The return of the Redeemer

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Coming of the Lord . .. 9

II. The Promise of His Coming 31

Chapter II The Promise Of His Coming

I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. — John 1J/. 3.

In one of his missionary journeys through Africa, at a time when he was in constant peril of his life and when it seemed that his plans for the redemption of the black people might be ruined any day, David Livingstone wrote in his journal: "But I read that Jesus came and said, 'All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations — and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.' It is the word of a gentleman of the most sacred and strictest honor, and there is an end on't."

With equal confidence devout souls have relied on the promise of our Lord to return in person to the world he is eager to bring to himself. Sustained in all their trials by the consciousness that Christ is always their comrade and helper, they still look for the day of his appearing, remembering that he said, "I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." 1 It is on the word of Jesus himself that the expectation of his return is most firmly based. Indeed, without this there would be no sure foundation for the hope of his coming again.

It will be well for us to group 'the sayings of our Lord about his second advent in a single

J John 14. 3.

exhibit, and later to analyze them in detail. For convenience let us first take those passages which refer to the time of his coming, and afterward those which pertain to the manner and purpose of his return.

1. On the time of the second coming we have three sets of sayings: those which speak of his advent as near, those which speak of it as distant, and those in which the time seems to be uncertain even to the mind of Jesus himself. Let us arrange these sayings of our Lord in the order of the differences named:

(1) The time is near.

Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come. 2

Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. 3

This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. 4

Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh. 5

If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me. c

(2) The time is distant.

So shall it be in the end of this world.

The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity. 7

And this gospel of the kingdom shall be

3 Matthew 16. 28; Mark 9. 1.

5 Matthew 24. 44. Same idea stated often.

preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come. 8

(3) The time is uncertain.

Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? 9

But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the Angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. 10

Expressions like "My lord delayeth his coming," u "While the bridegroom tarried/' 12 After a long time the lord of those servants conieth," 13 in the parables which Jesus used to illustrate the operations of his kingdom, may be referred either to the uncertainty of the time of his return or to the probable remoteness of that event. In the same way the frequent exhortations to "watch" 14 may be regarded as applying to the uncertainty of the time of Christ's return, or to the probable nearness of his advent, as held in the mind of our Lord. It is impossible to determine with positiveness. Therefore, we may assign them to the class of indefinite sayings with respect to time.

2. The manner and purpose of the second advent. The remaining passages from the Gospels, which are a record of our Lord's words concerning his return, deal for the most part ^ith the manner and purpose of his second coming. Let us group them in the order in which they appear

10 Mark 13. 32. Matthew 24. 36. "Matthew 24. ft. 12 Matthew 25. 5. 13 Matthew 25. 19.

THE BETURN OF THE REDEEMER

in the narratives. It will be noticed that the work of judgment takes a very prominent place in these declarations:

For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. 15

For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 16

And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 17

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

And before him shall be gathered all the nations: and he shall separate them one from another. ls

Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. 10

Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. 20

And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. ...

Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed. 21

I go to prepare a place for you.

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. 22

In these utterances of our Lord it is said that he will come suddenly, that his return will be marked by displays of glory and power, that he will be accompanied by holy angels, that he will come at a time when men are not expecting him, that his purpose will be to judge the world, that his appearance will occasion grief to many, but that he will receive his own unto himself.

These declarations are sufficiently clear in themselves, but when taken together with what Jesus said about the time of his return they throw the mind into same confusion. If we had before us everything that fell from his lips on this subject, and knew the exact circumstances under which he spoke in each instance, our difficulties probably would disappear. As it is, we are dependent on the somewhat indefinite records of the gospel narratives. Our Lord's disciples were more anxious for the immediate establishment of his kingdom than for any knowledge about the long future. This will account in some measure for the vagueness and even the seeming contradictions which we find in their reports of Christ's words on his coming again. This indefiniteness is best illustrated in the records of our Lord's apocalyptic address, which should be carefully read again and again in the three Gospels which contain it. 23

3. Confusion of times and events in the final discourse of Jesus on his second advent. Having remarked that the temple structures which his discipies were admiring would some day be beaten to the ground, his followers recall his previous announcement that Jerusalem would be overthrown, and ask:

Tell us, when shall these things be, and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?- 4

