bounds to the developments of history? which are to be taken at one time as identical with earthly measures of time, which indeed the eventus often first teaches (e.g., the seventy years of the Babylonish exile, Dan 9:2), but at another time as symbolical, but yet so that the historical course holds and moves itself within the divinely measured sphere, as with the seventy weeks of Daniel, wherein, for the establishing of the faith of individuals and of the church, there lies the consolation, that all events even to the minutest, particularly also the times of war and of oppression, are graciously measured by God (Jer 5:22; Job 38:11; Psa 93:3.).”[1]
To give this consolation to the faithful is the object of this revelation, and that object it fully accomplishes. For the time and the hour of the consummation of the kingdom of God it belongs not to us to know. What the Lord said to His disciples (Act 1:7) before His ascension, in answer to their question as to the time of the setting up of the kingdom of Israel - ”It belongs not to you to know χρόνους ἤ καιροὺς οὕς ὁ πατὴρ ἔθετο ἐν τῇ Ἰδίᾳ ἐξουσίᾳ “that He says not only to the twelve apostles, but to the whole Christian world. That the reason for this answer is to be sought not merely in the existing condition of the disciples at the time He uttered it, but in this, that the time and the hour of the appearance of the Lord for the judgment of the world and the completion of His kingdom in glory are not to be announced beforehand to men, is clear from the circumstance that Christ in the eschatological discourse (Mat 24:36; Mar 13:32) declares generally, “Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.” According to this, God, the Creator and Ruler of the world, has kept in His own power the determination of the time and the hour of the consummation of the world, so that we may not expect an announcement of it beforehand in the Scripture. What has been advanced in
- ↑ Auberlen, notwithstanding that he interprets the seventy שׁבעים chronologically as year-weeks, does not yet altogether misapprehend the symbolical character of this definition of time, but rightly remarks (p. 133f.), “The history of redemption is governed by these sacred numbers; they are like the simple foundation of the building, the skeleton in its organism. These are not only outward indications of time, but also indications of nature and essence.” What he indeed says regarding the symbolical meaning of the seventy weeks and their divisions, depends on his erroneous interpretation of the prophecy of the appearance of Christ in the flesh, and is not consistent with itself.
