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The Return of the Lord 
 
 What the New Testament teaches about the 
 
 second coming of Christ. An examination of 
 
 the leading passages in the New Testament 
 dealing with His return. 
 
 
 
 By 
 ARNO CLEMENS GAEBELEIN 
 Editor of “Our Hope” 
 
 PuBLICATION OrFice “Our Hope” 
 
 456 FourtH AVENUE 
 New York, N. Y. 
 
 And All Booksellers 
 
? 
 
 yf Copyright 1925 , ‘ | 
 
 t 
 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 Chapter 1. The Tord Soeur an iio ae Cae wate 
 Chapter II. The Return of the Lord in the Gospels.. 
 Chapter III]. The Return of the Lord in the Acts.... 
 
 Chapter IV. The Return of the Lord in the Pauline 
 PEDISUICR Tene rie ate pou? Cictahael cai eee ee ceases Moai ee, ay 
 
 Chapter V. The Return of the Lord in the General 
 BO VCORE A BAO fo GS se A ANERL CUPL OMIM AR TD 
 
 Ghenter VI. The Return of the Lord in the Book of 
 
 PP EUBLATIOTINS Hae Col Lia gaye Ot seg eri nti Ra Te, ate 
 
 Chapter VII. Twenty Prominent Facts Taught in 
 the New Testament on the Return of the Lord... 
 
 Chapter VIII. Fifty Prophecies of the Old Testament 
 Which Can only be Fulfilled when the Lord Returns 
 
 42 
 
 47 
 
 85 
 
 94 
 
 111 
 
 119 
 
CN) a 
 ad 
 
 
 
CHAPTER I 
 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 Almost nineteen hundred years ago there stood on a moun- 
 tain slope near Jerusalem a group of men. In their midst 
 stood One whom they had followed as their Master and Lord. 
 For many months they had listened to the words of life, which 
 came from His lips, and witnessed the miracles of divine 
 power and mercy, which were wrought by Him in every sec- 
 tion of Israel’s land. The eyes of the blind were opened 
 instantaneously; the paralytics walked; the dumb spake; the 
 deaf heard. Many cursed with leprosy were cleansed by His 
 commanding power. Three times death had to release its 
 prey. A young girl and a young man, after physical death 
 had claimed them, were restored to life. They had seen a 
 greater miracle than the one at Nain’s gate, when He had 
 stopped a funeral and turned weeping into laughter of joy. 
 One of His friends had been four days in the grave. He 
 spoke the word and the dead arose. Thousands had been fed 
 by Him also in a miraculous way. ‘The wind and the waves 
 obeyed His word. 
 
 Three of their number had seen Him in a startling trans- 
 figuration. ‘They heard a supernatural voice, which declared 
 Him to be the Son of God. ‘They all knew that their Master 
 and ‘Teacher is the promised |Messiah, the Son of David. 
 What Peter voiced,““Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living 
 God” was the deep conviction of each heart. 
 
 Then came the seeming tragedy. What He had predicted 
 came to pass. ‘They delivered Him into the hands of the 
 Gentiles. He was unjustly condemned. They nailed Him 
 to the cross, where He died. Hewas buried. He arose from 
 among the dead on the third day. After that He showed 
 Himself alive by many infallible proofs, He appeared in 
 
 5 
 
6 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 their meeting room, passing through closed doors. He 
 walked with them and talked with them. He ate in their 
 presence. Once more they are together. It is a farewell 
 meeting. For the last time they look into His face; for the 
 last time they hear His words; for the last time He gives them 
 command and promise. ‘Then all at once He extended His 
 hands in blessing, the hands where they still beheld the marks 
 of His erstwhile passion. 
 
 As Elisha, when he followed Elijah, his master, knew that 
 something was about to happen, that Elijah would leave him 
 without knowing the manner of his departure, so these dis- 
 ciples knew that their Lord would be taken from them, yet 
 they knew not how He would leave them. ‘They must have 
 remembered His words, “I came forth from the Father, and 
 am come into the world; again I leave the world, and go to the 
 Father? (John xvi:28). They knew the hour had come when 
 they were to be orphaned. 
 
 ‘“‘And it came to pass, while He blessed them, He was 
 parted from them, and carried up into heaven” (Luke xxiv: 
 51). ‘And when He had spoken these words, while they 
 beheld, He was taken up, and a' cloud received Him out of 
 their sight” (Acts i:9). His feet, which, for thirty three years 
 had walked the earth, the creation of His hands, left the 
 ground, and gradually He is lifted into space. For a brief 
 moment they beheld Him carried upward, when a cloud 
 received Him and He vanished from their sight. The last 
 vision they had of their beloved Lord was in the cloud, which 
 took Him to His eternal dwelling place. And that cloud was 
 not a cloud of vapour. The clouds of the sky are but “‘the 
 dust of His feet”? (Nahum i:3). The cloud which received 
 Him was the shining garment of glory, the Shekinah, with 
 which, in olden times, He had manifested Himself in the 
 midst of His people Israel; the glory which prophets had seen 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 7 
 
 in pre-incarnation days. What He had foretold had come 
 to pass; He had died; He had been raised from the dead; and 
 now He returned to the Father. 
 ‘And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He 
 went up, behold two men stood by them in white apparel, 
 which also said, ““Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up 
 into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you 
 into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him 
 go into heaven” (Acts 1:10-11). They could not take their 
 eyes off the spot where they had seen Him disappear. 
 Their eyes were fixed on the heavens. And then they listened 
 to the message of His coming again from the same heavens, 
 in like manner. They were familiar with this promise, for 
 He had often spoken to them about His return, when they 
 would see Him once more. They left the ascension mount 
 filled with a joyous hope and glorious anticipation. Their 
 physical attitude as they had looked steadfastly toward 
 heaven became the spiritual attitude of the Church, born on 
 the day when the Holy Spirit came down to earth. The 
 Lord Jesus Christ was the all absorbing object before the 
 heart of the early Church. Many of the believers had known 
 Him in His life of humiliation, and the thousands of converts 
 who believed on His name and were added to the body of 
 Christ, who had never seen Him, heard from the lips of the 
 disciples of His loveliness and graciousness. To see Him in 
 His glory must have been the highest wish of the early 
 Christians. Of them Peter wrote, ‘‘Whom having not seen, 
 ye love, in whom, though ye now see Him not, yet believing, 
 ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Peter i:8). 
 The Apostle’s doctrine included as a prominent truth of 
 Christianity the blessed hope of His return. It was taught 
 the young converts from paganism that Christ will return, 
 and will become King over all the earth. When the Holy 
 
8 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 Spirit unfolded the full truth as to redemption, and the 
 Church of Christ, His body and His bride, the blessed hope 
 was revealed as the great consummating event of the redemp- 
 tion plan of God. As we show in the examination of the many 
 Scripture passages in this volume, if the hope of His return 
 is given up, it means more than an incomplete and mutilated 
 Gospel; it means the collapse of true Christian doctrine. 
 
 Research in patristic literature, the writings of the Ante- 
 Nicene fathers, has shown that for at least 300 years the 
 Church universal believed in and hoped for, the coming of 
 the Lord. They waited for the coming of the Bridegroom. 
 But what the Lord had indicated in His parable of the ten 
 virgins (Matt. xxv) came to pass: “While the Bridegroom 
 tarried, they all slumbered and slept.” The immediate 
 coming of the Lord was no longer expected, and as the pro- 
 fessing Church became corrupted by false doctrines and 
 priestly assumption, the blessed hope was entirely forgotten. 
 Occasionally during the centuries which followed an alarm 
 was raised that the great judgment day was soontocome. It 
 was so in the beginning of the seventh century and more so” 
 when the year 1000 A. D. had come. Then it was universally 
 believed that the Dies irae, the day of wrath, was about to 
 break and the end of the world was at hand. The priests 
 made the most of it and the “Church” gathered in enormous 
 riches. The frightened people brought vast treasures so 
 as to be ready for the judgment day, as if the “Church” would 
 have any need of these riches when the world came to an end. 
 Thus ‘the blessed hope” like other doctrines of the faith 
 delivered unto the Saints, had become for many centuries a 
 forgotten truth. 
 
 Forgotten truths were gradually recovered, and the last of 
 all brought back to the Church, is the truth of the return of 
 the Lord as the hope of the Church. The Reformation did 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 9 
 
 not bring this recovery. The mighty men of God, the 
 chosen instruments of the Spirit of God, to lead the people 
 of God out of Romish night, paid little attention to the study 
 of the truth of the Lord’s return. John Knox, John Calvin, 
 Ulrich Zwingli and Martin Luther believed that Christ would 
 return. They held the belief of their times, that when He 
 makes good His promised second coming it would bring the 
 end of all things. Dr. Martin Luther did not share the 
 optimism of others that the church of the Reformation would 
 lead on in victory and conquer the world for Christ. The 
 writer has a copy of a sermon preached by Luther on “The 
 Second Advent of Christ’’; the date of publication is 1539. 
 In it he did not predict smooth things, but voiced the opinion 
 that the anti-Christian forces would gather strength, that 
 the Church would become more carnal, that true doctrines 
 would be abandoned before the Lord comes again. He also 
 states that the Lord would find a small remnant only awaiting 
 His coming. But it was not given to these great servants 
 of the Lord to discover and herald the details of the lost hope. 
 
 Only in recent times the “Mid-night cry” has sounded 
 forth to arouse the sleeping virgins, representing Christen- 
 dom, and to restore to His true Church ‘“‘that blessed hope.” 
 About a hundred years ago the Lord used a number of men, 
 whose names are hardly known and recognized by Church 
 historians, to unlock the blessed secrets of the Lord’s coming 
 and the truths which cluster around it. These men were 
 godly, scholarly and humble. ‘They possessed what is so 
 rare today—humility, self-effacement paired with true 
 scholarship. Through them was sounded forth, in Great 
 Britain first of all, the mid-night cry “‘Behold the Bride- 
 groom! Go ye forth to meet Him.” A great revival of the 
 study of prophecy followed and that resulted in the mighty 
 and far reaching revivals of the nineteenth century, by which 
 
10 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 countless thousands were saved. It brought about a greater 
 activity in foreign missionary work. And now all the world 
 hears of the truth of Christ’s coming back to earth again 
 some future day. ‘Thousands of volumes have been pub- 
 lished in scores of languages teaching the return of our Lord. 
 Hymns are sung which express faith, hope and joy in anti- 
 cipation of that glorious event. Conferences for the study of 
 prophecy have been held and are being held throughout 
 Christendom, and those who gather are inspired, by the fact 
 of His coming, to greater devotion to the Lord and more self- 
 sacrificing service for him and for humanity. For many 
 years every outstanding evangelist has been a believer and a 
 preacher of the Lord’s return. Some of the greatest and 
 most successful missionary movements, like the China Inland 
 Mission, have been inaugurated and maintained by those who 
 believe in the imminent coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. It 
 is also an interesting fact that all the best and most spiritual 
 expositors of the Word of God for a number of years have 
 been the men who know and teach the hope of His coming. 
 
 Whenever the Holy Spirit revives a great truth, the enemy, 
 the other spirit, begins at once to antagonize that truth. This 
 he does in different ways. One of his ways is to put a 
 counterfeit truth alongside of the real truth; in other words, 
 he perverts the truth. He also is satisfied to let the restored 
 truth stand as it is, and instead of fighting it openly, he links 
 with it some of his soul destroying errors. In this way he 
 succeeds in bringing the truth into disrepute. ‘Then he uses 
 the friends of the truth to hurt the truth, in making them 
 fanatics, and extremists. All this and much more he has 
 done with the truth of the return of the Lord. 
 
 Satan hates the Word of God and the Son of God. The 
 first time the old serpent acted, he made a strike at the Word 
 of God (Gen. iii); the second time he attacked the Son of 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 11 
 
 God (Matt. iv). He hates the truth of the Lord’s coming 
 as much as he hates the truth of the Gospel of our salvation. 
 As soon as the blessed hope had been restored to the Church 
 in a definite and Scriptural testimony, he used the Irvingite 
 movement to hurt that truth. First he introduced the 
 fanatical claim of the restoration of Pentecostal gifts, such as 
 the gifts of speaking in a foreign tongue, prophecy and heal- 
 ing. This was followed by one of the worst errors which 
 men can teach, namely, that the Lord Jesus Christ had a 
 fallen nature. Yet Edward Irving and his followers were 
 strong believers in the second coming of Christ and taught it, 
 for a time at least, in the Scriptural way. Then came the 
 so-called Millerite delusion. Miller and the mother of the 
 unscriptural Seventh Day Adventist cult, Mrs. White, were 
 the subtle tools of the enemy. ‘They claimed to have visions 
 and direct revelations from God. ‘Then dates were set in 
 which the Lord would appear. This delusion did an untold 
 harm in that generation, and the enemies of the study of 
 prophecy still use the hallucinations of the originators of 
 Seventh Day Adventism as a warning against such a study. 
 The present day teaching of the Seventh Day cult is perni- 
 ciously unscriptural. ‘The whole truth of the blessed hope is 
 perverted by these errorists. Mormonism, the delusion of 
 the Latter Day Saints, likewise mumbles about His return. 
 Mormonism is a semi-pagan religion, and yet they teach that 
 Christ will come back to earth. 
 
 Perhaps the worst of all cults which teaches the return of 
 our Lord, and which has done more harm among those who 
 seek the truth than the Irvingites, the Adventists and the 
 Mormons, is the Russell-cult. It was started by a man who 
 called himself ‘Pastor’? Charles T. Russell. According to 
 his scheme Christ came again in 1874. Since that time 
 Russell taught, Christ has been here. Some of his deluded 
 
12 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 women followers claimed that Russell was Christ. Then 
 forty years later He was to be revealed as King and the 
 millennium was to begin. But what happened forty years 
 later in 1914 is known to everybody. Besides teaching such 
 inventions he denied the Godhead of the Lord Jesus Christ; he 
 denied the physical resurrection of the body of Christ, and 
 taught other abominable errors. The system once known as 
 “Millennial Dawnism” has changed its name but not its 
 teachings. It goes now by the name of “The International 
 Bible Student Association.” 
 
 Still more subtle are the numerous Pentecostal movements, 
 such as the “Apostolic Faith’”—‘‘Latter Rain’”—‘‘McPher- 
 sonism” and others. As we have shown in our volume on 
 the ‘‘Healing Question,” church-history records many similar 
 movements in the past. The last was the Irvingite move- 
 ment. ‘These Pentecostal cults claim a return to Apostolic 
 times, another Pentecost and with it the restoration of one 
 of the inferior gifts of the Spirit, which is the easiest to 
 counterfeit, the gift of tongues. With it goes faith-healing, 
 generally called “Divine Healing.” Pentecostalism makes 
 much of the coming of the Lord. ‘They claim to have visions 
 _and trances in which they see Him coming. Some, like Mrs. 
 McPherson of Los Angeles, claim verbal inspiration for their 
 “messages” about the coming of the Lord. The different 
 men and women healers, who attract thousands by their 
 propaganda, like the Bosworth Brothers, Price, McPherson 
 and others, also teach about His coming. 
 
 And this is not all. The late war produced a large number 
 of men and women, who instead of interpreting prophecy, 
 turned to prophesying. They picked out the unfortunate 
 Hohenzollern as the Anti-christ. ‘They set the exact year 
 when the Lord would come again. ‘They were all found out 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 13 
 
 as false prophets. But it has not discouraged them from 
 trying again. We have collected pamphlets and articles in 
 which every year, since 1916, is prophesied to be the year of 
 His return. Even now a pamphlet is advertised in a number 
 of magazines, which should never lend their pages for such 
 propaganda, in which the author tries to answer in a per- 
 verted way the question ‘‘How long to the end?” from the 
 last chapter of Daniel. We have always warned and do so 
 now against this unscriptural date and day setting, which is 
 one of the devil’s choicest weapons against a sane and 
 Scriptural study of the truth of the Lord’s return. And there 
 is still more to be said. Those who held the Scriptural truth 
 on this doctrine have become unsettled; some, for different 
 reasons, have abandoned it altogether; others have accepted 
 new theories as to the Church in relation to His coming, and 
 one teaches now that no one need to trouble about a coming 
 “great tribulation” preceding His return, for, as he says,there 
 will be no tribulation(!) 
 
 We have felt therefore that a simple setting forth, wholly 
 from the New Testament, of the truth of the Lord’s coming, 
 is demanded by these conditions. The best way to get hold 
 of the truth is by turning to the Word of God and examining 
 the different passages, in an exegetical way, which deal with 
 that particular truth. We have done so in this little volume. 
 
 The Modernist does not believe it. 'The Modernist of the 
 last days of this age is prophesied in 2 Peter iii:1-4. He 
 sneers at His return. How can he believe in such a 
 return? If the Lord Jesus came into the world like every 
 other human being comes into the world, as the Modernist 
 believes by denying the Virgin Birth, then the Lord Jesus also 
 died like every other human being dies, was buried like every 
 other human being was and remained in the grave like every 
 
14 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 other human being remained there. How can He return, if 
 He was not raised from the dead? From the side of the 
 Modernist we expect nothing but sneers. He is hopeless. 
 
 But we hope and pray that the simple way in which the 
 doctrine of our Lord’s return is unfolded in the pages which 
 follow will open the eyes of many believers who have treated 
 the blessed hope with indifference. Books about the coming 
 of the Lord are good enough, but many of them theorize and 
 do not use the Scriptures as they should be used. Real light 
 and conviction comes through the illumination of the Holy 
 Spirit from the Text of the Word of God. We expect that 
 this volume will be greatly used, not because it is a better 
 book than others, for it is not, but because the Scriptures are 
 so prominently displayed in its pages. 
 
 We also hope that those who have followed men who claim 
 to give “new light” and who have abandoned the simplicity 
 of prophetic interpretation, will also be benefited by 
 reading the progressive development of the doctrine of His 
 Return as presented from the Scriptures. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE RETURN OF THE LORD IN THE GOSPELS 
 The Gospel of Matthew 
 
 The Gospel of Matthew may rightly be termed the Genesis 
 of the New Testament. It is the bridge which leads from 
 the Old dispensation into the New. Its character is Jewish 
 and dispensational; in it the Son of God is presented as 
 Messiah the King, the Son of David, who came as the 
 “minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm 
 the promises made unto the fathers” (Rom. xv:8). The 
 promises made unto the fathers are the promises of the 
 kingdom, covenanted to David. ‘The angelic annunciation of 
 His birth includes the throne of David and the kingdom. “‘ The 
 Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David; 
 and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of 
 His kingdom there shall be no end”’ (Luke ii:32, 33). The 
 Gospel of Matthew reveals therefore that the Lord Jesus 
 Christ is the Son of David, that He came as the King offering 
 the promised kingdom to His own people, that the offered 
 kingdom was not accepted and afterward He Himself was 
 rejected. The divine arrangement of the first twelve 
 chapters is of great importance. On the correct interpreta- 
 tion of these twelve chapters depends the right understanding 
 of much of the teaching of the rest of the New Testament. 
 We give a brief review. 
 
 In the first chapter the genealogy of the Lord Jesus and His 
 birth are given. The genealogy shows that He is legally 
 entitled to the throne of David, through Joseph.* The 
 Second chapter contains the record of the wise men from the 
 
 
 
 _ *For a complete exposition of the genealogy see the author’s Exposi- 
 tion of Matthew. 
 
 15 
 
16 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 East, seeking the newborn king of the Jews. No other 
 Gospel records this interesting incident. The Gospel of 
 Matthew being the Gospel of the King is the only Gospel into 
 which this visit of these Gentiles fits. It is an instructive 
 event which foreshadows future history. ‘The Gentiles from 
 afar come first to seek the King, while Jerusalem knows noth- 
 ing of her King, and no priest, elder or scribe went to Beth- 
 lehem to worship Him. The ihird chapter shows the herald 
 of the King, who announces the nearness of the kingdom, 
 with the soon appearing of the King, and how the Lord Jesus 
 entered upon His official ministry. In the fourth chapter the 
 Lord Jesus being tested by the devil, is proven to be the King, 
 the Holy One, who had no sin and could not sin. Im- 
 mediately after He began to preach ‘‘the kingdom of heaven 
 is at hand.” Chapters five, six and seven contain the so- 
 called Sermon on the Mount, which only this Gospel records 
 in full. The great discourse may rightly be called “the 
 ‘proclamation of the King” as to His Kingdom and its 
 righteous government. Then follow two chapters in which 
 a number of miracles are put together, taken out of their 
 different settings, to demonstrate that He who spoke with 
 authority, is the omnipotent King, the Son of God. In the 
 tenth chapter we find the sending forth of the messengers of 
 the King to preach the message of the kingdom to the lost 
 sheep of the house of Israel, giving them the power to heal 
 the sick, to cleanse the lepers and to raise the dead. The 
 eleventh and twelfth chapters reveal the fact that neither the 
 message nor the King would be accepted by the people, but 
 that He and the kingdom would be rejected. 
 
 With the twelfth chapter the kingdom preaching ceases. 
 No longer goes forth the message “the kingdom of heaven is at. 
 hand.” The King now speaks as prophet and announces 
 the mysteries of the kingdom, the present age and its religious 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 17 
 
 and moral characteristics. He also speaks prophetically of 
 His coming passion, that He would be delivered into the 
 hands of the Gentiles, be crucified and raised from the dead; 
 He speaks of the future building of His Church and announces 
 His return to thisearth. ‘There was no need for Him to speak 
 prophetically of the literal kingdom, for that kingdom is the 
 burden of all the prophets in the Old Testament; the bless- 
 ings and glories of the earthly kingdom were known to the 
 believing Jew as they are known to us. 
 
 The first prophetic utterances of our Lord are therefore 
 found after the preaching of the kingdom had been rejected, 
 that is, after the twelfth chapter. It is true in connection with 
 the healing of the centurion’s servant He had announced the 
 rejection of the children of the kingdom, and the calling of 
 the Gentiles, and at other occasions He hinted at future 
 events (Matt. vili:11, 12; x:16-34; xi:20-24; xii:40-45), but 
 these hints were given in connection with the anticipated 
 rejection. 
 
 In the thirteenth chapter He is seen sitting by the seaside. 
 He had left the house, and spoke to the multitude and to 
 His disciples in parables. These parables reveal the mys- 
 teries of the kingdom. It is no longer the literal kingdom, 
 but the development of the religious conditions of this dis- 
 pensation. Our age with the King absent, His truth and 
 doctrine preached and offered to the whole world, was un- 
 revealed in the Old Testament. It was kept secret (xiii:35). 
 In these parables He speaks of His future work at the end of 
 the present age. ‘The first parable pictures prophetically the 
 coming world-wide dissemination of the good seed. The 
 second parable shows that this age will be a mixed age, the 
 wheat and the tares grow together in the field till the harvest 
 comes.* ‘The harvest is the end of the age, not “the end of 
 
 *See our Commentary on Matthew Vol. ii, p. 1-25. 
 
18 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 the world.”’ At the end of the age, when the harvesting 
 takes place, He will act, sending forth His angels as reapers, 
 who gather the tares for the burning, while the righteous shine 
 forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father (xiii:38-43). 
 
 In the sixteenth chapter we find the first direct prophetic 
 utterance of our Lord as to His second coming. He is with 
 His disciples at the coast of Caesarea Philippi, the border- 
 land of the Gentiles. In answer to His question Peter con- 
 fessed Him as the Christ, the Son of the living God. Upon 
 this God-given testimony the Lord predicted the future 
 building of the Church upon Himself as the rock (verse 18); 
 the future ministry of Peter (verse 19); His coming rejection, 
 death and resurrection on the third day (verse 21) and then 
 follows the prophetic announcement of another coming of 
 Himself, 
 
 Chapter xvi:27 ‘‘For the Son of Man shall come in the glory 
 of His Father with Hts angels, and then He shall reward every 
 man according to his works.’ Unmistakably He speaks of 
 another coming. It is to be in the glory of His Father; 
 the angels will accompany Him, and His coming will bring 
 reward to every man according:to his works. It could not 
 mean His first coming for He speaks of an event in the future, 
 nor did He reward every man according to his works at His 
 first advent. The verse which follows presents an apparent 
 difficulty: “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.” 'The reasoning of many commentators on 
 these additional words of our Lord is as follows: The Lord 
 could not have meant a literal, a personal coming of Himself, 
 for all those who heard Him utter these words have died. 
 He meant a spiritual coming of Himself. ‘These expositors 
 apply mostly His coming in His kingdom to the gift of the 
 Holy Spirit; they teach that He came on the day of Pente- 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 19 
 
 cost. But how can the coming of the Holy Spirit reasonably 
 be the coming of the Son of Man? The Holy Spirit is the 
 third person of the Trinity and the Lord Jesus, the Son of 
 God, is the second person. Nor did the angels appear on the 
 day when the Spirit of God came to earth. And what about 
 ‘“‘rewarding every man according to his works”? Other com- 
 mentators say, He meant the destruction of Jerusalem, while 
 still others identify His coming with the death of the Chris- 
 tian. But did He appear with His angels in the year 70, 
 or did He give then every man according to his works? 
 As far as the death of the believer is concerned, Scripture 
 makes it clear that when the believer dies he goes to be with 
 the Lord, and therefore it cannot be the coming of the Lord. 
 