Upon this Jesus begins to talk about the future, and speaks words of undying interest concerning events which evidently were mingled together in the minds of his hearers. The disciples undoubtedly thought that the fall of Jerusalem, the coming again of Christ, and the end of the world were only several aspects of the same tragic crisis. This confusion they passed on to others, and we have it in the reports of Christ's address which are before us. Some scholars imagine they can tell from the face of the records where Jesus made the transition from one item to another in this prophecy. Others say that the whole discourse dealt with the fall of Jerusalem, and nothing else; still others, that the second coming is the only matter included, though the fall of Jerusalem is an incident of that advent. But not one of these claims can be established to the satisfaction of Bible students generally. It is impossible to "prove from the accounts given that Jesus said all he had to say on the fall of Jerusalem up to a certain point, and then moved on to the second coming, which subject he finished without going back to the overthrow of Jerusalem. Nor is it possible to prove that the discourse is to be applied exclusively to any one of the three things suggested by the questions of the disciples. The minds of these men were confused, and they have sent down to us a report which in its present form shows that confusion. The reasons for this are not hard to trace.

1. Though this discourse is spoken of as an address, it was really an informal conversation, as were most of our Lord's instructions to his disciples. It started with a question, and it was probably interrupted here and there by other questions. We are all aware how conversations will turn from point to point, and how a talker who has an idea to develop will be compelled, sometimes quite abruptly, to bring it back to the attention of his hearers who have for a moment diverted it to some other theme. It is probable that this occurred in the colloquy of Jesus on the occasion of his apocalyptic discourse. It is one defensible explanation of the seeming breaks and contradictions in the reports.

2. Only four men heard this discourse. 25 They told it to others. The words of Jesus were not written down till long after the event. They were doubtless correctly reported as single utterances. Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would safeguard the memory of his disciples. 26 But inspiration does not guarantee that the precise order in which a long conversation on several subjects was held shall be preserved without the slightest deviation. There are many illustrations in the Bible of the fact that the inspired writers did not always follow a logical arrangement of their subject-matter. But what is essential, the spiritual truth, of which the narrative is only a means of convey-' ance, is always kept wholly and accurately. We know from an examination of the Gospels that some of the things reported as having been said in this discourse were also said at other times, or in the memory of the writers were set down to other occasions, or were intentionally brought over to this discourse for the sake of a convenient survey of what our Lord had said on his second advent. 27 In the same way the Sermon on the Mount contains much that Jesus said at other times than the specific day on which that discourse is described as having been delivered.

3. Jesus made no attempt to correct the opinion of his disciples that the fall of Jerusalem, the second coming, and the end of the w r orld were three phases of the same event. The reason for this may not be perfectly known to us, but in part we can easily understand it. Our Lord had very little interest in times and seasons ; he had a profound concern for great central truths. The nearest he came to fixing the date of the fall of Jerusalem was to say that the generation then living would not pass away till it had happened. As to the hour of his return, he said he did not know w T hen it would occur, and the angels in heaven were equally without information. It was a matter known only to his Father. How much else was kept back from the human consciousness of Jesus we cannot know. How much he shared the feelings of the people of his own day, whose minds were filled with the prophecies found in the Old Testament and outside it, we cannot tell. Paul has opened room for much speculation in that direction in his remarkable words about the selfhumiliation of the Son of man :

27 For example, in Matthew 24. 17, 23, 28, 37, 41 we have what is given as having been said on another occasion in Luke 17. 20-37. Also, what is found in Matthew 24. 43-51, as a part of this discourse, is assigned to another occasion in Luke 12. 39-46.

THE PEOMISE OF HIS COMING

Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:

But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:

And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. 28

Did this humbling of himself include accommodating himself to the impressions of the people around him, so far as these ideas did not conflict with saving truth? Was he indifferent to the small mistakes in judgment they were making on matters which did not affect their moral and spiritual interests? If so, this will account in large measure for the fact that he refrained from correcting their unimportant errors. In the light of history, and on the reason of the case itself, we can see how they fell short of the actual facts, as time has brought them forth ; but had we been in their places, we doubtless should have made no clearer statement of Christ's words than they were able to make.

Whatever Jesus may have thought about the possibility of a very near occurrence of the things on which he was speaking to his disciples in this great discourse, it is certain that after his resurrection he had only a remote coming again to this world in his mind. It is a striking fact that following his rising from the tOmb Jesus is not recorded as having said anything about a further return. That does not prove that he never did thereafter utter anything on the subject of the second advent. The argument from silence, even in sacred history, is not safe. Moreover, we are told that Jesus continued in close fellowship with

!8 Philippians 2. 6-8.

lis disciples till the hour of his ascension, "being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God." 29 Among these things it is not unlikely that the second coming was mentioned, though it may not ' have been understood by the disciples, who we know were at that time much exercised over the outward setting up of the kingdom. But we do know that Jesus was now taking a forward look of indefinite length. He had said to Mary on the morning of his resurrection: "I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God." 30 He had commanded his disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit. He had commissioned them to go with the gospel "unto the uttermost part of the earth." 31 He had thrown his gaze into the long future. He knew that his final return would fall far beyond the generation then living. From these considerations we perceive that our Lord was not speaking of any event connected with the fall of Jerusalem when he said in this discourse :

