CERTAINTY OF CHRIST'S COMING.
By Lyman Abbott
It is a strange and inconsequential logic which concludes that Christ will not come again because history has perpetually baffled all this irreverential guess-work. If there is not to be a future and more glorious revelation of Christ to men, then all the prophetic revelation of the Scripture is falsified, and the Bible is no book of divine promise. The prophecy of a first coming of the Messiah is not so clear in the Old Testament as the prophecy of a second coming is in the New Testament. It is the hope held out to his church for the future. It is explicitly reiterated and promised by Christ. It was unmistakably the anticipation of his apostles. It is made by both the basis of many a practical exhortation. The disciples are bidden to be ever hastening toward the coming of their Lord; to live soberly in this present life, looking for that blessed hope and glorious appearing; to be as virgins, with lamps trimmed and burning, that wait for the bridegroom; to be as stewards, keeping their trust till their King returns to receive their accounting. Are they oppressed? They are to be patient unto the coming of the Lord. Are they in sorrow? They are to comfort one another with the hope of the day when the Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout. Are they weary of waiting? They are warned against scoffers who ask, Where is the promise of his coming? With this hope Christ comforts his disciples ere he departs from them. With this the angels again encourage them after his resurrection. It is idle to attempt to interpret these prophecies by the gradual and invisible appearing of Christ in the spiritual experience of his own disciples. The exegesis which can thus explain away the words of Scripture, can at will make nothing out of something, and something out of nothing. The one appearing is gradual, the other is to be sudden, like a stroke of lightning; the one is invisible, the other shall be seen of all men; the one is without observation, the other with a shout and the sound of a trumpet; the one is recognized only by believers, and sometimes with difficulty even by them, the other shall bring terror to the foe and triumph to the friend of Christ. I would not put undue emphasis on the emphatic words of the angel at the time of the ascension: "This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven;" but if they do not indicate a far different manifestation of Christ from any we have seen in the gradual development of a Christian spirit among men, words have no meaning.—Lyman Abbott.