Rom. 8:10-23—“in hope that the creation also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God ... waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body”; Rev. 21:5—“Behold, I make all things new.” A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 49—“We must not confound the Paraclete and the Parousia. It has been argued that, because Christ came in the person of the Spirit, the Redeemer's advent in glory has already taken place. But in the Paraclete Christ comes spiritually and invisibly; in the Parousia he comes bodily and gloriously.”

Acts 1:11—“this Jesus, who was received up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye beheld him going into heaven”; cf. Acts 7:28—“wouldest thou kill me, as ?? t??p?? thou killedst the Egyptian yesterday?” Mat. 23:37—“how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as ?? t??p?? a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings”; 2 Tim. 3:8—“as ?? t??p?? Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also withstand the truth.” Lyman Abbott refers to Mat. 23:37, and Luke 13:35, as showing that, in Acts 1:11, “in like manner” means only “in like reality.” So, he says, the Jews expected Elijah to return in form, according to Mal. 4:5, whereas he returned only in spirit. Jesus similarly returned at Pentecost in spirit, and has been coming again ever since. The remark of Dr. Hackett, quoted in the text above, is sufficient proof that this interpretation is wholly unexegetical.

1 Thess. 4:16—“For the Lord himself [= in his own person] shall descend from heaven, with a shout[something heard], with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God”—see Com. of Prof. W. A. Stevens: “So different from Luke 17:20, where ‘the kingdom of God cometh not with observation.’The ‘shout’ is not necessarily the voice of Christ himself (lit. ‘in a shout,’ or ‘in shouting’). ‘Voice of the archangel’ and ‘trump of God’ are appositional, not additional.” Rev. 1:7—“every eye shall see him”; as every ear shall hear him: John 5:28, 29—“all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice”; 2 Thess. 2:2—“to the end that ye be not quickly shaken from your mind, nor yet be troubled ... as that the day of the Lord is now present”—they may have “thought that the first gathering of the saints to Christ was a quiet, invisible one—a stealthy advent, like a thief in the night”(Lillie). 2 John 7—“For many deceivers are gone forth into the world, even they that confess not that Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh”—here denial of a future second coming of Christ is declared to be the mark of a deceiver.

Alford and Alexander, in their Commentaries on Acts 1:11, agree with the view of Hackett quoted above. Warren, Parousia, 61-65, 106-114, controverts this view and says that “an omnipresent divine being can come, only in the sense of manifestation.” He regards the parousia, or coming of Christ, as nothing but Christ's spiritual presence. A writer in the Presb. Review, 1883:221, replies that Warren's view is contradicted “by the fact that the apostles often spoke of the parousia as an event yet future, long after the promise of the Redeemer's spiritual presence with his church had begun to be fulfilled, and by the fact that Paul expressly cautions the Thessalonians against the belief that the parousia was just at hand.” We do not know how all men at one time can see a bodily Christ; but we also do not know the nature of Christ's body. The day exists undivided in many places at the same time. The telephone has made it possible for men widely separated to hear the same voice,—it is equally possible that all men may see the same Christ coming in the clouds.

1 Cor. 15:51—“We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed”; 1 Thess. 4:17—“then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord”; 2 Tim. 4:8—“henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day: and not only to me, but also to all them that have loved his appearing”; James [pg 1006]5:7—“Be patient therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord”; 1 Pet. 4:7—“But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore of sound mind, and be sober unto prayer”; 1 John 2:18—“Little children, it is the last hour: and as ye heard that antichrist cometh, even now have there risen many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last hour.”

Phil. 4:5—“The Lord is at hand (?????). In nothing be anxious”—may mean “the Lord is near”(in space), without any reference to the second coming. The passages quoted above, expressing as they do the surmises of the apostles that Christ's coming was near, while yet abstaining from all definite fixing of the time, are at least sufficient proof that Christ's advent may not be near to our time. We should be no more warranted than they were, in inferring from these passages alone the immediate coming of the Lord.

Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:349-350, maintains that Jesus expected his own speedy second coming and the end of the world. There was no mention of the death of his disciples, or the importance of readiness for it. No hard and fast organization of his disciples into a church was contemplated by him,—Mat. 16:18 and 18:17 are not authentic. No separation of his disciples from the fellowship of the Jewish religion was thought of. He thought of the destruction of Jerusalem as the final judgment. Yet his doctrine would spread through the earth, like leaven and mustard seed, though accompanied by suffering on the part of his disciples. This view of Wendt can be maintained only by an arbitrary throwing out of the testimony of the evangelist, upon the ground that Jesus' mention of a church does not befit so early a stage in the evolution of Christianity. Wendt's whole treatment is vitiated by the presupposition that there can be nothing in Jesus' words which is inexplicable upon the theory of natural development. That Jesus did not expect speedily to return to earth is shown in Mat. 25:19—“After a long time the Lord of those servants cometh”; and Paul, in 2 Thess., had to correct the mistake of those who interpreted him as having in his first Epistle declared an immediate coming of the Lord.

