The Lord Himself Shall Come.
By Editor
LAST week, at the request of a correspondent, we gave some proofs that faith in the second coming of Christ is not generally held in the churches. Most of them profess to believe the doctrine, but in some such sense as to dispense with the actual coming of the Lord in person. And we gave most explicit proofs that a substitute for the second advent, and for the blessings which are promised to the church at his coming, has been and is being accepted very generally. We will briefly give Scripture proofs to show that the mystical advent, and the substitute for the advent, are unscriptural and dangerous errors. III. The quotation which we gave last week affirms that Christ came spiritually on the day of Pentecost, and is never to come in any other way. On this spiritual, or mystical, or figurative coming of Christ, Bishop Merrill, of the M. E. Church, says, in answer to the position of the Universalists, who are really the authors of this idea of a spiritual or mystical advent:— "A figurative coming of Christ is no coming at all. Those who believe in such a coming at the destruction of Jerusalem [or at any other time] impose upon themselves by the sound of words without meaning. If the phrase, a ‘figurative coming,’ has any meaning, it fails to reach our perception. Certainly those who use it intend to say that Christ himself, did not come in person; and if he did not come in person as the Son of man he did not come at all. A figurative advent is a myth." Now we will give a few passages which can never be harmonized with the idea of the spiritual advent. 1 Thess. 4:16, 17. "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. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord." If this language can be made to refer to anything but "the Lord himself;" if it does not refer to a resurrection of the dead and a translation of the living saints in that day, then we see no use for our Bibles. Certainly they cannot be considered very reliable in their statements. And of the facts here spoken of the apostle speaks in another place. 1 Cor. 15:51-53. "Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." "We shall not all sleep;" equivalent to, "we that are alive and remain," of the preceding text. "The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised;" in the other text, "—and the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise." The parallel can be traced further, but it is not necessary. Again we quote. Heb. 9:28. "So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation." If his first coming was mythical, then his second may be; otherwise not. Reason, and every law of language, demand that if his first coming was real, personal, that it was actually himself (see Luke 24:39), the second should be real and personal also, and especially when inspiration says it will be "the Lord himself." Now we call attention to one fact which is decisive on this point. It is claimed that the promise of his second coming was fulfilled by the descent of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost; whereas, these positive testimonies of his future coming were written from twenty-one to thirty-two years after that day of Pentecost. And others, equally definite, were written at even later dates. It will be in order for the members of the Congregational Association, or their preacher who gave such a clear "elucidation of the spiritual sense" of the Scriptures, to explain how a definite prophecy and assurance of a coming event, written in A. D. 66, could be fulfilled in A. D. 33! Such pretended expositions are but travesties of the sacred word, and serve only to bring the Bible into disrepute before the world. We wish now to quote several more texts, which indeed will clearly prove the same point, namely, that the advent is a literal coming of Christ himself, but we quote them more especially to show the importance of the advent, and the utter absurdity of attempting to introduce a substitute for that glorious event. 1. "When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory." Col. 3:4. There is not a hint that we shall be glorified before that time. 2. We must refer again to 1 Thess. 4:13-18, as parallel to the text last quoted. The Lord himself shall come, the dead shall rise, those who are alive (of the brethren) will be caught up together in the clouds, and so—in this manner—shall we ever be with the Lord. No other manner, and no other time is given in the Scriptures for us to "appear with him in glory." We are told to "comfort one another with those words;" not some substitute for them. 3. "Thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just." Luke 14:14. These are the words of Jesus himself. And with this agrees the testimony of 1 Thess. 4, and 1 Cor. 15, as quoted. The just will be raised—"the dead in Christ"—when the Lord comes; when the archangel's voice and the trump of God are heard. Then the saints shall shout their victory over death and the grave. They cannot triumph over the grave until the resurrection of the just; and the just will not be raised until the Lord himself comes. He "is our life." And if he never comes the second time, the graves will never deliver up their dead; the resurrection of the just will never take place, and the recompense will never be given. And thus the blessed Saviour speaks again:— 4. "The Son of man shall come in the glory of the Father with his angels; and then shall he reward every man according to his works." Matt. 16:27. Or if it be claimed that this promise was made too early, and might have been fulfilled at Pentecost! we will give another from the Son of God, put on record more than three-score years after the Pentecost. 5. "Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be." Rev. 22:12. Always the same; the reward, the recompense, when he comes, when the dead are raised. 6. "And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away." 1 Peter 5:4. In Matt. 25:31-34, the Saviour says when he "shall come in his glory," sitting upon the throne of his glory, then the saints will "inherit the kingdom." Of course at that time, not before, they will receive their crowns, as Peter says in the text here quoted. 7. "We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." 1 John 3:2. When we consider that Jesus rose triumphant from the grave, that he showed them the wounds in his hands, and feet, and side, and told them to handle him and see that it was he himself, we are sure that the saints cannot be like him while they are still in the grave; they will never be like him, and see him as he is, if he never appears and never raises them from their graves. We might quote many more passages, but what is the need? The point stands fully proved, that the second advent is of infinite importance to the saints, and that no substitute is admissible, unless, indeed, we can find a substitute for the recompense, the reward of the righteous; for the crown of glory; for the immortality then to be given; for being like the Lord; for ever being with him. Strike every reference to the second coming of Christ out of the New Testament, and you would leave it in fragments, robbed of its glory. But who will point us to a single text which would be removed or marred if every reference to the immortality of the soul were stricken from the Scriptures? Now we are well prepared to appreciate the statement of the N. Y. Independent. We repeat the extract:— "For all practical purposes of comfort the doctrine of the blessed immortality of the righteous, the immortality of the soul, takes the place for us of any doubtful doctrine of the Lord's second coming. At our death the Lord comes for us. That is what we are to wait and watch for. The dead are already passed into glory. They do not wait for the trump for their judgment and blessedness." We appeal to the candid, reverent reader: Is there anything "doubtful" in the "doctrine of the Lord's second coming," as set forth in the texts we have quoted? Is it not as plainly revealed as it is possible that language can reveal it? Is "the immortality of the soul" more plainly revealed in the word of God than is the coming of Christ and the resurrection of the dead? Is the immortality of the soul ever set forth in the Bible as the ground of hope and of comfort? It is a significant fact, that they who claim the immortality of the soul rest the doctrine mainly on philosophy, many of the ablest expositors of Scripture confessing that it is not found in the Bible; and the standard philosophical argument, even to this day, is that of a pagan, who was ignorant of the Scriptures, or if not ignorant, disregarded them. Such is the paternity of that which is accepted as a substitute for the personal "Jesus and the resurrection." Paul, in Titus 2:13, calls the coming of Christ "that blessed hope." But now a substitute, of which no mention is made in the Bible, is accepted in its stead. It is no praise to the Protestant world that it sends the Bible to the nations, while it robs it of its glory and its life, and sets such a shocking example of making the word of God void through traditions. We cannot more appropriately close these remarks than by a quotation from 2 Tim. 4:1-8, on which a word of comment is not needed:— "I charge thee therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; preach the word. . . . For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. . . . I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing."