The Coming of Christ by Madame de Gasparin

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 23, 1866

The Coming of Christ.

By Madame de Gasparin

THE whole primitive church expected the coming of Christ, and believed in his temporal reign. This belief, so strong and firm in apostolic time, faded in proportion as faith lost its early simplicity. Men undertook to materialize precepts and spiritualize prophecy, and thus truth got modified on both sides.

I am one who take the promises in a literal sense. I believe with all my soul in my Saviour's coming. I believe that our earth will witness the scenes described by the prophets, and I have drawn my conviction from the study of the Bible.

The Lord comes! As the lightning shining from the east to west, so is the shining of the Son of God. He comes surrounded by myriads of angels, comes as conqueror to claim his crown.

The hour has struck, the elect have put on their glorified bodies. God's power hath done this. In the same moment the faithful who still live have been conscious of a marvelous transformation. It is not death; it is rather the casting off of a chrysalis covering. In the twinkling of an eye, incorruption has triumphed over corruption.

Do you realize this moment, this coming, this object of faith, now beheld from far, as actually come to pass?

Yes, it is true; my imagination is not at work, my eyes see. It is indeed Jesus my Lord. This is he who had pity on me; who suffered for me; whom I love with all the strength of my soul. My breast expands with a divine breath, each moment I love more, and feel that I am more beloved. My God! oh! to prostrate myself before thee! It is as though a sun had risen within my heart. At one glance my eye has taken in the thousand thousands in thy train. My dear ones, there you all are; you indeed, you living, forever mine—all of us the Lord's. But yesterday I laid your bodies in the earth, but yesterday I wandered alone, losing myself in the immensity of my sorrow, and now you are here, my hands touch you, you will not die any more. If God's arm did not sustain, surely man would founder in this ocean of bliss.

Oh! I can understand that hymn of rapture which marks our earth's course through the skies. The ground is moved, the forests clap their hands, the streams fertilize the sandy wastes, the rose blooms in the desert. No more desolate places, no more broken hearts, we hear no more the lion's roar, the shrieks of the slaughtered are changed to songs of thanksgiving. The Lord's alliance with his creatures glorifies the universe.

You are shocked at this! Such a scheme seems to you unworthy of God who is a spirit. For my part, it leaves me penetrated with reverence, admiring reverence. Without this restoration of all things there lacked one ray of my God's perfect glory.

It well beseems the Creator to re-establish his work in its pristine beauty; to restore to it the lustre it possessed when he spake the word and it was made. It becomes his power to snatch it entire from the grasp of Satan. It befits his glory to display it radiant once more; more touchingly beautiful, because it has known suffering; more precious, because Jesus died for it; more firmly rooted in holiness, because it has struggled to recover it.

And now, tell me, do you not find such a restoration sublime? Does it not seem to you worthy of the Lord, this restoration of the world lost by the madness of man: tormented by the rage of the great enemy, saved by the very Son of an offended God?

The mountains of Judea have beheld thy cross; the walls of Jerusalem have heard the shouts of the maddened crowds that dragged thee from Caiaphas to Pilate; Gethsemane has drunk thy blood; Golgotha has echoed with the mocking laughter of the Roman soldiers; the sighs of thy agony have passed over this land.

Oh! the tears of the mourner's earth! the lonely steps of those who walk among thy tombs! Thou who hast swallowed up generations of cherished beings; and to those who have asked of thee their dead, hast shown thy dust as sole reply. Thou wilt restore them all, eternally young and happy; they will deck thee like a burst of new flowers; two and two, in families, in companies, they will walk again, singing with joy, on the sites they loved.

The beasts of thy forests; all that move in solitudes unknown to men; all that swim in the abysses of the deep—used once to tear each other to pieces. A sound as of some pillaged town; a nameless sound, which, as we listen to it, fills the soul with terror, rose incessantly from thy whole surface. Then they who listen will hear a hymn of deliverance burst forth from mountain and plain, and the waves of ocean will repeat it to their shores.

Thou thyself curse-stricken earth; thou whose breast cracks at the equator beneath the breath of the simoon; whose barren poles are crushed beneath icebergs—thou shalt blossom out fair and fresh, younger than in the days of Eden. Thou hast borne our rebellion and our woe through the immensity of space; thou shalt then march in bridal beauty through a tranquil sky; blessed among worlds, bearing on thy surface the redeemed and the Redeemer.

How will these things be?

I know not, but God knows. The least moral contradiction troubles me more than mountains of physical impossibility.

Of all this I am ignorant. All this is my Father's business; I am not at all uneasy about it.

Nothing is too hard for him whose seven acts created the universe.

He will come soon! Watchmen lost in the darkness, we send this cry of hope one to the other.

Yes, the morning stars will soon sing together the hymn which greeted the dawn of the seventh day; the bones that strew the ground will soon rise; Jesus will soon return.

I shall see thee again, thou holy city, never to be depressed and trodden down by unbelievers; I shall see thee glorious, I shall salute thee, queen of the world. Desert, thy wide swamps shall change to gardens; thy swords, turned to ploughshares, shall prepare thy rich harvests, O country, everywhere called blessed.

You who weep, say, Are not your tears less bitter? You who are tossed upon the open sea, do you not discern the shores of the land of life?—Madame de Gasparin.