Horatius Bonar and Our Human Limitations on God’s Word

Horatius Bonar

I’ve been reading Horatius Bonar’s “Prophetical Landmarks” (first published in 1847), and it is interesting to read different viewpoints to help understand the variations in premillennial and dispensational thought.  Specifically, I’ve learned that Bonar was premillennial with future for Israel, but not dispensational — and this comes up in the details such as his understanding of Daniel’s prophecies, saying that those events will happen to the Church.

Chapter 10, “Distribution of Times and Events,” especially reveals Bonar’s weaknesses and limitations in understanding.  Here he abandons the standard literal interpretation of some prophecies because, to his mid-19th century viewpoint, the literal meaning seemed impossible to him. Consider the following two observations from Bonar:

Further, there are some things foretold as taking place during the well-known period of twelve hundred and sixty days, which scarcely admit of being compressed within the space of so many days. The “wearing out” of the saints of the Most High is something which cannot be accomplished within three years and a half. It denotes a long period of trial, a gradual, continuous oppression of the Church, not the sharp and sudden infliction of calamity upon one generation of saints. It is true this expression occurs in Daniel, not in the Apocalypse, but the periods are the same, and the expressions made use of in the latter are of the very same import.

Here Bonar reflects the evolutionary thinking of the mid-19th century, unable to conceive of things happening very quickly and catastrophically.  Yet he also missed a few biblical references that perhaps could have helped:  the sudden calamity of the flood in Noah’s day (reference 2 Peter 3), and Jesus’ words that the elect would not survive except that the days (of tribulation) be cut short.

But the next part is really interesting — again, consider Bonar’s 19th century perspective:

Again, we read that the dead bodies of the witnesses are to lie unburied for three days and a half, (Rev. 11: 8-10,) that is, three and a half literal days, if the abridged scheme be correct. And then it is added, that “they of the people, and kindreds, and tongues, and nations, shall see their dead bodies, and shall not suffer them to be put in graves.” Now, is it possible, that within three days and a half, people of the different nations even of the prophetic earth should be able to come together to the street of the great city, and see these bodies lying? Or is it possible, that within that short space the intelligence of their death should be so universally diffused, that men should have time to congratulate each other, and send gifts one to the other in token of their common joy? We can hardly conceive this possible.

Though Bonar and his contemporaries could not understand this as literal, our generation — with satellite communications, cell phones, instant messaging and the Internet — has no difficulty with the idea that the literal meaning could actually be fulfilled.  It really is amazing, how God’s word should always be taken at face value.   The oft-quoted saying, “if the plain sense makes sense, seek no other sense” bears repeating.  The passage itself has a plain enough meaning, a narrative description of a particular event, so it definitely fits with the advice to “seek no other sense.”  If people in one age cannot see how it will happen literally, it is because future events — and technology unimagined — must yet come to pass.  We can be sure, though, that God will in the course of human history bring about what is necessary to make such prophecies — which completely befuddled Horatius Bonar — literally come to pass.