"_They shall see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven
with power and great glory.... Of that day and hour knoweth no
one, not even the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but the
Father only."_--MATT. xxiv. 30, 36.
The doctrine of our Lord's Second Coming occupies at the present moment
a curiously equivocal position in the thought of the Christian Church.
On the one hand by many it is wholly ignored. There is no conscious
disloyalty on their part to the word of God; but the subject makes no
appeal to them, it fails to "find" them. Ours is a sternly practical
age, and any truth which does not readily link itself on to the
necessities of life is liable speedily to be put on one side and
forgotten. This is what has happened with this particular doctrine in
the case of multitudes; it is not denied, but it is banished to what Mr.
Lecky calls "the land of the unrealized and the inoperative." But if, on
the one hand, the doctrine has suffered from neglect, on the other it
has suffered hardly less from undue attention. Indeed of late years the
whole subject of the "Last Things" has been turned into a kind of happy
hunting-ground for little sects, who carry on a ceaseless wordy warfare
both with themselves and the rest of the Christian world. Men and women
without another theological interest in the world are yet keen to argue
about Millenarianism, and to try their 'prentice hands on the
interpretation of the imagery of the apocalyptic literature of both the
Old Testament and the New. As Spurgeon used to say, they are so taken up
with the second coming of our Lord that they forget to preach the first
So that one hardly knows which to regret more, the neglect and
indifference of the one class, or the unhealthy, feverish absorption of
the other.
As very often happens in cases of this kind each extreme is largely
responsible for the other. Neglect prepares the way for exaggeration;
exaggeration leads to further neglect. Moreover, in the case before us,
both tendencies are strengthened by the very difficulty in which the
subject is involved. Vagueness, uncertainty, mystery, attract some minds
as powerfully as they repel others. And, assuredly, the element of
uncertainty is not wanting here. In the first place, this is a subject
for all our knowledge of which we are wholly dependent upon revelation.
Much that Christ and His apostles have taught us we can bring to the
test of experience and verify for ourselves. But this doctrine we must
receive, if we receive it at all, wholly on the authority of One whom,
on other grounds, we have learned to trust. Verification, in the nature
of the case, is impossible. Further, we have gone but a little way when
revelation itself becomes silent; and, as I have said, when that guide
leaves us, we enter at once the dark forest where instantly the track is
lost.
Let us seek to learn, then, what Christ has revealed, and what He has
left unrevealed, concerning His coming again.
I
As to the _fact_ of Christ's coming we are left in no doubt. Our Lord's
own declarations are as explicit as language can make them. Thus, in
Matthew xvi. 27 we read that "the Son of Man shall come in the glory of
His Father with His angels; and then shall He render unto every man
according to his deeds." In the great discourse on the Last Things,
recorded by all the Synoptists, after speaking of the fall of Jerusalem,
Christ goes on, "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 on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory."
And again, in the Upper Room, He said to His disciples, "I go to prepare
a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come again,
and will receive you unto Myself; that where I am ye may be also." The
hope of that return shines on every page of the New Testament: "This
Jesus," said the angels to the watching disciples, "which was received
up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye beheld Him
going into heaven." The early Christians were wont to speak, without
further definition, of "that day." St. Paul reminds the Thessalonians
how that they had "turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and
true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven." _Maran atha_--"our Lord
cometh"--was the great watchword of the waiting Church. When, at the
table of the Lord, they ate the bread and drank the cup, they proclaimed
His death "till He come." "Amen; come, Lord Jesus," is the passionate
cry with which our English Scriptures close.
For all those, then, to whom the New Testament speaks with authority,
the fact of Christ's return is established beyond all controversy. But
what will be the nature of His coming? Will it be visible and personal,
or spiritual and unseen? Will it be once and never again, or repeated?
