II. THE MANNER OF HIS COMING.
By Max Hill
“Behold, He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him.” Rev. 1:7. “And they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” Matt. 24:30. “The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels.” 2 Thess. 1:7. “For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God.” 1 Thess. 4:16. “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.” Acts 1:11. WITH these texts before us one would think there is no chance for doubt or confusion in any way; yet the Saviour, looking down to the last days of earth’s history, saw that the simple Word of God would be doubted, and wrested to excuse error and support the positions of false teachers and prophets. Every evil that has ever come into the world is met by the Scriptures, and this specious error is clearly met in the Saviour’s own words: “If any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show signs and great wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Behold I have told you before. 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.” Matt. 24: 23-27. His coming is to be literal, personal, “this same Jesus,” “the Lord Himself,” shall so come “in like manner,” attended by every loyal angel of the heavenly courts, “ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands,” with a shout that shall call from their graves the sleeping saints and those that pierced Him, with a lightning-like splendor that shall destroy the living wicked. Think you that such a shout, such splendor, will not be seen and heard by every inhabitant of this sin-cursed earth? This is not the “rapping” of a spirit in a “secret chamber,” a spiritualistic seance, a fanciful falsehood of New Thought, a delusive deception of Christian Science, nor is it a Christ revealed only to the elders in the Mormon temple “in a desert place.” It is a triumphant and joyful shout, a lightning flash; the trembling earth, the troubled sea, giving up their dead; the saints of God being caught up together to the sea of glass with shout of praise and song of joy,—“and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” Not to a few only will the Saviour come, a favored few, not in a secret or a desert place, but, “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.”
MAX HILL.