And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; then shall the end come. 32

For the gospel was not previous to that event preached in the whole of any world that can fairly be denoted by the term, whether the known world, the civilized world, the Roman world, the Jewish world, or any other world whatsoever. Some will answer that it was indeed representatively preached to all the world, in the sense that persons from all parts of the world did hear the truth on the day of Pentecost. This is virtually what Luke says in the Acts of the Apostles. 33 But the phrase "every nation under heaven" is simply one example of many which could be given to illustrate the rhetorical freedom which writers of the day gave themselves, and which Luke uses frequently. 34 The Pharisees are represented in the fourth Gospel as saying of the popularity of Jesus: "Behold, the world is gone after him." 35 In the same fashion John declares that if all Christ's saying and doings had been written down, he supposes "that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." 36 It is not hard to understand that kind of exaggeration in Jewish writers, and we do not think it improper. But with reference to the wide extent of the commission to preach his gospel, we know that Jesus did not speak in this way when he said, "Go ye into all the world," for he also gave an explicit statement of his program. He told his disciples that they were to be his witnesses "unto the uttermost part of the earth." 37 Now, the earth is this planet whereon we live, and not any geographical, civil, or social designation sometimes called the world in an adapted sense. The gospel was not preached "unto the uttermost part of the earth" before the fall of Jerusalem, which occurred A. D. 70; nor has it since been preached to that extent. This ought to put a quietus on those who say that Christ may return at any moment. He has gone on record against that claim. The gospel must "first" be preached everywhere; "then 1 ' — but how soon thereafter no one can say — he will come back. 38

But some will reply that in the sense Jesus meant his w 7 ords to be taken, the gospel must have been preached in the whole world before the fall of Jerusalem, otherwise Paul could not have truthfully said that in his time the gospel had been "in all the world/' and "w^as preached to every creature which is under heaven." 39 The answer to this has already been given in what has been said about the rhetorical license the ancient writers gave themselves. The fact is that the gospel has not been literally preached everywhere, as we know r full well, and no amount of juggling with words, however ingeniously done, can alter that stubborn truth.

Over against this illustration of the way the words of Jesus may be misunderstood, if reason is cast aside, we may place the interpretation sometimes given to the declaration of our Lord.

Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. 40

These words must apply to the destruction of Jerusalem. That generation did not pass away before the overthrow of the Jewish capital, but it did pass away without seeing the return of our Lord in any but a spiritual sense, to which we shall refer later. It would seem almost unnecessary to pause here long enough to refute the claim that in this w r ord "generation" means "race," and that as the Hebrew race has not passed away, what Jesus really said was, that the Jews would not disappear till he came again. But the Jew 7 s are never going to disappear while the world lasts, as prophecy plainly affirms and as history shows to be very probable. Hence it is foolish to press this interpretation, even if the language permitted it, which it does not. The word here rendered "generation" is properly so translated. Nobody would think of calling it anything but "gen eration" if he had not a theory to build up which the word "race" would help him to construct. Brains were given us to use in a natural and not in an artificial way.

4. The several comings of Christ and the final coming. The key to the seeming contradictions in the words of Jesus about his coming again is found in the fact that he was not always speaking about the same thing. He announced one definite coming at the end of the age to judge the world, and in that final coming he will appear in person accompanied by the heavenly ministers of his power. But from the day of his resurrection to this hour he has been coming in a diversity of manifestations. His rising from the dead was an event of the most pivotal importance. It opened a new epoch in human history and in the progress of religion. It gave the disciples new courage, and furnished them with a theme for their preaching of invincible power. It gave to the church for all time a sure foundation for faith in the Son of man. The apostles preached Jesus and the resurrection with quenchless enthusiasm. They ceaselessly testified that after he rose from the dead he ascended to the Majesty on high, but they also proclaimed with equal fervor that he would come again.

Our Lord may be said to have come again on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit promised by him fell upon the disciples gathered in the upper room. In his farewell discourse to his disciples on the night before his crucifixion, as recorded in John's Gospel, he had said :

I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.

At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.

If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. 41

By such words he explained that his coming through the Holy Spirit would be a revelation of himself to their inner spiritual nature. Though they would not see him with the eyes of the flesh, yet there would be something essentially personal about his coming to them through the Holy Spirit :

Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come.

