Why I Preach the Second Coming.
by Isaac Ma.s.sey Haldeman.
Foreword
THE subject of this volume is an address delivered by the Author before the World"s Conference on Christian Fundamentals at Philadelphia, May 30, 1919.
The reasons for preaching and teaching the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ are manifold and each one worth while.
The Author has contented himself with presenting a few as follows:
The Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ is the one event most often recorded in Holy Scripture.
It is bound up with every fundamental doctrine, with every sublime promise and every exhortation to high, to holy and practical Christian living.
Only at the Second Coming of our Lord will redemption be complete and the blood of the cross be justified.
Not till our Lord Jesus Christ comes the Second time will the Church be exalted into her true function of rulership over the world.
Only at the Second Coming will the solemn and covenant promises of G.o.d to Israel be fulfilled.
Only at the Second Coming of the Christ of G.o.d will a government of everlasting righteousness and peace be established on the earth.
It is at the Second Coming of Christ alone that the earth will be delivered from the bondage of corruption and transformed into the paradise of G.o.d.
The Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ FOR His Church is the most imminent event on the horizon of time.
I. M. H.
_New York, 1919._
I
The Second Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ is the One Event Most Often Recorded in Holy Scripture
IT is recorded in type, in figure, in symbol, in a.n.a.logue, in parable, in hyperbole and metaphor, in exalted song, in n.o.blest poetry and in rarest rhetoric. It is set before us in dramatic and dynamic statement, in high prophetic forecast, in simple narrative, close linked logic, expanded doctrine, divine exhortation and far -reaching appeal.
The first promise of the Second Coming was made in Eden. It was made in the promise given to the woman that her seed should bruise the serpent"s head. On the cross the serpent bruised the heel of the woman"s seed, but her seed did not bruise the serpent"s head. Never was his head more uplifted and unbruised than now. The promise of the bruising is of G.o.d and must be fulfilled. The record of that fulfillment is to be found in the twentieth chapter of the book of the Revelation where our Lord descends and in the plenitude of His power by the hand of an angel binds Satan for a thousand years beneath His feet and the feet of His saints. As the bruising of the serpent"s head takes place at the Second Coming, and the promise of the bruising is made in Eden, then the first promise of the Coming is made in Eden; and as you see rising above the figure of the fallen first man the figure of the Second man, you hear for the first time the story of the Second Coming of the Second man; and thus the story and the doctrine of the Second Coming begin with the very beginning of the Book.
For three hundred years Enoch walked amid the slime, the slush and the uprising tide of human iniquity in a G.o.d-hating and G.o.d-defying world. Then one day G.o.d took him out of all the riot and wrong of it without dying into the heaven of His glory; and the Apostle Paul writing to the Corinthians of the Second Coming affirms there will be a generation who will continue alive till the Lord comes; and thus Enoch is a type of that deathless generation and by so much a prophecy of the Second Coming.
For one hundred and twenty years Noah preached righteousness to a world from which the death penalty had been removed, a world surrendered to conscience (and let it be well remembered conscience is not the gift of G.o.d nor evidence of grace but mark of fallen man, the shadow of G.o.d"s throne before which the "accuse" and "excuse" of the soul witness to human guilt), a generation given over to unrestrained fallen nature; a generation of murder, a.s.sa.s.sination, violence, war, utter brutality, sickening sensualism, the invasion of fallen and l.u.s.t-seeking angels, rank spiritism, diabolism and mocking laughter at G.o.d and the things of G.o.d.
Suddenly, without warning, G.o.d called Noah into the ark (the building of which had awakened the derision of the revellers in sin and the would-be wise men of the hour) shut the door and bolted him in. At the end of seven ominous days in which the darksome clouds hung low and threatening, the windows of heaven were opened, the fountains of the deep broken up and the flood fell, sweeping away all save Noah and his family in the ark. When the judgment waters had subsided Noah and his family came forth to set up a new and distinct dispensation in the world.
Seated yonder on the Mount of Olives in the shadow of the cross, looking forward to His Second Coming and backward for an ill.u.s.tration that should forecast the times and leave no excuse for exegetical and interpretative theological blundering our Lord said as it was in the days of Noah so should it be when the Son of man should come the Second time.
