The Second Coming of Christ

Sloe truth of the Second Coming of
Christ in the past few months has

come into a new prominence. For several years this great truth seems to have fallen into the background. About two years ago I was asked to write a book on the Second Coming of Christ. I had long wished to write a book on that subject, but I wondered if it was timely, so little was being said about the Second Coming of Our Lord, but I decided to write the book. There was considerable delay in publishing it, but about a year ago it was given to the public. *Almost simultaneously with the appearing of that book many other books on the same subject began to appear on both sides of the Atlantic. Then there came a great series of Prophetic Conferences, extending from Chicago to the Coast, until it may be said that the truth of our Lord’s coming again has become the most prominent truth in the thought of the Church in the past few months. To many the doctrine of our Lord’s Return appears like a visionary and impractical doctrine. If any of you think so, I will not blame you; for I recall the time when it seemed so to me. Early in my first pastorate, the first Premillennial Conference was held in New York City. It so happened that the chorister of my church was also the editor of a secular paper and he became greatly interested in the reports in the New York papers of the Premillennial Conference. He came to me and asked me if I would not preach on the Second Coming of Christ. I put him off, but thought to myself, “You will be a great deal older than you are now before you hear me preaching on so impractical and visionary a subject as that.” At the close of my first pastorate I went to Germany for further study. In Erlangen I pursued my studies under the immediate direction of the greatest thinker along theological lines there was in Germany at that time, Dr. Fr. H. R. Frank, at that time rector of the University of Erlangen. He gave me the free run of his own library and directed my studies. Among other books that he recommended me to read was Martensen’s “Dogmatik.” This great Danish theolo- +. gian was a Premillennarian, and, as I read his book, I became convinced intellectually of the truth of the Premillennial Return of our Lord, but I was not at all interested in it. On my return from Germany, I took a pastorate in Minneapolis. In our Minneapolis ministers’ meeting one Monday morning there was a debate between Rev. Dr. Sample, at that time pastor of the Westminster Church, Minneapolis, and Rev. M. D. Shudder, pastor of one of the Baptist churches of Minneapolis, on the subject of our Lord’s Return. Dr. Sample, who afterward became pastor of a church in New York, maintained the premillennial view; Mr. Shudder, who afterwards became a Unitarian, maintained the post-millennial view. Dr. Sample simply wiped the earth with Mr. Shudder and I went away from the meeting more fully convinced than ever of the truth of the Premillennial view, but still I was not greatly interested in it. It did not seem to me to matter much which view was correct. Some time after I went to Chicago to the First International Convention of Christian Workers. Being elected President of the Association, I came in very close contact with a Rescue Mission worker from New York and became greatly interested in him and his mission. Returning to Minneapolis, we took this worker back with us for a visit.

Upon his return to New York he wrote me a letter and enclosed a tract on the Second Coming of Christ. This tract made the imminent return of our Lord a very vivid and practical reality in my life. Now I not only got hold of the truth of our Lord’s Return, but that truth got hold of me, and it transformed my life and ministry.

There have been four great epochs in my Christian experience:

First, When I was led to accept Jesus Christ as my personal Saviour and to surrender my life to Him as my Lord and Master and in consequence of that surrender decided to enter the Christian ministry. The second was when I was led to see that beyond a question the entire Bible, from the first chapter of Genesis to the last verse of the last chapter of Revelation, was the inerrant Word of God, and, in consequence of seeing that, was led to resolve to take my stand upon every promise I found in the Bible that properly applied to me and to obey every commandment that applied to me. Up to that time, I had held very “advanced” views regarding the inspiration of the Bible and its inerrancy and authority. I was a “new theologian” of the new theologians, when new theology was not as popular nor as common as it is to-day. I say I had entertained very “advanced” views; to be more accurate, I had entertained very loose and unwarranted views, but now I knew for a certainty that the entire Bible was the very Word of God. The third great epoch in my life was when I was led to see, from a study of the Word of God, that there was a definite baptism with the Holy Spirit for every child of God in this dispensation as well as in the days of the Apostles, and when I was led to seek and claim and obtain this baptism for myself. The fourth great epoch was when I was led, not merely to believe theoretically in the Premillennial Return of our Lord, but when that great truth got possession of me. The world and its ambitions lost their power. What did I care whether I was rich or poor, whether I had good report or evil report from the world, whether I had plenty or whether I had hardship in this present age, the Lord Himself was soon coming and might come any time and all I cared for was to be well-pleasing in His sight when He should appear.

