THE SECOND ADVENT

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 28, 1879

THE SECOND ADVENT.

[The following is a report, by the Chicago Tribune, of a sermon preached in that city by the Evangelist Maj. Whittle, Sunday, Aug. 3. As an evangelist, Mr. Whittle stands second only to Mr. Moody. And while we cannot indorse every portion of his discourse, it contains so much truth on the second appearing of Christ, the new earth as the reward of God's people, and allusions to the mortality of the soul, and life only through the resurrection, that we rejoice in its being preached in cities like Chicago, and being published in the leading papers. G. B. S.]

Maj. Whittle read for his text the numerous passages in Rev. 2 and 2 Peter 3, bearing on this theme of the second coming, after which he proceeded to say that the Bible taught that the earth was the scene of God's redemptive work, while it presented very little comparatively about Heaven. As it presented the earth as the scene of the glory to come, so it presented Christ as the source of spiritual life for mankind. It had little to say about spirits, but for the most part occupied itself with facts,—something tangible. There was no apprehension of God as a spirit, but God manifest in Christ. The truth in connection with his manifestation was presented in a real, practical, tangible way. It was a mark of the early unbelief on the subject of Christ's coming that men looked for some spirituality, some spirit, some spiritualizing of the truth of a personal Jesus. Men in all generations had been ready to speculate about the immortality of the soul and a spiritual existence beyond the grave, and had tried to ingraft on the record their spiritualizing notions concerning the existence of the spirit apart from the body, denying that there had been a manifestation in the flesh. So men to-day turned away from the real truth, and taught and insisted not only that Christ's promises were not to be literally but figuratively interpreted, but that he had not come in the flesh but in the spirit. But there were remarkable fulfillments of Scripture concerning his first coming, which was surely visible and not to be spiritualized away. After his resurrection he left abundant evidences that could not be disputed concerning the reality of that resurrection. In that resurrected body he testified that he was to come again. Why, then, should we look for any other fulfillment of the Scriptures than that his second coming was to be a real, bodily, physical following of the prophecies, the same as at his first? In this connection the evangelist proceeded to enumerate the instances in which the first appearing was a literal fulfillment of prophecy, and to maintain that a harmonious interpretation would seem to compel the adoption of a literal fulfillment of the prophecies regarding the second coming.

The denials of this truth, in the light of all the testimonies on it, were enough to make one sad. Stephen had seen the risen Christ in his glory, and Saul, on his way to Damascus, had caught a vision of him in his glory and power. Nowhere in the Bible was it taught that the present dispensation was the conversion of the world. In a late conversation with Dr. John Hall, that eminent divine had told the speaker that the present dispensation, in his belief, was to be the gathering of the church, and, when that had been accomplished, the Lord would come. God would have his people out of this world, the speaker continued. The restoration of the Jews and the rebuilding of the temple would, he believed, precede the conversion of the world. There was too much preaching now of a belief in death as synonymous with Christ's coming, when the testimony of the Scripture was that Christ's coming meant life, not death. When he came to Lazarus there was a resurrection of life, and glory, and power. The coming of the Lord, wherever it was referred to in the New Testament, never meant death, but always life and a glorious hereafter.

Then there were those who believed that Jesus had already come at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, in the year 79 A. D., relying on the prophecy, “This generation shall not pass away until all these things shall be fulfilled.” But the proper interpretation of this passage, according to Dean Alford, was that that generation should not pass away until a beginning of the fulfillment of the prophecies should be made; and the destruction of Jerusalem and the scattering of Jewish people were a beginning of the fulfillment of the prophecies. The word “generation,” moreover, meant “nation,” and the sense of prophecy was clearly this: that the Jewish nation was not to be passing away until all these things should be fulfilled. Besides, writing in the year 96 A. D., seventeen years after the destruction of Jerusalem, John still spoke of the second coming as the crowning event of the future.

In conclusion, Maj. Whittle warned his hearers that Christ might come at any time. The man who pretended to be able to name a day or an hour was a deceiver, for no man knew “the day nor the hour when the Son of man cometh.” The signs of the times, however, in his opinion, proclaimed Christ's speedy appearing, though neither he nor other men could predict the day or the hour of his coming. God's people were commanded to watch and pray that they might be ready when the great day came. “Behold, I come quickly,” Jesus had said, while the church was represented as responding, “Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.” God grant that even such might continue to be its response, and the attitude of God's people one of watching, waiting, and praying.