The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 3

II. Meets Specious Fallacies and Makes Appeals

1. PROTESTS MYSTICAL INTERPRETATION OF ADVENT

Brief notice must suffice for succeeding works. Cuninghame’s Pre-Millennial Advent of Christ Demonstrated From the Scriptures, also of 1813, but appearing first in The Christian Observer, was primarily an appeal to the clergy. Deploring the popular attitude of the time, he declares that the Christian world is blinded by a “mystical application” concerning the advent. ⁵⁸ Cuninghame contends that the time has arrived for a revival of the “primitive doctrine of the personal advent of the Messiah,” that it is time to arouse a sleeping church to the significance of the “stupendous events” impending. It was published for the purpose of rescuing the doctrine of the glorious appearing from the low esteem into which it had been thrust by opponents. ⁵⁹ PFF3 373.1

2. MEETS BURGH’S FUTURIST FALLACY

In 1833 Cuninghame brought out the second edition of The Apostasy of the Church of Rome, with the title The Church of Rome the Apostasy, and the Pope the Man of Sin and Son of Perdition of St. Paul’s Prophecy. The attempt of William Burgh, the Futurist, is exposed in this second edition, as having the deliberate purpose of attempting “to overthrow the whole scheme of Protestant interpretation, root and branch.” ⁶⁰ PFF3 373.2

3. CONFIRMS AUTHENTICITY OF JUSTINIAN’S DECREE

Cuninghame’s Fulness of the Times (1836) deals, in the preface, with Thomas Comber’s charges in his Roman Forgeries (1673), that Justinian’s edict-letter of 533 is a forgery. Citing Goth of redus, Gravina, Hothman, Baronius, and other witnesses, Cuninghame gives a scholarly and critical answer, with clear documentation for the authenticity of the citation. ⁶¹ PFF3 373.3

4. EARNEST APPEAL TO HEED ADVENT WARNING

In his Political Destiny of the Earth (1833), Cuninghame meets some of the spiritualizing tendencies of: the time that would depersonalize the second advent. Here is his ringing declaration: PFF3 373.4

“If, then, as we certainly conclude, the Advent in Daniel 7:13, and Matthew 24:30, and Luke 21:27, be our Lord’s personal coming to judge the quick and the dead, since it has been seen that the 1260 years ended in the year 1792, and the Judgment of the ANCIENT OF DAYS, then began to sit, and the signs in the sun, moon, and stars, and distress of nations, and roaring of the sea and waves, or popular commotions, and the failing of men’s hearts for fear, and the shaking of the powers of the political heavens or governments, are even now accomplishing before the eyes of every one who hath eyes to see, then it does most indubitably and incontrovertibly follow, that our Lord’s coming with clouds is even at the doors; and as that very generation, to whom our Lord addressed his prophetic discourse, did witness its inchoate fulfilment in the awful destruction of Jerusalem, with circumstances of unparalleled wrath and misery on that people; so we believe that this very generation, before whose eyes the Lord is now spreading the multiplying signs of his approach, shall see his coming in his own glory, and the glory of the Father, and shall in vain call on the hills and the mountains to fall on them, and hide them from the wrath of the Lamb.” ⁶² PFF3 374.1

On the basis of this premise he addresses himself to four classes-ministers, professors of religion, the careless and ungodly, and worldly politicians. To each he makes earnest appeal. Thus to ministers, as watchmen on the walls of Zion, appointed to sound the alarm, to know the hour ol the night, and the proximity of the resurrection morn, lie appeals to study the prophecies in order to discern the signs of the times: PFF3 374.2

“And if they who now have the high office of opening to their brethren the mysteries of the kingdom, desire to emerge from the condition of spiritual infancy, in which so many still remain, we tell them that the) cannot advance a step beyond the first elements of the doctrine of Christ without the study of the prophetic word.” ⁶³ PFF3 374.3

Cuninghame stresses that “an awful crisis is now at hand,” when the stone is about to smite the image on the feet: PFF3 374.4

“In other words, the time is at hand, when the Son of Man, with his Saints, shall be revealed in (laming fire, and shall abolish all earthly rule and authority, and establish his everlasting kingdom of peace and righteousness.” ⁶⁴ PFF3 374.5

The professors of religion are reminded of the parable of the ten virgins, as he appeals to them not to treat “with levity or with scorn the annunciation of the speedy Advent and glorious reign of the Lord Jesus Christ. ⁶⁵ Next, speaking to the worldling who is hiding behind the indifference of the careless Christian, Cuninghame speaks of the terror of the advent to the ungodly, and makes this earnest plea: PFF3 375.1

“It is, indeed, the ease that few of the ministers of Christ give heed to it, but on the other hand, you cannot but feel that we who hold it, do so with the Bible in our hands, and that we challenge our opponents to meet our arguments from the Word of God. But this challenge is offered in vain. Our adversaries are reduced to silence. Let every one, then, who has been leading a careless and ungodly life, into whose hands this Tract may fall, be persuaded not to neglect or despise the warning here given of the approach of the Son of Man with clouds, but let him instantly repent and turn to God, and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and he shall not only be saved from the wrath to come, but shall receive that spiritual illumination which will enable him to discern, whether this doctrine of the speedy advent of the Lord with all his saints, be the truth of God, or a fiction of our imagination.” ⁶⁶ PFF3 375.2

And finally, to the worldly politician he says: PFF3 375.3

“Let them all be warned that their schemes will end in utter disappointment. The time is now al hand when all earthly authority must give place to that of the SAINTS OF THE MOST HIGH, and the shillings of the political scenes witnessed in our own times, appear as it were to be the forerunners, of the entire prostration of wordly powers which is approaching.” ⁶⁷ PFF3 375.4

5. SCHOLARLY WITNESSES ATTEST PROPHETIC CERTAINTIES

Political Destiny was really a survey of Daniel 2 and 7. ⁶⁸ Cuninghame asserts that Daniel’s fourth beast, Paul’s Man of Sin, and John’s lamblike beast all describe the papal power. ⁶⁹ This statement he makes on the “nearly unanimous voice of the Protestant Churches,” citing twenty six leading names as illustrative. He next stresses the 1260 days as literal years from 533 to 1792. ⁷⁰ In addition to Christian expositors, Cuninghame cites a large body of supporting Jewish writers-Saadia, Gaoa, Jarchi (Rashi), Abarbanel, Moses ben Nachman, etc. ⁷¹ PFF3 375.5

The four empires of prophecy are outlined, ⁷² the ten divisions enumerated, ⁷³ followed by identification of the papal Little Horn. ⁷⁴ Finally the judgment scene, and the coming of the Son of man with the clouds of heaven is surveyed. ⁷⁵ The “modern fancy of a figurative coming of the Son of Man” was declared unknown to the church of the early and Reformation centuries. ⁷⁶ PFF3 376.1

To infidels-a fifth group-the prophetic procession of the centuries is passed in review, with its 1260-year period, and they are called upon to acknowledge and accept the foreknowledge of God. ⁷⁷ PFF3 376.2