Foreword
THE subject of this volume is an address delivered by the Author before the World’s Conference on Christian Fundamentals at Philadelphia, May 30, 1919.
The reasons for preaching and teaching the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ are manifold and each one worth while.
The Author has contented himself with presenting a few as follows:
The Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ is the one event most often recorded in Holy Scripture.
It is bound up with every fundamental doctrine, with every sublime promise and every exhortation to high, to holy and practical Christian living.
Only at the Second Coming of our Lord will redemption be complete and the blood of the cross be justified.
Not till our Lord Jesus Christ comes the Second time will the Church be exalted into her true function of rulership over the world.
Only at the Second Coming will the solemn and covenant promises of God to Israel be fulfilled.
Only at the Second Coming of the Christ of God will a government of everlasting righteousness and peace be established on the earth.
It is at the Second Coming of Christ alone that the earth will be delivered from the bondage of corruption and transformed into the paradise of God.
The Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ for His Church is the most imminent event on the horizon of time.
I. M. H.
New York, 1919.
I
The Second Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ is the One Event Most Often Recorded in Holy Scripture
IT is recorded in type, in figure, in symbol, in analogue, in parable, in hyperbole and metaphor, in exalted song, in noblest poetry and in rarest rhetoric. It is set before us in dramatic and dynamic statement, in high prophetic forecast, in simple narrative, close linked logic, expanded doctrine, divine exhortation and far-reaching appeal.
The first promise of the Second Coming was made in Eden. It was made in the promise given to the woman that her seed should bruise the serpent’s head. On the cross the serpent bruised the heel of the woman’s seed, but her seed did not bruise the serpent’s head. Never was his head more uplifted and unbruised than now. The promise of the bruising is of God and must be fulfilled. The record of that fulfillment is to be found in the twentieth chapter of the book of the Revelation where our Lord descends and in the plenitude of His power by the hand of an angel binds Satan for a thousand years beneath His feet and the feet of His saints. As the bruising of the serpent’s head takes place at the Second Coming, and the promise of the bruising is made in Eden, then the first promise of the Coming is made in Eden; and as you see rising above the figure of the fallen first man the figure of the Second man, you hear for the first time the story of the Second Coming of the Second man; and thus the story and the doctrine of the Second Coming begin with the very beginning of the Book.
For three hundred years Enoch walked amid the slime, the slush and the uprising tide of human iniquity in a God-hating and God-defying world. Then one day God took him out of all the riot and wrong of it without dying into the heaven of His glory; and the Apostle Paul writing to the Corinthians of the Second Coming affirms there will be a generation who will continue alive till the Lord comes; and thus Enoch is a type of that deathless generation and by so much a prophecy of the Second Coming.
For one hundred and twenty years Noah preached righteousness to a world from which the death penalty had been removed, a world surrendered to conscience (and let it be well remembered conscience is not the gift of God nor evidence of grace but mark of fallen man, the shadow of God’s throne before which the “accuse” and “excuse” of the soul witness to human guilt), a generation given over to unrestrained fallen nature; a generation of murder, assassination, violence, war, utter brutality, sickening sensualism, the invasion of fallen and lust-seeking angels, rank spiritism, diabolism and mocking laughter at God and the things of God.
Suddenly, without warning, God called Noah into the ark (the building of which had awakened the derision of the revellers in sin and the would-be wise men of the hour) shut the door and bolted him in. At the end of seven ominous days in which the darksome clouds hung low and threatening, the windows of heaven were opened, the fountains of the deep broken up and the flood fell, sweeping away all save Noah and his family in the ark. When the judgment waters had subsided Noah and his family came forth to set up a new and distinct dispensation in the world.
Seated yonder on the Mount of Olives in the shadow of the cross, looking forward to His Second Coming and backward for an illustration that should forecast the times and leave no excuse for exegetical and interpretative theological blundering our Lord said as it was in the days of Noah so should it be when the Son of man should come the Second time.
Without warning, out of a world of increasing materialism, self-sufficiency, boasting, pride, violence, war and multiplied peril, a world that under the guise of general indifferentism and cultivated cynicism mocks at the things of God and denies we have a written, final and sure revelation from Him, the Lord will snatch away the genuine, regenerated Church (the dead raised, the living changed) and take them to Himself, into the place prepared. For at least seven years spiritual blackness, measureless woe and indescribable anguish will fall upon a Devil-deceived and Devil-ruled world. Then will the Lord come with His previously gathered Church, execute judgment on the ungodly, sweep away all iniquity and set up the new administration of righteousness and truth. Noah is therefore a figure, a prophecy of the closing hours of this age and its climax in the Second Coming of the Lord.
