The Personal Coming of Christ

Here are three mountain peaks in the landscape of biblical history and prophecy, and each represents an advent. First, the advent of the first Adam, in the creation; secondly, the advent of the Second Adam, in his incarnation; and thirdly, the second advent of the Son of Man and Son of God, at his final revelation. Each of these peaks presents a double prominence; for the creation of man is associated with his fall, the incarnation of Christ with his death, and the second coming of Christ with his reign.

Between the first and second of these advents, stands one simple object, an altar of sacrifice fronting both ways and linking the two: for every victim that bled and burned on the altar pointed backward to the sin of Adam and forward to the coming Lamb of God. And between the second and third of these advents, the incarnation and the final revelation of Christ, stands likewise one simple object — the Table of the Lord, that likewise points both ways and links the two: for, “As

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often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord” s death till he come.’’’

There is something very beautiful about the simple faith that accepts the mystery of biblical teaching without hesitation, even where it defies penetration and explanation. Dr. Gordon was one of the giants of his day. Few men have minds more colossal in stature and more Titanic in grasp. Yet he bowed meekly to Scripture teaching, even where reason could not explore. The doctrine of the Lord’s second coming, with the august events attendant upon it, such as the first resurrection of the sleeping saints and the rapture of living saints, the development and destruction of antichrist, the conversion of the Jews and the personal reign of the Son of God, the apostasy of the church, etc., presented to his mind difficulties and even discrepancies which his reason could neither unravel nor reconcile. But, having satisfied himself that the Bible is the word of God, he had no further question than this: What does the Bible teach? And as he found this truth lying on the very surface of the word of God, it would have been an irreverent rationalism either to refuse to receive it or to attempt by a tortuous exegesis to explain it away.

Inseparable from this biblical authority and prominence of this truth was its naturalness, as the completion and consummation of the divine plan. There is an unpublished and probably

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unwritten lecture of Dr. Gordon’s, on the “Plan of the Ages,” which those who heard it regard as one of the most masterly products of his study of the word, and in which he set forth the divine teaching as to the providential purpose exhibited in the course of history. In the Epistle to the Hebrews we find the grand conception that God made the “time worlds” (nluva) as he did the matter worlds, and framed them together like the joints of a body or the beams of a house; in this study of the ages Dr. Gordon carefully traced the teaching of the word of God as to these successive periods of history. He divided them into three: the Age of Preparation, the present Gospel Age of Ingathering, and the Age of Consummation; or the age before Christ, the age from his first to his second coming, and the millennial age. In a marvelous way he then proceeded to show how all prophecies, precepts, and other teachings of the word fall into their appropriate place when their relations to these three ages are understood; how countless difficulties are relieved and countless errors avoided, so soon as God’s plans are rightly conceived. With the skill of a master, he then showed how, the moment that which is characteristic of the preparatory legal and Jewish age is imported into the gospel age, or what belongs in this present evil age is transferred over into the age to come, or reversely, we turn cosmos into chaos, and get everything out of order into confusion. A very intelligent hearer remarked, after a delivery of this grand address:” Why you have just found a pigeon-hole for every text,’’ and this well describes the practical effect of this study of the dispensational history of redemption. To Dr. Gordon the whole subject of the Lord’s coming, however mysterious, seemed only the most natural event possible as the conclusion and consummation of the plan and history of redemption. The advent of man to this globe was also the signal for the disaster of sin and the ruin of the race. To repair this ruin the Redeemer came, but in disguise. It can now be seen that such disguise was essential to his mission, for had he come otherwise, he could not have accomplished his holy errand. Humiliation was necessary in order to vicarious atonement, for the Second Adam must be identified with the sin, sorrow, and misery of the race. He must be born of a woman, made under the law, “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” He must by his poverty and obscurity be identified with the lowest and the least, else how could he represent humanity as such; he must be made sin for us, and suffer as a malefactor. All this implied an emptying of self — a making himself of no reputation, an obedience unto death. But surely this cannot be the end, the final manifestation of the Son of God. And so the word of God plainly reveals another advent, not in shame but in glory, no THE DREAM AS INTERPRETING THE MAN

not in disguise but in his essential investment, as the King of kings, with his proper royal retinue — the natural necessary consummation of the divine drama, the true revelation of the Son of God.

And the “blessed hope” has thus the highest prominence in the Scripture; it is revealed as the golden milestone toward which all events point and all roads tend. All good waits to find in his second appearing, his true epiphany, its completion and consummation. All that is best in human history is but the foretaste or first-fruits of which this is to be the harvest. The conquest of sin, now individual and occasional and exceptional, is then to be general, wide-spread, and final. Now, Satan, though resisted by saints, is yet at large working disaster to the race; then, he is to be bound and finally burned — consigned to the lake of fire. The Holy Spirit, now shed abundantly on believers, is to be poured out on all flesh. Evangelism, now like a river, with many little rills that reach far into the deserts and here and there turn wastes into gardens, shall then cover the earth with a flood as the sea does its bed. Now we see the outgathering of the elect from all nations: God visiting the Gentiles to take out of them a people for his name: then the very kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdom of the Lord Christ.

Christ’s coming is to introduce events and developments of almost unprecedented character.

such as the resurrection of sleeping saints, the restoration of Israel, the universal exaltation of God’s anointed King, the final triumph of godliness, the judgment of God’s enemies, and the reward of his servants.

Surely if the Bible did not reveal this as the ultimate outcome of the great historic ages, it would seem the most consistent and natural culmination and consummation of the redemptive scheme. This is the” blessed hope” toward which for many years our departed brother looked with unspeakable longing as the crown of all other hopes.

That which pre-eminently marks the Scripture teaching as to our Lord’s second coming, is its inwiinence, or the combination of certainty at some time with uncertainty at what time. And our Lord himself made this imminence the main incentive to vigilance and diligence: “Watch, therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.” To refer this to death is to violate the simplest laws of exegesis and upset the whole science of hermeneutics. Such, and similar expressions can refer to nothing less than the personal return of the Son of Man, to assume the sceptre and mount the throne toward which all prophecy and promise look. And as Dr. Gordon often said, there is not a virtue or grace in the whole circle or chorus of Christian attainments that is not in the Scripture connected expressly with this blessed hope.

This dream, therefore, not unnaturally pictures the Son of Man as coming suddenly to his temple — unexpectedly appearing in the midst of his people to test, as with refiner’s fire, the service of his saints, as to whether or not it is an offering in riehteousness.