Why I Preach the Second Coming

Fifteen millions of demonstrations and fifteen millions of indubitable proofs.

By so much as they prove that God keeps faith with His warnings of woe and judgment, by so much will He keep faith with the promise of good He has made; by so much is it sure He will yet plant them as He has said in their own land and will do so with His whole heart and His whole soul.

Already the sound of their footsteps may be heard on the homeward march.

Zionism is now an immense fact.

The spirit of nationalism has come back to Judah.

The blue and white flag of David has been unfurled.

Diplomats in the nations’ counsels agree there can be no settled peace between Europe and the East till the Jew is back in his own land and Judah once more a recognized political state; that the Jews are the only people all the nations will agree should have Palestine, and the words, “Jewish State” are words repeated in common speech round the globe.

England has driven the Turk out of Jerusalem.

The corner-stone of a five million dollar university has been laid upon that Mount of Olives where once the Son of God amid its lonely shades prayed and agonized, a begun fulfillment of the prophecy of Zephaniah that in the latter days the Lord would execute judgment on the Gentile nations that should be gathered there and to His restored and delivered people turn again a pure speech, no longer the stuttering and smattering phrase of Yiddish, but the old Hebraic tongue of their fathers.

Already there are papers in Jerusalem published in Hebrew, schools are taught and many speak in the ancient language.

Many Jews are going back to Palestine.

Many more are there now than returned from Babylon.

They are going back as the Word of God foretold, in utter and absolute unbelief and bitter repudiation of the idea that Jesus of Nazareth was their foretold and foreordained Messiah.

They are going back with the vail upon their eyes and as blind as in the day when their fathers caused Him to be crucified by Roman hands.

They are going back to a time of anguish of which Jeremiah solemnly warns as “the day of Jacob’s trouble,” and our Lord describes as the tribulation, “the great one,” the like of which the world has never seen and will never see again.

They are going back to be set up by a league of ten nations and to enter into an alliance and covenant with its godless head as their political and false Messiah.

They will suffer until there shall come upon that generation all the righteous blood shed upon the earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zacharias, the son of Bacharias who was slain between the temple and the altar, and the blood of the Son of God which they invoked in judgment on themselves and their children in that fatal hour when Pilate convinced of the innocence of Jesus and wishing to let Him go had washed His hands in water, putting the responsibility of the crucifixion upon them as a people. Then it was they cried that terrible cry:

“His blood be on us, and on our children.”

But then as now, and always since the days of Elijah, there was and is an elect remnant in Israel.

For their sakes the Lord will come.

He will descend with His host to Mount Sinai, the place of the law; the spot where Israel rejected grace and sought that covenant which neither they nor their children have ever been able to keep.

He will sweep with His mighty army to Jerusalem.

He will overthrow the Gentile nations gathered there under the Devil-incarnate Antichrist.

He will stand upon the Mount of Olives.

The elect remnant will behold Him come.

They will look upon Him whom their fathers pierced.

They will fall down in anguish before Him.

They will mourn for Him as one mourneth for his only son.

They will take up the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah and make it their confession of faith and bitter, self-accusing lamentation.

They will say:

“We did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

And in that hour, in that day of days shall there be a fountain opened to the house of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and uncleanness.

The Lord will cause Jerusalem to be rebuilded “upon her own heap.” He will ordain the erection of that temple in which He shall establish the throne of His holiness.

Like David He will reign first over Judah. After that He will send Gentile messengers like “fishers” to seek out and find the descendants of the ten lost tribes. They will respond to the proclamation that will be made and to the search that will be instituted in that eastern land and among those peoples whither they were first carried away. There will be many impostors among them; but the Lord will make them to “pass under the rod” as when the true sheep are struck with the owner’s mark and as they take up their journey Zionward all who are not of Israel will be purged from their midst.

Those who are really of the covenant people will be quickened, regenerated, and when they enter the land will be welcomed by Judah and Benjamin.

They shall become one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel. One king shall be king to them all. They shall not be two nations any more, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms at all. The Lord will make a covenant of peace with them and multiply them and set His sanctuary in the midst of them forever. His tabernacle shall be with them. He will be their very God as He shall be the God of the whole earth. They shall be His peculiar people. All the Gentiles shall know that He has set them apart for Himself when they behold His temple erected in their midst, the most wonderful building in all the earth.

And thus will be fulfilled the prophecy concerning Israel quoted and emphasized by the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul that the Deliverer should come to Zion and turn away ungodliness from Jacob and that all Israel – that is – Israel united and as twelve tribes, should be saved.

It is at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, then and not till then that the solemn and covenant promises of God made to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob will be fulfilled and united, redeemed, regenerated and saved Israel set in their own land as the center and channel of blessing to the earth.

And because there can be no permanent peace in the world till Israel has been restored; and because I wish to see, not only peace among the nations and Israel reaping the blessings of the unconditional covenant of God’s grace and unchanged faithfulness, but because I yearn to see the hour when the Lord shall enter upon His own inheritance and justify Himself before heaven and earth as Judah’s Lord, as Israel’s God and turn the accusation of His cross: “This is Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews” into the pean of His coronation as such, I preach the Second Coming.

VI

Only at the Second Coming of the Christ of God Will a Government of Everlasting Righteousness and Peace be Established Upon the Earth

IT was the original purpose of God to make the people of Israel the head of nations, place them in Palestine as the geographical center of the earth, make them its political center, send His own Son to be their incarnate king, use them as a channel of earthly and spiritual blessing and make this world the most perfect and happiest spot in all the wide universe.

They failed to meet their opportunity.

Then the Lord transferred the possibility of world rulership from the Jews to the Gentiles.

He did this by handing political power and authority to Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon.

This rulership and sway of the world descended in its ordained and foretold succession down through Medo-Persia with its incorporation of Babylon, through the temporary but immensely extended empire of Greece which under Alexander included both Babylon and Medo-Persia, and after that the colossal and magic empire of Rome, swallowing up as it did the three empires or kingdoms which preceded it.

Since the division of Rome into Western and Eastern empires the rulership of the world has been maintained by the various nations composed of those people dwelling in the territory once occupied by Rome.

The world has been ruled by Turks, Spaniards, Germans, by the French and by the English.