 The chapter division in this part of Matthew’s Gospel is 
 unfortunate. There should be no break here. The next 
 chapter records the transfiguration, to which our Lord re- 
 ferred, when He announced that some of those who stood 
 there should see Him coming. From 2 Peter i:16-20 we 
 learn the deeper meaning of His transfiguration. Peter in 
 this passage declares that he was an eyewitness of His 
 majesty, and that he made known unto believers the power 
 and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. That wonderful scene 
 on the holy mountain was a pattern of the return of the 
 Lord in power and glory, when He comes in His kingdom, 
 surrounded by His Saints, represented by Moses and Elijah, 
 one who had died, the other who had gone to heaven without 
 dying. The Lord’s face shone like the sun; He is clothed 
 with the glory of the Father. As He stood upon that 
 mountain, so will He stand some future day upon this earth 
 as King of kings and Lord of lords, attended by His Saints 
 and the angels of God. 
 
 Chapter xix:28 “And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say 
 unto you, that ye which have followed Me, in the regeneration 
 
20 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of His glory, ye also 
 shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” 
 These words were spoken by our Lord when the rich young 
 man had left Him, and Peter asked the question “Behold, we 
 have forsaken all, and followed Thee, what shall we have 
 therefore?” Here again our Lord speaks of reward for those 
 who have followed Him. He does not promise rewards at 
 the present time. There will be a regeneration, a time when 
 all things will be made new, and when that time comes He 
 will not be the occupant of the Father’s throne, but will re- 
 ceive His own throne, the throne of His glory. ‘Then He will 
 reign and judge, and His own will be associated with Him. 
 But the time of regeneration for the earth, the deliverance of 
 groaning creation, does not come till He receives the throne 
 of His glory, and He will not receive that throne till He comes 
 in the glory, of the Father and His angels with Him. 
 
 Chapter xx11:44 “And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall 
 be broken, but on whomsoever 1t shall fall, rt will grind him to 
 powder.’ He had quoted the one hundred and eighteenth 
 Psalm concerning the stone the builders rejected, which 
 becomes the head of the corner. The other New Testament 
 references show that He is the stone, rejected by the Jews, 
 and that He became the corner stone. While He does not 
 mention His return in the quoted words, that event is clearly 
 indicated. ‘The Jews fell on the stone, rejected Christ, and 
 were nationally and spiritually broken. ‘The day comes when 
 Christ, the stone, will fall on others and grind them to 
 powder. ‘The second chapter in Daniel gives us the complete 
 picture of the smiting stone, which falls from heaven and 
 deals the great man-image such a blow that every portion of 
 it becomes like the chaff of the summer threshing floors 
 (Dan. ii:35).* The stone which did the work becomes a 
 
 *See Exposition of Daniel by A. C. G., Chapter II. 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 21 
 
 mountain filling the whole earth. The man-image is the 
 symbol of the times of the Gentiles, the stone represents the 
 second coming of Christ, and the transformation of the stone 
 into a mountain is the prophetic symbol of the world-wide 
 kingdom of Christ. 
 
 Chapter xxi11:38, 39 “Behold, your house is left unto you 
 desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see Me henceforth, 
 tull ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of 
 the Lord.’ The last sentence is to be linked with His 
 promised return. It will be fulfilled in the day of His second 
 coming, when a remnant of believers from His own earthly 
 people will welcome Him with the Messianic greeting 
 recorded in Psalm cxviii. 
 
 We turn next to the greatest prophetic discourse of our 
 Lord, the so called Olivet Discourse. Matthew gives it 
 complete, while Mark and Luke contain certain omissions 
 and additions. ‘This greatest of all prophecies of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ has for its center His personal, visible and 
 glorious return to this earth. He predicts events preceding 
 His return, the event itself, what is connected with it, and 
 the events which follow His return. 
 
 Chapter: xxiv:1-2 “And Jesus went out, and departed from 
 the temple: and H1s disciples came to Him for to show Him 
 the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said unto them, See 
 ye not all these things. Verily I say unto you, There shall not 
 be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown 
 down.’ The full prophecy as to the destruction of Jerusalem 
 and the temple is given by Luke. Here the bare fact is stated 
 that the temple is to be destroyed. It is a serious error to 
 apply what follows exclusively to the destruction of the 
 temple and to Jerusalem. This event is not in view at all in 
 the Gospel of Matthew. We shall demonstrate this as we 
 follow the text. 
 
22 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 After He had uttered the words as to the coming destruc- 
 tion of the temple buildings, the disciples asked Him ques- 
 tions as to His coming, the sign of His coming and the end 
 of the age. 
 
 The great center of the discourse. contained in chapters 
 xxiv and xxv is found in verses 29 and 30 of the twenty-fourth 
 chapter: “Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall 
 the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and 
 the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens 
 shall be shaken. 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 1n the clouds of heaven 
 with power and great glory.” 
 
 Preceding this great prophetic announcement the Lord 
 speaks of the present age and more particularly of its end. 
 The events which will transpire in connection with the 
 Jewish people, rehabilitated in Palestine, a believing remnant 
 suffering during the great tribulation, their deliverance, the 
 restoration of the scattered tribes to their own land, are 
 predicted by Him. Verses 4-45 of the twenty-fourth chapter 
 contain these future events. We find next three parables in 
 chapter xxiv:45 to chapter xxv:30. .. Each of these parables 
 is related to His return. ‘These parables reveal the religious 
 conditions prevailing up to the time of His coming again, and 
 how He will deal with these conditions. ‘The final section 
 of the prophetic disclosure shows Him upon the throne of His 
 glory with the nations gathered about Him, whom He judges. 
 This great judgment is prophesied by Him in chapter xxv:31- 
 46. We take up each section briefly. Our complete com- 
 mentary on Matthew in two volumes devotes nearly a 
 hundred pages to this great portion of the first Gospel. 
 
 I. The events which precede His visible and personal 
 return. The opening statements of this first section in verses 
 
 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 23 
 
 5-7 are applicable to the present age in a general way. 
 Throughout this age there have been false Christs deceiving 
 many; there have been wars and rumors of wars, nation 
 rising against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. The 
 many wars have always been followed by famines and 
 pestilences. Every century has brought earthquakes in 
 divers places. Our own generation has witnessed the great- 
 est war of all history, followed by the greatest famines and the 
 greatest pestilences. Furthermore we have also witnessed 
 the greatest earthquakes of historic times. What a con- 
 firmation of the words of our Lord! Before this age ends the 
 same things will happen again, but on a larger scale. The 
 world is even now getting ready for it and Revelation vi, the 
 breaking of the four seals, foretells these events likewise. 
 The greater portion of the discourse relating to this present 
 age, is taken up with the end of it, as it will take place, not 
 among the Gentiles, but among the Jews. ‘This is clearly 
 demonstrated by the fact that our Lord calls special attention 
 to the prophet Daniel and his predicted “‘abomination of 
 desolation” (verse 15). The Danielian prophecy has nothing 
 to do with the Church or the Gentiles, but the abomination 
 of desolation takes place on Jewish ground, in Jerusalem and 
 Palestine. The Jews are returning to their own land; a 
 restoration in unbelief takes place before our eyes. It will 
 be fully consummated in the near future when the national 
 aspiration of Jewry will be realized in the long proposed 
 Jewish state. When finally the true Church, the body of 
 Christ, will no longer be on earth, when its supernatural 
 removal (1 Thess. iv:16-18) has taken place, the Lord will 
 call a remnant from among the masses of unbelieving 
 Israelites; a part of this remnant will be in Palestine while 
 others will move about as witnesses among the Gentile 
 nations. Of this believing remnant during the end of the age 
 
24 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 our Lord speaks next in verses 9-28. On account of their 
 faith and their witness they will suffer persecution. Many 
 false prophets will arise and they must endure to the end of 
 the seven years, the close of the age, in order to be saved 
 (not a spiritual, but an earthly salvation) to enter the king- 
 dom, which comes with the King’s return. ‘They will be His 
 Witnesses among all the nations, preaching the Gospel of the 
 kingdom, which is, the heralding of the coming of the King, 
 calling upon the nations to repent. ‘There will then be great 
 tribulation, in the land, and throughout the world. Anti- 
 christ will reign in his satanic power for 1260 days, or three 
 years and a half, as revealed in Daniel and Revelation. 
 Politically, commercially and religiously confusion will reign. 
 When this period of time has ended “immediately after the 
 tribulation,” the Lord predicts He will come again in great 
 power and glory in the clouds of heaven. ‘The only way to 
 interpret the words He spoke is the literal interpretation. 
 It does not mean a spiritual coming, but a literal coming. 
 The age will end as predicted; there will be a great tribu- 
 lation and after its force is spent Christ will come back to 
 earth again. All kinds of false teachings have been connected 
 with the plain statements of our Lord. One Pastor Charles 
 T. Russell deceived many by his invention that Christ came 
 back in a secret manner in 1874, and that He would be 
 publicly revealed in 1914. Others deny that there ever will 
 be a great tribulation, like a recent voluminous writer in his 
 attempts to teach prophecy. He follows the same argument 
 of nearly all commentators, that the words of our Lord were 
 fulfilled in the past when Jerusalem was destroyed by the 
 Roman armies of Titus. But the theory that our Lord 
 speaks of the destruction of Jerusalem, and that His coming 
 in the clouds of heaven in great power and glory happened 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 25 
 
 in connection with that event is unscriptural. The words of 
 our Lord which follow are the conclusive evidence. 
 
 “And He shall send His angels with a great sound of a 
 trumpet, and they shall gather His elect from the four winds, 
 from one end of heaven to the other” (verse 31). Did this take 
 place when Jerusalem was destroyed? Who are the elect? 
 This word is found in the Synoptics seven times. In the 
 Epistles it is used nine times. As used in the Gospels it 
 never means the Church of Jesus Christ, but His people 
 Israel; as used in the Epistles the word “‘elect”® never means 
 the people Israel, but always the Church. ‘This is a valuable 
 fact. We ask, when Jerusalem was destroyed did the Lord 
 come and send His angels to gather the people Israel together 
 from their world-wide dispersion? No! ‘They were scat- 
 tered as a result among all the nations of the world. This 
 in itself is proof that our Lord speaks of His future coming. 
 Others are so elementary in their exegesis that they identify 
 the gathering of the elect by angels with the home gathering 
 of the Church as prophesied in 1 Thess. iv:16-18. As if there 
 could be any kind of correspondency between Matt. xxiv:31 
 and that passage. 
 
 The mentioning of the fig tree fully confirms the truth of 
 what we have stated. ‘The fig tree is emblematic of Israel. 
 The cursing of the fig tree and the subsequent withered con- 
 dition is symbolically Israel during this age. But the fig 
 tree is to put forth new leaves. The Jewish hope is not dead. 
 It died when Jerusalem was destroyed, but it will be revived 
 immediately before the age ends and the Lord returns. 
 
 But someone will probably point to verse 34, *‘ This genera- 
 tion shall not pass away, till all these things be fulfilled.’ The 
 word “‘generation” has been made to mean that very genera- 
 tion living then. Therefore, it is claimed, the Lord taught 
 
26 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 His return to take place within their life time. But the 
 Greek word “Genea” has the meaning of ‘a race of people.” 
 It is used in this sense in Luke xvi:8 and elsewhere in the 
 New Testament. ‘“This generation” means the race which 
 sprung from Abraham, God’s chosen earthly people. Well 
 have they been called “the everlasting nation.” 
 
 Care must also be taken with interpreting verses 40 and 
 41. The one who is taken, when the Lord comes in visible 
 glory, is taken in judgment, the one who is left, is left to 
 have a share in the earthly kingdom. It is different, as we 
 point out later, when the Lord comes for His Church. Then 
 some will be taken to be caught up in clouds to meet the 
 Lord in the air, and others will be left to pass through the 
 great tribulation and face the day of wrath. 
 
 II. We give a brief word on the three parables which follow. 
 The first parable is the one which describes the faithful and 
 the evil servant. The faithful and wise servant reckons 
 with the fact that his Lord is coming some day and therefore 
 he gives meat in due season to the household. Having done 
 this and acted faithfully, the Lord calls him blessed. “‘Blessed 
 is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so 
 doing. Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler 
 over all his goods.”” The evil servant says “‘my lord delayeth 
 his coming.” This leads to his outrageous actions. Then 
 the lord comes in a day when the evil servant does not look 
 for him at all and punishes him for his evil deeds. Anyone 
 can trace in this parable the prevailing religious conditions of 
 this age, past, present and future. Had the Church always 
 believed that the Lord is coming back, ecclesiastical condi- 
 tions would have been far different from what they have been. 
 But nearly all Christendom either denies the fact of His 
 coming, or puts it into the remote future, thus saying “my 
 Lord delays His coming.” 
 
 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD oa 
 
 The second parable, the parable of the ten virgins, pictures 
 similar conditions. ‘The ten virgins are typical of professing 
 Christendom. ‘The wise virgins who have oil, the symbol 
 of the Holy Spirit, represent true believers; the foolish virgins 
 who have lamps only, but no oil, represent those who have 
 the outward form of godliness, but are destitute of the reality, 
 for they are unsaved Church members. In the beginning 
 of the Church all waited for the coming of the Bridegroom. 
 But as He tarried the blessed hope was given up, and for 
 many centuries nothing was heard of the return of Christ. 
 The midnight cry was sounded (as it is now) and while the 
 Wise virgins, true believers, trimmed their lamps and the 
 foolish virgins tried to obtain oil, the Bridegroom came, 
 Those who were ready entered in to be with Him; the others 
 faced a closed door. 
 
 The parable of the talents is the third parable. Two used 
 the talents they had received; one did not use his talent. 
 ‘Those who were faithful were rewarded and the unfaithful 
 one was punished. It will be seen that each parable is teach- 
 ing the return of the Lord, rewarding those who are faithful 
 and punishing the unfaithful. Without belief in the coming 
 of the Lord these parables are meaningless. 
 
 III. The third section of the discourse is not a parable, 
 but a prophecy. It is generally called “the parable of the 
 sheep and the goats.” But our Lord does not say it is a 
 parable. It is a prophecy, revealing His judgment work 
 after His return, when He takes the throne of His glory, not 
 in heaven but on earth. The Father’s throne which the 
 glorified Son of Man occupies during the present age, is in 
 heaven; the throne of the Son of Man will be established on 
 and over the earth; it is the throne of His glory. This 
 judgment is generally called the universal judgment at the 
 end of the world. The Scriptures do not teach a universal 
 
28 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 judgment. ‘There is a judgment of the righteous, as there 
 is a resurrection of the just; there is a judgment of the wicked 
 dead, as there is a second resurrection unto damnation. But 
 neither one of these judgments or resurrections is taught in 
 Matthew xxv:31-46. Nothing is said about a resurrection. 
 The judgment concerns living nations. Some are put on 
 His right hand; others on His left. The standard of judg- 
 ment is what the nations have done, or have not done, to 
 His brethren. His brethren are not the members of His 
 body, but His brethren according to the flesh, Jews. He sent 
 forth these Jewish messengers during the end of the age. 
 They preached the Gospel of the Kingdom (verse 14). Some 
 of the nations believed and while the judgments of the Lord 
 were in the earth they learned righteousness (Is. xxvi:9) and 
 expressed their righteousness in doing good to these mes- 
 sengers. Other nations did not accept this final call of the 
 mercy of God; they mistreated the messengers and did not 
 show them kindness. ‘They will be put on the left and pass 
 away as nations from the earth, while the nations which 
 believed and learned righteousness will remain on earth to 
 enter the prepared kingdom. 
 
 Only one more passage in Matthew mentions His return. 
 
 Chapter xxv1:64 “Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said; 
 nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man 
 sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of 
 heaven.” Itisasolemn passage. The high priest had said 
 to his prisoner, the Lord Jesus Christ; “I adjure thee by the 
 living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the 
 Son of God.” Then He answered in the words which we 
 have quoted. In them He confirms His Deity, predicts His 
 exaltation to the right hand of God, and His visible return 
 in the clouds of heaven. Upon this true witness He was 
 judged guilty of death. When He spoke of His return “in 
 
 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 29 
 
 the clouds of heaven” the Jewish officials knew that He 
 claimed to be the One whom Daniel saw in his night vision, 
 who receives from the hands of God the kingdom, whom all 
 nations and languages are to serve (Dan. vii:14). 
 
 The Gospel of Mark 
 
 There are not many passages in the Gospel of Mark which 
 mention His return. We mention those which are not found 
 in Matthew. 
 
 Chapter vit1:38 “Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of 
 Me and 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.” ‘This is also 
 quoted by Luke in the ninth chapter. Mark and Luke 
 record the transfiguration and link with it the words of the 
 Lord that some would not taste death till they see the king- 
 dom of God (Mark ix:1; Luke 1x:26). The Olivet prophetic 
 discourse is reported by Mark only in part; the parables of 
 Matthew, and the description of the judgment of nations are 
 omitted. But there is something in Mark which neither 
 Matthew nor Luke mention. 
 
 Chapter x111:34-37 “For the Son of man 1s as a man taking 
 a far journey, who left His house, and gave authority to His 
 servants, and to every man his work, and commanded the porter 
 to watch. Watch ye therefore, for ye know not when the master 
 of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cock- 
 crowing, or in the morning: lest coming suddenly he find you 
 sleeping. And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.” 
 The far journey is His return to the Father. He left His 
 house, the relationship with His covenant people Israel. He 
 also gave authority to His servants, His apostles, and after 
 His ascension, as the head of the body, He gave to every 
 
30 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 one his work. The porter, who is commanded to watch, may 
 be applied to the Holy Spirit, just as this word is used by our 
 Lord in the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John. Then He 
 commanded them to watch. He is coming again, but the 
 exact time is not revealed by Him. He told them before 
 “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the 
 angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. 
 Take heed, watch and pray, for ye know not when the time 1s” 
 (Verse 32, 33). Itis presumption to try to find out the exact 
 time of His return. Setting the time of His second coming 
 has been in the past a popular delusion, and it is still being 
 indulged in, in spite of the miserable failures of fanatics. 
 Seventh Day Adventism with its perverted Gospel and 
 prophetic teaching, started with Miller and the false proph- 
 etess Mrs. White, who prophesied the day of His coming. 
 So did Russell of the Millennial Dawn delusion (International 
 Bible Student Association). Then there was Mr. M. Baxter, 
 founder of the “Prophetic News,” who published his ‘Forty 
 Coming Wonders” in which he fixed the dates for all coming 
 prophetic events. When the time arrived and nothing 
 happened, he invented new dates, and published a new 
 edition. ‘Then there are smaller pamphlets written by Mr. 
 Baker, W. B. Blackstone and others, which attempt to figure 
 out the time of His coming. All date and day setting is 
 unscriptural, and the believer does well to ignore all attempts 
 to ascertain the time of His coming, for it is unrevealed. 
 
 The Gospel of Luke 
 
 The Gospel of Luke presents our Lord as the perfect man. 
 The Holy Spirit gives in this account, written by the beloved 
 physician, the details of His entrance into His earthly life by 
 the Virgin-birth. The Modernist, who denies this great 
 
THE RETURN OF THE, LORD 31 
 
 foundation rock of the Gospel, charges that two of the Gospel 
 records (Mark and John) have not a word about the Virgin- 
 birth; Matthew speaks of it and only Luke gives a full account 
 of Mary of Nazareth, the angel’s visit and his heaven sent 
 message. On account of the silence of the other Evangelists 
 they reject the fact of the Virgin-birth as unreliable. It 
 shows, like all other claims made by this rationalistic school, 
 their blindness. Matthew was led to mention the bare 
 fact that Mary had conceived by the Holy Spirit, because 
 Matthew begins his Gospel with a genealogy, which is the 
 genealogy of Joseph to whom Mary was espoused. To 
 show that Joseph was not the father of our Lord, Matthew 
 mentions the fact of the Virgin-birth. Inasmuch as Luke 
 wrote of Him as the second Man, the perfect Man, the Spirit 
 of God gave through his pen the full facts of the Virgin- 
 birth. Mark did not write about this, because he draws the 
 picture of the perfect servant, and John was led to write of 
 His Deity and the eternal life, and ety was no need to re- 
 state what Luke’s Gospel contains. 
 
 We quote the message of the Bon Gabriel, lohaneee 1:3 1-33 
 ‘And behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth 
 a son, and shalt call His name Jesus. He shall be great, and 
 shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the LordGod shall give 
 unto Him the throne of His Father David, and He shall reign 
 over the house of Jacob for ever, and of His kingdom there shall 
 be no end.” How literally the first part of this announcement 
 has been fulfilled is well known. The second part, relating 
 to the throne of David, His reign over the house of Jacob 
 and His kingdom, is generally declared to be sa piritual throne 
 of David in heaven, and a spiritual reign, and a spiritual 
 kingdom. When God made a covenant with David He 
 did not promise him a spiritual throne in heaven, nor a 
 spiritual kingdom, but an earthly throne and an earthly 
 
32 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 kingdom. The return of our Lord, the Son of Man and the 
 Son of David, will bring the realization of the promised throne 
 and the promised kingdom. 
 
 The three songs of praise which follow in the Gospel of 
 Luke, the Magnificat of the Virgin, the praise of Zechariah 
 and the adoration of Simeon in the temple, have a prophetic 
 strain looking forward to the consummation, when the King 
 receives His throne. 
 
 Chapter x11:35-40 “Let your loins be girded about, and your 
 lights burning: and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for 
 their lord, when he will return on account of the wedding: that 
 when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him 1mme- 
 diately. Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord when he 
 cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall 
 gird himself, and make them sit down at meat, and will come 
 forth and serve them. And if He shall come in the second watch, 
 or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those 
 servants. And this know, that tf the goodman of the house had 
 known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, 
 and not have suffered his house to be broken through. Be ye 
 therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when 
 ye think not.” It is obvious that He speaks of His second 
 coming. He exhorts His own to wait for that event with 
 girded loins and shining lights. He comes on account, or, 
 for the wedding (the correct rendering). He will come sud- 
 denly and His watching servants are to be rewarded. He 
 will come forth and gird Himself, as when He washed the 
 disciples’ feet, and serve them. What service that will be 
 when He has His redeemed with Him, we do not know. He 
 speaks of the second and third watches only, and not of the 
 first and the fourth. In Matthew xiv we have a hint that He 
 will come in the fourth watch. 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 33 
 
 Peter spoke asking “‘Lord speakest Thou this parable unto 
 us, or even to all?’ He answered him with a parable of the 
 faithful and unfaithful servant (verses 42-48) it is the same 
 parable as recorded in Matt. xxiv with something added as 
 to the future punishment (verses 47, 48). 
 
 Chapter xvi1:24-37. In this passage He speaks of His 
 future coming once more “‘For as the lightning, that lighteneth 
 out of the one part under heaven shineth unto the other part under 
 heaven: so shall also the Son of man be in His day.” The 
 present age is ‘“‘man’s day,’’ when He comes again His day 
 will begin. ‘That day will come suddenly. Then He men- 
 tions what precedes His return, “‘But first must He suffer 
 many things, and be rejected of this generation.” 
 
