Glimpses of the coming...

Preface

PREFACE.

This little book is large enough. To have right to be larger it would need to be a more thorough treatment of its great theme, concerning which it is only a series of hints. And for the arrangement of these, while a natural order has been sought, no attempt has been made toward a scientific method.

It enters on no history of doctrine concerning the Second Coming of The Son Of Man ; it gives no analysis of any of the various systems of interpreting the prophecies, such as have been learnedly argued under the designations of literal, normal, figurative, spiritual, symbolical ; it attempts nothing on the seductive field of a specific reference of specific prophecies, each to its nation or its person on the scene of history — a field elaborately traversed by innumerable explorers through paths interlacing or colliding ; it is not even devotional or practical in form, though it is hoped that a devout mind may find in it most practical suggestions ; it attempts no thorough exeviii Preface.

gesis of prophetic texts, which may be deemed a serious defect, though indeed it does seek to make audible at least the constant undertone of the grand Scriptural Anthem of The Coming, and to voice its one pervasive strain and to mark its rhythmic and unfaltering time.

Certain principles herein stated can be shown to be grounded solidly on the Word of God : these must stand, whether with or against any learned theories of the Second Advent. Where, as at many points, this little treatise takes the form of an explorative hypothesis ranging out upon a vast mystery, the single question is — how closely the main lines of guidance and the holding-points revealed by The Holy Spirit, are adhered to?

If the right or profit of hypothesis on this theme be questioned, the answer is instant — that Holy Scripture leaves us herein not without some ground of formulated thought, and in numerous passages invites us to search for it ; and that our search being tentative must be in the manner of hypothesis ; and that for us to speak slightingly of a reverent study of the prophecies, is to follow the fashion of an easy and shallow and not ancient piety, rather than to copy the Apostles and our Lord Himself, Who con-

Preface. ix

stantly hold up to view the Final Coming as the strong practical rebuke to worldliness and an inspiration to faith. The Church of our time stands in line of battle on the field of thought. It can not afford to discard this keen weapon of The Spirit. The Great Coming of The Lord, plainly taught in Holy Scripture, scoffed at by unbelief, and half-doubted in vast sections of the very Church whose business on the earth is to wait for it and to hasten it, must be not only replaced in its rightful rank of truths, but must be newly set in such presentment and array as shall confront the unbelief of the times — unbelief which doubts the Lord's Coming as it doubts The Lord.

The reason therefore for probing this theme in part with hypothesis is valid, even should any given hypothesis be found untenable. This treatise is an attempt to suggest a possible harmonizing of the two sharply divergent interpretations under which the Church has set fortfi the future Advent — thus a humble contribution to unity among the Christian forces : it is also an attempt to set the Advent in terms of thought which can take their place not only in arbitrary creeds, but in a cognizable system of history and of Nature — a system of unfailing laws. Let the theory now suggested be found as faulty on certain x Preface.

points as it is confessedly incomplete in presentation : what then ? The failure is of small moment : at least some minds will have been stirred with suggestions, and the need will have been emphasized of some attempt which shall not fail, to set the Great Coming in such a harmony of Christian thought as shall suffice to bring its immense practical power to bear on individual experience and on the general thought and life.

Since all our unity is in Christ, the Final Epoch which is our theme is herein treated as conceivable no other wise than as centralizing all its elements, principles and developments around and in the living and mighty Person of The Son Of God, The Eternal Word in Whom stands the whole life of humanity, past, present and to-come. For, it is possible that a treatment of the great Event not in the well-worn lines of either of the two great theories upon it, which have had such learned advocacy — but only as vitally and naturally connected with the Living Christ — may bring around it a fresh atmosphere favorable for thought. Those writers on the Second Advent seem most helpful to us who, with whatever theories, open it to us in its vital dynamics rather than as an outward mechanical operation.