One day Lot went into Sodom, took office, tried to reform the evil city, succeeded in vexing his righteous, but unspiritual soul with the filthy conversation of the wicked, got down to the level of the natural man, lost his testimony and seemed to his friends and intimates like a madman or the most excuselessly inconsistent trifler when he attempted to take up once more his damaged testimony.
Then there was a night when God’s angels came and snatched him out of the doomed city. The next morning the fire of God fell and Lot “saved so as by fire” looked on at the blaze and the burning of all his works of righteousness as wood hay and stubble, big in bulk but rejected of God.
Looking forward to His Second Coming and backward for an illustration the Son of God declared as it was in the days of Lot so should it be when the Son of man should come again.
There are good and righteous Christians – righteous enough but wholly unspiritual who are seeking to make spotless town of a world God has judged and doomed, failing to see the cross is not only the judgment of the individual, but equally the judgment of the world; that not only does the cross reveal the end of all flesh but the end in God’s sight of that system of things which men call the world; that on the cross the world is crucified to the Christian and the Christian to the world; and failing to see this, failing to get the mind of God are daily descending to the plane of the natural man, are losing and in many cases deliberately setting aside the testimony once for all delivered to the saints.
Without warning, they will be snatched away to meet a descending Lord (if they be real and regenerated Christians) and this alone because their faith be it never so small holds them securely in the bonds of the covenant. After that the Lord will be revealed in flaming fire to execute judgment on the world and all the works of misguided social reformers because these works are built, not upon the righteousness of God, but the righteousness of man.
According to the Word of the Lord Himself therefore Lot is a picture and prophecy of the closing hours of the present age with its climax the Coming and Appearing of the Lord.
After Abraham had typically offered up his son on Mount Moriah and typically received him from the dead on the third day the son for a number of chapters in the record disappears from view. Then Abraham the father sends his servant Eliezer into a far country to get a bride for this now invisible son. Eliezer meets the intended bride at a well from whence she is drawing water, goes with her into her brother’s house, takes out a pack of precious things sent from the father in the name of the son, displays them to her and invites her to become the bride of the son. She consents. The servant leads her forth. On the way he talks to her of the promised bridegroom. Suddenly she beholds him coming to meet her. He receives her, takes her into his prepared tent and she becomes his wife.
On the same mount nearly two thousand years later God the Father offered up His only begotten Son. On the third day He raised Him from the dead. For two thousand years He has disappeared from view. The Father has sent forth the Spirit to obtain a bride for His Son. He meets her at the Gospel well from whence we draw the waters of salvation. He is calling her through individual selection that she may become the corporate bride. He has brought spiritual gifts which He seeks to display in all her assemblies. He is endeavouring to lead her along the highway of time and to speak to her in the heaven speech of the Coming Bridegroom. Suddenly the Lord will come to meet her and take her into the place prepared and keep her for the marriage hour. In this simple story the analogue finds its prophetic climax in the Second Coming of our Lord.
Jacob fled from his home, the brother he had outwitted and the father whom he had deceived. As night drew on footsore and weary he cast himself upon the plain with a stone for his pillow. Visions came to him in the night. A ladder of gold reached from earth to heaven. At the top of it was a host of angels and the Lord Himself in glory. The Lord spoke to him and assured him he and his posterity should have the land on which he was lying for an everlasting possession. It was a confirmation of the oath to and the covenant with Abraham and Isaac. As the covenant can find its fulfillment only at the actual Second Coming of our Lord as the God of Jacob, this vision is the prophetic anticipation of that hour and the heaven-proclaimed assurance the Lord is coming a Second time.
Joseph was sent by his father to his brethren. They despised and rejected him. They cast him into the pit of death. He was taken out alive. He was carried away into a far country – even into Egypt. There he was exalted to become co-ruler with Pharaoh. In the hour of famine he became the bread giver, the saviour of a hungry world. At the same time he got a Gentile bride. In the hour when tribulation and sorrow came upon his brethren he revealed himself to them the second time and was owned and acknowledged by them. With his wife he came in his chariot of kingly glory and established his father and his brethren in the promised land of Goshen.
The application is so simple it applies itself.
God the Father sent His Son to His brethren in the flesh. They despised and rejected Him. They put Him in the place of death. He was raised up alive. He has gone into a far country – even into heaven itself. He is there now as one who has been exiled from earth. He has been exalted to the throne of His Father. For two thousand years of spiritual famine and hunger in the world He has been the giver of the bread of life, the saviour of men. During these years of His exile He has been obtaining a bride from among the Gentiles – that is the Church. When the hour of tribulation and anguish shall come upon His brethren in the flesh, even as He Himself has warned, He will appear in His glory, the scales will fall from their eyes as they did from Paul and they will own Him as their Messiah and Lord, the Holy One of Israel. With His Church in associate power and glory He will deliver them and place them forever in the promised land – the land of their fathers.