That every Christian should be interested in the doctrine of our Lord’s return is evident from the fact that it is so frequently referred to in the Word of God; the Second Coming of Christ is mentioned 318 times in the 260 chapters of the New Testament and is said to occupy one in every 25 verses from Matthew to Revelation, i. e., it is mentioned far more frequently than there are chapters in the New Testament. Ought not then this great truth to occupy a more prominent position in our thought than it does in the thought of the average believer or average preacher of the Gospel? Further than this, by far the greater number of the definite predictions concerning Christ in the Old Testament are connected with His Second Coming. We sometimes wonder how it is that the Jews of our Lord’s time did not see the truth so clearly revealed in some of the prophecies of the Old Testament (for example, Isa. 53) that He was to come as a suffering Messiah, as an atoning sacrifice for sin. It is indeed surprising as this truth is so clearly revealed in the Old Testament; but it is far more surprising that Christians of today do not see the truth of His coming again to reign as King; for there are far more predictions concerning this in the Bible than there are predictions concerning His Coming to suffer as an atoning sacrifice for sin. The fact of the coming again of Jesus Christ is the great Bible argument for a life of watchfulness, fidelity, wisdom, activity, simplicity, self-restraint, energetic soul winning, prayer and abiding in Christ (e. g. Matt. 24:44-46; Luke 21 :34-36; 1 John 2:28; Matt. 25 entire chapter). The truth of our Lord’s return is the one truth with which we are urged to comfort sorrowing saints (1 Thess. 4:16-18, cf. Isa. 40:1, 9, 10).

What we have to say to-night on the Return of our Lord will come under two heads, First, The Fact of His Coming Again; Second, The Manner of His Coming Again.

I. The Fact of His Coming Again.

In John 14 our Lord Himself says, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” In Heb. 9:28, R. V., we read, “So Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear the second time, apart from sin, to them that wait for Him, unto salvation.” In Philippians 3:20, 21, R. V., Paul says, “For our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory, according to the working whereby He is able even to subject all things unto Himself.” In 1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17, R. V., Paul says again, “For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we that are alive that are left, shall together with,them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” In Acts 1:11, we read that the two heavenly messengers who stood by the disciples as they saw the Lord ascending to the Father said, “This Jesus, who was received up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye beheld Him going into heaven.” And in Acts 3:19, 20, R. V., we read, “Repent ye therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that so there may come seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord; and that He may send the Christ who hath been appointed for you, even Jesus, whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, whereof God spake by the mouth of His holy prophets which have been from of old.” If these passages of the Word of God mean anything they certainly state in the clearest and most definite way possible that our Lord Jesus Christ is coming again.

The coming again of our Lord spoken of im these passages is not His coming at death. In whatever sense our Lord may come to any believer at his death, that coming is certainly not the coming described in the passages quoted. Almost none of the things mentioned in these verses occur at the death of the believer. At the death of the believer, our bodies are not changed into the likeness of His glorious body; rather they crumble into corruption and decay. At the death of the individual believer, those who have already departed and are dead in Christ are not raised nor are we caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air. By no twisting that any honest searcher after truth will consent to can these passages be made to describe what occurs at the death of the believer. Furthermore, our Lord Himself draws a very careful and clear-cut distinction between death and His own coming. As Peter followed Him down the shore of Galilee after he had been told of the manner of death by which He Himself should glorify God, he saw John the beloved disciple following, and he asked his Lord, What shall come to John? and our Lord replied, “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?” (John 20:18-22). “Tarry” evidently means “remain alive.” If the coming to which our Lord referred is His coming at death, then what our Lord Jesus said put in other words would be this, “If I will that he remain alive till he die, what is that to thee?” Of course, this would be nonsense and our Lord never spoke nonsense. He made it clear as day that the death of the believer was one thing; that His coming was something entirely different and apart.

Neither do these passages describe the coming again of our Lord Jesus at Pentecost, nor at the coming of the Holy Spirit to the individual believer. Pentecost was in a very real sense a coming of Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit to the individual believer is in a very real sense a coming of Christ: it is the work of the Holy Spirit when He comes to the believer to form within us the indwelling Christ, and so our Lord Jesus when He gave the promise of the Holy Spirit said, “I will come to you” (John 14:18. Note context, read whole passage from vs. 15-23). But while the coming of the Holy Spirit is in a very real sense a coming of Christ, it is not the coming of Christ described in the verses quoted above. The things described so accurately and so vividly in these passages do not occur at the coming of the Holy Spirit. At the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Lord Himself does not descend from heaven “with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God,’ the dead in Christ are not raised, living believers are not caught up together with the dead who have just been raised to meet the Lord in the air. At the coming of the Holy Spirit we are not taken up to be with Christ; He comes to be with us. Furthermore, all these promises but one were made after the coming of the Holy Spirit and pointed to a coming of Christ still future.