Preface. xi

The author, undertaking this difficult theme not of his own motion, will be permitted to say that this treatise is published only by reason of the unexpected and urgent request of a large company of ministers in the city of New York, before whom a general outline of the views here given had been (also upon special request) privately read by him. Let this, however, be plainly understood : he is not aware that any one of the many ministers before whom this view was presented in outline assents to it in detail ; he is not definitely informed that any of them accept it in even its general principles : he deems them responsible only for the judgment that in the present state of discussion, this view would be suggestive and helpful to further thought by other minds.

In the main, the writer rests in the views advanced, deeming them agreeable with the Word of God and honorable to Christ. On the single point of the Resurrection, however, for the sake of a complete presentation of the hypothesis, some statements are made — somewhat positively in form — which while thought to be reconcilable with the general tenor of Holy Scripture, are confessed to be open to questioning. Only the thorough criticism and exegesis xi i Preface.

of a vast range of Scripture passages by those given to that special work can show the validity of these statements on the Resurrection.

"To the Law and to the Testimony!"

Contents

CONTENTS.

Part I. The Son Of Man As The Coming One

I. The Son Of Man— The Life In The Written Word,

II. The Son Of Man — The Divine Life In History,

III. The Continuous Coming Of The Son Of Man

IV. The Kingdom Of The Son Of Man, V. The Consummate Coming Of The Son Of Man

VI. The Approach Of Th£ Son Of Man, VII. The Unknown Day Of The Son Of Man, VIII. Groups And Cycles Of Coming Events,

IX. Crises And Epochs Of The Final Coming, i ii

24 31 34

Part II. The Millennial Coming Of The Son Of Man

55 I. Questions On Christ's Millennial Coming. . 59 xvi Contents.

The Series Of Questions Introduced. I.

In the history of the Church of Christ, and of the world, is there an Epoch recognizably distinct, such as may be termed the Millennium? $9

What are the chief moral and social characteristics of the Millennium ? 70

X. What are the physical characteristics of the Millennium ? . 72

XL

Is Christ's Millennial Coming and Reign real and personal — an actual efficiency on His part ; or does it consist merely in an increase of faith, love and zeal on the part of His Church ? 73

XII. In Christ's Millennial Coming and Reign, is He in a body of

flesh and blood ?

Is He in any such body (not flesh and blood, but "glorified ") as

is visible to the bodily eyes of men ? . . .74

XIII

Is the Millennium an Epoch in the Church in the Heavens as well as to the Church on earth : and if so, what are the bearings of that fact ? Which is the sphere of its original and chief development ? Rev. xix. xx 78

XIV. Is the Millennium introduced or accompanied by a Resurrection?

The First Resurrection — its nature, scene, subjects, period? Whether its subjects are visible on the earth in their presence and reign with Christ ? Rev. xix. 1, 1 1-16 : xx. 4-6. 84

II. General Survey Of Christ's Millennial Coming, ioi xviii Contents.

Part III. The Coming Of The Son Of Man In Final Judgment

I. The Culmination Of History, . . . .115

II. The Supreme Crisis Veiled In Symbolism, . 120

III. The Consummation Of Nature, . . . .127

IV. The Ultimate Of Resurrection, . . .132

V. The Consummate Personal Discrimination: . 136 —To The Right-Hand Of The Son Of Man, —To The Left-Hand Of The Son Of Man.

The Son Of Man As The Coming One.

PART L

THE SON OF MAN AS THE COMING ONE.

i.

THE SON OF MAN— THE LIFE IN THE WRITTEN WORD.

TT 7E testify that the Holy Scripture is the Word of ^* God.

This is the unchanging testimony of Christ's Church to the changing centuries. The Church which has seen the rising, the fading, and the fall of all the greatest earthly things, has tested this one thing and found it permanent ; wherefore, it sets to its seal — That the Word of The Lord abideth forever.