No sooner has Moses with the host of Israel crossed dry shod through the divided waters of the Red Sea than he lifts up his voice and sings, not of the first, but the Second Coming of the Lord. He sings of Him as a man of war, as the head of celestial armies, coming to execute judgment, overthrow iniquity and establish His reign and rule of righteousness.
When you open the historic pages of the Bible, along the seemingly driest and coldest paragraphs you may if you will behold the wheels of the King’s chariot flashing by and catch a gleam of His radiant features, now as the man of war in David, and then as the Prince of peace in Solomon.
Yonder, under the far-away stars, Job sat at his tent door and as he meditated on the brevity and vanity of human life, its hopes deferred that make the heart sick, the sound of the clods as they fall upon the coffin lid, he asked the question that has quivered down the ages – “If a man die, shall he live again?”
He answers his own question. He says he knows he will die. He knows his soul will go into the underworld of the dead. His body will be laid away in the dust. It will become nothing more than a bundle of skin and bones. He knows, also, this bundle of skin and bones is the work of God’s hand. The Lord will have respect to His work. He will remember He wrought it. At a given time He will call to Job and Job will answer; then in anticipation of the supreme moment he cries out exultantly he knows his redeemer liveth; that he shall stand in the latter day upon the earth and covered with his own flesh once more shall see his incarnate God.
Thus in those wondrous days of the long ago Job caught the shining of the morning star, heard the trumpet of the first resurrection and caught the vision of the Second Coming of his Lord.
David sweeps his fingers across the answering chords of his golden harp and sings of that hour when the Lord shall come in His glory; when the trees of the wood shall clap their hands; when the mountains shall flow down at His presence, the waves of the sea fling their hallelujahs on the resounding shore; and when the earth shall own the Lord is coming, coming not the first time to die, but the Second time as the risen one to live and reign and with none to dispute Him.
In the Song of Songs we who believe are by nature before God as black and uncomely as the sun-burned tents of Kedar, but by grace in God’s sight as beautiful as the Tyre-woven curtains of Solomon.
The breath of the spring time is in the air. The voice of the turtle dove is to be heard in the land. It is the time of love and for hearts to find their mates. The leaves of the fig tree of Israel are beginning to put forth. The seeds of hope sown in the graves of the Christian dead and watered with tears from the anguish of the living are ready to bud and blossom forth in the full flower of their assured immortality. The voice of the Bridegroom may be heard saying to the Church: “Come away my beloved. Come thou rose of Sharon and thou lily of the valley,” and presently we see the Bridegroom Himself descending and the Church going up out of the wilderness leaning on the arm of her Beloved.
So we may learn and quickly if we will, that the Song of Songs which is Solomon’s is the celebration of the nuptial hour when our Lord shall come the Second time to take His affianced Church to Himself and make her the heavenly bride of His unfolding and unfading glory.
The prophet Isaiah hears the seraphs sing their “holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory” till the posts of the door are moved at the wonder of the song. He sees the glory of the Coming of the Lord. He tells us the Lord is coming with fire and with His chariots like a whirlwind, to render His anger with fury, and His rebuke with flames of fire.
Jeremiah announces the Lord is coming the Second time. When He comes He will make Jerusalem the throne of His glory. Unto it shall be the gathering of the nations. They shall gather unto it in the name of the Lord, and neither shall they walk any more after the imaginations of their evil heart.
Ezekiel beholds the Lord seated on a throne high and lifted up. He sees Him coming out of the purple dawning of the east. He restores Jerusalem. He builds the temple till the shining spendour of it shall fill the promised land; and in a voice as the sound of many waters He says this temple shall be the place for the soles of His feet and thus rebukes those who try to keep Him from dwelling bodily in the land as though forsooth He should lose His heavenliness by so doing, forgetting that earth is His rightful home and is to be His eternal dwelling place. Yea and Amen when He comes to His own again He shall dwell in the midst of His ransomed forever. And the nations of the earth as they ascend to the heights of Jerusalem to behold His glory and to worship Him in His holy temple as they catch the first glimpse of the city, its gardens like unto the garden of the Lord, the temple with its shekinah cloud by day and the flaming fire by night that shall make it to be no more night but day, shall cry out, not “Jerusalem,” but “Yaveh Shamma – the Lord is there.” And from henceforth this shall be the name of the city.
