South Africa, which is more isolated and therefore more conservative, that this means not only that Christ would crush the serpent's head, but that the children of Christ, the Christians, would participate in the crushing of the serpent seed and in winning the victory through the finished work of Christ, even Christ continuing to work through them in their own lives. Also significant, I believe, is the little statement in Genesis 5 that when Lamech had a son, he called his name Noah, derived from the Hebrew root comfort, or perhaps rest, because, said Lamech, This is he who will comfort us on account of all the labors of our hands. This is he who will strengthen us. This is he who will enable our hands to become strong to continue with the work of the subjugation of the earth and the universe. And indeed it's perceived in this theology that Noah is a kind of second Adam. He ecologically preserves his covenant seed in the ark in connection with man's central position of controlling and subduing the animals to God's glory which he took with him into the ark and God makes a difference between the seed of the woman in the ark and the seed of the snake outside of the ark. Peter seems to be reflecting this in 1 Peter chapter 3 where he refers to holy baptism in the name of the ontological trinity as being the great watershed which separates Noah and his covenant family forever as God's elect from the wicked who perished outside of the ark. Indeed, we are specifically told here for the first time in Scripture that this was a covenant. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and God said to Noah, I will establish my covenant with thee, and thou shalt come into the ark, thou and thy sons and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee, and of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort, shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee. They shall be male and female, of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort, shall come in unto thee to keep them alive." Would take us too far afield to analyze the profound implications of that statement. but I'll merely say that it's a re-echo of the Dominion Charter originally given to Adam in his position of centrality with his family and with his seed to subjugate the animals to bring them to a position of complete usefulness to save man and I may point out that John Calvin points to the fact in one of his commentaries that the distinction between clean and unclean animals is pre-mosaic inasmuch as it is grounded at this particular point of scripture, and he adds that nobody in his right mind would dream of eating the flesh of lions or of wolves. And then the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground anymore. This is after the flood had taken place, and God had used that to bring judgment on the earth, As long as the earth remains, seed, time, and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. Great is thy faithfulness." This is, of course, a premonition of what God would later say on a tremendous scale through Jeremiah in reminding his covenant people of his own covenant with the sun and the moon and the stars, and that that would just as little fail as would God's promise with his children and their children fail and then after the delivery from the ark God repeats the great dominion charter to the human race be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth government is instituted as Paul later tells us to punish the wicked but also to reward the good and to encourage the further unfolding of all of the actions of man on this earth, that man should not transgress against man, that there may be harmony in the external interrelationship of man's work, different kinds of work to one another, and that crime should be punished, and then the great rainbow given as gods aesthetic guarantee that he will never again wipe out the earth, and finally the statement that this will symbolize the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. There again we see something of the tremendous scope of this covenant, not just a matter of the salvation of the soul and the ditching of the body of man, It's a matter of the salvation of the whole man, but it's not a matter of the salvation of man separated from his fellow creatures in the universe. It's a matter of the salvation of the entire universe under the control and the guidance of God's man down through the centuries and the generations. I believe it's significant what God says to Job. Even when Job is going through great difficulties, God reminds him that his seed shall yet be great. This is after Job has just been liquidated, as far as his family is concerned. Know also that thy seed shall be great, thy offspring shall be as the grass of the earth. Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like a shock of corn cometh in in his season. Though thy beginning was small, yet thy latter end should greatly increase. the righteous shall hold on to his way and he that hath clean hands shall become stronger and stronger and finally the beautiful statement at the end of that book and it reverberates down through the apocrypha of the early church fathers and later Calvinism at the end the Lord turned the captivity of Job and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before, or as the Lord Jesus later told his disciples, that there is not a Christian who has left father and mother or goods for the sake of the gospel who shall not receive in this life here and now a hundredfold more than he lost, and the extra benefit in the life to come, everlasting life. And then we find this pinpointed and concentrated in a very significant way in God's dealings with Abraham, the father of the believers. The Lord said to Abraham, I will make of thee a great nation and a blessing. In thee all the families of the earth shall be blessed and kings shall come out of thee. If you can compare that covenant promise with the last page of scripture where we are told that the nations of those that are saved who came forth from Abraham and that the kings bring the honor and the glory of the nations into the heavenly Jerusalem you see or begin to see something of the wonderful harmonious structure of the word of God as salvation covers all that man is interacting with, down through all generations to the very end of the earth. And God said to Abram, I will establish my covenant between me and thee for an everlasting covenant, and I will give unto thee and to thy seed after thee the land wherein thou art a stranger. It is an earthly, down-to-earth, concrete, material promise Indeed, Paul is thinking of this, I believe. Paul, who makes the statement that Abram is the father of all the believers, also says in Ephesians 6, Honor thy father and thy mother, that it may go well with thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. And finally, we see the fulfillment of the promise of the land when the heavenly Canaan, at the end of history, descends down onto the new earth, when heaven and earth are one. And when after the bodies of God's children have been resurrected, they enjoy this rich, full of concrete shalom of God on the land, the land of the New Jerusalem forever. It's also significant what God says to Abraham a little later, I will multiply thy seed like the stars of heaven. and thy seed shall take possession of the gate of his enemies, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." Here we are told that the true children of Abraham will take possession of the gates, the political institutions of their enemies, By the grace of God, they will capture control as we see this movement in eschatological victory forward toward the capture and the control of the entire world. Stimulant promises, of course, were repeated to Isaac and Jacob, whom the book of Hebrews tells us were the fellow heirs of the same promises. And specifically we're told in respect of Jacob, that God would spread him abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed the Lord Jesus seems to be referring to this in Matthew 8 where he says many shall enter into the kingdom of God that day from the north and the south and the east and the west as the kingdom of God becomes full of all of his children holding to these promises And then significantly, of course, in Genesis 49, we are told of the coming of Shiloh, the great Messiah, and we are told that the law will not depart from his feet until he comes. That doesn't mean that it will depart after he comes, but it means that he will maintain that law, and then he will stretch out his scepter to all nations. and to him shall the peoples become obedient, as these promises and these duties are again specifically internationalized through the great commission of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And then we need to say just one or two words about the Ten Commandments very briefly. Have you noticed how each of the Ten Commandments covers a wide, wide territory and is no way limited merely to the life of the Church. First Commandment is interested in godliness, round the clock, 24 hours a day, whatever we're doing. The Second Commandment emphasizes the need of spirituality, doing the right thing for the right reason. The Third Commandment rings with victory. For God visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and the fourth generation of those that hate him. But he also shows mercy to thousands of generations of those that love him and who keep his commandments. By the way, if one generation is approximately 20 years, and as the Hebrew here has the plural, it must mean that Moses expected the world to continue for at least 56,000 years. after revealing the third commandment. And then in the fourth commandment, when we analyze that, we see that it is not merely commanding man to rest each seventh day, but as the great Polish reformer, John Lasky, who stimulated the thought of Abraham Cooper, Cooper wrote his doctoral dissertation on Lasky, and has had such a tremendous influence in South Africa and elsewhere, the Fourth Commandment also requires that we labor and sweat on a godly profession six days every week. So we see that the fourth commandment is not one of just withdrawing from real life one day a week, but it's one of being involved in real life in a different way six days a week, and all to the glory of God. And then when we look at the fifth commandment, we see that it covers all kinds of authority, not just to honor your immediate father or mother, but to respect your ancestors, to have