Further still, the coming again of our Lord described in the passages quoted is not His coming again at the destruction of Jerusalem. What little I was taught in the theological seminary on this subject was to the effect that the destruction of Jerusalem was the Second Coming of Christ. Now the destruction of Jerusalem was undoubtedly in a sense a precursor, prophecy and type of the judgment at the end of this age in connection with our Lord’s return, and, therefore, in Matthew 24 and Mark 13 the two events are described in close connection with each other, but God’s judgment on Jerusalem in A. D. 70 is manifestly not the event referred to in the passages given above, the things so minutely described in these passages did not occur at the destruction of Jerusalem. On that occasion the Lord Himself did not descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God; it is certain that on that occasion those who sleep in Jesus were not raised and living believers were not transformed and clothed upon with a body like unto the glorious body of our risen Lord, they were not caught up to meet the Lord in the air. All things were not restored at that time. Besides this, years after the destruction of Jerusalem, we find John still looking forward to the Lord’s coming (Rev. 22:20). And it was long after the destruction of Jerusalem that John himself wrote the record of the Lord’s words to Peter at Galilee concerning himself: “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren that that disciple should not die; yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, If I will that he tarry tll I come, what is that to thee?”

It is clearly evident then that the very plain, explicit and definite predictions of Christ Himself and the Apostles regarding our Lord’s Return which were quoted above have not yet been fulfilled in any historic event that has yet occurred nor in any series of events. The coming again of our Lord Jesus so frequently mentioned in the New Testament as the great hope of the Church lies still in the future.

Il. The Manner of His Coming.

Now let us turn to the manner of our Lord’s Coming Again.

First of all, it meeds to be said that there will be different stages in our Lord’s Return. He is to come first in the air whither His believing people are caught up to meet Him. After a period of dealing with His people in the air, judging them and rewarding them according to their works, He will come with His believing people to the earth, then there will follow a long succession of events connected with His coming. Second, The Bible makes it very plain that the Coming of the Lord Jesus will be a personal coming. In Acts 1:11 we read, “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.” And Paul said, “The Lord himself shall descend from heaven.” And Jesus Himself said, “J will come again (John 14:3). The Second Coming of Christ then is not merely the coming of some great moral reformation or spiritual uplift; it is the coming of Jesus Himself. We have a way of speaking of a revival of religion as the coming of Christ. In a sense it is a coming of Christ, but there is to be a personal return of our Lord, a coming of this very same Jesus in His own person. Nothing else will satisfy the heart of the believer. When I was a pastor in Minneapolis, a godly minister of the Gospel, a man who I believe really loved his Lord, for he had made sacrifices for Him, wrote an essay on The Second Coming of Christ in which he said, “We must not look for the personal return of our Lord, but must learn to see Him and be satished with Him as coming more and more in all the wonders and glories of this closing 19th century.” In other words, we were not to expect the Lord Himself to come but should see the fulfilment of His promise of coming again in the electric telegraph, in the telephone, in the improvement of our steam railways, in the advance of social conditions and civilization; this, according to this minister, was the coming promised in the Bible. I have said that I believe this minister really loved his Lord, but I could never understand how any one who really loved the Lord could write these words. It is not merely social improvements that we need and long for, it is not even the messages and gifts of grace of our Lord that we long for; the one who really loves his Lord longs for the Lord Himself. Suppose when I go East in a few weeks I should say to my wife, “I am coming back again and I wish you to be watching for my return.” She certainly would be watching for it and longing for it without my telling her to. Every day during my absence I write her a letter full of expressions of my love to her. Now and then I send her some beautiful gift as a token of my remembrance, but all the while she is watching for me. Some day a friend comes in and says to her, “Is your husband coming back again?’ “Yes, certainly.” “When is he coming back?” “I do not know but I trust soon.” “Why do you believe he is coming back?” “Oh, he said he would.” Then suppose this friend should say “He did not mean he was coming back personally. You must not expect him to return personally. Is he not writing you frequent letters, and sending you gifts as tokens of his love now and then?” “Yes.” “Well, what he meant was that you must ‘see him and be satisfied with him as coming more and more’ in these letters which he is writing you and these gifts which he is sending you.” What do you think my wife would say? I know well what she would say. Her eyes would flash with indignation and she would say, “I do not want his letters and his gifts. I want himself.” And the true believer wants the Lord Himself and it is the Lord Jesus Himself we are going to have. “The Lord Himself” shall come; “this very Jesus” will come. The late Dr. James H. Brooks of St. Louis, once united in marriage a beautiful girl in his church