Will Christ come at the end of history, or is He continually coming in
those great crises which mark the world's progress towards its appointed
end? These questions have been answered with such admirable simplicity
and scriptural truth by Dr. Denney that I cannot do better than quote
his words: "It may be frankly admitted," he says, "that the return of
Christ to His disciples is capable of different interpretations. He came
again, though it were but intermittently, when He appeared to them after
His resurrection. He came again, to abide with them permanently, when
His Spirit was given to the Church at Pentecost. He came, they would all
feel who lived to see it, signally in the destruction of Jerusalem, when
God executed judgment historically on the race which had rejected Him,
and when the Christian Church was finally and decisively liberated from
the very possibility of dependence on the Jewish. He comes still, as His
own words to the High Priest suggest--From this time on ye shall see the
Son of Man coming--in the great crises of history, when the old order
changes, yielding place to the new; when God brings a whole age, as it
were, into judgment, and gives the world a fresh start. But all these
admissions, giving them the widest possible application, do not enable
us to call in question what stands so plainly in the pages of the New
Testament,--what filled so exclusively the minds of the first
Christians--the idea of a personal return of Christ at the end of the
world. We need lay no stress on the scenery of New Testament prophecy,
any more than on the similar element of Old Testament prophecy; the
voice of the archangel and the trump of God are like the turning of the
sun into darkness and the moon into blood; but if we are to retain any
relation to the New Testament at all, we must assert the personal return
of Christ as Judge of all."[53]
So far I think is clear. It is when we come to speak of the time of our
Lord's return that our difficulties begin. It appears to me impossible
to doubt that the first Christians were looking for the immediate return
of our Lord to the earth. At one time even St. Paul seems to have
expected Him within his own life-time. Nor does this fact in itself
cause us any serious perplexity. What does perplex us is to find in the
Gospels language attributed to Christ which apparently makes Him a
supporter of this mistaken view. _E.g._, we have these three separate
sayings, recorded in St. Matthew's Gospel: "But when they persecute you
in this city, flee into the next; for verily I say unto you, Ye shall
not have gone through the cities of Israel, till the Son of Man be come"
(x. 23); "Verily I say unto you, There be some of them that stand here,
which shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of Man
coming in His kingdom" (xvi. 28); "Verily I say unto you, This
generation shall not pass away, till all these things be accomplished"
(xxiv. 34). This seems plain enough; and if we are to take the words as
they stand, we seem to be shut up to the conclusion that our Lord was
mistaken, that He ventured on a prediction which events have falsified.
Let us see if this really be so. I leave, for the moment, the words I
have quoted in order to cite other words which point in a quite
different direction.
To begin with, we have the emphatic statement: "But of that day and hour
knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the
Father only." We remember also Christ's words to His disciples, on the
eve of the Ascension, "It is not for you to know times or seasons, which
the Father hath set within His own authority." There is, further, a
whole class of sayings, exhortations, and parables, which seem plainly
to involve a prolonged Christian era, and, consequently, the
postponement to a far distant time, of the day of Christ's return. Thus,
there are the passages which speak of the preaching of the gospel to the
nations beyond: "Wheresoever the gospel shall be preached throughout the
whole world, that also which this woman hath done shall be spoken of for
a memorial of her" (Mark xiv. 9); "This gospel of the kingdom shall be
preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations; and
then shall the end come" (Matt. xxiv. 14). There is the parable which
tells of the tarrying of the bridegroom till even the wise virgins
slumbered and slept. "After a long time," we read in another parable,
"the Lord of those servants cometh and maketh a reckoning with them."
What is the significance of the parable of the leaven hid in three
measures of meal, and still more, of that group of parables which depict
the growth of the kingdom--the parables of the sower, the wheat and
tares, the mustard-seed, and the seed growing gradually? Does not all
this point not to a great catastrophe nigh at hand, which should bring
to an end the existing order of things, but rather to just such a future
for the kingdom of God on earth as the actual course of history reveals?
And this, and no other, was, I believe, the impression which Christ
desired to leave on the minds of His disciples.
What, then, are we to make of those other and apparently contrary words
which I have quoted, but meanwhile have left unexplained? They
constitute, without doubt, one of the most perplexing problems which the
interpreter of the New Testament has to face,[54] and any suggestion for
meeting the difficulty must be made with becoming caution. I can but
briefly indicate the direction in which the probable solution may be
found. Our Lord, as we have already seen, spoke of His coming again, not
only at the end of the world, but in the course of it: in the power of
His Spirit, at the fall of Jerusalem, in the coming of His kingdom among
men. But the minds of the disciples were full of the thought of His
_final_ coming, which would establish for ever the glory of His
Messianic kingdom; and it would seem that this fact has determined both
the form and the setting of some of Christ's sayings which they have
preserved for us. Words which He meant to refer to Israel's coming
judgment-day they, in the ardour of their expectation, referred to the
last great day. In the first Gospel, especially, we may trace some such
influence at work. When, _e.g._, Matthew represents our Lord as saying,
"There be some of them that stand here which shall in no wise taste of
death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom," it is
evident, both from the words themselves and from the context, that he
understood them to refer to the final return. Luke, however, speaks only
of seeing "the kingdom of God," and Mark of seeing "the kingdom of God
come in power." And if these words were our only version of the prophecy
they would present no difficulty; we should feel that they had received
adequate fulfilment in the events of the great day of Pentecost. We
conclude, therefore, that of the three reports before us the second and
third, which are practically the same, reproduce more correctly the
words actually spoken by Christ; and that the account given in the first
Gospel was coloured by the eager hope of the early followers of Christ
for their Master's speedy return.[55]
To sum up in a sentence the results of this brief inquiry: Christ's
teaching concerning His return leaves us both in a state of certainty
and uncertainty. "We believe that Thou shalt come to be our Judge"--that
is our certainty; "Of that day and hour knoweth no one"--that is our
uncertainty. And each of these carries with it its own lesson.