respect for your descendants and to plan for their future, but also teaches, of course, the respect that a wife owes her husband, that a pupil owes his schoolteacher, that citizens owe their government, that people in the pew owe their elders, and so on, in every single non-political governmental sphere in which man can be involved. and the sixth commandment thou shalt not kill means that we are to be large as life to love life and to promote life and liberty and the pursuit of human happiness seventh commandment teaches not just a prohibition against adultery but positively the integrity of the family and the need for us to build beautiful homes to make them look pretty to make them function well to the glory of God in all that we do. The eighth commandment deals not just with a prohibition against theft negatively, but it must encourage us positively to increase our wealth. Paul specifically says this in Ephesians chapter 4. He says let the one that used to steal no longer go on stealing negatively, but let him now positively work hard, save money, Invest it, wisely distribute it to worthy people while teaching them to work hard, to save, to wisely distribute to other people, and in that way to increase the wealth of mankind. And then the ninth commandment, of course, not merely means that we should not lie when we're in church, or that we should not lie when we're at home or at work, but it means we must tell the truth on all occasions and it means we must tell the truth as Adam did before the fall when he looked at an animal and said you are a giraffe you are a hippopotamus so that if we are sloppy or inaccurate in our work of labeling and classifying and putting new names on bugs and microbes that we're looking at through microscopes as part of our daily work we are breaking the ninth commandment and the tenth commandment thou shalt not covet of course means we will be content with that which we have while taking every opportunity that we may have to improve our position and that of our neighbor in a lawful and a legal way the conclusion then is that the commandments of God are exceedingly broad that they're intertwined with every aspect of human action and indeed of the welfare and the history and the expansion of the whole universe and this is the perspective in which these matters are regarded by and large in South African theology and elsewhere today. I cannot at this point go into further detail as regards the concrete application of the Ten Commandments as we find them expressed in the civil and the ceremonial laws. I would refer you to some of my many booklets on this subject, and those of others too. The Mosaic Laws today, Mount Sinai, and the Sermon on the Mount, and Christocracy, and the Divine Savior's Law for All Mankind. But I would like you to know that a lot of consideration about the phenomenon of trade unionism, for example, in South Africa, has been engaged in by studying many of these civil laws of the Old Testament. It has been thought that careful study of them in this regard, and of course as regards other matters too, that's just one example, would provide guidelines for Christian behavior as to trade union organization or advising against such organization, as the case may be. And you know, when you take a look at the way in which the New England Puritans of 1620 understood and applied many of these laws, and the early South African settlers just 30 years later in 1652, and when you notice how many Old Testament place names were given to the early communities both here in North America and in South Africa, place names like Salem, like Sinai, Quran, or Paran, Bethel, Zohar, Goshen, Hebron, Bethlehem, both in the New World of America and in deep south of Africa, we begin to understand something of the extension of this Old Testament perspective down through the Christian centuries in the history of Calvinism's expansion worldwide today. I won't deal with Joshua. Others have dealt with it more adequate than I will, but I will say it deals with the conquest of the world through the application and obedience to the law of God. Going through the Psalms very briefly, Psalm 2, we find the father say to the son, just ask of me and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the ends of the earth. In Psalm 22, we find the statement that the meek or the law-abiding citizens of the kingdom shall be satisfied, all the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord, all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Jehovah. In Psalm 72, give the King Jesus Christ thy judgments, O God. His people shall fear God as long as the sun and the moon endures throughout all generations. He, a probable reference, I think, to the Holy Spirit of King Jesus, in the central analysis, shall come down like rain upon the mown grass. In his days shall the righteous, or the law-keepers, flourish. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. His enemies shall lick the dust. The kings shall bring him presents. motive of the kings descended from Abraham again you see bringing the honor and the glory of the nations ultimately into the heavenly Jerusalem all nations shall serve him all nations shall call him blessed let the whole earth be filled with his glory amen and amen why do I read this and there's so much more that I could read because it's important to realize that in the South African churches psalms must be sung at every worship service, and where the people are exposed not to a diet of Alexander No. 3's ditties, but to the songs of the Old Testament. It has a psychological effect on the people of inciting them to step out and to claim these promises for Jehovah, and to undertake, by his blessing, the conquest of the earth as his people. We come to many other passages. Joel, which I will not go into, you all know its significance and how it was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost and led to a mighty missionary outreach at that time. I think of the promise of Amos, where God promises to raise up again the tabernacle of David and to bring all of the heathen into it. which the Apostle James, of course, in Acts 15 says was fulfilled in the beginnings of the tricklings into the New Testament church of the converts of the Gentiles at that time. But then Amos goes on to say something that is echoed and re-echoed time and again in the early patristic fathers, Papias and others, the mountains shall drop sweet wine and all of the hills shall melt and I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel they shall build up the waste cities and inhabit them they shall make gardens and eat the fruit of them promises of material agricultural prosperity as a result of the surrender of men and women to the gospel of Jesus Christ as the face of the earth is slowly but surely transformed through the power of the Holy Spirit working through His obedient people. And then in Isaiah chapter 2, as you know that well-known statement that in the latter days, that is at the end of the Old Testament days and the beginning of the New Testament days, all nations shall begin to flow into the Zion of the Christian Church. As the Great Commission is faithfully proclaimed in all of its depth and in all of its cosmos-embracing scope throughout the universe, the nations begin to be saved and flow into the Christian Church, and the law goes forth from Mount Zion of the Christian Church, and obedience and submission by God's people to the law of God brings peace and prosperity and domestic tranquility in a society and between one nation and the other to the extent to which the nations as such are brought into obedience to the Lord. In Isaiah chapter 9 and how appropriate this Christmas approach is that we should consider this, a child is born and the son is given and the government shall be placed upon his shoulder You see, Christ is the head of all kings and of all presidents, and he wields political power as from the time of his incarnation, and especially as from the time of his ascension onward. And of the increase of this government, political government, marital government, ecclesiastical government, scholastic government and every other kind of government of the increase of Christian government and peace there shall be no end it shall continue to expand forever and it is the burning zeal of the spirit of the Lord God that will indeed perform this and bring it to pass through his people why the very face of nature begins to change as the wolf dwells with the lamb as the earth becomes more and more filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. And then we find the dispropriation of the wicked by the people of God, Isaiah 45 and elsewhere. The labor of Egypt merchandise of Ethiopia and of the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over unto thee, and they shall be thine. Thus saith the Lord. He did not create the world in vain, but he created it to be inhabited. God didn't create this world to wipe it out and to rapture a handful of frozen chosens out of it, and to let the rest be destroyed in hell in one final Fourth of July bonfire. No. He created the world to be inhabited, to become full of the glory of Jehovah as the waters cover the sea. And we're told a few verses later that political leaders, kings, shall ultimately rise up for the protection of the people of God and be the nursing fathers and the nursing mothers of the people of the Lord and their enemies. shall bow down with their face toward the earth and lick up the dust of the church's feet as they willingly give back to the people of God their ill-gotten gains which they expropriated from God's people as the Egyptians had earlier done from the Israelites and which the Israelites when they were delivered took with them into the desert to dedicate to the glory of God this is going to happen I believe has been happening in history, will continue to happen in the future on an ever-increasing scale, be it unto us according to our faith. And then we're told, in the rest of Isaiah, too many beautiful and wonderful promises to deal with in detail here, other than to just to lay the foundation of what the apocrypher and the early church fathers later build upon. of how Christ shall be given as the covenant, the second Adam, the one who will keep the covenant of works, and shall be given and donated to the Gentiles. And the Gentiles, the nations, shall turn from their sins, and shall come to this light, and the abundance of the sea shall be converted, and shall be brought to the feet of King Jesus. And