{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_30573/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_30573","id":"gutenberg_30573","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30573","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Religion/Spirituality","Second Advent"],"text":"E-text prepared by Keith G. Richardson from page images generously made\navailable by the Google Books Library Project (http://books.google.com/)\n\n\n\nNote: Images of the original pages are available through\n      the the Google Books Library Project. See\n      http://books.google.com/books?vid=etoOAAAAIAAJ&id\n\n\n\n\n\nWHY I PREACH THE SECOND COMING\n\nby\n\nI. M. HALDEMAN, D. D.\n\nPastor First Baptist Church, New York City\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNew York Chicago\nFleming H. Revell Company\nLondon and Edinburgh\n\nCopyright, 1919, by\nFleming H. Revell Company\n\nNew York: 158 Fifth Avenue\nChicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.\nLondon: 21 Paternoster Square\nEdinburgh: 75 Princes Street\n\n\n\nForeword\n\n\nTHE subject of this volume is an address delivered by the Author\nbefore the World's Conference on Christian Fundamentals at\nPhiladelphia, May 30, 1919.\n\nThe reasons for preaching and teaching the Second Coming of our Lord\nJesus Christ are manifold and each one worth while.\n\nThe Author has contented himself with presenting a few as follows:\n\nThe Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ is the one event most\noften recorded in Holy Scripture.\n\nIt is bound up with every fundamental doctrine, with every sublime\npromise and every exhortation to high, to holy and practical\nChristian living.\n\nOnly at the Second Coming of our Lord will redemption be complete\nand the blood of the cross be justified.\n\nNot till our Lord Jesus Christ comes the Second time will the Church\nbe exalted into her true function of rulership over the world.\n\nOnly at the Second Coming will the solemn and covenant promises of\nGod to Israel be fulfilled.\n\nOnly at the Second Coming of the Christ of God will a government of\neverlasting righteousness and peace be established on the earth.\n\nIt is at the Second Coming of Christ alone that the earth will be\ndelivered from the bondage of corruption and transformed into the\nparadise of God.\n\nThe Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ FOR His Church is the most\nimminent event on the horizon of time.\n\n\nI. M. H.\n\n\n_New York, 1919._\n\n\n\nContents\n\n\nI. THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST IS THE ONE EVENT MOST\nOFTEN RECORDED IN HOLY SCRIPTURE\n\nII. THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST IS BOUND UP WITH\nEVERY FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINE, EVERY SUBLIME PROMISE AND EVERY\nEXHORTATION TO HIGH, TO HOLY AND PRACTICAL CHRISTIAN LIVING\n\nIII. ONLY AT THE COMING OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST WILL REDEMPTION BE\nCOMPLETE AND THE BLOOD OF THE CROSS BE JUSTIFIED\n\nIV. NOT TILL OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST COMES THE SECOND TIME WILL THE\nCHURCH BE EXALTED INTO HER TRUE FUNCTION OF RULERSHIP OVER THE WORLD\n\nV. ONLY AT THE SECOND COMING WILL THE SOLEMN AND COVENANT PROMISES\nOF GOD TO ISRAEL BE FULFILLED\n\nVI. ONLY AT THE SECOND COMING OF THE CHRIST OF GOD WILL A GOVERNMENT\nOF EVERLASTING RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE BE ESTABLISHED UPON THE EARTH\n\nVII. IT IS AT THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST THAT THE\nEARTH WILL BE DELIVERED FROM THE BONDAGE OF CORRUPTION AND\nTRANSFORMED INTO THE PARADISE OF GOD\n\nVIII. THE COMING OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST FOR HIS CHURCH IS THE MOST\nIMMINENT EVENT ON THE HORIZON OF TIME\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nThe Second Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ is the One Event Most\nOften Recorded in Holy Scripture\n\n\nIT is recorded in type, in figure, in symbol, in analogue, in\nparable, in hyperbole and metaphor, in exalted song, in noblest\npoetry and in rarest rhetoric. It is set before us in dramatic and\ndynamic statement, in high prophetic forecast, in simple narrative,\nclose linked logic, expanded doctrine, divine exhortation and far\n-reaching appeal.\n\nThe first promise of the Second Coming was made in Eden. It was made\nin the promise given to the woman that her seed should bruise the\nserpent's head. On the cross the serpent bruised the heel of the\nwoman's seed, but her seed did not bruise the serpent's head. Never\nwas his head more uplifted and unbruised than now. The promise of\nthe bruising is of God and must be fulfilled. The record of that\nfulfillment is to be found in the twentieth chapter of the book of\nthe Revelation where our Lord descends and in the plenitude of His\npower by the hand of an angel binds Satan for a thousand years\nbeneath His feet and the feet of His saints. As the bruising of the\nserpent's head takes place at the Second Coming, and the promise of\nthe bruising is made in Eden, then the first promise of the Coming\nis made in Eden; and as you see rising above the figure of the\nfallen first man the figure of the Second man, you hear for the\nfirst time the story of the Second Coming of the Second man; and\nthus the story and the doctrine of the Second Coming begin with the\nvery beginning of the Book.\n\nFor three hundred years Enoch walked amid the slime, the slush and\nthe uprising tide of human iniquity in a God-hating and God-defying\nworld. Then one day God took him out of all the riot and wrong of it\nwithout dying into the heaven of His glory; and the Apostle Paul\nwriting to the Corinthians of the Second Coming affirms there will\nbe a generation who will continue alive till the Lord comes; and\nthus Enoch is a type of that deathless generation and by so much a\nprophecy of the Second Coming.\n\nFor one hundred and twenty years Noah preached righteousness to a\nworld from which the death penalty had been removed, a world\nsurrendered to conscience (and let it be well remembered conscience\nis not the gift of God nor evidence of grace but mark of fallen man,\nthe shadow of God's throne before which the \"accuse\" and \"excuse\" of\nthe soul witness to human guilt), a generation given over to\nunrestrained fallen nature; a generation of murder, assassination,\nviolence, war, utter brutality, sickening sensualism, the invasion\nof fallen and lust-seeking angels, rank spiritism, diabolism and\nmocking laughter at God and the things of God.\n\nSuddenly, without warning, God called Noah into the ark (the\nbuilding of which had awakened the derision of the revellers in sin\nand the would-be wise men of the hour) shut the door and bolted him\nin. At the end of seven ominous days in which the darksome clouds\nhung low and threatening, the windows of heaven were opened, the\nfountains of the deep broken up and the flood fell, sweeping away\nall save Noah and his family in the ark. When the judgment waters\nhad subsided Noah and his family came forth to set up a new and\ndistinct dispensation in the world.\n\nSeated yonder on the Mount of Olives in the shadow of the cross,\nlooking forward to His Second Coming and backward for an\nillustration that should forecast the times and leave no excuse for\nexegetical and interpretative theological blundering our Lord said\nas it was in the days of Noah so should it be when the Son of man\nshould come the Second time.\n\nWithout warning, out of a world of increasing materialism, self\n-sufficiency, boasting, pride, violence, war and multiplied peril, a\nworld that under the guise of general indifferentism and cultivated\ncynicism mocks at the things of God and denies we have a written,\nfinal and sure revelation from Him, the Lord will snatch away the\ngenuine, regenerated Church (the dead raised, the living changed)\nand take them to Himself, into the place prepared. For at least\nseven years spiritual blackness, measureless woe and indescribable\nanguish will fall upon a Devil-deceived and Devil-ruled world. Then\nwill the Lord come with His previously gathered Church, execute\njudgment on the ungodly, sweep away all iniquity and set up the new\nadministration of righteousness and truth. Noah is therefore a\nfigure, a prophecy of the closing hours of this age and its climax\nin the Second Coming of the Lord.\n\nOne day Lot went into Sodom, took office, tried to reform the evil\ncity, succeeded in vexing his righteous, but unspiritual soul with\nthe filthy conversation of the wicked, got down to the level of the\nnatural man, lost his testimony and seemed to his friends and\nintimates like a madman or the most excuselessly inconsistent\ntrifler when he attempted to take up once more his damaged\ntestimony.\n\nThen there was a night when God's angels came and snatched him out\nof the doomed city. The next morning the fire of God fell and Lot\n\"saved so as by fire\" looked on at the blaze and the burning of all\nhis works of righteousness as wood hay and stubble, big in bulk but\nrejected of God.\n\nLooking forward to His Second Coming and backward for an\nillustration the Son of God declared as it was in the days of Lot so\nshould it be when the Son of man should come again.\n\nThere are good and righteous Christians--righteous enough but wholly\nunspiritual who are seeking to make spotless town of a world God has\njudged and doomed, failing to see the cross is not only the judgment\nof the individual, but equally the judgment of the world; that not\nonly does the cross reveal the end of all flesh but the end in God's\nsight of that system of things which men call the world; that on the\ncross the world is crucified to the Christian and the Christian to\nthe world; and failing to see this, failing to get the mind of God\nare daily descending to the plane of the natural man, are losing and\nin many cases deliberately setting aside the testimony once for all\ndelivered to the saints.\n\nWithout warning, they will be snatched away to meet a descending\nLord (if they be real and regenerated Christians) and this alone\nbecause their faith be it never so small holds them securely in the\nbonds of the covenant. After that the Lord will be revealed in\nflaming fire to execute judgment on the world and all the works of\nmisguided social reformers because these works are built, not upon\nthe righteousness of God, but the righteousness of man.\n\nAccording to the Word of the Lord Himself therefore Lot is a picture\nand prophecy of the closing hours of the present age with its climax\nthe Coming and Appearing of the Lord.\n\nAfter Abraham had typically offered up his son on Mount Moriah and\ntypically received him from the dead on the third day the son for a\nnumber of chapters in the record disappears from view. Then Abraham\nthe father sends his servant Eliezer into a far country to get a\nbride for this now invisible son. Eliezer meets the intended bride\nat a well from whence she is drawing water, goes with her into her\nbrother's house, takes out a pack of precious things sent from the\nfather in the name of the son, displays them to her and invites her\nto become the bride of the son. She consents. The servant leads her\nforth. On the way he talks to her of the promised bridegroom.\nSuddenly she beholds him coming to meet her. He receives her, takes\nher into his prepared tent and she becomes his wife.\n\nOn the same mount nearly two thousand years later God the Father\noffered up His only begotten Son. On the third day He raised Him\nfrom the dead. For two thousand years He has disappeared from view.\nThe Father has sent forth the Spirit to obtain a bride for His Son.\nHe meets her at the Gospel well from whence we draw the waters of\nsalvation. He is calling her through individual selection that she\nmay become the corporate bride. He has brought spiritual gifts which\nHe seeks to display in all her assemblies. He is endeavouring to\nlead her along the highway of time and to speak to her in the heaven\nspeech of the Coming Bridegroom. Suddenly the Lord will come to meet\nher and take her into the place prepared and keep her for the\nmarriage hour. In this simple story the analogue finds its prophetic\nclimax in the Second Coming of our Lord.\n\nJacob fled from his home, the brother he had outwitted and the\nfather whom he had deceived. As night drew on footsore and weary he\ncast himself upon the plain with a stone for his pillow. Visions\ncame to him in the night. A ladder of gold reached from earth to\nheaven. At the top of it was a host of angels and the Lord Himself\nin glory. The Lord spoke to him and assured him he and his posterity\nshould have the land on which he was lying for an everlasting\npossession. It was a confirmation of the oath to and the covenant\nwith Abraham and Isaac. As the covenant can find its fulfillment\nonly at the actual Second Coming of our Lord as the God of Jacob,\nthis vision is the prophetic anticipation of that hour and the\nheaven-proclaimed assurance the Lord is coming a Second time.\n\nJoseph was sent by his father to his brethren. They despised and\nrejected him. They cast him into the pit of death. He was taken out\nalive. He was carried away into a far country--even into Egypt.\nThere he was exalted to become co-ruler with Pharaoh. In the hour of\nfamine he became the bread giver, the saviour of a hungry world. At\nthe same time he got a Gentile bride. In the hour when tribulation\nand sorrow came upon his brethren he revealed himself to them the\nsecond time and was owned and acknowledged by them. With his wife he\ncame in his chariot of kingly glory and established his father and\nhis brethren in the promised land of Goshen.\n\nThe application is so simple it applies itself.\n\nGod the Father sent His Son to His brethren in the flesh. They\ndespised and rejected Him. They put Him in the place of death. He\nwas raised up alive. He has gone into a far country--even into\nheaven itself. He is there now as one who has been exiled from\nearth. He has been exalted to the throne of His Father. For two\nthousand years of spiritual famine and hunger in the world He has\nbeen the giver of the bread of life, the saviour of men. During\nthese years of His exile He has been obtaining a bride from among\nthe Gentiles--that is the Church. When the hour of tribulation and\nanguish shall come upon His brethren in the flesh, even as He\nHimself has warned, He will appear in His glory, the scales will\nfall from their eyes as they did from Paul and they will own Him as\ntheir Messiah and Lord, the Holy One of Israel. With His Church in\nassociate power and glory He will deliver them and place them\nforever in the promised land--the land of their fathers.\n\nNo sooner has Moses with the host of Israel crossed dry shod through\nthe divided waters of the Red Sea than he lifts up his voice and\nsings, not of the first, but the Second Coming of the Lord. He sings\nof Him as a man of war, as the head of celestial armies, coming to\nexecute judgment, overthrow iniquity and establish His reign and\nrule of righteousness.\n\nWhen you open the historic pages of the Bible, along the seemingly\ndriest and coldest paragraphs you may if you will behold the wheels\nof the King's chariot flashing by and catch a gleam of His radiant\nfeatures, now as the man of war in David, and then as the Prince of\npeace in Solomon.\n\nYonder, under the far-away stars, Job sat at his tent door and as he\nmeditated on the brevity and vanity of human life, its hopes\ndeferred that make the heart sick, the sound of the clods as they\nfall upon the coffin lid, he asked the question that has quivered\ndown the ages--\"If a man die, shall he live again?\"\n\nHe answers his own question. He says he knows he will die. He knows\nhis soul will go into the underworld of the dead. His body will be\nlaid away in the dust. It will become nothing more than a bundle of\nskin and bones. He knows, also, this bundle of skin and bones is the\nwork of God's hand. The Lord will have respect to His work. He will\nremember He wrought it. At a given time He will call to Job and Job\nwill answer; then in anticipation of the supreme moment he cries out\nexultantly he knows his redeemer liveth; that he shall stand in the\nlatter day upon the earth and covered with his own flesh once more\nshall see his incarnate God.\n\nThus in those wondrous days of the long ago Job caught the shining\nof the morning star, heard the trumpet of the first resurrection and\ncaught the vision of the Second Coming of his Lord.\n\nDavid sweeps his fingers across the answering chords of his golden\nharp and sings of that hour when the Lord shall come in His glory;\nwhen the trees of the wood shall clap their hands; when the\nmountains shall flow down at His presence, the waves of the sea\nfling their hallelujahs on the resounding shore; and when the earth\nshall own the Lord is coming, coming not the first time to die, but\nthe Second time as the risen one to live and reign and with none to\ndispute Him.\n\nIn the Song of Songs we who believe are by nature before God as\nblack and uncomely as the sun-burned tents of Kedar, but by grace in\nGod's sight as beautiful as the Tyre-woven curtains of Solomon.\n\nThe breath of the spring time is in the air. The voice of the turtle\ndove is to be heard in the land. It is the time of love and for\nhearts to find their mates. The leaves of the fig tree of Israel are\nbeginning to put forth. The seeds of hope sown in the graves of the\nChristian dead and watered with tears from the anguish of the living\nare ready to bud and blossom forth in the full flower of their\nassured immortality. The voice of the Bridegroom may be heard saying\nto the Church: \"Come away my beloved. Come thou rose of Sharon and\nthou lily of the valley,\" and presently we see the Bridegroom\nHimself descending and the Church going up out of the wilderness\nleaning on the arm of her Beloved.\n\nSo we may learn and quickly if we will, that the Song of Songs which\nis Solomon's is the celebration of the nuptial hour when our Lord\nshall come the Second time to take His affianced Church to Himself\nand make her the heavenly bride of His unfolding and unfading glory.\n\nThe prophet Isaiah hears the seraphs sing their \"holy, holy, holy is\nthe Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory\" till the\nposts of the door are moved at the wonder of the song. He sees the\nglory of the Coming of the Lord. He tells us the Lord is coming with\nfire and with His chariots like a whirlwind, to render His anger\nwith fury, and His rebuke with flames of fire.\n\nJeremiah announces the Lord is coming the Second time. When He comes\nHe will make Jerusalem the throne of His glory. Unto it shall be the\ngathering of the nations. They shall gather unto it in the name of\nthe Lord, and neither shall they walk any more after the\nimaginations of their evil heart.\n\nEzekiel beholds the Lord seated on a throne high and lifted up. He\nsees Him coming out of the purple dawning of the east. He restores\nJerusalem. He builds the temple till the shining spendour of it\nshall fill the promised land; and in a voice as the sound of many\nwaters He says this temple shall be the place for the soles of His\nfeet and thus rebukes those who try to keep Him from dwelling bodily\nin the land as though forsooth He should lose His heavenliness by so\ndoing, forgetting that earth is His rightful home and is to be His\neternal dwelling place. Yea and Amen when He comes to His own again\nHe shall dwell in the midst of His ransomed forever. And the nations\nof the earth as they ascend to the heights of Jerusalem to behold\nHis glory and to worship Him in His holy temple as they catch the\nfirst glimpse of the city, its gardens like unto the garden of the\nLord, the temple with its shekinah cloud by day and the flaming fire\nby night that shall make it to be no more night but day, shall cry\nout, not \"Jerusalem,\" but \"Yaveh Shamma--the Lord is there.\" And\nfrom henceforth this shall be the name of the city.\n\nDaniel has visions in the night. He beholds the Lord as the Son of\nman, as eternal judge and king of all the earth. He sees Him coming\nto the Father to receive His title deeds and then descending in\nclouds of glory to establish the kingdom that shall never pass away.\n\nFrom Hosea to Malachi the Minor Prophets echo with the declaration\nthe Lord is coming and always this coming is the Second.\n\nHosea foresees Israel will forsake the Lord and for many days be as\na dead man out of sight and forgotten. But in the latter times when\nthe Lord Himself shall return Israel will awaken and own Him as Lord\nand king.\n\nJoel tells us the armies of the world league shall be gathered\nagainst Jerusalem and under their godless, Devil-incarnate head\nshall defy the Lord of hosts; that the Lord will come, overthrow\nthem with a great slaughter and deliver the holy city from the\ntreading down of the Gentiles forever.