When we seek for the hiding-place of such enduring power, we find it where we find the secret of all power, in A Personal Life. Nothing but life can live. We think rightly of Holy Scripture, not when we consider it as a cabinet of precious abstract truths or as a code of high moral precepts ; but when we take it as the sure self-registering testimony of the progress with which that Life of God which is Personal in His Son, has been revealing itself through the long successions of human history.

Thus, the Word comes to us, not as an oracle imperiously uttered out of a mystery, an intrusion upon man's nature and upon the whole flow of the world ; not even as an arbitrary Divine declaration for practical benefit ; but as the living testimony of The Living God uttering itself through and in the life of man. From the beginning of the Old Testament to the closing of the New, the Word is the written Revelation of Jesus Christ Who is the Living and Eternal Word of God made manifest in our Flesh ; it is His continuous translation of Himself as the Personal Divine Life, into human consciousness, perception, affection and action; it is one ever-growing story of His Incarnation ; it is the panorama of the Coming of The Son Of Man — of His first, and final, and countless intermediate, comings. For, as Christ came in the Flesh by The Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, so — as the Universe at last shall see — by the power of the same Spirit He is to come in perfect glory, as the final issue and fruit from the long travail of the collective humanity: wherefore from the beginning ot

The Life in The Word. 3

the Gospel until now, and till The End when He shall have delivered up the Kingdom to God even The Father, His own chosen Name — Who might have called Himself " Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father" [Is. ix. 6], is this in-

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"The Son Of Man."

II.

THE SON OF MAN — THE DIVINE LIFE IN HISTORY.

The Son Of Man is The Son Of God — God in His whole unsearchable and eternal relation to humanity. We know man well enough to know practically, whatever may be our theories, that the absolutely perfect and ideal Man must be necessarily and essentially Divine ; for though we deem our day the best, we have never seen that Man among those born of human parents. We know God sufficiently to know, that, while we may theorize concerning Him, we cannot know Him at all except as He presents Himself to our thought in relations and through a whole type of Being developed from our own humanity. What nation, what soul, has ever conceived of a God that was not in some sense a God-Man ? Rid theology of a Christ viewed as essentially God ; make Him only a high creature or a second God ; prove His proper Deity to be a logical impossibility, which can be done by any reasoner as easily as four-hundred years ago any philosopher could prove it absurd to say that the

world is round : and you have simply removed the (4)

The Divine Life in History. 5

logical frame-work for man's conception of Deity, so that if man were to be limited by your arbitrary premises he would find it impossible to think of any Deity at all beyond a high creature or a second God ; but since man cannot permanently avoid framing a conception of God, you have done nothing after all but to confuse his mental machinery for an unavoidable conception; and sooner or later, a Christ as The God-Man is sure to return into human thought; as has been proved in history over and again. For He is God in manifestation. Jesus The Christ is God as known ; we have not seen beyond Him : and He says to us — " He that hath seen Me, hath seen The Father " [Jn. xiv. 9]. The Apostle Paul [Col. i. 15-17] declares Him to be "the Image of the invisible God," and that " by [Greek, in] Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in [on] earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created by Him and for Him : and He is before all things and by [in] Him all things consist [subsist]. " Also, it is written [Heb. i. 3] that He is " the express image of God's Person — upholding all things by the word of His power."

The Apostle John, opening his Gospel with sentences which in their measureless mystery and grandeur are like echoes rolling in from Eternity, declares — " In the beginning was The Word, and The Word was with God, and The Word was God : the Same was in the beginning with God : all things were made by [through] Him, and without [except through] Him was not anything made that was [hath been] made. In Him was [is] life, and the life was the light of men. .... That was the true Light which lighteneth every man that cometh into the world. .... And The Word was made [became] Flesh, and dwelt [tabernacled] among us" [Jn. i. 1-4, 9, 14]. In Holy Scripture the Person of Christ is a mystery ; but concerning Him this one thing is made known to us with perfect plainness — that the human race, whether in the body or dwelling in whatever spiritual sphere, and the whole moral, social, even physical world, are utterly given into the hands of Him Who called Himself The Son Of Man ; so that the creating of us is through His agency, and the Providential keeping and directing of us is His office, and the redeeming and saving of us is His work, and the suffering with us and for our sins is claimed by Him as His strange privilege, and the supreme Kingship and Headship over us is His prerogative, and all judging of us is in Him, and

The Divine Life in History. 7

except through Him is nothing made or done that is made or done concerning us.