to an officer in the United States army. Very soon after the marriage this officer was sent to a new post where he was not permitted to take his bride with him. As he left her in obedience to the government, he said to comfort her, “I will come back soon. I do not know how soon. These appointments are often brief. It may be for a day; it may be for a longer time, but not for a very long time.” During his absence, he wrote her many letters telling her of his love. He sent her beautiful gifts as tokens of his love. One day she sat in the parlor with a letter in her hand that she had just received from him and looking through the box of beautiful gifts he had sent her. Suddenly, she heard a sound at the door, she heard a familiar footstep; looking up, there he stood in the door; she threw down the letter, stumbled over the box, scattered the gifts, ran to him and was clasped to his heart. What did she care for letters and gifts, she had himself. And the day is not very far away when we shall have, not merely those treasured messages from Christ that we find in the Bible and when we shall have not merely the many wondrous gifts of His grace, but when we shall have the Lord Himself.

Third, Our Lord’s coming again will be bodily and visible. We read in Acts 1:11, “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.” Now our Lord went up into heaven before their eyes, visibly and bodily, and so He will come again. I was once on the Council examining a brother minister for installation. The man was thoroughly orthodox on all the fundamental doctrines. In the course of the examination I put to him the question, “Do you believe in the personal return of our Lord?” He replied, “No, I do not.” Then I asked him, “What do you do with Acts 1:11, “This same Jesus shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven’?” He replied, “This simply sets forth a certainty that He will come but not that He will come personally and bodily.” But the Greek words do not admit of any such interpretation. The words translated “So come in like manner” have and can have but one meaning, literally translated they mean “‘Thus in the manner which.” They never describe mere certainty; they always and necessarily describe manner, they cannot mean anything else, and God sent His own heavenly messengers to tell us that as Jesus was seen going up bodily and visibly that He would come again in the very manner in which He was seen going. Again in Hebrews 9:28, R. V., we read, “So Christ having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear the second time.” Now the Greek word translated “shall appear” in this passage means “shall be seen.” The first meaning given in the best Greek Lexicon of the New Testament to the word is “to see with the eyes,” and that is what this passage means, that Jesus “shall be seen with the eyes’ the second time,” that He shall come visibly and bodily.

We read again in Revelation 1:7, “Behold, He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him; and they also which pierced Him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him.” Some years ago I was preaching one morning in the Moody Church in Chicago on the Second Coming of Christ. One, who was not merely a disciple, but an apostle of Pastor Russell and his Millennial Dawn vagaries was in the audience. He came to me at the close of the address and said, “Mr. Torrey, you don’t believe, do you, that the Lord Jesus will come in a way that He shall be seen with our physical eye?’ I replied, “It does not make a particle of difference what I believe, the only question is what God says, and God says, ‘Every eye shall see Him’.” The coming of Christ plainly predicted in the Scriptures is an entirely different sort of coming from that which Pastor Russell assures us took place in October, 1874.