\n\nIn Amos the Lord is coming to restore the kingdom to Israel and set\nup and establish the throne of David.\n\nObadiah warns us of the day of the Lord, the day that is introduced\nby the Second Coming of the Lord.\n\nJoel teaches us under the madness and folly of Gentile rule\nploughshares are to be beaten into swords and pruning hooks into\nspears and the nations are to give themselves to war and all the\nhorror and desolation of it. But this Scripture is never quoted by\nthose who preach peace where there can be no peace. Always they\nquote Micah who tells us the swords will be beaten into\nploughshares, the spears into pruning hooks and the nations shall\nlearn war no more.\n\nThe two prophets seem to stand in absolute opposition to each other.\n\nThey do not.\n\nJoel tells us what will happen just before the Lord comes.\n\nMicah tells us what will take place after the Lord comes.\n\nIn Joel the Lord will come, meet the armies of the League in the\nvalley of decision, the valley of Jehoshaphat, and overthrow them;\nthen will the implements of war be beaten into the implements of\npeace and war be at an end forever.\n\nMicah announces the end of war and the beginning of lasting peace\nwill come as the consequence of the Lord's appearing in glory and\nnot till He does so appear.\n\nNahum proclaims the Second Coming. The Lord's way shall be in the\nwhirlwind and the storm, the clouds shall be the dust of His feet,\nthe mountains shall quake at Him, the hills shall melt and the very\nearth burn at His presence.\n\nIn Habakkuk the Spirit carries human language to its loftiest height\ntill it glows on peaks of thought sublime.\n\nThe prophet sees the Lord coming the Second time. His brightness is\nas the shining light. In His hands once pierced for such as we is\nthe hiding of His power. Pestilence and burning coals are His\nvanguard. He stands and measures the earth. He drives asunder the\nnations. The everlasting mountains are scattered. The perpetual\nhills bow before Him and the inhabitants of the onlooking worlds\nlift up their voices and sing: \"His ways are everlasting.\"\n\nZephaniah proclaims the Second Coming.\n\nThe Lord will come and smite the world league in the pitifulness of\nits gathering and the pigminess of its might. He will pour forth His\nindignation and fierce anger upon all the exaltation and pride of\nman. He will devour the earth with the fire of His jealousy, deliver\nJerusalem, turn to the people the pure speech of the old Hebraic\ntongue, bid Zion to sing, Israel to shout and calling Jerusalem her\ndaughter, bid her to rejoice. He will overthrow the false Christ and\nas the true Messiah will Himself dwell in the midst of Jerusalem\nforevermore.\n\nHaggai declares the Lord will come and will shake all nations so\nthat only the things which are of God may remain.\n\nZechariah tells us in terms so plain, so clear no one need\nmisunderstand nor be in darkness for a moment that the Lord is\ncoming the Second time.\n\nHe will come with all His saints. His feet shall stand in that day\non the Mount of Olives; and that no false teacher nor wilful\nperverter of the truth about the reality of the Lord's bodily\npresence on the earth at that time may have even the shadow of a\nshadow to rest on, and as a proof that this coming is not spiritual\nbut actual and the testimony of His very feet under the most\npronounced topographical conditions, the prophet says the mount on\nwhich those blessed and real feet shall descend is not only on the\nMount of Olives, but that \"Mount of Olives, which is before\nJerusalem on the east.\"\n\nAt the touch of the Lord's feet this wondrous and sacred Mount of\nOlives will split in twain. One half of it will roll like a wave\nnorthward. The other half will roll to the south. A great valley\nwill be formed. That valley is named in Scripture, but never has\nbeen found on any map and cannot be found in Palestine to-day. It is\nthe valley of Jehoshaphat, the valley of decision, the valley of\njudgment of the nations. And into this valley pell-mell shall rush\nthe Antichrist-led and Devil-deceived armies of the league of ten\nnations to find their overthrow at the hand of the Lord and the\ninauguration of that hour when the once despised and crucified\nChrist shall be the revealed and recognized God of the whole earth;\nwhen there shall be one Lord and His name one--even that name which\nis above every name whether in heaven or on earth--the name of\nJesus.\n\nMalachi closes the book of the Old Testament. He beholds our Lord\nJesus Christ coming the Second time. He sees Him coming as the\nrising sun filling the heavens and flooding the earth with the\nbenediction of His majesty and might.\n\nFrom Malachi to the New Testament we pass over four hundred years of\nprophetic silence and then we are in the book of the Gospel\naccording to Matthew.\n\nHere we are face to face with the night of nights.\n\nThe stars like silver squadrons sail close to the waiting earth. The\nangels fling down their wreath of natal song and the virgin mother\ncradles upon her white and unsullied breast the Christ of God.\n\nWe follow Him in the days of His unfolding ministry. Every time He\ntouches the earth His footsteps leave a benediction. Each time He\nbreathes the air He sweetens it. His low and modulated voice starts\na note of music whose rhythmic accents have not done sounding and\nwhose heavenly harmony outsings the discords of earth. He looks\ndaylight into blind eyes. He cools the fever pulse to quiet beating.\nHe makes the lame man to leap as a hart. He hushes the storm on\nGalilee till the ruffled, windswept waters are as calm and peaceful\nas a babe upon its mother's breast. With a word He raises the wept\n-for dead. Everywhere and at all times His miracles are wrought, not\nmerely that He may do good and bring needed blessings as He passes\nby, but as the credentials and sign warrant of the truthfulness of\nHis claim that He is Son of God, God the Son, the Anointed of the\nLord and Israel's king.\n\nBut in all His ministry of hand or word never does He speak save\nincidentally of His first coming. Always and in fullest degree He\nspeaks of His Second Coming. Seated upon the Mount of Olives He\naffirms, after the cross shall have slain and stained Him and the\ngrave shall have briefly held Him He will come again; but, just\nbefore He comes it will be as it was in the days of Noah--a time of\nmaterialism, sensualism, the culture of self-consciousness, an hour\nof boasting, pride, lawlessness and war; and when He is revealed it\nwill be as with the driving judgment of the flood.\n\nIn the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew and the first part of the\nchapter He declares He is coming as the bridegroom comes--seeking\nthe marriage hour of his bride.\n\nIn the last part of the chapter and as the climax of His bridegroom\ncoming He will appear as the king of glory and the judge of the\nliving nations.\n\nWhen He stands before His guilty judges and their suborned witnesses\nand while they mock and deride Him He breaks His hitherto amazing\nsilence not to demonstrate to them the truth of His incarnation nor\nthe proof of His preexistence, but in calm and measured utterance to\ntell them that after they shall have put Him to death He will come\nthe Second time; and they shall see Him descending from heaven\nseated upon the cloud of shekinal glory and with the power of God.\n\nIn Mark He is the householder who goes into a far country, gives to\neach of His servants a work to do, puts the porter on guard to watch\nthe door of the house and announces that no one in heaven nor on\nearth knows when He will return. He will return, He will come the\nSecond time. It will be in one of the four watches of the spiritual\nnight. It may be at even, it may be at midnight, it may be at\ncockcrowing and it may be in the morning. Because it is certain He\nwill come, but uncertain when He will come, each one who claims to\nbe His servant is under bond to watch. The whole household must be\nin the attitude of watching, of readiness and expectation; and His\nword of exhortation and warning to His Church is:\n\n\"What I say unto you, I say unto all--watch.\"\n\nIn Luke He is the nobleman who goes into a far country to get the\ntitle deeds of His kingdom and return. When He returns He comes\nfirst to His servants, gathers them to Himself and rewards them.\nAfter that with them He executes judgment on His enemies and then\nsets up His kingdom.\n\nIn the Gospel of John He eats with His disciples the last and\nmemorial supper. He goes out with them, bids them lift their glances\nto the wide, extended sky where the jewelry of the night as the\nscattered largess of a king burns in the fire of opal, the purple\nand violet of amethyst and the white splendour of uncounted\ndiamonds. He assures them these gleaming things are no fiction fire\n-flies of gaseous worlds in the making, but illuminated dwelling\nplaces in His Father's house. He is going thither. He will ascend\ninto that congeries of inhabited worlds and will prepare a place for\nthem, a glorious palace home befitting their high estate; when all\nis ready He will come back and receive them in corporate unity to\nHimself.\n\nHis words are simple, but the simplicity is the simplicity of light\nand every accent is as the touch of peace to troubled hearts; for\nthis is what He said:\n\n\"In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would\nhave told you. I go to prepare a place for you.\n\nAnd if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and\nreceive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.\"\n\nIn the book of Acts, in the first chapter you have a scene no artist\nhas really ever painted, no writer ever fairly portrayed and no\nmortal tongue can fittingly describe.\n\nOur Lord is going up from the Mount of Olives. He is going up from\nthe midst of His disciples. He is going heavenward. The disciples\nwatch Him as He ascends. He enters a cloud. Do not, I beseech you,\nimagine for a moment this cloud is a fog bank, a mass of watery mist\nand vapour; it is the shekinal cloud which once covered the\ntabernacle in the wilderness and was the vehicle of His presence\nwhen Israel in that far time marched on their way to the promised\nland. It is His chariot of state. In this chariot sent to meet Him\nHe passes between the onlooking worlds ever higher and higher till\nat last He takes His seat upon the throne of the Highest at the\nright hand of the invisible majesty.\n\nThen, as through the dimness of their tears the disciples watch Him\ndisappear, they hear a voice which says to them:\n\n\"Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same\nJesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like\nmanner as ye have seen him go into heaven.\"\n\n\"This same Jesus.\"\n\nMark that well!\n\nThe Jesus who on the Sunday night of His resurrection did meet these\ndisciples in the upper room and said to them as they shrank back\ninto a frozen silence of hope and fear:\n\n\"Peace be unto you.\"\n\n\"Why are ye troubled?\"\n\n\"And why do thoughts arise in your hearts?\"\n\n\"Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me and\nsee; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.\"\n\nStill these disciples were afraid, afraid it could not be true.\n\nThen He showed them His hands and His feet that they might see where\nthe nails had gone in, torn through the flesh and left eternal\nwounds as the chevrons of glory.\n\nAnd still the silence of hope mingled with fear.\n\nThen he said:\n\n\"Have ye here any meat?\"\n\nAnd they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb.\n\nAnd He took and did eat before them.\n\nHe had said to them He was flesh and bones, not flesh and blood.\n\nHe was not flesh and blood because in the sin-offering all the blood\nmust be poured out at the bottom of the altar, and He was Himself\nthe antitypical sin-offering. He had poured out His blood. It had\nrun as a living stream from every vein and artery.\n\nBecause He was the sin-offering in death, in resurrection He became\nfor the first time a priest--high priest after the order, not of\nAaron, but Melchisedec.\n\nThat very morning as the high priest He had ascended to heaven,\nwithin the vail, and sprinkled His redeeming blood (how is not\nrevealed) on the eternal throne, changing it from the throne of\njudgment to a throne of grace. That night He stood before them He\nwas their high priest, not of earth, but heaven. He breathed upon\nthem, imparted to them the Holy Spirit--the Comforter--linking them\nto His immortal body. He remained with them, going and coming,\nduring forty days, operating with them officially by and through the\nHoly Spirit as His unseen executive; for we are told that, \"until\nthe day he was taken up he through the Holy Ghost had given\ncommandments unto the apostles;\" and then, finally, as this scene in\nthe book of Acts shows us, ascended to His high-priestly function\nand unceasing service of intercession.\n\nHe is seated in heaven now, seated there as the same Jesus who met\nHis disciples that first Sunday night, the same Jesus who ascended\nout of their midst from Olivet. This same Jesus! The same not only\nin realistic, human body, but the same in character, full of the\nsame measureless compassion and grace as when He sat on the well\ncurb in Samaria and though thirsting as a real man for real water\noffered to give to the sinful woman who by divine and eternal\nordination met him there, the water that should be in her as a well\nof water springing up into everlasting life.\n\nThis same Jesus is coming again, not a phantom, not an impalpable\nspirit, not a ghost Christ, but a Christ who is a real man of real\nflesh and real bones.\n\nThis is the key-note of the book of Acts.\n\nHe who died for men, who has sanctioned the Holy Spirit to operate\nin His name, speak in His name, reveal to us the things that are His\nand show us things to come concerning Him, He is coming again,\ncoming not only as very God, the Holy One of Israel, He who has been\nexalted to be both Lord and Christ, but as this loving, tender,\ncompassionate Jesus, and in a body that may be seen and handled--a\nbody of flesh and bones.\n\nIn Romans we have the promise the Lord is coming to bruise Satan\nunder His feet and the feet of His saints; and according to the\ncalendar of heaven and the way in which they measure time there this\ngreat event must come to pass, as it is written, \"shortly.\"\n\nIn First Corinthians the Lord is coming to raise the dead who shall\nbe His \"at his coming.\"\n\nIn Second Corinthians He is coming to transfigure the living who\nbelieve in Him and thus clothe them with their \"house from heaven,\"\ngive them the body that shall be the handiwork of God and not man.\n\nIn Philippians our citizenship is in a country which is in heaven\nfrom whence we are to look for a Saviour, even the Lord Jesus\nChrist, who shall change this body of our mortal humiliation that it\nmay be fashioned like unto His immortal and glorious body, a change\nwhich He will effectuate by that mighty power according to which He\nis able to subdue all things unto Himself.\n\nIn Colossians our life is hid with Christ in God, a double\nenvironment of security, and when Christ who is our life shall\nappear, we shall appear with Him also in glory.\n\nIn the epistles to the Thessalonians each chapter closes with a\ntestimony to the Second Coming.\n\nIn the first epistle in the first chapter the Apostle commends the\nThessalonian Church because they had turned to God from idols to\nserve the living and true God and to wait for His Son from heaven.\nFrom the beginning the Apostle Paul taught the new converts the next\npossible event might be the Coming of that Lord whom he had declared\nhad been sacrificed for them, was now risen and in heaven. This was\nthe one supreme thing for which they were to be in readiness every\nday--the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.\n\nIn the second chapter he assures the Thessalonians he will meet them\nin the presence of the Lord at His Coming; when He comes and they\nare all gathered before Him, saved through the Gospel Paul has\npreached to them in the demonstration of the Spirit and power, they\nwill be the guarantee and occasion of the crown he shall receive.\n\nIn the third chapter he exhorts them to increase and abound in love\nto one another that their hearts may be established unblameable in\nholiness before the Lord when He shall come the Second time with all\nHis saints.\n\nIn the fourth chapter he announces as a special revelation from the\nLord that the Lord Himself is coming to awaken those whom He has put\nto sleep in His name. He will descend from heaven with a shout, with\nthe voice of the archangel and the trump of God. The dead in Him\nshall rise first, then we who are alive and remain shall be caught\nup with them in clouds to meet the Lord in the air; so shall we ever\nbe with the Lord and with one another.\n\nIn the fifth chapter the Coming of the Lord for His saints as just\nnoted in the fourth and preceding chapter will bring in the day of\nthe Lord; and we further learn this coming for the saints not only\nprecedes the day of the Lord, but as the introduction to it will be\nas secret, sudden and unknown to the world as is in general the\ncoming of a thief.\n\nIn the second epistle, in the first chapter the Lord is seen coming\nwith all His saints to execute judgment on the ungodly and the\nunbelieving.\n\nIn the second chapter we learn the word, \"Rapture,\" so often given\nas the name and title for the translation of the Church to meet the\nLord, while it may be a deducible truth and exegetically, or, rather\nphilologically sustained, is not the Holy Ghost title. The true and\nScriptural title is: \"Our gathering together unto Him.\"\n\nIn this chapter we learn also when the Church has been gathered to\nthe Lord in heaven the man of sin, the Antichrist will be revealed;\nthen will the Lord appear in glory, overthrow him and his league of\nnations and set up the heaven-ordained kingdom of righteousness and\npeace.\n\nIn the third chapter the Apostle prays the Lord may direct their\nhearts into the love of God and into--patient waiting for Christ.\n\nIn the First Epistle to the Thessalonians the Lord comes FOR His\nChurch.\n\nIn the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians He comes WITH His Church.\n\nIn First Timothy He is coming that He may be shown forth as the\nblessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords.\n\nIn Second Timothy He is coming to judge the quick and the dead and\nto give reward to all those who love His appearing.\n\nTitus gives us the inspired and official title of the Coming of our\nLord Jesus Christ as, \"That Blessed Hope.\"\n\nIn Hebrews we see this age is the antitypical Day of Atonement; just\nas at the close of the day in Israel the people were waiting for the\nman who led away the scapegoat into the wilderness to come back\nwithout it as evidence their typical redemption was complete and\nsecure for another year; just so our Lord Jesus Christ having\nappeared in the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of\nHimself, reconcile the world to God and bring in the day of grace\nand salvation, to them that look for Him shall He come the \"second\ntime, without sin, unto salvation\"; that is, He will come back not\nas the sin offering, but as the triumphant Redeemer and as witness\nthat our redemption will then be completed by Him in the immortal\nbodies He shall give us.\n\nJames testifies that in the closing hours of this age Capital and\nLabour will look at each other with wrinkled brows, clenched hands\nand nervous, impatient expectation.\n\nHe exhorts the Christian labourer to be patient because, as he says,\n\"the Coming of the Lord draweth nigh,\" is so near, so imminent He\nstandeth as a judge--verily \"at the door\"--and ready to intervene.\n\nIn the First Epistle of Peter the Lord is coming to justify the\nfaith of His elect.\n\nIn the Second Epistle He is coming to bring in the new heavens and\nthe new earth.\n\nIn the First Epistle of John we who believe are sons of God. It is\nnot yet manifested to the world what we really are, nor what we\nshall be; but we know when He shall appear we shall be like Him for\nwe shall see Him as He is. When He shines out we shall shine out\nwith Him.\n\nWe are told every one who has this hope in him, purifieth himself\neven as he is pure.\n\nAnd thus in this special fashion the Holy Spirit affirms the Second\nComing of our Lord Jesus Christ is not only the climacteric of our\navouchment as sons of God, but, when held as a hope in the heart,\nwill keep us pure and clean as the Holy Christ Himself.\n\nIn the Second Epistle of John we are warned false teachers will\nabound; teachers who shall deny the eternal incarnation of the Son\nof God. They will deny He is coming the Second time; but, above all,\nthey will deny He could possibly come in the flesh.