Horae Apocalypticae - Consummation of All Prophecy

Consummation of All Prophecy

Edward Elliott's last task was to show that Revelation provided the exact fulfilment of all prophecy in Daniel, Isaiah, Ezekiel and others.

For Daniel, he dismissed the argument, dating from Porphyry, that Daniel was 'prophecy after the event' for the following reasons:-

• that Christ spoke of the fulfilment of Daniel (for example, Matthew 24:15) so it was illogical for Christian believers to reject Daniel's inspiration,
• that the things foretold in Daniel related to the Romans, to the Messiah and to other events long after the Maccabees, so it could not all have been written with hindsight,
• the language employed in the text is too archaic for a later writer (although Elliott said this was only true for the early chapters of Daniel),
• that it would be very difficult to insert fraudulent chapters into such a well-known book at a later date,
• that the prophetic timescale employed would be useless for any fraudulent purpose.

But this still left unanswered a problem which had troubled Isaac Newton of how Jewish prophecies could be adapted to a Christian setting without simply excluding the Jews. He then considered a contrasting range of prophetic utterances from Isaiah, Joel, Ezekiel and Zechariah. "In summing up and comparing these several prophecies, the first conclusion that we are I think irresistibly led to respecting them, is that one and all refer to that same great crisis of the consummation: - that which is to be marked by the apostate nations' last conflict against God's cause and people; and to end in the Jubilean blessedness of a regenerated world." Elliott skillfully showed that seemingly diverse prophecies were all woven into Revelation, except for two themes of Ezekiel which were, perhaps significantly, left out. One is the idea that the wicked will be mutually destructive, the other that there will be a real chance some of the scoffers will repent. According to Edward Elliott's view, the millennium will be literal and the descent of the new Jerusalem will be pre-millennial, too. The millennium will be a time of bliss reserved for the martyrs and for those who refused the mark of the Beast. It is a forerunner of the new heaven and earth all the elect will enjoy after the second resurrection.