The Return of the Lord

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.

Forgotten truths were gradually recovered, and the last of all brought back to the Church, is the truth of the return of the Lord as the hope of the Church. The Reformation did not bring this recovery. The mighty men of God, the chosen instruments of the Spirit of God, to lead the people of God out of Romish night, paid little attention to the study of the truth of the Lord’s return. John Knox, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli and Martin Luther believed that Christ would return. They held the belief of their times, that when He makes good His promised second coming it would bring the end of all things. Dr. Martin Luther did not share the optimism of others that the church of the Reformation would lead on in victory and conquer the world for Christ. The writer has a copy of a sermon preached by Luther on “The Second Advent of Christ’’; the date of publication is 1539. In it he did not predict smooth things, but voiced the opinion that the anti-Christian forces would gather strength, that the Church would become more carnal, that true doctrines would be abandoned before the Lord comes again. He also states that the Lord would find a small remnant only awaiting His coming. But it was not given to these great servants of the Lord to discover and herald the details of the lost hope.

Only in recent times the “Mid-night cry” has sounded forth to arouse the sleeping virgins, representing Christendom, and to restore to His true Church ‘“‘that blessed hope.” About a hundred years ago the Lord used a number of men, whose names are hardly known and recognized by Church historians, to unlock the blessed secrets of the Lord’s coming and the truths which cluster around it. These men were godly, scholarly and humble. ‘They possessed what is so rare today — humility, self-effacement paired with true scholarship. Through them was sounded forth, in Great Britain first of all, the mid-night cry “‘Behold the Bridegroom! Go ye forth to meet Him.” A great revival of the study of prophecy followed and that resulted in the mighty and far reaching revivals of the nineteenth century, by which countless thousands were saved. It brought about a greater activity in foreign missionary work. And now all the world hears of the truth of Christ’s coming back to earth again some future day. ‘Thousands of volumes have been published in scores of languages teaching the return of our Lord. Hymns are sung which express faith, hope and joy in anticipation of that glorious event. Conferences for the study of prophecy have been held and are being held throughout Christendom, and those who gather are inspired, by the fact of His coming, to greater devotion to the Lord and more self-sacrificing service for him and for humanity. For many years every outstanding evangelist has been a believer and a preacher of the Lord’s return. Some of the greatest and most successful missionary movements, like the China Inland Mission, have been inaugurated and maintained by those who believe in the imminent coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is also an interesting fact that all the best and most spiritual expositors of the Word of God for a number of years have been the men who know and teach the hope of His coming.

Whenever the Holy Spirit revives a great truth, the enemy, the other spirit, begins at once to antagonize that truth. This he does in different ways. One of his ways is to put a counterfeit truth alongside of the real truth; in other words, he perverts the truth. He also is satisfied to let the restored truth stand as it is, and instead of fighting it openly, he links with it some of his soul destroying errors. In this way he succeeds in bringing the truth into disrepute. ‘Then he uses the friends of the truth to hurt the truth, in making them fanatics, and extremists. All this and much more he has done with the truth of the return of the Lord.

Satan hates the Word of God and the Son of God. The first time the old serpent acted, he made a strike at the Word of God (Gen. iii); the second time he attacked the Son of God (Matt. iv). He hates the truth of the Lord’s coming as much as he hates the truth of the Gospel of our salvation. As soon as the blessed hope had been restored to the Church in a definite and Scriptural testimony, he used the Irvingite movement to hurt that truth. First he introduced the fanatical claim of the restoration of Pentecostal gifts, such as the gifts of speaking in a foreign tongue, prophecy and healing. This was followed by one of the worst errors which men can teach, namely, that the Lord Jesus Christ had a fallen nature. Yet Edward Irving and his followers were strong believers in the second coming of Christ and taught it, for a time at least, in the Scriptural way. Then came the so-called Millerite delusion. Miller and the mother of the unscriptural Seventh Day Adventist cult, Mrs. White, were the subtle tools of the enemy. ‘They claimed to have visions and direct revelations from God. ‘Then dates were set in which the Lord would appear. This delusion did an untold harm in that generation, and the enemies of the study of prophecy still use the hallucinations of the originators of Seventh Day Adventism as a warning against such a study. The present day teaching of the Seventh Day cult is perniciously unscriptural. ‘The whole truth of the blessed hope is perverted by these errorists. Mormonism, the delusion of the Latter Day Saints, likewise mumbles about His return. Mormonism is a semi-pagan religion, and yet they teach that Christ will come back to earth.