\n\nThe Apostle unhesitatingly affirms those who hold and teach this\nfalsehood are nothing less than antichrists; and he warns us as\nfaithful followers of the true Christ not to receive them into our\nhouses, nor bid them Godspeed.\n\nJude is the smallest, that is to say, the shortest, of all the\nepistles. It is a clasp between the Old and the New Testaments.\n\nJude tells us Enoch the seventh man who lived on the earth\ntestified, not of the first, but the Second Coming, saying:\n\n\"Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints.\"\n\nThen we find ourselves in the Revelation.\n\nThis is the book of the Consummation.\n\nThe supreme subject is the Second Coming.\n\nThere are twenty-two chapters.\n\nEach of the chapters portrays conditions and circumstances leading\nup to the great climax--the Second Coming and the immense and\nmeasureless consequences--the millennial reign and the eternal\nstate.\n\nThe book is like the roof of a great cathedral, like the interior of\nthe roof, groined and panelled--each panel a chapter.\n\nIt is like the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in which, however, may\nbe found figures and forms such as Michel Angelo never drew nor such\neven as his imperial and suggestive mind could conceive.\n\nYou will find in these chapters the figures of wild beasts, the\ndragon, fallen angels, fiends from the pit, that old Serpent called\nthe Devil and Satan. If you will read and listen you will hear the\nblast of trumpets, the breaking of vials, the sounds of woe, the\ntramp of marching feet, the clash of battle, fire falling out of the\nheavens, trees and grass in flame, the waves of the sea turned to\nblood, fountains and streams become as wormwood and gall, the sun as\nblack as a starless midnight, the moon hanging in the lowering\nheavens like a clot of blood, earthquakes, the scarlet tongues of\noutpouring volcanoes, thunderings and lightnings, all manner of\nwickedness and pervading sin, a world quivering as a ship in the\nstorm, the bending heavens as though unbolted and insecure, all\nfoundations apparently shattered and the universe itself as though\nrushing forward to its funeral pyre.\n\nHeaven opens and the Lord comes forth riding a white horse, followed\nby armies on white horses, the horses the symbols of His power, each\nhoof beat as it smites the slant of heaven the sound of swift\ndescending judgment.\n\nOn the Lord's head are many crowns.\n\nHe is wrapped in a garment dyed in blood.\n\nHis eyes are as a flame of fire. His glances penetrate to the secret\nintents and purposes of the heart. They get behind every cloak of\ndeception and every pretense. All the spotted nakedness of interior\nand intensive sin is revealed. Nothing remains in shadow, everything\nis illuminated to bareness, and the searching light of His looks\ngoes through every fibre of being.\n\nHe is coming to reign and rule.\n\nAll the things the chapters record have been driving us to look\nforward to that; the woe, the anguish and the hell on earth have\nbeen pleading and crying out for a master to master and put an end\nto the cataclysms of catastrophic iniquity; the very nature of\nthings has been testifying that He must come.\n\nHe is responding to the demand that lies in the nature of things.\n\nHe is coming to reign and rule as a king. He is not coming with an\nolive branch in one hand and a cooing dove on His shoulder.\n\nNay!\n\nHe is coming with a rod of iron. He is coming to trample all\nopposition beneath His feet, put down all rule and authority, break\nto pieces and shatter as a potter's vessel the pride of nations and\nthe self-exaltation of man.\n\nHe is coming to establish peace, but not by means of compromise, by\ngentle and persuasive ways, but by war and as a man of war, as the\nman who is very God and judge omnipotent.\n\nThe book closes with the thrice repeated announcement from the Lord\nHimself:\n\n\"Behold, I am coming quickly.\"\n\nThis is the last utterance of the Lord from heaven.\n\nTo this the Church replies with its last recorded prayer:\n\n\"Amen, even so, come, Lord Jesus.\"\n\nWhen you close the book you feel the next thing is--the Coming of\nthe Lord.\n\nIf the value of a statement or doctrine is to be measured by the\nnumber of times repeated, then, since from Genesis to Revelation, in\nevery form of human language the Second Coming is proclaimed, is\nstamped upon almost every page of the Bible, is inwrought with every\nfibre of truth it finally presents; since in the New Testament alone\nit is mentioned directly and indirectly more than three hundred\ntimes, as there is no other theme in the Bible that approaches it in\nfrequency of repetition, it should seem that this event and doctrine\nof the Second Coming with all its promises and certified\nconsequences should easily be of supreme and all-compelling\nimportance; and because the Holy Spirit has made it of such\nimportance I am under bonds to preach it.\n\nThose who persist in saying it is incidental, secondary and sporadic\nmight well be said to be of that class of theological disputants who\nnever study their Bible; for the fact is should you cut out every\nreference to the Second Coming, its cognate truths and all the\nevents to which it gives emphasis, you would have but a fragment of\nthe Bible; and the Book upon which faith is founded, from which hope\ncasts its glances heavenward, sees light in the grave and\nimmortality assured, would be but as a broken reed, a garment of\nbeauty torn and shredded, or as a harp whose main chord had been\nsnapped asunder.\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nThe Second Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ is Bound up With Every\nFundamental Doctrine, Every Sublime Promise and Every Exhortation to\nHigh, to Holy and Practical Christian Living\n\n\nIT is bound up with every fundamental doctrine.\n\nThe resurrection from the dead, the transfiguration of the living,\nthe judgment seat of Christ, the judgment of the living nations, the\nconsequent judgment of the white throne, the rewards of the\nrighteous and the punishment of the wicked.\n\nIt is bound up with every sublime promise.\n\nThe recognition of the dead, the overthrow of Satan, the deliverance\nof creation, the triumph of God and Christ and the eternal felicity\nof the saints.\n\nIt is bound up with every exhortation to high, to holy and practical\nChristian living.\n\nWe are not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together as the\nmanner of some is. On the Lord's day we are to break bread and drink\nthe fruit of the vine, show forth the Lord's death and make known to\nheaven and to earth that the only ground of approach to a holy God\nis the sacrificial offering and vicarious sufferings of the Son of\nGod and God the Son, and that on the ground of His atoning blood as\nour sin offering and personal substitute we claim Him as redeemer,\nsaviour and interceding priest.\n\nWe are to love God and love one another.\n\nWe are not to judge one another.\n\nWe are not to cast stumbling blocks in each other's path.\n\nWe are to walk worthy of our vocation.\n\nWe are to let our moderation be known to all men.\n\nWe are to be patient, long-suffering and forbearing.\n\nWe are to engage continually in prayer and supplication.\n\nWe are to live blamelessly before men and holily before God.\n\nAs pastors we are to shepherd the sheep over whom God has made us to\nbe overseers.\n\nWe are to feed the flock, not with the philosophies and fictions of\nmen, but with the truth of God.\n\nWe are to restore the wandering, sustain the weak and comfort the\nsorrowing.\n\nWe are to go to the house of mourning and give consolation to those\nwho are Christians and who weep above their Christian dead.\n\nAs preachers we are to preach the Word. We are to preach in season\nand out of season, and to exhort with all long-suffering and\ndoctrine.\n\nWe are exhorted to this high, this holy, this exalted and practical\nChristian living, this reincarnation of Christ in daily experience,\nthis translation of His character, this manifestation of His guiding\nand ruling presence, not by the fact that we must die and appear\nbefore God, but by the fact the Lord Himself is coming, may come at\nany time, that any moment we may meet Him at His judgment seat.\n\nIn all the universe of God there is nothing so impressive as the\nthought that you, that I, that we must give a personal account to\nGod for the manner in which we have used our time, our talent, our\nopportunity and substance; and when we are told--as we are told in\nHoly Scripture--that any moment we may be summoned to give an\naccount of our stewardship, and that without dying, just suddenly,\nwithout a moment's warning, translated bodily and with all the sense\nof the daily life we have been living upon us into the presence of\nHim whose name we have been professing--impressiveness has reached\nits ultimate and exhortation the fullest leverage of appeal.\n\nAnd he who says the Coming of Christ considered as a doctrine, as a\ntruth or a motive, is not intensely practical and all-compelling to\nChristian devotion and service, is either blindly and excuselessly\nignorant of the Word of God or brutally and perversely guilty of\ndenying a truth that flashes like lightning from one end of the\nBible to the other and illuminates every hortative passage in the\nWord of God.\n\nWhen thus you are face to face with the indisputable fact that every\nbasic doctrine of the Christian faith, every outshining promise of\nhope, of comfort, of consolation, of abiding peace, every appeal to\nthe noblest and purest life as a Christian, every demand that the\nChristian shall unceasingly be the light of heaven in the spiritual\ndarkness of earth is bound up inextricably with the fact of the\nSecond Coming, it carries with it the inevitable corollary that the\nSecond Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ as a certified and imminent\nevent is the very sum and substance of all available motives that\ncan lead to a life of practical service to God and man.\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nOnly at the Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ Will Redemption be\nComplete and the Blood of the Cross be Justified\n\n\nOUR Lord Jesus Christ did not come into this world that He might go\nthrough the unspeakable horror of the cross; He did not hang on that\nbrutal and torturing instrument of death as the criminal of the\nuniverse; He did not receive the down sweep of the essential\nantagonism of a holy God against the sin He represented; He did not\ncry the cry of the lost, \"My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken\nme?\"; He was not flung out like a derelict thing into the black,\nstarless night of God's inexorable law, measureless wrath and\nindignation where His humanity unanchored and alone was forsaken\nboth by God and man; He did not hang there in the torment of His\nbody, suffering all the agony the most exquisitely wrought, nerve\n-centered body of the universe could suffer of physical pain and\nanguish; God did not make Him to be sin and treat Him as the\nblackest and most repulsive thing in existence; He did not lay upon\nHim the weight and demerit of a world's guilt that He might suffer\nin His innocence, His purity and innate sinlessness on behalf of the\nvilest outcast this side of Gehenna, the lake of fire, just that He\nmight keep us from lying, cheating, swearing, getting drunk, giving\nourselves up to immorality, licentiousness and sensualism; He did\nnot send Jesus Christ His only begotten and well-beloved Son to die\na spectacle to heaven, to earth and hell that He might make us\nmerely decent and right and morally correct in our relations to one\nanother. All that is involved in the fact of redemption just as\nfragrance is involved and included in the rose, as harmony is\nexpected to be a part of music and rhythm as well as metre a part of\nverse and song.\n\nCleanness and morality are involved quantities in a Christian. The\nmoment the new life of the risen Christ is wrought in a believer and\nhe is linked up by the Holy Ghost to the glorified body of the Son\nof God he has in him all the impulse and power of the highest\nmorality, the most exalted purity, the rarest spirituality and the\ndiscernment of spiritual things. All that is self-evident--but the\nSon of God came into this world and went through the amazing tragedy\nand sacrifice of the cross to do something more than to make us\nmerely moral and good. He came into the world, He died the\nforeordained death of the cross that He might deliver us from death\nand the grave.\n\nDeath is the blackest and most shameful blot on the face of the\nearth, the grave the most repulsive of scandals, drawing the trench\nof its corruption and stain round the girdle of the globe.\n\nTo bring a human being into the world, give him no choice of father\nor mother, of place, of time and circumstance, endow him with a\nbrain to think, a heart to feel and love and then set him face to\nface with death, hide from him the hour of his going like a criminal\nwho knows not the hour of his execution; to allow the old to live\ntill they are withered, shrivelled and helpless, a burden to others\nand a still greater burden to themselves, cursing the fact they must\nlive and yet afraid to die; to take a young man in the splendour of\nhis youth, on the threshold of assured success, snatch him away\nwithout warning from the parents devoted to him, the wife who loves\nhim and the children dependent on him; and then leave them both, the\ndecrepit and useless old and the needed young to drop into the\ntongueless silence of the grave, that silence broken only by the\nsound of the clods as they fall on the coffin lid or the plash of\ntears, or the choking sob; to allow the living whose hearts are torn\nand twisted and smashed by the robbery that death brings upon them\nto stand there and strangle themselves with the unanswered and\nunanswerable questions: \"Whence,\" \"What,\" and \"Whither,\" and then\nsay all this is the work of a good, a compassionate, a tender and\nloving God, and that death is as natural as birth?\n\nNay!\n\nThose who say and teach that death is as natural as birth are guilty\nof pure unintellectualism and are unwarranted deniers of the facts.\n\nThe birth of a child is like the coming of the dawn. It is like the\nnote of a new and joyous song. It is the revelation of a new world,\na world of life, of hope, of promised and larger activities. No one\nwho is sane and true and wise will deliberately seek to hinder\nbirth; but death! ah! everything is against death and by right\nagainst it.\n\nEvery fibre in the body repudiates death. Pain is the protest of\nlife against it and the scout that brings in news of its approach.\nThe brain, the mind, the heart shiver at it, not merely because of\nthe native fear at the unknown, but at the mockery it makes of life,\nthe uselessness of living a time, at the longest, so brief, so full\nof disappointment and bitterness, a life where plans are never\naccomplished nor hopes fulfilled, where tears and sorrow outweigh\nlaughter and song.\n\nEvery remedy taken from materia medica, every operation of the\nsurgeon's knife that adds even a day to the sufferer's existence,\nevery hospital, every precaution and invention to prevent accident,\nall the genius exercised by man to conserve health and strength are\na protest against death and a proclamation that it is unnatural, a\ndiscord and a wrong.\n\nEvery human being who has the slightest pulse of sentiment, who is\nnot sunken in the soddenness of moral unconsciousness feels that\ndeath is the shadow shutting out the sun of day and hiding the stars\nof night, the false note that breaks the lilt in any song, the thief\nwho takes the treasure no money can replace, the mocker who bids us\nreadjust our days and live as though those whom we have loved and\nlost had never been a part of us, so that their going has put more\nof death in those of us who remain to live than life--even the brute\nbeast feels and knows death is--an enemy.\n\nNor does God Himself leave us in any doubt about it.\n\nHe says death is an enemy; even as it is written:\n\n\"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.\"\n\nAnd since in itself it is an enemy, it is, necessarily, the work of\nan enemy.\n\nIt is the work of an enemy who has the power of death.\n\nHe who has the power of death is--the Devil; even as it is written:\n\n\"Him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.\"\n\nThe Son of God came into the world that He might destroy the Devil\nand his work of death.\n\nHe came to abolish death and bring life and immortality to light.\n\nHe came to make us something more than--just moral.\n\nHe came to make us--immortal.\n\nThere is only one man in the universe who has immortality; and that\nman is He who is our Lord Jesus Christ, very God and yet true and\nactual man.\n\nThere is not an immortal human being on earth to-day.\n\nThere is no such thing as an immortal soul.\n\nBut here I bid you halt!\n\nLet no one take up this statement and go hence and say I teach the\nfinal annihilation of the soul.\n\nHe who should go forth and say that would be, after what I shall\nfurther tell you, a robber of truth and character.\n\nOn this round earth at this hour there is no man who has spoken\nmore, written more and, under God, done more to rebuke and smite\nthis slavering, slobbering, unintellectual and Devil-inspired\ndeception known as Russellism, Christadelphianism and Seventh Day\nAdventism than the man who now speaks to you.\n\nI affirm here that by the will of God the soul must exist forever\nwhether it be in heaven or in hell; but, I say to you the preacher\nwho seeks to deny and overthrow the doctrine of annihilation by\ndefending the immortality of the soul is beaten before he begins. He\nhas his pains for his labour. He can find no such expression as\n\"immortal soul\" in the Bible nor any such doctrine taught there.\nAbove all, he is guilty of excuseless philological blundering. The\nsoul is immaterial. Immortal is applied to that which is material.\nThe words, \"immortal,\" and \"immortality\" are never applied in the\nNew Testament to the soul--never! but always and exclusively to the\nbody.\n\nTo be immortal means to have a deathless, incorruptible body like\nunto that of the Son of God.\n\nThis, and this alone--as related to man--is Scriptural immortality.\nThe Son of God came into the world to give this boon of immortality\nto men.\n\nThis is the supreme objective of redemption.\n\nTill that objective is obtained redemption is not complete and the\nblood of the cross is not justified.\n\nDo you call the redemption of Paul complete so long as his body lies\nmingled with the dust of the highway by the banks of that yellow\nTiber where he was slain?\n\nDo you call complete the redemption of those you love and I love so\nlong as the Devil like the strong man armed with the law holds the\nmortgage on their bodies and keeps them in his dark and worm-filled\nhouse--the grave?\n\nIt is true, blessedly true, thank God, the moment a believer dies he\nis absent from his home in the body and immediately present at his\nhome with the Lord in the third heaven, in the beautiful country of\nParadise, in the Holy City, the place prepared.\n\nIt is true the dear departed ones are clothed with the white robe of\nimmaculate light woven on the unjarring looms of heaven, a temporary\nclothing which preserves their form and makes them visible and\nrecognizable to one another; but with it all they are disembodied,\nand in spite of the comfort and the consolation of it, in spite of\nthe fact that their state is \"far better\" than this at its best,\nstill they are souls whose vehicle is no longer body, but spirit\n(wherefore after death they are sometimes spoken of as spirits);\nnevertheless, the Son of God did not come to make us eternal, even\nif happy--ghosts.\n\nIf Christians should continue to die and should remain as white\nclothed ghosts in heaven forever they would be an incongruous\nenvironment and abiding scandal to the immortality of the Son of God\nHimself. A living, immortal man shining in a glorified human body\nsurrounded by bodiless souls forever! What a contradiction that\nwould be, what a scandal, indeed. It would be the declaration that\nthe Son of God had power to rise from the dead, make His own body\nimmortal, impervious to death, but in respect to those for whom He\ndied and who died trusting in His promise He either did not have the\npower or did not care to keep His promise.\n\nSuch a conclusion in either member of the proposition is impossible.\nIt is impossible, for no such postulate as inability or\nfaithlessness can be laid against the Son of God.\n\nBy His own immortality as the first-fruits of them that slept, as\nthe ordained forerunner and sample of all those whom He has redeemed\nHe is, and in the nature of things, under bonds to give immortality\nto each, to raise the dead and transfigure the living in His\nlikeness.