The Coming of the Lord by L. A. Phippeny

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 3, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 36.

The Coming of the Lord

By L. A. Phippeny

BY L. A. PHIPPENY

The Third Advent.

In popular parlance, heaven is the reward of the righteous,—the dwelling-place of happy souls after death. These few words constitute about the sum of ordinary preaching and conception of the future for man, so far as reference is made to the Bible. While heaven as a place is to be the home of the redeemed, it will be temporary only, it will be their home for only one thousand years. With eternity of existence as the future of the saved, a thousand years is only a beginning!

At the end of the thousand years—the millennium—the final events in the history of the conflict of righteousness and sin will be enacted, and upon the earth. We must again bring prominently to the front the fact that God did not create the earth in vain. He made it to be inhabited,—not for six thousand years only, but for eternity. He designed it to be the everlasting home of man, and the design will be carried out. Heaven—the planet we may call heaven—is a glorious place, beyond question the brightest, most beautiful spot at the present time in all the universe, and it will be a delight beyond comprehension to spend a thousand years there. But the earth, after all, is the final thought of those who were created from it, who have lived upon it, and have been brought forth again from its dust to immortality. “Behold, the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth,” are the words of Inspiration concerning man’s future estate.

This article is entitled the “Third Advent,” and the words may sound strange to many at first hearing. But they indicate accurately what will occur at the close of the long judgment work by the saints, with Christ and the Father. The earth is Christ’s. He has purchased it, conquered the enemy who usurped Adam’s dominion, and will come at that time to enter into everlasting personal possession with the great family of the redeemed of the human race. He is the second Adam.

It will be remembered that at the time of the second advent, Christ does not descend upon the earth, but remains in the air above the earth. But the third and final advent is for the purpose of taking possession. In the prophecy of Zechariah are words descriptive of that time, and we learn that “his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.” Zech. 14:4–10. Afterwards this valley, or plain, shall be “lifted up,” elevated as a vast tableland, and upon this prepared, cleansed portion of the earth will descend the New Jerusalem from heaven, the capital city of the earth in its renewed condition. A vast plain this will be for the city which lies foursquare, and measures three hundred and seventy-five miles on each side. See Revelation 21.

The Second Resurrection.

As Christ and the host of the redeemed descend to the earth, the wicked dead are called forth from their graves. “The rest of the dead lived not again till the thousand years were finished,” are the words of Revelation. This is the time; and all the world shall at that time behold the glory and majesty of the Son of Man, as He comes from the land that is far away, with His righteous followers. The resurrection of the wicked dead looses Satan from his long idleness, his bound condition, his prison, and he and his angels go forth to deceive again the nations brought forth from death.

For “a little season,” the Word tells us, the bold deceiver is to be loosed. Rev. 20:3. As one contemplates the scene, the mind is staggered at the thought of the motley throng that comes forth to life for a brief existence at this time. There are all the inhabitants of earth from the first unsaved individual in the world’s history to the millions destroyed a thousand years before by the brightness of Christ’s second advent. There are world rulers, captains, generals, mighty men of every age, bondmen, slaves, false teachers, professed Christians, revilers, the abominable, and millions upon millions innumerable of every age, nation, tongue, and clime, who have disregarded the little or great light given them. And they come forth, unchanged in motive. They come forth for final rewards soon to be given them.

At this time the deception of Satan is that his power has raised the multitudes to life, and that the beautiful city is properly his and theirs. This is evident from the words of Scripture, that the multitudes are marshalled into armies, and gather from all parts of the earth into besieging positions about the New Jerusalem. Once again the ancient falsehood will be uttered to the people by Satan that after all they shall not surely die, and the fact that all are now alive will be urged as final demonstrations of the truth of the statement. He will inspire them with the hope that they are able, with his inventions, and assisted by the generals and commanders among them, to capture the bright stronghold before them, and live and reign forever upon the earth.

Some time must elapse between the resurrection of the wicked dead and the time for an attack to be made on the Capital City. The record is brief, but does not prevent the filling in of necessary details. Councils must be held; plans will be carefully laid; engines of destruction devised and constructed; and, most important of all, the nations must be kept alive, and perhaps live in some kind of dwellings in the meantime. It must not be forgotten that the leader in this movement is an angelic being, with angelic assistants, possessed of powers far beyond our present knowledge. We now know him to be possessed of remarkable power to work miracles and signs, and he will use these powers at that time in strengthening the feeble, and in various ways designed to maintain his supremacy.