the forces, and the dynamism, and the possessions And the treasures of the Gentiles shall down through history more and more be turned by way of conversion toward enhancing and adorning Jesus Christ as Lord of Lord and as King of Kings. And then you know in the last couple of chapters of Isaiah that remind me so much of the end of the Old Testament, the last two chapters of the book of Malachi, they both end with a blessing and with a curse. We are told that God will extend peace to his people like a river. The glory of the Gentiles will come flowing into the church like a mighty flowing stream. I will gather all nations and all tongues. Longevity shall be extended. People will live till far over a hundred may not be so fanciful. My doctor told me about a month ago, expects me to live till I'm 175 and why not? Abram lived till he was 175 and he's the father of the believers and I'm a child of Abraham and so we should plan to stick around and to live as long as we can to work hard for the Lord and to see the progress of his gospel and of his conquests here on earth through his people from decade to decade and from one generation to the other. My people, says God, shall declare my glory among the Gentiles. Your seed and your name shall remain, and it shall come to pass that from one Sabbath to another, all flesh shall come to worship before me. And Micah, the minor Isaiah, if we may call him that, has a similar message. that in the last days at the end of the Old Testament with the first coming of Christ the house of the Lord shall be established on top of the mountains in a place of preeminence as the number one institution in the affairs of man and the people shall flow into it and as a result of that every man shall sit under his vine and his own fig tree socialism shall be banished and destroyed free enterprise shall triumph and be paramount and agriculture shall flourish everywhere as God's laws are obeyed. This is done as the following chapter, the fifth, of my God tells us through the incarnation and the fruits of the incarnation of that great ruler born in little Bethlehem whose goings forth have been from everlasting in the past. And as he goes forth he stands tall and he gives proof and feeds others in the strength of the Lord and he becomes great unto the very ends of the earth an extremely important prophecy and one that none of us may have paid any attention to is in the little book of Zephaniah we're told in Zephaniah that it is from beyond the rivers of Ethiopia apparently south of the rivers of Ethiopia that God's suppliants, the daughter of his dispersed, shall bring his offerings." Quite a lot of people in South Africa who appropriate that text to themselves and say, look, here is an Old Testament prediction that God would raise up a people south of the rivers of Ethiopia one day to bring dedication to it. Well, I'm not claiming that that's entirely sound exegesis, but I will claim that some reasonably brilliant men have felt it to be significant and there is no question in my mind that believing that to be appropriate has had quite a stimulus on many of the people in South Africa to want to see that fulfilled through them and then we are told in the book of Habakkuk that the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea Habakkuk lifts up his head and calls upon God to revive his people in the midst of the years, to increase the influences of his Holy Spirit, and to bring these promises to pass, to make the earth full of his praise, and to cause the feet of his people to dance on the high places like the feet of an antelope. And Jeremiah, the prophet of doom, And of gloom, living at a very depressing time of history nevertheless, also has moments of light and of optimism. He says, Who will not fear thee, O King of Nations? He says, Behold, there is a righteous branch coming, and as a result of that branch, the Messiah who comes into the world. my law shall be inscribed into their inward parts, and it shall be written in the hearts of my people, and they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord." The New Testament book of Hebrews takes those prophecies and applies it very clearly and firmly to the New Testament people of God, the Christians. And so if the law of God is not being written in the heart of a church member, well, he's just not a Christian at all. He's a Latter-day Saint, rather than a Latter-day Saint. And then, in the book of Obadiah, which I had the privilege of expounding just last night, we're told that the house of Jacob marches forward to gain possession of the Mount of Esau, of the children of the reprobate. And there is an expansion in all directions, north, south, east and west. And the Old Testament images, northward into Samaria and westward into the Shefilah or hill country and eastward into the mountains of Gilead. And even the cities of the south are captured or taken for that great Obadiah, that great servant of the Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ, the slave of God and the kingdom. The kingdom, says Obadiah, shall become the Lord's, for as Handel tells us in that echo of Obadiah found in the book of Revelation, the kingdom of this world shall become the kingdom of our God and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever. and