Why I Preach the Second Coming

Daniel has visions in the night. He beholds the Lord as the Son of man, as eternal judge and king of all the earth. He sees Him coming to the Father to receive His title deeds and then descending in clouds of glory to establish the kingdom that shall never pass away.

From Hosea to Malachi the Minor Prophets echo with the declaration the Lord is coming and always this coming is the Second.

Hosea foresees Israel will forsake the Lord and for many days be as a dead man out of sight and forgotten. But in the latter times when the Lord Himself shall return Israel will awaken and own Him as Lord and king.

Joel tells us the armies of the world league shall be gathered against Jerusalem and under their godless, Devil-incarnate head shall defy the Lord of hosts; that the Lord will come, overthrow them with a great slaughter and deliver the holy city from the treading down of the Gentiles forever.

In Amos the Lord is coming to restore the kingdom to Israel and set up and establish the throne of David.

Obadiah warns us of the day of the Lord, the day that is introduced by the Second Coming of the Lord.

Joel teaches us under the madness and folly of Gentile rule ploughshares are to be beaten into swords and pruning hooks into spears and the nations are to give themselves to war and all the horror and desolation of it. But this Scripture is never quoted by those who preach peace where there can be no peace. Always they quote Micah who tells us the swords will be beaten into ploughshares, the spears into pruning hooks and the nations shall learn war no more.

The two prophets seem to stand in absolute opposition to each other.

They do not.

Joel tells us what will happen just before the Lord comes.

Micah tells us what will take place after the Lord comes.

In Joel the Lord will come, meet the armies of the League in the valley of decision, the valley of Jehoshaphat, and overthrow them; then will the implements of war be beaten into the implements of peace and war be at an end forever.

Micah announces the end of war and the beginning of lasting peace will come as the consequence of the Lord’s appearing in glory and not till He does so appear.

Nahum proclaims the Second Coming. The Lord’s way shall be in the whirlwind and the storm, the clouds shall be the dust of His feet, the mountains shall quake at Him, the hills shall melt and the very earth burn at His presence.

In Habakkuk the Spirit carries human language to its loftiest height till it glows on peaks of thought sublime.

The prophet sees the Lord coming the Second time. His brightness is as the shining light. In His hands once pierced for such as we is the hiding of His power. Pestilence and burning coals are His vanguard. He stands and measures the earth. He drives asunder the nations. The everlasting mountains are scattered. The perpetual hills bow before Him and the inhabitants of the onlooking worlds lift up their voices and sing: “His ways are everlasting.”

Zephaniah proclaims the Second Coming.

The Lord will come and smite the world league in the pitifulness of its gathering and the pigminess of its might. He will pour forth His indignation and fierce anger upon all the exaltation and pride of man. He will devour the earth with the fire of His jealousy, deliver Jerusalem, turn to the people the pure speech of the old Hebraic tongue, bid Zion to sing, Israel to shout and calling Jerusalem her daughter, bid her to rejoice. He will overthrow the false Christ and as the true Messiah will Himself dwell in the midst of Jerusalem forevermore.

Haggai declares the Lord will come and will shake all nations so that only the things which are of God may remain.

Zechariah tells us in terms so plain, so clear no one need misunderstand nor be in darkness for a moment that the Lord is coming the Second time.

He will come with all His saints. His feet shall stand in that day on the Mount of Olives; and that no false teacher nor wilful perverter of the truth about the reality of the Lord’s bodily presence on the earth at that time may have even the shadow of a shadow to rest on, and as a proof that this coming is not spiritual but actual and the testimony of His very feet under the most pronounced topographical conditions, the prophet says the mount on which those blessed and real feet shall descend is not only on the Mount of Olives, but that “Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east.”

At the touch of the Lord’s feet this wondrous and sacred Mount of Olives will split in twain. One half of it will roll like a wave northward. The other half will roll to the south. A great valley will be formed. That valley is named in Scripture, but never has been found on any map and cannot be found in Palestine to-day. It is the valley of Jehoshaphat, the valley of decision, the valley of judgment of the nations. And into this valley pell-mell shall rush the Antichrist-led and Devil-deceived armies of the league of ten nations to find their overthrow at the hand of the Lord and the inauguration of that hour when the once despised and crucified Christ shall be the revealed and recognized God of the whole earth; when there shall be one Lord and His name one – even that name which is above every name whether in heaven or on earth – the name of Jesus.

Malachi closes the book of the Old Testament. He beholds our Lord Jesus Christ coming the Second time. He sees Him coming as the rising sun filling the heavens and flooding the earth with the benediction of His majesty and might.

From Malachi to the New Testament we pass over four hundred years of prophetic silence and then we are in the book of the Gospel according to Matthew.

