It is part of the glory of God, that he insists on causing restoration and renewal after decline. It's part of the principle of the triumph of grace. When even if it's the fault of the very people of God, spiritual things go into decline, it is always God's way to create a resuscitation and a renewal, and so we can expect under that principle to see some renewal in our land. We can expect to see the word of God going forth again. We can expect to see days of power and a renewal, and here are the terms: only when the ground has been thinned out; only when the generation of decline has been bypassed; only with a new mood, a new period, a new era has come in, will it be seen. If our churches are going to be party to this new generation that the Lord will bring in, there must be great concern for real spirituality, for separation from worldliness in the personal life and in the methods of the church, and for separation from doctrinal compromise. There must be great concern for active serving the Lord, and soul-winning. These are the things that will characterize the new generation. We don’t say, ‘Leave it all to the Lord. He will win souls, while we just moon about and do the work as steadily and as lazily and as quietly as we can.’ We have got to understand that God doesn't bless a new generation until they begin to realise what was wrong with the old one. Over recent decades there has been a rundown at every level – on the one hand compromise, and on the other hand a fatal romanticism which besets Reformed Christians today. You say, ‘But we ask God to bless all these good denominations that have done these things. Surely the deficiencies of the past are not that serious. Surely we can pray for revival, and we mean that God will revive all evangelicals.’ But that is not his way. When troubles come in and decline and compromise, God raises up a new generation; he does a new thing every time, and that's what we see here.
Here is an example of prophecy simply fulfilled stage by stage. You are in captivity in Babylon the Judeans are given this prophecy that they're going to return to their land, and they did return. But you say, ‘Wasn't it a great disappointment to them that they should not live to experience all the fulfilment, but only part of it?’ No, it should have been a mighty encouragement to them. It was a kind of earnest, a kind of down payment, a guarantee of what was to come, a mighty deliverance. How unthinkable it had been that invincible Babylon would fall, and yet it did and Israel had liberty; they have their own country again, and their own governor under a sympathetic empire. How astonishing! Surely all the rest will come to pass in God's time.
These three stages of fulfilment have been given names. The first has been called the stage of preparation – the release the captives: what does that prepare? Well it gets them back to their homeland; now prophecy is back on track. Christ can come out of that land born to that people, who prophecy had said he would be born to, an educated people, taught in prophecy and in worship, educated in essential doctrines and truths. So the first stage of prophecy is fulfilled as an encouragement, as a visual aid that more is to come, and it's fulfilled to physically prepare the scene for the coming of Christ. The second stage is redemption. Christ comes and he does the work and we have our Davidic King, our eternal King, and the church is founded, and the new covenant comes in the final stage victory triumph. Satan's little season, which we often think we see starting – the overturning of all morality and so on – will climax with the revelation of the man of sin. That will be terrible, but very short lived. The man of sin of lawlessness is revealed, and then almost at once he is destroyed with the brightness of Christ’s coming and the final things are ushered in: the resurrection, the judgment, the marriage supper of the Lamb, the descent of heaven to earth, the destruction of the earth, its rejuvenation, and somehow its amalgamation with heaven, a heavenly physical earth. Amazing things! That is the ultimate fulfilment of the very same prophecies, stage by stage.
To be continued in the future, God willing.