This is
no more a treatise on the Second Advent of Christ than a
former chapter was on the Holy Spirit. Our specific
object is to point out the connection between the Cross
and the Coming. This will be seen to be the fourth and
final intersection on our diagram.
Just as
Salvation, Sanctification, the Holy Spirit, have been
made something in themselves, and have become isolated
doctrines, separated from their relatedness to all else,
and have therefore become abnormal and unbalanced, so has
it become with the teaching concerning the Lord's coming
again. For a long time this matter fell into abeyance and
was neglected or rejected. Then came a real awakening
concerning it, and it was given its place again. But,
like every swing of the pendulum, it has either taken on
abnormalities, or become something in itself. In the one
case it does positive harm: in the other it does not do
much harm or good at all.
Some of
us have lived long enough to outlive many Second Advent
theories - not of cranks, extremists, or fanatics
(although there have been some of these) but of honest,
devout, and otherwise balanced and sound evangelical
leaders. How sure some were that the German Kaiser was
the Antichrist! How much was published and said by
prophetic students that Allenby's entrance into Jerusalem
was the end of the times of the Gentiles! Then Hitler
took his place in the long line of Antichrists. A
well-known evangelical leader travelled to Rome with the
express purpose of telling Mussolini that he was the one
raised up of God at the end-times to reconstruct the
Roman Empire according to prophecy, and Mussolini took it
on. Well, what about it all?
We are
not dismissing "signs of the times," for there
undoubtedly are such, but we do emphasize that the
spiritual aspect of things is far safer and more
important than the temporal, fascinating as the latter
may be. SATAN CAN SIDETRACK AS MUCH BY MEANS OF
UNRELATED TRUTH AS BY POSITIVE ERROR.
Before
his departure to be with the Lord, a beloved friend and
servant of God who had made prophecy his life-long study,
and who was well-known as an investigator, wrote to me
and said that he had been compelled to change his entire
standpoint and much of his interpretation in this whole
matter. This is sad, if not tragic! We do need to be on
very safe and sure ground.
The Lord's Coming Is Rooted In The
Cross
and is
the definite outworking as well as the outcome of it.
'Thou art coming; at Thy table
We are witnesses for this.'
The
Table, which shows forth His death, links that death with
His coming again - "'till He come."
To show
that the Cross is the basis of the Blessed Hope would be
unnecessary here, but to show how that is so may be
important. The reason for this is that so many have not
got beyond the idea - an idea never seriously thought out
- that the Second Advent is just an isolated event, or an
event which, standing in a program or time-table of
dispensational movements, will just happen. When the
clock strikes twelve the Lord will come. Well,
"within His own authority" the Father may have
the times and the seasons, but in touching this matter we
are confronted with one of those inscrutable ways of God.
There are several of them in the Bible. To reconcile
freewill and predestination lies with the wisdom of God
alone, we cannot do it. In the same way it is beyond our
understanding that a certain state which lies with the
volition of Christians should synchronize with a fixed
point of time for the Lord's coming. Yet it is beyond
dispute that in both the above matters the Bible is quite
clear and emphatic. The Lord will come at a time
definitely known to and fixed by Him, but, on the other
hand, the Lord's coming will be just as much a spiritual
matter as a chronological one.
It is on
this spiritual side of Adventism that the Church and its
teachers are so weak. As truly as Abraham's servant, sent
to fetch the bride for Isaac, foreshadowed the Holy
Spirit's being sent to fetch a bride for Christ, so truly
is it a matter of spiritual progress on her part toward
Him and the Spirit's showing of His things. Rebekah did
not make one sudden leap from Mesopotamia to Canaan. It
was a long, exacting and testing journey, and one
involving a great exercise of faith. There was the whole
question of leaving everything and everyone whose roots
were in that land. There was the matter of implicit trust
in the servant. There was, no doubt, a temptation more
than once to wonder if the end was sure. And there was
the constant battle with the reactions arising out of the
weariness and the length of the unfamiliar way. But all
this had a necessary effect upon this elect bride to both
fit her for her great vocation and make the ecstasy of
realization all the greater. This is at best a poor
figure of the spiritual side of the consummation of union
with Christ at His appearing.
The fact
is that we are to move just as much toward Him as He to
us. The break with all here in a heart way, the leaving
of this world spiritually, the occupation with the things
of Christ, the patient endurance, and the growth of
faith, are indispensable and inseparable factors in
relation to His coming and our going on with Him.
Let
there be differences of opinion as to the willy-nilly
translation of Christians, or as to whether the whole
Church will be caught up at Christ's coming; it is not
necessary to formulate theories or teachings on such
matters. Selectiveness of rapture may or may not be held,
but from one thing no one can get away, God has left no
room for theories here; a spiritual state of separation,
occupation, and expectation is invariably bound up with
our being received by Him at His appearing.
In our diagram there are two blue lines, and
blue stands for heavenliness. Israel in the wilderness
was given a blue token to wear on the border of their
garments. This betokened that they were - in God's mind -
a heavenly people. They no more belonged to the
wilderness than they did to Egypt. It was a place in
which to know and prove their heavenliness - heavenly
life, resource, guidance, etc. - and it was always
pointing to "a heavenly country" which was
really their own. But Jordan was the way in, the real
point of crossing. And Jordan forever represents the
Cross of Christ. As the Red Sea represented what God did
for them, so Jordan was the figure of a work consummated
in them.
"Ephesians"
is the counterpart of "Joshua"; it is "in
the heavenlies in Christ," but the Holy Spirit took
what was chronologically first -
"Thessalonians" - and caused it to be placed
after "Ephesians," as much as to say - The
Coming of the Lord (the main theme of
"Thessalonians") is the outcome of the Church's
arrival at its heavenly position.
More
will be said on this when we deal with the Church in our
next chapter, but here we want to underline the Divine
revelation that the Cross separates us from this world,
from this "flesh," from Satan's authority, and
joins us to Christ, brings us on to heavenly ground, and
constitutes us a spiritual people, and it is for such
that the Lord will come. When David was driven out of his
place by the usurper Absalom and his company, he
exercised sublime wisdom and faith by sending back
Abiathar with the ark into the city. It was his own
foothold there. It was that which would always give him a
place, even where he was otherwise repudiated. And to it
he would return. It was his hold and his magnet. The Lord
will not just return as a matter of course. He will come
to and for something. It is a love matter. He will come
for His bride, but it has to be mutual. "Them that
have loved His appearing." So the Cross is as much a
part of the consummation as it is of the initiation, and
by its operation in the life as a principle and power the
Lord will come for "a people prepared." This
preparation relates to heart condition and not to mental
apprehension of prophetic truth.