The Christ is thus the operative force in all human history. History is, in its essence, the record of His continuous coming to man through innumerable Divine approaches, material, intellectual, moral ; with the record of man's active or passive reception of this personal Divine Life, or of man's repulsion or neglect of it. For while from the first moment of creation Christ comes to set up a Kingdom in love, man nevertheless stands in moral liberty : hence are the tumultuous dashings, the refluent tides of good and evil, " the eternal outflow and recall " as of a throbbing ocean, the seeming retardations of the Kingdom, the world's memorable disasters when against the patient rock of Infinite Love the world mis-using its liberty and massing its ungodly power, flings itself as a billow only to find itself broken and cast back in spray. Meantime with silent, but ceaseless augmentation Christ rears His Kingdom ; and

"The Testimony of Jesus is the spirit of Prophecy.''

III.

THE CONTINUOUS COMING OF THE SON OF MAN.

"The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy/' Since Christ's personal energy, vitalizing the moral, social, material world, and stirring as a deep life within all events, has been human history from the beginning, it is to be history till historic time shall end. Christ marshals the ages, future as well as past. Prophecy is history in the future tense. Therefore whatever great things of the Kingdom are written in the prophets for our learning, are to be known by us only as seen in the light of the personal Presence of The Son Of God. Whether we contemplate Creation, Incarnation, Resurrection, Advent, Millennial Glory, or Final Judgment, we are looking not at epochs or events arbitrarily appointed and to emerge mechanically as by celestial clock-work when their hour shall strike ; but at certain natural processes or results of Christ's living energy. Each either is, or flows from, some manifestation of His Divine-Human personality on the field of man's character and career. These

The Continuous Coming. 9

manifestations themselves are conditioned on a ter tain moral readiness in men to receive them ; also they correspond with a certain ripeness in the time and preparedness of all the accompanying events.

In the eternal Counsel of God, which is mystery, are appointed these various conjunctures of outward events, of human action, of material, mental, moral forces ; still though thus rooted— rather, because thus rooted, in the Divine Sovereignty, they stand in an infinite fitness with the whole frame of things, and with the whole flow of history. Thus no coming or manifestation of Christ, from the least to the greatest, is ever hurried or hindered and so thrown out of time ; none is ever unnatural or disorderly however it may seem to us. Since all things were created through The Son Of God and subsist through Him, all things are administered by Him in perfect accordance with His own nature, and so in perfect adaptation of each part to every other. " He is the Head of all principality and power" [Col. ii. 10]. And since, as He affirms [Mat. xxviii. 18] — "All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth," we are to think of the invisible world as always moved from Him through all' its immeasurable bounds with action perfectly consentaneous and correspondent in its sphere with that io The Coming One.

which in this material world proceeds from His everflowing, all-controlling Life.

" It pleased The Father that in Jesus Christ should all fullness dwell,— and by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; even by Him, whether they be things on earth or things in heaven " [Col. i. 19, 20]. Wherefore the Confession which The Master saith was revealed to His disciple Simon Peter not by man, but by The Father in Heaven, and on which as a Rock He would build His Church [Mat. xvi. 16-18], is our key for history and our light for prophecy, and links the Church on earth in one glorious hope with the Heavenly Jerusalem, while with united heart we cry —

We confess Jesus The Christ, The Son Of The Living God !

IV.

THE KINGDOM OF THE SON OF MAN.