Without warning, out of a world of increasing materialism, self -sufficiency, boasting, pride, violence, war and multiplied peril, a world that under the guise of general indifferentism and cultivated cynicism mocks at the things of G.o.d and denies we have a written, final and sure revelation from Him, the Lord will s.n.a.t.c.h away the genuine, regenerated Church (the dead raised, the living changed) and take them to Himself, into the place prepared. For at least seven years spiritual blackness, measureless woe and indescribable anguish will fall upon a Devil-deceived and Devil-ruled world. Then will the Lord come with His previously gathered Church, execute judgment on the unG.o.dly, sweep away all iniquity and set up the new administration of righteousness and truth. Noah is therefore a figure, a prophecy of the closing hours of this age and its climax in the Second Coming of the Lord.
One day Lot went into Sodom, took office, tried to reform the evil city, succeeded in vexing his righteous, but unspiritual soul with the filthy conversation of the wicked, got down to the level of the natural man, lost his testimony and seemed to his friends and intimates like a madman or the most excuselessly inconsistent trifler when he attempted to take up once more his damaged testimony.
Then there was a night when G.o.d"s angels came and s.n.a.t.c.hed him out of the doomed city. The next morning the fire of G.o.d fell and Lot "saved so as by fire" looked on at the blaze and the burning of all his works of righteousness as wood hay and stubble, big in bulk but rejected of G.o.d.
Looking forward to His Second Coming and backward for an ill.u.s.tration the Son of G.o.d declared as it was in the days of Lot so should it be when the Son of man should come again.
There are good and righteous Christians--righteous enough but wholly unspiritual who are seeking to make spotless town of a world G.o.d has judged and doomed, failing to see the cross is not only the judgment of the individual, but equally the judgment of the world; that not only does the cross reveal the end of all flesh but the end in G.o.d"s sight of that system of things which men call the world; that on the cross the world is crucified to the Christian and the Christian to the world; and failing to see this, failing to get the mind of G.o.d are daily descending to the plane of the natural man, are losing and in many cases deliberately setting aside the testimony once for all delivered to the saints.
Without warning, they will be s.n.a.t.c.hed away to meet a descending Lord (if they be real and regenerated Christians) and this alone because their faith be it never so small holds them securely in the bonds of the covenant. After that the Lord will be revealed in flaming fire to execute judgment on the world and all the works of misguided social reformers because these works are built, not upon the righteousness of G.o.d, but the righteousness of man.
According to the Word of the Lord Himself therefore Lot is a picture and prophecy of the closing hours of the present age with its climax the Coming and Appearing of the Lord.
After Abraham had typically offered up his son on Mount Moriah and typically received him from the dead on the third day the son for a number of chapters in the record disappears from view. Then Abraham the father sends his servant Eliezer into a far country to get a bride for this now invisible son. Eliezer meets the intended bride at a well from whence she is drawing water, goes with her into her brother"s house, takes out a pack of precious things sent from the father in the name of the son, displays them to her and invites her to become the bride of the son. She consents. The servant leads her forth. On the way he talks to her of the promised bridegroom.
Suddenly she beholds him coming to meet her. He receives her, takes her into his prepared tent and she becomes his wife.
On the same mount nearly two thousand years later G.o.d the Father offered up His only begotten Son. On the third day He raised Him from the dead. For two thousand years He has disappeared from view.
The Father has sent forth the Spirit to obtain a bride for His Son.
He meets her at the Gospel well from whence we draw the waters of salvation. He is calling her through individual selection that she may become the corporate bride. He has brought spiritual gifts which He seeks to display in all her a.s.semblies. He is endeavouring to lead her along the highway of time and to speak to her in the heaven speech of the Coming Bridegroom. Suddenly the Lord will come to meet her and take her into the place prepared and keep her for the marriage hour. In this simple story the a.n.a.logue finds its prophetic climax in the Second Coming of our Lord.
Jacob fled from his home, the brother he had outwitted and the father whom he had deceived. As night drew on footsore and weary he cast himself upon the plain with a stone for his pillow. Visions came to him in the night. A ladder of gold reached from earth to heaven. At the top of it was a host of angels and the Lord Himself in glory. The Lord spoke to him and a.s.sured him he and his posterity should have the land on which he was lying for an everlasting possession. It was a confirmation of the oath to and the covenant with Abraham and Isaac. As the covenant can find its fulfillment only at the actual Second Coming of our Lord as the G.o.d of Jacob, this vision is the prophetic antic.i.p.ation of that hour and the heaven-proclaimed a.s.surance the Lord is coming a Second time.
