The New Testament Teaching Regarding the Second Coming of Christ
"The Passing of Apocalypticism" Again
WE noticed last week an editorial in the Biblical World for September regarding modern ideas and the second coming of Christ, in which the editor presents as "a great spiritual fact" that "the conception of a kingdom of God already among us, slowly but surely moving toward the realization of its ideal of perfected personal character and perfected human society, has already largely displaced the hope of a day when the present order of things shall suddenly and forcibly be destroyed to make way for the instantaneous establishment of a heavenly kingdom." In other words, the greater part of Christendom believes in a coming converted world through a process of evolution rather than in the second coming of Christ and its attendant events. We were told by one who spoke as "a defender of the faith" that "our Lord is recorded in the Gospels to have made predictions which certainly have not been, and can not now be, fulfilled." "The predictions, as they stand in the documents, clearly assert the return or coming of the Son of Man as imminent." That the apostles and their disciples believed at some time that Jesus was soon coming again is clearly evident, for they did not see all things clearly; but that the New Testament teaches the constant imminence of Christ's coming at all times we deny. One consideration which will help us to an understanding of its teaching is that the New Testament is one book. It came through different persons, bearing the stamp of their several individualities, but the Author is one, and the object of the multifold phases of the book is one. There are different instruments, but the Master Musician has brought them into harmony, and the music and the song are His. The various persons play various parts in the great drama, but the direction is His, and all parts teach singly and together the same true story. The New Testament (or the Bible) is not an incongruous patchwork of the teaching of Christ, perverted by Petrine or Pauline theology; but it is all the theology of Christ, taught through various writers. Another consideration is that the New Testament is given for all time. The apostles and other writers each wrote for his own time, but many of them wrote also for ours. Jesus spoke for that time; He spoke also for the last days.9 It was so with the ancient prophets. Isaiah prophesied for his time; he also prophesied of long centuries to come. He spoke of the "voice crying in the wilderness" (Isa. 40:3); and seven hundred years later nearly, John the Baptist literally fulfilled the prophecy by the River Jordan (John 1:23). He spoke of the Anointed of God who should open the prison for those who were bound, who would give liberty to the captives, and preach the acceptable year of the Lord (Isa. 61:1, 2); and nearly seven centuries later, Christ Jesus the Lord stood in the synagog at Nazareth and declared, "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears" (Luke 4:21). The entire import of our Lord’s great discourse on the subject under discussion recorded in Matthew 24 and Mark 13 is against such a conception as presented by the Biblical World. By a series of events He places His second coming far in the future from His day, and that in direct response to the question of the disciples as to the time of His coming. He expressly declares that many world-noted events will take place, but "the end is not yet." The brethren at Thessalonica seemed to get the idea from the teachings of Paul, whom the Spirit used for all time, that the coming of Christ was imminent; but the apostle declares that no such idea should be obtained or inferred from any word or letter from him "that the day of Christ is at hand." And he expressly and emphatically affirms that that day shall not come till the great apostasy foretold by the prophets has taken place. In the end of that apostasy Christ would come, and by the forthshining of His personal presence destroy the wicked. See 2 Thess. 2:1-10. In the light of the above principles and considerations there are no contradictions in the writers of the New Testament, and we can emphatically say that our Lord is not recorded in the Gospels to have made predictions which can not now be fulfilled. Again we say that God spoke for all time, and therefore according to His Word, He did not leave a gap in these last days to be filled by Higher Critics.