THE CASE AGAINST THE
SECOND ADVENT
How
strongly Second Advent truth is telling is proved by the elaborate attempts now
being made to refute it, the latest being advanced (Christian World, Feb.
10th and 17th, 1927) by Dr. Charles E. Jefferson, of
We do not say to one another "Maranatha."
We seldom think of His coming. That will account in large measure for the
difference in spirit between the first century, Church
and our own. Their belief in the early coming of Christ gave an intensity to their
life* which
ours does not possess. We are intense
about certain things but not about our religion. There
was an other-worldliness in the Church of the Apostles
which has vanished. The early Christians
kept their thoughts upon the other world, the world into which Christ had
vanished and from which He was soon to emerge again. We do not think much about the other world. The present world is amazingly attractive and
it absorbs all our strength and time. It
is a difficult world to manage and we have no time for any other. The
[* Why
do so many Christians not have this ‘intensity to
their life’? Simply
because they are ‘dull of hearing’, unbelieving, and neglectful of the
warnings that threaten their exclusion from the ‘Age’ to come. Bunyan said: "They
that will have it must run for it; and this calls aloud to those who
began but awhile since to run, I say, for them to mend their pace if they
wish to win. Look to it, therefore, that thou delay no time, not an hour’s
time, but part speedily with all, with everything that is an hindrance to thee
in thy journey, and run ; yea, and so run that thou mayest
obtain."]
Now
this encomium - [high commendation, a speaking
well of the ‘first century church’ is] - - a perfectly true one - is exceedingly dangerous
to Dr. Jefferson’s case. "Do men gather grapes of thorns?" Does it not go far towards overthrowing the
very foundations of morality to paint in glowing colours the heavenly mind and
unearthly conduct which sprang, and spring, out of what is later
described as ‘a deadly superstition’? It is a fundamental law of the universe that
like alone produces like. If the life
radiant to which (as Dr. Jefferson says) the modern Church without the Advent
is a stranger, is the fruit of a ‘travesty’ and
a ‘caricature’ of the Gospel (again the
Doctor’s words), morality is at an end, and truth has committed suicide.
But
why does the Doctor admit so much? For one very simple reason. He thinks he has a deadly torpedo which he can
launch at any moment into the flank of the Advent, sinking it hopelessly. Here it is:-
Let us see what Paul believed. We have his belief recorded in 1 Thess. 4: 16-18: "For
the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout with the voice of the
archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first;
then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in
the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord."
That is very
clear and very positive. The Lord is
coming out of the sky with a shout. An
archangel is going to speak. The trumpet
of God is going to blow. All the
Christians then alive, and Paul will be among the number, will be caught up in
the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. That was Paul’s joyful belief. Of that he had no doubt. That is the doctrine which he taught his
converts. But Paul was mistaken, so were all the Apostles. Every one of them was
mistaken. Their mistake is recorded in our New Testament. That mistake cannot
be got rid of. It was a huge mistake, and it forms a part of the New Testament
for ever.
Alas, the ‘huge mistake’ is Dr. Jefferson’s! It is always an error to attack a citadel with
such contempt as not first to have mastered its ground plan. Cannon emptied at out-works which do not exist
waste their shot. A not very recondite
study of the Scripture documents reveals that the attitude and
not the date was the one constant factor inculcated,
combining unwavering readiness with the possibility of indefinite postponement.
We to-day use exactly the language of
the Apostle, with an identical meaning:- "we that are alive, that remain,
shall be caught up": whether we shall be
alive, and remain, is one of the secrets of God. Dr. Jefferson confounds expectation with
prediction. The Apostle John carefully
guards (John 21: 23) against any dating of
the Advent, even within the last Apostle’s lifetime, while
equally carefully leaving open its possibility, hope, or even expectation. An identical attitude runs through the entire
substructure of all Advent prophecies. Paul’s
‘huge mistake’ simply does not exist; and with
it collapses the solitary argument, the lonely foundation, from which Dr.
Jefferson, with a curiously uniformed assurance, jettisons the Second Coming as
‘a deadly superstition.’ Nor is the Doctor’s knowledge of Advent
literature any more accurate than his knowledge of Advent prophecies.
They say He is coming soon. They
used to name the date. They missed it so
many times they dare not do it any more. Only a fanatic of unusual stature ventures,
any longer, to specify the day on which the Lord will bring the world to an
end. They now use ambiguous adverbs. They declare He is coming "soon."
