THOUGHTS FOR CHRISTIANS TO CONSIDER.
"Christ is all and in all." So wrote the inspired Paul. And another apostle says, "There is no other name under Heaven given among men whereby we must be saved." It is, therefore, a matter of the utmost practical moment to have right views of Christ, and his relations to the children of men. The two great central facts in the Biblical account of Christ are his two advents. With these two important facts are connected all the curses and blessings of God's ancient people and of the world. The one conducts to Bethlehem's manger and Calvary's cross; and the other to the clouds of heaven and the New Jerusalem. Connected with the first advent we have the rejection of God's ancient people, the Jews, and their dispersion, under God's scathing judgments, among all nations; the preaching of the gospel as a witness to all people; the calling of the Gentiles; and the gathering out of the world a people for the Lord, to be his kings and his priests in "the world to come." Connected with Christ's second advent we have the glorious gathering and restoration of "the outcasts of Israel and the dispersed of Judah," the pouring out of the vials of wrath upon the unbelieving and idolatrous Christian nations, and the setting up of Christ's kingdom on the earth. Correct views of the manner and object of these two advents of Christ are necessary to a right appreciation and enjoyment of Christ as the Saviour. A striking lesson on this subject may be found in the case of the Jews, in regard to the first advent. They believed that the promised Messiah would come. It was universally admitted that he would come. Many devout people believed that the time for his appearance had arrived. The Scriptures had plainly announced the state and condition of things amid which he would appear. Many believed these announcements, and were anxiously waiting for his appearing. But many looked only for a triumphing Messiah, who was to deliver them from their oppression, and overlooked the manner and object of the first advent. They looked for the immediate realization of the Psalmist's declaration: "When the Lord shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his glory." They looked for him as a Prince and Ruler who would give great honor to the nation, and at once smite their enemies, "assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah." They looked for an immediate universal reign, in which he should take "the heathen for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession." They thought their own sacred hills would at once be made the scene and centre of his universal triumphs, because it had been written, "He shall reign in Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously;" and "the kingdom and dominion, and greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the saints of the Most High." Such seems to have been the almost universal opinion and belief among the Jews, at that time, in regard to the manner and object of Messiah's coming. They expected a Messiah of noble and princely estate, and surrounded by external pomp and power, such as they thought became the Son of David. And they were not wrong in their conceptions of the coming Messiah. All this, and much more, had been predicted of him. But their great error was that they looked only at results, and not at the means. They were so absorbed with the idea of what they should realize in the glories of the mount upon which Messiah is to reign "before his ancients gloriously," that they entirely lost sight of the deep, dark valley that lay between them and that mount. They failed to perceive that the same prophecies which predicted Messiah's triumph and reign also predicted his sufferings and death. They would not believe that the way to the mount of glory, and that even for Messiah, was to be through the valley of humiliation. They forgot that, whilst it was appointed unto him to reign, it also behooved him to suffer and to die. They were so anxious to be delivered from the Roman yoke, and have the palmy days of David and Solomon restored, that they were offended at the manger and the cross. Their great eagerness for the expected deliverance blinded their eyes to the prophet's words that Messiah was to be "a root out of dry ground," "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." They were so filled with the glory which God had promised to the house of Israel through him, that they failed to see in their sacrifices and ceremonies the types of a better sacrifice, and that the blood which flowed from their altars pointed to the precious blood of Jesus, "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." They failed to comprehend that, long before the predicted glory, Messiah should first spend a life of toil, and poverty, and wretchedness, and submit to the cruelties of his enemies, be nailed to the tree of crucifixion, and "cut off" for the sins of the world. And by failing to comprehend and believe ALL that the prophets had written concerning the promised Deliverer, they failed of a deliverer entirely, and rejected the only Messiah. Though "he came to his own, his own received him not;" and for this their house was "left unto them desolate," and for eighteen hundred years they have been suffering the judgments of God, scattered among all nations, their very name a by-word and reproach. But shall we reproach the Jews for this, their error, in regard to the manner and object of the Saviour's first advent? "Let him that is without sin cast the first stone." Many professing Christians are guilty of the same error, in another direction. How many spiritualize and allegorize away some of the most solemn and positive declarations, which are as plain and straightforward as those by which the coming of the Messiah, as a sufferer, was announced to the Jews! There are those who preach the doctrines of Redemption, Repentance, and Faith, very earnestly, who yet hate and condemn the great doctrine of Christ's Second Personal Advent and Reign, and warn their hearers against it as a pernicious heresy. And yet there is no truth more clearly and fully announced in the Scriptures than this. And are not such doing the very thing for which they condemn the Jews? Notwithstanding their zeal and sincerity for other truths, they preach only half a gospel, and hold up to the worship and faith of their people only half a Christ. The minds of the Jews were so occupied with the glories of Messiah's reign and triumphs, that they overlooked his sufferings and death, and hence would not receive him as the promised Messiah;26and so, many Christians confine themselves so entirely to what the Jews stumbled at, as to look only at the humiliation and the cross, whilst they set aside the crown and the throne, and are as much offended at them as the Jews at the humility and the cross. And whence is this? Not from any uncertainty or indefiniteness in the manner in which the triumph is announced; for the Scriptures are just as clear, full and distinct, on this as on any doctrine they contain. It comes from a false system of spiritualizing and allegorizing the word of God, as the Jewish mistake came from a like perversion of God's plain records. It is high time, however, that we cease to tamper with the word of God, by forcing upon it meanings which it was never intended to teach, and to be assured that the Bible means just what it says, and says just what it means. Our only safety is in interpreting unfulfilled Scripture in the light of Scripture already fulfilled. And what is true of those solemn declarations in regard to the Jews, is also true of those passages which refer to the manner and object of Christ's two advents. The predictions concerning the one must be fulfilled the same as those concerning the other. Christ's first advent was literal, visible, and personal, fulfilling the very letter of prophecy. How dare we then suppose that the second advent will be spiritual only, especially when it is affirmed that it will be as literal, visible, personal as the first? (Acts i, 9-11.) At Christ's first advent, every prediction, even to the dividing of his garments, and casting lots for his seamless coat, was literally fulfilled; and how can it be possible that the predictions relating to his second coming will not also be fulfilled in the same literal manner? The shame was all literal and visible, and so also must be the exaltation and glory. The error of the Jews was in thinking too exclusively of Messiah's reign and glory; ours is in thinking too exclusively of Christ's suffering and humiliation. And if it was a fatal error in the Jews to dwell too exclusively upon the predicted triumphs, ignoring the intervening sufferings, may it not be an error equally fatal to us, to dwell upon the accomplished humiliation and ignominy, to the rejection of the true doctrine concerning the kingdom? The Jews ignored the cross; but do not the great mass of professing Christians equally ignore the crown? Is it not the practice of many to interpret the Scriptures referring to the first advent of Christ literally, and those referring to the second advent, spiritually? If this is understanding "all that the prophets have spoken" about the first advent, it is certainly very far from understanding "all that the prophets have spoken" about the second. If we are right in understanding those Scriptures literally which speak of the humiliations, sufferings, and ascension of Christ, we certainly cannot be right in interpreting those respecting his second coming and reign in any other way.—Prophetic Times.