We can not assert that there will or will not be food. Nevertheless, it would appear from a number of Scriptures (Isaiah 13 and 34; Jeremiah 50, etc.) that include the final overthrow of all nations in their application, that not all the beasts and birds are destroyed at the second coming of Christ, but live on as at present, propagating their kind amid the ruins of earth. During the thousand years that intervene between the second coming of Christ and

the resurrection of the wicked, the numbers of these denizens of the wilderness would be increased enormously. One could perhaps conceive of no more fitting diet than these creatures for a world that even now includes in its bill of fare a large portion of the animal kingdom. But we know in any event, that there will be provision of some kind for the sustenance of the hosts called forth at that day.

The words of Rev. 20:9, with other scriptures, indicate that the space cleansed at the descent of Christ reaches beyond the city’s walls, and includes more or less adjacent territory. Here the saints, or many of them, are encamped without the walls, until the approach of the vast host that finally is brought against the city. Here Satan gathers “them together to battle; the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city.” Rev. 20:8, 9.

The End of the Wicked.

The old doctrine of eternal torment for the wicked is repulsive, and dishonoring to God, and entirely antagonistic to the positive teaching of the Bible. Let us follow the study with the positive teaching before us. Afterward brief reference may be made to the doctrine referred to.

Imagination must waver before the sublime and awful spectacle presented, when the city of God, with the redeemed within the walls, shall be surrounded by the hosts marshalled under Satan’s banner. When all is ready for the final attack, the advance of the wicked is suddenly arrested. Before them is the beautiful city—“Thy city Jerusalem, Thy holy mountain.” The prophet John says: “And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it. . . . And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened [these are the books of death]; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.” John speaks of them as the dead, for in vision he saw them raised from the land and sea.

The work of deciding the degrees of punishment takes place in heaven during the thousand years. But now the assembled ones of all ages are confronted by the records of their deeds. This is the culmination of the events in particular mentioned by Matthew: “And before Him shall be gathered all nations; and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats; and He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” “Then shall He say, also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” Matt. 25:32–34, 41. The wicked will see the results of their wrong choice, acknowledge that God is just, and their sentence just. They will experience terrible remorse as they realize what they have lost, but will have no true repentance. Nowhere in the Scriptures is there a hint of a second probation for sinners. This life is the time for developing and testing character. Were the wicked permitted another lifetime, their course would result ultimately as at present.

Then it is that fire is rained upon the wicked “from God out of heaven,” and John says that this fire “devoured them.” Rev. 20:9. “And death and hell [the grave] were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” “And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone.” Note the expressions, “devoured,” and “second death.” This is the positive teaching. Through the prophet Malachi the end of the wicked is thus graphically described: “For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. . . . And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts.” Another testimony is: “The heavens and the earth, which are now, . . . are . . . reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. . . . And the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” 2 Peter 3:7–10. Again: “The wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs; they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away.” Ps. 37:20.

Satan, his angels, and the wicked of earth, and all that has been defiled by the curse of sin, will be utterly destroyed. Satan is the “root,” his followers the “branches,” of sin. But does not the Word speak of his being tormented “forever and ever?” It does; but this expression, in view of the positive teaching here adduced must be understood as are other usages of the Word “forever” in a number of instances, signifying until the death of an individual, or the end of a nation as such. See Deut. 15:17; Josh. 4:7, etc. There will be no endless torment. While there will be physical suffering because of a wicked course in the present life, yet the mental suffering occasioned by a knowledge of what has been lost will transcend all other pain. When the wicked have also been recompensed in the earth (Prov. 11:31), there will be an end forever for sin. There will never be a resurrection again for sinners. Death and the grave and him who had the power of death—the devil—will be exterminated.

Not only will Satan suffer for his own evil course, but the confessed sins of the redeemed will be placed upon him, and he will suffer for the sins he has caused the righteous to commit. This is the teaching of the ceremony of placing upon the scapegoat the sins of the people at the door of the sanctuary. These sins are placed upon Satan, the antitypical scapegoat, when Christ leaves the sanctuary above, at the beginning of the thousand years. As senior partner in the firm of wickedness he shares the liabilities; when one breaks partnership with him, he, as remaining member of the firm, must assume responsibility for all. In the “lake of fire”—the burning earth—sin passes away forever. This is the end of the wicked. “Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”

Next week we must take a brief glance at that new condition.

[The next and concluding article in the series is “The Dominion Restored.”]