Joseph was sent by his father to his brethren. They despised and rejected him. They cast him into the pit of death. He was taken out alive. He was carried away into a far country--even into Egypt.
There he was exalted to become co-ruler with Pharaoh. In the hour of famine he became the bread giver, the saviour of a hungry world. At the same time he got a Gentile bride. In the hour when tribulation and sorrow came upon his brethren he revealed himself to them the second time and was owned and acknowledged by them. With his wife he came in his chariot of kingly glory and established his father and his brethren in the promised land of Goshen.
The application is so simple it applies itself.
G.o.d the Father sent His Son to His brethren in the flesh. They despised and rejected Him. They put Him in the place of death. He was raised up alive. He has gone into a far country--even into heaven itself. He is there now as one who has been exiled from earth. He has been exalted to the throne of His Father. For two thousand years of spiritual famine and hunger in the world He has been the giver of the bread of life, the saviour of men. During these years of His exile He has been obtaining a bride from among the Gentiles--that is the Church. When the hour of tribulation and anguish shall come upon His brethren in the flesh, even as He Himself has warned, He will appear in His glory, the scales will fall from their eyes as they did from Paul and they will own Him as their Messiah and Lord, the Holy One of Israel. With His Church in a.s.sociate power and glory He will deliver them and place them forever in the promised land--the land of their fathers.
No sooner has Moses with the host of Israel crossed dry shod through the divided waters of the Red Sea than he lifts up his voice and sings, not of the first, but the Second Coming of the Lord. He sings of Him as a man of war, as the head of celestial armies, coming to execute judgment, overthrow iniquity and establish His reign and rule of righteousness.
When you open the historic pages of the Bible, along the seemingly driest and coldest paragraphs you may if you will behold the wheels of the King"s chariot flashing by and catch a gleam of His radiant features, now as the man of war in David, and then as the Prince of peace in Solomon.
Yonder, under the far-away stars, Job sat at his tent door and as he meditated on the brevity and vanity of human life, its hopes deferred that make the heart sick, the sound of the clods as they fall upon the coffin lid, he asked the question that has quivered down the ages--"If a man die, shall he live again?"
He answers his own question. He says he knows he will die. He knows his soul will go into the underworld of the dead. His body will be laid away in the dust. It will become nothing more than a bundle of skin and bones. He knows, also, this bundle of skin and bones is the work of G.o.d"s hand. The Lord will have respect to His work. He will remember He wrought it. At a given time He will call to Job and Job will answer; then in antic.i.p.ation of the supreme moment he cries out exultantly he knows his redeemer liveth; that he shall stand in the latter day upon the earth and covered with his own flesh once more shall see his incarnate G.o.d.
Thus in those wondrous days of the long ago Job caught the shining of the morning star, heard the trumpet of the first resurrection and caught the vision of the Second Coming of his Lord.
David sweeps his fingers across the answering chords of his golden harp and sings of that hour when the Lord shall come in His glory; when the trees of the wood shall clap their hands; when the mountains shall flow down at His presence, the waves of the sea fling their hallelujahs on the resounding sh.o.r.e; and when the earth shall own the Lord is coming, coming not the first time to die, but the Second time as the risen one to live and reign and with none to dispute Him.
In the Song of Songs we who believe are by nature before G.o.d as black and uncomely as the sun-burned tents of Kedar, but by grace in G.o.d"s sight as beautiful as the Tyre-woven curtains of Solomon.
The breath of the spring time is in the air. The voice of the turtle dove is to be heard in the land. It is the time of love and for hearts to find their mates. The leaves of the fig tree of Israel are beginning to put forth. The seeds of hope sown in the graves of the Christian dead and watered with tears from the anguish of the living are ready to bud and blossom forth in the full flower of their a.s.sured immortality. The voice of the Bridegroom may be heard saying to the Church: "Come away my beloved. Come thou rose of Sharon and thou lily of the valley," and presently we see the Bridegroom Himself descending and the Church going up out of the wilderness leaning on the arm of her Beloved.