A. H. Strong, Cleveland Sermon, 1904:27—“The faith in a second coming of Christ has lost its hold upon many Christians in our day. But it still serves to stimulate and admonish the great body, and we can never dispense with its solemn and mighty influence. Christ comes, it is true, in Pentecostal revivals and in destructions of Jerusalem, in Reformation movements and in political upheavals. But these are only precursors of another and literal and final return of Christ, to punish the wicked and to complete the salvation of his people. That day for which all other days are made will be a joyful day for those who have fought a good fight and have kept the faith. Let us look for and hasten the coming of the day of God. The Jacobites of Scotland never ceased their labors and sacrifices for their king's return. They never tasted wine, without pledging their absent prince; they never joined in song, without renewing their oaths of allegiance. In many a prison cell and on many a battlefield they rang out the strain: ‘Follow thee, follow thee, wha wadna follow thee? Long hast thou lo'ed and trusted us fairly: Chairlie, Chairlie, wha wadna follow thee? King o' the Highland hearts, bonnie Prince Chairlie!’ So they sang, so they invited him, until at last he came. But that longing for the day when Charles should come to his own again was faint and weak compared with the longing of true Christian hearts for the coming of their King. Charles came, only to suffer defeat, and to bring shame to his country. But Christ will come, to put an end to the world's long sorrow, to give triumph to the cause of truth, to bestow everlasting reward upon the faithful. ‘Even so, Lord Jesus, come! Hope of all our hopes the sum, Take thy waiting people home! Long, so long, the groaning earth, Cursed with war and flood and dearth, Sighs for its redemption birth. Therefore come, we daily pray; Bring the resurrection-day; Wipe creation's curse away!’ ”

Mat. 24:36—“But of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but the Father only”; Mark 13:32—“But of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is”; Acts 1:7—“And he said unto them, It is not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father hath set within his own authority”; 1 Cor. 10:11—“Now these things happened unto them by way of example; and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come”; 16:22—“Marana tha [marg.: that is, O Lord, come!]”; 2 Thess. 2:1-3—“Now we beseech you, brethren, touching the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto him; to the end that ye be not quickly shaken from your mind, nor yet be troubled ... as that the day of the Lord is now present [Am. Rev.: [pg 1007] ‘is just at hand’]; let no man beguile you in any wise: for it will not be, except the falling away come first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.”

James 5:8, 9—“Be ye also patient; establish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Murmur not, brethren, one against another, that ye be not judged: behold, the judge standeth before the doors”; 2 Pet. 3:3-12—“in the last days mockers shall come ... saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for, from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they wilfully forget, that there were heavens from of old.... But forget not this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise.... But the day of the Lord will come as a thief ... what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness, looking for and earnestly desiring [marg.: ‘hastening’] the coming of the day of God”—awaiting it, and hastening its coming by your prayer and labor.

Rev. 1:3—“Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of the prophecy, and keep the things that are written therein: for the time is at hand”: 22:12, 20—“Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to render to each man according as his work is.... He who testifieth these things saith, Yea: I come quickly. Amen: come, Lord Jesus.” From these passages it is evident that the apostles did not know the time of the end, and that it was hidden from Christ himself while here in the flesh. He, therefore, who assumes to know, assumes to know more than Christ or his apostles—assumes to know the very thing which Christ declared it was not for us to know!

Gould, Bib. Theol. N.T., 152—“The expectation of our Lord's coming was one of the elements and motifs of that generation, and the delay of the event caused some questioning. But there is never any indication that it may be indefinitely postponed. The early church never had to face the difficulty forced upon the church to-day, of belief in his second coming, founded upon a prophecy of his coming during the lifetime of a generation long since dead. And until this Epistle [2 Peter], we do not find any traces of this exegetical legerdemain as such a situation would require. But here we have it full-grown; just such a specimen of harmonistic device as orthodox interpretation familiarizes us with. The definite statement that the advent is to be within that generation is met with the general principle that ‘one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day’ (2 Pet. 3:8).” We must regard this comment of Dr. Gould as an unconscious fulfilment of the prediction that “in the last days mockers shall come with mockery” (2 Pet. 3:3). A better understanding of prophecy, as divinely pregnant utterance, would have enabled the critic to believe that the words of Christ might be partially fulfilled in the days of the apostles, but fully accomplished only at the end of the world.

Gen. 4:1—“And the man knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man with the help of Jehovah [lit.: ‘I have gotten a man, even Jehovah’]”—an intimation that Eve fancied her first-born to be already the promised seed, the coming deliverer; see MacWhorter, Jahveh Christ. Deut. 18:15—“Jehovah thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken”—here is a prophecy which Moses may have expected to be fulfilled in Joshua, but which God designed to be fulfilled only in Christ. Is. 7:14, 16—“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.... For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land whose two kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken”—a prophecy which the prophet may have expected to be fulfilled in his own time, and which was partly so fulfilled, but which God intended to be fulfilled ages thereafter.

