The Blessed Hope | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 10, 1877

The Blessed Hope.

ROBERT PATTERSON, D. D., an able and well-tried defender of the Christian faith, has spoken on the subject of the Second Advent in the Interior in his usual forcible manner, under the caption, The Blessed Hope. Length ever adds to the value of productions rich in important history, and ablaze with living truths for the people. Mr. Patterson says:—

When our Lord left his church on earth to go to the Father, he left her in a sorrowful condition. His five hundred disciples were surrounded by the whole world of his enemies, organized into anti-Christian religions and governments by one of the highest intelligences, animated by the most venomous malice, and educated by the experience of ages in the most effectual modes of destruction. The Lord was not ignorant of our danger; nor in his last discourses did he extenuate it, nor promise any abatement of the world's enmity and the church's tribulation. But he did promise that he himself would return to overthrow his enemies, and that he would support us till that blessed day. “The world hateth you. In the world ye shall have tribulation. Ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice. Ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but as soon as she is delivered of the child she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. Ye now therefore have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice and your joy no man taketh from you. If I go away I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am there ye may be also.”

Such was the blessed hope of his personal return with which he comforted his church on his personal departure. During all the period of his absence, he said we must suffer tribulation; and so it has come to pass. If we are to enjoy any period of outward peace during his absence, if his church is to be delivered from the assaults of the world, if there is to be any age of purity when the tares shall not grow among the wheat, or if, at his coming he shall be welcomed by the population of an earth filled with the glory of the Lord, or indeed even be able to find faith in the earth—it will be to him a most unexpected surprise. Jesus did not know of this millennium. We say he did not know of it, because he did not tell us of it; and he says, “I have called you friends, for all things which I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.” But in all his discourses and parables there is not the least hint that we are to hope for any period of peace or glory before his coming. The apostles are equally ignorant of a Christless millennium. For three hundred years after our Lord's departure the blessed hope of the church was the hope of his return.

But when, in the progress of her predicted apostasy, the bride of Christ began to solace herself in his absence with the friendship of the kings of the earth, very naturally she averted her eyes from the eastern sky, and from that return of her Lord which would put an end to all her worldly grandeur. When the Reformers put the gospel trumpet to their mouths, and began to blow the reveille which was destined to awake the harlot of Babylon, the dreams of a Christless millennium were instantly swept away with the rest of the popish trumpery; and the church again began to look for the coming of the Lord to destroy Antichrist. Luther hoped that it might not be much more than a hundred years from his day. In their letters, sermons, and confessions of faith, the Reformers proclaimed their premillennial hopes.

“The major part of the divines,” of the Westminster Assembly, as Baillie tells us, were “express chiliasts.” They conclude their noble Confession with a declaration of their faith in the second coming of the Lord in words which fully express the faith of premillennarians; but which are utterly unintelligible on the theory that Scripture teaches us not to expect his coming for thousands of years. For it is not merely the fact of his future coming to judgment, but its impending uncertainty as a constant motive to each of us to be always ready, which they proclaim in these ringing words:—

“As Christ would have us to be certainly persuaded that there shall be a day of Judgment, both to deter all men from sin, and for the greater consolation of the godly in their adversity, so will he have that day unknown to men, that they may shake off all carnal security, and be always watchful, because they know not at what hour the Lord will come; and may be ever prepared to say, ‘Come, Lord Jesus! Come quickly!’ ”—Confession of Faith, Chap. 33, Sec. 3.

This confession of faith in the second coming of the Lord was adopted without alteration by the Presbyterian churches of England, Scotland, Ireland, and the British colonies; by all their various branches; and by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States, and all the smaller bodies of Presbyterians in America; who, with one consent, confessed their faith in the premillennial advent of the Lord, so far as they could do so by giving it the place of honor as the climax of their printed and published Confession of Faith. The other Reformed churches uttered corresponding testimony. During the heat of the battle with popery, our reforming ancestors strengthened their hearts by looking for the coming of the Lord, and encouraged each other by the cry, “Hold the field! for he is coming with legions of help,” a sentiment embodied recently in a popular revival hymn, but familiar to the old Scottish Covenanters.

