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The glory of God is declared by every prophecy. His foreknowledge is one of his highest attributes. His people are comforted, and their faith is strengthened, when they find that the experiences through which they are passing, the troubles that are befalling them, or the difficulties that they encounter, have been foreseen and foretold by their God. But there are some things which it is better for God's people not to know beforehand; as for instance the true length of the present period of the absence of Christ from his church. Divine wisdom and love judged it best, as we have seen, to conceal from the early church the foreordained duration of this Christian age, and to allow every generation of Christians to live in the expectation of the speedy return of their Lord.'Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.' He of course knew that over eighteen centuries would elapse before the second coming of Christ, and could very easily have revealed this in plain words to the church. He did not do so, as is proved by the fact that the early generations of Christians expected the return of Christ in their own day. If then God, for the guidance of his people especially during its later stages, wished to reveal the events of this period, without revealing its duration, He must needs adopt a style of prediction, which would reveal while concealing and conceal while revealing, the truth. This is exactly what He has done. The revelations granted to Daniel and John, relating to the events of this dispensation, are not couched in ordinary language, or made in plain terms, which admit of no second meaning. They are embodied in mysterious symbolic forms, which require to be translated before they can be understood. They are not incomprehensible; very far from that! Incomprehensible prophecy could answer no conceivable object. But prophecy which would be obscure for a time, and clear only after the lapse of ages, would answer the object supposed above, of concealing from one generation that which it would not be desirable for it to know, while revealing it to a succeeding one, to which the knowledge was indispensable.(Approaching End of the Age 294-5)
(145:1)
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