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Darby sets froth three main points:

“”They charge us with looking into prophecy: undoubtedly we do, and use it as God intended it, as a charge and warning against our present sin and state; while they prophesy for themselves that which is credit for themselves - though never has the professing church at large been so far from godliness as now; if not, why all this labour, effort, formation of societies for home or continental purposes?

This is the simple difference: we acknowledge it as a result of God’s power; they say, without God’s word (and we must add, against it), ‘It will be done by our instrumentality.’ Believers say, with God’s word, It will not be done thus. We quarrel not with their efforts, but join in them according to our ability of God, as far as our poor hearts permit us; but we do quarrel with their assumption as to the coming result of their own labours, as if they were prophets, of that of which God has prophesied otherwise.

They prophesy; we consult the word, and apply it to judge ourselves, and find the church guilty. Our assertion, accordingly, is this:

Firstly, that there is no prophecy in Scripture, or promise (which as to means, observe, of future accomplishment, is prophecy) that the gradual diffusion of the gospel shall convert the world. If there be, let them produce it: if not, I affirm that they are assuming something future, without any warrant for it but their own thoughts.

100 Secondly, that the prophecies always connect the filling of the world with the knowledge of the glory - with judgments.

Thirdly, we add, to those who are labouring without reference to this glory, yet are looking to the gathering of God’s elect - faithfully perhaps - that there is a vast purpose of God, and one which is the result of all God’s purposes, not embraced in their views, and that, as teachers of God’s mind and will, their system must be wholly and utterly defective; for the earth is to be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. They recognise, and justly, that that cannot be, as it has never been, and, as we have seen, that it was not intended to be, by the gospel. There must, therefore, if they admit the truth of God’s word, be some great plan and act of God’s power, on which His mind is especially set (for His glory on the earth, as in heaven, must be His end as well as our desire, because we are His saints, and have the mind of Christ), of which they embrace nothing, teach nothing.””