\n\nAs the dead can be raised and the living changed only when He is\npersonally present then He must come to this world again to give\nthat immortality of which seated on yonder throne in heaven He is\nthe promise and the pledge.\n\nHe made this promise by the grave of Lazarus.\n\nStanding there with His cheeks wet with tears of sorrow over the one\nHe loved and in profound sympathy with the grief-stricken sisters,\ngroaning in Himself, not merely as one who was under the spell of\nsorrow and heartache, but full of \"indignant protest\" (this is the\nmeaning of the word \"to groan\") against the havoc of death as the\nwork of that being whom we so familiarly call \"Devil,\" without\nstopping to measure his dignity, malignity and power, He said:\n\n\"I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though\nhe were dead, yet shall he live:\n\nAnd whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.\"\n\nWondrous, gracious, far reaching and full of measureless comfort is\nthe promise, but nine out of ten who repeat it seem never to have\ncomprehended the full import of it.\n\nFor this is what He meant.\n\nListen to it as I quote it in its fullness of intent:\n\n\"I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though\nhe were dead, yet--when I come again--shall he live:\n\nAnd whosoever liveth and believeth in me--when I come again--shall\nnever die.\"\n\nNor is this a fictional fancy of mine, but the direct declaration of\nthe Holy Spirit to the Church speaking through the Apostle Paul; for\nhe says:\n\n\"Behold, I shew you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall\nall be changed,\n\nIn a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the\ntrumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and\nwe shall be changed.\n\nFor this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must\nput on immortality.\n\nSo when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption and this\nmortal shall have put on immortality, then (and not till then--not\nwhen we die and go to heaven, but when the dead are raised and the\nliving are changed--then--and not till then) shall be brought to\npass the saying that is written (written by the Prophet Isaiah in\nthe twenty-fifth chapter of his prophecy), death is swallowed up in\nvictory.\n\nO death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?\"\n\nAnd mark it well, the context of this Holy Ghost promise is the\ndeclaration that the resurrection of the dead, the transfiguration\nof the living, this changing from mortality to immortality will be\nthe resurrection and the transfiguration of those who are \"Christ's\nat His coming.\"\n\nYes! He will come.\n\nHe will descend from heaven with a shout of command. He will pass it\non to the archangel. The archangel will pass it to the angel who is\ncalled the \"trump of God.\" He will cause a sound, a blast, an\nutterance of power at which the doors of graves of every sort shall\nopen outward, every secret hiding place of the purchased dead will\nbe revealed and the sacred dust will bloom with life; for, in the\nbody of every regenerated soul there is planted the germ of the new\nbody; and just as the buried seed is linked by the unseen air to the\nfructifying sun in heaven and as at a given moment we call the\ngermination is quickened and at last comes forth in new form yet the\nsame essential embodiment as when planted; so, the regeneration\nnucleus of the new body is held by the Holy Spirit (of which the air\nis the symbol) to the risen, glorified body of the Son of God in\nheaven; and no matter what may befall the body in which it was\nburied it will abide to that hour we call the resurrection and\ntransfiguration and at the shout, the voice and action of the trump\nof God will come forth in the glow of unfolded and eternal beauty as\nthe sheath, the house, the home, the perfect dwelling place, the\nroyal robe of the souls the Lord shall bring with Him; while the\nliving shall flash forth in the same immortality and glory.\n\nYes! the dust of death shall bloom and mortality shall put on\nimmortality at the Coming of the Lord.\n\nAnd I for one want Him to come.\n\nI have loved ones waiting within the gates of the upper city for\nthat morning hour.\n\nI have one there my heart in these days yearns to see.\n\nBut a short time ago death with rude and sudden hand snatched from\nme my only child, the son of my heart; a son grown to splendid young\nmanhood; a son who loved me, reverenced me, believed as I believe, a\nmember of my own Church, baptized by my own hand in early days: a\nson on whom I hoped to lean in peace if the shadows should deepen\nround me ere my Lord might come. And in the going of that beloved\nson of mine the light of day has seemed at times to fail, the stars\nof heaven have grown so dim and far away I think of them often as\ntears of distant eyes that pity me. There are moments when I crave\nhim as a hungry man does food and as a thirsty man in desert ways\nyearns for a draught of limpid waters. I have a hurt here in the\nheart of me no medicine of earth can cure; but because I know when\nthe Lord comes this son of mine shall rise and I shall meet him and\nthe old glad life renew in larger, richer, fuller measure; and\nbecause I know there is only the sound of the trump between me and\nthat longed-for hour; that the door of heaven is always ajar and my\nLord may come at any moment and bring us to the hand clasp and the\nlove embrace again, I bear my hurt, I rest in the Lord and preach\nthis blessed hope to other hearts that ache--the Coming of Him who\nis the resurrection and the life and whose last earthward utterance\nto His Church is:\n\n\"Behold, I come quickly.\"\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\nNot Till Our Lord Jesus Christ Comes the Second Time Will the Church\nbe Exalted into Her True Function of Rulership Over the World\n\nTHE Church was not sent into the world to convert or Christianize\nit.\n\nIt was sent into the world to preach the Gospel to every creature.\n\nIt was not to condone the world but to condemn it.\n\nWith its twin doctrines of Incarnation and Regeneration it was to\nring the knell of evolution and deny the hope of any saving energy\nin the flesh.\n\nIt was not to flatter, to paint, to gild nor endeavour in any wise\nto reform or organize the world.\n\nIt was to deal with the world, with the system called the world, as\na ship pounding to pieces, and pounding helplessly, upon the rocks\nof fallen human nature, the dethronement of God in the soul and the\nenthronement and exaltation of self-interest in the soul.\n\nThe Church in its ministry and widely commissioned effort was to\nplunge, as a well-equipped and perfectly manned life-boat may do,\ninto the sea and surf of natural and Satanic things and get men out\nof an old system under the doom and judgment of God into Christ as\nthe head of a new system under grace and the coming glory of God.\n\nThe Church was not to build up a kingdom during the absence of the\nLord.\n\nOn the contrary, she was to recognize herself as the affianced bride\nof a rejected king and coming bridegroom.\n\nShe was to walk in separation from the world, refusing the seductive\nenticements of her would-be lovers and with an upward and heavenly\nlook serve while she waited for a returning Lord.\n\nThe Lord did not come.\n\nThe Church grew weary of her vigil.\n\nShe exchanged the heavenly for the earthly look.\n\nShe met the Devil and felt the magic of his bewitching glances.\n\nHe had led her Lord to the mount of temptation. He had shown Him all\nthe kingdoms of the world and their glory. He offered them to Him on\ncondition that He would turn His feet out of the pathway that led to\nthe sacrificial cross. He offered them on condition that He should\nrefuse to go to the cross and there in the agony of His soul and\nbody and on the loom of His vicarious sufferings weave the seamless\nrobe of divine righteousness for sinful men.\n\nThe Lord refused.\n\nThe Devil turned and slew Him.\n\nHe now led the willing Church to the same mountain height of\ntemptation.\n\nHe tempted her with the same temptation he had offered her Lord: The\nrulership of the world.\n\nIf she would turn aside from a heaven-ordained bridegroom and a king\nwhose face she could not see, she might win the world as her kingdom\nand rule it in spite of the cross.\n\nThe offer of world rulership sounded pleasant in her ears.\n\nShe yielded.\n\nShe fell into the arms of the world.\n\nThe world became her paramour.\n\nShe became the world's mistress.\n\nOut of that ungodly and sensual alliance was born the illegitimate\nchild, that woful ecclesiastical offspring, we call the Roman\nCatholic Church.\n\nThe Roman Catholic Church became the Holy Roman Empire.\n\nThe Empire was the Church.\n\nFor long and dismal ages the Roman Church exhibited to perfection\nthe evil, the folly and fatality of that false and deceptive\nproposition that the Church is the kingdom of Christ on earth.\n\nThen came the Reformation. It so smote the Catholic Church that men\nimagined the tiara to be broken, crushed and scattered to the winds\nforever.\n\nThey were mistaken.\n\nIt came from underneath that blow almost as if it had risen from the\ndead.\n\nTo-day it is more populous than ever, having a membership of at\nleast two hundred millions. It has a more intensely emphasized\nsolidarity. It is filled with enthusiasm, with ever-increasing\narrogance and persistent aggression.\n\nIt is the religious incubus of the hour, the spiritual paralysis of\nnations and their most dangerous political menace.\n\nWith brazen effrontery and calculating boldness it has its clutch\nupon the throat of this Republic, controls its government from the\nPresidential office down through army and navy, has open mass in the\nshipyards of the latter, in camp and barracks its priests are\nmasters and its wily knights of Columbus have obtained governmental\nfavours and consideration the Young Men's Christian Association\nwould not dare to claim.\n\nIt rules your cities, holds the balance of political power and can,\nwhen it will, elect a President, and will promptly do so when the\ncandidate for that high office shall be willing, as already it has\nbeen done by the present occupant of that office, to visit the\nVatican or officially recognize the civil as well as religious\nauthority of the Pope or receive the Apostolic delegate of the Papal\nSee.\n\nThe clutch of Romanism with its strangle hold is on the throat of\nwhat remains of Protestantism.\n\nProtestantism is the after birth of the Reformation.\n\nProtestantism repudiated all the temporalities of Rome but held on\nto the proposition that the Church is the kingdom of Christ on\nearth.\n\nProtestantism is to-day broken up into multiplying fragments. If\nthere be any unity remaining in it it is the unity that comes from\nthe compromising denial of the convictions that led to the original\nbreak into fragments; a unity that hopes to maintain itself by\nclassifying many of its former convictions as \"non-essentials\" and\nthus constitutes a combination that must become more and more\ncolourless and inefficient in respect to doctrine.\n\nSome of its theological institutions are nothing better than\nclearing houses of infidelity and the curricula made up of Jericho\ntheology. It has universities in which many of the professors have\nbeen graduated in Germany, having passed through the poison gas\nfactory of the Berlin university, and under the camouflage\ndepartment of \"sacred literature\" are sending out the mentally and\nspiritually asphyxiating poison of German rationalism, inoculating\nevery fresh lot of newly made ministers and would-be missionaries\nwith rank unbelief and Bible repudiation, distributing the poison\ninto the back counties as well as municipal centers until there are\nscores of men who once stood for a whole Gospel and a certified Word\nof God who now stand first on one foot then on the other debating\nwith themselves whether this Scripture that was once considered holy\nand sufficient is after all a revelation from God or an invention of\nman.\n\nA large number of men who are at the front in the teaching, the\nmanagement, the organization and control of the churches of the\ndifferent denominations repudiate practically every fundamental\ndoctrine of the Christian faith.\n\nThey deny the Virgin birth.\n\nThe denial of the Virgin birth puts a stain upon the mother of Jesus\nas of a woman who has broken wedlock and sends her son forth as a\nbastard, an illegitimate who had no legal right to come into the\nworld; and then illogically, if not hypocritically, those who deny\nit bid us take this son and make Him the exemplar of righteousness,\nforgetting or ignoring the self-evident fact that if, indeed, He had\nbut a human and natural father then was He bred in sin and unfit to\nbe set up as the supreme standard of righteousness and holiness\namong men.\n\nThere are those who deny the sacrificial character of the death of\nthe cross.\n\nThey repudiate atonement by the shedding of blood.\n\nWhen we tell them it is written without shedding of blood there is\nno remission and it is the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, that\nalone cleanseth from all sin they fling up their hands in protest,\ntell us we are to be numbered among the figures of the past and that\nthe theology we seek to maintain is the theology of the butcher\nshop, the barbarous doctrine of the shambles and the shadow of old\n-time tribal gods whose vengefulness and wrath could be appeased only\nby the murder of a victim.\n\nThey repudiate the doctrine of the bodily resurrection of the Lord.\n\nHis body has long ago mingled with the dust of Palestine and been\nblown afar by careless winds. If He rose at all it was as the\nprinciple of righteousness and truth, whatever such a resurrection\nmay mean. They will no longer tolerate the insistent need of\nregeneration. It has been said that \"if a man is well born the first\ntime he does not need to be born the second time.\"\n\nIn the nature of the case such teaching rejects our Lord's bodily\nascension to heaven and His session as a glorified man who is very\nGod at the right hand of the Father.\n\nAbove all, and as a further consequent of such an attitude, teachers\nof this class repudiate with an almost hysterical outcry, not only\nthe thought that the Lord will come a second time to this world, but\nthat those who love Him and yearn to see Him will ever behold Him\ncoming in visible glory so that they may stand face to face with Him\nand get the very touch of His hands upon them in the vital\nbenediction for which they are longing.\n\nThese advanced teachers repudiate the Bible as the inspired,\ninfallible, inerrant Word of God,\n\nThe Pentateuch, the writings of Moses, is a bundle of folk lore,\nMoses himself a fiction no more substantial than Abraham, Isaac and\nJacob. The historic books of the Old Testament are unreliable and\ntherefore not history at all. The book of the prophet Isaiah instead\nof one author has many, each in turn contradicting the other. The\nbook of Ezekiel from its incomprehensible wheels as they flash by\nthe banks of the river Chebar to the impossible temple and its\nanimal offerings with the ever-deepening river flowing out of it, is\nas mystic as the amazing cherubim which the prophet seeks, but\napparently fails, to describe. The prophecies of Daniel were written\nlong after the events they pretend to foretell. From Genesis to\nMalachi the Old Testament is in reality the mixed history of a\ntribal people with a national god whose attributes and demands are\nno more authentic and authoritative than those of the gods of Greece\nand Rome.\n\nThe New Testament while a degree of advance on the Old by reason of\nthe progress of the times and the more cultivated environment of its\norigin is not a whit more divinely inspired. The three Synoptic\nGospels are witnesses summoned to court where their success is the\ncontradiction and confusion of the story they attempt to tell. The\nbook of Acts is a combination pamphlet put together by the followers\nof Peter and Paul as an attempt to compromise between the one who\nwas the Apostle to the Circumcision and the other who was the\nApostle to the Gentiles.\n\nThe epistles of Paul are filled with the pernicious influence of\napocalyptic, Jewish fictions and the crass concept the Apostle had\nof the kingdom of Christ. Page after page is filled with proof that\nhe expected the Lord to come in his day and was sorely mistaken,\nmaking that confession at the close of his writings and turning his\nattention to death and the grave, no longer having expectation of\nthe Coming of the Lord as the daily hope of the Church.\n\nIt is these palpable errors of Paul, his honest, but undoubted\nmistakes that are wholly responsible for that strange thing (so the\nPost-millennialists think it) known as Pre-millennialism, a system\nof teaching which stands for a whole Bible, a Gospel of redeeming\nblood, a risen and actually coming Saviour, coming again in the\nflesh, and seeks with an insistent and constant \"thus saith the\nLord\" to win the souls of men to a grace-given and grace-dealing\nSaviour. (And I may say in passing that Paul, under God, is\nundoubtedly responsible for this doctrine so persistent and\naggressive, this doctrine of Premillennialism.)\n\nTo the advanced theological professor Revelation is a piece of crazy\nquilt patchwork, so full of symbols that have no intelligent\nmeaning, symbols that can be interpreted by twenty different\nexpositors in twenty different ways, is so full of monsters and\nnightmare doings that only an unbalanced mind could have written it\nand one equally unbalanced would alone attempt to decipher it.\n\nTo these teachers and leaders who count themselves as progressive\nfollowers of the Christ of God, who practically set aside the matter\nof miracles as no more worthy of credence than the stories of Alice\nin Wonderland, the final place of the deposit of authority is in the\nindividual and subconscious mind.\n\nThese professors, teachers and leaders to a large degree are an\nexpression of Protestantism.\n\nProtestantism to-day stands for everything in general and nothing in\nparticular, except its protest against being definite and\nparticular.\n\nIt has thrown eschatology overboard.\n\nIt no longer has any interest in hereafter things.\n\nThere may be a holy city in heaven; it does not know, it will not\naffirm for nor against; but it does know there are unholy cities on\nearth.\n\nThe streets of the upper city may be paved with gold; it will not\nenter into controversy about it; but it is certain the streets down\nhere are paved with poor asphalt and trodden by footsore and weary\nmen.\n\nHeaven may be more desirable than earth. The condition there may be\na great advance on this. Advanced thinkers in Protestantism will\nneither affirm nor deny that; but they are convinced the conditions\ndown here should be made much better and if possible even that of\nheaven on earth.\n\nThe truth is, both heaven and hell, like angelology, have fallen out\nof modern theology. Heaven is too high and hell too deep. No\ntelescope has ever revealed the one and modern sweetness, gentleness\nand light repudiate the cruelty and sufferings of the other.\n\nThe Gospel for the individual soul, the soul the Son of God once\noutweighed against a whole world in all that the world might stand\nfor of wealth and riches and power and attained ambitions, saying\nthe profit in the gain of a whole world would not equal the loss of\none soul, has been set aside.\n\nInstead we have that modern and amazing evangel known as the \"Social\nGospel.\"\n\nHere for illustration are two old people living in a miserable cabin\nin a reeking, malarial swamp with a dozen children drinking in the\npoison of their environment. What folly to spend time and money on\nthe father or mother. How inefficient any effort to save the\nchildren just one by one. Get to work at once and drain the swamp,\ndrive out the poisonous and infectious insects with which the place\nis swarming, fill in the land with fine clean earth, plant flowers\nand sow seeds of fruitful harvests, let the salt sea blow in and\nbreathe across the spot.\n\nThe old people may die, in all probability they will, but under\nright and sanitary conditions the children will grow up into\nvigorous elements of a strong and worthful society.\n\nWhy spend time, money, heart and enthusiasm in seeking to overcome\nor straighten out and make correct the bent lives that have come\ndown to us through the unsanitary moral conditions of a previous\ngeneration? We have had wretched laws, desperate customs, children\nhave grown up under them to become fathers and mothers of\ngenerations no better than themselves.