He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you. 42

Thus the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and the repeated and continuous entrance of the Spirit of truth into the lives of men may be regarded as in a true sense the coming of Christ. For this reason some have held that through this coming were fulfilled those predictions of our Lord that he would return during the lives of those to whom he spoke, and this may have been his meaning. Furthermore, on the day of Pentecost the apostle Peter declared that the descent of the Holy Spirit was in fulfillment of the events which the prophet Joel had said would precede the "great and notable day of the Lord. 43

But the coming of the Holy Spirit, in so far as this can be called the coming of Christ, does not fulfill the predictions of our Lord concerning the judgment of the world at the end of the age. Moreover, one of the commonest of all our Christian beliefs is that the Holy Spirit is a distinct personality. Jesus himself said :

I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever;

Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive. 44

But, it is held by others, though the coming of the Holy Spirit cannot be actually identified as the personal coming of Christ, yet the promised return of our Lord did occur in connection with it. In defense of this theory it is said that after Pentecost our Lord's disciples "came to experience a consciousness of his presence which they never afterward altogether lost." This is true, but in spite of it the apostles still kept preaching and writing about his return in the future. If the second advent of Christ was contemporaneous with the descent of the Holy Spirit, the apostles did not know it, for they continued to look for his return, as we shall see when we come to examine their writings. Moreover, to say that, while Christ's return is not just the same as the descent of the Holy Spirit, it yet accompanied it and occurred with it, is only to darken counsel with words.

In a broad sense the destruction of Jerusalem was a coining of the Lord. It also marked the close of an epoch and the beginning of a new age in the progress of religion. Judaism was never again to be what it had been. But the overthrow of the ancient city, frightful as were the events which attended it, was not signalized by those occurrences which our Lord said would be inseparable from his coming again at the end of the age. It might be possible to say that the portents in the sky and the mourning of the tribes of the earth were symbolically realized in the awful devastation wrought by the armies of Titus; but the gathering of the elect from the four corners of the world, and the final judgment of the nations of mankind surely found no counterpart in that havoc of war. Neither was there a translation of the saints to heaven, for John lived and wrote perhaps twenty years after the destruction of Jerusalem, and one cannot think he would have been omitted from the list of the elect. All great overturnings, such as the late war and scores of other upheavals in civilization, which are in the nature of divine judgments, may in a large way be described as the coming of the Lord. In this manner the fall of Jerusalem may be regarded as a coming of Christ. When so considered, it may also halp us to understand how the prediction of our Lord that he would come in power within the generation to which he spoke was literally fulfilled.

The progress of the church and the advance of society have been wrought not so much by slow evolution as by repeated impulses from sudden revolutions and unexpected openings of the windows of heaven. Widespread revivals of religion, great and enduring reforms, extraordinary devel-

THE PKOMISE OF HIS COMING

opments in missions, may truly be called the coming of the Lord. The lives of individuals, not less than the careers of nations, are subject to the same experience. The Holy Spirit quickens conscience, convicts of sin, stirs to penitence, inspires faith, imparts the new birth. This is a coming of the Lord. It is often as dramatic in its operations in a human character as the fall of Jerusalem was in the history of nations. Jesus is represented as saying :

Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. 45

This is a gracious coming of the Lord, realized in the happy experience of millions. On the Damascus road Paul is arrested by the voice of the Lord and the unbearable splendor of the eternal glory. That was a coming of the Lord. That kind of miraculous advent of Christ to the souls of men is startling society every day. The main proof of the divine source of our religion is that our Lord is publicly coming to such vast numbers of redeemed spirits. Yet no careful student of the Bible will say that these sublime triumphs of grace fulfill our Lord's promise of his return to judge the world. No more would it be adequate to say, as some have dared to do, that at death we have the final coming of Christ. Such an assertion empties at one stroke nearly every prediction Christ made about his coming again of any definitive meaning.

After we have made every allowance required to reconcile the seeming inconsistencies in the prophecy of our Lord concerning his second advent, it is still impossible to explain the predictions which remain on any other ground than that Christ announced in clear terms that he was coming back at the end of the age to raise the dead, judge the world, and introduce the life of the heavenly world.

Chapter III The Expectation Of His Coming

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. 11.

During his lifetime Ferdinand Lassalle inspired such enthusiasm for his doctrines and such devotion to himself that when he died his followers were at first inconsolable. Gradually the fancy took them that a man of such ability could not be permanently kept out of the world, and that eventually he would return. Within recent times there have been men and women among the Social Democrats of Europe who comforted themselves with the expectation that their magnetic leader would some day come back to guide them and to give victory to their cause.