 What is recorded by Matthew is also stated by Luke with 
 some additions. ‘‘4nd as it was in the days of Noe, so shall 
 it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they 
 drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until 
 the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came and 
 destroyed them all. Likewise also as 1t was in the days of Lot: 
 they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, 
 they builded: but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom 1t 
 rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. 
 Even thus shall tt be in the day when the Son of man ts revealed,” 
 
 He does not speak of righteousness and peace reigning on 
 earth when He comes, but His day, the day of His visible 
 manifestation, will be preceded by the days of Noah and Lot, 
 that is, the same moral conditions will prevail on earth. The 
 days of Noah were days of violence; the days of Lot were days 
 of immorality. The common affairs of the race in commerce, 
 agriculture and in social life continued till sudden judgment 
 came. Thus it will be before He comes again. Violence, 
 immorality and other forms of unrighteousness and lawless- 
 
34 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 ness will increase and culminate in the great tribulation. He 
 does not find a converted world when He returns. Both the 
 deluge and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah are 
 typical of the judgment which falls upon the ungodly when 
 He comes back; and as Noah and his house were saved, and 
 Lot escaped, so will the righteous be delivered. 
 
 Chapter xviii:8 “ Nevertheless when the Son of Man cometh 
 shall He find the faith on the earth?” ‘This was spoken after 
 the parable of the unjust judge (verses 1-7). The widow 
 is the remnant of Israel sorely pressed during the days of 
 tribulation. ‘They cry, at that time, as His own elect, night 
 and day unto Him (verse 7). His answer will be His visible 
 manifestation by which they will be delivered. But when 
 He comes He will not find the faith, that is the faith revealed 
 in His Holy Word, on the earth. The Spirit of God in the 
 Epistles gives the complete revelation as to what He will 
 find when He returns. 
 
 Chapter xix:11-27. This passage contains the parable of the 
 ten pounds. It was occasioned by those who thought “that 
 the Kingdom of God should immediately appear.” They 
 recognized in Him the promised Messiah, the King, but did 
 not realize that the cross and the suffering had to precede the 
 glory. He speaks of Himself as going to a far country to 
 receive a kingdom, and to return. Inthe interval His servants 
 are to be faithful with the entrusted pounds; He tells them 
 “Occupy till I come.” The ten servants like the ten 
 virgins, represent Christendom. The one who hides the 
 pound in the sweat cloth (soudarion) is called a wicked serv- 
 ant, and represents unsaved, professing Christians. The 
 citizens mentioned in verse 14, who hated the nobleman, are 
 the Jews. The parable teaches that when the Lord returns 
 He will reward His faithful servants and will give them a 
 share in His Kingdom. 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 35 
 
 The Olivet discourse is given in part by Luke in the twenty 
 first chapter. We do not repeat what has already been 
 stated in Matthew’s account, Chapter «x1:20-24. ‘This pas- 
 sage predicts the destruction of Jerusalem and the world- 
 wide dispersion of the Jewish people. We quote the last 
 verse. ‘And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall 
 be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be 
 trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are 
 fulfilled.” Jerusalem will not always be trodden down by the 
 Gentiles. Redemption and glory is everywhere promised 
 in the prophetic Word of the Old Testament to Jerusalem. 
 But the accomplishment of these promises is everywhere 
 linked with the coming of the once rejected King. There will 
 be no restoration of Israel, no glory for Jerusalem, till Christ 
 comes back. The times of the Gentiles will end. Their end 
 is the end of the age and that comes with His return. How 
 long do the times of the Gentiles last? When will they end? 
 Nobody knows. We know when they began, but the dura- 
 tion of these times is unrevealed. 
 
 Verses 25-28 “And there shall be signs in the sun and tn the 
 moon, and in the stars, and upon the earth distress of nations, 
 with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring: Men’s hearts 
 failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which 
 are coming on the earth, for the powers of heaven shall be 
 shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a 
 cloud wth power and great glory. And when these things begin 
 to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads, for your 
 redemption draweth nigh.” 
 
 Between verse 24 and 25 comes in the present age. When 
 the age ends times of distress and perplexity will come, 
 heaven and earth will be shaken before the Son of man ap- 
 pears in a cloud with power and great glory. Verses 34-36 
 contain words of warning and exhortation in view of the fact 
 
36 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 of His coming. While these words mean primarily those 
 who wait for His visible coming to the earth, they also have 
 an application to His Church waiting to meet Him in the air. 
 
 The Gospel of John 
 
 The striking difference between the Synoptics and the 
 fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John, is known to every thought- 
 ful Christian. Without enlarging upon these differences 
 we call attention to the total absence in this Gospel of all 
 the prophetic announcements of His return, which we have 
 found so frequently in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and 
 Luke. Nothing is found in this Gospel about the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem in the year 70, for the simple reason that 
 the Gospel of John was written at least 20 years after that 
 event. Nor is there found a single word of the Olivet dis- 
 course. Not once does our Lord refer to the great tribula- 
 tion. Once He speaks of Antichrist, the false Messiah, 
 but without any further teaching as to the end of the age. 
 (John v:43). The Spirit of God guided the hand of the 
 beloved disciple to omit all these statements, not to pen 
 anything about the characteristics of the age, the wars, 
 the rumors of war, the famines, the pestilences or earth- 
 quakes. Nor did John record the repeated declarations 
 our blessed Lord made, that He would come in the clouds 
 of heaven with power and great glory. Nothing is said of 
 the regathering of Israel, the budding fig tree. In vain do 
 we look for the kingdom parables with their great dispen- 
 sational messages. 
 
 Why is it thus? The purpose of the Gospel of John 
 furnishes the answer. It is the Gospel which reveals Christ 
 as the Son of God, with the assurance that those who believe 
 on Him have life, eternal life, through His name. What 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 37 
 
 this eternal life is, in what it consists, what it includes, and 
 how it is sustained and manifested, is all blessedly unfolded 
 in the fourth Gospel. 
 
 His disciples, except Judas, who betrayed Him, had be- 
 lieved on Him; they were therefore born again and had re- 
 ceived in the new birth eternal life. In His high priestly 
 prayer (John xvii) He speaks of them as being not of the 
 world even as He is not of the world. By believing on Him 
 they belonged to Him, were separated from the world, 
 which lieth in the wicked one; their lot and portion was no 
 longer with the world, for they had passed from death unto 
 life, no longer the subjects of judgment but destined to eternal 
 glory. While in the Synoptics they represent prophetically 
 the believing Jewish remnant in the end of the age, in the 
 Gospel of John they represent not the nucleus of an earthly, 
 literal kingdom, but the nucleus of the Church. According 
 to the eternal purpose they were members of that body al- 
 ready, soon to be baptized by the coming of the Holy Spirit 
 into the body of Christ, the Church. 
 
 Because they are the representatives, prophetically, in 
 Matthew, Mark and Luke of believing Jews of the end of 
 the age, these Gospels record His sayings as to the tribula- 
 tion, the abomination of desolation, the persecutions, the 
 false Christs, His visible coming, and the signs of His coming 
 and the regathering of Israel. But inasmuch as they are 
 seen in John’s Gospel as identified with Him, no longer of 
 this world, but brought into a new and heavenly relationship, 
 His second visible coming, the preceding events, the signs 
 of His coming, the end of the age, the tribulation and the 
 regathering of Israel, as well as other events are not men- 
 tioned in this Gospel. 
 
 And why not? Because the Church of Jesus Christ, com- 
 posed of all true believers, born again, not of the world as 
 
38 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 He is not of the world, identified with Him, will not be on 
 the earth during the end of the age, will not pass through the 
 tribulation of those days, has nothing to do with the “abomi- 
 nation of desolation” and will not see Him coming in the 
 clouds of heaven with power and great glory. This great 
 and comforting truth, that those who belong to Christ and 
 constitute His body, will not be on earth during the great 
 tribulation, but have a better hope, is, for the first time, 
 brought out in the Gospel of John. When we examine 
 the teaching of the Epistles as to the return of our Lord, 
 we shall discover the full meaning of that blessed hope, 
 which is stated by our Lord in the Gospel of John. 
 
 And now we are ready to quote and explain the one, and 
 only one passage, in this Gospel in which the coming again of 
 our Lord is directly and most blessedly promised by Himself. 
 
 Chapter xiv:1-3 “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe 
 in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many 
 mansions: tf 1t were not so I would have told you. TI 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, ye may be also.’ This is a unique promise. 
 No such promise is recorded in the preceding Gospels, nor 
 is there anything like it written in the Scriptures of the Old 
 Testament. The prophet Isaiah indicated that God had 
 something very blessed in reserve for those who would see 
 
 the days of the Messiah. “For since the beginning of the 
 
 world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither 
 hath eye seen, O God, beside Thee, what He hath prepared 
 for him that waiteth for Him” (Isaiah lxiv:4). This is 
 quoted in the New Testament (1 Cor. 11:9) and there we 
 read “But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.” 
 Here then is a new revelation. 
 
 f 
 
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 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 39 
 
 Let us remember once more that the eleven were Jews 
 by nature. What was their hope? They believed in, 
 and expected, the coming of the Messiah, the Son of David. 
 Their hope was an earthly hope. They expected to be with 
 Him in His earthly kingdom. The mother of the sons of 
 Zebedee requested that her- sons might occupy places at 
 His right hand and at His left in His reign. To be in Jeru- 
 salem, the capital of the coming kingdom, to have share in 
 that kingdom, was the highest hope of the believing Jew. 
 And these disciples expected nothing else. They could 
 not expect a higher calling and a more glorious destiny, 
 for Old Testament revelation is silent on such a higher 
 destiny. ; 
 
 They were greatly troubled. He had said to them “‘Little 
 children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek 
 Me, and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot 
 come; so now I say to you.” Before that He had announced 
 His betrayal by one of their number. Then Judas having 
 “received the sop went immediately out; and it was night.” 
 They did not know what it all meant. What would become 
 of their Jewish hope, if He leaves them alone? Can there 
 be a kingdom without the presence of the King? Then came 
 His soothing words ‘‘Let not your heart be troubled,” fol- 
 lowed by the most blessed statements. He speaks of the 
 Father’s house, not of a place on earth, in Jerusalem or the 
 kingdom, but in heaven where the Father dwelleth. He 
 tells them that He goes there to prepare a place for them. 
 They expected He would prepare a place for them in Jeru- 
 salem. Then comes the assurance, with which they had 
 become familiar from what He had said at other occasions: 
 “T will come again.” What followed was altogether new to 
 them: “and receive you unto Myself, that where I am, there 
 
40 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 ye may be also.” They heard from His lips that He would 
 leave them, that His destination would be the Father’s house, 
 there He would prepare a place for them; in due time He 
 would come back, receive them unto Himself, and make 
 them the sharers of His place inthe Father’s house. How 
 perplexed they must have been. They did not realize what 
 it all meant. They still clung to their Jewish hope, but 
 after the Holy Spirit came they understood the better hope 
 of a better inheritance. Thus Peter wrote to his brethren 
 in the dispersion, ‘‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath 
 begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of 
 Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, 
 and undefiled, that fadeth not away, reserved for you in 
 heaven” (1 Peter 1:2,3). When Christ expired on the 
 cross their Jewish hope died; when He was raised from among 
 the dead and received up into glory, they were begotten 
 again unto a living hope, and then realized that their in- 
 heritance is heavenly, with Him in everlasting glory. 
 
 The word of our Lord in the fourteenth chapter of John 
 is the first time the blessed hope is mentioned, something 
 entirely different, as we have shown, from the Jéwish hope 
 of an earthly kingdom. We shall find the full revelation 
 as to this hope in the different Epistles. How near and dear 
 this hope, to have His own with Himself in the Father’s 
 house, is to His own loving heart, may be learned from His 
 great prayer. ‘There He prayed the Father for that, which 
 some future day, will be gloriously answered. “Father, I 
 will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me 
 where I am, that they may behold My glory, which Thou 
 hast given Me; for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of 
 the world.” (John xvii:24). 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 41 
 
 There is another passage in John in which our Lord men- 
 tions His coming indirectly. He had announced, at the 
 shore of Tiberias, Peter’s destiny. ‘Then Peter asked con- 
 cerning the destiny of John. In answer the Lord said 
 “Tf I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? 
 Follow thou Me.” (xxi:21,22). But our Lord did not say 
 that John should not die. 
 
 Our Lord probably indicated that John should tarry 
 longer than the other Apostles, and as a very old man, as a 
 prisoner in Patmos, should behold the great events in the 
 “Revelation of Jesus Christ” connected with His coming 
 for the Church, and His coming in power and glory for judg- 
 
 ment and the establishment of His reign over the earth. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE RETURN OF THE LORD IN THE BOOK OF ACTS 
 
 The Book of the Acts of the Apostles records the beginning 
 of the Church by the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day 
 of Pentecost, and how the Gospel witness was given to Jeru- 
 salem, Judea, Samaria, and to the Gentiles. 
 
 The first chapter gives the account of the Lord’s ascension. 
 For forty days He had shown Himself alive by many in- 
 fallible proofs, and spoke to them of the things of the king- 
 dom. At their last meeting, when He was about to be 
 taken up from them, they asked Him a question. “Lord, 
 wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” 
 The Jewish hope still dominated their thinking. But what 
 was His answer? He did not reprove them for their carna, 
 expectations, nor did He say that they were mistakenl 
 that another kingdom is coming, and that there will be no 
 kingdom restered to Israel. If He had said this He would 
 have contradicted the testimony of all the prophets in the 
 Old Testament. ‘‘4nd He said unto them, It 1s not for you 
 to know the times and the seasons, which the Father hath put 
 in H1s own power.’ ‘The kingdom will surely be restored to 
 Israel. It will be restored with His return. What He had 
 said before, that the time of His return is known to the 
 Father only, He re-states here. How well it would have 
 been if Christians had heeded these words of our Lord. The 
 attempts to find out the time of His return have always 
 been disastrous and have led to the discrediting of the pro- 
 phetic Word. 
 
 Then He ascended on high. They saw Him kent 
 What a sight it must have been when He was received up 
 into glory: Then a cloud took Him in. 
 
 42 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 43 
 
 It was not a common cloud, but the shekinah-glory- 
 cloud, the garment which He so often used in the theophanies 
 of olden times. The disciples stood there, evidently unable 
 to take their eyes off the spot where He had disappeared. 
 Were they so steadfastly gazing because they expected His 
 return there and then? Two men in white apparel arrested 
 their attention. 
 
 They said ‘' Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up 
 into heaven? This same Jesus, which 1s taken up from you 
 into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him 
 go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). The return in like manner with 
 a cloud, and a literal return to the very spot from which 
 He left, the Mount of Olives, must not be confounded (as 
 it is often done) with the blessed hope. The coming promised 
 here is His visible coming as revealed in the prophets and 
 re-stated by Him in the Synoptics. The words spoken by 
 these two men in white apparel confirm therefore His own 
 words, as well as the prophecies of the Old Testament. It 
 is not the coming for His Saints, but the coming with His 
 Saints. See Zechariah xiv. 
 
 We do not find the return of our Lord mentioned in the 
 words spoken by Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, on the 
 day of Pentecost. He witnessed to Christ crucified, buried, 
 risen and ascended, seated at the right hand of God, demon- 
 strated by the presence of the Holy Spirit, who had come 
 from heaven to earth. But the better hope must have 
 been brought to the hearts of all who believed and trusted 
 on Christ. We read ‘'And all that believed were together, 
 and had all things common, and sold their possessions and 
 goods, and parted them to all, as every man had need” (Acts 
 11:44,45). 
 
 They were all Jews. The Jew clings tenaciously to the 
 material things and expects the blessing of God to be ex- 
 
44 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 pressed in the increase of houses and lands. But here are 
 Jews who gladly give up earthly things. They realized 
 the better hope, the better inheritance, which the Spirit of 
 God reveals more fully in the Epistles. 
 
 Chapter 111:19 ‘‘Repent ye therefore, and be converted 
 that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing 
 shall come from the presence of the Lord, and He shall send 
 Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you, whom the 
 heavens must receive until the times of restitution of all things, 
 which God hath spoken by the mouth of all H1s holy prophets 
 since the world began.”” ‘The lame man at the temple gate 
 had been miraculously healed, and Peter delivered to the 
 gathered multitude his second address. After bearing wit- 
 ness to the Person of Christ, that He was delivered by 
 them into the hands of the Gentiles and that they had killed 
 the Prince of life, whom God had raised from the dead, he 
 called upon them to repent. Once more God spoke in mercy 
 to Jerusalem to accept Him as their promised Messiah- 
 King whom they had crucified. 
 
 Peter declares that, if they turn to Him and repent of 
 their evil deed, their sins would be blotted out and as a re- 
 sult the times of refreshing would come from the presence 
 of the Lord. Then the important statement is made that 
 He, whom the heavens received, who had gone back to the 
 Father, would be sent again. His coming again will result 
 in the times of refreshing and the restitution of all things 
 as promised by God’s holy prophets. The restitution of 
 all things, or restoration, means the restored kingdom and 
 all the blessings and glories which go along with it, accord- 
 ing to the prophetic Word. They did not repent. The 
 offer of mercy was rejected. But when the age ends a 
 remnant of the same people will turn to the Lord and re- 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 45 
 
 pent, and the promises made unto their fathers by the 
 prophets will be accomplished. 
 
 Chapter xv:13-18 “And after they held their peace, James 
 answered, saying, Men and brethren, hearken unto me: Simeon 
 hath declared how God at first did visit the Gentiles, to take out 
 of them a people for His name. And to this agree the words of 
 the prophets, as 1t 1s written, After this I will return, and will 
 build again the tabernacle of David, which 1s fallen down, and I 
 will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set 1t up: that the 
 residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, 
 upon whom my name 1s called, saith the Lord,who doeth all these 
 things. Known unto God are all His works from the beginning 
 of the world,” 
 
 This great prophetic utterance was made during the first 
 general church council and contains the important program 
 of God concerning the work of the present age, and what will 
 follow when it ends with the return of the Lord. 1. God 
 visits the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His name. 
 This is the great purpose of the present age. The Gospel is 
 preached in all the world and through this preaching and 
 the power of the Holy Spirit the gathering of the Church, 
 the out-called company (the meaning of the Greek word 
 ecclesia) takes place. This work must end some day and 
 the body of Christ is then complete. 2. “After this I will 
 return.” This is the testimony of all the prophets, a second 
 advent. Christ comes back when the purpose of this age is 
 realized, 3. The tabernacle of David will be built again, 
 that is, the throne of David will be established, the kingdom 
 will be restored to Israel. 4. Then all the Gentiles will seek 
 after the Lord. This is world-conversion. The program 
 ignored leads to confusion; the present day condition of 
 Christendom bears witness to it. 
 
46 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 Apostolic preaching included the return of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. We learn this from Paul’s visit to Thessalonica. 
 Paul spent a short time in that city, and preaching the Gospel 
 an assembly was formed. From his first Epistle to the Thes- 
 salonians we learn that they waited “‘for His Son from heaven, 
 whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, who delivereth 
 us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10). How could they 
 wait for His return if Paul had not taught them this great 
 Bible doctrine? We also learn from the second Epistle 
 to the same Church that he had taught them orally the com- 
 ing events in connection with His return. (See 2 Thess. 
 ii:5). When opposition arose against the Thessalonians in 
 their city, the Jews, with the town rabble, accused them that 
 they do “contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there 
 is another King, even Jesus.” By inference we gather from 
 this that Paul had taught them the coming of the King 
 (Acts xvii:7). 
 
 Chapter xvi1:31 “Because He hath appointed a day, in the 
 which He will judge the world 1n righteousness by that man 
 whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance 
 unto all, in that He hath raised Him from the dead.” Paul in 
 speaking thus did not teach a universal judgment at the 
 end of the world, but the setting up of a righteous govern- 
 ment, vested in Him whom He raised from the dead. 
 
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CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE RETURN OF THE LORD IN THE 
 PAULINE EPISTLES 
 
 The Epistle to the Romans 
 
 The message of the Epistle to the Romans is the Gospel 
 of Jesus Christ, the salvation which God has provided in the 
 sacrificial death of His Son. This salvation is threefold, 
 from the guilt of sin, from the power of sin and from the 
 presence of sin. 
 
 Chapter v:1, 2 “Therefore being justified by faith, we have 
 peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom also 
 we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and 
 rejoice 1n hope of the glory of God.”” Three things accompany 
 justification by faith. The first is peace with God through 
 our Lord Jesus Christ. That peace was made in the blood 
 of the cross; the believer enters into it by faith in Christ. 
 There is a present blessing in that the justified believer has 
 access by faith into this grace wherein he stands; then there 
 is something which is future. It is the glory of God. This 
 promised glory is the object of hope. In this hope of the 
 glory of God, the believer rejoices at the present time; it 
 enables him to glory, even in tribulation. What is the hope 
 of the glory of God? It would be a very vague hope if 
 Scripture did not define it. But Scripture tells us what it is. 
 The hope of the glory of God,which is revealed in the Gospel, 
 is to be like the risen Son of God, to share His inheritance and 
 to be forever with the Lord. Other Epistles reveal this fully. 
 But this hope of the glory of God is dependent on His return. 
 If He does not return there will be no such glory for the child 
 of God. His coming again will bring His own to the Father’s 
 house and into the possession of all the promised glory. 
 
 47 
 
48 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 In the eighth chapter we reach the summit of this Epistle 
 and the salvation of God. There is no condemnation to them 
 that are in Christ Jesus. The guilt and condemnation of our 
 sins are forever gone; the believer is freed from the law of sin 
 and death; sin has no more dominion over him. In this 
 chapter we read of the future redemption, the salvation from 
 the presence of sin, and of the glory of God, for which we 
 wait. The body of the believer has the promise of redemp- 
 tion. This we learn from the eleventh verse of this chapter, 
 “But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead 
 dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall 
 also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth 
 in you.” As we have shown in our work on the ‘Healing 
 Question” is it not a promise that the believer’s body is to be 
 immune from pain and sickness, but the passage teaches the 
 future redemption of the believer’s body either by resurrec- 
 tion, or by the sudden change when the Lord comes (1 Cor. 
 xv1:51). 
 
 The Apostle speaks next of the fact that believers are the 
 ~ children of God “and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and 
 joint heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that 
 we may be also glorified together.” But when does this 
 glorification take place, when does the believer receive his 
 inheritance, when does he begin to be the joint-heir with 
 Christ? Certainly not at death. Death in the New Testa- 
 ment is branded as an enemy. Nowhere in the Scriptures is 
 the promise of glory and the glorification of the believer’s 
 body linked with death, though it is true that to “depart 
 and to be with Christ, is far better.” The glory of joint 
 heirship with Christ does not come till Christ comes again. 
 
 Chapter v1t:18-25 “For I reckon that the sufferings of thas 
 present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which 
 shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the 
 

 
 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 49 
 
 creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For 
 the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by 
 reason of Him who hath subjected the same in hope. Because 
 the creature ttself also shall be delivered from the bondage of 
 corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For 
 we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain 
 together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which 
 have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within 
 ourselves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. 
 For we are saved in hope; but hope that is seen 1s not hope. For 
 what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for. But if we hope 
 for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.” ‘This 
 is a mighty revelation of the future glory. Paul teaches that 
 the present time of suffering will be followed by glory which 
 will be revealed. Then he speaks of creation and the crea- 
 ture. The creature suffered on account of man’s sin; his fall 
 dragged down creation; it is now subject to vanity. The 
 whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together till 
 now. But will this be the permanent condition of creation? 
 Is it hopeless? If it were God would suffer defeat; He would 
 be a defeated God. Full redemption demands the removal 
 of the blight and the curse which rests now upon creation. 
 Groaning creation will cease its groans. For that time of 
 deliverance creation is waiting with earnest, longing expecta-~ 
 tion. The divine promise is that ‘the creature itself shall 
 be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the 
 glorious liberty of the children of God.” It will come with 
 “the manifestation of the sons of God” (verse 19). But the 
 manifestation of the sons of God does not take place apart 
 from His manifestation (Col. iii:4). And Christ is not mani- 
 fested in a spiritual way, but His manifestation, His Appear- 
 ing means in Scripture His personal return in glory. 
 
50 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 For this all creation is groaning and waiting. For this we 
 wait, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, the members of 
 His body, we wait for the promised redemption of the body, 
 when we shall be like Him and see Him as He is. 
 
