THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST by Various Authors Copyright © 1896 CHAPTER SEVEN THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST Charles H. Spurgeon Four Great Events, and a Fifth—His Promised Return—Necessary—Unquestionably Asserted— What can Hinder it?—When?—Vividly Realized—Seen of All—Denying, Living, Looking—Be Ready—Waiting Patiently—Notion of Delay Harmful OUR GREAT EVENTS shine out brightly in our Saviour’s story. All Christian minds delight to dwell upon His birth, His death, His resurrection, and His ascension. These make four rounds in that ladder of light, the foot of which is upon the earth, but the top whereof reacheth to Heaven. We could not afford to dispense with any one of those four events, nor would it be profitable for us to forget or underestimate the value of any one of them. - That the Son of God was born of a woman creates in us the intense delight of a brotherhood springing out of a common humanity. - That Jesus once suffered unto the death for our sins, and thereby made a full atonement for us, is the rest and life of our spirit. The manger and the cross together are divine seals of love. - That the Lord Jesus rose again from the dead is the warrant of our justification, and also a transcendently delightful assurance of the resurrection of all His people, and of their eternal life in Him. Hath He not said, “Because I live, ye shall live also”? The resurrection of Christ is the morning star of our future glory. Equally delightful is the remembrance of His ascension. No song is sweeter than this,—“Thou hast ascended on high; thou hast led captivity captive; thou hast received gifts for men, yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them.” Each one of those four events points to another, and they all lead up to it. The fifth link in the golden chain is our Lord’s second and most glorious advent. Little is mentioned between His ascent and His descent. True, a rich history comes between; but it lies in a valley between two stupendous mountains: we step from alp to alp as we journey in meditation from the ascension to the second advent. I say that each of the previous four events points to it. Had He not come a first time in humiliation, born under the law, He could not have come a second time in amazing glory “without a sin offering unto salvation.” Because He died once, we rejoice that He dieth no more. Death hath no more dominion over Him, and therefore He cometh to destroy that last enemy whom He hath already conquered. It is our joy, as we think of our Redeemer as risen, to feel that in consequence of His rising, the trump of the archangel shall assuredly sound for the awaking of all His slumbering people, when the Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout. As for His ascension, He could not a second time descend if He had not first ascended; but having perfumed Heaven with His presence, and prepared a place for His people, we may fitly expect that He will come again and receive us unto Himself, that where He is there we may be also. THE LORD WILL COME AGAIN He will come again, for He has promised to return. We have His own word for it. That is our first reason for expecting Him. Among the last of the words which He spoke to His servant John are these, “Surely I come quickly.” You may read it, “I am coming quickly. I am even now upon the road. I am traveling as fast as wisdom allows. I am always coming, and coming quickly.” Some try to explain the Second Coming of Christ as though it meant the believer dying. You may, if you like, consider that Christ comes to His saints in death. In a certain sense He does; but that sense will never bear out the full meaning of the teaching of the Second Advent with which the Scripture is full. No; “the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God.” Christ will as certainly be here again in glory as He once was here in shame. He often assured His disciples that if He went away from them, He would come again to them; and He left us the Lord’s Supper as a parting token to be observed until He comes. As often as we break bread we are reminded of the fact that, though it is a most blessed ordinance, yet it is a temporary one, and will cease to be celebrated when our absent Lord is once again present with us. He promised to die on the cross, and to rise again the third day: and He kept His word. Let us believe His promise to return again. Moreover, the great scheme of redemption requires Christ’s return. It is a part of that scheme that as He came once with a sin offering, He should come a second time without a sin offering; that as He came once to redeem, He should come a second time to claim the inheritance which He has so dearly bought. He came once that His heel might be bruised; He comes again to bruise the serpent’s head, and with a rod of iron to dash His enemies in pieces, as potter’s vessels. He came once to wear the crown of thorns; He must come again to wear the diadem of universal dominion. He comes to the marriage supper. He comes to gather His saints together. He comes to glorify them with Himself on this same earth where once He and they were despised and rejected of men. Make you sure of this, that the whole drama of redemption cannot be perfected without this last act of the coming of their King. The complete history of Paradise Regained requires that the New Jerusalem should come down from God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; and it also requires that the heavenly Bridegroom should come riding forth on His white horse, conquering and to conquer, King of kings and Lord of lords, amid the everlasting hallelujahs of saints and angels. It must be so. The man of Nazareth will come again. None shall spit in His face then, but every knee shall bow before Him. The Crucified shall come again, and though the nail prints will be visible, no nails shall then fasten His dear hands to the tree; but instead thereof, He shall grasp the scepter of universal sovereignty, and He shall reign forever and ever. Hallelujah! And next, it is unquestionably asserted. “Behold, He cometh.” It is not, “Perhaps He will come”; or, “Peradventure He may yet appear.” “Behold, He cometh” is dogmatically asserted as an absolute certainty, which was realized by the heart of the man who proclaims it. “Behold, He cometh.” All the prophets say that He will come. From Enoch down to the last that spoke by inspiration, they declare, “The Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints.” You shall not find one who has spoken by the authority of God, who does not, either directly or by implication, assert the coming of the Son of Man, when the multitudes born of woman shall be summoned to His bar, to receive the recompense of their deeds. All the promises are travailing with this prognostication, “Behold, He cometh.” What is there to hinder Christ from coming? When I have studied and thought over this