The Coming of Christ by Rev. Geo. Muller

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 2, 1882

The Coming of Christ.

By Rev. Geo. Muller

BY REV. GEO. MULLER, OF BRISTOL, ENGLAND.

IN the days of the apostles, the disciples were comforted and encouraged by the prospect of the personal return of the Lord Jesus Christ. An angel had said to them as they watched the Lord depart from the earth, “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.” (Acts 1:11.) This, and not death, was the hope of the church; and thus it ought to have remained up to his actual return. His coming should have continued to be the hope of the church; but this, alas! for centuries had not been the case.

In confessions of faith the truth that the Lord Jesus will come again may still have had a place; but practically to by far the greater number of his disciples it has been a mere doctrinal statement that has not been enjoyed, and which has had no influence upon their lives. The Lord, however, desired it should be otherwise. He intended that his church should look for him, that she should watch and wait for his return. Again and again during his personal ministry, the Lord Jesus foretold this great event; and after his ascension the apostles referred continually to it.

Very many passages of Scripture might be quoted in proof of this assertion, but I will only mention the following: “When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory.” (Matt. 25:31.) “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.” (John 14:2, 3.) “As it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the Judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time, without sin unto salvation.” (Heb. 9:27, 28.) “The Lord himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then (afterward) we, which are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” (1 Thess. 4:16, 17.) These quotations suffice to prove that the second coming of the Lord Jesus means that he will return in person, and has no reference to the gift of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, nor to his manifesting himself in an especial manner to the believer in the way of comfort, instruction, or help of any kind; nor has it reference to our death.

The whole church will at once be introduced to full eternal happiness and glory at our blessed Lord’s return. Not only as individuals will our cup of joy be full to overflowing, but we shall rejoice throughout eternity with the whole company of the redeemed. What has been said therefore is, I trust, sufficient to show that the second coming of Christ will be his personal return, and that there is a vast difference between the death of individual believers and the coming advent of our Lord in glory.

During the present dispensation, before the return of our Lord, Satan will not be bound; therefore sin and open wickedness will continue to the end of it; and instead of becoming better, things, according to Scripture, will become worse and worse. It is impossible to shut one’s eyes to the fearful wickedness now around us everywhere; for murders of the most cruel character, and numerous other atrocious crimes are, even in this enlightened nineteenth century, continually being committed. How certainly does all this prove that Satan is not yet bound, that he is even now the god of this world, and has power still; and because he knows that his time will be comparatively short, he manifests his hatred against God and against his people to the very utmost. But this state of things will not always last; for when Jesus comes again he will lose his power in the earth, and will be shut up in the bottomless pit for a thousand years.

In connection with the return of the Lord Jesus is another event, namely, the separation between the wheat and the tares. Read carefully Matt. 13:24-30; also verses 37-43. In this parable, together with our Lord’s explanation of it, we can see what to expect during this present dispensation while Jesus tarries. Civilization, mental cultivation, and advancement in knowledge of every kind may continue to the utmost; but man, fallen man, remains a ruined creature, except he be regenerated by the power of the holy gospel through the acceptance of the gospel. Intellectually he may be improved and polished to the very highest degree, but he is a sinner, and, in his natural condition, remains lost, ruined, and undone. He may even possess natural religion and a form of godliness; but if he is not born again he is still at enmity with God, and as assuredly as he does not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ “the wrath of God abideth on him.” (John 3:36.)

Sin is not, as some suppose, a comparatively little thing. It is a deadly spiritual disease, as the word of God declares it to be; and no progress in education, no mental culture, can eradicate it from the heart, nor change depraved human nature. For notwithstanding every effort at improvement, the heart remains “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” Until the return of the Lord Jesus, therefore, the present state of things will continue, and, as we shall see presently from the word of God, will become worse and worse.

This, then, plainly shows the notion entertained by many godly, excellent persons, that the world will be converted during the present dispensation by the preaching of the gospel, and that the millennium will thus finally be introduced, to be not according to the Holy Scriptures.

The gospel, indeed, was to be preached “as a witness to all nations,” but it was not to be the means of the conversion of the world. (Matt. 24:14). Moreover, from Acts 15:14, we learn the character of the present dispensation, which is, that God “takes out from among the Gentiles a people for his name,” but does not convert all the nations. This is confirmed by the parable of the wheat and the tares; for if the whole world were to be converted before the return of the Lord Jesus, there would be no truth in the explanation given of it by our Lord himself. He tells us that the tares (the children of the wicked one) were to grow together with the wheat (the children of the kingdom), until the end of the age, namely, up to the time of his own return. Thus therefore, the word of the Lord, is in direct opposition to the common notion that the world will be converted previous to his coming again.

And in addition to this we find passage after passage in the New Testament in which we are expressly told, either by Christ or by the apostles, that at the close of the present dispensation wickedness will abound both among professed believers and in the world at large, in proof of which I will refer to one single passage of Scripture only. In 2 Tim. 3:1-5 we read, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof.” Here we have particularly to keep before us that this is not a description of Pagans or Mahometans, but of the professed disciples of the Lord Jesus; for to such a state will Christendom, or the professing church of Christ, be reduced at the end of the present dispensation.

Notice especially that of these persons it is said, they have a form of godliness. They wish to be considered Christians; they are not avowed infidels and atheists, but professed believers. Are we, then, to expect that things around us will gradually improve, or rather, that as we approach the end of the age the darker they will become? True is it that one day, “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea,” but this will never be until Jesus himself comes. In the meantime lawlessness will increase, and the socialism, the communism, the nihilism, etc., of which we now hear so much, will at last be headed up in the man of sin.

In Matt. 24:36-41, our Lord himself enjoins it upon us to wait for his return, and to watch. In Matt. 25:13 the Lord said to his disciples, “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour when the Son of man cometh.” Again in Mark 13:35-37 Jesus said, “Watch ye therefore, for ye know not when the Master of the house