Had
Dr. Jefferson any knowledge at all of Advent literature - he seems acquainted
only with the date-fixing vaticinations [false prophecies] of
non-Christian sects such as Russellism, or Mormonism
or the Order of the Star in the East - he would know that we could range
through the thirty volumes of the Quarterly Journal of Prophecy, or the
entire output of the Rainbow - probably the most remarkable periodical
on prophecy ever issued - or the pages of any foremost exponent of the Coming,
and cross-examine hundreds of thousands of prophetic students of every grade of
gift and grace, and not only find no date, but the strongest possible
enforcements of our Lord’s prohibition of all date-fixing to an event the very
soul of which is its inviolable secrecy.
Nor
is Dr. Jefferson’s one practical criticism a ‘mistake’
less ‘huge.’ He imagines because Christ’s Gospel finds so
obstinate a refusal as to shift the centre of gravity for world-reform across
the grave, rendering all present political and social effort a constant Sisyphus
[incessantly recurring]
miscarriage, that the Advent attitude is, therefore, folded hands and a
slumbering heart.
A
reading of the Bible which cuts the nerve of action is certainly a deadly
superstition which all open-eyed lovers of the truth must resist and overcome.
As
a matter of fact, the mass of work accomplished in the world, and for the
world, by watchers for the Lord during the world’s latest century is out of all
proportion to their rank or number. Missionaries
like Hudson Taylor, philanthropists like Lord Shaftsbury,
evangelists like Moody, preachers like Spurgeon, expositors like Govett, authors like Pember,
scholars like Tregelles, founders of
institutions for Christian rescue like George Muller; - all these giants
in their several spheres, whose labours were colossal, not only could say, but
most have said, that so far from ‘cutting
the nerve of action,’ it was the
nerve. We have space for but a
single witness. Mr. Moody, beyond challenge the greatest evangelist of the modern
age, and from his earliest years an exhaustive worker, says: "I have felt like
working three times as hard since I came to understand that my Lord is coming
again."
Dr.
Jefferson’s own view of the Coming is a coming so ineffectual that it never
ceases, and never arrives.
The proper expression is the "continuous" coming of
Christ. He has already come many times. He is coming many times. In the present hour He will come and keep on
coming.
It
seems a light matter to critics of this kind that such a view contradicts
point-blank the Son of God, who says: "they shall see
the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory"
(Matt. 24: 30). If the Apostles erred, the Lord erred much
more deeply, for His assertions of His
bodily return are the most drastic and constant in the whole range of
Scripture.
It
is deeply pathetic that the very ‘faith’ in the
future which the Church often so loyally, so bravely, exercises is itself a
tragic ‘unbelief’ - in the Scriptures - doomed
to bitter disenchantment. Israel
stressed the crown and forgot the cross - the Church stresses the
cross and forgets the crown; and critics of the Advent, coming perilously near
to filling the role of the mockers foretold (2
Pet. 3: 3), may well be cautious lest they duplicate Israel’s blunder,
who, "because they knew not the voice of the
prophets, fulfilled them by condemning Him" (Acts. 13: 27).*
[*
The only Christian date-affixers (so far as we know) are found among advocates
of the ‘year-day’ theory, nor would even they (we imagine) attempt to forecast
the exact day of rapture, or the hour of our Lord's arrival on earth.]
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THE BACKSLIDER’S CRY
Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years!
I am so weary of toil and of tears --
Toil without recompense, tears all in vain --
Take them and give me salvation again!
I have grown weary of dust and decay-
Weary of flinging my soul-wealth away;
Weary of sowing this hard world to reap:
Shepherd, enfold me again with Thy sheep
Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue,
Saviour, O Saviour, my heart calls for You!
Many the years in sin I have squander’d,
While from Thee, Jesus, my steps have long wander’d
Yet with strong yearning and passionate pain,
Long I to-night for Thy presence again.
Come from the silence so long and so deep:
Shepherd, enfold me again with Thy sheep!
Saviour, dear Saviour, the years have been long
Since I last join’d in Thy saint’s holy song;
Let them sing - then to my soul it shall seem
That my backslidd’n years have been but a dream.
Clasp’d to Thy heart in a loving embrace
With joy unexhausted and infinite grace,
Never hereafter to mourn or to weep,
Shepherd, enfold me again with Thy sheep!
- H. LOUISE DAVIS