word, “Behold, He cometh,” “Yes,” I have said to myself, “indeed He does. Who shall hold Him back? His heart is with His church on earth. In the place where He fought the battle He desires to celebrate the victory. His delights are with the sons of men. All His saints are waiting for the day of His appearing, and He is waiting also. The very earth in her sorrow and her groaning travaileth for His coming, which is to be her redemption. The creation is made subject to vanity for a little while; but when the Lord shall come again, the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.” We might question whether He would come a second time if He had not already come the first time; but if He came to Bethlehem, be assured that His feet shall yet stand upon Olivet. If He came to die, doubt not that He will come to reign. If He came to be despised and rejected of men, why should we doubt that He will come to be admired in all them that believe? WHEN? When will He come? Ah, that is the question, the question of questions! He will come in His own time. He will come in due time. A brother minister, calling upon me, said, as we sat together. “I should like to ask you a lot of questions about the future.” “Oh, well!” I replied, “I cannot answer you, for I daresay I know no more about ii than you do.” “But,” said he, “what about the Lord’s Second Advent? Will there not be the millennium first?” I said, “I cannot tell whether there will be the millennium first; but this I know, the Scripture has left the whole matter, as far as I can see, with an intentional indistinctness, that we may be always expecting Christ to come, and that we may be watching for His coming at any hour and every hour. I think that the millennium will commence after His coming, and not before it. I cannot imagine the kingdom with the King absent. It seems to me to be an essential part of the millennial glory that the King shall then be revealed; at the same time, I am not going to lay down anything definite upon that point. He may not come for a thousand years; He may come tonight. The teaching of Scripture is, first of all, ‘in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man cometh.’ It is clear that, if it were revealed that a thousand years must elapse before He would come, we might very well go to sleep for that time, for we should have no reason to expect that He would come when Scripture told us He would not.” “Well,” answered my friend, “but when Christ comes, that will be the general judgment, will it not?” Then I quoted these texts: “The dead in Christ shall rise first”; “But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.” I said, “There is a resurrection from among the dead to which the Apostle Paul labored to attain. We shall all rise; but the righteous shall rise a thousand years before the ungodly. There is to be that interval of time between the one and the other; whether that is the millennial glory, or not, this deponent sayeth not, though he thinks it is. But this is the main point, the Lord shall come. We know not when we are to expect His coming. We are not to lay down as absolutely fixed, any definite prediction or circumstance that would allow us to go to sleep until that prediction was fulfilled, or that circumstance was apparent.” “Will not the Jews be converted to Christ, and restored to their land?” inquired my friend. I replied, “Yes, I think so. Surely they shall look on Him whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son; and God shall give them the kingdom and the glory, for they are His people, whom He has not for ever cast away. The Jews, who are the natural olive branches, shall yet be grafted into their own olive tree again, and then shall be the fullness of the Gentiles.” “Will that be before Christ comes, or after?” asked my friend. I answered, “I think it will be after He comes; but whether or no, I am not going to commit myself to any definite opinion on the subject.” To you, my friends, I say,—Read for yourselves, and search for yourselves; for still this stands first, and is the only thing that I will insist upon, the Lord will come. He may come now; He may come tomorrow; He may come in the first watch of the night, or the second watch, or He may wait until the morning watch. But the one word that He gives to us all is, “Watch! Watch! Watch!” that whenever He shall come, we may be ready to open to Him, and to say, in the language of the hymn, Hallelujah! Welcome, welcome, Judge divine! So far I know that we are Scriptural, and therefore perfectly safe in our statements about the Lord’s Second Advent. HIS COMING IS TO BE VIVIDLY REALIZED I think I see the Apostle John. He is in the spirit; but on a sudden he seems startled into a keener and more solemn attention. His mind is more awake than usual, though he was ever a man of bright eyes that saw afar. We always liken him to the eagle for the height of his flight and the keenness of his vision; yet on a sudden, even he seems startled with a more astounding vision. He cries out, “Behold! Behold!” He has caught sight of his Lord. He says not, “He will come byand-by,” but, “I can see Him. He is now coming.” He has evidently realized the Second Advent. He has so conceived of the second coming of the Lord that it has become a matter of fact to him; a matter to be spoken of, and even to be written down. “Behold, He cometh!” Have you and I ever realized the coming of Christ so fully as this? Brothers and sisters, to this realization I invite you. I wish that we could go together in this, until as we went out of the house we said to one another, “Behold, He cometh!” One said to his fellow, after the Lord had risen, “The Lord has risen indeed.” I want you now to feel just as certain that the Lord is coming indeed, and I would have you say as much to one another. SEEN OF ALL “Behold, He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him.” I gather from this expression that it will be a literal appearing and an actual sight. If the Second Advent was to be a spiritual manifestation, to be perceived by the minds of men, the phraseology would be, “Every mind shall perceive Him.” But it is not so: we read, “Every eye shall see Him.” Now, the mind can behold the spiritual, but the eye can only see that which is distinctly material and visible. The Lord Jesus Christ will not come spiritually, for in that sense He is always here; but He will come really and substantially, for every eye shall see Him, even those unspiritual eyes which gazed on Him with hate, and pierced Him. Go not away and dream, and say to yourself, “Oh, there is some spiritual meaning about all this.” Do not destroy the teaching of the Holy Ghost by the idea that there will be a spiritual manifestation of the Christ of God, but that a literal appearing is out of the question. That would be altering the record.
Posted on: Mon, 30 Sep 2013 09:27:05 +0000
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