Will Christ Come Again?

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WILL CHRIST
COME AGAIN?

An Exposure of the Foolishness,

Fallacies and Falsehoods of

Shailer Mathers

By! R. A. TORREY

Dean of HTxe Bible Institute of Los Angeles

BIBLE INSTITUTE OF LOS ANGELES

536-558 South Hope Street
LOS ANGELES, “CALIFORNIA

Copyright, 1918

B>> R. A. TORRET

“WILL CHRIST COME AGAIN?” AN EXPOSURE

OF THE FOOLISHNESS, FALLACIES AND

FALSEHOODS OF SHAILER MATHEWS.

One of the most dangerous and harmful pamphlets or books published in the last year or two is the leaflet of Shailer Mathews entitled, “Will Christ Come Again?” The American Institute of Sacred Literature, with the large resources at its command, seems to have put forth its strongest efforts to get this pamphlet into the hands of every minister and prominent Christian worker in the land. In this attempt they have had the earnest and active co-operation of many influential ministers and religous bodies. When the pamphlet first appeared it seemed to many thoughtful people as though the reasoning of the pamphlet was so weak and many of the statements so manifestly false that the pamphlet would do good rather than harm by serving to open the eyes of many to the weakness of the cause of the postmillenarians, who felt compelled to resort to such methods as those illustrated in the pamphlet to prop up their waning cause. In point of fact this pamphlet has had this expected effect upon a great many; but on the other hand many were so determined that they would not be premillenarians that they have been ready to cordially welcome anything that attacked premillenarianism, even though it was full of the poison of unbelief. Further than this, not a few have been blinded by the subtleties of the pamphlet. A striking illustration of this is found in the fact that the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the most honored and influential missionary societies in this country, has sent a copy of this pamphlet to every one of the five hundred missionaries that they support in different parts of the world, earnestly commending the pamphlet, and the wife of one of the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a gifted and influential woman, Mrs. Clotilda L. McDowell, has

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written a letter ^9.. each, of thse missionaries, sending it with til?, ^ffcplllEt.-ariq Sctyjrig’ .in it: “The enclosed leaflet, stating as it does, with substantial accuracy, the position of the Methodist Episcopal Church on this important question.” It certainly is startling when a foreign missionary society, led by a woman of Mrs. McDowell’s influence, endorses officially a pamphlet which not only attacks the premillennial theory of our Lord’s return, but denies in the plainest terms that He will ever come again at all personally and bodily, and furthermore, discredits and sneers at the clear teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostles, and constantly seeks to undermine confidence in the absolute reliability of the Scriptures of both the Old Testament and the New. On page 21 of this pamphlet are found these words: “Will Christ come again 1 We answer in all reverence, not in the sense in which the early Christians (and from the whole pamphlet it is evident that in “the early Christians” Shailer Mathews includes Jesus Christ and the Apostles)... expected. Never in the sense that the premillenarians of today assert (i.e., as the immediate context in the pamphlet makes clear, personally, visibly, bodily).” We are informed by another Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church that Mrs. McDowell and the Board had no right to take this action, and we presume that this Bishop is correct in his statement, but nevertheless the Board took it, and it is a striking illustration of the peril that there is in the pamphlet.

It is not pleasant to say about any man, but especially about a man who has occupied so high a position in the educational world and in the organzed church as that occupied by Dr. Shailer Mathews, the things which we shall be forced to say in this review of his pamphlet, but Dr. Mathews has himself compelled it. He has attacked, not openly it is true, but none the less really because insidiously, the honor of God’s Word, the Bible, and of God’s Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He has said most contemptuous and slanderous things about both, as we shall show further on, and the man who attacks the honor and truthfulness of my Lord Jesus Christ, or who seeks to undermine faith in that Book that I know to be the Word

of God, I feel compelled to contend against and to speak about in the frankest terms, no matter who he is nor what position he may occupy. In speaking of him as “Shailer Mathews,” without the use of the titles which belong to him, no disrespect is intended, but he so signs himself. He uses no titles on the title page of his pamphlet. We confess that we respect him all the more for this. A great man does not need titles. But Shailer Mathews, if any man, has a right to use titles. He has been given the honorary degree of D.D. by three colleges: Colby, Oberlin and Brown University. He has received the honorary degree LL.D. from Pennsylvania State College. From 1899 to 1908 he occupied the position of Dean of the Divinity School, and from 1908 to the present time of the University of Chicago. Shailer Mathews is in reality a far more able man and a far better scholar and a far more intelligent reasoner than appears from this pamphlet. In this pamphlet he has ventured to write upon a subject to which he has given no thorough and honest study. Indeed his ignorance of the views and teachings of those whom he attacks — the premillenarians — is sometimes startling. Furthermore, he has allowed himself in this instance to be governed by his very violent and bitter prejudices rather than by his reasoning faculties, and thus has been betrayed into the fallacies and falsehoods that characterize the pamphlet from beginning to- end. There is reason for thinking that his deepest prejudices are not so much against the premillenarian view of the Second Coming of Christ as against the Divine authorty and inerrancy of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Inspired Apostles, and that this professed attack upon premillenarianism is really intended to be a camouflaged attack upon the authority and reliability of Jesus Christ and the New Testament writers, which he did not dare to attack directly and openly.

Let me say at the outset that the great fault of the pamphlet and the great danger that lies in it is not that it attacks the premillennial view of our Lord’s return, but that it persistently and constantly seeks to discredit the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and the holy men of God whom God, by His Holy Spirit, inspired to write the

New Tesatment Scriptures. If Shailer Mathews is right in his statements, then Jesus Christ, as we shall show later, was either an egregious fool or a consummate fraud. We shall see further on that there is no escaping this conclusion. To me the question of whether our Lord Jesus is coming before the millennium or after the millennium, or even the question whether He is coming again to this earth visibly and bodily at any time, is an entirely secondary question. The question of whether the inspired Apostles were infallible teachers or not, and above all the question whether our Lord Jesus Christ was an infallible teacher or not, is of the very first importance. That Jesus Chrst claimed to be a teacher sent from God, who spoke the very words of God, admits of no honest question (see John 12:48, 49 ;x 14:24; John 7:16). If our Lord Jesus was not a teacher sent from God, who spoke the very words of God, a Divinely inspired and absolutely infallible teacher, then He was either a sadly deluded fanatic or a deliberate liar. If He were either one or the other I must refuse to believe on Him, and become an infidel. There is no middle ground for any logical thinker to take. There is not enough of the intellectual trickster about me, even if there is about Shailer Mathews and his school, to believe that Jesus was either a sadly deluded fanatic or a deliberate liar and still claim to believe in Him as my Saviour and Lord. But our Lord Jesus was neither a sadly deluded fanatic nor a deliberate liar, He was what He claimed to be, a teacher sent from God, who spoke the very words of God, a Divinely inspired and absolutely infallible teacher. Yes, He was more than that; He was so entirely, even during His earthly life, God manifest in the flesh, that He could say truly: “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9), and could say again concerning Himself: “All men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father” (John 5:23). God Almighty has set His seal to these stupendous claims of our Lord Jesus by raising Him from the dead; and by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, which can be easily shown to be one of the best proven facts of history, Shailer Mathews, in seeking, even though it be in underhanded ways and with much subtlety, to discredit our Lord Jesus Christ,

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