What Christ’s Coming Means to the Earth
By C. P. Bollman
The burden of Dumah. He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night. Isa. 21:11, 12. WHILE to His own believing children the second coming of Christ will be the dawn of the glad morning of eternal day, to the wicked it will bring the blackness of everlasting midnight. Thus while the morning comes, the night also draws on apace. To the righteous that day is a time of final salvation; to the wicked it is a time of darkness, of desolation and death. Shortly before the Lord appears in the clouds of heaven, probation closes, and the dread decree goes forth, “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still.” Therefore the coming of the Lord means the closing of the door of hope to all who are not at that time God’s children. They having chosen sin and refused to be separated from it, the Lord says of them, “Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone.” And a little later they are destroyed; for— Sin must perish, and with it all must die
Who to transgression cling, who God defy,
And crucify afresh the Lord who for them died
That they might live forever. It must suffice for the present to state briefly that “the day of the Lord,” beginning with the close of human probation and ending with the final destruction of sin and of sinners, embraces a period of approximately one thousand years. This will be shown quite definitely at a future time. But in this study, judgments upon the wicked will be referred to without stopping to locate them as to time, or in other words, without showing whether they fall upon the finally impenitent in the early part of the day of the Lord, or at its close. The Lord through the psalmist David gives this counsel, and incidentally reveals what the coming of Christ means to the wicked: “Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass. Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil. For evil-doers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth.” Ps. 37: 7-9. Of that day the prophet Isaiah says, “Behold, the Lord cometh out of His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.” Isa. 26: 21. The Great Day of the Lord
Looking down the stream of time to the end of the history of sin, the prophet Joel exclaims, “Alas for the day! for the day of the Lord is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.” Joel 1:15. Of the same dread time Obadiah testifies: “The day of the Lord is near upon all the heathen [the wicked]: as thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee: thy reward shall return upon thine own head. For as ye have drunk upon My holy mountain, so shall all the heathen drink continually, yea, they shall drink, and they shall swallow down, and they shall be as tho they had not been.” Obadiah 15, 16. “The great day of the Lord is near,” testifies another prophet; “it is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the Lord: the mighty man shall cry there bitterly. That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high towers. And I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the Lord: and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as the dung. Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the Lord’s wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of His jealousy: for He shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land.” Zeph. 1: 14-18. The Vision of God’s Throne
Still another phase of the same dreadful day is described in these words: “And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the Book of Life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell [the grave] delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.” Rev. 20: 11-15. Of that day the prophet Malachi writes: “The day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.” Mal. 4: 1. Of that day and of what it means to the wicked, our Lord Himself says: “When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory: and before Him shall be gathered all nations: and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: and He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King . . . say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” Matt. 25: 31-34, 41. Ushered in by the Plagues
In Revelation 16 we learn that the ushering in of the day of the Lord means the falling of the seven last plagues upon the unprotected heads of the impenitent. That6these plagues fall after the close of probation is evident from two considerations; first, we learn from Rev. 14:10 that in these plagues the wrath of God is poured out without mixture of mercy; therefore there must be at this time no place of repentance for sinners. Again, Rev. 16:11, 12 reveals the fact that under the plagues men do not repent; but always in the past it has been true that when the judgments of God are abroad in the land the people “will learn righteousness.” Their failure in this instance to learn righteousness is conclusive evidence that the day of their salvation is past when the plagues are poured out. Such are a few of the pen pictures that divine inspiration gives us of the judgments that the day of God holds in store for the finally impenitent. We are now living in the time to which the words of the prophet apply, “The great day of the Lord is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the Lord.” And this warning is given in mercy while probation still lingers, that all who will heed the warning voice of that day may escape the wrath of God which is presently to be poured out “without mixture into the cup of His indignation.” The Lord takes no delight “in the death of him that dieth;” but He can not deny Himself; He must be true to His own character. He is infinite not only in mercy but in justice. Sin must perish, and with it all must die
Who to transgression cling, who God defy. But those who yield to God now, that the body of sin may be crucified and destroyed while they live, will in the end find themselves crowned with eternal life in the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.