The restoration of God's chosen people at the close of this age and the millenial reign of Christ was a truth obscured since the time of Origen. Around the start of the nineteenth century the literal significance of the prophecies began to be considered once again.
During this period - in 1812 - 'The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty' was published in Spain during a brief period of respite from the Roman Catholic Inquisition. The work reached Britain, and was taken up and translated by Edward Irving, a minister of the Church of Scotland.
Primarily as a research tool for those studying the context of millenarianism in the church. However, the tool is no dull instrument: it has a great deal to say to us today concerning the literal truth of Holy Scripture.
The first reason for republishing the work is to make available to serious students of church history a work published at a time when our understanding of 'the Church' and the rapture of the saints was beginning to be discussed with renewed fervor amongst Christians. It is not the purpose of this preface to discuss the relative significance of J. N. Darby, Edward Irving or Emmanuel Lacunza: others have given that fuller attention that I might ever hope to do. I simply offer this so that you may see what Lacunza (and Irving) does, and does not say. We will not agree with everything, indeed we may agree with nothing; but then all Lacunza ever asks of us is that we read and consider.
The doctrine of Replacement Theology, as typified by Augustine and many of the Protestant Reformers, is today strongly advocated from so many pulpits and convention platforms. Yet such a position was not to be found in the writings of the early church. Lacunza was not the first, but is certainly one of the most influential writers, to suggest that the church needed to review her position and look again at what the Word of God has to say on the subject. The work has, of course, been out of print for almost two centuries yet it or its author are commonly quoted (or misquoted) as saying things and starting doctrines not actually mentioned in the book.
Lacunza's contribution to present day Evangelicalism was to go back to the literal truth of Scripture; to reassert the restoration of the Jews in the end-times; the two-fold coming of the Lord; the millenial reign; the setting up of the temple sacrifice once again; and, the restoration of the earth following the yet future and final defeat of Satan. His position has been described technically as 'futurist post-tribulational'.
'Ben Ezra' is the pseudonym for a Roman Jesuit priest named Manuel (sometimes Emmanuel) de Lacunza (1731 - 1801). The pseudonym may be seen as a way of making the work acceptable to Jewish readers and diverting attention from the station of the author.
This information will occasion many Protestants to read no further, but if Luther was correct in demanding 'Sola Scriptura' (and we would not dare to disagree) then Lacunza may be taken as a model of those that would follow Luther's call. If ever an author was to insist absolutely on the veracity and primacy of the Word of God these pages show such a one. Indeed, one of the prime reasons for his work was to rebut the centuries old claims of the 'doctors of the Church' who sought to put the Church in the position of the Jews both now and during the end times. Lacunza takes us back again and again to the inerrant word of God and sweeps away 12 centuries of replacement and amillenial theology to show again the teaching of the early church and the scriptures. For these reasons, and despite the support of his peers who read the work, the Catholic Church banned the book.
None-the-less, we have to recognise the Lacunza was a Roman Catholic and a Jesuit; where Lacunza does occasionally quote church teaching rather than scripture we find doctrinal views that fail the test of scripture. The present publisher is not, nor would ever wish to be, an apologist for the Roman 'church'. Roman dogma and her peculiar doctrines are contrary to Scripture. The reader will also find some seemingly odd conclusions (for example the concept of Antichrist as a moral body rather than a person) although the logic by which they are derived is not unreasonable.
Edward Irving (1792 -1834) was a Scottish minister associated with the origins of the 'Catholic Apostolic Church', a group many Pentecostals look to when seeking awakenings of charismatic activities in the church. Irving's personality was certainly magnetic and he drew vast crowds to his Caledonian chapel in London. Two influences greatly affected his emerging millenarian views: the first was Henry Drummond, a wealthy banker who held study meetings at Albury, his estate in Surrey; the other was 'The Coming of Messiah' which Irving translated and published in English in 1827. The 1827 publication contains a lengthy 'Preliminary Discourse' written by Irving as a vehicle for his emerging views. Irving's doctrinal views (in one pamphlet he declared Christ's human nature to be sinful) led him to be excommunicated by the presbytery in 1830. The fledgling Catholic Apostolic Church gradually removed him from the centre of power, and in 1834 he died in Glasgow, the city in which he had so faithfully served the poor during his early ministry.
On the next page you may download the text