But ere long a second apostasy from the faith set in among the Reformed churches. It was known in Scotland as Moderateism; in England, as Arianism, and more recently, as Broad Churchism; in America it called itself Unitarianism; and in Germany, Rationalism. Setting up human reason as the judge, and our very limited modern observation as the evidence, and denying that any event ever could occur but according to the course of the observed laws of nature, it reduced Jesus to the rank of a Jewish rabbi, rather in advance of his day, but totally unacquainted with modern science. Of course the notion of such a person returning from the invisible world to reign upon the earth was remanded to the Hebrew mythology. But the common people of the Reformed churches still revered their Bibles, and it would not do for the Rationalists, who still held their chairs, pulpits, and pay, as orthodox Protestants, openly to deny the Bible. It was, however, easy to make it void by what was called a spiritualizing interpretation, which developed into the mythical hypotheses. The promises of his second coming and reign on earth were interpreted to mean simply the spread of his gospel, and the submission of a great part of the world to Christianity for a period of a thousand, or, as some thought, 360,000 years; during which mankind was to advance in the arts of civilization, and enjoy unexampled peace and prosperity. At the close of that extended cycle, too vast for the common mind to see across, possibly some great convulsion of nature would occur, and it might be said, the Lord would come and destroy the world, and call the human race to judgment. This theory was elaborated and popularized by an English commentator named Whitby, who, by his published correspondence, is proved to have been an Arian, but whose commentaries were popular with his own class, and whose mythical millennium was received with favor by many of the orthodox pensioners and friends of the State churches of Europe, to whom it promised a long lease of tithes and honors. Through their influence it was imported into America, where it was immediately utilized as material for platform platitudes and perorations.

But, like all compromises between truth and error, this theory was fatally defective. The Rationalists protested that such a personal coming of Christ would be a violation of natural law, whether it occurred to-morrow or a thousand years hence, and so would be inadmissible. When some of the Germans were willing to relinquish the personal coming entirely, and to substitute, instead, a spiritual reign, the modern Jews turned on them with the demand, Why should not the same principle be applied to the first coming of the Messiah? Why should not all the predictions of a Messiah be understood to be simply personifications of the reign of righteousness desired by pious Jews? Mere projections of the longings of the Hebrew mind? Why not, indeed? If the second advent be mythical, why not the first as well?

An increasing number of the clergy of the churches of England, Scotland and Germany are returning to the ancient faith in the coming and kingdom of our Lord. This recovery of faith in England and Germany has not been unfelt here in America; the more scholarly and fervent class of the rising ministry feel its influence. The revivals now in progress are everywhere accompanied by increased study of the words of Christ and the apostles. The contrast is observed between modern and apostolic preaching. The people ask, “Why are the preachers so silent on the coming of the Lord? The Old Testament is full of promises of his coming. Every thirtieth verse of the New Testament presents that as the blessed hope of the church; or as one motive to work, and warfare, and patience; but we do not hear a sermon on the subject once in seven years. We hear hundreds of sermons on science, sermons on politics, sermons on the scandals of the day; how is it that our preachers so industriously avoid the subject which our Lord and the apostles introduced into all their discourses?”

It is true that the Presbyterian churches have never been entirely destitute of able defenders of the faith in the second advent proclaimed in their Confession of Faith. The number is increasing, and a noble band of professors and ministers of learning, ability, and standing are now proclaiming the personal reign of Jesus as the only hope of the salvation of our earth from sin, and sorrow, and death. Prof. Duffield, in his sermon before the Synod of New Jersey, indicates premillennialism as the doctrine of the standards of the Presbyterian church. Dr. Craven, in his learned and exhaustive Excursus on the Basileia, in Lange's Commentary on the Apocalypse, establishes the scriptural application of the term, “the kingdom of heaven,” to the millennium only. Dr. Brookes, of St. Louis, in his popular volume, Marantha, gives a review of the scripture testimony, proving unanswerably

that there can be no millennium till the Lord comes. And Dr. Willis Lord, recently Principal of Wooster University, Ohio, in a beautiful little volume just published by W. G. Holmes, Chicago, displays Christ's coming as Our Blessed Hope.