THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST.
By Geo. W. Rine
Its Place in the Gospel Scheme.
THE first and the second coming of Christ to this world are sharply discriminated in the sacred Scriptures. The fact that Jesus will come to save saints is just as dogmatically asserted as the fact that He did come to save sinners. In the beginning God promised to send His beloved Son into the world to taste death for every man. We all know2that the Son did come; that He did die, the just for the unjust; that He did rise from the dead and ascend to the right hand of the Father on high. Equally definite and positive is His promise, "I will come again." If the one promise was literally fulfilled, why will not the other be? If taught and guided by the divine Word, we must believe that the second coming of our Lord will be just as certain, just as palpable and personal, as was His first coming. If His first advent was necessary to the realization of the Gospel mission, His second advent is equally necessary. "I will come again" is, in short, the keystone to the Gospel arch. In that mighty fact the Gospel culminates—finds its crowning glory. In more than fifty places is the second appearing of the Lord referred to in the Scriptures. It is identified with the paramount blessing, the supreme hope of the Christian. Repeatedly the divine Word speaks comfort and consolation to the sorrowing, suffering believer by assuring him that his Lord will come and will not tarry. The disciples, having been intimately associated with their Master for more than three years, had become ardently attached to Him. To be in His personal presence was to them one and the same thing as to be happy. They could conceive of no higher joy than to be in personal touch and communion with Jesus. Hence they could hardly endure the thought of being separated from Him. Accordingly, when He disclosed to them the fact that He would soon part from them and return to His Father, their hearts were wrung with grief. In His love and pity He at once assuaged their sorrow by assuring them of His personal return to this world. "Let not your heart be troubled," He began; "in My Father's house are many mansions; . . . 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." John 14:1-3. Would not even a child understand that the Saviour's language here teaches that if the saints shall ever be where He is, in the world to come, He must appear again to receive them unto Himself? No language can teach more clearly that if the people of God shall ever be delivered from this present evil world, Jesus must and will return for them; and His returning is the pledge that they shall be with Him in eternity. This assurance is the balm He lays upon the sorrowing hearts of His disciples. When consoling those who sorrow for their dead, the Holy Spirit seizes upon that supreme event, the coming again of Jesus; and declares the sequel of that event to be the raising from the dead of those who sleep in Jesus. For "I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. . . . For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord." Then follows this significant precept: "Wherefore comfort one another with these words." 1 Thess. 4:13-18. Again we see that the only pledge God has given us that the righteous dead shall be raised and delivered from the power of the grave, and that they and the righteous living shall ever be with the Lord in glory, is that Jesus will come again. And why should not the promise of the Master's return be supremely precious to His church, when the Bible itself declares His returning to be "that blessed hope"? Titus 2:13. For the blessed hope we are commanded to look; that is, we are joyfully to expect it. Again (Heb. 9:28): "And unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation." There is no promise whatever that He will bring salvation to those who refuse to look for Him. Observe, too, that this scripture unequivocally teaches that ultimate salvation, or final and eternal deliverance from the power and reach of sin and death, can be compassed in no other way than by the personal coming again of our Lord and Saviour. He Himself declares, "Behold, I come quickly; and My reward is with Me, to give every man according as His work shall be." Rev. 22:12. How emphatically is here enunciated the great truth that the Saviour must come again if His saints shall ever receive their final reward. "If the dead rise not,"—(and their rising is contingent upon the appearing of Christ)—"then are we [Christians] of all men most miserable." No future advent of Christ, no deliverance; that lost, all is lost. See also Luke 14:12-14. It is the fashion in these days to spiritualize the doctrine of the second advent. Many profess to believe that the promise of our Lord's coming again finds its fulfilment in His coming to His saints by His Spirit when they die. But in this sense He is constantly coming to them, while they live as well as when they die. The language of Inspiration effectually precludes a mere spiritual application of the doctrine. Let us make the test: "And as they thus spake, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. . . . Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; handle Me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have." Luke 24:36-39. It was the tangible, personal Christ that stood before the disciples on the evening of the resurrection day. Now note again the language of Scripture: "When He had spoken these things, while they beheld, He was taken up; and a cloud received Him out of their sight." Acts 1:9. As the eyes of the sorrowing disciples wistfully followed their ascending Lord, two angels, fresh from the courts of glory, declared unto them: "This same Jesus, who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven." Verses 10, 11. He ascended visibly, bodily; so He will likewise come again. "Behold, He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him." Rev. 1:7. "The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout," etc. 1 Thess. 4:16. What, then, shall we believe—human conjecture or divine affirmation? Shall not each one of us say, "As for me and my house, we will believe the voice of the Lord"? We see, accordingly, that the Gospel would utterly fail of its mission in the earth were the second personal appearing of our Lord never to be realized. Just as certainly as He came the first time to save sinners, He will come the second time to save the righteous. As certainly as He once came in solitariness, humility, and poverty, so certainly will He come again "with all the holy angels with Him," "in power and great glory" and with all the riches of heaven. He came once to be despised and rejected of men, to be set at naught and crucified; He will again come "to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired of all them that believe, in that day." He came nineteen centuries ago to wear a crown of thorns; He is soon coming with the fadeless crown of universal sovereignty upon His sacred head. That will be a glad day to those that believe, and watch, and pray, and look. Then "the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." Isa. 35:10.