The Return of the Lord: What the New Testament Teaches about the Second Coming of Christ

Almost nineteen hundred years ago there stood on a mountain slope near Jerusalem a group of men. In their midst stood One whom they had followed as their Master and Lord. For many months they had listened to the words of life, which came from His lips, and witnessed the miracles of divine power and mercy, which were wrought by Him in every section of Israel’s land. The eyes of the blind were opened instantaneously; the paralytics walked; the dumb spake; the deaf heard. Many cursed with leprosy were cleansed by His commanding power. Three times death had to release its prey. A young girl and a young man, after physical death had claimed them, were restored to life. They had seen a greater miracle than the one at Nain’s gate, when He had stopped a funeral and turned weeping into laughter of joy. One of His friends had been four days in the grave. He spoke the word and the dead arose. Thousands had been fed by Him also in a miraculous way. ‘The wind and the waves obeyed His word.

Three of their number had seen Him in a startling transfiguration. ‘They heard a supernatural voice, which declared Him to be the Son of God. ‘They all knew that their Master and ‘Teacher is the promised Messiah, the Son of David. What Peter voiced,““Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” was the deep conviction of each heart.

Then came the seeming tragedy. What He had predicted came to pass. ‘They delivered Him into the hands of the Gentiles. He was unjustly condemned. They nailed Him to the cross, where He died. He was buried. He arose from among the dead on the third day. After that He showed Himself alive by many infallible proofs, He appeared in their meeting room, passing through closed doors. He walked with them and talked with them. He ate in their presence. Once more they are together. It is a farewell meeting. For the last time they look into His face; for the last time they hear His words; for the last time He gives them command and promise. ‘Then all at once He extended His hands in blessing, the hands where they still beheld the marks of His erstwhile passion.

As Elisha, when he followed Elijah, his master, knew that something was about to happen, that Elijah would leave him without knowing the manner of his departure, so these disciples knew that their Lord would be taken from them, yet they knew not how He would leave them. ‘They must have remembered His words, “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world; again I leave the world, and go to the Father? (John xvi:28). They knew the hour had come when they were to be orphaned.

‘“‘And it came to pass, while He blessed them, He was parted from them, and carried up into heaven” (Luke xxiv: 51). ‘And when He had spoken these words, while they beheld, He was taken up, and a’ cloud received Him out of their sight” (Acts i:9). His feet, which, for thirty three years had walked the earth, the creation of His hands, left the ground, and gradually He is lifted into space. For a brief moment they beheld Him carried upward, when a cloud received Him and He vanished from their sight. The last vision they had of their beloved Lord was in the cloud, which took Him to His eternal dwelling place. And that cloud was not a cloud of vapour. The clouds of the sky are but “‘the dust of His feet”? (Nahum i:3). The cloud which received Him was the shining garment of glory, the Shekinah, with which, in olden times, He had manifested Himself in the midst of His people Israel; the glory which prophets had seen in pre-incarnation days. What He had foretold had come to pass; He had died; He had been raised from the dead; and now He returned to the Father. ‘And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold two men stood by them in white apparel, which also said, ““Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? 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 1:10-11). They could not take their eyes off the spot where they had seen Him disappear. Their eyes were fixed on the heavens. And then they listened to the message of His coming again from the same heavens, in like manner. They were familiar with this promise, for He had often spoken to them about His return, when they would see Him once more. They left the ascension mount filled with a joyous hope and glorious anticipation. Their physical attitude as they had looked steadfastly toward heaven became the spiritual attitude of the Church, born on the day when the Holy Spirit came down to earth. The Lord Jesus Christ was the all absorbing object before the heart of the early Church. Many of the believers had known Him in His life of humiliation, and the thousands of converts who believed on His name and were added to the body of Christ, who had never seen Him, heard from the lips of the disciples of His loveliness and graciousness. To see Him in His glory must have been the highest wish of the early Christians. Of them Peter wrote, ‘‘Whom having not seen, ye love, in whom, though ye now see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Peter i:8). The Apostle’s doctrine included as a prominent truth of Christianity the blessed hope of His return. It was taught the young converts from paganism that Christ will return, and will become King over all the earth. When the Holy Spirit unfolded the full truth as to redemption, and the Church of Christ, His body and His bride, the blessed hope was revealed as the great consummating event of the redemption plan of God. As we show in the examination of the many Scripture passages in this volume, if the hope of His return is given up, it means more than an incomplete and mutilated Gospel; it means the collapse of true Christian doctrine.

Research in patristic literature, the writings of the Ante-Nicene fathers, has shown that for at least 300 years the Church universal believed in and hoped for, the coming of the Lord. They waited for the coming of the Bridegroom. But what the Lord had indicated in His parable of the ten virgins (Matt. xxv) came to pass: “While the Bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.” The immediate coming of the Lord was no longer expected, and as the professing Church became corrupted by false doctrines and priestly assumption, the blessed hope was entirely forgotten. Occasionally during the centuries which followed an alarm was raised that the great judgment day was soontocome. It was so in the beginning of the seventh century and more so” when the year 1000 A. D. had come. Then it was universally believed that the Dies irae, the day of wrath, was about to break and the end of the world was at hand. The priests made the most of it and the “Church” gathered in enormous riches. The frightened people brought vast treasures so as to be ready for the judgment day, as if the “Church” would have any need of these riches when the world came to an end. Thus ‘the blessed hope” like other doctrines of the faith delivered unto the Saints, had become for many centuries a forgotten truth.

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