Jesus The Christ, The Son Of The Living God, is King. A King has a kingdom. What, where, and when, is it ?

Various answers are heard. It is said to be a present kingdom in the hearts of His saints alone — its scene the true and vital Church below and above. It is said to have its present scene in the visible Church. It is said to be not present, but future ; He is waiting His appointed time to bring it in. It is said to be present in the Heavens, but future on the Earth when He shall be manifested in a glorious Presence here, and every eye shall see Him. It is said to consist in the willing obedience of His friends : it is said to consist in the submission by, or subjugation of, His foes« Is it not possible that each of these answers conveys, while it limits and reduces, the truth ?

The Scriptures seem to show that Christ's Kingdom viewed not as a display, but as a reality, is in its scene and nature, universal ; and that as to its time, it em- (ii)

braces all the Time there is, all epochs, ages, aeons, past, present and to come, of which man can conceive. [Eph. i. 20-22 : I Peter iii. 22 : Heb. i. 2, 3, 8 : Col. i. 16-19: ii. 9: 1 Cor. xv. 25 : Phil. ii. 9, 10.] All nature is Christ's, all powers, all materials and elements, all bodies and all souls, all His friends and all His foes, all spiritual forces and physical laws. Nature, matter, space, time — these things that are so real to us, are real, but only as they are framed into the dimension, the order and sequence, of His Kingdom. Space is nothing but the extent of His domain : Time is nothing but the continuance of His dominion: both are conceptions mediated to our thought by The God- Man. The Son Of God is King in every way, everywhere, and all the time. Where His Kingdom seems incomplete, is only where our vision of it is incomplete : while it seems to us to be waiting to be set up, it is already set up of old ; only we are waiting for the spiritual illumination to see it. Its methods indeed change with the changing epochs; it projects itself upon an evil world through dispensation after dispensation, and these grow in a glory of Divine manifestation ; but the Kingdom is something more than its manifestation to men's eyes, and is as real when ungodly hearts reject it and tempt the long suffering of the patient King, as when they accept it, or as when they are crushed beneath it.

Christ, " the Same yesterday, to-day and forever," is always the Coming One, always the Reigning One ; using all diverse methods of approach and governance ; not indeed recognized in His Kingship when aforetime He meekly tabernacled in the Flesh ; not recognized even to-day save by the men of faith ; yet none the less The King when He stood before Pontius Pilate's bar (where also He confessed Himself The King), none the less The King when He was throned upon the Gross (which also by its title confessed Him King) — none the less than He shall be when, manifested in awful glory on the great white Throne, He shall come on the clouds of heaven in the final Day.

From an ancient wall in Siena, a marvellous fresco looks forth. It shows The Christ Desolate. Weary and worn, He is bound to a pillar, bleeding from the scourge, fainting, with no friendly upholding save that of the cords that bind Him. The ignominious pillar seems His only friend. In prospect is the Cross. With utter physical exhaustion and agony, there is absolute loneliness and desertion as of One Forsaken on the earth and in the heavens. Yet the beholder finds prevalent through all the unspeakable sadness, a mysterious majesty in The Man, visibly such as may be conceived of in One throned at the right hand of Power. Meekness and majesty, suffering and glory, earthly shame and eternal might — these are not incongruous except to the eyes that are so filmed with the material that the soul of fact remains unseen. The picture is no proof, but it is an illustration. If Art can conceive, if hands can trace, such Kingship in such weakness, then surely a spiritual faith may cry even at front of Calvary, This Man is The Son Of God, therefore The King, Prince of a power that knows neither beginning nor end.