then in the book of Ezekiel again written during a time of captivity when a spirit of defeatism had understandably taken hold of many of the banished people of God in Babylon Ezekiel reminds them that the top of the tall cedar shall be lopped off and it shall be planted as a tender twig and that even though the people of God shall be cut down very very low They shall take root again, like the sawn-off tree of Isaiah chapter 11, the root of Jesse proceeds out of that tree again, and it brings forth thousand bears' fruit, and becomes a glibly cedar, a huge tree, and under it shall dwell all the fowl of every wing. I believe our Savior in his parable of the mustard seed that grows into a huge tree and then accommodates all of the various birds of the four corners of heaven is our Savior's infallible comment on this prediction of Ezekiel in nailing it down to the expansion of the kingdom of Jesus Christ starting from the time of his first coming onward. Also in Ezekiel, we are reminded at the end of the glorious book of him whose voice is like the noise of many waters, the great Jehovah Jesus, I am who speaks again in this very language of Ezekiel in the last book of the Bible, in the book of Revelation. and we're told that as the gospel waters flow forth from the house of God and from the church first it is put ankle deep but then up to the knees and then to the waist and finally to the very neck as these waters of peace and of salvation flow forth in all direction irrigating and bringing healing as far as the curse is gone and the Lord is there And what shall we say of the book of Daniel, as it considers the rise and the setting of nations? And how often do we not find echoes of the book of Daniel and its predictions in the Apocrypha, in the New Testament to some extent, and in the early Church Fathers as we shall see subsequently? A stone is cut out of the mountains, it is done so without hands and that stone comes rolling down the mountain, snowballing, gathering momentum and size, and it smashes and destroys the, uh, the, um, statue which symbolizing the walled empires and crushes them to a powder and that is not all the stone of the kingdom of Christ goes rolling on victoriously until it becomes a mighty mountain that fills the entire earth and then he tells us something that brought about a real revolution in my own thinking it's amazing how often we can read Daniel chapter 7 telling us of how the Son of Man comes on the cloud of heaven to the Ancient of Days and then receives dominion and glory and a kingdom. But you know the operative word there is Calvin points out so beautifully in his commentary is the little preposition to. It doesn't say that he comes from the Ancient of Days at the time of his second coming on the clouds. It says he comes on the clouds to the Ancient of Days. The reference is therefore to the ascension of Jesus Christ on the clouds, Acts 1, not to his second coming. It is from that time that he begins to rule, and that in spite of all opposition, the kingdoms of the world are more and more brought under his dominion. In Haggai, he is called the great desire of the nations who shall come to him. In the book of Zechariah, we are told that the very ends of the earth turn to him and join themselves to him in that day, and that the nations bring in all their wealth and all of their culture into his kingdom. And on the last page of the Old Testament, which we shall see in the next lecture, is quoted from, so frequently, in the much misunderstood apocrypha, the book of Malachi. We're told that from the east to the west, from the rising of the sun even to its setting, the name of the Lord shall be great amongst the Gentiles, that Elijah or John the Baptist shall be sent out to his people, that he shall turn the hearts of the children to the fathers and of the fathers to the children and then those solemn words and how the church needs to heed them today remember the law of Moses lest I come lest I come to bless the law keepers but to punish the law breakers by smiting the earth with a curse for Christ comes he comes to tread down the wicked under his burning feet and under the feet of his church and he comes as the healing son of righteousness to rise with healing in his wings for the salvation of his elect who are then themselves to confidently go forth prosperously and to grow even as the calves do in the stall of a delightsome land For free newsletters and a complimentary copy of our large discount mail-order Christian book catalog specializing in Reformed resources, contact Stillwaters Revival Books. On the Internet, we are at www.swrb.com. By email, swrb at swrb.com. Our mailing address is 4710-37A Avenue, Edmonton. That's E-D-M-O-N-T-O-N. Alberta can be abbreviated capital A, capital B. Canada, T6L-3T5. By phone, we're at 403-450-3730 or after February 99, we will be at 780-450-3730. And keep in mind that the causes of fasting, June 13, 1921, as listed in the outline of the recent proceedings of the Reformed Presbytery on pages 7 and 8, state, one of the sad and evil signs of this day of darkness is the lack of family worship. Those that know God will call upon him. Where family worship is not observed, such families are living in a state of heathenism.