Daniel has visions in the night. He beholds the Lord as the Son of man, as eternal judge and king of all the earth. He sees Him coming to the Father to receive His title deeds and then descending in clouds of glory to establish the kingdom that shall never pass away.
From Hosea to Malachi the Minor Prophets echo with the declaration the Lord is coming and always this coming is the Second.
Hosea foresees Israel will forsake the Lord and for many days be as a dead man out of sight and forgotten. But in the latter times when the Lord Himself shall return Israel will awaken and own Him as Lord and king.
Joel tells us the armies of the world league shall be gathered against Jerusalem and under their godless, Devil-incarnate head shall defy the Lord of hosts; that the Lord will come, overthrow them with a great slaughter and deliver the holy city from the treading down of the Gentiles forever.
In Amos the Lord is coming to restore the kingdom to Israel and set up and establish the throne of David.
Obadiah warns us of the day of the Lord, the day that is introduced by the Second Coming of the Lord.
Joel teaches us under the madness and folly of Gentile rule ploughshares are to be beaten into swords and pruning hooks into spears and the nations are to give themselves to war and all the horror and desolation of it. But this Scripture is never quoted by those who preach peace where there can be no peace. Always they quote Micah who tells us the swords will be beaten into ploughshares, the spears into pruning hooks and the nations shall learn war no more.
The two prophets seem to stand in absolute opposition to each other.
They do not.
Joel tells us what will happen just before the Lord comes.
Micah tells us what will take place after the Lord comes.
In Joel the Lord will come, meet the armies of the League in the valley of decision, the valley of Jehoshaphat, and overthrow them; then will the implements of war be beaten into the implements of peace and war be at an end forever.
Micah announces the end of war and the beginning of lasting peace will come as the consequence of the Lord’s appearing in glory and not till He does so appear.
Nahum proclaims the Second Coming. The Lord’s way shall be in the whirlwind and the storm, the clouds shall be the dust of His feet, the mountains shall quake at Him, the hills shall melt and the very earth burn at His presence.
In Habakkuk the Spirit carries human language to its loftiest height till it glows on peaks of thought sublime.
The prophet sees the Lord coming the Second time. His brightness is as the shining light. In His hands once pierced for such as we is the hiding of His power. Pestilence and burning coals are His vanguard. He stands and measures the earth. He drives asunder the nations. The everlasting mountains are scattered. The perpetual hills bow before Him and the inhabitants of the onlooking worlds lift up their voices and sing: “His ways are everlasting.”
Zephaniah proclaims the Second Coming.
The Lord will come and smite the world league in the pitifulness of its gathering and the pigminess of its might. He will pour forth His indignation and fierce anger upon all the exaltation and pride of man. He will devour the earth with the fire of His jealousy, deliver Jerusalem, turn to the people the pure speech of the old Hebraic tongue, bid Zion to sing, Israel to shout and calling Jerusalem her daughter, bid her to rejoice. He will overthrow the false Christ and as the true Messiah will Himself dwell in the midst of Jerusalem forevermore.
Haggai declares the Lord will come and will shake all nations so that only the things which are of God may remain.
Zechariah tells us in terms so plain, so clear no one need misunderstand nor be in darkness for a moment that the Lord is coming the Second time.
He will come with all His saints. His feet shall stand in that day on the Mount of Olives; and that no false teacher nor wilful perverter of the truth about the reality of the Lord’s bodily presence on the earth at that time may have even the shadow of a shadow to rest on, and as a proof that this coming is not spiritual but actual and the testimony of His very feet under the most pronounced topographical conditions, the prophet says the mount on which those blessed and real feet shall descend is not only on the Mount of Olives, but that “Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east.”
At the touch of the Lord’s feet this wondrous and sacred Mount of Olives will split in twain. One half of it will roll like a wave northward. The other half will roll to the south. A great valley will be formed. That valley is named in Scripture, but never has been found on any map and cannot be found in Palestine to-day. It is the valley of Jehoshaphat, the valley of decision, the valley of judgment of the nations. And into this valley pell-mell shall rush the Antichrist-led and Devil-deceived armies of the league of ten nations to find their overthrow at the hand of the Lord and the inauguration of that hour when the once despised and crucified Christ shall be the revealed and recognized God of the whole earth; when there shall be one Lord and His name one – even that name which is above every name whether in heaven or on earth – the name of Jesus.
Malachi closes the book of the Old Testament. He beholds our Lord Jesus Christ coming the Second time. He sees Him coming as the rising sun filling the heavens and flooding the earth with the benediction of His majesty and might.
From Malachi to the New Testament we pass over four hundred years of prophetic silence and then we are in the book of the Gospel according to Matthew.
Here we are face to face with the night of nights.
The stars like silver squadrons sail close to the waiting earth. The angels fling down their wreath of natal song and the virgin mother cradles upon her white and unsullied breast the Christ of God.
We follow Him in the days of His unfolding ministry. Every time He touches the earth His footsteps leave a benediction. Each time He breathes the air He sweetens it. His low and modulated voice starts a note of music whose rhythmic accents have not done sounding and whose heavenly harmony outsings the discords of earth. He looks daylight into blind eyes. He cools the fever pulse to quiet beating. He makes the lame man to leap as a hart. He hushes the storm on Galilee till the ruffled, windswept waters are as calm and peaceful as a babe upon its mother’s breast. With a word He raises the wept-for dead. Everywhere and at all times His miracles are wrought, not merely that He may do good and bring needed blessings as He passes by, but as the credentials and sign warrant of the truthfulness of His claim that He is Son of God, God the Son, the Anointed of the Lord and Israel’s king.
But in all His ministry of hand or word never does He speak save incidentally of His first coming. Always and in fullest degree He speaks of His Second Coming. Seated upon the Mount of Olives He affirms, after the cross shall have slain and stained Him and the grave shall have briefly held Him He will come again; but, just before He comes it will be as it was in the days of Noah – a time of materialism, sensualism, the culture of self-consciousness, an hour of boasting, pride, lawlessness and war; and when He is revealed it will be as with the driving judgment of the flood.
In the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew and the first part of the chapter He declares He is coming as the bridegroom comes – seeking the marriage hour of his bride.
In the last part of the chapter and as the climax of His bridegroom coming He will appear as the king of glory and the judge of the living nations.
When He stands before His guilty judges and their suborned witnesses and while they mock and deride Him He breaks His hitherto amazing silence not to demonstrate to them the truth of His incarnation nor the proof of His preexistence, but in calm and measured utterance to tell them that after they shall have put Him to death He will come the Second time; and they shall see Him descending from heaven seated upon the cloud of shekinal glory and with the power of God.
In Mark He is the householder who goes into a far country, gives to each of His servants a work to do, puts the porter on guard to watch the door of the house and announces that no one in heaven nor on earth knows when He will return. He will return, He will come the Second time. It will be in one of the four watches of the spiritual night. It may be at even, it may be at midnight, it may be at cockcrowing and it may be in the morning. Because it is certain He will come, but uncertain when He will come, each one who claims to be His servant is under bond to watch. The whole household must be in the attitude of watching, of readiness and expectation; and His word of exhortation and warning to His Church is:
“What I say unto you, I say unto all – watch.”
In Luke He is the nobleman who goes into a far country to get the title deeds of His kingdom and return. When He returns He comes first to His servants, gathers them to Himself and rewards them. After that with them He executes judgment on His enemies and then sets up His kingdom.
In the Gospel of John He eats with His disciples the last and memorial supper. He goes out with them, bids them lift their glances to the wide, extended sky where the jewelry of the night as the scattered largess of a king burns in the fire of opal, the purple and violet of amethyst and the white splendour of uncounted diamonds. He assures them these gleaming things are no fiction fire-flies of gaseous worlds in the making, but illuminated dwelling places in His Father’s house. He is going thither. He will ascend into that congeries of inhabited worlds and will prepare a place for them, a glorious palace home befitting their high estate; when all is ready He will come back and receive them in corporate unity to Himself.
His words are simple, but the simplicity is the simplicity of light and every accent is as the touch of peace to troubled hearts; for this is what He said:
“In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”
In the book of Acts, in the first chapter you have a scene no artist has really ever painted, no writer ever fairly portrayed and no mortal tongue can fittingly describe.
Our Lord is going up from the Mount of Olives. He is going up from the midst of His disciples. He is going heavenward. The disciples watch Him as He ascends. He enters a cloud. Do not, I beseech you, imagine for a moment this cloud is a fog bank, a mass of watery mist and vapour; it is the shekinal cloud which once covered the tabernacle in the wilderness and was the vehicle of His presence when Israel in that far time marched on their way to the promised land. It is His chariot of state. In this chariot sent to meet Him He passes between the onlooking worlds ever higher and higher till at last He takes His seat upon the throne of the Highest at the right hand of the invisible majesty.
Then, as through the dimness of their tears the disciples watch Him disappear, they hear a voice which says to them:
“Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.”
“This same Jesus.”
Mark that well!
The Jesus who on the Sunday night of His resurrection did meet these disciples in the upper room and said to them as they shrank back into a frozen silence of hope and fear:
“Peace be unto you.”
“Why are ye troubled?”
“And why do thoughts arise in your hearts?”
“Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.”