If to this whole view it be objected that our Lord and various inspired men spoke of the Kingdom of God as "to come/' as "near," as "at hand " — either affirming that it could not be entered except in a child-like character and a life of Christian discipleship — or pointing to it as to be brought in w r ith power in latter days — thus showing it as not yet established in such present and universal dominion as is claimed above ; the answer is not difficult. To examine the passages of Scripture which refer to the Kingdom, requires a thoroughness which this little treatise does not attempt. But it is thought that anv one examining them all in their general harmony may see that those Scriptures which require a certain character of discipleship for entrance into the Kingdom, make this requirement not as a condition for the existence of the Kingdom, but as the condition on which men may share in its glorious power and blessing; and that those Scriptures which seem to remit the Kingdom to the day of Christ's future coming to introduce the Millennium, are naturally and completely explicable as referring not to the reality of the Kingdom or to anything essential in it, but to its heightened manifestation and to its consummating development under the later and* fuller revelation within it of its King. Not in its substantial fact, but merely in a certain specific form is it represented as delayed : and if it be alleged that this future specific form or visible development of the Kingdom is so mighty as to be the very Kingdom itself to which prophecy refers ; it is to be replied that while prophecy may indeed refer to a form, we have no warrant in the character of Christ for reducing to any external form or visible development however glorious, a fact which He Himself plainly sets forth as spiritual in it's origin and nature: for He saith [Lk. xvii. 20, 21] when inquired of by the Pharisees what time the Kingdom i6. The Coming One.

of God should come — " The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation : neither shall they say, Lo here ! or Lo there ! for behold the Kingdom of God is within [in the midst of] you."

And if it be alleged that certain Scriptures show a Kingdom of Christ as beginning in the course of history — dating only from His Ascension above all heavens as the crucified Son Of Man risen from the dead; then without disputing such a Scriptural presentation as to the form of the Kingdom, we may reply that even this shows the Kingdom as already set up. We are not awaiting it now.

It is sometimes said in the use of an analogy drawn from human governments — as though they were delicate and exquisitely perfect or quite satisfactory images of God's dominion — that Christ is King in law y but not yet in fact. This only confuses the Divine authority and power with the human love and willingness. In Scripture Christ appears as Supreme in law, and in fact, and in every other conceivable range of relations: even the demons are subject unto Him. But if it be alleged that the Kingdom as to a certain form is in Holy Scripture expressly conditioned upon a coming of Christ ; then it is to be conceded that this is true ; and that Christ's comings are represented as repeating themselves along all the path of human history — each advent bringing in a new historical development of His kingly judicial power [Jn. xii. 31 : ix. 39] : wherefore, as it will be attempted to show hereafter, His final Coming will indeed consummate His Kingdom in its highest form and its grandest scope.

But in fully conceding this, nothing is conceded as to the Kingdom being not yet set up on earth in all its essential majesty and dominion ; and nothing is conceded as to any setting aside of the work of The Holy Spirit and putting in its place Christ's bodily presence, in establishing Christ's dominion among men, before the final judgment-hour: for nothing of this sort is either naturally involved in Christ's Coming, or warranted in Holy Scripture. The Spirit of God convicts of sin, shows Christ to men, gathers the Household of faith, and convinces of Judgment to come, until in Christ's final utmost manifestation through the same Spirit the last Judgment that was to come shall have fully come [Jn. xiv. 16, 26 : xvi.

: We look for a Kingdom to come : it is well ; every eye shall yet see it: but let us not fail to see also that the Kingdom already is. It always is, and always it is coming more and more ; only its manifestation is delayed. Why, except to prop some theory as to the scene or manner of Christ's Advent that cannot stand on Holy Scripture alone, should those who have learning and ingenuity use them to show that the Kingdom of Christ is not to be on earth until some later Advent sets it up ? Because foes and rebellion are rampant, shall we therefore say that there is no government in the land, while we behold the law always invincible in its might, and the vast marching armies of justice, and the domain of peace steadily broadening, and the hostile noise and fret all vain, and the civil power ready when its own chosen time shall come to crush all opposition into dust ? Because the morning Sun casts only level beams through the Eastern gate of its coming, shall we deny that there is yet sunrising or day, and teach that no great achievement in affairs is possible till noon?