Concerning the "Times and Seasons"

(This is taken from "The Second Coming of The Lord, How is it taught in Scripture? and why?" by Samuel Tregelles an early Open Brethren scholar.)

"But do you not remember," it is said, "that God holds the times and seasons in His own power? Does not this shew that He may arrange events as He willeth? that He may re-dispose their order? And is not the definite formation of expectations, as if God must bring events to pass in one way and not in another, a limiting of the Holy One of Israel?" God has all things in His power; but when once He has spoken, He will fulfil; and thus, without irreverence, we may say that such event will occur, and such will not. When once God has promised, He is concluded by His own words: He cannot deny Himself. Thus we may, with all confidence, say, that if God has revealed that a portion of His Church shall be found in unbroken continuity on the earth up to the harvest, when the wicked shall be severed from the midst of them, then so it will be. If He has said that Antichrist’s appearance and power shall precede the coming of Christ, then this must be the order of events. If He tells us that it is after, and not before, the time of special tribulation that Christ shall come, then we must not discredit God by the imagination that it may be previous. If the Lord Jesus has told us that His shall not be a secret coming, then we must take heed and not accept the teaching that bids us expect a secret advent. If He tells us to watch for His appointed signs, then we must not imagine that this can be inconsistent with the hope of seeing the Lord, or that it can have any evil effect morally; nay, we must be sure that such an expectation, held in the Spirit, is that which will produce the right effect of watchfulness and waiting in every one who rests on the word of Christ, because it is His. 

However much God may do in grace and mercy beyond what He has promised, of this we may be sure, that whatever He has promised shall be fulfilled; and that every revealed circumstance in connection with the time or order shall have a perfect accomplishment. In unrevealed things, it behoves us to avoid speculation; but where the Scripture speaks, it is for us, whether we understand or not, to listen and to receive. 

In any inquiry what God can do, or will do, there are two principles which must be borne in mind: Firstly, God is "the faithful God;" "God that cannot lie." This is part of His own essential character; and we know, too, that as to His revelation in Christ, "all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God by us" (2 Cor. 1:20). Secondly, besides this (or rather consequent on this), "the Scripture must be fulfilled." What can prove this more fully than our Lord’s prayer and agony in the garden, and His betrayal? 

"O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt" (Matthew 26:39). "O my Father, if this cup may not pass from me, except I drink it, thy will be done" (v. 42). 

 "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and He shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?" (vv. 53, 54). 

 "But all this was done that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled" (v. 56). 

If there are points which are not certainly or definitely stated in Scripture, some conclusion may, perhaps, be formed from analogy or probable inference; but when the Scripture tells the events and their order, then what is called "free enquiry" has no place whatever. Those who sit in judgment on Scripture, and question or deny what it conclusively says, are not fitting persons to be listened to as teachers in the Church of Christ, whatever be their claims as to wisdom or holiness. 

The question of the apostles to the Lord in Acts 1:6 is, "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" To this He replies, "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power." He then tells them what their service should be as witnesses for Him,-in fact, referring them back to His own previous instruction in Matthew 24:6, 14: "The end is not yet." "And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come." They are thus reminded that the restoration of the kingdom to Israel could not be in the ordering of God until the events of that chapter were brought to pass; it was thus that He had put these times and seasons in His own power. We cannot measure these events by a century or by a thousand years, but we may know their order as revealed and recorded in Holy Scripture. 

When the Apostle says,

"I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery . . . that blindness in part is happened to Israel, UNTIL the fulness of the Gentiles be come in" (Rom. 11:25), 

the following words, "And so all Israel shall be saved," prove that the blindness shall be altogether taken away. But when shall this be? When the fullness of the Gentiles is gathered. How could the Scripture speak of a "blindness in part until" that time, if Israel’s greatest blindness, in the depth of anti-Christian evil, is not till after the removal of the Church? But the order of these events has been revealed for our instruction. It is when He cometh with clouds, when every eye shall see Him, that Israel shall look on Him whom they pierced—when the spirit of grace and of supplications shall be poured upon them. Until that day the fullness of the Gentiles will not have come in. The resurrection of the Church and the removal of the blindness are at the same time.