Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 100:398 (Apr 1943)
Article: The Prophetic Literature of Colonial America Part 2
Author: Wilbur M. Smith

BSac 100:398 (Apr 43) p. 273

The Prophetic Literature of Colonial America
Part 2

Wilbur M. Smith

(Continued from the January-March Number, 1943)

{Editor’s note: Footnotes in the original printed edition were numbered 22–53, but in this electronic edition are numbered 1–32 respectively.}

To return to the main thesis of Mather’s most important book on prophecy, we find our author going so far as to say, regarding the return of Israel to Palestine, “I have many times thought on it with admiration that there is not any one thing in all the Word of God more abundantly witnessed unto than this truth, that all Israel shall be saved: What should be the reason of that? Doubtless there are divers reasons for it; one is, because the Lord would not, by any means, have His people ignorant of this great truth.... Another reason is...because it is that which men are most unapt to believe.... And why, think you, are men so unapt to believe this truth? but because of the strangeness and wonder that is in it; it is a thing beyond humane sense and reason.”1 So extensive will this return to Palestine prove to be, Mather was persuaded, that, “at the return of Israel, the land of their fathers will be too little for them, such will the multitude of their number be, and that therefore they must have other countries adjoining for their possession (Zech 10:10; Isa 49:19, 20; 54:2, 3; Num 24:17, 18; Obadiah 19).”2

Our great Puritan scholar has a very good paragraph on the meaning of the Kingdom in the Word of God. We do not defend each reference, each specific point, but it shows the breadth of his understanding in this very difficult matter. “We shall find that there is a three-fold Kingdom of Christ. (1) Providential, whereby He governs the world in respect

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whereof He is called the King of nations (Jer 10:7; Matt 28:18; John 5:27). (2) Spiritual, in respect whereof He is styled the King of saints (Rev 15:3), and this is either (1) internal in the souls and hearts and consciences of men, and is very fitly termed the kingdom of grace...