THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST.
By Elder F. M. Wilcox
"TELL us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?" These were the questions propounded to Jesus Christ over eighteen hundred years ago by his puzzled disciples. They had just been calling the attention of their Lord to the Jewish temple. With marbled walls and sunlit gilded domes and turrets, it presented an imposing scene to the minds of the humble fishermen. And truly it was a noble structure. "Forty and three years was this temple in building." Herod, by the sacrifice of many lives, and the lavish expenditure of untold wealth, had made it the pride of the nation, the glory of oriental architecture. Into its construction had entered stones so massive that no devices now known to architecture could have adjusted them to their proper place. To finite minds, and especially to minds biased by dreams of dawning national prosperity, as were the minds of all Jews, including the disciples, a building of such strong and massive proportions would withstand the ravages of time and age almost indefinitely. As the disciples dwelt upon this glory and luxury of the sacred edifice, they were startled to hear Christ proclaim: "See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." In the privacy of Olivet's quietude the disciples sought the meaning of this startling prediction, in the words at the beginning of this article: "Tell us, when shall these things be [or when shall the temple be thus destroyed]? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?" Matt. 24:1-3. These same problems interest us at this time in the consideration of this question. And in the answer given by our Saviour we may find a solution to the queries in our minds as well as did the early disciples. Let us then consider the answer returned. Christ evidently does not answer the questions in the exact order of their asking. In verses 4-14 he speaks of the events which would mark the history of the world from that time down to the end of the age, ending with the statement in verse 14: "And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come." With verse 15, as is clearly shown by the context, does he begin a recital of those signs and events which would indicate THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.
We shall consider this point only as it is pertinent to an understanding of what follows. "When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place (whoso readeth, let him understand); then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains." Verses 15, 16. Luke 21:20, 21 expresses this even more plainly: "And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains," etc. The fulfillment of this prediction occurred in the year A.D. 70, when the Roman army under Titus besieged and took Jerusalem, butchering the inhabitants with indiscriminate slaughter, and reducing the city with its beautiful temple to smouldering ruins. But none of the Christians perished in this destruction. Acting upon the counsel of their Lord, they escaped to Pella, a small mountain town north of Jerusalem, and thus saved their lives. Following the flight of the Christians from Jerusalem there was to begin the tribulation from the powers of earth, which in the end would become the "great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be." To what period of persecution does this "great tribulation" refer? Some have contended that it had reference to the tribulation of the Jews when Jerusalem was destroyed. Several important considerations, however, preclude its application to the Jewish tribulation. First, this "great tribulation" was to be a time tribulation. It was to have connected with it certain specified "days," as shown by the expression, "except those days should be shortened." Verse 22. Indefinite, unspecified periods cannot be shortened. The destruction visited upon Jerusalem by Titus was not a time tribulation. No prophet predicted that it would be performed within certain days. Hence this specification alone forever denies the application of the "great tribulation" to the destruction of Jerusalem. Second, the days should be shortened "for the elect's sake," in order that the elect people of God might not all perish from off the earth. Who could be counted the elect at the destruction of Jerusalem? Not the Jews, for they had filled up the cup of their iniquity in the crucifixion of Christ, and the martyrdom of Stephen and James. Certainly none but the disciples of Christ could have been counted the elect at that time. But did the ravages of the Roman army at Jerusalem need to be checked to save the disciples?—No, indeed; for, as we have already learned, they were far from the noise and din of the besieging army, safe in their mountain retreat. Then we must conclude that the "great tribulation" did not refer to the destruction of Jerusalem. But to what time does the expression refer? There can be but one answer,—to the long and bitter persecution waged by the papal power against the church of Jesus Christ. Beginning with their hazardous escape from Jerusalem, fraught as it was with loss of property and friends, and many temporal and physical discomforts, the Christians endured persecution under pagan rule for many years. But the afflictions of the church under Pagan Rome were as nothing almost, compared in severity, suffering, and bitterness with the "great tribulation" endured under papal rule. And the two specifications above, which so thoroughly preclude the application of the tribulation to the destruction of the Jews, fix with great certainty its application to the persecution under Papal Rome. Let us see: First293the point of time, "days." Was the papal persecution one of days? Did God by his prophets proclaim its limit? We answer, Yes. In Dan. 7:25 we have brought to