Fourth. In the next place, Jesus Christ is coming again with great publicity. We read in Matthew 24:26, 27, R. V., “If therefore they shall say unto you, Behold, He is in the wilderness; go not forth: Behold, He is in the inner chambers; believe it not. For as the lightning cometh forth from the east; and is seen even unto the west; so shall be the coming of the Son of man.” Every little while some one appears in some obscure corner of the earth and sets himself forth as the Christ come again. Now it is Schweinfurth; again it is Dora Beekman in Minnesota, and then it is Prince Michael in Detroit, Michigan; then it is Tead in Chicago; still again Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy in Concord; again the Bab in Persia; still again Mrs. Annie Besant’s pet boy, “The Star of the East.” But all of these “inner chamber” Christs and obscure corner Christs are a humbug long since predicted and exploded. They would have no power over any one if people were not ignorant of their Bibles. Some years ago a young friend of mine who was assisting B. Fay Mills in his work, came to me and asked me if it might not be possible that the Christ had already come and was here and waiting to manifest Himself. I knew what he meant: at that time B. Fay Mills was much carried away with Prof. Herron. I knew that this young man was wondering if Prof. Herron might not be the Christ come back again. I pointed him to the passage given above, which, of course, utterly exploded that nonsense. When Mr. Moody was holding his last meetings in Detroit I assisted him in the work. One day a long-haired disciple of Prince Michael, who was at that time in the Jackson State’s Prison for a statutory offense, came to Mr. Moody to explain to him his opinions and to get Mr. Moody to accept them. Mr. Moody turned him over to me, as he usually did cranks of various kinds. I took this disciple of Prince Michael to my room and let him expound his views. Then I said to him, “Do you really think that Prince Michael is Christ come back again?” He said that he did. Then I asked him what he did with Matthew 24:26, 27, “As the lightning cometh forth from the east, and is seen even unto the west; so shall be the coming of the Son of man.” He gave me this very illuminating answer, “When Christ appeared first, did He not come in Palestine?” “Yes.” “Ts that not in the East?” “Yes.” “And is not Michigan in the West?” “Yes.” “Well, then, in the coming of Prince Michael is He not coming from the East to the West?” This apostle of Prince Michael afterwards deserted Prince Michael and came to me and wanted me to put him into Christian work, but I fear that his grasp of truth was not very strong, for he was soon involved with Ann O’Delia Dis de Bar. A very enthusiastic disciple of Mrs. Eddy invited my youngest sister a number of times to go with her to the Christian Science meeting in the leading Christian Science church in New York. Finally my sister yielded to her importunities and went. As they came home from the meeting this ardent Christian Scientist said to my sister, “How did you like it?” “I did not like it at all.” “Why not?” “First of all, you had no sermon.” “What do you mean,” said the Christian Scientist, “by a sermon?” My sister replied, “An exposition of the Scripture.” “Oh,” said this woman, “we would not have that, that would be human and we have nothing human in our gatherings.” “But,” my sister replied, “they read Mrs. Eddy’s ‘Science and Health’ for half an hour.” “Oh, yes, but that is not human, that is the second coming of Christ.” If she had said it was a coming of the anti-christ there would have been more reason in it. All of these inner chamber Christs and obscure corner Christs are, as we have said, a long since predicted and -exploded humbug. One does not need to go to

hear them or see them. Christ Himself has told us all about them and exposed them centuries before they appeared. Pastor Russell’s Christ who came in October, 1874, belongs with the rest; certainly His coming was not the coming described by our Lord Himself in Matthew 24:26, 27; on the contrary, it was a kind of coming against which our Lord Himself warned us. You may be able to see Pastor Russell’s moving picture shows for nothing but none the less you are being humbugged if you go. Fifth, When the Lord Jesus comes again, He is “coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.’ In Matthew 24:30 He says, “They shall see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” Some one may ask, “What does it mean by saying, He is coming on the clouds? If you will look up with your concordance all the passages in the Bible in which any one is said to come with clouds, you will find that there is but one person who came in the clouds, or on the clouds, and that person was Jehovah (see Ex. 91:9; 34:5; Ps. 91:1, 2; Matt. 17:53) Ps. 104-3 Isa. 19°12 For our Lord to say that He was coming in the clouds was as much as for Him to say that when He came again, He was com- - ing as Jehovah. Before His incarnation our Lord existed in the form of God (Phil. 2:6), that is to say, as the Heavenly world beheld Him they beheld Him in a visible form of such infinite glory that it told at once that He was God. When He came to this earth, He came as a man, wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. They did what they pleased with Him; they despised and rejected Him; they spat upon Him, they slapped Him in the face, they scourged Him, they nailed Him to the cross of Calvary, they killed Him, but when He comes again, He will come as Jehovah, when every knee must bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Jehovah) to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:9-11). The glory of His coming is beyond description, No earthly pageant that this world ever saw can, for a moment, be compared with it. Some years ago, I was speaking in the auditorium at Northfield on the Second Coming of Christ. It was a hot, sultry day. As I spoke the clouds gathered and it became very dark, black clouds gathered right above the auditorium. I had just read Matthew 24 :30 and said “The Son of man is coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.’ The word “glory” had scarcely fallen from my lips when there was a sudden flash and an awful crash, the whole auditorium was a blaze of light — the lightning had struck the building where we were gathered! Some sprang to their feet and screamed. I simply said, “This is nothing to what it will be when the Lord really comes.” I looked down in front of me and Mr. Moody’s eldest sister, Mrs. Walker, was sitting there. Her face was a study. It was radiant with joy and peace unspeakable. After the lecture I went down to speak to her, “Oh,” she said as she took my hand, “Mr. Torrey, it was the gladdest moment of my life. I thought the Lord had really come.” Suppose He should come at this moment, suppose right now there should be the shout and we should hear the voice of the archangel and the trump of God and the Lord Himself should descend with power and great glory, would it be the gladdest moment of your life?