\n\nIt is neither economy of mind nor matter, so the modernists teach,\nto build mission houses, gather the people, old and young, and\nfrighten them with the thought that when they die they shall pass\ninto an environment worse than the one in which they are\nendeavouring to eke out a handicapped existence. Let us do the wise\nthing--go not so much to the prayer meetings, but to the\nlegislatures, get bills passed, laws made that will drive out the\nfalse and disastrous conditions now obtaining; legislate so that it\nwill no longer be possible for people to drink themselves drunk,\nsteep themselves in drugs, smoke themselves yellow with tobacco,\nyield to the fascination of gambling in any form. Let society be\ncleaned from these evils and the result will be certain. A\ngeneration that shall never see a saloon, a bottle of wine or\nwhiskey; a generation that will never know the meaning of rum and\ntobacco and will never see a house of ill fame will be a generation\nthat must grow up in righteousness and truth. There will be no more\ndrunken brawls, no multiplied lawlessness, no diseased bodies, no\nmoral leprosy. The world will be safe for each individual. Each\nindividual will have a saved, moral life here, a life lived in\nobedience to the laws of nature, and as the laws of nature are the\nlaws of God, in obedience to God. And what danger can the hereafter,\nif there be such a thing as the hereafter, hold for any one who is\nso obeying the laws of God?\n\nGet society right and the individual will become right.\n\nThat is the modern Gospel.\n\nThat is the message to a needy world:\n\n\"Get society right and the individual will become right.\"\n\nI do not interject here in full testimony the nevertheless fact that\nsuch a pagan city as Rome, or licentious Corinth or idolatrous\nEphesus were lifted into cleanness and moral decency, not by\nlegislative action, by reorganization of local conditions, but by\nthe regeneration of one individual at a time until the divine sanity\nand personal spirituality enthroned in them built up societies,\nassemblies of such heaven-given health that the old social\nconditions were overthrown; so overthrown by the personal Gospel\nPaul preached that throughout Asia Minor the people had been turned\naway from the worship of their gods, in Ephesus the temple of Diana\nwas largely deserted and the craftsmen who made the silver, souvenir\nimages of the goddess complained their business was almost at an\nend.\n\nStrangely enough the advocates of this social Gospel set up the\nindividual life of the Son of God as the means by which society is\nto be made right; but they set up, not the life He is living now as\nthe risen, glorified God-man; on the contrary the life He lived\nbefore He died, the character He exhibited as a social reformer and\nan exemplar in righteousness. Men, they say, are not to be saved by\nthe death Christ died, but by the life He then lived. He is to be\ntaken as the proof of the doctrine of evolution and the\npossibilities in the natural man. He is the most advanced son of God\nwho ever lived. All other men are innately sons of God, but\nundeveloped.\n\nThe fact of Christ, it is said, is a sublime encouragement to any\nman. He has only to copy Him in His words and deeds to find the\ndivine life unfolding. Get away from the sacrificial Christ, this\nmodern Gospel teaches, to the social Christ, the Christ who was\ninterested in the poor and needy and who arraigned wrong social\nconditions; take the attitude of Christ in relation to the evil of\nHis times and with Him as the inspiration institute right\nlegislation and right social conditions and the world will soon\napproach the condition of heaven on earth.\n\nThis is the infidellic drive of Protestantism today.\n\nProtestantism has come down from the plane of the supernatural to\nthe plane of the natural.\n\nEvery day Protestantism is becoming more and more a society for\ncompetitive morality.\n\nIn short, the Protestantism of the hour is a combination of\nreligiousness, civilization, Christianity, socialism, pagan\nphilosophy, unitarianism and the energy of the flesh.\n\nNor need we be startled at this as though some strange thing had\ntaken place. Long ago the Apostle warned us that it would be\nnecessary to preach the Word in season and out of season--just as a\nwatchman is under bonds to flash light in the darkness--because the\ntime would come when the Church should have a form of godliness, but\ndenying the power thereof; when it would not endure sound doctrine,\nbut in obedience to the itching of the flesh should heap to itself\nteachers who should endeavour to respond to these worldly demands;\nteachers who in the end should turn the people away from the truth\nand turn them to the fictions and fables of men; teachers of whom\nthe Apostle Peter warned who should bring in damnable heresies, even\ndenying the Lord who had bought them, teachers whom Jude foresaw\nwould creep in unawares.\n\nMen who consult the chart of a seacoast which marks the place of\nbreakers and treacherous, hidden ledges, now and then thrust out\nthrough the white foam like the gleaming sharp teeth of waiting\nsharks, are not startled when they see the surf breaking at the\nindicated spot and hear the roar of the waters where it was\nannounced they should lift up their thunder; they are not surprised,\ninstead their confidence in the accuracy of the chart is emphasized.\n\nLikewise when those who have read the forecast in Holy Scripture,\nwhile they may feel a certain grief at the facts as they are,\nrejoice when they see these things that even the failure of man as\nman and the betrayal of committed trust bear witness to the accuracy\nof Holy Writ.\n\nWith all its failure the professing Church still claims to be the\nkingdom of Christ on earth and asserts its determination to rule the\nworld. Rome holds to the idea with unfailing faith and with\nconsistent Jesuitical and political scheming is moving forward with\nunited front to temporal sovereignty. Protestantism with its new\nwatchword of a \"reorganized world\" is making all its plans to attain\nthe place of power by social, moral and political means.\n\nWhat would be said of a queen who entered into partnership with men\nwhose hands were still red with the blood of her murdered husband\nand rejected king? What could be said but that she had wholly\nforgotten or proved totally false to the principles for which her\nhusband had died?\n\nWhat shall be said of a Church which seeks to enter into partnership\nwith a world that slew her Lord; which under all the smile and\nsmoothness of moral, social and philosophical phrases and all the\nhypocritical laudations of His human character rejects His deity and\nhears in His cry of agony on the cross the proof that He was only a\nman who failed as other men have failed at the last.\n\nSuch a Church as that has lost the vision of its true attitude\nduring the absence of its rejected Lord and is well-nigh to\nforfeiting its commission.\n\nOver the professing Church is sounding to-day with ominous\nsignificance the Apostolic words of warning:\n\n\"What, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with\nGod; and that whosoever will be the friend of the world, is the\nenemy of God?\"\n\nThe Corinthian Church attempted to take the place of rulership in\nthe world.\n\nWith keen and biting words the Apostle rebukes them.\n\nThus he writes to them:\n\n\"Now ye are full, now ye are rich, ye have reigned as kings without\nus: and I would to God ye did reign, that we might also reign with\nyou.\"\n\nThen he adds by way of contrast:\n\n\"I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were\nappointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and\nto angels and to men.\"\n\nIt is this same apostle who under the inspiration of the Spirit in\nhis second epistle writes to Timothy:\n\n\"If we suffer, we shall also reign with him.\"\n\nIt is not while her Lord is the crucified and rejected that the\nChurch is to reign and rule over the world. Not while He is seated\non His Father's throne in heaven and His own throne on earth is cast\ndown and trampled in the dust. Nay! if the Church is faithful she\nwill walk in separation from the world. If the Church is faithful\nshe will testify against the world, not testify merely against\ncertain abuses, but against the world as a system, that it is built\nupon the principle of the enthronement of self and not God, the\nexaltation of the flesh and not spirit.\n\nIf the Church shall be faithful and like Noah in the building of his\nark condemn the world; if the Church will take up earnestly the\nsolemn truth of God and warn men that no matter how good a\ngovernment may be established by human means, no matter what culture\nand morality may fill the earth, no matter to what extent advance\nmay be made in art, in science, nor no matter how safe a place the\nworld may be made to live in, no matter to what heights of natural\nmorality and righteousness man as man may attain, the judgment of\nGod against this system of man called the world is certain, and that\nHe will arise in His majesty to shake terribly the earth, and that\nonly the things that are built on God can remain, the Church will\nsuffer and be rejected even as was her Lord.\n\nThe Church is to be faithful to the testimony of Christ and enter\ninto the fellowship of His sufferings.\n\nThe day of her triumph will come.\n\nShe is yet to rule over the world.\n\nThe hour and the circumstances are fixed.\n\nListen, I pray you, to the words of the Spirit as He speaks through\nthe Apostle Paul:\n\n\"When Christ who is our life shall appear--then (and not till then)\nshall ye also appear with Him in glory.\"\n\nOnly when Christ shall come to take to Himself His long deferred\nrulership can the Church enter into her rulership over the world. In\nthe fifth chapter of the Revelation you have the new song of the\nChurch, the song of redemption and rule.\n\nThis is the triumphant song; it is a song of praise addressed to the\nSon of God Himself:\n\n\"Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of\nevery kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation:\n\nAnd hast made us unto our God kings and priests; and we shall reign\non the earth.\"\n\nBut mark the moment when that song is sung, the occasion of\noccasions!\n\nIt is at that supreme moment when as the Lion of the tribe of Judah\nyonder in His risen and glorified humanity in heaven He steps\nforward, Son of man, king of the Jews and king of Israel to take the\ntitle deeds of His kingdom from the hand of the Father; that moment\nwhen He is getting ready to cast His judgments on the earth and come\nforth as in the days of Noah to sweep away all iniquity and\nunrighteousness. It is at this moment when He is about to take to\nHimself His great power and descend in judgment glory that the\nChurch bursts forth into her song of redemption and rule.\n\nIt is at the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ alone that the\nChurch will enter upon her function of rulership over the world. She\ncannot reign till He comes and puts her in the place of His queen\nand in associated power with Himself.\n\nAnd because I want to see the Church lifted up out of social,\npolitical and fleshly partnership with the world; because I want to\nsee the Church in the place of authority and power making and\nfulfilling the edicts of God; because I want to see the Church so\nexalted into the place of rulership that all the nations shall walk\nin the light of her excellency, her righteousness and holiness; and\nbecause this high and glorious state will be attained alone at the\nComing of our Lord Jesus Christ I preach His Second Coming.\n\n\n\nV\n\n\nOnly at the Second Coming Will the Solemn and Covenant Promises of\nGod to Israel be Fulfilled\n\n\nGOD sware to Abraham that he and his posterity should have the land\nof Palestine for an everlasting possession.\n\nAbraham never got a foot of the land under covenant promise.\n\nThe only bit of ground he was able to call his was the burial plot\nhe purchased with his own money.\n\nThe children of Israel never entered the promised land under the\nAbrahamic covenant.\n\nThe Lord redeemed them from Egypt, brought them through the divided\nwaters of the Red Sea, led them by His presence, bore them up as on\neagle's wings and dealt with them in pure, unconditional grace till\nthey came to Sinai.\n\nThere in all the pride and self-sufficiency of the flesh they took\nthemselves off the ground of grace and unconditional covenant and\nput themselves under the covenant of the law.\n\nThis covenant was a covenant of good behaviour.\n\nThey were to possess the land as long as they fulfilled the terms of\nthe covenant under the seal of its blessing and cursing.\n\nAfter the first generation had perished in the wilderness because of\ntheir unbelief, the second generation crossed the Jordan dry shod as\ntheir fathers had crossed the Red Sea and entered the land under\npledge and bond of good behaviour.\n\nThey were not able to keep the covenant of their own suggestion. Ten\ntribes went into an abomination of organized and politically\ninspired idolatry.\n\nIn judgment and according to His warning He caused them to be\ncarried away captives and buried nationally among the people whither\nthey were led and for twenty-five hundred years have been nationally\nlost to view.\n\nFor two thousand years because of similar and aggravated offenses\nand finally, because as a nation guilty of manslaughter in slaying\nthe Lord their covenant king, the Jews have been the wanderers of\nthe earth, the people of the restless foot, finding a home in every\nland but their own.\n\nHas God failed to keep His promise?\n\nHas He been unable or unwilling to keep His promise?\n\nNeither postulate is possible.\n\nGod's counsel is immutable.\n\nHe confirmed it by an oath. And since He could swear by nothing\ngreater He sware by Himself.\n\nIn the nature of the case then scattered Israel and wandering Judah\nmust be gathered. They must return to their own land.\n\nGod has so promised.\n\nThese promises are to be found upon the pages of Holy Writ like the\nleaves of autumn--so many, so thickly strewn, now in single phrase,\nin connected passages, in whole chapters that should I attempt to\nread them slowly and distinctly, giving the sense, it would take me\ntill the morning light.\n\nThe Lord declares He has written their names upon the palms of His\nhand.\n\nThey are as near and sensitively dear to Him, He says, as the apple\nof His eye. He is so interested, so determined concerning their\nrestoration that He uses the most intensive language to express it,\nlanguage that almost thunders aloud from the page as you read it.\n\nHe uses language no less intense than this:\n\n\"Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant\nthem in this land (the land of Palestine) assuredly with my whole\nheart and with my whole soul.\"\n\nTry and think of that! Let it penetrate your mind. The Lord who made\nheaven and earth, whose very name is omnipotence, says He will put\nthe whole of His omnipotent heart and the whole of His omnipotent\nsoul into the execution and the accomplishment of His determination\nand purpose to plant the children of Israel once more and forever in\ntheir own land.\n\nIn the face of that registered will and purpose what power is there\nof man or Devil; what force is there in all the sweep of the\nuniverse that can hinder the chosen and covenant people of God from\ngoing back to Palestine and possessing that land as theirs and\ntheirs alone, forever?\n\nBut what evidence have we, what demonstration and proof that God\nwill fulfill this postscript promise and plan?\n\nWhat evidence have we from the bare statement of God that He will\nkeep this promise?\n\nThe evidence is manifold and overwhelming.\n\nBefore even the children of Israel crossed the Jordan the Lord\nwarned them in language which burns and blisters that if they did\nnot keep the law covenant and walk in the ways of righteousness and\ntruth He would cause them to fall before their enemies. They should\ngo out one way before them and flee seven ways. Their cities should\nbe taken and their wives ravished. They should be led captives into\nevery land. They should become a proverb, a byword, a hissing and a\nscorn. Every hand should be against them to do them ill. They should\nfind no ease whither they went, nor should the soles of their feet\nhave rest. Amidst those nations the Lord should give them a\ntrembling heart, failing eyes and sorrow of mind. Their life should\nhang in doubt. They should fear night and day, and have no assurance\nof life. In the morning they should say, Would God it were even, and\nat even they should say, Would God it were morning.\n\nTheir land should be made desolate and be an astonishment to the\npasser-by. In its desolation it should keep the sabbaths they should\nfail to give it. If they would not allow the land to rest in its\nsabbatic years, the Lord would cause it to have its ordained and\nnatural rest by driving them out of it and allowing wind and rain\nand sun to take care of it and keep it fruitful.\n\nLater on all this warning of woe and terror of judgments was\nemphasized by the prophets against the Jews.\n\nThey should become a nation of sorrows and acquainted with grief.\n\nBut while the Lord should use the nations to correct them He would\nnot make a full end of His own people.\n\nHe would use the nations as the rods of His anger, as the\ninstruments of discipline. He would use them by taking advantage of\ntheir own aggressive desires and ambitions, then after using them He\nwould turn upon them, punish them for their pride and godless enmity\nto His people and make a full end of them.\n\nThen as the hour should draw nigh for the restoration to the land He\nwould cause the Jews as the national representatives of all Israel\nto bud, to blossom and fill the face of the whole world with fruit.\n\nThey should be the first to be restored to the land.\n\nThey would go back in unbelief.\n\nAnd mark how the prophecies have been fulfilled!\n\nThe illustration of this fulfillment finds its most tragic emphasis\nin the history of the Jews since that day when their king, the Son\nof God and the Holy One of Israel was hung as a malefactor on a\nRoman cross.\n\nThey have not only been wanderers in every land, but they have\nsuffered an agony no tongue can fittingly tell.\n\nThe men have been robbed. They have been broken on the wheel. They\nhave been stretched on the rack. They have been flayed alive. They\nhave been burned alive. They have been sent to sea by thousands as\nherded cattle; and they have been sent thither in rotting and\nsinking ships. Their wives and daughters have suffered worse than\ntorture or death. Their children have been mutilated; and when they\nfailed to bring a full and satisfactory price in the public market,\nmen, women and children have been given away as worthless slaves,\nnot worth even the price of a kennel dog.\n\nThey have been hunted like wild beasts of the mountain. Like\nfrightened beasts they have trembled at the sound of approaching\nfootsteps and the sound of a shaken leaf has caused them to flee.\n\nIf their Lord was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, truly\nmay it be said of them that they have been through the centuries a\nnation of sorrows and acquainted with grief; but the sorrows were\nunlike those of their Lord. He carried the sorrows, the griefs and\nwoes of others that He might relieve them; they carried their own\nsorrows put upon them by the wickedness and cruelty of others until\ntears were their meat and drink night and day.\n\nBehold how the prophecies have been fulfilled in respect to their\nland.\n\nFor centuries it has kept a sabbath of rest.\n\nIt has rested from the toil of man; harvests have neither been sown\nnor reaped, nor the vintage gathered save here and there as with the\nsword in one hand and the sickle in the other.\n\nThe land is there as a land just as it was in the days when the man\nof Nazareth walked by the shores of blue Galilee or trod the hills\nof Judah. The mountains of Moab draw their lines of beauty against\nthe measureless deeps of an orient sky. The valleys lie between like\nfruitful bosoms where wheat and barley may grow. The olive trees\nstand dusky in the deepening shade. Pomegranate and apricot stretch\nforth their weighted boughs and the grapes in Eschol clusters hang\npurple in the slant of westering suns. It is even yet a land of\nbrooks and fountains of waters and men may still dig iron and brass\nfrom out of its rugged hills.\n\nYonder in Bashan within the range of your eyes you may count sixty\ncities of stone, walls and roofs and windows of stone, great\nswinging doors of stone. The centuries have beaten the wind, the\nrain, the storms and flying sand upon them. They remain. They have\noutworn the centuries. They are silent. No footfall is heard upon\nthe threshold. The houses are empty save for a fox, a swiftly\ngliding viper, or a belated Bedaween who may stable his horse in a\ndeserted room where once a happy family dwelt in the long ago.