The Second Coming of Christ.
By A. M. Driscall
The heading of this article is attractive to some minds, as it is repellant to others. It is attractive, because it is more animating to the Christian to think of meeting Christ, and very soon, than to dwell upon his history, as that of a Divine Person, once with us, now and for near two thousand years removed from us. There is also something especially pleasant in his second coming, as it is described to be as visible as was his ascending from Olivet; as it brings him back, this side of the river of death, to meet us, instead of our crossing to meet him; and as it enables us to realize the satisfaction the apostle Paul described as a “clothing upon,” in place of being “unclothed,” a life descending from heaven, to transfigure and swallow up mortality. But the title above is to others repelling, as suggesting a less spiritual conception of Christianity, and contradicting the very letter of the gospel by fixing a date, not fixed in Holy Scriptures, but left indeterminate, and described as “the lightning,” sudden, instantaneous, and inexplicable. One extreme, however, generates another, and the very existence of extremes shows that there is a safe middle ground between. It is not obvious that those believers are in the wrong, who allow themselves to be so repelled by extravagances on this subject, that they do not make the second coming of our Lord a frequent and joyous contemplation? It was so to the apostles; it should be so to us, as the current language of the New Testament shows. Every one has remarked how frequently the sacred writers exclaim, “The Lord is at hand.” This is, indeed, in one passage of the authorized version denied, but it is an evident and now recognized mistranslation, the apostle denying that “the day of the Lord is present.” 2 Thess. 2 : 2. That it is at hand, our Lord himself, and all his apostles, in a great variety of ways affirm. The delusion seems to have seized upon the Thessalonian Christians, as it has upon so many others since, and at so many epochs, that the exact hour for Christ’s reappearance had arrived. Men stood idle, and excitedly abandoned their normal pursuits, instead of calmly awaiting an unknown and unknowable event. But it is written that believers “know neither the day nor the hour;” they are not permitted “to know the times and the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power;” “of that day, and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels who are in Heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.” This ignorance is made by Christ an argument for watchfulness, as if any day might prove “the day,” and any hour “the hour.” The attitude of faith is that of listening to the foot-falls of an approaching Redeemer. Christians are described as those who “are waiting for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.” They are “looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ.” It is the obedience of faith, neither to postpone the second advent to a distant future, nor to say that it has actually come, or is coming at a specified date. Church history shows that where the coming of the Lord has been regarded as fixed in the deep future, at an infinite distance off, the Christian life has been cold, and careless, and worldly. When, on the contrary, every crisis in the world’s history has been regarded a possible token of his near approach, a streak of light in the kindling east as a premonition of the cry, “Behold he cometh,” it is a reviving of the faith of apostolic times in a respect in which it is a pattern for us, and in which it reflects the current and characteristic teaching of the New Testament, which ends with the testimony, “Surely, I come quickly.” No doubt “this world’s history is its judgment too,” but the world shall, also, in the course of history, see its Judge; “Behold he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him; and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him.” No dawn ever reddens in the east, but another dawn may spring above it: no sun rides upon the meridian, but another may eclipse it. And this expectation is evermore before the church; all the future is bright with his coming; at all times it may be the next event. No Christian may, consistently with Holy Writ, form a philosophy of history, which necessitates the postponement of the Lord’s coming to a distant future. The faithful Christian is one who “waits for the Lord,” and heeds the warnings of his approach. “Faith's ear, with awful still delight,
Counts them like minute-bells at night,
Keeping the heart awake till dawn of morn,
While to her funereal pile this aged world is borne.” If this be a just representation of the characteristic teachings of the New Testament on this subject, the Christian should always associate the future with the coming of his Lord, his actual and visible coming, or some spiritual preparation for it. To his believing outlook every event has something to do with Him, and may be a precursor of the Advent. It is more in accordance with Christian believing and living, to think of the coming of Christ, than of the coming of death; near as the last is, the first may be nearer. If this sentiment seems to us strange and exaggerated, let us remember it did not seem so to the apostles and first Christians; and this difference should teach us that we have insensibly drifted away from early and consecrated habits of thought. And is not this fact an argument for special thought on this subject? How strangely significant is our Lord’s inquiry, “Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” If general forgetfulness and incredulity be a sign of his approach, it should make us more wakeful to the truth, “The Lord is at hand.”—WM. I. BUDINGTON, in American Messenger.