Your ShelfYour Projects

Coming of Christ

25%

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 20, 1882

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 8, No. 27.

Read the full edition

Coming of Christ.

By Editor

BISHOP MERRILL has written a book with this title, which is published by the Methodist House of Cincinnati. We have read it with more than ordinary interest. It is a very candid presentation of the subject of the Second Advent, with the doctrines connected with it. We do not agree with all his positions—it would be somewhat strange if we could—but he writes so much more good and important truth than is common for the ecclesiastics who write on this question, that we read his pages with much satisfaction. He speaks very modestly on the subject of the Jews and their restoration, laying down nothing as settled except that there is a very wide difference of opinion in the church in relation to it. We must dissent from his view of "the first resurrection" in Rev. 20. Had he examined and cited more fully the texts of Scripture on certain points, we believe his conclusions in regard to them would have been necessarily modified.
On the nature of the resurrection he is emphatic and clear, and consistently with this, he gives no quarter to those who advocate a "figurative coming" of Christ. We have long urged that the "orthodox" churches have strengthened the hands of the Universalists by accepting for the Second Advent something less than a literal, personal, visible coming of Christ; and the Bishop combats that view as the Universalist theory. He is also decided on the presence of "literal fire" in "the day of judgment, and perdition of ungodly men." 2 Peter 3:3-13. Rev. 20:9-15, etc. Our readers may remember that at the last Methodist General Conference, the reporter of a Cincinnati paper interviewed a large number of the most prominent members of that body, and found scarcely any who would indorse the old Methodist belief, which is the Scriptural view, that there will be actual fire in the punishment of the unjust. Had Bishop Merrill aimed his shafts at the majority of the dignitaries of modern or "progressed" Methodism, he could not have made a more palpable hit.
As soon as the state of our pages will permit, we shall give our readers the benefit of some quotations from this book.