\n\nThe stone cities are waiting and every stone in door and window\nseems to be crying out:\n\n\"We are waiting till they return whose right alone it is to live and\ndwell here.\"\n\nBut what of the nations that scattered them and made them to suffer?\n\nWhere is Babylon the proud empire that took them captive; where is\nBabylon the golden city that saw them hang their harps upon the\nwillows, sit down upon the banks of the strange river and give way\nto weeping as they yearned for their own land again?\n\nWhere is Greece whose phalanxes swept through their fields and\nspoiled their vineyards?\n\nWhere is Rome whose iron legions took their city, put thousand on\nthousands to the sword, destroyed the beautiful temple once hallowed\nby a Saviour's feet and then drew a ploughshare over Zion that it\nmight become a ploughed field as foretold? The Rome that sculptured\non its triumphal arches the figures of the captive Jews it had led\nin boastful mockery at the chariot wheels of returning conquerors?\n\nThese nations in their ancient glory have disappeared, the Lord as\nHe promised has made a full end of them.\n\nBut what of Israel?\n\nThe Jews have answered for them.\n\nThere are fifteen millions of Jews to-day.\n\nThey are the most vital and vigorous race on the earth. They are\nfive times the number of all Israel who left Egypt; and they are but\na sixth part of them--two tribes, Judah and Benjamin.\n\nThey are the money makers and money loaners of the world. They are\nthe merchants, the bankers, the musicians, the professors in school,\nin college and university. They are the philosophers, the\nscientists, the electricians and chemists. They have furnished prime\nministers, statesmen, judges and generals. Such a statesman as\nDisraeli who glorified England, such a general as Massena whom\nNapoleon characterized as the \"child of victory.\"\n\nIf to-day you should seek a representative in every department of\nhuman genius and endeavour you would find that representative to be\neither a Jew or a Jewess.\n\nFifteen millions of Jews!\n\nWhat are these fifteen millions of Jews but fifteen millions of\nproofs that the book we call the Bible is true, is inerrant,\ninfallible?\n\nFifteen millions of demonstrations and fifteen millions of\nindubitable proofs.\n\nBy so much as they prove that God keeps faith with His warnings of\nwoe and judgment, by so much will He keep faith with the promise of\ngood He has made; by so much is it sure He will yet plant them as He\nhas said in their own land and will do so with His whole heart and\nHis whole soul.\n\nAlready the sound of their footsteps may be heard on the homeward\nmarch.\n\nZionism is now an immense fact.\n\nThe spirit of nationalism has come back to Judah.\n\nThe blue and white flag of David has been unfurled.\n\nDiplomats in the nations' counsels agree there can be no settled\npeace between Europe and the East till the Jew is back in his own\nland and Judah once more a recognized political state; that the Jews\nare the only people all the nations will agree should have\nPalestine, and the words, \"Jewish State\" are words repeated in\ncommon speech round the globe.\n\nEngland has driven the Turk out of Jerusalem.\n\nThe corner-stone of a five million dollar university has been laid\nupon that Mount of Olives where once the Son of God amid its lonely\nshades prayed and agonized, a begun fulfillment of the prophecy of\nZephaniah that in the latter days the Lord would execute judgment on\nthe Gentile nations that should be gathered there and to His\nrestored and delivered people turn again a pure speech, no longer\nthe stuttering and smattering phrase of Yiddish, but the old Hebraic\ntongue of their fathers.\n\nAlready there are papers in Jerusalem published in Hebrew, schools\nare taught and many speak in the ancient language.\n\nMany Jews are going back to Palestine.\n\nMany more are there now than returned from Babylon.\n\nThey are going back as the Word of God foretold, in utter and\nabsolute unbelief and bitter repudiation of the idea that Jesus of\nNazareth was their foretold and foreordained Messiah.\n\nThey are going back with the vail upon their eyes and as blind as in\nthe day when their fathers caused Him to be crucified by Roman\nhands.\n\nThey are going back to a time of anguish of which Jeremiah solemnly\nwarns as \"the day of Jacob's trouble,\" and our Lord describes as the\ntribulation, \"the great one,\" the like of which the world has never\nseen and will never see again.\n\nThey are going back to be set up by a league of ten nations and to\nenter into an alliance and covenant with its godless head as their\npolitical and false Messiah.\n\nThey will suffer until there shall come upon that generation all the\nrighteous blood shed upon the earth from the blood of righteous Abel\nto the blood of Zacharias, the son of Bacharias who was slain\nbetween the temple and the altar, and the blood of the Son of God\nwhich they invoked in judgment on themselves and their children in\nthat fatal hour when Pilate convinced of the innocence of Jesus and\nwishing to let Him go had washed His hands in water, putting the\nresponsibility of the crucifixion upon them as a people. Then it was\nthey cried that terrible cry:\n\n\"His blood be on us, and on our children.\"\n\nBut then as now, and always since the days of Elijah, there was and\nis an elect remnant in Israel.\n\nFor their sakes the Lord will come.\n\nHe will descend with His host to Mount Sinai, the place of the law;\nthe spot where Israel rejected grace and sought that covenant which\nneither they nor their children have ever been able to keep.\n\nHe will sweep with His mighty army to Jerusalem.\n\nHe will overthrow the Gentile nations gathered there under the\nDevil-incarnate Antichrist.\n\nHe will stand upon the Mount of Olives.\n\nThe elect remnant will behold Him come.\n\nThey will look upon Him whom their fathers pierced.\n\nThey will fall down in anguish before Him.\n\nThey will mourn for Him as one mourneth for his only son.\n\nThey will take up the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah and make it\ntheir confession of faith and bitter, self-accusing lamentation.\n\nThey will say:\n\n\"We did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.\n\nBut he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our\niniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his\nstripes we are healed.\n\nAll we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his\nown way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.\"\n\nAnd in that hour, in that day of days shall there be a fountain\nopened to the house of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem,\nfor sin and uncleanness.\n\nThe Lord will cause Jerusalem to be rebuilded \"upon her own heap.\"\nHe will ordain the erection of that temple in which He shall\nestablish the throne of His holiness.\n\nLike David He will reign first over Judah. After that He will send\nGentile messengers like \"fishers\" to seek out and find the\ndescendants of the ten lost tribes. They will respond to the\nproclamation that will be made and to the search that will be\ninstituted in that eastern land and among those peoples whither they\nwere first carried away. There will be many impostors among them;\nbut the Lord will make them to \"pass under the rod\" as when the true\nsheep are struck with the owner's mark and as they take up their\njourney Zionward all who are not of Israel will be purged from their\nmidst.\n\nThose who are really of the covenant people will be quickened,\nregenerated, and when they enter the land will be welcomed by Judah\nand Benjamin.\n\nThey shall become one nation in the land upon the mountains of\nIsrael. One king shall be king to them all. They shall not be two\nnations any more, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms at\nall. The Lord will make a covenant of peace with them and multiply\nthem and set His sanctuary in the midst of them forever. His\ntabernacle shall be with them. He will be their very God as He shall\nbe the God of the whole earth. They shall be His peculiar people.\nAll the Gentiles shall know that He has set them apart for Himself\nwhen they behold His temple erected in their midst, the most\nwonderful building in all the earth.\n\nAnd thus will be fulfilled the prophecy concerning Israel quoted and\nemphasized by the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul that the\nDeliverer should come to Zion and turn away ungodliness from Jacob\nand that all Israel--that is--Israel united and as twelve tribes,\nshould be saved.\n\nIt is at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, then and not till then\nthat the solemn and covenant promises of God made to Abraham, to\nIsaac and to Jacob will be fulfilled and united, redeemed,\nregenerated and saved Israel set in their own land as the center and\nchannel of blessing to the earth.\n\nAnd because there can be no permanent peace in the world till Israel\nhas been restored; and because I wish to see, not only peace among\nthe nations and Israel reaping the blessings of the unconditional\ncovenant of God's grace and unchanged faithfulness, but because I\nyearn to see the hour when the Lord shall enter upon His own\ninheritance and justify Himself before heaven and earth as Judah's\nLord, as Israel's God and turn the accusation of His cross: \"This is\nJesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews\" into the pean of His\ncoronation as such, I preach the Second Coming.\n\n\n\nVI\n\n\nOnly at the Second Coming of the Christ of God Will a Government of\nEverlasting Righteousness and Peace be Established Upon the Earth\n\n\nIT was the original purpose of God to make the people of Israel the\nhead of nations, place them in Palestine as the geographical center\nof the earth, make them its political center, send His own Son to be\ntheir incarnate king, use them as a channel of earthly and spiritual\nblessing and make this world the most perfect and happiest spot in\nall the wide universe.\n\nThey failed to meet their opportunity.\n\nThen the Lord transferred the possibility of world rulership from\nthe Jews to the Gentiles.\n\nHe did this by handing political power and authority to\nNebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon.\n\nThis rulership and sway of the world descended in its ordained and\nforetold succession down through Medo-Persia with its incorporation\nof Babylon, through the temporary but immensely extended empire of\nGreece which under Alexander included both Babylon and Medo-Persia,\nand after that the colossal and magic empire of Rome, swallowing up\nas it did the three empires or kingdoms which preceded it.\n\nSince the division of Rome into Western and Eastern empires the\nrulership of the world has been maintained by the various nations\ncomposed of those people dwelling in the territory once occupied by\nRome.\n\nThe world has been ruled by Turks, Spaniards, Germans, by the French\nand by the English.\n\nThe Gentile nations in this special and prophetic territory have\nbeen the world rulers.\n\nIt has been peculiarly Gentile rulership and in Scripture is called,\n\"The times of the Gentiles.\"\n\nGentile times, Gentile rulership has lasted for twenty-five hundred\nyears.\n\nIt has been an amazing rule.\n\nIt has been a rulership that has revealed the genius, the brilliance\nand the God-given powers of man.\n\nIt has been a rulership that has revealed the iniquity, the sin, the\nmad ambition and devil-inspired policies of man.\n\nIn all the twenty-five hundred years of this Gentile rule there have\nnot been one hundred consecutive years of universal peace.\n\nIt has been twenty-five hundred years of war, of rapine, murder and\nmeasureless lust.\n\nCities have been destroyed, fields have been laid waste, women have\nendured the last outrage. Children have been orphaned, right has\nbeen upon the scaffold and wrong upon the throne, prison chains have\nbeen for virtue, silk and velvet for vice, civilization after\ncivilization has been destroyed, the earth has been filled with\nanguish beyond the power of tongue or pen to describe, and blood\nenough has been shed through man's inhumanity to man to float all\nthe navies of the world, and money and treasure enough wasted to\nhave provided a palace for every man and woman on earth.\n\nA little less than five years ago men everywhere were talking of\npeace and safety.\n\nChristianity and civilization were walking hand in hand.\n\nChristianity or that which professed to be Christianity had accepted\nall the claimed benefits of civilization.\n\nRapid transit, the telephone, all the triumphs of applied science\nwere announced as the by-products of the Gospel. Even though the\nchurches were becoming more or less empty and the people were\nturning away to other centers of instruction or enlightenment or\nconsolation or hope, preachers were everywhere and with great\ninsistence announcing that the world was growing better every day\nand that we were rapidly approaching the purple and the gold of\nmillennial times. The hour was not far distant when the lion and the\nlamb should lie down together. There was much talk about the\nfatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. People were coming\ntogether and having a better and more disinterested estimate of each\nother. Religion was ceasing to be dogmatic and precise and becoming\nmore and more a profession that was free from restraint.\n\nChristian ministers in the pulpit and supposedly wise men in the\ncounsels of the nations with optimistic utterance announced that the\ndays of barbarism had passed away, the brutality of war was at an\nend. Men and nations would no longer adjourn their differences to\nthe field of battle. A magnificent palace of peace had been erected\nin that country that had for centuries been the bloody ground where\nEurope settled its political issues. In this splendid home of\narbitration the nations were to meet as friends and brothers and\ncalmly arrange and solve all matters that had hitherto kept them\nmenacingly apart.\n\nWar had become so abhorrent to what was called the Christian sense\nof the nations that mothers were exhorted to banish from the\nnurseries anything that might suggest the thought of war, such as\ntrumpets, drums or toy guns. So completely had the peace idea\npervaded the mind of the people, the idea that peace had come to\nstay and nothing must be tolerated that would even hint at war, that\na soldier or a sailor wearing the uniform of his country was no\nlonger acceptable in a public place, were it a restaurant, a music\nhall or even a church.\n\nMen who were opposed to spending a dollar to make a nation ready for\nthe possibility of war were hailed as the advanced thinkers and the\nmen worthy of the suffrage of the people; while those who contended\nhuman nature had not been changed, that a nation was simply the\nindividual grown large and the jealousies, the covetousness and\nambitions of governments would always make it possible for the\nstrong to prey upon the weak and for the unprincipled under the\nguise of national necessity to attack their unprepared neighbours\nand therefore just as much as a city rests in confidence with the\npresence within it of a well-equipped police force, equally so the\ncomfort and security of peace could be best maintained by a nation\ngoverned by right principles whose army and navy were ready to\nresist successfully any unjust assault upon its honour or integrity,\nwere treated with pity, if not scorn, as still under the spell of\nbenighted and barbaric days.\n\n\"Peace and safety!\" these were the pleasant words that lulled a\npleasure-seeking and money-making generation into self-satisfied\nrest and the mirage of millennial days already arrived.\n\nThen, suddenly, like a bolt out of a clear sky, or the overflow in\nraging lava tide of an unsuspected volcano, the most stupendous,\nghastly and brutally devilish war the world has ever known was on in\nall its fiendish fury, sweeping from England to the Euphrates and\nfrom the Rhine and Danube on the north to the glittering sands of\nAfrica on the south, rolling its waves of blood and sending its\nsickening and indescribable horrors through those lands and among\nthose people at one time constituting the four kingdoms to whom God\nhad committed the rulership of the world; that region occupied by\nBabylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome and whose administration of\nworld affairs is called \"the times of the Gentiles.\"\n\nTo-night ten millions of the world's flower of manhood lie rotting\nin their graves. Six millions of women and children have been\nstarved to death. Women have been unspeakably ruined, children\nmutilated and flung as helpless debris upon the charity of\nstrangers, suffering their orphaned estate and not knowing why.\n\nAll the genius, the science and invention of man with poured out,\nunlimited wealth, have been drafted to produce the most terrifically\ndestructive means of war. All the boasted progress and culture of\nthe preceding centuries were called upon to wage the contest until\nit should affright even the participants themselves. Clouds of\npoison gas filled the once sweet and vital air of spring time and\nsummer mornings. Human beings wearing hideous masks and looking like\nother world monsters rushed in mad onslaught upon one another. They\nburrowed in holes and trenches like wild beasts concealed in their\nlair and waiting for the prey. Through the startled heavens winged\nthings like huge vampires vomiting fire and blood took their way\nover cities, towns and unprotected hospitals, leaving behind them\nthe dead, the dying and the tortured. Hunger with its sunken cheeks,\nand pestilence with its green eyes, its slavering lips have trod the\nearth till horror with wordless anguish has kept vigil by the\nblackened hearthstones of ruined homes and deserted firesides.\n\nTo-night, the fields of Flanders where the poppies grow and where\nthe dead who died too soon and lie almost too thick to count, are as\nthough a mighty juggernaut had rolled its fearful wheels over them,\ncrushing both man and earth together into one monstrous pulp of\nhopeless ruin.\n\nTo-night France, where the lilies were wont to bloom, is torn and\nripped in all the one-time beauty and fascination of her white and\nwinding roads, poplar fringed, in the culture of her fruited\ngardens, her orchards and her royal forests, as though some\nmonstrous creation of pre-Adamite days had survived and broken\nthrough all restraint of all the ages to riot and gorge himself with\nunlimited delight of destruction.\n\nAll this after two thousand years of professed Christianity and the\nconstant iteration that the Church was slowly winning its way to the\nruler-ship of the world; that each hour the world was growing better\nand more and more the principles of the Christ of God dominating the\nuniversal heart of man.\n\nThe world awoke to find its heart unchanged and war with aggressive\nanimalism still the underlying and primal force in man.\n\nTo-night in face of all this, in face of the solemn declaration of\nthe Son of God that during the whole time of His absence there would\nbe war and rumours of war, and specially within the territory once\noccupied by Rome; that there would be distress of nations with\nperplexity, men's hearts failing them for fear for looking after the\nthings that should be coming on the earth; that the people like the\nwaves of the sea should be roaring, uttering their discordant voices\nin the thunder of protest and bitter discontent, breaking the bonds\nof old customs and lashing the times with lawlessness and\nunprecedented crime; in face of the warning of the Apostle Paul that\nin the last days, that is to say in the closing hours of this age,\nthere should be, not peaceful but perilous times; that evil men\nshould wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived; in the\nface of the inspired assurance of the Apostle James that as this\ndispensation should draw to its close Capital and Labour should\nstand in bitter attitude to each other; that the accumulated wealth\nof a special class called \"rich men\" should be \"heaped together\"\nthat they might be spoiled and that miseries should come upon them;\nthat on the one side should be the aggression of the profiteers and\non the other the violence of those who would refuse to be exploited;\nin face of this assurance of industrial and class war; in face of\nthe fact that the softest toned apostle whose pen is always\ntranscribing the word \"love,\" and who has reached the highest and\nmost sublime definition of God as love; in face of the fact that\nthis apostle affirms the hour will come when the whole world under\nreligious, political and devilish inspiration will rush to conflict,\nthat everywhere will be heard the tramp of armed men and the\ngathering of the nations for a war such as the world has not yet\nseen; in face of the picture which this apostle of love paints where\nthe armies of the world are seen gathered in battle array against\nthe Lord Christ and His right to reign; in the face of this divine\nwarning the statesmen of the world are assembled in counsel at\nParis, the world's capital of pleasure, in a palace once dedicated\nto lust and wanton self-gratification, whose panelled ceiling and\nmirrored walls are filled with and reflect the scenes and\nglorification of war, that by the stroke of a pen, by a series of\nresolutions, they may constitute a league of nations bulking so big\nthat every threatened wave of future war may be flung back as when\nthe dykes of Holland reject the sea.