 Chapter 0111:29, 30 “For whom He did foreknow, He also 
 predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He 
 might be the first born among many brethren. Moreover whom He 
 did predestinate, them He also called, them He also justified, 
 them He also glorified.” ‘This precious chain leads from 
 eternity to eternity. He foreknew and predestinated those | 
 who believe. He redeemed them by His Son, calling, justi- 
 fying and glorifying them. All foreknown and predestinated 
 are to be conformed to the image of His Son. He is the 
 firstborn among many brethren, bringing many sons unto 
 glory, (Heb. ii:10). But all is inseparably connected with 
 His return. 
 
 Chapter «1:25-27 “For I would not, brethren, that ye should 
 be ignorant of this mystery: that blindness in part 1s happened 
 to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all 
 Israel shall be saved, as it 1s written, There shall come out of Sion 
 a Delwerer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob. For 
 this 1s My covenant unto them, when I shall take away their — 
 sins.’ 'This chapter in Romans contains a great dispensa- 
 tional message, showing that God hath not cast away His 
 | earthly people Israel, and that the present-day blindness is 
 ‘neither permanent nor total.* There is a hope of Israel, as 
 there is a hope of the Church, and the Lord Jesus Christ is 
 _ the hope for both, His earthly and His heavenly people. In — 
 _ the passage we have quoted, Paul makes known a mystery. 
 Blindness in part has happened to Israel, but that blindness 
 has a limitation. It will be removed when the fulness of the — 
 Gentiles has come in. As stated before, during the present — 
 
 *See our book, ““The Jewish Question,” price 75 cents. 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD a1 
 
 age there is a world-wide preaching of the Gospel for the 
 gathering of the true Church. When the full number is 
 reached, the fulness of the Gentiles will have come in, the 
 true Church will be united to the Lord Jesus in glory. Then 
 all Israel will be saved. It does not mean all Israel in the 
 sense as taught by Russellism and other cults, that those 
 who died in their sins will have another chance, but it means 
 all those of Israel living in that day, who wait for Him, a 
 believing remnant, as made known in different portions of the 
 prophets. Their salvation will be accomplished by the com- 
 ing of the Deliverer, the Lord Jesus Christ. His return will 
 result in the salvation and restoration of the remnant of 
 Israel. Then all the covenant blessings will be realized, (See 
 Isa. lix:20, 21 and Zech. #xii:10). Apart from the coming of 
 the Lord there is no hope for Israel. 
 
 Chapter x10:10 “But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why 
 dost thou set at naught thy brother? for we shall all stand before 
 the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written, As I live, saith the 
 Lord, every knee shall bow to Me and every tongue shall confess 
 to God. So then every one of us shall give account of himself to 
 God.”” Our Lord said “the Father judgeth no man, but hath 
 committed all judgment to the Son” (John v:22). Here for 
 the first time we read of the judgment seat of Christ. The 
 judgment of which He speaks in Matt. xxv:31 is the 
 judgment which he executes as the Son of Man, when He 
 occupies the throne of His glory. The passage in Romans 
 and others in the Epistles to the Corinthians do not 
 speak of a judgment throne, but of a judgment seat. The 
 judgment seat (Bema) is for His people; their works and 
 service will be judged; some will be approved and others will 
 be disapproved; some will receive a reward and others will 
 receive none. ‘The question of eternal salvation is not con- 
 nected with the judgment seat of Christ, for eternal salva- 
 
52.00) THEY RETURN) OFS THE: LORD 
 
 tion is received and assured by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 But does the believer when he dies appear immediately before 
 the judgment seat of Christ, or is the judgment seat in the 
 future? The Apostle Paul answers this question. “Hence- 
 forth is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the 
 Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not 
 to me only but unto all them also that love His appearing” 
 (2 Tim. iv:8). That day, is the day of His appearing. 
 Apart from His appearing there can be no judgment seat of 
 Christ and no promised rewards. 
 
 The First Epistle to the Corinthians 
 
 The state of the Corinthian church is learned from this 
 Epistle. They were carnal, worldly minded, they envied 
 and had strife and divisions among themselves. (1 Cor. 
 i1:3). They tolerated in their midst the grossest immorali- 
 ties (1 Cor. v). The Spirit of God had to warn them to 
 beware of fornication, which was so prevalent in Corinth. 
 There were other evils also. The Apostle calls therefore their 
 attention to the judgment seat of Christ, and speaks of it 
 twice in the first Epistle and once in the second. 
 
 Chapter 111:10-15 ‘For other foundation can no man lay 
 than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man 
 build upon this foundation id, silver, precious stones, wood, 
 hay and stubble; every man’s work shall be made manifest; 
 for the day shall declare it, because 1t shall be revealed by fire; 
 and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If 
 any man’s work abide which he has built thereupon, he shall 
 recewe a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall 
 suffer loss, but himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire.” With- 
 out giving a full exposition of these verses we state briefly 
 that the day which the Apostle mentions is the day of Christ, 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 53 
 
 when He will judge His people. The fire of that day, the 
 symbol of His holiness and righteousness, will consume all 
 that is not of Him; then every man’s work will be tried. 
 The believer’s foundation is Christ. 
 
 Every one who rests upon this one foundation is saved 
 forever. But the believer is to build upon this foundation. 
 Some build upon it the things which are precious; others 
 build nothing but wood, hay and stubble. Some will re- 
 ceive a reward; others will see everything burned up, while 
 they themselves are saved as by fire. 
 
 Chapter iv:5 ‘‘Therefore, judge nothing before the time, 
 until.the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden 
 things of darkness, and will make mantfest the counsels of the 
 hearts, and then shall every man have praise of God.” ‘This 
 passage also refers us to the day of Christ and His judgment 
 seat. The hidden things of darkness will then be brought 
 to light, the counsels of the hearts will be laid bare. The 
 spiritually minded believer does not need to vindicate him- 
 self when misunderstood or misjudged; he can afford to 
 wait till the Lord comes. Then in His presence every 
 wrong will be righted and He will praise those who have done 
 well. 
 
 Chapter 01:2,3 ‘Do ye not know that the saints shall judge 
 ERE OTE 6. ceticrncsn Know ye not that we shall judge angels? 
 
 The Apostle reproved them for going before a heathen 
 judge to have their grievances among themselves adjusted. 
 He reminds them of their coming and promised glory. 
 They are destined, with all other believers, to judge the world 
 and even angels. But the judgment of the world, the nations 
 and the angels in which believers participate, does not take 
 place till He is manifested. 
 
 Chapter «1:26 ‘‘For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink 
 this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death, till He come.”?” The 
 
54 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 Apostle of the Gentiles was not in the upper room when our 
 Lord instituted the memorial feast. The Lord therefore 
 revealed it unto Him with the command to deliver this 
 blessed ordinance to the Church. “For I have received it 
 of the Lord, that which I also delivered unto you, that the 
 Lord Jesus the night in which He was betrayed took bread; 
 and when He had given thanks, He brake it, and said, ‘Take, 
 eat; this is my body which is given for you, this do in re- 
 membrance of Me. After the same manner also He took the 
 cup, when He had supped, saying, This cup is the New 
 Testament in My blood. This do, as oft as ye drink it, in 
 remembrance of Me.” Whatever else Christendom has 
 made out of the Lord’s supper is unscriptural. The memorial 
 feast is only for true believers. As they gather on the Lord’s 
 day at His table they remember His death, that He died 
 for our sins according to the Scriptures; that He is risen 
 from the dead and seated at the right hand of God as priest 
 and advocate and that He is coming again. ‘Till He come 
 we break the bread and take the cup, and when He comes 
 again the blessed feast of remembrance passes away, for 
 we shall see Him face to face. God’s people in the Old 
 Testament had altars upon which sacrifices were brought. 
 At these altars the Jewish believer looked back to the time 
 when sin entered in, and looked forward to the coming of 
 the better sacrifice and the better blood. In the New Testa- 
 ment the believer has a table; he looks back to the cross, 
 where the Lamb of God died, the true sacrifice was brought; 
 he looks forward to the promised coming again and the 
 promised glory. 
 
 Chapter xv:22-25 ‘For as in Adam all die, even so tn 
 Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own 
 order; Christ the first fruits; afterward they that are Christ’s 
 at His coming. Then cometh the end, when He shall have 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 55 
 
 delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when He 
 shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. 
 For He must reign till He hath put all enemies under His 
 feet.” 
 
 In the great resurrection chapter we find this definite 
 Witness to the second coming of our Lord. Christ arose 
 first from among the dead; He is called the first fruits; 
 then comes the resurrection of those that are Christ’s at His 
 coming. Here as elsewhere the truth is revealed, that the 
 believer’s body will be raised from the grave. This is the 
 first resurrection. It will take place at His coming. Some 
 teach that not all believers will be raised when He comes 
 for His saints; they claim that only a certain class will par- 
 ticipate in the rapture, composed of those who have lived 
 a consecrated life, and who attained a deeper experience 
 or higher life, etc. 
 
 All these fanciful inventions are scattered by the state- 
 ment “they that are Christ’s at His coming.” All who be- 
 long to Christ will be raised to glory. The weakest believer, 
 the most ignorant and the youngest child of God is included, 
 for it is not the matter of attainment, but of grace. Then 
 after His coming, Christ will reign, till He hath put all enemies 
 under His feet. 
 
 Chapter xv:51-53 ‘*Behold, I shew you a mystery; we 
 shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, 
 in the twinkling of an eye, ab the last trump; for the trump 
 shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and 
 we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on tncor- 
 ruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” 
 
 This is one of the mysteries made known by the Apostle 
 Paul. A “mystery” in the Word of God is a truth which 
 was not made known before. The Apostle Paul was the 
 instrument through whom the great mysteries of God not 
 
56 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 known in former ages have been revealed. In Romans 
 xi:25 is revealed the mystery of Israel’s blindness and its 
 limitation. In Ephesians the mystery of the Church, as 
 the body and bride. of Christ, is revealed; and in 1 Cor. xv: 
 51-53 and 1 Thess. iv:14-17 the translation of those who 
 live at the close of the age. Inasmuch as 1 Thess. iv: 
 14-18 was written before 1 Cor. xv:51-53, the latter passage 
 is supplementary to that great revelation given through Paul 
 in the first Epistle he penned by the Spirit of God. The 
 mystery here is that there will be a generation of believers 
 living who will not sleep,* that is, pass through death. 
 They will be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an 
 eye and not pass through the grave. This will be at the 
 last trump, which is not the seventh trump of the book of 
 Revelation. At the same time the dead in Christ will be 
 raised incorruptible. Let it be noticed that the Apostle 
 does not say “and they shall be changed,”’ but “‘we shall be 
 changed.” Qur comment on 1 Thess. iv:14-18 deals with 
 this blessed hope more fully. 
 
 Chapter xv1:22 “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 let him be Anathema Maran-atha.” The words “Anathema 
 Maran-atha” mean “Accursed the Lord cometh.” This is 
 asolemn word. It shows that when the Lord returns, He 
 will deal in judgment with the Christ rejectors. (2 Thess. 
 1:8-9). 
 
 The Second Epistle to the Corinthians 
 
 Chapter 1:14“ As also ye have acknowledged us in part, that 
 we are your rejoicing, even as ye also are ours in the day of the 
 Lord Jesus.” ‘The day of the Lord Jesus, the day of Christ, 
 is the day when His redeemed are gathered in His presence. 
 
 *Sleep here, as elsewhere in the New Testament, means physical 
 death. Scripture knows nothing whatever of the sleep of the soul. 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD - 57 
 
 This day is an exclusively New Testament revelation. The 
 day of the Lord ( Yom Jehovah), many times mentioned by 
 the prophets, is the day of His visible manifestation, when He 
 comes to deliver the remnant of His earthly people, deals in 
 judgment with their enemies and receives the throne of His 
 father David, to be the King of kings and the Lord of lords. 
 The day of Christ concerns only the Saints of God, the day 
 of the Lord concerns Israel and the nations. The day of 
 Christ is ushered in by the rapture of the Saints, the fulfil- 
 ment of 1 Cor. xv:51-53 and 1 Thess. iv:14-18; the day of the 
 Lord is ushered in by His return in the cloud with power and 
 great glory. Paul looked forward to the day of the Lord 
 Jesus as a day of rejoicing. (See 1 Thess. ii:19). 
 
 Chapter v:1-5 “For we know that 1f our earthly house of this 
 tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house 
 not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we 
 groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house 
 which is from heaven, tf so be that being clothed we shall not be 
 found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being 
 burdened, not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, 
 that mortality might be swallowed up of life. Now He that hath 
 wrought us for the selfsame thing 1s God, who also hath given 
 unto us the earnest of the Spirit.” ‘This passage is also closely 
 related to 1 Cor. xi:51-53 and 1 Thess. iv:14-18. The believer 
 knows that he possesses a house not made with hands, eternal 
 in the heavens. While he is clothed with an earthly, frail 
 tabernacle, this physical body of our humiliation, he groans 
 and desires earnestly to be clothed upon with the house from 
 heaven. He groans not to be unclothed, which means, to 
 fall asleep and have the body put into a grave, but he groans 
 for something better, to be clothed upon, that mortality 
 might be swallowed up of life. To be clothed upon means not 
 to pass through death, but to be “changed in a moment, in 
 
58 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 the twinkling of an eye.” The coming of the Lord will 
 bring this about. 
 
 Chapter 0:10 “For we must all appear before the judgment 
 seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done tn his 
 body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” 
 Once more the Apostle speaks of the award seat of Christ, 
 when the believer’s works will be judged. 
 
 The Epistle to the Galatians 
 
 This Epistle contains the inspired defense of the Gospel 
 of Jesus Christ. The Galatians were falling from grace by 
 going back under the law. False teachers were at work 
 among them, teaching the use of the law as a means of justi- 
 fication, and for a God-pleasing life and walk. In matchless 
 divine logic it is proven “if righteousness comes by the law, 
 then Christ is dead in vain” (Gal. ii:21). This perverted 
 Gospel which the Galatians began to follow in the first cen- 
 tury is also being taught and followed in the twentieth cen- 
 tury. Ritualism is Galatianism. Seventh-Day Adventism 
 is also a perverted system, which teaches a Gospel of works, 
 Sabbath-keeping, and other evil doctrines. 
 
 The Holy Spirit does not speak of “‘that blessed Hope” in 
 this Epistle; there is only a hint as to that hope. Ritualism 
 does not know anything about the blessed hope. For a 
 ritualist, who prays that the Lord may incline his heart 
 to keep the law, who does not know the assurance of eternal 
 salvation by simple trust in Christ, the coming of the Lord 
 is the Dies Irae, the day of wrath, and to be dreaded. Instead 
 of rejoicing that the Lord is coming again, the ritualist 
 trembles at the thought of His coming. Nor does the 
 Seventh Day Adventist know anything of the blessed hope; 
 he perverts the prophetic Word in such a way which robs the 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 59 
 
 believer of the comfort of hope. The one passage in which 
 the hope is mentioned is found in the fifth chapter. 
 
 Chapter 0:4-5 “‘Christ is become of no effect unto you, whoso- 
 ever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace. 
 For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by 
 faith.” The Christian who falls from grace, goes back under 
 the law, believes as does the Sabbath Day keeper, that only 
 those can be saved who keep the Seventh Day, the Jewish 
 Sabbath, has no hope; but the believer who rests on grace, 
 who is justified by faith, “who worketh not, but believeth on 
 Him that justifieth the ungodly” (Rom. iv:5), waits for the 
 hope of righteousness by faith, that is hope which the right- 
 eousness by faith has promised; it is “the hope of the glory of 
 God” for which he waits (Rom. v:2). 
 
 The Epistle to the Ephesians 
 
 ‘This portion of the Word of God contains God’s highest and 
 best revelation. ‘The masterpiece of God, the redemption of 
 sinners, through Christ Jesus, is marvelously unfolded in this 
 greatest of all the Pauline Epistles, (11:10), the depths of which 
 no Saint has ever fathomed. The glory of the body of 
 Christ, the Church, which is His fulness, is the special revel- 
 ation of this document. Each member of that body is seen 
 fully indentified with Christ. They are quickened with 
 Christ, risen with Christ and seated in Christ in the heaven- 
 lies, far above all principality and power and might and 
 dominion. The destiny of that body is to be with Him, the 
 glorified head. In the opening chapter the Apostle speaks 
 of a coming dispensation, a future age. 
 
 Chapter 1:9-11 “ Having made known unto us the mystery 
 of His will, according to His good pleasure which He hath 
 purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fulness of 
 
60 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 times He might gather together in one all things in the Christ, 
 both which are in heaven, and which are in earth, evenin Him; 
 in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predesti- 
 nated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things 
 after the counsel of His own will.” ‘The dispensation of the 
 fulness of times follows the present dispensation; it will be 
 the result of our Lord’s return. During the present dispen- 
 sation we see not yet all things put under His feet, but when 
 He comes back all things will be gathered in the Christ. 
 Christ and His body will be united in glory and all will be 
 gathered together in one. It is the blessed consummation 
 in the kingdom to come. This is the inheritance which the 
 grace of God has given to the redeemed. But this dispensa- 
 tion of fulness will never dawn if there is no second coming 
 of our Lord. 
 
 In verse fourteen of the same chapter Paul writes of “the 
 redemption of the purchased possession.”? ‘The purchased 
 possession is that which is in the heavenlies. In creation 
 God gave to man the earth—‘ the earth has He given to the 
 children of men’? (Psalm cxv:16), but in redemption He 
 gives the heavens and their glory. The heavenly spheres 
 have also been contaminated by sin. Satan is still the prince 
 of the power of the air; he has his abode there; his princi- 
 palities and powers are in the heavenlies where the wicked 
 spirits dwell (Eph. vi:12). That purchased possession will 
 be redeemed by the power of God, when Christ comes again 
 (See Rev. xii:7.12). 
 
 Chapter 0:27 “ That He might present it to Himself a glorious 
 Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that 
 it should be holy and without blemish.’ In this section of the 
 Epistle Paul speaks more particularly of the Church as the 
 bride of Christ. The family relation is used to illustrate 
 this truth. Husbands are to love their wives, as Christ 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 61 
 
 loved the Church; wives are to submit themselves unto their 
 husbands as a picture of how the Church is in submission to 
 Christ. Three great facts as to Christ and the Church are 
 brought to our attention. The first is past: ‘‘Christ loved 
 the Church and gave Himself for it.””. The second concerns 
 the present: “that He might sanctify it and cleanse it with 
 the washing of water by the Word.” ‘The third is future, 
 (verse 27). He is to present the Church to Himself a glorious 
 Church. But that presentation is not now, nor can it be, 
 till He comes and takes the Church to Himself in glory. 
 
 The Epistle to the Philippians 
 
 This Epistle is not a doctrinal Epistle but is of a practical 
 character. It shows what true Christian experience is. The 
 day of Christ and His coming as the goal of Christian experi- 
 ence and as the Christian Hope are mentioned several times. 
 
 _ Chapter 1:6 “‘ Being confident of this very thing, that He which 
 hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of 
 Jesus Christ.” He gives the assurance that the Lord Jesus 
 Christ will not leave those who have accepted Him and in 
 whom a good work is begun. The day of Jesus Christ as 
 stated before, is His day in glory, when His own are gathered 
 in His presence. 
 
 Chapter 1:10“ That ye may approve things that are excellent, 
 that ye may be sincere and without offence till the Day of Christ.’ 
 This is the second mention of the same day of glory, which 
 can only come with His coming to receive His own unto 
 Himself. 
 
 Chapter 11:16 “‘ Holding forth the Word of life; that I may 
 rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither 
 laboured in vain.” For the third time the day of Christ is 
 before us. It is not without meaning that the Apostle in 
 
62 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 this Epistle of true Christian experience refers thrice to the 
 coming face to face meeting in the day of Christ. Tolivethe 
 life that pleases God means to live Christ. As revealed in 
 this Epistle, He must be the object of our life (chapter 1); 
 the same mind which was in Him, must be in us; He is our 
 pattern (chapter ii). ‘To reach out constantly after the 
 promised goal, the resurrection from among the dead, to 
 prove worthy of the calling wherewith we are called, must be 
 our daily ambitidn (chapter iii); to walk in faith and know 
 that we can do all things through Christ will then be our 
 daily experience (chapter iv). In such a devoted life the 
 heart finds its greatest incentive to look forward to that day, 
 when we shall see Him as He is. 
 
 Chapter 111:20 “For our conversation 1s in heaven; from 
 whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who 
 shall change our body of humiliation, that it may be fashioned 
 like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby 
 He 1s able even to subdue all things unto Himself.” 'The word 
 “conversation” in the Greek is the word “ Politeuma.”’ From 
 this word we have our English word “‘politics.’? One might 
 translate “‘our citizenship, or politics, are in heaven.’ ‘The 
 true believer knows himself in Christ, and in Him, in the 
 heavenlies. His gaze is upward. Christ in glory is His daily 
 contemplation. He looks for Him from heaven. He expects 
 Him as Saviour who will, when He comes, change the body of 
 humiliation, the body in its earthly limitations, subject to 
 pain, disease and death, and fashion it like unto His own 
 glorious body. This is the believer’s hope and daily comfort. 
 
 The Epistle to the Colossians 
 
 The Epistle to the Colossians is the companion Epistle to 
 Ephesians. In it is revealed the glory of the Lord Jesus 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 63 
 
 Christ. His double headship in creation and in redemption 
 is seen in the first chapter. By Him were all things created 
 “and He is the head of the body, the Church, who is the be- 
 ginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He 
 might have the preeminence”’ (i:16-18). After this we read 
 of His atoning work and the double results of this work. 
 Chapter 1:20-22 “And having made peace in the blood of 
 His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, by Him, 
 I say, whether they be things 1n earth, or things in heaven. And 
 you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind 
 by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled, 1n the body of His 
 flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and 
 unreproveable in His sight.” The great work of redemption 
 was accomplished by Him “‘in the blood of the cross.” There 
 is mentioned a double reconciliation. The reconciliation of 
 believing sinners who were once alienated and enemies by 
 wicked works; this is accomplished throughout this Gospel- 
 -age. The other reconciliation is future. It is the reconcilia- 
 tion of all things in earth and in heaven. This reconciliation 
 is the same as “‘the restitution of all things” preached by 
 Peter (Acts iii:19-21). This reconciliation and restitution 
 is predicted in the Old Testament. It will be realized in the 
 age to come, when righteousness reigns, peace dwells on 
 earth, when groaning creation no longer groans under the 
 curse. It is unattainable during the present age and can 
 only be accomplished by His return, for He paid for this 
 glorious reconciliation on the cross, and when He comes to 
 reign all things will be restored to Edenic conditions. Does 
 this reconciliation include the unsaved, the unregenerated, 
 who reject Christ and die in their sins? Does it include 
 Satan and the fallen angels? Some, who call themselves 
 *‘Reconciliationists” or “‘Restitutionists” teach this; so does 
 the cult of the “International Bible Student Association” 
 
64 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 alias Russellism. The Scriptures do not teach such a uni- 
 versal reconciliation, which includes the wicked dead and the 
 wicked spirits. 
 
 Chapter 111:1-4 “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those 
 things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of 
 God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the 
 earth. For ye are dead, and your life 1s hid with Christ in 
 God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall 
 ye also appear with Him in glory.”’—Dead with Christ, risen 
 with Christ, the believer’s life hid with Christ in God, these 
 are the great cardinal truths of Christianity. If apprehended 
 in faith they will lead the believer to seek the things which 
 are above; the mind will be weaned away from the things 
 which are on the earth. The things on the earth include 
 what is mentioned in the previous chapter, such as the rudi- 
 ments of the world, philosophy and words of vain deceit, 
 legalism, ritualism, ordinances, as well as worldly ambitions, 
 honors and pleasures. ‘Then the Apostle speaks of the future. 
 A day is coming when the life, now hid with Christ in God, 
 will be fully manifested. ‘‘When Christ is manifested who is 
 our life, then shall ye also be manifested with Him in glory.” 
 This manifestation of the redeemed comes when He is mani- 
 fested, when He comes in power and great glory. The day 
 *‘when He shall come to be glorified in His Saints, and to be 
 admired in all them that believe in that day” (2 Thess. 1:10). 
 It is not the day when He comes for His Saints, but the day 
 of His visible and glorious return, the day in which He 
 brings His many sons unto glory. 
 
