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The Promise of His Coming

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 5, 1911

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 88, No. 1.

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The Promise of His Coming

By C. M. S.

HOPE for weary hearts burdened with this world's woe, joy for the sad ones who have lost the dearest treasures of the heart, consolation and comfort and peace for all who will have it, lie in the promise of our Redeemer's return. Trust in that hope makes hard ways easy, makes heavy loads light, and kindles fresh every day the fires of courage on the altars of loyal service. That hope puts into the lives of men an unquenchable purpose, and lifts despondent hearts out of the quicksands of doubt. In the light of that promise every detail of life's activities, every circumstance and environment, takes on new features, and wears a different hue. In that promise is the earnest of a new life, the guaranty of eternal consciousness in a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and satisfaction. That promise is a passport for the children of God out of the kingdoms of darkness into the kingdom of his dear Son,—the kingdom of light and liberty and life.
What a different aspect would this old world wear for the toilers, the sad ones, the afflicted, and the weary, if that blessed promise were stricken from the Book of God, and the human must lie down with the beasts in a common oblivion! The Christian can not contemplate such a contingency without a feeling of horror. The utter blackness of such a prospect must crush the soul of any individual who permits his doubts to make it real to him.
But He is coming again. Said Jesus: “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.” Said the angels: “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.” Said the prophet Enoch: “Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints.” Said our Lord himself: “Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.”Said the apostle: “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.”
These are some of the many promises of his return, spoken by our Lord himself to his hearers, or to us through his prophets. Yet we are living in a day of which Inspiration speaks when it declares that men would be saying, “Where is the promise of his coming?”
The great deceiver has taught many to doubt the promises; he has taught others that this, that, or the other thing was the fulfilment of that promise, and in this last generation, through a system of educated clerical infidelity, he has caused many so to doubt the Word itself that its most emphatic promises have no meaning to them, no assurance of fact. These, then, doubting the Bible, ask themselves and their neighbors, “Where is the promise of his coming?” This is a scoffing inquiry; for it is based upon their belief that they have so undermined the Bible that these precious promises have no foundation in fact.
The Spiritist professes to believe that Christ has come in the darkened séance room; but ingenious investigators have caught some spirit mediums in fraud and trickery, and this confirms the infidel in his doubting of the promise. The Mormon believes he has founded the kingdom of Christ on the Western desert. The Christian and the infidel moralist both revolt against the idea that that system, built upon polygamy, has any claim to consideration as a kingdom of righteousness. Slovenly fanatics have sought to impersonate Jesus Christ, and to make their advent upon the scene fulfil the promise of our Lord. The New Theology has presented its claims, and Theosophy has set itself forth as the culmination of the divine promise. While all these have had their adherents, their chief business has been to bewilder minds, gender doubt, and make the promises of the Redeemer's return appear to many as a visionary fabric, a delusive hope.
These have had their day and deceived their thousands. But now comes the greatest stumbling-block of them all; for it has set itself up within the professed household of the Redeemer himself, and from that place of vantage, will do a more deadly work for this generation than they all. That is the Higher Criticism. It has shattered the Rock of truth (as many think) on thousands of pulpits, and left for the thirsty flock only the dry dust of its disintegration. Its deductions have, for many individuals, crumbled the very foundations of the Word itself; and when that goes, all that is built upon it goes with it. If the Rock of truth is submerged in the sea of doubt, the promises chiseled into it go down into the same flood. Therefore they can say, they who have helped to accomplish the undertaking, “Where now is the promise of his coming?” For them that promise has gone out; and in a seeming frenzied hilarity over what they have done, they appear insensible to the fact that they have cut loose the only rope that held them to the shore, and are drifting straight into the great maelstrom of everlasting ruin and oblivion. The lunatic laughs on the brink of a precipice, and springs out and down to his death. So do these when they make themselves believe they have destroyed the only hope the world has, and then exultantly spring out into the black abyss of eternity without hope and utterly without God.
The large success of such an undertaking must be an astonishment to angels. It is Satan's master-stroke in his war against God; and it was no doubt the development of this work which our Saviour saw when, nearly nineteen hundred years ago, he asked: “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” There will be faith at that time in spite of all that infidelity without the church and within can do. Said the Revelator of this very time: “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.”
The last message of mercy to this stricken world brings out two classes,—the faithful and the faithless; the believers and the scoffers; the commandment-keepers and the image-worshipers. The one looks for him, and believes the promise of his return; the other turns its eyes to, and places its trust in, a human being sitting in the temple of God, and showing that he himself is God.
“Where is the promise of his coming?”—In the infallible Book of our Father, as true as God is true; and in that promise lies the only hope of a world now shrouded in the gloom of Satan's machinations. That promise is worth more than worlds to us. It opens all the storehouses of eternity. It makes us heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ in all the wealth of God's universe, and brings us into his household to sit down with him, and go no more out forever.
C. M. S.