The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 3

VII. Gerard Noel-Smiting by the Sione Impends

GERARD THOMAS NOEL (1782-1851), of Richwood, English dissenting minister and writer, was educated at Edinburgh and at Trinity College, Cambridge, receiving his B.A. in 1805 and his M.A. in 1808. After taking orders he served as curate in several places. Later he left the Anglicans and joined the Baptists. He was a close friend of Wilberforce and wrote a number of books on prophecy. ⁷⁸ Beginning with his sermon given be fore the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews (1810), and The Day at Hand (1818), he wrote A Brief Enquiry into the Prospects of the Church ... in Connexion with the Second Advent (1828), Extracts on Prophecy, Chiefly the Approaching Advent and Kingdom of Christ (1835), Lectures on points in the Controversy between Romanists and Protestants (1836), and Christian Missions to Heathen Nations (1842). PFF3 530.1

1. HISTORY FORMS COUNTERPART OF PROPHECY

Noel’s brief Enquiry deals with the premillennial establishment of the kingdom of Christ. Sharing the view of virtually all his associates, he declares that the image of Daniel 2 “foretells a succession of monarchies, the last of which, when broken into TEN parts, is smitten to shivers by the STONE cut out of the mountain.” ⁷⁹ The second vision, that of the four beasts, “foretells the same succession of FOUR monarchies,” the same ten divisions and the “eleventh,” and then depicts his work. These prophecies “no human hand could have traced, because no human mind could thus have pierced through the dark and interfolded veils of futurity.” ⁸⁰ Noel calls on the reader to compare the prophecy with the history, and to marvel at the accuracy. PFF3 530.2

2. STONE TO SMITE AMID PRESENT DIVISIONS

After naming the four empires, and the ten divisions, and “the sanguinary Papacy,” he declares that the judgment has already begun to sit. and the papal throne to totter as “the kingdom of the Son of God hastens to the hour of its manifestation, alike to the confusion of his toes, and to the joy and glory of his saints.” ⁸¹ Such is the prophesied fifth monarchy. As to the designated time he adds: PFF3 530.3

“Let the wicked tremble; let the wicked mourn; let the wicked believe, repent, and live! Yet a little while, and these prophecies will attest the fidelity of Him who uttered them! Christian! the last tempest may soon gather around thee, but, ‘be of good cheer.’ ‘Lift up thy head, for thy redemption draweth nigh.’” ⁸² PFF3 531.1

Concerning the time when the stone smites the Roman image, Noel declares: PFF3 531.2

“We find that the ‘stone cut out from the mountain’ does not smite the legs of the image, which legs represent the unbroken or imperial form of the Roman Empire, but it smites upon the feet, that is, upon the Roman Empire in its divided state, or when broken into the ten kingdoms. It is ‘in the days of these kings’ that the stone smites the Roman image.” ⁸³. PFF3 531.3

3. RSURRECTION PRECEDES THE MILLENNIUM

Noel boldly takes the position that the resurrection of the saints pre cedes the millennium, in order that the resurrected saints may reign with Christ during the thousand-year period. PFF3 531.4

4. 1260 YEARS, ENDING 1792, PRECEDE KINGDOM

Having thus made an “outline of those great events which appear to lie depicted on the map of prophecy,” ⁸⁴ Noel comes to the “times and seasons,” and the “chronology of the period, in which we live.” According to Daniel 2, the advent will take place “during the divided state of the Roman Empire.” ⁸⁵ And according to Daniel 7, it will be after the period of the “spiritual despotism” of the Little Horn, its three and a half times, or 1260 days, or prophetic years. ⁸⁶ After noting the parallel time periods in Revelation, Noel dates the 1260 years from the Justinian grant of 533, down to 1792. In support he quotes extensively from Cuninghame. ⁸⁷ PFF3 531.5

5. CUMULATIVE SIGNS OF TIMES AND WORLD’S APATHY

The cumulative signs of the time of Matthew 24 and Joel 2 he then portrays, with the “political convulsions” foretold. Last of all he alludes to that sealing message of the angel of Revelation 7, the “remnant of the election of his grace.” ⁸⁸ These identify “the present time to be the hour of approaching mercy to the church, and of destruction to its foes.” ⁸⁹ Noel then stresses the “insensibility of the world to the warning voice of Christ”-the scoffing of the days of Noah repeated. Vividly he portrays the ancient scene: PFF3 531.6

“During one hundred and twenty years did the warning voice of God utter its mournful accents, and intreat a cessation in the work of ungodliness and sin. The accents were scattered to the desert air; they reached no rebel heart of man. The shortness of time, the approach of death, the brooding darkness of the gathering storm, interrupted not the career of sensuality, the progress of licentiousness, nor the noise of mirth. They eat, they drank; ‘the harp, and the viol, and the tabret, and melody, were in their feasts;’ they formed alliances; they built up many a domestic dwelling-place; they coveted individual and national renown; but ‘they regarded not the work of the Lord,’ nor knew ‘the operation of his hands.’ They ridiculed the prophetic record. They smiled in idle scorn, while the Prophet built and surveyed his ark, an appointed refuge from the approaching wrath! But the insensibility of man delayed not the pur pose of God; the neglected warning cancelled not the recorded purpose; the mirth of the criminal arrested not the hand of the executioner; the horizon blackened; the tempest burst; and the human population lay buried beneath the waves! ⁹⁰ PFF3 532.1