 The First Epistle to the Thessalonians 
 
 This is the first Epistle the Apostle Paul wrote. It was 
 written from Corinth about the year 52. In this Epistle we 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 65 
 
 find the great revelation as to the coming of the Lord to re- 
 ceive His Saints. Everything else in the Pauline Epistles, as 
 to the coming of the Lord for His own, is connected with the 
 revelation found in the fourth chapter of this Epistle. It 
 seems the Epistle was mostly occasioned by the death of 
 some of the Thessalonian believers; as they lacked more 
 definite teaching as to the coming of the Lord and the first 
 resurrection, they sorrowed like those who have no hope. To 
 relieve their anxiety and uncertainty, and to give them the full 
 light on the coming of the Lord in relation to those who are 
 asleep and the future reunion with them, the Lord gave the 
 unique and most blessed revelation as to this coming event. 
 
 In the first chapter we find a description of the Thessa- 
 lonian church. They possessed real Christianity, and at 
 the close of this chapter we find in what their experience 
 and Christian life consisted. 
 
 Chapter 1:9,10 ‘*For they, themselves, report concerning us 
 what manner of entrance we had unto you, and how ye turned 
 to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait 
 for His Son from heaven, whom He ratsed from among the 
 dead, Jesus, who delivereth us from the wrath to come.” 
 
 Here are the three great essentials of true Christianity. 
 A true conversion in turning to God from idols; a true service 
 and life for God which attest the genuineness of conversion; 
 and the third a hopeful waiting for His Son from heaven. 
 To believe in the coming of the Lord and to wait for it is 
 therefore a vital part of Christianity. A sad testimony 
 it is to the superficial knowledge of the Gospel, when men 
 say, and teach, that the belief in the second coming of Christ 
 is unessential and has no practical value. 
 
 It is most essential and of the greatest value to the child 
 of God. He is coming again, and with His coming He de- 
 livereth us from coming wrath. 
 
66 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 Chapter 11:19,20 ‘For what 1s our hope, or crown of re- 
 goicing. Are not even ye before our Lord Jesus Christ at 
 His coming. For ye are our glory and joy.” He reminds 
 them, as he did remind the Philippians and the Corinthian 
 believers, that there will be a day of Christ, when they would 
 meet in His presence in glory. Those who were saved 
 through the preaching of the servant of Christ, nourished 
 and built up in their most holy faith, will be the crown of 
 joy and glorying of the servant of Christ. He speaks of the 
 Thessalonians as his glory and joy in the day of Christ. 
 
 Chapter 111:13 “To the end He may stablish your hearts 
 unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the 
 coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His Saints.” This 
 is the third time Paul writes in this Epistle of the coming 
 of the Lord. Here it is His visible manifestation, when He 
 comes with all His Saints. In view of this coming mani- 
 festation in glory the Spirit of God urges to holiness, sO as 
 to be unblameable before Him. 
 
 Chapter 1v:13-18 “ But we do not wish you to be ignorant, 
 brethren, concerning them that are fallen asleep, to the end 
 that ye sorrow not, even as others who have no hope. For if we 
 believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also God will bring 
 with Him those who have fallen asleep through Jesus. 
 
 “For this we say to you by the Word of the Lord, that we, the 
 living, who remain to the coming of the Lord, shall not precede 
 them who have fallen asleep; for the Lord Himself will descend 
 from heaven with a shout (literally: an assembling shout), 
 with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God; and 
 the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we, the living, who re- 
 main, shall be caught up together with them in clouds, to meet 
 the Lord in. the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord. 
 Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” This is 
 the great and unique revelation to which we have referred 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 67 
 
 repeatedly in our previous pages. We remember here what 
 our Lord said to the eleven disciples (John xiv:1-3). The 
 details of this promise, to come again and to receive His 
 own to Himself, remained unrevealed till the Apostle wrote 
 this Epistle. Let us notice first the statement in verse 14 
 ‘For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also 
 God will bring with Him those that have fallen asleep 
 through Jesus.” The Apostle writes ‘‘Jesus died.”? Of the 
 Saints it is written that they fall asleep; but never is it said 
 that the Lord Jesus slept. He tasted death to the fullest 
 as judgment upon sin. Those who have fallen asleep having 
 believed on Christ will God bring with Him. It does not 
 mean that He brings their disembodied spirits with Him to 
 be united to their bodies from the graves, though this will 
 be the case, but it means that those who have fallen asleep 
 as to their physical bodies will God bring with His Son, 
 when He comes with all His Saints, in that coming glorious 
 manifestation. Their loved ones would be with Christ 
 when He returns; and this assurance the sorrowing Thessa- 
 lonians needed. But this assurance necessitated an ad- 
 ditional revelation. How is it possible that they can come 
 with Him? Are they coming as disembodied spirits? What 
 about their bodies which were put into the graves? How 
 shall they come with Him? 
 
 In answer to these questions we read first that those who 
 passed away will not have an inferior place when He comes, 
 and that, we, who remain to the time of His coming, will 
 not precede those who have fallen asleep. r 
 
 Then follows the greatest of all revelations as to the man- 
 ner of His coming. Nothing like it is found anywhere in 
 the Old Testament. We know first of all that “the Lord 
 Himself will descend from heaven.” He is now at the right 
 hand of God in His glorified humanity. When the last 
 
68 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 member is added to His mystical body, the Church, when 
 that body is complete, and the appointed time has come, 
 He will leave the place at the right hand of the Father, and 
 descend from heaven. He will not return to the earth at 
 that time, but the air will be the meeting place, as we read 
 later. When He comes with His Saints in His visible mani- 
 festation, He will descend to the earth. When He comes 
 to gather His Saints, He descends with a shout, the shout 
 of power and supreme authority. The Greek word “ Kelus- 
 ma’ used means the shout of the hero to his followers in bat- 
 tie, by which they are gathered unto himself. 
 
 That shout may be that beautiful word “Come,” the royal 
 word of grace. ‘There will also be the voice of the archangel 
 and the trump of God. The archangel Michael is the leader 
 of the heavenly hosts. All heaven will be in commotion 
 when the heirs of glory, sinners saved by grace, are about 
 to be brought, fully glorified, into the Father’s house. 
 
 The trump of God has nothing to do with the judgment 
 trumpets in Revelation, nor with the Jewish feast of trumpets. 
 It is a purely symbolical term, and like the shout, denotes 
 the fact of gathering. In Numbers x:4 we read “‘and if they 
 blow with one trumpet, then the princes, the heads of the 
 thousands in Israel, shall gather themselves unto thee.” 
 The shout and the trump of God will gather the fellow-heirs 
 of Christ. “The dead in Christ shall rise first.” All Saints 
 of all ages, Old and New Testament Saints, are included. 
 This statement disproves the erroneous belief held in the 
 greater part of Christendom, as to a general resurrection. 
 There is first a resurrection of the righteous, and from the 
 Book of Revelation we learn, that there will be a second 
 resurrection, in which the rest of the dead, the wicked dead, ° 
 will be raised. The resurrection of the dead in Christ will be 
 accomplished first when He descends into the air. What 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 69 
 
 power will then be manifested! Next all those who are living, 
 at the time this shout is heard, will be caught up together 
 with them in clouds to meet the Lord inthe air. It does not 
 include the unsaved, professing church-members, but all 
 who are Christ’s are included. The change will take place 
 ‘in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Cor. xv:52). 
 Then this mortal puts on immortality; it will be the being 
 ‘clothed upon” of which the Apostle testifies in 2 Cor. v:1-5. 
 It is then that our body of humiliation will be fashioned like 
 unto His glorious body. 
 
 It will also bring the blessed reunion with our loved ones, 
 who have gone before. Often the question is asked «shall 
 we meet our loved ones again and shall we know them in 
 glory?’ The blessed revelation before us gives the only 
 definite answer in all Scripture. ‘‘Together with them” 
 tells us of both, reunion and recognition. We shall surely 
 find our loved ones at that time and enter with them upon an 
 eternal conscious and glorious fellowship. ‘Those who deny 
 
 this truth and revelation, that the Lord is coming for His 
 Saints, rob themselves of all comfort and assurance as to 
 those who have died in Christ. If the Lord Jesus Christ does 
 not come back as revealed in this Scripture, there will be no 
 resurrection and no reunion with our loved ones. 
 
 Then we read that the clouds will be heaven’s chariots to 
 take the joint heirs of Christ into His own presence at the 
 appointed meeting place. “‘Caught up in clouds to meet the 
 Lord in the air’’; all laws of nature will be set aside, for it is 
 the power of God. The same power which raised Him from 
 the dead and seated Him at His own right hand, will be dis- 
 played in behalf of the redeemed (Eph. i:19-23) Surely 
 this is divine revelation. No human mind could have ever 
 invented such a scheme. How absolutely impossible for any 
 man to have conceived that the Lord’s own should be caught 
 
70 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 up to meet Him in the air! It carries with it in its boldness 
 and uniqueness, the assurance that it is the truth, and only 
 to the natural mind, to the modernist with his darkening 
 inventions, it appears foolishness. 
 
 And the blessedness, ‘“‘to meet the Lord in the air’! Then 
 we shall see Him as He is and look into His face of beauty 
 and glory. And then we shall be transformed into His like- 
 ness, for it is written ‘‘we shall be like Him.”? How long will 
 the meeting in the air last? Some teach that it will be only 
 momentary, and that the Lord will at once descend to the 
 earth. We know from other Scriptures that this cannot be 
 the case. Between the coming of the Lord for His Saints, 
 and His coming with His Saints, there is an interval of at 
 least seven years. The judgment seat of Christ must also 
 first be set up, as well as the presentation of the Church in 
 glory (Eph. v:27; Jude verse 24). After the judgment seat 
 with the bestowal of rewards, He will take the Saints into 
 the Father’s house, to behold His glory. (John xvii:22). 
 But what will it be, “Forever with the Lord”’! 
 
 Chapter v:1-4 “‘ But of the times and the seasons, brethren, 
 ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know 
 perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the 
 night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden 
 destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with 
 child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not 
 in darkness, that the day should overtake you as a thief.’ The 
 Apostle writes now about “the day of the Lord” and no longer 
 speaks of the coming of the Lord for His Saints and the day of 
 Christ. The day of the Lord with its judgments, what pre- 
 cedes that day, and what follows, is often described by the 
 prophets. See Isaiah ii:12-22; Joel ii and iii; Zeph. i: 
 14-18; Zech. xiv:1-9, etc. Whenever our Lord spoke of that 
 day, He said “when the Son of Man cometh,” that is, 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 71 
 
 His own visible and glorious manifestation. ‘That day will 
 bring judgment for the world. (2 Thess. 1.) The world, 
 and the world-church do not believe in such a day; they 
 dream of peace and safety, of increasing prosperity and ex- 
 pansion, of universal peace and a continued improvement of 
 earthly conditions. Some day the Lord will come suddenly 
 for His Church, and then the world with all its false optimism, 
 false hope, false peace and safety, will suddenly have to face 
 the judgment-tribulations which precede the day of the 
 Lord. Because these judgments, and the times and seasons 
 connected with that day, do not concern those who are the 
 Lord’s, the Apostle states that there is no need to write to 
 them about it. 
 
 The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians 
 
 The opening verses of the second chapter of this Epistle 
 show that some one had troubled the Thessalonians, and 
 tried to convince them, that the day of the Lord, with its 
 threatened judgments, was actually present. They had 
 received the first Epistle, which must have brought great 
 joy to their hearts. There was on their part renewed wait- 
 ing for His Son from heaven. A short time after false 
 teachers came, telling them their hope was vain, inasmuch 
 as the predicted tribulation had begun and that they would 
 have to pass through all the horrors of the events, preceding 
 His visible return. As they were then passing through 
 persecutions and tribulations, these false teachers probably 
 told them that their sufferings were the indications that the 
 day of the Lord was upon them. It seems these false 
 teachers had gone so far as to produce a document, which 
 they pretended was a letter from the Apostle (ii:2), in which 
 he seemingly confirmed their views. For this reason Paul 
 attached his own signature to this second Epistle (iii:17). 
 
72 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 These teachers belonged undoubtedly to the same class of 
 Judaizers who had sneaked in among the Galatian churches. 
 They attacked the blessed hope given to the Church, and 
 put in its place the judgment and tribulation of the day 
 of the Lord. 
 
 They put the Church back under the Law and taught that 
 all which is in storefor the ungodly, before His return, would be 
 shared by Christians. To answer this invention, which is still 
 being taught, that the true Church must pass through the 
 great tribulation, the Spirit of God inspired this second 
 Epistle. It contains additional and important truths on 
 the Lord’s return. 
 
 Chapter 1:4-10 ‘‘So that we ourselves glory in you in the 
 churches of God for your patience and faith in all your perse- 
 cutions and tribulations that ye endure, which 1s a manifest 
 token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted 
 worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer; seeing 
 wt 1s a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to 
 them that trouble you, and to you who are troubled rest with 
 us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with 
 His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them 
 that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. Who shall be punished with everlasting destruc- 
 tion from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of Hts 
 power, when He shall come to be glorified in His Saints, and 
 to be admired 1n all them that believed, in that day (because our 
 testimony among you was believed).” He quiets first of all 
 their fears. The Apostle assures them, that all their persecu- 
 tions and tribulations, far from having a punitive character, 
 were ‘“‘a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God,” 
 with this purpose in view, that they might be “counted 
 worthy of the Kingdom of God” for the sake of which they 
 suffered. ‘They suffered with Him, so that they might also 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 73 
 
 be glorified together. (Rom. viii:17). And then the con- 
 trast. When the day of the Lord comes it will bring the 
 punishment of the ungodly. The ungodly were now troub- 
 ling them, but when that day comes the ungodly would be 
 troubled, while the troubles of the Saints of God cease for 
 ever, and rest and glory will be their lot. The day of the 
 Lord therefore had not yet come. That day will bring 
 the visible manifestation of the Lord, in flaming fire with 
 His mighty angels, and judgment will fall upon the ungodly. 
 
 Two classes are especially mentioned. ‘Those that know 
 not God, which means the Gentiles, as well as sinners in 
 general, and “those that obey not the Gospel of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ.” These are the Jews and nominal, apostate 
 Christians. The latter class will suffer the greater punish- 
 ment. But when He comes in judgment upon the ungodly, 
 in that day, He will also be glorified and admired in all them 
 that believed. When He comes in power and glory back 
 to earth again, His Saints, the true Church, will no longer 
 _beontheearth. The Church, previously caught up in clouds, 
 will come with Him in glory. The time of the manifesta- 
 tion of the sons of God has come (Rom. viii:19). All are 
 transformed into His image, each member of His body re- 
 flects His glory. And so the afflicted and despised Thes- 
 salonians will then be glorified when He appears. And 
 this is the glorious future of all the redeemed. 
 
 Chapter i1:1-12. (Corrected translation) “ Now we beg 
 you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our 
 gathering together unto Him, that ye be not soon shaken in 
 mind, nor troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter, 
 as if it were by us, as that the day of the Lord 1s present. 
 
 “Let not any one deceive you in any manner, because it will 
 not be unless the apostasy has come first, and the man of sin 
 has been revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts 
 
74 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 himself on high, against all called God, or object of worship; 
 so that he himself sits down in the temple of God showing him- 
 self that he is God. Do ye not remember that, being yet with 
 you, I said these things to you. And now ye know that which 
 restrains, that he should be revealed in his own time. For the 
 mystery of Lawlessness already works; only there 1s He who re- 
 strains until He be gone, and then the lawless one shall be revealed, 
 whom the Lord shall consume with the breath of His mouth, 
 and shall annul by the brightness of H1s coming; whose coming 
 is according to the working of Satan in all power, and signs, 
 and wonders of falsehood, and in all deceit of unrighteous- 
 ness to them that perish, because they have not received the love 
 of the truth, that they might be saved. 
 
 And for this reason God sendeth them an energy of error, 
 that they may believe the lie: that they all might be judged who 
 believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” 
 
 We find here an additional information as to the coming 
 day of the Lord (not the day of Christ as stated by the au- 
 thorized version). ‘That day cannot come unless two con- 
 ditions are fulfilled. ‘There must be first the apostasy, the 
 falling away from the truth, and the man of sin, the son 
 perdition must also be revealed. Both these conditions 
 were mentioned before in the Word of God. The Lord 
 spoke of the moral conditions during the end of the age, 
 and predicted the false Christs, which should come. The 
 Old Testament prophetic Word also speaks of these things. 
 When Paul was with them he had taught these things; he 
 reminds them of his oral ministry. 
 
 In view of these conditions it has been said by some, how 
 could the early Christians believe in and wait for the im- 
 minent coming of the Lord? There was then no sign of 
 apostasy nor the revelation of the man of sin. But the 
 Apostle wrote also “the mystery of lawlessness already 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 75 
 
 works.”? Even in Apostolic times, a falling away began. 
 Such a falling away has gone on throughout this age, but 
 when it closes, the age culminates in the apostasy, head- 
 ing up in the final, personal Anti-christ, the man of sin 
 and the son of perdition. Throughout this age believers 
 could see the mystery of lawlessness at work in every gen- 
 eration and thus could wait for the coming of the Lord as 
 an event near, and not in the distant future. 
 
 Who is the man of sin? —The Roman Emperor, Nero and 
 other emperors, Mohammed, the Pope and the Papacy, the 
 French Revolution, Napoleon I and others have been men- 
 tioned as the predicted man of sin. The most common in- 
 terpretation and most widely accepted view makes the Pa- 
 pacy the Anti-christ. But this is incorrect, for the Papacy 
 does not deny that Jesus is the Christ, nor does the Pope 
 claim to be Christ. That the Papacy has certain marks 
 of Anti-christianity cannot be denied. Recently certain 
 Catholic writers have charged Modernism, which denies 
 the Virgin-birth and the Deity of Christ, with being Babylon 
 and an Anti-christ. With this we are in fullest agreement. 
 
 As John tells us there have been and are many Anti- 
 christs; and never so many as today. Christian Science, 
 Theosophy, Mormonism Russellism, Modernism, Destruc- 
 tive Criticism, New Thoughtism, the Unity Movement of 
 Kansas City and similar cults are Anti-christian. But 
 Paul speaks here of the final Anti-christ, the heading up of 
 the apostasy, which in its completeness is still unreached. 
 
 When he appears he will be the leader of God opposition 
 and Christ defiance. He poseth and exalteth himself 
 against all that is called God. He takes the place of God 
 on earth and demands worship. He will be Satan’s man 
 and Satan’s masterpiece. We find his picture in Daniel 
 x1:36-39 and in Rev. xiii:11-18. In Revelation he is called 
 
76 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 “the false prophet.” He is the one of whom our Lord speaks 
 in John v:43. 
 
 “‘He sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth 
 that he is God.” The temple of God does not mean the 
 Church. It is a Jewish temple. When the true Church is 
 gone from the earth, the Jewish people, partially restored 
 to their own land in unbelief, will erect another temple and 
 institute once more the ancient temple worship. (Isaiah 
 Ixvi:1-4). God will despise their worship. Then, during the 
 great tribulation the man of sin will appear, claiming to be 
 the true Messiah, doing lying signs and wonders, by which 
 he will deceive the Jews and also the Gentiles. He takes 
 his place in that temple. He will undoubtedly be a Jew, 
 for the Jews would not receive a Gentile as their Messiah. 
 The present day rehabilitation of the Jews in Palestine, 
 their eagerness to have a temple, a universal house of wor- 
 ship, all without faith in God and with their hatred against 
 the Christ of God, shows how very near all these predicted 
 events are. The ever increasing apostasy of Modernism 
 in the professing church is the shadow of the soon coming 
 great apostasy. 
 
 But who keeps back the full revelation of the mystery 
 of lawlessness? Who is He that restrains? (Verses 5-8). 
 Many answers have been given to this question. It is evi- 
 dent that that which restraineth must be a power superior 
 to man and Satan, and of a nature totally different to the 
 man of sin and his work. The restraining power is a person. 
 It is the Holy Spirit of God. When the Church is taken 
 up to meet the Lord in the air, this restraining person, the 
 Holy Spirit, who dwells in the body of Christ, the Church, 
 will be taken out of the way. His restraining influences 
 will cease. 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 77 
 
 God will then permit everything to rush into the apostasy 
 and, in due time, the lawless one will be revealed, accepted 
 by all who did not receive the love of the truth. 
 
 The First Epistle to Timothy 
 
 The two Epistles to Timothy and the one to Titus are 
 generally called the pastoral Epistles, because they are ad- 
 dressed to these two servants of Christ, who had been put 
 in charge of important churches. Timothy ministered 
 in Ephesus and Titus in Crete. The purpose of the first 
 Epistle to Timothy is stated in Chapter iii:14,15. In the 
 first Epistle the Church is seen as the House of God; in the 
 second Epistle the House of God is anticipated in its failure 
 and disorder. Both Epistles, especially the second Epistle, 
 give solemn prophetic warnings as to the closing of the age 
 and the inrushing apostasy. These warnings must be con- 
 nected with the warnings our Lord gave and with what we 
 have learned from the second chapter in the ia 
 Epistle, to the Thessalonians. 
 
 Chapter 1:1 “ Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in 
 the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to 
 seducing spirits, and doctrines of demons.” It is a prophetic 
 warning. Inasmuch as the true faith revealed in the in- 
 fallible, inerrant Word of God, is the foundation upon 
 which everything rests, Satan aims at that first of all. He 
 does so today in Modernism and the New Theology. ‘Then 
 when the true faith is given up, the master-mind of the 
 enemy brings in the false doctrines, the fables of seduc- 
 ing spirits and demons. 
 
 Only one direct mention is made in this Epistle of the 
 appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He exhorted Timothy 
 
78 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 to “keep this commandment without spot, unrebukable, 
 unto the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ” (vi:14). 
 
 The Second Epistle to Timothy 
 
 In this Epistle Timothy is repeatedly exhorted to hold 
 fast the form of sound doctrine. It was probably the last 
 Epistle the prisoner of the Lord wrote and in its prophetic 
 testimony we find the most solemn warnings as to our own 
 times. Here the moral and religious conditions of profes- 
 sing Christendom are faithfully and minutely pictured. 
 In the first chapter, the Apostle gives his own testimony. 
 “For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that 
 He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him 
 against that day.”? ‘This is followed by the first exhortation. 
 (Verses 13,14). 
 
 Chapter t11:1-5 ‘*This know also, that in the last days peril- 
 ous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of themselves, 
 lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to 
 parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, false 
 accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, 
 traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasure more than 
 lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the 
 power thereof; from such turn away.”? Such are the predicted 
 religious conditions which will hold sway during the last 
 days, not in the ungodly world, but among the ungodly 
 masses of professing Christians, who have an outward pro- 
 fession, the form of godliness, but deny the power. Here we 
 see the fruits of the present day modernism, which denies 
 the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. These conditions 
 the returning Lord will find on earth. 
 
 Chapter 1v:1-4 **I charge thee before God, and the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at Hts 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 79 
 
 appearing and His kingdom; Preach the Word, be instant 
 in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long 
 _ suffering and doctrine. For the time will come, when they 
 will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall 
 they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they 
 shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned 
 unto fables.” ‘This is the last, and the most solemn exhor- 
 tation, Paul wrote to his son Timothy. With the coming 
 of the Lord before his heart, he charges him to preach the 
 Word at all times. The blessed hope gives energy to con- 
 tinue in the faithful ministry of the Truth of God. What 
 the Apostle beheld here and penned by the Holy Spirit 
 nineteen hundred years ago has come to pass. Sound 
 doctrine is no longer endured. The outcry is against the 
 dogma, the form of sound words. 
 
 Away with the faith of our fathers! Away with the be- 
 lief in the Bible as the infallible Word of God! Away with 
 the belief that Christ is the Virgin-born Son of God! This 
 is followed by belief in fables, such as the evolution fable. 
 These conditions which are now with us will lead on towards 
 that complete apostasy of which Paul speaks in 2 Thess. ii 
 and in the manifestation of the man of sin. 
 
 Chapter 1v:6-9 *‘For I am now ready tobe offered, and the time 
 of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have 
 finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there 
 1s laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the 
 righteous Judge, shall give me at that day, and not to me only, 
 but unio all them that love His appearing.” The martyr’s 
 death loomed up before the prisoner of the Lord when he 
 wrote these most blessed words. 
 