Perhaps the worst of all cults which teaches the return of our Lord, and which has done more harm among those who seek the truth than the Irvingites, the Adventists and the Mormons, is the Russell-cult. It was started by a man who called himself ‘Pastor’? Charles T. Russell. According to his scheme Christ came again in 1874. Since that time Russell taught, Christ has been here. Some of his deluded women followers claimed that Russell was Christ. Then forty years later He was to be revealed as King and the millennium was to begin. But what happened forty years later in 1914 is known to everybody. Besides teaching such inventions he denied the Godhead of the Lord Jesus Christ; he denied the physical resurrection of the body of Christ, and taught other abominable errors. The system once known as “Millennial Dawnism” has changed its name but not its teachings. It goes now by the name of “The International Bible Student Association.”

Still more subtle are the numerous Pentecostal movements, such as the “Apostolic Faith’” — ‘‘Latter Rain’” — ‘‘McPhersonism” and others. As we have shown in our volume on the ‘‘Healing Question,” church-history records many similar movements in the past. The last was the Irvingite movement. ‘These Pentecostal cults claim a return to Apostolic times, another Pentecost and with it the restoration of one of the inferior gifts of the Spirit, which is the easiest to counterfeit, the gift of tongues. With it goes faith-healing, generally called “Divine Healing.” Pentecostalism makes much of the coming of the Lord. ‘They claim to have visions and trances in which they see Him coming. Some, like Mrs. McPherson of Los Angeles, claim verbal inspiration for their “messages” about the coming of the Lord. The different men and women healers, who attract thousands by their propaganda, like the Bosworth Brothers, Price, McPherson and others, also teach about His coming.

And this is not all. The late war produced a large number of men and women, who instead of interpreting prophecy, turned to prophesying. They picked out the unfortunate Hohenzollern as the Anti-christ. ‘They set the exact year when the Lord would come again. ‘They were all found out as false prophets. But it has not discouraged them from trying again. We have collected pamphlets and articles in which every year, since 1916, is prophesied to be the year of His return. Even now a pamphlet is advertised in a number of magazines, which should never lend their pages for such propaganda, in which the author tries to answer in a perverted way the question ‘‘How long to the end?” from the last chapter of Daniel. We have always warned and do so now against this unscriptural date and day setting, which is one of the devil’s choicest weapons against a sane and Scriptural study of the truth of the Lord’s return. And there is still more to be said. Those who held the Scriptural truth on this doctrine have become unsettled; some, for different reasons, have abandoned it altogether; others have accepted new theories as to the Church in relation to His coming, and one teaches now that no one need to trouble about a coming “great tribulation” preceding His return, for, as he says,there will be no tribulation(!)

We have felt therefore that a simple setting forth, wholly from the New Testament, of the truth of the Lord’s coming, is demanded by these conditions. The best way to get hold of the truth is by turning to the Word of God and examining the different passages, in an exegetical way, which deal with that particular truth. We have done so in this little volume.

The Modernist does not believe it. ‘The Modernist of the last days of this age is prophesied in 2 Peter iii:1-4. He sneers at His return. How can he believe in such a return? If the Lord Jesus came into the world like every other human being comes into the world, as the Modernist believes by denying the Virgin Birth, then the Lord Jesus also died like every other human being dies, was buried like every other human being was and remained in the grave like every other human being remained there. How can He return, if He was not raised from the dead? From the side of the Modernist we expect nothing but sneers. He is hopeless.

But we hope and pray that the simple way in which the doctrine of our Lord’s return is unfolded in the pages which follow will open the eyes of many believers who have treated the blessed hope with indifference. Books about the coming of the Lord are good enough, but many of them theorize and do not use the Scriptures as they should be used. Real light and conviction comes through the illumination of the Holy Spirit from the Text of the Word of God. We expect that this volume will be greatly used, not because it is a better book than others, for it is not, but because the Scriptures are so prominently displayed in its pages.

We also hope that those who have followed men who claim to give “new light” and who have abandoned the simplicity of prophetic interpretation, will also be benefited by reading the progressive development of the doctrine of His Return as presented from the Scriptures.