view a power, the "little horn," which no Protestant will deny to be a symbol of Rome. Of the power represented by this "little horn" does the prophet declare: "And he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws; and they [God's people] shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time." Here, then, is a tribulation predicted, having time, or days, connected with it, and the time is a specified, definite period. We learn from Rev. 12:6, 14 that this period equals 1,260 days, or, according to Rev. 13:5, "forty and two months." But this is prophetic time, a day in prophecy standing for one year (see Eze. 4:1-6), hence would equal 1,260 prophetic days, or an equal number of literal years. That the papal power of Rome practiced and prospered for just such a period of time is well known to the student of history, hence no more than a mere statement of the dates marking the beginning and ending of this period will be necessary. Papal domination began in 538 A.D. by the decree of Emperor Justinian, whereby was conferred upon the bishop of Rome the power to define heresy and to punish heretics. This temporal power continued till 1798, when it was snatched from the Papacy by the French Government in the capture of Rome and the dethroning of the pope by Berthier, the commander of the French forces. Thus we find brought to view a tribulation to the church of God, based upon the matter of time. We come now to inquire, Was this Reliable historians estimate that between fifty and one hundred millions of God's people have attested the genuineness of their faith under most excruciating torment, by rack, thumbscrew, stake, and gibbet, and by every other kind of torture that human ingenuity, aided by hellish cunning, could invent. A meager idea of the extent of these papal cruelties may be gleaned from the following extract from the "Cottage Bible," in its comment on Rev. 17:6:— According to the calculations of some, about 200,000 suffered death in seven years under Pope Julian; no less than 100,000 were massacred by the French in the space of three months; the Waldenses who perished amounted to 1,000,000; within thirty years the Jesuits destroyed 900,000; under the Duke of Alva 36,000 were executed by the common hangman; 150,000 perished in the Inquisition; and 150,000 by the Irish massacre, besides the vast multitude of whom the world never could be particularly informed, who were proscribed, banished, starved, burned, buried alive, smothered, suffocated, drowned, assassinated, chained to the galleys for life, or immured within the horrid walls of the Bastille, or others of their church or State prisons. According to some, the whole number of persons massacred since the rise of the Papacy, amounts to 50,000,000. When once the destruction of Jerusalem, at which perished, according to Josephus, less than one and one-half millions of people, is compared with the long reign of papal tribulation, during which over fifty millions of people were put to death in the terrible manner described above, it will be readily seen that the latter and not the former is the "great tribulation such as was not since the beginning of the world, no, nor ever shall be." In an unworthy but terrible manner did it earn its designation, "great." But what is this power elect of God? Small need to raise such a query. Wearily to the church of God did the long period of papal domination drag itself along. Often did it seem to those contending for the right that the lamp of truth would go out forever. But God had said, "For the elect's sake those days shall be shortened," and, lo, we find when the Papacy was at the height of its heaven-daring glory, that there was silently germinating in its midst those principles of truth which under God shortened its days of supremacy, and culminated in its final overthrow. Wycliffe, the morning-star of the Reformation, sounded the cry of religious freedom from papal assumption; Luther and his colaborers caught the note, and soon that power which had usurped the prerogatives of God himself found itself confronted by a force which it could not flatter by cajolery nor intimidate by anathemas. Long before its final overthrow in 1798 did the Papacy feel its power weakening. The world had awakened from its dream of blood and carnage, and was asserting its right to think for itself. The cause of the Reformation continued to advance. Some of Europe's rulers became friendly to its teachings, and others more bold declared themselves disciples of the Lord Jesus. This took from papal support, and made less potent the bulls and anathemas of the Roman see. In 1776 the empress of Austria issued a decree of religious toleration. Then, too, in the Western wilds rapidly shaping events were developing a new nation—a nation composed of men who had fled from papal intolerance, and who in the wilds of America had established a State upon the principles of civil and religious liberty and equality. The same year that Maria Theresa issued her edict of toleration, the ensign of this new nation was unfurled to the breeze. These events conspired to limit papal dominance, and to shorten the days, not the days of the Papacy's temporal power as a prince, but the days of its persecution. The Papacy maintained its temporal sovereignty till its capture by Berthier in 1798; but after 1776, by the new order of events shaping themselves in the earth, its power to persecute was practically taken away. Thus upon every count does the "great tribulation" meet its fulfillment in the history of Papal Rome. The premises we have thus established give us data from which to draw important conclusions. Important signs of Christ's second coming were to transpire between 1776 and 1798. The interesting discussion of what these were to be, and how they were fulfilled, we leave for our next paper.