 The correct translation of the first sentence is ‘For I am 
 already being offered,” that is, his heart contemplated in 
 joyful anticipation, the hour when he would depart and be 
 
80 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 with Christ. He knows there is laid up for him a crown of 
 righteousness. He does not say that he will receive this 
 crown immediately upon his departure, but that He will 
 receive it from the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ, the 
 righteous Judge, in that day, when he and all the Saints 
 will appear before the judgment seat of Christ. What a 
 crown he will receive in the day of Christ! And the crown 
 of righteousness is here also promised to all who love His 
 appearing. This means more than loving the truth of the 
 coming of the Lord. If we love His appearing, we shall 
 ‘ also walk in separation from the world, and, like the Apostle, 
 fight the good fight and keep the faith. Again we say, how 
 meaningless all this would be if Christ did not come back. 
 
 The Epistle to Titus 
 
 In this Epistle, addressed to Titus, a Greek convert of the 
 Apostle Paul (Tit. i:4:Gal.iii:3), we find but one reference 
 to our Lord’s return. 
 
 Chapter 11:11-13 *‘For the grace of God, bringing salvation 
 for all men, hath appeared, teaching us that, denying ungodli- 
 ness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and 
 godly 1n the present age, awaiting the blessed hope and appear- 
 ing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, who 
 gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniqutty, 
 and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good 
 works.” 
 
 This is a comprehensive statement of the Gospel and true 
 Christianity. The grace of God appeared in the Son of 
 God, our Lord. This grace comes to man bringing salva- 
 tion, offering salvation to all men, because Christ died for 
 our sins. ‘The same grace teaches how to live and walk in 
 the present age, and supplies the power fora sober, righteous 
 
 Me 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 81 
 
 and godly life. Then we read of the blessed hope and the ap- 
 pearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus 
 Christ. He is coming again for His Saints; this is the blessed 
 hope; He will appear in glory; this is His visible manifesta- 
 tion, when we shall be manifested with Him in glory. This 
 hope is seen once more as an incentive for a holy life. These 
 things Titus was to speak with all authority. 
 
 The Epistle to the Hebrews 
 
 In the first chapter of this Epistle the Holy Spirit reveals 
 Christ in His exaltation at the right hand of God. After 
 He made purification of sins, He was constituted heir of all 
 things, being made so much better than the angels, as He 
 hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than 
 they. This fact is attested by the Old Testament prophetic 
 Word. The Spirit of God uses the Book of Psalms and 
 quotes from seven Psalms. ‘These Psalms reveal His match- 
 less person, and in several of them His glory, dependent on 
 a future manifestation, is predicted. The second Psalm, 
 which is quoted, reveals the fact that some day He will be 
 enthroned as King upon the holy hill of Zion and receive 
 the nations for His inheritance, over whom He will rule. 
 The next Psalm quoted is the eighty ninth, here we find the 
 promise “I will make Him my Firstborn (as risen from the 
 dead), higher than the kings of the earth.” The forty fifth 
 Psalm, mentioned in verses 8 and 9, speaks prophetically of 
 His future throne, and the one hundred and tenth Psalm 
 tells us that His place at the right hand of God is occupied 
 by Him till God makes His enemies the footstool of His feet. 
 Then He will receive His kingly rights and judge the nations. 
 All these prophetic Psalms can only be fulfilled with His 
 return. 
 
82 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 Chapter 11:6-10 ‘*But one in a certain place testified, saying, 
 What 1s man that Thou art mindful of him? or the son of man 
 that Thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the 
 angels, Thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst 
 set him over the works of Thy hands; Thou hast put all things 
 in subjection under His feet. For in that He put all in sub- 
 jection under Him, He left nothing that is not put under Him. 
 But now we see not yet all things put under Him. But we see 
 Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suf- 
 fering of death, crowned with glory and honour, that He by 
 the grace of God should taste death for everything. For it be- 
 came Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all 
 things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain 
 of their salvation perfect through suffering.” 
 
 The eighth Psalm is quoted and we learn that the second 
 Man, the last Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ, is the One under 
 whose feet all things are to be put into subjection. He was 
 made a little lower than the angels; He suffered on the cross 
 and is now exalted at the right hand of God. As we learned 
 from other Scriptures (see 1 Cor. xv:22-27) all things will be 
 put under His feet, not through the work of the Church, but 
 on the day of His return. 
 
 Chapter ix:28 “Christ was offered once to bear the sins of 
 many; and unto them that look for Him shall’ He appear the 
 second time, without sin, unto salvation.” ‘The context states 
 three appearings of Christ. He appeared once in the end 
 of the world (that is, age, the Jewish age) to put away sin 
 by the sacrifice of Himself. This is His first coming to suf- 
 fer and to die. 
 
 He appears now in the presence of God for us, as our high 
 priest. This appearing is unseen by human eyes. Then 
 as surely as He appeared once on earth to die, so He will 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 83 
 
 appear a second time unto salvation to them that look for 
 Him. There is then a “second coming” or “‘appearing.” 
 
 What does it mean “‘unto them that look for Him”? Some 
 teach that He comes and takes unto Himself only those 
 Christians who actually wait for Him and look for Him. 
 They teach that all others will be left behind to go through 
 the great tribulation. Scripture does not teach any such 
 thing. All true believers believe in a return of our Lord. 
 It is the universal belief of all Christians. If any man 
 denies that He is ever coming again in person, as He promised 
 and as the Holy Spirit so abundantly testifies through His 
 Apostles, that man can hardly be called a true believer. All 
 true believers look for Him at some time. ‘To share in the 
 glory promised with His coming is not the question of belief 
 in the mode and manner of His coming, but it is solely the 
 question of being born again and belonging to Christ. “All 
 who are Christ’s at His coming’”’ will share in that future 
 salvation and glory. (1 Cor.xv:23) Countless thousands 
 ‘of Christians died, who knew nothing of His coming, as we 
 know it. Yet they will all be raised when He comes, not 
 because they had a scriptural creed about His coming, but 
 because they belong to Christ and are members of His body. 
 But there is a more positive interpretation which we must not 
 overlook. The Epistle was addressed to believing Hebrews. 
 
 When the age ends, as we have seen before in this volume, 
 a Jewish believing remnant will be on the earth, waiting for 
 Him and His visible manifestation. ‘Those who wait for 
 Him during the tribulation will be delivered when He comes. 
 He appears unto them particularly “‘unto salvation.” 
 
 Chapter x:25 ‘* Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves 
 together, as the manner of some 1s, but exhorting one another, 
 and so much the more as you see the day approaching.” The 
 day mentioned, is the day of His return. 
 
84 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 That day is approaching throughout this age. Each 
 generation can say “the night is far spent, the day is at hand” 
 (Rom. xiii:12). 
 
 Verse 37 “For yet a little while, and He that shall come will 
 come, and will not tarry.” ‘This is a partial quotation of 
 Hab.ii: 3-4. With God an age of almost two thousand years 
 is. but a little while. But the;emphasis is upon the fact that 
 He will come and will not tarry. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE RETURN OF THE LORD IN THE GENERAL 
 EPISTLES 
 
 The Epistle of James 
 
 The Epistle of James, addressed to the twelve tribes scat- 
 tered abroad, is the earliest Epistle, having been written 
 about the year 45 A. D. 
 
 It has partially a prophetic character, inasmuch as we > 
 find exhortations as to the last days. The believing Israelites 
 to whom this Epistle was first of all addressed stand pro- 
 phetically for the believing remnant of the end of the age. 
 The conditions prevailing during this coming period of time 
 are once more described. 
 
 Chapter v:1-6 “‘Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for 
 
 your miseries shall come upon you. Your riches are cor- 
 rupted, and your garments motheaten. 
 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall 
 be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as tt were 
 fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Be- 
 hold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your 
 fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth, and the cries 
 of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord 
 of Sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been 
 wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. 
 Ye have condemned and killed the just, and he doth not resist 
 you.’? One can easily see how these words are applicable 
 to the very end of the age, when oppression rules, and the 
 just are persecuted and killed. When that day comes the 
 rich may well howl and weep. 
 
 Verses 7-8 ‘Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming 
 of the Lord. 
 
 85 
 
86 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 Behold, the husbandman waitteth for the precious fruit of 
 the earth, and hath long patience for 1t, until he receive the early 
 and latter rain. Be. ye also patient, stablish your hearts, for 
 the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.” 
 
 While this exhoration has a special meaning for those be- 
 lieving Jews living during the great tribulation, it also has a 
 message for all true believers. 
 
 When we remember the coming day of our gathering to- 
 gether unto Him, the day in which all will be manifested in 
 His presence, and the day when we shall appear with Him 
 in glory, we toa shall be patient now in our tribulations 
 and trials. 
 
 The First Epistle of Peter 
 
 This Epistle is addressed “to the strangers scattered 
 throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.” 
 They were not Gentiles, but the Jewish believers, who were 
 scattered as strangers in those provinces among the Gentiles. 
 In writing to them Peter carried out the commission given to 
 him by the Lord to strengthen his brethren. They were 
 passing through much suffering. ‘They had fiery trials and 
 many persecutions. He reminds them at once of the better 
 inheritance they had obtained, the inheritance which is to 
 be revealed and possessed in the last time. 
 
 Chapter i:3-7 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath 
 begotien us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus 
 Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and un- 
 defiled, that fadeth not away, reserved 1n heaven for you, who 
 are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready 
 to be revealed in the last time. Wherein ye greatly rejoice, 
 though now for a season, if need be, ye are 1n heaviness through 
 mantfold temptations, that the trial of your faith, being much 
 
 eS a 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 87 
 
 more precious than gold that perisheth, though it be tried with 
 fire, might be found unto praise and honour, and glory at the 
 appearing of Jesus Christ.” As Jews they had the promise 
 of an earthly inheritance. The godly in Israel looked for 
 the day when the promise made to Abraham should be 
 realized, and they would inherit, under the reign of the 
 Messiah, the land. As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 their Messiah and Saviour, they had received an inheritance 
 reserved, not on earth, but in heaven. That inheritance is 
 the Father’s house, the glory where He is. It is the future 
 salvation, the complete redemption, the fulness of glory, 
 to be revealed in the last time. 
 
 That time is the day of His manifestation. In that day 
 of His appearing all their trials and persecutions would turn 
 out unto praise and honour and glory. What an incentive 
 to suffer in meekness and in patience! 
 
 In the next place Peter speaks of the testimony of the Old 
 Testament prophets. The Spirit of Christ testified through 
 them concerning the sufferings that are in Christ, and the 
 glory that should follow. (Verse 11). 
 
 he things they announced which angels desired to look 
 nto, the Gospel, is now preached with the Holy Spirit sent 
 down from heaven. (Verse 12). Then follows in verse 13 
 another mention of the revelation of Christ. 
 
 “Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and 
 ope to the end for the grace that 1s to be brought unto you at 
 the revelation of Jesus Christ.” The revelation, the 4 poka- 
 iu.psis, is the full revelation of His glory in the day of His vis- 
 ibic manifestation. In that day when He appears we shall 
 appear with Him in glory, and grace will be consummated. 
 
 Chapter 10:13 ‘*But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers 
 of Christ’s sufferings; that when His glory shall be revealed, 
 ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.” ‘The Holy Spirit 
 
88 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 comforts those who suffered, being partakers of Christ’s 
 suffering, with the coming glory, when His glory will be 
 revealed. The more suffering now, the greater the joy in 
 the day of His revelation. 
 
 Chapter 0:4 ‘And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, 
 ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away.” ‘The 
 Lord Jesus spoke of Himself as the good shepherd, who 
 gives His life for the sheep. Paul in the last chapter of 
 Hebrews calls Him the great shepherd, risen from the dead. 
 Peter speaks of Him as the chief shepherd. He will be 
 manifested in this character at His return. Then the true 
 servant will receive from His hands the crown of glory. 
 Thus Peter witnesses, as Paul did, and as the Lord said, 
 that there will be no rewards for service given, till He comes. 
 
 The Second Epistle of Peter 
 
 This second Epistle has a decided prophetic character. 
 Peter was now an old man. The Lord had told him at the 
 lake of Tiberias that he would be crucified, when an old 
 man. (John xxi). He knew therefore that he must soon 
 put off his tabernacle. Then he speaks first of all of the 
 transfiguration as revealing the, power and coming of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ. (See comment on Matthew xvi:27-28). 
 That glorious event, foreshadowing His return, makes the Old 
 Testament prophetic Word more sure (i:19). After these 
 statements Peter speaks of the importance of the prophetic 
 Word and how it came into existence, “‘ holy men of God spake 
 as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” 
 
 In the second chapter he bears a witness as to the condi- 
 tions of professing Christendom when this present age closes. 
 This chapter reads like the Epistle of Jude, though there 
 are many differences. Peter did not copy from Jude, nor 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 89 
 
 did Jude copy from Peter, but both bear an independent 
 witness given by the Spirit of God as to the coming apostasy. 
 All harmonizes with what the Lord said as to the close of 
 the age and what the Holy Spirit witnessed through the 
 Apostle Paul. 
 
 The third chapter is entirely prophetic and in its revela- 
 tions leads us forward towards the new heaven and the new 
 earth. 
 
 Chapter i11:3-4 ‘Knowing this first, that there shall come 
 in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and 
 saying, Where 1s the promise of His coming? for since the 
 fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the 
 beginning of the creation.”” According to Peter’s prophecy 
 the blessed hope will be ridiculed and scoffed at in the last 
 days. It is so today. The Spirit of God evidently has in 
 mind the evolution theory, which is so very prominent in 
 these days. Things continue as they were and a catastrophic 
 ending of this age is put down as unbelievable, and those 
 who believe that there are such things coming, as predicted 
 in connection with the Lord’s return, are branded as fanatics. 
 Then the Spirit of God shows up their willing ignorance. 
 Geology shows to them, who do not believe the Bible, that 
 this globe had a catastrophic period in the past when “the 
 earth that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.” 
 
 Then he continues: 
 
 Chapter 111:7-10 ‘‘But the heavens and the earth, which are 
 now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire, 
 against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. 
 But beloved, be not tgnorant of this one thing, that one day 1s 
 with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as 
 one day. The Lord 1s not slack concerning His promise, as 
 some men count slackness, but 15 long-suffering to us-ward, 
 not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to 
 
90 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in 
 the night, 1n the which the heavens shall pass away with a 
 great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the 
 earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” 
 
 Peter predicts that the day will come when the earth 
 will be burned up, when the heavens will be passing away 
 with a great noise and all will melt with a fervent heat. 
 Leading astronomers tell us that they have discovered that 
 some of the stars in the heaven burn up now and then, and 
 that such a conflagration is in store for our globe, and the 
 surrounding heavens. Peter was not an astronomer; he 
 had not a telescope nora spectroscope, yet he penned that 
 which painstaking astronomy has but recently discovered. 
 It is one of the evidences of supernatural inspiration and 
 revelation. 
 
 But of what day does Peter speak here? The twelfth 
 verse mentions the day of God, wherein the heavens being 
 on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with 
 fervent heat. In the seventh verse we read of the day of 
 judgment and perdition of ungodly men. It is not the day 
 of the Lord, when He comes back to earth again to begin | 
 His kingly reign, but it is the end of that day, which lasts 
 for a thousand years and which ushers in the day of God, 
 when God will be all in all. (1 Cor. xv:28). That great 
 coming “‘ Day of the Lord,”’ His reign upon and over the earth, 
 when all things will be put under His feet, has a fiery be- 
 ginning and a fiery ending. When His thousand year reign 
 ends, the judgment of ungodly men will take place, recorded 
 in Rev. xx:11-15. The great conflagration of which Peter 
 speaks takes place then, when once more that day comes 
 like a thief in the night, after the earth has had her great 
 millennium. After that follows the new heavens and the 
 new earth (verse 13), just as we read in Revelation xxi, fol- 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 91 
 
 lowing the passing away of the heaven and earth as they are 
 now, and the great white throne judgment; ‘“‘And I saw a 
 new heaven and a new earth.” 
 
 The First Epistle of John 
 
 The first Epistle of John has been called “a family letter.” 
 It concerns only the children of God, those who enter the 
 family of God by the new birth. The blessed hope is men- 
 tioned prominently in this Epistle. We quote the two 
 passages. 
 
 Chapter 11:28 *‘And now little children, abide in Him, 
 that when He shall appear, we may have confidence, and not 
 be ashamed before Him at His coming.” 
 
 The beloved disciple addresses the members of the family of 
 God as little children and exhorts them to abide in Christ. 
 The day is coming when He willappear, and John, as a teacher 
 and Apostle, knows that in that day he and other servants 
 of Christ will have confidence, joy and glory, in His presence, 
 if those to whom they ministered abided faithfully; if not, 
 they would be ashamed before Him at His coming. (See 
 1 Thess. ii:19). 
 
 Chapter iti:1-3 “Behold, what manner of love the Father 
 hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children 
 of God; therefore the world knoweth us not, because 1t knew 
 Him not. Beloved, now are we the children of God, and 1t 
 doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that, when 
 He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him 
 as Heis. And every man that hath this hope in Him puri- 
 freth himself, even as He is pure.” 
 
 These are beautiful words. But those who do not believe 
 in the literal return of the Lord cannot claim them, nor 
 can they tell us how the promise given can ever be realized 
 apart from His coming again. 
 
92 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 In Christ, the unspeakable gift of the Father’s love, we 
 are called the children of God. As Paul wrote in Romans 
 (Chapter viii) “if children then heirs, heirs of God and fel- 
 low-heirs with Christ.””> What we shall be has not yet ap- 
 peared. It is still a blessed secret with the Father. But 
 we know one thing “we shall be like Him.” This is the hope 
 of the calling of God. 
 
 We shall be transformed into the same image; our bodies 
 of humiliation will be changed and become like unto His 
 own glorious body. But when? 
 
 When He shall appear. And if He does not appear we 
 have no hope that such a glorious transformation will ever 
 take place. This hope which we have has in it the power 
 of purification. It is a separating hope. He who believes 
 in it with his heart will not love the world and the things 
 which are in the world, but will love Him and His appearing. 
 
 The Epistle of Jude 
 
 This Epistle, like the second chapter in Peter’s second 
 Epistle, predicts the moral and religious conditions of 
 Christendom at the close of this age. Jude writes of some- 
 thing which we do not find in the Epistle of Peter. 
 
 Verses 14 and 15.‘‘And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, 
 prophesied of these, saying, Behold the Lord cometh with ten 
 thousands of His Saints, to execute gudgment upon all, and to 
 convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly 
 deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard 
 speeches, which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” 
 
 From Genesis v we learn that Enoch walked with God for 
 three hundred years. Then God took him. In what this con- 
 sisted we find recorded in Hebrews xi. ‘‘ By faith was Enoch 
 translated that he should not see death; and was not found 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 93 
 
 because God had translated him, for before his translation he 
 had this testimony, that he pleased God.” And here we 
 have additional information. 
 
 He was a prophet. He prophesied of the coming of the 
 Lord in judgment. 
 
 It was at the close of an age, when darkness and violence 
 began to spread over the human race, before the days of 
 Noah, the end of that age, were reached. He heralded the 
 coming of the Lord and as a result the ungodly spoke against 
 him. Can we expect anything better from the ungodly 
 world and the ungodly professing church, at the close of the 
 present age? | 
 
 Enoch is abruptly introduced in this little Epistle for a 
 purpose. He is in his experience a prophecy. The true 
 Church at the close of this age, is, like Enoch, surrounded by 
 scoffers, while the world itself rapidly nears the days of 
 Noah, for violence is in the earth. But before the days of 
 Noah return, as our Lord predicted in His prophecy, the 
 true Church will be removed in a supernatural way, as Enoch 
 was taken. May all those who believe in the Lord’s re- 
 turn walk with God and bear witness to His coming to bring 
 judgment upon the ungodly, as Enoch walked with God and 
 witnessed for Him. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE RETURN OF THE LORD IN THE 
 BOOK OF REVELATION 
 
 The final book of the New Testament is the only prophetic 
 book in the New Testament Scriptures. Its prophetic char- 
 acter is indicated in the very beginning (Chapter i:3). We 
 have learned that there is a prophetic element in every 
 portion of the New Testament. ‘The Lord Jesus Christ 
 exercised His office as the Prophet, when on earth, and 
 predicted things to come concerning Jerusalem, His own 
 nation, the Gentiles, the present age, and above all did He 
 predict His return in power and glory to receive His own 
 throne. The message of apostolic preaching included 
 prophecy. Every one of the great doctrinal Epistles reveals 
 prophetically the consummation and fullness of redemption, 
 when Christ comes again. In this last Bible book given 
 through the Apostle John, when a prisoner on the island of 
 Patmos, we find the greatest New Testament unfolding of © 
 the visible return of the Lord and the events connected 
 with it. Not only what is revealed in the New Testament, 
 but also Old Testament prophecies are restated once more 
 in this majestic book which leads us from time into eternity. 
 One of the reasons why the prophetic message of the Revel- 
 ation has been so much misunderstood and misinterpreted 
 is the ignorance of expositors as to the contents of the 
 prophetic Word in the Old Testament and God’s revealed 
 purposes. This great capstone of the entire revelation of 
 God must forever remain a sealed book if the personal, 
 visible and glorious return of Christ is not owned. It has 
 been so much criticized and even ridiculed because that 
 coming great event which will enthrone the Lord Jesus as 
 King of kings and Lord of lords is not believed. 
 
 94 
 
THE, RETURN: OF 'THE LORD 95 
 
 The correct title is “‘the Revelation’; the name of the 
 Apostle John should be omitted, though it was communicated 
 through John, the book is not the revelation of St. John. 
 As the opening verse tells us, it is the Revelation of Jesus 
 Christ. The word revelation in the Greek ‘‘ Apocalypsis” 
 means ‘‘Unveiling.”” We find in this book the unveiling of 
 the Person and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. While on 
 earth our Lord said “‘Search the Scriptures . . . they are 
 they that testify of Me.” The final testimony to the Lord 
 Jesus Christ is given in this book. Here we read of His 
 Deity, His life and witness on earth, His sacrificial death, 
 His resurrection and exaltation; but above all His glorious 
 return is prominently made known. He is seen in the midst 
 of the seven golden candlesticks; He sends messages from 
 His throne to the churches. We behold Him as the Lamb 
 in the midst of the throne; He is called the Lion of the tribe 
 of Judah, who receives from God’s hands the seven sealed 
 book. He breaks the seals, sends forth the trumpeting 
 angels and the seven angels which pour out the vials of divine 
 wrath. Again we see Him as the Angel of the covenant 
 presenting before God the prayers of the Saints, and entitled 
 to the possession of the land and the sea. John beheld Him 
 sitting upon a white cloud crowned with a golden crown, 
 and a sickle in His hand, and finally He appears riding upon 
 the white horse followed by the armies of heaven to conquer 
 the hostile forces and begin His glorious reign over the earth. 
 
 The charge brought against this majestic book that it is 
 disjointed and lacks an orderly construction is wholly un- 
 founded. It is the opposite; all is arranged in perfect order. 
 The first great prophetic message of this book concerns the 
 Church on earth. The seven church messages give a start- 
 ling prophetic forecast of the history of the Church on earth 
 from Apostolic days till the true Churchis taken to glory 
 
96 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 and the apostate Church is disowned. This is found in the 
 second and third chapters. Then follows the vision of the 
 glorified church in the presence of the throne, after which 
 we find the things which are coming upon the earth during 
 the last seven years of tribulation with which the present 
 age closes. When the end of those years comes He is revealed 
 from heaven and His kingdom reign begins. Finally we 
 behold in this book the issues of eternity. 
 
 After these introductory remarks we turn to a closer exam- 
 ination of the different passages in which His return is men- 
 tioned. 
 