Sixth, When our Lord Jesus comes again, He is coming in the glory of His Father with the holy angels. In Matthew 16:27, R. V., He is recorded as saying, “For the Son of man shall come in the glory of the Father with His angels; and then shall He reward every man according to His deeds.” All heaven will empty itself to follow in His train when He comes again. How many angels there may be I do not know, myriads and myriads of them. Men of our day have a way of thinking that the human race are the only persons there are in the universe; how stupid and unreasonable, to say nothing about how unscriptural the thought. Are we to believe that all these countless worlds of light that dot the heavens by night are not inhabited? Some one will say, “Astronomy teaches us that many of them could not be inhabited for they have no atmosphere that a human being could breathe.” Yes, but are there no beings but human beings? Are there no beings that can live under other conditions than those under which we can live? This earth that man inhabits is a very small portion of the universe. It is so small a speck in space that compared with one of the heavenly bodies, and that by no means the largest, the sun, that if the sun were hollow and a hole were bored into it, you could pour into it 1,200,000 earths like ours and still there would be room for them to rattle around, and there are millions of these worlds. If every member of the human race were lost, the number of holy and blessed beings would immeasurably surpass the number of the lost. And not only may some of these wondrous worlds of light be inhabited by countless angelic beings but the aerial spaces themselves are inhabited by spirits good and evil, demons and angels, “principalities, powers, world rulers,” and in the train of our returning King shall come these wonderful angels of light. Seventh, When Jesus Christ comes again, He will come as a thief, 1. e. unannounced, without warning, unexpectedly. suddenly. In Revelation 16: 15, the Lord Jesus says, “Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.” In 1 Thessalonians 5:2, 3, the Apostle Paul tells us, “Yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.” There will be no previous announcement of the coming of our Lord. The world will not be expecting Him. He Himself says in Matthew 24: 44, “Therefore be ye also ready: for in an hour that ye think not, the Son of man cometh.” He will take every one unawares. Men will not be standing out on the hilltops in white robes waiting for Him. The world will be taken up with its usual occupations. Our Lord says, “As were the days of Noah, so shall be the coming of the Son of man. For as in those days which were before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, unto the day that Noah entered into the ark and they knew not until the flood came and took them all away, so shall be the coming of the Son of man” (Matt. 24: 37-39). Everything will be going on as usual; women will be in the stores buying dress cloth for dresses and all manner of finery; they will be in the jewelry stores buying diamonds and pearls and rubies and emeralds; the theatres will be in full blast, crowded with the eager seekers after pleasure; throngs will be going up and down the streets; the dance halls will be crowded; society people will be tangoing, maxixing, hesitating, waltzing, bunny-hugging, grizzly bearing, Texas Tommying; there will be wild hilarity with no thought of judgment near at hand. Wedding parties will be in full swing, when suddenly without a moment’s warning there will be the shout, the voice of the archangel will ring out, the trump of God will reverberate, the sleeping

saints will be raised, and true believers will be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and the worldlings and worldly professors of religion will be left behind to meet the tribulation and the judgment.

Ill. The Results of His Coming Again.

We have no time left to speak of the results of our Lord’s Return; they will be glorious; they can be summed up under seven heads:

1. The results of His coming as
regards God.

2. The results of His coming as
regards the Church.

3. The results of His coming as
regards Israel.

4. The results of His coming as regards the nations and wunregenerate individuals.

5. The results of His coming as regards the human society as a whole.

6. The results of His coming as regards the Antichrist and the Devil.

7. The results of His coming as
regards the physical universe.

To sum it all up, every loftiest dream of social philosopher and enthusiast for humanity will be more than realized; there will be a new and glorious man, in a new and glorious body, in a new and glorious society in a new and glorious universe. The coming again of Christ will realize more for this world in a day than all the peace conferences and peace palaces at the Hague could realize in 10,000 years and well may we cry, “Amen, come Lord Jesus.”

Jesus is coming again! How those words ought to thrill our hearts! How they do thrill our hearts! Jesus is coming again. It may be in a year; it may be in a month; it may be in a day; it may be tonight! Would you be glad if right now we should hear the shout and the voice of the archangel and the trump of God and all true believers should this moment begin to rise and pass right up to meet our Lord Jesus to be forever with Him?