\n\nThe astonishing and suggestive thing is that in the making and\nremaking of the map of Europe and Asia undertaken by the framers of\nthe league, they are, all unconsciously, restoring the outlines of\nthe old Roman Empire and preparing the way for the final and\ndesperate revival of Rome under the form of ten confederate nations,\nwith its last kaiser, that dark and woful figure, the man of sin,\nthe son of perdition, the Antichrist.\n\nAnd there are Christian teachers who see in this league another\nherald of the millennium before Christ comes which they so\nsedulously preached previously to the war. They see in this league\nan evidence that the Lord Jesus Christ as the Prince of Peace is in\nreality reigning over the earth and bending the nations to His will\nfor the reign of peace.\n\nIn the whole history of theological exegesis and interpretation I\nknow of nothing so utterly faulty, illogical and wholly unscriptural\nas that exegesis which teaches the angel song at Bethlehem to be the\nannouncement of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ as the Prince of\nPeace and that as such He should establish it among the nations\nafter His ascension to heaven and during His absence from the world.\n\nThe angels sang glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to\n\"men of good will.\"\n\nThe angel who spoke to the shepherds keeping the temple sheep for\nthe morning and the evening sacrifice was testifying to them that\nthere was no longer need to keep the sheep for such a purpose. The\nday of animal sacrifices had passed, the living God had provided the\ntrue sacrifice, He who was born beneath the chaplet of heaven's\nmusic, the Lamb of God ordained before the foundation of the world.\nHe had been born into the world that He might make peace by the\nblood of His cross, not between man and man, not between nation and\nnation, but between man and God. He had been born to die and by His\ndeath reconcile a rebel world to God; on the basis of this sacrifice\nyet to be and when He should have risen from the dead as witness of\nthe efficacy of His death He would bring peace to every soul that\nshould be of good will--every soul that should surrender to the will\nof God by believing on Him, offering Him by faith as a sacrifice and\nclaiming Him as a substitute. Every such soul should be at peace\nwith, and have the peace of, God.\n\nThis was the meaning of that natal hour at Bethlehem.\n\nThe angels were not singing over Him as the Prince of Peace who had\ncome to abolish war among the nations, but as the ordained sacrifice\nwho should bring peace between the individual man and his God. And\nyet--He is to be the Prince of Peace and reign and rule as such over\nthe earth, putting an end to war and establishing perfect peace\namong the nations.\n\nThe promise of His reign and rule as the Prince of Peace is clearly\nset forth in Scripture; as it is written in the book of the prophet\nIsaiah:\n\n\"Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. His name shall be\ncalled Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting\nFather, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his peace and\ngovernment there shall be no end.\"\n\nBut when? Where?\n\nListen:\n\n\"Upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom to order it.\"\n\nAnd hear what Gabriel says to Mary when he comes to announce to her\nthat she has been chosen of Almighty God to give birth to the\nMessiah of Israel.\n\nThe angel says:\n\n\"Thou shalt call his name Jesus . . . He shall be great, and shall\nbe called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto\nhim the throne of his father David:\n\nAnd he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his\nkingdom there shall be no end.\"\n\nHe is to be the Prince of Peace when He sits upon the throne of\nunited Israel in their own land and not before.\n\nHe was born in fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah.\n\nHe was a Son given. The Son of God who was God the Son.\n\nHe was a Son given and became a child born.\n\nHe grew up to the station of manhood.\n\nHe entered upon His pre-arranged ministry.\n\nAt the appointed hour and to the very second foretold by Gabriel to\nDaniel and in the exact manner announced by the prophet Zechariah He\nrode into Jerusalem, went into the temple, claiming it as His\nFather's house of prayer and by so much declaring Himself to be the\nSon of the Highest and the heir of David's throne.\n\nThe shout of the multitude had announced Him officially.\n\nThey had said:\n\n\"Hosanna! Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of\nthe Lord.\"\n\nIn crying this aloud they were fulfilling the prediction of\nZechariah.\n\nHe had, under the vision of God, looked forward to this hour and\nwith the Spirit of God upon him had exhorted the people who should\nbe alive when Jesus should come to acclaim him.\n\nHe said:\n\n\"Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem; behold thy King cometh unto thee;\nhe is just, and having salvation (political as well as spiritual\nsalvation); lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal\nof an ass.\"\n\nThe multitude were shouting as Zechariah said they should shout.\nThey were confessing that He who came that day up the slopes of Zion\nwas the Prince of Judah and King of Israel.\n\nHe came to His own, but His own received Him not.\n\nInstead of the diadem of David He got a crown of thorns. Instead of\nthe sceptre of Israel He got the vine stick of a Roman centurion\nthrust through His rope-tied hands. Instead of a throne He got a\nmalefactor's cross. Instead of a robe of royal purple He got the\nwinding sheet of the dead. Instead of a palace He got a borrowed\ngrave.\n\nThe Jews have paid the price of that blindness and betrayal. The\nman-slayer who unwittingly slew his neighbour or was even ignorant\nof it at the moment sooner or later found he had to flee from the\navenger of blood instantly upon his track. He became an exile from\nhis home, forced to dwell in a provided place called the city of\nrefuge. He could not return to his home till the second coming of a\npriest.\n\nThe Jews were guilty, as a nation, of manslaughter.\n\nThey were deceived and involved by their leaders. They really did\nnot know that He whom they hounded to death at the last was not only\nthe covenant king of Israel, and the Holy One of their fathers, but\nthe Prince of life.\n\nBecause of their blindness, blunder and sin they were cast out of\nthe land. Because, even though in ignorance, they slew their King,\nthey were exiled by the judgment of God from their home. They\ndeprived the Lord of that land that was His through the covenant of\nAbraham, and the Lord in turn deprived them of the right of dwelling\nin the land. They should be exiles so long as He was an exile. Nor\ncan they return till He comes the second time as a priest, not after\nthe order of Aaron, but Melchisedec; for it is written that He shall\nbe both a king and priest upon His throne.\n\nOnly can the Jews return and be owned nationally of the Lord when He\nshall come.\n\nHe will come and He will come as the Prince of Peace.\n\nHe will not come, I repeat, with the olive branch in His hand and\nthe cooing dove nestling upon His shoulder.\n\nNay! not at all!\n\nHe will come as the Avenger of His elect, as the Son of man, as the\njudge of all flesh.\n\nHe will come to overthrow the combination of Devil and man.\n\nHis Coming will be the climax of old and outworn ages, the beginning\nof the new.\n\nThe glory of His Coming cannot be described.\n\nThrough years of meditation and continued effort at description I\nhave exhausted my vocabulary and worn to tatters the oft-repeated\nphrases with which I have sought with heart full of adoring\nenthusiasm to announce the wonders of that hour.\n\nIf all the suns and systems were turned into speech till every\nflaming center of light were an adjective with increasing emphasis\nof qualification and expression the attempt to put into words the\nglory of that Coming would be a pitiful and overwhelming failure.\n\nHe will come surrounded by an innumerable host whose hallelujahs\nshall so vibrate that the very heavens will roll apart at their\nsoundings.\n\nThe Lord will come in His threefold glory, the glory of the Father,\nthe glory of the angels and His own glory: the glory of His eternal\nand unbegun sonship with the Father, as chief of the angels and as\nthat man who is very God, as that God who is real and immortal man.\nThen will He set up the kingdom, the government for which the ages\nhave dreamed and groaned and guessed and prayed.\n\nThat hour of hours!\n\nSatan bound, iniquity overthrown, God and Christ and the Holy Spirit\nruling in the lives of men. The very air surcharged with the\nrighteousness of God; so surcharged that he who thinks a lie shall\nfall dead in the tracks where he meditated it. No longer need of\njudge, of jury, of prison bars, nor hangman's rope, nor electric\nchair.\n\nAn hour when no longer the scarlet poppies of hate, of jealousies\nand mad ambition shall bud and blossom into war. War over forever,\nswords beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks. Every\nman the same right as any other man, the right to sunshine, to air,\nto water, the beauty of the landscape and all the usufruct of earth.\n\nThat hour when no man shall call another his master; when no longer\na man shall toil and bend his back and break his heart for a stipend\nof bread; for a hole in the ground and the worm of corruption as\nmistress of his bed.\n\nThat hour when life shall be worth while and when the centuries of\npeace and perfectness of actual being shall pass on till they are\ncounted as eternity.\n\nAnd because this government of peace and splendour and all the\noutflowing possibilities of a world in which righteousness shall\nreign and God shall be first can be brought about only by and at the\nSecond Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; because until He does so\ncome wars and sorrows and the darkness of sin will continue; because\nall the legislation of man and all the leagues of nations will\nutterly fail to establish permanent peace; because in spite of the\nbest endeavours of all the merely moral forces in the earth there is\nnothing can keep this system called the world from going on the\nrocks; because only the hand of God's Christ can break the bands of\niniquity, quiet earth's fever pulses and putting down all authority\nbring in the peace that never can be broken; because when He comes\nthe government of right and truth and the life that is really worth\nwhile shall come; and because from my heart I want to see that\nlonged-for hour of heaven on earth, I preach the Second Coming of\nour Lord Jesus Christ.\n\n\n\nVII\n\n\nIt is at the Second Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ that the Earth\nWill be Delivered from the Bondage of Corruption and Transformed\ninto the Paradise of God\n\n\nWHEN man fell creation fell.\n\nIt fell because creation in respect to this earth was headed up in\nhim.\n\nGod placed a ban upon it, a restraint of its fruitfulness.\n\nInstead He gave liberty to thorns and briars and poisonous, creeping\nthings.\n\nYou may plant your garden, you may plant your orchard, set your\nvines and sow your fields. You may go to sleep and rest and think\nyour work is done, that nothing remains but to awake again and\nreceive the looked-for fruit and harvest.\n\nWhen you do awake you will find the poisonous, creeping things have\nclimbed over your wall and fence, have glided in among the good\nseed, flung their tentacles of death about them and are slowly,\nsurely strangling the life out of them.\n\nIf you would have your garden to grow, your orchard to yield its\nfruit, your vineyard to hang out its purple clusters, your harvests\nto ripen in the kiss of sun and developing touch of caressing winds,\nthen you must rise early and toil late. For every acre of worthful\nland you must crown your brow with the sweat of unceasing and\nexacting toil.\n\nThe earth is in bondage. It is held in the close, the gripping and\nrelentless bonds of corruption.\n\nEverywhere and in all things is the corruption of the dead.\n\nThe very air you breathe is dust from the mingled bones of the dead.\nThe earth is crammed with the dead of man and beast. The grain that\nis reaped and the flowers that bloom grow forth from the fatness of\nthe grave and the impulse of corruption, watered by tears distilled\nfrom the heartache of the generations old who have sorrowed above\nthat grave and wept and hoped in vain.\n\nPut your ear to the bosom of old mother earth and you will hear a\nmoaning and lament like unto women in travail who seek to bring to\nthe birth.\n\nI am told the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain\ntogether until now; that it is on the tiptoe of expectation with\nneck and head stretched out waiting for the Coming of the Son of God\nand all the sons of glory.\n\nO yes! creation in all her borders is crying out for the Son of God\nto come.\n\nIt is crying out from all its rivers, from the moan of the sea, in\nthe shiver of earthquake and the rush of the lava tide from the red\nthroat of the flaming volcano. It is crying out in the heat of\nburning deserts, in every pain that is felt, in every tear of\nanguish that stains the face and speaks the agony of the heart, in\nevery clod that falls with its accent of woe upon the coffin lid, in\nall the bitterness, the shame and tragedy of a sin-smitten and\nDevil-hurt world; everything in nature from rock and worm to man is\ncrying out: \"Come, Lord Jesus, and build again this broken and\nruined earth of thine.\"\n\nHe will hear the cry.\n\nWhen He comes He will take off the ban.\n\nHe will deliver from corruption.\n\nThe earth will no longer shiver as an aspen.\n\nFear will no longer walk forth like a tyrant and set the pulses\nbeating or hold them strangling.\n\nBriars and thorns and fiend-like weeds and smothering, choking\nthings that have kept the earth in barrenness where Eden-like\ngardens should have bloomed, and, thank God, all graves, will\ndisappear. The desert shall bloom as the rose, the earth shall be\nrenewed, made beautiful, and all creation loosened from its prison\nbonds shall sing and echo with unending harmonies in every freely\nfruiting and growing thing throughout all its delivered and happy\nborders.\n\nFor a thousand golden years under a new heavens and beneath a pure\nsky where the air shall flow round it as a river of crystal from the\nthrone of God the earth will roll onward to the music of its sister\nspheres keeping time in the great diapason of the universe that owns\nand celebrates the glory of God; then, at last, it will pass through\ngates of fire and come forth into that new orbit, as that new earth\nwherein is no more dividing sea, storm swept and full of the wrecks\nof ships, of greater wrecks of hopes, and tiled with the white bones\nof the dead; that new earth where there shall be no more night with\nits hidden evil and its long and darksome hours in which the\nsufferer yearns for morning light, no more tears, nor sorrow, nor\npain, nor any more that black and ever multiplying horror they call\ndeath; that new earth that shall be no longer the footstool, but the\nexalted and special throne of God--the center of the universe.\n\nInto this new and perfect earth the Church shall descend--a company\nof redeemed, blood-washed, immortal sons of God.\n\nThe Son of God and God the Son Himself shall descend and dwell\nthere. Then for the first time shall the children of God behold in\nHim the full lineament of their Father's face; for, though He be the\neternal Son He shall be seen and known as the \"everlasting Father,\"\nor \"the Father of the everlasting age.\"\n\nThe onlooking worlds as they swing in their chorus of adoration\nabout this radiant and omnipotent center will learn and proclaim the\nimmense truth that this earth was created, not merely as an\nexpression of the wisdom, genius and might of God in His function as\na creator, but as the arena of redemption, as the spot whence in all\nthe wide empire of His power might be known and felt the pulse beat\nof His heart. As the innumerable hosts of heaven sweep around this\ncenter of grace and redemption, as they behold beings who once were\nlost in sin, wrecked and ruined beyond human hope or angelic aid,\nnow immortal, holy, happy sons of God, they will break forth in ever\nincreasing songs of adoration and shall say as they sing till the\nuniverse shall repeat it again and again:\n\n\"Behold, the glory of God is not alone in his majesty and might, in\nhis holiness and omnipotence, but in his love.\"\n\nThey shall take up that marvellous passage in John 3: 16 and cry it\naloud so that it will ring with accumulating praise to Him who first\nuttered it:\n\n\"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,\nthat whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have\neverlasting life.\"\n\nAnd all the host of heaven shall proclaim:\n\n\"God is love. God is love.\"\n\nAll this consummation is to find its initial at the Second Coming of\nour Lord Jesus Christ.\n\nAnd because I want to see this earth freed from the stain of sin,\nthe torture of pain, the accents of sorrow, the terror of tears, the\nhour of dying, the black and shameful grave, the trench of\ncorruption and the Devil's ministry of death; because I want to see\na worth-while world where no longer the earth shall turn from night\nto morn and then from morn to disappointing night again, but shall\nglow forever in the light of an endless morn; because I want to see\na world where the purposes of God in love, in benediction and\nunfailing grace are no longer seemingly contradicted by untoward\nevents and conditions, by problems that with the best apologies for\nthe divine character no human genius can solve or balance, but are\nwritten in high and lifted testimony brighter than the stars of any\nnight and stronger shining than any sun of day; because I want to\nsee a world where man shall be the enthronement of God and shall\nglorify Him as such, and where every atom of earth shall be full of\nHis love and redolent with His praise, and where life shall be only\nanother name for joy and the unending and the ever new unfoldment of\nit, the actual joy of unreserved, unlimited living; and because this\ndesire in all its full accomplishment can come and the first notes\nof infinite triumph alone be struck and the song begin by the Coming\nof our Lord Jesus Christ--I preach His Second Coming.\n\n\n\nVIII\n\n\nThe Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ for His Church is the Most\nImminent Event on the Horizon of Time\n\n\nBETWEEN us and the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in glory to Mount\nZion to set up and establish His kingdom there are many predicted\nand consecutively fixed events.\n\nBetween us and the moment when our Lord shall suddenly and secretly\ndescend to take the Church to Himself into the place prepared, hold\nher in security above the woe hour coming on all them that dwell on\nthe face of the earth and then bring her back to reign and rule with\nHim in glory, there is not a single, predicted event; and this--in\nthe very nature of the case.\n\nIn the nature of the case because this age in which we live is a\nparenthesis between the kingdom postponed upon the one side and the\nkingdom to be brought in upon the other.\n\nIn this age God is not seeking to convert the world, but to take out\nof it a people for His Name.\n\nIt is an age of selection and therefore an age of election.\n\nWhen you take some things out of the midst of other things there\nwill be, not only a first one, but necessarily a last one.\n\nAs there was a first one elected, called out and taken into union\nwith a risen Lord, so must there be a last one who shall be called\nthrough the Gospel, quickened by the Spirit and bound up in\nindissoluble union with a living Lord.\n\nWhen that last one is called and responds to the life-giving power\nof the Spirit the Lord will descend into the upper air and take the\ncompleted and corporate Church to Himself--the dead raised, the\nliving changed.\n\nWhen that last elect one will be called you do not know, it is not\nknown to a single soul on earth.