 Chapter 1.4-8 “ John to the seven churches which are in Asia: 
 Grace be to you, and peace, from Him who 1s, and who was, 
 and who is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before 
 His throne; and from Jesus Christ, who 1s the faithful witness, 
 and the first begotten from the dead, and the prince of the kings 
 of the earth. Unto Him who loveth us, and washed us from 
 our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and 
 priests unto God and His Father; to Him be glory and dominion 
 for ever and ever, Amen. Behold, He cometh with clouds, and 
 every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him; and 
 all the tribes of the land shall wail because of Him. Even so, 
 Amen. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, 
 sath the Lord, who 1s and who was, and who 1s to come, the 
 Almighty.” | 
 
 These are the words of sublime greeting with which the 
 Book begins. The Son of God is revealed here in His 
 essential Deity and in His Incarnation. In His essential 
 Deity He is the “I Am,” Jehovah, the self-existing One, 
 who was, who is and who is to come. He is the Alpha and 
 the Omega, the beginning and the ending, the Almighty. In 
 incarnation we know Him as Jesus Christ. Of Him this 
 text speaks in a threefold way. He is the faithful witness. 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 97 
 
 Such He was on earth as He made God known to man and 
 witnessed to the Truth. Then He is the first begotten from 
 the dead, which indicates His death, the death of the cross. 
 In the third place He is called “‘the prince of the kings of 
 the earth”’; this is a title which He will receive in the future 
 when He returns to earth and claims His crown rights over 
 all the earth, purchased by His blood. 
 
 Then follows an outburst of praise. It is not the worship- 
 ful praise of John, but the praise of the Holy Spirit through 
 the true Church. The Saints, those who know Christ, praise 
 Him for His mighty love, because they know He died for 
 their sins, has cleansed them by His blood and given them a 
 place with Himself. The possession of this place awaits His 
 return. He does not yet have the kingdom, nor does He 
 reign as King; only when He reigns can His own reign with 
 Him over the earth. The announcement of His coming with 
 clouds is His appearing to the world. It is the same of which 
 He spoke in Matthew xxiv:30, ‘“‘And then shall appear the 
 sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and then shall all the tribes 
 of the earth (land) mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man 
 coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” 
 The tribes are the tribes of Israel. Two other passages of 
 Scripture throw light on this verse. In John xix:34-36 is the 
 record of the pierced side; His legs were not broken. John 
 informs us that these things, the piercing of His side and the 
 unbroken legs, were done that the Scripture should be ful- 
 filled. But while we read of the Scripture fulfilled that a 
 bone of Him shall not be broken, John writes that another 
 Scripture says “They shall look on Him whom they pierced.” 
 It is still unfulfilled. That is why the word fulfilled is not 
 used. This Scripture is found in Zech. xii:10. “And I will 
 pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of 
 Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplications, and they 
 
98 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall 
 mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall 
 be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for 
 his firstborn.”? Those who pierced Him are His own people 
 Israel, who rejected Him. ‘The context shows that this takes 
 place “‘in that day,” that is the day of the Lord, when He 
 appears visibly. Jerusalem will be in great trouble and dis- 
 tress (Zech. xiv), but He will appear for their salvation and 
 for the judgment of their enemies. The glorified body of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ retains the nail prints and the mark of the 
 pierced side (John xx:27; Luke xxiv:40). “Behold, He 
 cometh with clouds,” is therefore His visible, second Coming, 
 when all the remnant of Israel, will turn to Him and be 
 saved by Him (Rom. xi:26). 
 
 The seven messages, which the glorified Christ sent from 
 the throne to seven churches in existence in Asia Minor at 
 the close of the first century, contain the history of the entire 
 Church on earth in a nutshell. The omniscient Lord knew 
 from the beginning what the course of the professing church 
 would be, beginning with the first declension in apostolic 
 days down to the end of the age when apostasy would demand 
 judgment. In the seven local assemblies He selected and 
 addressed, He beheld certain, characteristics, which later 
 would become the prominent features of the entire profess- 
 ing church. To give a complete outline of the prophetic 
 significance of these messages is not the purpose of this 
 work. We have done so elsewhere.* We briefly state that 
 the message to Ephesus gives the picture of the Church at 
 the time the Apostles had ended their testimony (with the 
 exception of John). Smyrna shows the Church during the 
 dreadful persecutions under the different Roman emperors. 
 Pergamos presents the Church being corrupted by identi- 
 
 
 
 *Exposition of Revelation by A. C.G. 230 pp. 85 cents postpaid. 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 99 
 
 fication with the world and by priestly assumption. Thyatira 
 gives a prophetic picture of the Roman Catholic apostasy. 
 Sardis is the Reformation period. Philadelphia and Laodicea 
 describe the conditions of the professing Church apart from 
 Rome, at the close of the age. Philadelphia is the faithful, 
 loyal remnant, who keep His Word and deny not His Name. 
 Laodicea is Modernism, the Protestant church in apostasy. 
 
 In the first three messages the Lord does not mention 
 His coming at all. But He speaks of His return in the four 
 other messages. The first three periods are gone and will 
 never appear again; the last four periods and phases remain 
 till the Lord comes back. For this reason He does not speak 
 of His return in the messages to Ephesus, Smyrna and Per- 
 gamos, for He knew these periods would pass before His 
 return. Not so with the last four; Roman Catholicism with 
 all its evil doctrines, its superstitions and evil practises 
 remains, till He comes. Sardis, the Reformation Churches, 
 remain and when He comes He will find on earth an apostate 
 church, which He disowns. 
 
 To those faithful even in the Roman corruption He says: 
 * But that which ye have hold fast till I come.”’ (Chapter ii:25.) 
 Then He gives those overcomers a promise. “And he that 
 overcometh, and keepeth My works unto the end, to him will 
 I give power over the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod 
 of tron, as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers, 
 even as I received of My Father. And I will give him the 
 morning star.” ‘The noble men and women, thousands of 
 them, who during Romish night held fast the truth of God 
 and sealed their noble confession with their blood, after 
 cruel tortures, have not yet received the promised power 
 over the nations, nor do they, as disembodied spirits, rule 
 with a rod of iron. The promise, yea all the promises, in 
 the book of Revelation, will be made good when the Lord 
 
100 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 Jesus Christ returns.. If He does not come again to receive 
 from the Father’s hands the nations for His inheritance all 
 His promises made to the overcomers are failures, and those 
 whose trusted in them trusted in vain. 
 
 Chapter i11:3-5. “‘ Remember therefore how thou hast received 
 and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not 
 watch, I will come unto thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know 
 what hour I will come upon thee. Thou hast a few names even 
 in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall 
 walk with Me in white, for they are worthy. He that over- 
 cometh the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will 
 not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess 
 His name before My Father, and before His angels.” Sardis 
 represents the Reformation period and the Churches of the 
 Reformation. They will exist, like Roman Catholicism, till 
 He comes. ‘The Lord calls on Protestantism to hold fast 
 and to repent, exactly that which Protestantism is not doing 
 today. What the glorified Christ says as to His coming as a 
 thief will some day take place. It is not a coming in some 
 other way, but His personal coming. The faithful ones who 
 confess Him in the midst of Protestant failure and denial 
 of the faith will He own before His Father and the angels. 
 When will that be? Mark viii:38 tells us it will be at His 
 coming. ‘The message to Philadelphia which follows brings 
 into view the true Church, the faithful remnant, those who 
 walk in separation and who own Christ alone. They are a 
 feeble folk for He says, ‘Thou hast a little strength.” They 
 keep His Word and do not deny His Name. The Lord of 
 glory has given to them an open door, which no man can shut. 
 We hear what He has to say to this faithful, loyal remnant 
 of His people, who represent the assembly, His body in these 
 days of the end of the age. 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 101 
 
 Chapter 111 10-12. ‘‘ Because thou hast kept the word of my 
 patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation 
 (trial), which shall come upon all the world, to try them that 
 dwell upon the earth. Behold I come quickly; hold that fast 
 which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. Him that over- 
 cometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My God, and he 
 shall go no more out, and I will write upon him the name of 
 My God, and the name of the city of My God, which is New 
 Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from My God, 
 and I will write upon him My new name.” 
 
 Here is a gracious promise of exemption, which every true 
 believer can claim. There is coming an hour of trial for all 
 the world. What else can this mean but that coming time 
 of tribulation with which the ages closes, and of which the 
 Lord spoke while on earth (Matthew xxiv:21) and also His 
 Apostles (2 Thess. ii)? Before that hour of trial arrives, 
 not while it is in process, He will take His true Church to 
 glory and 1 Thess. iv. 16-18 will be fulfilled. The believer 
 who belongs to this remnant remembers daily His promise 
 “T come quickly” and waits for Him. 
 
 Laodicea runs parallel with Philadelphia. Laodicea is the 
 professing church in apostasy; it is the Modernism of today. 
 In this message He speaks as the coming judge. He threatens 
 to spue the nauseating thing out of His mouth. He calls to 
 repentance and speaks of Himself as standing at the door. 
 From Laodicea there is no recovery. No new reformation 
 takes place. No great revival restores things as they were 
 in the beginning. Here we have a divine forecast of the end- 
 history of the professing church on earth. While there is 
 His true Church waiting for His coming, true to Him, holding 
 fast the form of sound words, the great mass of professing 
 Christians will depart from the faith once and for all delivered 
 
102 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 unto the Saints, so that when He comes He will not find the 
 faith upon the earth, as He announced (Luke xviii:8). 
 
 Chapter 1v:1-2. “‘ After this I looked, and, behold, a door was 
 opened in heaven, and the first voice which I heard was as tt 
 were of a trumpet talking with me, which said, Come up hither, 
 and I will shew thee things which must be afterwards. And 
 immediately I was in the spirit, and, behold, a throne was set 
 in heaven, and one sat on the throne.” 
 
 A great change suddenly takes place. John is transported 
 in the spirit from earth to heaven. Earthly things are left 
 behind and the unseen, heavenly things appear. Such a 
 sudden change is in store for the true Church. It will take 
 place when His gracious promise in John xiv:1-3 is fulfilled. 
 In the preceding chapter we read of His promise “I will keep 
 thee from the hour of trial,”’ and His threat “‘I will spue thee 
 out of My mouth.” The opening words of the fourth chapter 
 show the fulfillment of the promise and the threat as well. 
 The true Church will be taken up to glory; the apostate 
 church is seen completely rejected. 
 
 Symbolically the words in the beginning of this chapter 
 stand for that great revelation penned by the Apostle Paul 
 in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians (iv:16-18). The 
 open door is the symbol of the'entrance of the Saints into 
 His presence. As it is written in Paul’s revelation, so here 
 we read of a voice speaking and also the trumpet. The shout 
 which will gather His Saints together to meet Him in the air 
 will probably consist in the words which John heard, ““Come 
 up hither.” As John was immediately in the spirit in the 
 presence of the Lord, so we, when the Lord comes for His 
 Saints, will be changed “‘in a moment, in the twinkling of 
 an‘eye’’) {1 Cor: xvi52)- 
 
 We find then here in the Revelation the definite infor- 
 mation that before the tribulation with which this age 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 103 
 
 closes, revealed in detail in Chapters vi-xix, can pass into 
 history, the Lord will take His people to be with Himself. 
 This is also indicated by the word ‘“‘afterward” ... the 
 things which must be afterward. We are still living in the 
 things “‘which are,” that is in the period of the Church on 
 earth. The things afterward appear after the rapture of the 
 Saints of God. All events in the book of Revelation after 
 the third chapter are future. 
 
 In the fourth and fifth chapters the redeemed are seen in 
 glory as a glorified and worshipping company. An im- 
 pressive scene takes place which is related to His return. 
 In the beginning of the fifth chapter we read that God holds 
 in His right hand a seven sealed book. It is found that the 
 One who alone is worthy to receive the book, to break its 
 seals, to make known its contents is “‘the Lion of the tribe 
 of Judah, the Root of David.”’ The Lion appears at once in 
 the midst of the redeemed as “‘a Lamb as it had been slain.” 
 For the redeemed He is the Lamb of God. They heard on 
 earth the message ‘‘Behold the Lamb of God!” They 
 looked and lived. But He is the Lion of the tribe of Judah 
 as well. He will manifest His Lion-character in royal 
 judgments when He is about to return and in the day of 
 His visible manifestation. ‘The book He receives contains 
 the judgment actions of Almighty God, of which He is the 
 executor, as well as the title deeds to the earth. ‘*The 
 Father judges no man, but hath committed all judgment to 
 the Son” (John v:22). When He came the first time He 
 came for salvation. “For God sent not His Son into the 
 world to condemn (judge) the world, but that the world 
 through Him might be saved” (John i1i:17).. When He comes 
 the second time He will judge the world in righteousness 
 (Acts xvii:31). 
 
104 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 He receives the book and breaks the seals. When the 
 sixth seal is broken the end of the age with His visible 
 manifestation appears. 3 
 
 Chapter vi:12 “ And I beheld when He had opened the sixth 
 seal, and lo, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became 
 black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and 
 the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth 
 her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And 
 the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together, and 
 every mountain and island were moved out of their places. 
 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, 
 and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, 
 and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks 
 of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on 
 us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, 
 and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of Hts 
 wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?” (See Isaiah 
 11:10-22; x111:9-11; Matthew xxiv:30-31.) 
 
 The seal judgments are followed by the trumpet judgments 
 and the vial judgments. In connection with the sounding 
 of the seventh trumpet His glorious manifestation and 
 victory is again mentioned. 
 
 Chapter x1:15-17 “ And the seventh angel sounded, and there 
 were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world 
 are become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He 
 shall reign for ever and ever. And the four and twenty elders, 
 which sat before God on their thrones, fell upon their faces, and 
 worshipped God, saying, We give Thee thanks, O Lord God 
 Almighty, which art, which wast, and art to come, because 
 Thou hast taken to Thee Thy great power, and hast reigned.” 
 Not till these judgments are accomplished during the end of 
 this age will the world be converted and the nations learn 
 righteousness. ‘The kingdoms of this world can only become 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 105 
 
 the kingdom of Christ at the time of His return. World 
 conversion before the second coming of Christ is an unscrip- 
 tural delusion. 
 
 Chapter xiv: 14-16 “‘ And I looked, and behold a white cloud, 
 and upon the cloud sat one like unto the Son of Man, having 
 on His head a golden crown, and in His hand a sharp sickle. 
 And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud 
 voice to Him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in Thy sickle, and 
 reap, for the time is come for Thee to reap, for the harvest of 
 the earth is ripe. And He that sat on the cloud thrust in Hts 
 sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped.” It is the time 
 of the harvest, the end of the age, of which our Lord spoke 
 in two of His parables (Matthew xiii). He is the great reaper, 
 and He also uses the angels as we read in the verses which 
 follow. 
 
 Chapter xo: 3-4“ And they sing the song of Moses the servant 
 of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous 
 are Thy works, Lord God Almighty, just and true are Thy 
 ways, Thou King of Saints. Who shall not fear Thee O Lord, 
 and glorify Thy name? For Thou only art holy; for all 
 nations shall come and worship before Thee, for Thy judgments 
 are manifest.” ‘This is the song of the victors over the beast, 
 the overcomers during the reign of Antichrist (Chapter 
 xili), His victory, when all nations worship Him and all 
 evil is dethroned. But that will not take place till His 
 judgments are manifest in the earth (Isaiah xxvi:9) and His 
 judgments are always linked with His return. 
 
 Chapter xvt: 15 “ Behold I come as a thief. Blessed 1s he 
 that watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and 
 they see his shame.” 
 
 These are His own words. Chronologically in this book 
 - they were spoken when the tribulation is nearing its end and 
 all is preparing for the battle of that great day of God 
 
106 THE RETURN{OF THE LORD 
 
 Almighty, the battle of Armageddon. The exhortation is 
 addressed to the Jewish remnant, suffering during the tribu- 
 lation, and waiting for His coming, when deliverance is in 
 store for them. When the seventh angel pours out his vial 
 into the air, the consummation is at hand, and the day of 
 His visible manifestation . . . (verses 17-21). 
 
 After a description of the mystical Babylon (Chapters 
 XVii-xviii) and the judgment of it, the book introduces us 
 once more to a heavenly scene. The voice of much people 
 is heard, saying, Hallelujah! Salvation, and glory, and 
 honour, and power, unto the Lord our God. All heaven is 
 celebrating the overthrow of Babylon and the victory which 
 is now at hand for the Son of Man. His reign is about to 
 begin. ‘‘And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude 
 and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty 
 thunderings, saying, Hallelujah, for the Lord God reigneth. 
 Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to Him, for the 
 marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made her- 
 self ready” (xix:1-7). The Bride of the Lamb, the Church, is 
 now come to her glorious rights bestowed upon her by Him 
 who loved the Church and gave Himself for it. Then all is 
 ready for, not an opened door in the heavens, but for the 
 opened heavens, and for the age-long expected manifestation 
 of the returning Christ in great power and glory, to conquer 
 with one mighty blow the opposing forces of evil, to dethrone 
 Satan and to take His own throne to exercise the rule of 
 righteousness and peace. 
 
 Chapter xix:11-16 ‘‘ And I saw heaven opened, and behold, 
 a white horse; and He that sat upon him was called Faithful 
 and True, and in righteousness He doth judge and make war. 
 Hts eyes were as a flame of fire, and on His head were many 
 diadems, and He had a name written, that no man knew, but 
 
 He Himself. And He was clothed in a vesture dipped in 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 107 
 blood, and His name ts called the Word of God. And the 
 
 armies which were in heaven followed Him upon white horses, 
 clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of His mouth 
 goeth a sharp sword, that with 1t He should smite the nations, 
 and He shall rule them with a rod of iron, and He treadeth the 
 wine press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And 
 He hath on His vesture and on His thigh a name written, 
 King of kings and Lord of lords.” 
 
 The language is symbolical. The white horse typifies the 
 victory of Him who sits upon the horse. He comes wearing 
 many diadems. The brow which was once crowned in 
 mockery with the cruel crown of thorns, wears now the 
 diadems of kingly glories, such as were never seen upon 
 earthly kings. His glory is told out in the names He bears. 
 He has a name which is unknown, known only to Himself. 
 It is the name of His essential Deity. His next name is 
 “the Word of God.” It is the name which speaks of His 
 incarnation, when He walked upon the earth among men. 
 The third name is His name of the future. While He is 
 constituted “‘ King of kings and Lord of lords” in the eternal 
 purposes, and this title belongs to Him, He is not yet en- 
 throned as King and Lord over all. Not in this dispensation 
 but in the next, the dispensation of the fulness of times 
 (Eph. i:10) will all things be put under His feet. That dis- 
 pensation will be ushered in when heaven opens and He 
 comes forth, as seen in this Patmos vision, as the mighty 
 conqueror. He comes to overthrow the gathered nations 
 under the leadership of the beast” (Chapter xiii:1-10). “And 
 I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, 
 gathered together to make war against Him that sat on the 
 horse, and against His armies” (Verse 19). The day of 
 Armageddon has come. The stone, which Nebuchadnezzar 
 saw falling out of heaven, strikes, and the end of the times 
 
108 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 of the Gentiles has come (Daniel ii). He smites the nations 
 in judgment. He gathers them as the kingly Judge, and as 
 a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats so He will 
 separate them (Matthew xxv:31-32). He is enthroned upon 
 Zion’s hill and as long ago predicted in the second Psalm, 
 He begins His rule with a rod of iron, the rule of righteousness, 
 followed by the rod of peace, when all enemies have been 
 subdued (Psalm cx:2). The armies of heaven which He 
 brings with Himself are the redeemed hosts, as well as the 
 holy angels. All He predicted while on earth as to His 
 return will then literally be fulfilled. 
 
 In the twentieth chapter we have His thousand-year 
 reign revealed. It is the kingdom reign, when all things are 
 put in subjection under His feet, when nations turn swords 
 into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. Satan will 
 be bound by Him (Genesis iii:15), the first great promise of 
 the Bible, will then be fulfilled. ‘The head of the serpent is 
 crushed. He can no longer deceive the nations. Christ 
 reigns and the redeemed reign with Him over the earth. 
 “Blessed and holy is he that hath part inthe first resurrection, 
 on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be 
 priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a 
 thousand years.” During these thousand years every 
 prophecy of blessing and glory in both Testaments will be 
 literally fulfilled. Peace on earth and “glory to God in the 
 highest” has now come. His own people have their rewards 
 and what He promised for the time of regeneration has been 
 realized (Matthew xix:28). 
 
 We do not follow here the ending of the Kingdom reign of 
 Christ. ‘The reader will find this explained in our complete 
 exposition of Revelation, nor do we enlarge on the eternal 
 issues as revealed in this book. We quote the remaining 
 references to His return. 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 109 
 
 Four times in the last chapter of Revelation, and therefore 
 the last chapter of the whole Bible, His Return is mentioned. 
 In doing so the Holy Spirit shows that with Him it is not the 
 unessential doctrine, of no account and little consequence, 
 as stated by so many theologians. 
 
 Chapter xxii:7 “Behold, I come quickly. Blessed 1s he that 
 keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book.” It is one of 
 the last beatitudes of the Bible. Those who sneer at this 
 book, and the thousands of indifferent Christians who never 
 read this book or ponder over its wonderful revelations, have 
 no share whatever in this blessing. But if a Christian 
 believes in the personal and glorious return of the Lord, that 
 Christian will read and study this greatest of all prophetic 
 books, and keep the sayings of the prophecy of this book. 
 
 Chapter xx11:12 “‘ Amd, behold, I come quickly; and my 
 reward 15 with Me to give every man according as his work 
 shall be.’ 'The previous passage in which the Lord announced 
 His return and a promised blessing speaks of obedience; the 
 second announcement of His coming is linked with the prom- 
 ised reward. What He had spoken on earth (Matthew xxv: 
 8-27) He repeats from glory. His coming brings the rewards 
 for His servants (2 Tim. iv:8). 
 
 Chapter xxi1:17 “‘ And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come. 
 And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst, 
 come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” 
 
 The preceding verse contains His own words. “I Jesus 
 have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the 
 churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the 
 bright and Morning Star.” This self-witness brings at once 
 a response from the Holy Spirit. The Morning Star is the 
 harbinger of the nearing dawn, with the rising Sun in all His 
 glory. His visible return in great power and glory is spoken 
 of in the last chapter of the last book of the Old Testament 
 
110 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 as “the Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings’’ 
 (Mal. iv:2). The Morning Star denotes His coming for His 
 Saints. For this the Holy Spirit longs, when He can present 
 the complete body of Christ, the assembly in His presence. 
 Therefore He utters His “‘Come,”’ not here the invitation to 
 the sinner, which follows directly, but the “Come” is address- 
 ed to Him who is the root and offspring of David, the 
 bright and Morning Star. The Bride is the assembly, the 
 true Church. The Spirit dwells in her and she joins in and 
 says “‘Come.” The Spirit and the Bride desire longingly 
 His coming. But there is another “Come.” It is addressed 
 to those who know Him not, who have no share and part in 
 the coming glory, when His own are gathered home into the 
 Father’s house. The last Gospel invitation, the last “‘ whoso- 
 ever’ is given in this verse. 
 
 Chapter xx11:20 “He which testifieth these things saith, 
 Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, Come, Lord Jesus.” 
 This is His last word. Once more He announces His coming. 
 It will be suddenly. The next word which His own will 
 hear from His lips is the shout (1 Thess. iv:16), the ‘Come 
 up hither.”” The prayer ‘‘Even so, Come, Lord Jesus’’ is 
 the answer of His waiting bride, the Church. For centuries 
 it has been the forgotten prayer. But now it is prayed as 
 never before. The prayer will be answered when He comes 
 suddenly, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. May we 
 never forget to pray this last prayer in the Bible. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 TWENTY PROMINENT FACTS TAUGHT IN THE NEW 
 TESTAMENT ON THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 In our examination of the teaching in the New Testament 
 on the return of the Lord Jesus Christ we have discovered 
 the great prominence of this doctrine. The Lord Jesus 
 Christ spoke frequently of His second coming. He announced 
 it to His disciples. He gave them prophetically the program 
 of the end of the age. He spoke of His return in different 
 parables. He gave in His farewell discourse the promise of 
 the blessed hope to His eleven followers, the Apostles. Even 
 in the presence of His accusers He mentioned His return in 
 the clouds of heaven. At His ascension the two heavenly 
 visitors re-stated His return in like manner as He went up 
 to heaven. We have learned that Peter preached it in his 
 second address in the book of Acts, and that apostolic 
 preaching and teaching did not neglect this great theme, it 
 held an important place in their ministry and was the hope 
 and comfort of the early Church. 
 
