THOUGHTS ON THE ADVENT

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 29, 1861

THOUGHTS ON THE ADVENT.

(Continued)

ALTHOUGH we have found many unequivocal declarations in the oracles of God that the Son of man is to return to this earth personally and visibly in power and glory, and have produced an amount of evidence on the point, which must be more than satisfactory to every candid mind, there are other scriptures which we are unwilling to pass entirely by.

The coming of the Lord is inseparably connected with other scenes. A series of events of which this forms a part is often spoken of in the word of God as a whole; the day in which it is to take place we find many times and uniformly described. This being the case, it follows that those scriptures which foretell any of these events, or declare to us that such a day is approaching, become so many direct prophecies of the coming of Christ, though this event may not be particularly specified therein. To a few passages of this class we now propose to call attention. "For yourselves know perfectly," says Paul in 1 Thess. v, 2, "that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night." But what about this day of the Lord? Has this anything to do with the coming of Christ? Is the latter one of the events to take place therein? See the connection. In the previous chapter, verse 16, Paul had been discoursing directly about the coming of the Lord, and laying down declarations plain and strong like this: "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God." And he continues in the first verse of chap. v, "But of the times and seasons [when these things shall take place] ye have no need that I write unto you." Why? "For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord cometh," &c.; and since you know about this, you of course know about the coming of Christ, which is one of its primary events.

Again, we have in Rev. vi, 12-17 a record of the events which John saw transpiring under the sixth seal. After mentioning the signs in the sun, moon and stars, he brings us to the closing event of the series when the heavens depart as a scroll, and every mountain and island move out of their places, and the great, and rich, and noble of earth cry to the rocks and mountains, saying, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of his wrath is come and who shall be able to stand!" There can be no mistaking the fearful scene here brought to view. But it involves the presence of him who sitteth on the throne, the revelation from on high of the once insulted, but now exalted and avenging Lamb; for otherwise they could not pray to be hid from his presence or buried from his wrath. So we may add Rev. vi, 16, to the long catalogue of inspired announcements that the Lord will come.

In Isa. xiii, 6, 9, 10; Joel ii, 31; Zeph. i, 14, we have portrayed before us, in the graphic and sublime strains of inspiration, the great day of the Lord, which is appointed for all the earth. But no surer does the day of the Lord burst upon us, than our Redeemer appears to the salvation of all them that look for him. Heb. ix, 28.

Before leaving this division of the subject, we must notice a few more scriptures which speak to us of the great fact of the second coming of our Lord; not that they are necessary to the establishment of the point in question, but simply for the gratification which the heavenward traveler feels as he sees his hope recorded before him in line upon line, line upon line, here and there, throughout the book of God. To the weary pilgrim who mourns the ruins of the fall, no prospect can be more cheering than a restoration of all things to their primeval state, a cure of all the evils that sin has wrought. And such a restitution has been graciously promised. But what shall introduce this glorious era? Nothing less than the second coming of the Lord. Peter speaks in Acts iii, 19, of the times of refreshing which shall come from the presence of the Lord, and adds, "And he shall send Jesus Christ which before was preached unto you, whom the heavens must receive till the times of restitution of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.

Very much after the tenor of this passage is another found in 1 Tim. vi, 14, 15: "That thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebukable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which in his times he shall show," &c. It is here declared that the appearing of Jesus shall be shown; in Acts iii, that God shall send him; and when the Almighty utters his purposes with a shall, who is he that dare disbelieve!

1 Thess. i, 10. "He shall come to be glorified in his saints." 2 Thess. ii, 8. "And then shall that wicked be revealed whom the Lord shall consume with the Spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming." To harmonize this scripture with their soporific theory, advocates of a temporal millennium tell us that a personal coming is not here intended, but a coming in the sense of an increased power imparted to the truth, and a universal spread of the gospel; and that by this means the man of sin is to be destroyed and consumed, or, in other words, be converted to the religion of Jesus. Had such persons never read beyond verse 8, although their interpretation would then be marvelous in the extreme, it might still be looked upon with greater allowance. But we feel warranted in utterly scouting such an idea, from the verses immediately following in which we are told that those who perish, are such as did not receive the love of the truth, and were therefore given over to strong delusion, not that they might be converted and saved, but that they all might be damned. Nothing less than a personal coming, and that, too, in inconceivable power and glory, can produce the results mentioned in verse 8. Such it will therefore be.

Paul in his letter to Titus [ii, 11-13] tells us that the grace of God hath appeared to all men teaching us that we should live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world, looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ," or as it might better be rendered, the appearing of the glory of the great God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ.

But Paul is not the only witness here. The other sacred penmen all come forward as if impatient to bear testimony to the glorious theme. Peter dwells in glowing terms on the coming day of the Lord, and carries us forward to the delightful scene of the new earth wherein righteousness alone shall dwell. And Jude, in his brief letter to Christians, is careful not to omit the fact that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints.

(To be continued.)