He Will Come Again

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 24, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 12.

“He Will Come Again.”

[From a sermon preached in Portland, Me., by S. D. Ward, Congregational minister, June 22, 1842.]

THE sacred writers have taught us that Christ will come personally and visibly. They frequently allude to this second advent of our Lord as the day—the last day—the day of the Lord. The manner in which this coming of Christ is described, the circumstances which are connected with it, and the exhortations which are grounded upon it, are such as to make the application of it to any events which have yet occurred utterly absurd and preposterous. It is described as the time when all nations shall be gathered before the Son of Man, when the dead both small and great shall stand before God, when we must all appear before the Judgment-seat of Christ, when the wicked shall be severed from the just, and the destinies of each be fixed forever. But it is evident that none of these events occurred at the destruction of Jerusalem. All nations were not assembled, the dead were not raised, the final destinies of men were not decided on that memorable occasion.

The apostles speak of a second coming of Christ, in which all Christians had an equal interest. On the certainty of it they grounded their most urgent exhortations to watchfulness, to a faithful discharge of Christian duties, to constancy in enduring their persecutions, and to perseverance in the way of the Lord even to the end. But what connection had the Romans, the Corinthians, the Thessalonians, or any of the Gentile Christians with the destruction of Jerusalem? What had they either to hope or fear from that event? It is utterly unaccountable that the apostles should have exhorted Christians to steadfastness in their profession, and diligence in the duties of their holy calling, in order that they might be blameless in the day of the Lord, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming, if, by His coming, they meant nothing more than the vengeance which was poured out upon the Jewish people? The truth is, that this latter event was but a faint image of that more awful display of divine justice and power which our Lord and His apostles have described as the coming, — the day, — the appearing, of the Lord Jesus.

Hence, we conclude that the opinion which has prevailed in the Christian church in all ages, that the Son of Man will yet be seen descending from heaven, as visible to all the world, as He was to His disciples when He ascended to heaven, is an opinion founded on most certain warrants of Sacred Scripture, and is as firmly established as the authority of the inspired writers themselves.