 Furthermore the testimony of the great documents of 
 Christianity, the Epistles, teach that His return is the goal 
 of redemption. Some of the most vital doctrines of the 
 faith are linked to this truth, that Christ will come back. 
 We have seen that the resurrection of those who died in 
 Christ, our re-union with them, the rewards for faithful 
 service, the promised crowns and also the promised blessings 
 for the earth are, besides much else, entirely dependent on 
 His return. If there is no second coming of Christ the whole 
 truth of Christianity breaks down. Then we learned from 
 the last book of the Bible, the Apocalypse, the fitting cap- 
 stone of the whole Word of God, the last word on His return. 
 
 111 
 
112 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 Here the Old and New Testament revelations as to this event, 
 what precedes and what follows His return, are all restated. 
 
 And now we give facts taught in the New Testament about 
 the Lord’s coming. 
 
 1. The New Testament does not teach that the gift of the 
 Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost 1s the second coming of 
 Christ. This is one of the erroneous theories taught by 
 commentators. They claim that when our Lord spoke of 
 His return, that He meant the coming of the Holy Spirit. 
 But such a teaching is unknown in the New Testament. 
 The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. How 
 then can the third person of the Godhead be the promised 
 return of God the Son, the second person? 
 
 2. Nor does the New Testament teach that the Destruction 
 of Jerusalem 1s the promised return of Christ. ‘This view is 
 also found in many commentaries. It is repeated by others, 
 who, instead of searching the Scriptures search the com- 
 ments of expositors of past generations. The destruction of 
 Jerusalem was predicted by the Lord Jesus Christ. But 
 nowhere does He say that He would come again at that time. 
 As pointed out before Matthew xxiv:31 is the fatal blow to 
 this view. Many commentators teach that verses 29 and 
 30 mean His coming in the destruction of Jerusalem. But 
 when Jerusalem was destroyed He did not send His angels 
 to gather His elect, the people Israel, from the four winds. 
 They were scattered into the four corners of the earth 
 instead. 
 
 3. Christ does not come again when the believer dies. This 
 also is taught by many. When the Lord Jesus said to His 
 disciples “‘I will come again and receive you unto myself,” 
 they say, He meant the death of the disciples, when He 
 would come to take them to Himself. But the death of the 
 believer is never spoken of as the second coming of Christ. 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 113 
 
 When the believer dies the Lord does not come for him, but 
 the believer goes to be with the Lord. For this view there 
 is not a line of Scripture in the entire New Testament. 
 
 4, His return is a personal return. He said that He would 
 go away. It was not a phantom departure, but He went in 
 person. And he said “‘I will come again.”’ He did not mean 
 a spiritual return, but a personal coming again. His words 
 cannot be interpreted in any other way. Furthermore the 
 two men in white apparel said to the disciples “‘‘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 
 i:11). Wherever His return is mentioned in the New Testa- 
 ment it means the return of the same One who lived on earth, 
 who died on the cross, was buried, rose again and ascended 
 up on high. 
 
 5. It will be a visible return. His words “ They st shall see the 
 Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 
 xxiv:30) teach His visible coming again beyond the shadow 
 of a doubt. So does Rev. i:7, ‘‘Every eye shall see Him.” 
 Scoffers sometimes say, How is this possible? But every eye 
 on earth every twenty-four hours sees the sun in the heavens. 
 Thus in that day when He descends in the cloud every eye 
 will behold Him. 
 
 6. His return will be in great power and glory. ‘And they 
 shall see the Son of Man coming in great power and glory” 
 (Mark xiii:26). The Epistles speak of His glorious appear- 
 ing (Tit. ii:13; 2 Thess. i:9). This power and glory is 
 prominently revealed in the Apocalypse. 
 
 7. The Angels of God will accompany Him in H1s return, 
 ‘For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father 
 with His angels” (Matthew xvi:27). “‘When the Lord Jesus 
 shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels” 
 (2 Thess. i:8). He will send forth the angels and use them as 
 
114 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 His messengers. These unseen tenants of the heavens will 
 become visible in His return. 
 
 8. He will bring all His Saints, the redeemed of both 
 Testaments, with Him. (See 1 Thess. iv:14; Rev. xix:14.) It 
 will be His glorification as well as the glorification of the 
 Saints. ‘‘When He shall come to be glorified in His Saints, 
 and to be admired in all them that believed, in that day 
 (because our testimony among you was believed)” (2 Thess. 
 i:10). 
 
 9. His return will be suddenly, like the lightning and like 
 a thief. The following passages teach this: Matthew xxiv:27; 
 42-51; Mark xiii:35, 36; Rev. xvi:15; xxii:7; 12; 20. 
 
 10. The present age remains unchanged till He returns. 
 The New Testament teaches that not Christ, but Satan, is 
 the god of this age and the prince of it. (2 Cor. iv:4; Eph. 
 ii:2.) Satan is not dethroned till Christ comes again. (See 
 Rev. xx:1-2.) Therefore this age remains an evil age down 
 to its end. 
 
 11. His return 1s preceded by the falling away. 'Throughout 
 this age there has been going on a falling away from the truth. 
 John wrote of the many antichrists in his day. (1 John ii.) 
 The mystery of iniquity was then already at work (2 Thess. 
 ii). When the end of the age comes (Matthew xiii) the 
 harvest, the tares which began in the beginning of the age 
 will be full grown. When He comes again He will not find “the 
 faith on the earth” (Luke xviii:8); the days of Noah and Lot 
 have returned, days of violence and lust (Luke xvii:26-37). 
 The Epistles bear a startling testimony as to the final great 
 apostasy, an apostasy which is apparent today, for the 
 modernistic rationalism in the different evangelical denom- 
 inations is the beginning of this falling away (See 2 Thess. ii; 
 1 Tim. iv:1, 2; 2 Tim. iii:1-5; iv:1-4; Epistle of Jude; 2, Peter 
 ii and iii). 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 115 
 
 12. H1s return 1s preceded by the manifestation of the final, 
 personal Antichrist, the man of sin and the son of perdition. 
 The Lord announced the coming of such a one. He pre- 
 dicted false Christs, with lying signs and wonders (Matthew 
 xxiv:24, 25; John v:43; 2 Thess. ii; Revelation xiii). 
 
 13. Hts return is preceded by the budding of the fig-tree and 
 a final witness to the nations of the world (Matthew xxiv:14 
 and 32, 33). There will be national revival among the Jews 
 and the Lord will call a remnant from among them to herald 
 the coming of the King, preaching the Gospel of the kingdom 
 to all the nations of the world (see Rev. vii). The great 
 multitude coming out of the great tribulation (Rev. vii:9-17) 
 is not the Church, but the multitude represents those of the 
 nations who believed this final witness, given by the 144,000 
 Israelites, not Gentiles, who bear this final witness. 
 
 14. His return 1s preceded by the great tribulation and 
 followed by the gudgment of the nations. Nowhere is it pre- 
 dicted that when Christ comes back He will find a converted 
 world, that righteousness and peace will reign before His 
 return. The Lord and His Apostles teach something entirely 
 different. (See Matthew xxiv:21; Luke xxi:25, 26; Revelation 
 in its main portion reveals the events of this time of greatest 
 trouble. He returns at the close of the great tribulation, 
 Matthew xxiv:29. He will come as judge after the tribu- 
 lation. See Matthew xxv:31; 2 Thess. i: 8, 9). 
 
 15. The New Testament reveals H1s coming as a blessed 
 hope unknown 1n former ages. Whatever revelation the Lord 
 Jesus Christ predicted as to His visible, personal and glor- 
 ious return, preceded by the great tribulation and the 
 manifestation of the Antichrist, is also revealed in the Old 
 Testament. But in one passage He spoke of something new, 
 altogether new, unknown to the prophets and to the Old 
 Testament Saints. This is found in John xiv:1-4 It is the 
 
116 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 first intimation of the blessed hope for the Saints of the New 
 Testament. 
 
 It was given to the Apostle Paul to receive the full revel- 
 ation concerning ‘“‘that blessed hope” (See again 1 Thess. 
 iv:16-18 and 1 Cor. xv:51, 52). This blessed hope has 
 rightly and scripturally been termed “‘the coming of the Lord 
 for His Saints’’ in distinction from “‘the coming of the Lord 
 with His Saints.”” The latter takes place when He is visibly 
 revealed out of heaven. 
 
 16. The coming of the Lord for His Saints takes place before 
 the end of the age sets in, before the final great apostasy, before 
 the great tribulation and before the mantfestation of the man of 
 sin. The denial of this has led to much confusion. Good 
 men teach, what is an unscriptural theory, that the Church 
 will be on earth to the very end of the tribulation period. 
 Some speak of the Church having yet to pass “‘through a 
 Gethsemane experience.” But where is this taught in 
 Scripture? Nowhere. ‘The second chapter of the second 
 Epistle to the Thessalonians shows that the falling away and 
 the man of sin, cannot come as long as there is the hindering 
 One on the earth. As we have shown in the exegetical note 
 on that chapter, that One is the Holy Spirit. He dwells in 
 the true Church, as He dwells in every individual believer, 
 and must be taken out of the way first. He will be taken 
 away in hindering power with the rapture of the Saints. 
 
 The reason why our Lord said nothing about tribulation 
 to His disciples in the upper room when He first mentioned 
 “that blessed hope,” is because the true Church has nothing 
 whatever to do with that period of time. There is no tribu- 
 lation of a punitive character in store for her, nor any wrath 
 whatever (1 Thess. i:10). The suffering Saints during the 
 great tribulation are Jews. In the Old Testament it is spoken 
 of as “‘the time of Jacob’s trouble” (Jerem. xxx:7); and Daniel 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 117 
 
 speaks of it in the same way (Dan. xii:1, 2). The scope of 
 the Book of Revelation proves conclusively, that before even 
 the Lord receives the book of judgments and tribulation from 
 God’s hands, the Saints must first be brought to glory. Not 
 one of the Epistles has anything to say about that great 
 tribulation. There is a significant silence. It is because the 
 true Church will not be here when that time comes. 
 
 17. All true believers will be taken when the Lord comes. 
 Some teach that only a certain class of believers will parti- 
 cipate in the glorious rapture. According to some only those 
 will meet the Lord who believe in His coming; holiness sects 
 claim that one must have had a “‘deeper”’ experience to be fit 
 for His coming. Others make ‘‘ Divine healing” the test, or 
 the “gift of tongue” delusion, or something else. All these 
 theories are not found in Scripture. Every child of God, 
 no matter how ignorant, how weak in himself, how imperfect 
 in walk and service, is nevertheless a child of God and as such 
 belongs to the Father’s house. Every true believer, inde- 
 pendent of his experience, whether ‘‘deep” or “‘shallow,” 
 independent of his attainments, is through grace a member 
 of the body of Christ, the Church. No member of that 
 body will be left behind, when He comes for His Saints, 
 for that body will be presented as a complete body 
 in His presence. There is no such thing taught in the New 
 Testament as a “‘piece-meal rapture,’ such as certain 
 English and American Bible-teachers claim, to the confusion 
 of simple and young believers. 
 
 18. Hts coming for the Saints will mean a blessed re-union 
 with our loved ones, who have gone before, and with all the 
 Saints. It is therefore called ‘‘the comforting hope.”” Apart 
 from the coming of the Lord for His Saints there is no ray 
 of hope in Scripture of meeting our departed ones again. 
 But when He comes for His Saints, those who died in Christ 
 
118 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 will be raised in incorruption; we, the living ones, will be 
 changed. All will take place by the mighty power of God, 
 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. Together with 
 them we shall be caught up in clouds to meet the Lord in the 
 air. 
 
 19. The New Testament teaches that there will be a judg- 
 ment-seat of Christ. There the hidden things of our lives as 
 to service, Christian living, Christian sacrifice and suffering, 
 will be brought to light. Rewards and crowns will be 
 bestowed upon those who were faithful. Others will be 
 ashamed before Him in His presence and will be crownless, 
 though saved as by fire. Then the Apostle Paul and all the 
 Apostles and martyrs will receive their crowns in that day 
 (2 Tim. iv:8). The blessed hope becomes therefore a great 
 incentive to holy living and untiring, self-sacrificing service. 
 
 20. With His coming the Church will be glorified and share 
 with Him Hts glory and His kingdom. He will present the 
 Church to Himself “fa glorious church, not having spot, or 
 wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy and 
 without blemish” (Eph. v:27). Every individual believer 
 will see Him as He is and will be like Him. Every believer 
 will receive an eternal body, like unto His own glorious body. 
 His prayer is answered ‘‘ Father, I will that those Thou hast 
 given Me be with Me where I am, that they may behold 
 My glory.” His glory will be our glory. With Him we shall 
 be priests and kings, and reign with Him for a thousand years 
 in His Kingdom over the earth. With Him the Church shall 
 judge the world and shall judge Angels. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 FIFTY PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 WHICH CAN ONLY BE FULFILLED WHEN 
 THE LORD RETURNS 
 
 There are hundreds of passages in the Old Testament 
 prophetic Scriptures which are unfulfilled and which cannot 
 be fulfilled till Christ returns. But when He comes back 
 all these prophecies will be accomplished, and as a result the 
 Bible as the inerrant, infallible Word of God will be vin- 
 dicated. We quote only a small number of these prophecies 
 as to the future, and indicate their coming fulfilment when 
 the King returns to claim His Kingdom. We do not quote 
 the texts in full as we do not want the reader to neglect his 
 Bible in reading this volume. Please take your Bible and 
 look up each passage. 
 
 1. Numbers xxiv:17-25. The heathen prophet Balaam, 
 forced to speak what the Spirit of God put into his mouth, 
 in the presence of the heathen king of Moab, predicted that 
 a Star should come out of Jacob and of a Sceptre to arise 
 out of Israel. The Star and the Sceptre are predictions of 
 Christ. His first coming is typified by the Star; His second 
 coming by the Sceptre. The judgment of nations and the 
 overthrow of the enemies of the people of God is announced 
 by Balaam. It awaits His return to reign and rule over the 
 earth. 
 
 2. 1 Sam. 11:10. Hannah’s prophecy, uttered in her praise, 
 looks forward to the time when He is King, when the 
 Anointed (Christ) is exalted and when He will judge the ends 
 of the earth. 
 
 3. Psalm t1. In this Psalm the revolt against God and 
 against His Christ is predicted. It has not yet come. Then, 
 
 119 
 
120 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 when the nations of the world are opposing God and Christ, 
 the King will be enthroned upon the hill of Zion and receive 
 the nations of the world for His inheritance and the uttermost 
 parts of the earth for His possession. 
 
 4. Psalm otit. The Son of Man is the last Adam, the Lord 
 Jesus Christ. All things will be put in subjection under His 
 feet. But we see not yet all things put under Him (Hebr. ii). 
 Only when He returns will this be done. 
 
 5. Psalm xxit:27-31. There will be no turning of the ends 
 of the world, nor will there be the worship of all nations, till 
 Christ receives the Kingdom from the hands of God. He 
 will be the Governor among the nations when He returns. 
 
 6. Psalm xlvi:5-11. The preceding Psalm reveals the King 
 coming to receive His throne. The results of His coming 
 are given in this Psalm. The nations raged and the king- 
 doms were moved. Judgment works are then executed by 
 Him. Wars cease unto the end of the earth. The time of 
 universal peace has come. It will not be till He returns. 
 
 7. Psalm xlvoit and xloitt. Both of these Psalms are proph- 
 ecies of the Kingdom to come. 
 
 8. Psalm 1:3-6. The coming theophany described in this 
 Psalm of Asaph is a prophetic picture of the Lord’s coming, 
 when He will gather His Saints together and when the 
 heavens shall declare His righteousness. 
 
 9, Psalm lxxxix:27, The Firstborn, destined to be higher 
 than the kings of the earth, is Christ. His return will exalt 
 Him above all kings and rulers. 
 
 10. Psalm ctt:13, 16. Mercy is promised to Zion, not the 
 Church, but Israel. Zion in both Testaments never means 
 the Church of Jesus Christ, but always the earthly literal 
 Zion. The building of Zion, the restoration of Israel, will not 
 take place till He appears in glory. 
 
 11. Psalm cx:1-7. Only the first verse of this prophetic 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 121 
 
 gem is fulfilled. He is still at the right hand of God waiting 
 till it pleases God to send Him back to earth again. Then 
 He will rule in the midst of His enemies, while Israel will be 
 His willing people and the nations will be judged by Him in 
 righteousness. 
 
 12. Isaiah 11:2-4. 'This much quoted prophecy, in spite 
 of all the well meaning efforts to legislate war out of the 
 world, and have universal peace, will not be fulfilled till the 
 Prince of Peace is on the throne. Then nations will learn 
 war no more. 
 
 13. Isaiah 11:10-22. This day of the Lord is future. It 
 is the day of His visible and glorious appearing. 
 
 14. Isaiah 1:2-6. 'This is another prophecy of that coming 
 day of His return and of the glorious results which are in 
 store for Israel. 
 
 15. Isaiah ix:6-7. The child was born and the Son given, 
 but the seventh verse remains to be fulfilled. He will receive 
 the throne of David and with it the government, when He 
 comes back. 
 
 16. Isaiah x1:4-9, Here other results of His return are 
 revealed. Groaning creation will be delivered, and the earth 
 shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord. 
 
 17. Isaiah xi:10-14. The restoration of Israel, the re- 
 gathering of the nation from the ends of the earth and the 
 islands of the sea has never taken place. His return will 
 accomplish it (See Matthew xxv:31). 
 
 18. Isaiah xi. This is a prophetic Song which converted 
 and restored Israel will sing “in that day”? when “the Holy 
 One of Israel,”’ Christ, is in their midst. 
 
 19, Isaiah x111:9-11. 'This description of the coming day 
 of the Lord is the same as spoken by Him in Matthew xxv: 
 29, 30. 
 
 20. Isaiah xxiv. The whole chapter and those which 
 
122 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 follow have been called “‘Isaiah’s little Apocalypse,” because 
 the last book of the New Testament, the Revelation, or, 
 Apocalypse, reveals much of what is contained in these 
 chapters. The judgment announced comes in the day of the 
 Lord. 
 
 21. Isaiah xxv:9-12. This will be fulfilled when Israel’s 
 waiting ends and He appears for their deliverance. 
 
 22. Isatah xxv1:20-21. The godly remnant of Israel will 
 be kept by the Lord during the days of the coming great 
 tribulation, when judgments are poured out upon the 
 ungodly. 
 
 23. Isaiah xxvti:1. This is a prophecy of the future 
 punishment of and complete victory over Satan (See Reve- 
 lation xx:1). 
 
 24. Isatah xxxit:1. 'The King promised to reign in right- 
 eousness is the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 25. Isaiah xxxii:13-20. The future outpouring of the 
 Spirit will come with His return, when peace and blessing 
 will be given to Israel. 
 
 26. Isaiah xxxv. A prophetic picture of the coming 
 kingdom. It necessitates the return of Christ and His 
 personal presence in the midst of His people. 
 
 27. Isaiah xl:5. The glory of the Lord is His visible glory. 
 All flesh shall see it in that day. 
 
 28. Isatah xlv:23. This is quoted in the second chapter 
 of the Epistle to the Philippians. Only after His return 
 will every knee bow before Him and every tongue confess 
 Him. 
 
 29, Isaiah xlix. ‘The entire chapter is prophetic, revealing 
 Christ’s rejection by His own people, their ultimate salvation 
 and the blessings of the kingdom, when He is revealed in 
 His glorious majesty. 
 
 30. Isaiah liv. These precious promises made to His 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 123 
 
 afflicted, earthly people and predicting their future glory, 
 and the glory of Jerusalem, will be fulfilled when He returns 
 to earth. 
 
 31. Isaiah lix:20, 21. This promise is quoted in the 
 Epistle to the Romans xi:26. It is His second coming, and 
 will result in the conversion and acceptance of the remnant 
 of Israel living in that day. 
 
 32. Isaiah lx: The future conversion of the world, following 
 Israel’s conversion, is predicted in this chapter. World con- 
 version in the Old Testament always follows the conversion 
 and restoration of Israel, and these events are the results of 
 the second, visible and glorious coming of Christ. 
 
 33. Isatah lxi-lxv1. Each of these closing chapters of Isaiah 
 reveals things tocome. ‘They cannot be fulfilled in any other 
 way than by the return of the Lord. 
 
 34. Jeremiah xx111:5-8. The reign of the King follows the 
 return of the King, and the blessings promised here and in 
 many other Scriptures will be bestowed upon Israel. 
 
 35, Ezekiel xxxvi-xloiu. This entire section of the Prophet 
 Ezekiel concerns the future. Nothing contained in these 
 chapters has ever been fulfilled, nor can these prophecies 
 be fulfilled before His return. 
 
 36. Dantel 11; 44-45. 'The greater portion of Nebuchad- 
 nezzar’s prophetic image has passed into history. ‘The smit- 
 ing stone is future. It is the prophetic symbol of the second 
 coming of Christ and the setting up of His kingdom on earth. 
 
 37. Daniel vit:13-14. Of this the Lord spoke when on 
 earth. ‘The vision shows Him in His return to receive 
 dominion, glory and a kingdom. 
 
 38. Daniel 1x:24-27. 'This greatest prophecy in Daniel has 
 also been in greater part fulfilled. The last unfulfilled week 
 is the end of the age, after the true Church has been super- 
 
124 THE RETURN OF THE LORD 
 
 naturally removed from the earth. It remains to be fulfilled, 
 and at the close of the seven years Christ returns. 
 
 39. Daniel x1i;1-4. The predicted tribulation is the same 
 as predicted by our Lord in Matthew xxiv. It precedes 
 immediately His return, Matthew xxiv:29. 
 
 40. Joel 11 and 111. ‘These events are closely linked with 
 the day of the Lord, when He appears. Note Israel’s 
 tribulation, repentance, restoration, spiritual blessings, the 
 outpouring of the Spirit of God, the judgment of nations, are 
 all future. 
 
 41. Amos ix:11-15. This passage in part is quoted by 
 James in Acts xv:13-17. The restoration of the house of 
 David to kingly rule, the subsequent blessings for all the 
 earth, follow His return. 
 
 42. Habakkuk iti. This beautiful Ode is a prophecy of 
 His second coming. What precedes His Return, the return 
 itself and what is connected with it, are found in this chapter. 
 
 43. Zephaniah 1. 'The description of the day of the Lord in 
 its majesty, as given by Zephaniah is the same as revealed 
 by Isaiah, Joel and other prophets. 
 
 44, Haggai u:6,7. The time when heaven and earth will be 
 shaken comes with His return. He is “the desire of all 
 nations.” 
 
 45. Zechariah 11:10-13. The joining of the many nations to 
 the Lord is also future. Though the Gospel has been in 
 the world for nineteen hundred years, there is no nation 
 which is joined unto the Lord. The joining will take place 
 “after the glory” (verse 8), that is, after the Lord has 
 returned. 
 
 46. Zechariah v111:6-8. The promised salvation of Israel, 
 His people, from the East and the West, comes with His 
 return. No such salvation for Israel is promised anywhere in 
 Scripture apart from His visible return. 
 
THE RETURN OF THE LORD 125 
 
 47. Zechariah 1x:9-11. While the Lord Jesus, when on 
 earth, entered Jerusalem as predicted in this prophecy, 
 another coming to Jerusalem is indicated. When that takes 
 place, He will speak peace to the nations. His dominion 
 shall be from sea to sea. It is at His Second Coming. 
 
 48. Zechariah xi1:10. Israel’s conversion is foretold. It 
 takes place when they look upon Him whom they pierced. 
 
 49. Zechariah xiv. ‘The whole chapter is prophetic. The 
 predicted siege in the beginning of this chapter has not yet 
 taken place. As we find in other Scriptures, the nations will 
 gather at the very end of the times of the Gentiles against 
 Jerusalem (See Revel. xix:19). Then He will come forth 
 and fight against those nations. His feet will stand upon 
 the Mount of Olives in that day. He comes and all His 
 Saints with Him. The rest of the chapter predicts the king- 
 dom which always follows His return. 
 
 50. Malachi 1v:1-3. ‘The last chapter in the Old Testa- 
 ment predicts His Second Coming, just as the last chapter of 
 the New Testament does the same. From all this we have 
 learned that the Return of the Lord is a prominent, an out- 
 standing doctrine of the entire Bible. The second coming is 
 as prominently revealed as His first coming; both are of 
 equal importance. If there were no second coming of 
 Christ the whole scheme of redemption would break down. 
 And His Return is the Hope, the one great Hope of all. 
 

 
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