\n\nSince you do not know when the last elect of God shall be called,\nand it is sure the Lord will come when that last elect one is\ncalled, then you do not know when the Lord will come; and so far as\nyou are concerned, and so far as any revelation otherwise is given,\nit may be any hour and, therefore, \"any moment\"; consequently the\nComing of the Lord for His Church is--imminent.\n\nThus the imminency of the Lord's Coming for His Church is grounded\non election.\n\nImminency is so absolutely linked up with election that you cannot\ndeny imminency without denying election; and to deny election is to\ndeny God Himself, deny Him in the very essence of His own\nprerogative, the prerogative of foreordination, of decree.\n\nThe imminency of the Lord's Coming for His Church is grounded on the\nLord's own declaration that He is coming for her as a thief comes.\n\nThis is His declaration and warning to the Church at Sardis, that\nChurch which is the symbol of Protestantism in the closing hours of\nthe age. The warning is given to the pastor, through the pastor to\nthe Church and through the local assembly at Sardis to the whole\nChurch.\n\nThis is what the risen Lord actually says:\n\n\"Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard; and hold fast,\nand repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will arrive over\nthee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will arrive\nover thee.\"\n\nThe characteristics of thief coming are marked and clear.\n\nThe thief does not come with strident voice, with thunderous noise,\nnor in open daylight, but between the midnight and the morn, with\nshodden feet, silently, softly, and takes the treasure while all in\nthe house are sunken in the depths of sleep.\n\nWhen the sunbeams of the morning pelt the eyelids of the laggard\nsleepers they awake to find the thief has come and gone and in his\ngoing has taken the treasure with him.\n\nIf the symbol be of avail and not a mere exercise in logomachy then\nwill the Lord, indeed, descend in the moral and spiritual night of\nthe world while men are sleeping and in fancied security pleasantly\ndreaming.\n\nHe will descend unseen, unnoted. If men shall hear the sound of a\ntrump it will have no greater significance to their spiritually deaf\nears than any other passing sound. He will take, not the \"great\nhouse\" of religious profession, but those alone in that profession\nwho have been regenerated and are indwelt by the Spirit, the dead\nwho have fallen asleep in His name and the living who abide in Him.\n\nAbove all--imminency is grounded in the integrity of the Son of God\nand His apostles.\n\nUnless all language is a deception; unless the promises of God are a\nbaited lie; unless the apostles of Christ are the most shameless of\nall wanton tricksters; unless the Son of God Himself is the coolest\ntraitor to truth who ever fooled the trusting hearts of needy men;\nunless He is the one being of all others who had the subtle and\neffective genius of making promises that fill the ear and are broken\nto the heart; unless He was the most skillful of all deceivers and\nrejoiced with malignant delight in deceiving the souls of men and\nthus proved Himself to be not the Son of God at all but the very son\nof falsehood, then seeing He is the reverse of all that, is in truth\nthe very Son of God and truth itself, by His own unqualified\nstatement, by its very character as exhortative warning His Coming\nmust be and is--imminent. It is on the threshold of unfolding\nhistory and the gates of heaven are ajar ready for His Coming. So\nimminent is it that there is nothing between us and that event of\nevents but the shout of command, the voice of the archangel and the\nshattering sound of the trump. So imminent that there is not the\nthickness of an eyelash between us and that moment when the door in\nheaven shall open wide and His voice with all compelling power shall\nsay, \"Come up hither.\"\n\nListen to what He says:\n\n\"Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.\"\n\nWatch! because He is coming.\n\nWatch! because you do not know what hour He will come.\n\nWatch! because as the householder He said He might come in any one\nof the four watches, at even, at midnight, in the cockcrowing or in\nthe morning.\n\nHe did not come at even.\n\nSurely the midnight has come. It is dark enough spiritually. There\nis not only enough of sorrow, sin, confusion and unbelief in a\ngodless world, but rank treason to the truth and repudiation of the\nwritten Word in the professing Church to call it spiritual midnight.\n\nIt seems sometimes like the cockcrowing.\n\nThere are sounds of chanticleer, blasts of trumpets, changing of the\nguards and sentinels of old customs and ways, and echoes in the\nevents now unrolling that prelude the great morning and the great\nday.\n\nThere is nothing certain about the hour but its--uncertainty.\n\nWatch! because you may be alive at His Coming.\n\nThat is the word of Holy Scripture and not my suggestion.\n\nListen to the Apostle: \"We which are alive, and remain unto the\ncoming of the Lord.\"\n\nThe Apostle said that for his generation.\n\nHe said it not under his own mistaken idea as the Chicago department\nof \"sacred literature\" would suggest, but under the inspiration of\nthe Holy Spirit of the Holy God.\n\nPaul as a mere man might make mistakes just as the modern\ntheological professor not infrequently does.\n\nThe Holy Spirit speaking through Paul could not make a mistake\nHimself, neither could it be possible for Paul under the direction\nof the Holy Spirit to make a mistake.\n\nPaul was led by the Holy Spirit to believe it possible the Son of\nGod might come in his day.\n\nWhat Paul under inspiration said for his generation, he said for our\ngeneration.\n\nHe said it for you and for me.\n\nBecause no man knows the hour when the Lord will come it might be in\nyour hour and my hour.\n\nThe Master Himself said:\n\n\"You know not what hour your Lord doth come.\"\n\nWho is he who will have the hardihood to fix the hour when the\nMaster has said no man knows?\n\nWho is he who will put a thousand years between the Church and her\nreturning Lord?\n\nWhere is the difference between a thousand years' delay and one\nmoment that can be fixed by any man?\n\nIf the Lord says you do not know the hour and necessarily do not\nknow the minute of the hour, if you fix a minute between us and the\nComing you deny the words of the Son of God Himself that the minute\nand the hour are unknown.\n\nWho is he who has it all fixed and polished and pumice stoned to the\nexact date?\n\nThe Lord has said no man on earth knows, not an angel in heaven\nknows. He Himself took the place of a servant and by the exercise of\nHis omnipotent will residing in His eternal and unchanged\npersonality as Son of God and God the Son, shut out the knowledge of\nit from His humanity, from Himself as man, and said He did not know\nwhen He should come.\n\nAdmit that a revelation has since been given to Him as a man or that\nHe has taken the ban off His human side Himself and that He knows\nwhen He will come for the Church and the exact hour of His appearing\nin glory; admit this if you like and for the sake of argument\n(although there is not the slightest shade of a shadow of evidence\nfor such an argument) it still remains that no such revelation has\never been given to the Church; neither has the restriction of the\nSon of God to His disciples been removed. You remember what He said\njust before He ascended!\n\nThis is what He said:\n\n\"It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the\nFather hath put in his own power.\"\n\nThat this restriction was for the Church is the declaration of the\nApostle. This is what he said to the Church at Thessalonica:\n\n\"Of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I\nwrite unto you.\"\n\nWhy had he no need to write to them?\n\nBecause the day of the Lord, he said, should come as a thief, and as\nthat day is introduced by the Coming of the Lord for His Church,\nthen His coming for the Church was, as He Himself afterwards\ndeclared in his letter to Sardis, like the coming of a thief. This\nComing Paul had described in the fourth chapter of his first letter\nto the Thessalonians.\n\nIt was not for the Church to know in Paul's day when the Lord should\ncome as the bridegroom for His bride.\n\nNo revelation has been given in any epistle to the Church since.\nWhat was true in Paul's day as to the attitude of the Church is true\nin this day. Listen to the commended attitude of the Thessalonian\nChurch:\n\n\"Ye turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God; and\nto wait for his Son from heaven.\"\n\nThere you have it.\n\nThe Church is to wait; that means to watch, to expect, to be ready.\n\nThis is what the Apostle said.\n\nThis is what the Son of God Himself said and still says to-day.\n\nHe affirms we do not know the hour.\n\nHe exhorts us to watch.\n\nThe affirmation and the exhortation hold for this hour.\n\nIf therefore the Son of God be not incarnate falsehood; if He seek\nnot to play with my heart and make me a spectacle to the lost souls\nof the pit as well as to the mockers among men--He means what He\nsaid.\n\nIf He meant what He said, then He means that any day, and any hour\nof the day so far as I know I may meet Him at any turn of the road.\n\nAnd what would that mean if He should come to-night or to-morrow?\n\nI have told you what it would mean to me.\n\nWhat would it mean to you, to some of you who have so much invested\nin Laurel Hill, in that white and beautiful city of the dead, by the\nbanks of your winding river?\n\nWhen I was a boy my father took me there and I watched as the winds\nrippled through the long grasses, and I could hear the wash of the\nriver below, I was startled and sometimes shivered as I walked under\nthe shadow of tall monuments, carved figures, and by stately tombs\nof marble. And once I started back and broke into tears at the sight\nof the sculptured form of \"Old Mortality\" bending above a slab with\nchisel and mallet in hand--and I suppose is there still, grown older\nin his stony face because more stained with the passing years.\n\nWhat would it mean to you whose loved ones are lying in that\ncemetery or any other of the sleeping places of the dead?\n\nAh! it would mean the home-coming, the greeting, the rapturous kiss\nand hand-clasp of recognition, the joy of that heaven life that\nshall know no end and that immortality that shall compensate for all\nthe weariness and the heartache of the mortal path here below.\n\nYes! it would mean to those of us who by faith in Christ Jesus are\nchildren of the living God, the gathering to our arms again of those\nwho have left us and for whom our arms still ache to enfold them\nonce more. And O my soul! it would mean the seeing of Him whom our\nsoul loveth and who unfailingly has loved us; it would mean that\nboon of boons--seeing Him face to face.\n\nDo you wonder the Holy Spirit who is the finger of God has written\nover against the word \"hope,\" that qualification, \"blessed,\" and\naffixed to it the demonstrative, \"that,\" so it doth read: \"That\nblessed hope\"?\n\nAnd yet! and yet! there are men who call themselves the ministers of\nChrist who would blot out that hope and take away the vision of it\nfrom our souls.\n\nWith cold, acute, metallic voices in which you may hear the sound of\nthe wheels of machinery and the buzz of business, they tell us that\nshould the Lord suddenly come it would paralyze all industry, put an\nend to commerce and to trade, overthrow all progress, make worthless\nevery high endeavour for the betterment of man, shut the doors of\nschool, of college and university, render useless the architect's\nand builder's plans, throw down the mechanic's tools, the artist's\nbrush, the sculptor's chisel, the writer's pen, still the orator's\ntongue, make null and void the legislator's high emprise and draw a\nline of atrophy across the unfolding processes of human life.\n\nOh, foolish, blind and slow to believe, do you not see that if the\nLord should come it would lift our so-called civilization out of the\nslime and shame of its brazen folly and reeking, though perfumed sin\ninto the glory of eternal righteousness and peace?\n\nDo you not see that it would, at last, make men immortal and give\nthem such beauty of form, such sanity and such culture and worth of\nbeing as all the gymnasia and all the eugenics of the hour have\nfailed and will ever fail to achieve?\n\nDo you not see that if the Lord should suddenly come it would at\nonce open the gates of knowledge and bring us face to face with the\nsecrets of the universe and make us masters under God of all natural\nlaws such as all the curriculae of all the institutions of learning,\nof applied science and philosophy have failed to impart?\n\nDo you not see it would be the fulfillment of the highest ideals and\naspirations and would make man what the creator of heaven and earth\noriginally intended man should be--not an animal working with tools\nand breaking his heart in vain finally to achieve--but a very God\nwho should speak and it should be done, command and it should stand\nfast; and who should be the incarnate revelation, the eternal\nenthronement of the invisible God, in power, in character and\nholiness?\n\nDo you not see it would change this old earth from the swinging\ncemetery of the dead into the home of deathless men, the home of the\neternal and worth-while life?\n\nOh, listen to me all who hear me!\n\nThe hope for this world of daily toil and tears, of graves and\nunceasing tragedy, of pitiful woe, is not that slow creeping thing\ncalled evolution, wallowing on its serpentine belly amid the dust of\ndeath and the crime and sin of unchanged and unchangeable human\nnature--but God Himself--God in Christ, the personal Coming of Him\nwho is the maker of heaven and earth, coming to bring in the new\ndawn, the new day, the new earth and the new empire of God and man.\n\nOh, tell me those of you who have been redeemed by blood,\nregenerated by the Spirit, made partakers of the divine nature,\nturned heavenward by the power of God, who see cloudless daylight in\nthe Bible, even in the darkness of a spiritual night, hear music in\nits promises and whose souls are filled with love to God and love to\nman, tell me would you like Him to come, would you like to see your\nLord face to face?\n\nOh, you who have had the vision of His cross behold it, I beseech\nyou, there!\n\nThe head crowned with thorns, the nailed hands, the nailed feet, the\npierced side, the blood pouring out of those hands, gliding round\nHis body, weaving itself in its sinuous course over the white flesh\ninto a robe of crimson, and then streaming out into a fringe of\nintense scarlet as it drops, drop by drop to the thirsty ground,\ndripping, dripping there. Oh, I can see it and I seem to feel the\nwarm touch of it, the strange, the wonderful cleansing touch of it,\nthe only thing that can make a blackened sinner white; and as it\ndrops each drop seems to say till it turns to very music in the\nsoul:\n\n\"Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though\nthey be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.\"\n\nListen to the dropping of that blood out of the heart of God, every\ndrop the price current of the merchant, the half shekel of the\nsanctuary, the purchase price of your redemption and mine and the\nseal of infinite love, of measureless grace.\n\nOh, tell me would you like Him to come, transfigure you into the\nbeauty of His likeness and put the benediction of His peace upon\nthis old sin-smitten, tear-stained earth?\n\nDo you ever pray the last prayer recorded in Holy Scripture, the\nlast prayer of the Holy Apostolic Church?\n\nListen to it! Listen to it well!\n\n\"Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.\"\n\nIs this prayer in your heart?\n\nDoes it ever come to your lips?\n\nDo you ever genuinely and openly offer it, wishing with all your\nheart it might be so, might be answered in your time; or, have you\nforgotten it like the Church at large?\n\nDo you feel ashamed or afraid to offer it in public?\n\nWhen you try to offer it in private or public does unbelief smother\nit?\n\nI once heard a boy say to his mother:\n\n\"O mother, don't do so much for me; love me more.\"\n\nI tell you the truth whether you hear or forbear: as preachers and\nteachers many of you are doing too much for the Lord. You are busy,\nmorning, noon and night in His name, running here and there,\ntinkering religiously and morally, putting things together and\nincreasingly active; so busy doing for the Lord that like Martha you\nhave no time to sit still at His feet as did Mary and hear His Word,\nhear what He has to say to you; so busy doing for Him that you are\nlosing sight of Himself. This was the \"somewhat\" He had against the\nEphesian Church.\n\nThat Church was full of works and labours. They had tested false\ndoctrines and false teachers. They stood squarely for fundamentals\nand were theologically sound; but they had left their \"first love,\"\nlove to Himself, love to His person, devotion to His person, a\nflaming, outbreaking, overflowing enthusiasm for a personal, a\nrealistic Saviour and Lord. They were taken up with what they were\ndoing for Him rather than with Himself. They had got away from the\nloving, impelling touch and contact with Himself.\n\nThe personal touch with Christ!\n\nThat is what He wants from us. Not so much what we are doing for\nHim, but what He is to us personally. He wants to be the first and\nthe last, the chiefest among ten thousands and the one altogether\nlovely. This is the definition of true and efficient Christianity\n--personal devotion to a living and loving Saviour.\n\nLooking down from heaven He is saying to us, no matter how much we\nmay be doing for Him, He is saying this to us:\n\n\"Love me more.\"\n\nAnd until there is this flaming, burning, out-flowing enthusiasm for\nand devotion to a personal Lord, to Him for what He is as well as\nfor what He has done for us, there can be no sweeping, wide,\nresultant revival and ingathering of the elect of God. You may plan\nand organize and get together, you will have only a flame that will\nflare for a time and then go out.\n\nNay! only when we are on fire for Him can we make the hearts of men\nto burn with the faith that shall turn them to Him and make them\nhate and forsake whatever does not honour and glorify Him.\n\nOver all the noise and rush of things, and all the machinery well\nmotived men sometimes set going in His name He is saying:\n\n\"Love me more! love me more!\"\n\nWhen some one you love with this intense personal love is absent you\nare not satisfied till that absent one returns, fills your vision\nand responds to the touch of your greeting and your love.\n\nIf you love the very person of the Son of God; if you have a\nquivering, all-pervading enthusiasm for Him so that He is, indeed,\nabove all personalities in the universe to you, you will want Him to\nreturn where you may look upon Him--not as Thomas did for doubt's\nsake and stumbling hope's sake--but for the very joy of it until the\nprint of the nails in His hand and the print of the nails in His\nfeet shall be to you as the apocalypse of His glory and the\nillumination of your soul.\n\nDo you really want Him to come--this long absent Redeemer and Lord?\n\nHe is listening to hear whether you want Him to come; whether above\nevery plan and scheme you may have been building in His name; above\nany religious, even spiritual ambition you may have, you want Him to\ncome for--Himself.\n\nHe is very still. He is listening to hear whether you will say that\none little word that has in it such vibrant meaning, that one word:\n\n\"Come.\"\n\nThe Church as a Church has long ago ceased to say--\"Come.\"\n\nBut the old prayer is still written here in the closing page of Holy\nScripture:\n\n\"Amen. Even so, Come, Lord Jesus.\"\n\nAre you willing to-night to put your faith and your heart into that\nold prayer and bid Him come?\n\nHave you the faith and sincerity to do it?\n\nYou say, \"Yes.\"\n\nThen rise to your feet as one person and say that prayer as I line\nit out to you until it shall roll upward like a wave on the infinite\nshore and break on our Lord's listening ears with the music of\nlove's unfailing appeal:\n\n\"AMEN. EVEN SO, COME, LORD JESUS.\"\n\n\n\nIn response to Dr. Haldeman the great audience filling the building\nfrom pit to dome rose to its feet as in a flash and repeated the\nprayer as he gave it out. It was a moving sight and full of\nimpression as the mighty volume of united voices rose and swelled\nupward to that throne where our Lord sits as Bridegroom as well as\nKing and yearns in these days to hear His true Bride in all the\nwonder of her spiritual beauty and the strength of her essential\nunity say--\"Come.\"\n\n\n\n_Printed in the United States of America_","title":"Why I Preach the Second Coming","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":29821}