JESUS is coming again. The pen of every inspired writer proclaims this glorious truth. He is coming to usher in the glad day of redemption. He is coming to break the power of sin and death, and set every captive free. He is coming to take His children home unto Himself.
As we contemplate the many important events growing out of His return, the questions naturally present themselves to every thoughtful mind, How are these things to be accomplished? How will Christ return to the earth? What will be the manner of His coming?
Regarding these inquiries there are many diverse views entertained by His professed children to-day. Is this because the Bible is silent upon this point, and each one is left to conjecture for himself? God has revealed in His Word every essential to salvation, and upon this all-absorbing theme He has not left us in darkness. Hence, upon the authority of the Scriptures of truth, we are prepared to state that the second coming of Christ to this earth will be—
1. Personal.
He says, "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am there ye may be also."
The second coming of Christ will be—
2. Literal.
He will not come through a representative. Since His departure, Christ has been with His people by His Holy Spirit, and thus in their need has more fully supplied their lack than could the personal presence of Christ; but now that their warfare is over, the Lord Jesus Christ comes to receive them unto Himself. Says the apostle Paul in scripture already quoted, "The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout," and in the words of the angel as recorded in the first chapter of Acts, "This same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven," will come again. These words must have indeed imparted comfort to the sorrowing hearts of the disciples. It was to be the same Jesus who was to come; not another, but the One with whom they had been associated during His earthly ministry for three and one-half years. The One who had raised the dead, who had opened the eyes of the blind, who had unstopped the ears of the deaf; the One who had broken for the hungry multitude the bread created by His power; the One who had stilled the tempest on the stormy Sea of Galilee and saved them from a watery grave, and who, when their sorrows and perplexities and discouragements were ready to overwhelm, had stood as their ready friend and sympathizer. He was coming once again to receive them unto Himself. His Spirit would sustain while He was absent; but His blessed Spirit could not make up or fill the place of His own blessed personal presence.
The coming of Christ will be—
3. Visible.
In the hour of death, Jesus comes near by His blessed Spirit, to console and comfort. Many a weary warrior, as he has come down to the end of his pilgrimage, has been given blessed experiences in the Lord as a crowning evidence and assurance of his acceptance by the Saviour. Some have even seen visions of the heavenly land, and their eyes have been opened so that they have seen the angels of God about their bedside; but this, altho so blessed and a foretaste of the heavenly glories, was not the coming of Jesus. Says our Saviour, in speaking of that time, "Wherefore, if they shall say unto you, behold, He is in the desert; go not forth: behold, He is in the secret chamber; believe it not. For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." The words of the angels at the ascension may again be quoted with special application to this point: "This same Jesus, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven." Then if we are to determine how Christ will come the second time, it is but necessary for us to determine how He went away, and that can readily be done by the ninth verse of the first chapter of Acts, where it says, "While they beheld, a cloud received Him out of their sight." He went away with the clouds of heaven; He is to come again in like manner. And this is confirmed by the words of the beloved disciple, "Behold He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him; and all the nations of the earth shall wail because of Him." It does not follow that the clouds spoken of in these scriptures are the misty, vapory clouds of our atmosphere, but doubtless the myriads of angels that surround the Son of God as He will descend to this earth—angels whose glories are veiled from mortal sight, appearing in the far distance as the clouds of our natural atmosphere. But as Christ nears the earth the glory will become brighter and more resplendent, until it will become to the wicked a consuming fire, and to the righteous a transforming power, changing them into the glory of immortality.
Hence, in these days of peril, it is not for us to be deceived by the voice of pretenders. Says Christ of this time, "If any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there," "believe it not." The second coming of Christ is not in the deserts of the west, not in the regions of the Sahara, nor will any land or nation or clime vie with another in claiming that honor. His return will be worldwide in knowledge and results. If we pay heed to the "sure word of prophecy," we shall not be deceived, and so ensnared and engulfed.
May the Lord anoint our eyes with the heavenly anointing, that we may be able to discern between the true and the false, the chaff and the wheat. To every humble, believing, trusting soul, God will reveal a knowledge of His will, and will show unto him the salvation of our God.