Here we are face to face with the night of nights.

The stars like silver squadrons sail close to the waiting earth. The angels fling down their wreath of natal song and the virgin mother cradles upon her white and unsullied breast the Christ of God.

We follow Him in the days of His unfolding ministry. Every time He touches the earth His footsteps leave a benediction. Each time He breathes the air He sweetens it. His low and modulated voice starts a note of music whose rhythmic accents have not done sounding and whose heavenly harmony outsings the discords of earth. He looks daylight into blind eyes. He cools the fever pulse to quiet beating. He makes the lame man to leap as a hart. He hushes the storm on Galilee till the ruffled, windswept waters are as calm and peaceful as a babe upon its mother’s breast. With a word He raises the wept-for dead. Everywhere and at all times His miracles are wrought, not merely that He may do good and bring needed blessings as He passes by, but as the credentials and sign warrant of the truthfulness of His claim that He is Son of God, God the Son, the Anointed of the Lord and Israel’s king.

But in all His ministry of hand or word never does He speak save incidentally of His first coming. Always and in fullest degree He speaks of His Second Coming. Seated upon the Mount of Olives He affirms, after the cross shall have slain and stained Him and the grave shall have briefly held Him He will come again; but, just before He comes it will be as it was in the days of Noah – a time of materialism, sensualism, the culture of self-consciousness, an hour of boasting, pride, lawlessness and war; and when He is revealed it will be as with the driving judgment of the flood.

In the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew and the first part of the chapter He declares He is coming as the bridegroom comes – seeking the marriage hour of his bride.

In the last part of the chapter and as the climax of His bridegroom coming He will appear as the king of glory and the judge of the living nations.

When He stands before His guilty judges and their suborned witnesses and while they mock and deride Him He breaks His hitherto amazing silence not to demonstrate to them the truth of His incarnation nor the proof of His preexistence, but in calm and measured utterance to tell them that after they shall have put Him to death He will come the Second time; and they shall see Him descending from heaven seated upon the cloud of shekinal glory and with the power of God.

In Mark He is the householder who goes into a far country, gives to each of His servants a work to do, puts the porter on guard to watch the door of the house and announces that no one in heaven nor on earth knows when He will return. He will return, He will come the Second time. It will be in one of the four watches of the spiritual night. It may be at even, it may be at midnight, it may be at cockcrowing and it may be in the morning. Because it is certain He will come, but uncertain when He will come, each one who claims to be His servant is under bond to watch. The whole household must be in the attitude of watching, of readiness and expectation; and His word of exhortation and warning to His Church is:

“What I say unto you, I say unto all – watch.”

In Luke He is the nobleman who goes into a far country to get the title deeds of His kingdom and return. When He returns He comes first to His servants, gathers them to Himself and rewards them. After that with them He executes judgment on His enemies and then sets up His kingdom.

In the Gospel of John He eats with His disciples the last and memorial supper. He goes out with them, bids them lift their glances to the wide, extended sky where the jewelry of the night as the scattered largess of a king burns in the fire of opal, the purple and violet of amethyst and the white splendour of uncounted diamonds. He assures them these gleaming things are no fiction fire-flies of gaseous worlds in the making, but illuminated dwelling places in His Father’s house. He is going thither. He will ascend into that congeries of inhabited worlds and will prepare a place for them, a glorious palace home befitting their high estate; when all is ready He will come back and receive them in corporate unity to Himself.

His words are simple, but the simplicity is the simplicity of light and every accent is as the touch of peace to troubled hearts; for this is what He said:

“In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”

In the book of Acts, in the first chapter you have a scene no artist has really ever painted, no writer ever fairly portrayed and no mortal tongue can fittingly describe.

Our Lord is going up from the Mount of Olives. He is going up from the midst of His disciples. He is going heavenward. The disciples watch Him as He ascends. He enters a cloud. Do not, I beseech you, imagine for a moment this cloud is a fog bank, a mass of watery mist and vapour; it is the shekinal cloud which once covered the tabernacle in the wilderness and was the vehicle of His presence when Israel in that far time marched on their way to the promised land. It is His chariot of state. In this chariot sent to meet Him He passes between the onlooking worlds ever higher and higher till at last He takes His seat upon the throne of the Highest at the right hand of the invisible majesty.

Then, as through the dimness of their tears the disciples watch Him disappear, they hear a voice which says to them:

“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.”

“This same Jesus.”

Mark that well!

The Jesus who on the Sunday night of His resurrection did meet these disciples in the upper room and said to them as they shrank back into a frozen silence of hope and fear:

“Peace be unto you.”

“Why are ye troubled?”

“And why do thoughts arise in your hearts?”

“Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.”

Still these disciples were afraid, afraid it could not be true.