Luke 2:25—“Simeon; and this man was righteous and devout, looking for the consolation of Israel”—Simeon was the type of holy men, in every age of Jewish history, who were waiting for the fulfilment of God's promise, and for the coming of the deliverer. So under the Christian dispensation. Augustine held that Christ's reign of a thousand years, which occupies the last epoch of the world's history, did not still lie in the future, but began with the [pg 1008]founding of the church (Ritschl, Just. and Reconc., 286). Luther, near the time of his death, said: “God forbid that the world should last fifty years longer! Let him cut matters short with his last judgment!” Melanchthon put the end less than two hundred years from his time. Calvin's motto was: “Domine, quousque?”—“O Lord, how long?” Jonathan Edwards, before and during the great Awakening, indulged high expectations as to the probable extension of the movement until it should bring the world, even in his own lifetime, into the love and obedience of Christ (Life, by Allen, 234). Better than any one of these is the utterance of Dr. Broadus: “If I am always ready, I shall be ready when Jesus comes.” On the whole subject, see Hovey, in Baptist Quarterly, Oct. 1877:416-432; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:641-646; Stevens, in Am. Com. on Thessalonians, Excursus on The Parousia, and notes on 1 Thess. 4:13, 16; 5:11; 2 Thess. 2:3, 12; Goodspeed, Messiah's Second Advent; Heagle, That Blessed Hope.

Dan. 2:44, 45—“And in the days of those kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall the sovereignty thereof be left to another people; but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.”

Mat. 13:31, 32—“The kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard seed ... which indeed is less than all seeds; but when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of heaven come and lodge in the branches thereof”—the parable of the leaven, which follows, apparently illustrates the intensive, as that of the mustard seed illustrates the extensive, development of the kingdom of God; and it is as impossible to confine the reference of the leaven to the spread of evil as it is impossible to confine the reference of the mustard seed to the spread of good.

Mat. 24:14—“And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations; and then shall the end come”; Rom. 11:25, 26—“a hardening in part hath befallen Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in; and so all Israel shall be saved”; Rev. 20:4-6—“And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God, and such as worshipped not the beast, neither his image, and received not the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand; and they lived, and reigned with Christ a thousand years.”

Col. 1:23—“the gospel which ye heard, which was preached in all creation under heaven”—Paul's phrase here and the apparent reference in Mat. 24:14 to A. D. 70 as the time of the end, should restrain theorizers from insisting that the second coming of Christ cannot occur until this text has been fulfilled with literal completeness (Broadus).

Mat. 13:30, 38—“Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather up first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn ... the field is the world; and the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one”; 24:5, 11, 12, 24—“For many shall come in my name, saying, I am the Christ; and shall lead many astray.... And many false prophets shall arise, and shall lead many astray. And because iniquity shall be multiplied, the love of the many shall wax cold.... For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.”

Luke 21:12—“But before all these things, they shall lay their hands on you, and shall persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, bringing you before kings and governors for my name's sake”; 2 Thess. 2:3, 4, 7, 8,—“it will not be, except the falling away come first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, he that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God or that is worshipped; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God.... For the mystery of lawlessness doth already work: only there is one that restraineth [pg 1009]now, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall be revealed the lawless one, whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the breath of his mouth, and bring to nought by the manifestation of his coming.”

Elliott, HorÆ ApocalypticÆ, 1:65, holds that “Antichrist means another Christ, a pro-Christ, a vice-Christ, a pretender to the name of Christ, and in that character, an usurper and adversary. The principle of Antichrist was already sown in the time of Paul. But a certain hindrance, i. e., the Roman Empire as then constituted, needed first to be removed out of the way, before room could be made for Antichrist's development.”Antichrist, according to this view, is the hierarchical spirit, which found its final and most complete expression in the Papacy. Dante, Hell, 19:106-117, speaks of the Papacy, or rather the temporal power of the Popes, as Antichrist: “To you St. John referred, O shepherds vile, When she who sits on many waters, had Been seen with kings her person to defile”; see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 507.

It has been objected that a simultaneous growth both of evil and of good is inconceivable, and that the progress of the divine kingdom implies a diminution in the power of the adversary. Only a slight reflection however convinces us that, as the population of the world is always increasing, evil men may increase in numbers, even though there is increase in the numbers of the good. But we must also consider that evil grows in intensity just in proportion to the light which good throws upon it. “Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The devil always builds a chapel there.”Every revival of religion stirs up the forces of wickedness to opposition. As Christ's first advent occasioned an unusual outburst of demoniac malignity, so Christ's second advent will be resisted by a final desperate effort of the evil one to overcome the forces of good. The great awakening in New England under Jonathan Edwards caused on the one hand a most remarkable increase in the number of Baptist believers, but also on the other hand the rise of modern Unitarianism. The optimistic Presbyterian pastor at Auburn argued with the pessimistic chaplain of the State's Prison that the world was certainly growing better, because his congregation was increasing; whereupon the chaplain replied that his own congregation was increasing also.

Mat. 24:29, 30—“But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven”; Luke 21:8-28—false prophets; wars and tumults; earthquakes; pestilences; persecutions; signs in the sun, moon, and stars; “And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these things begin to come to pass, look up, and lift up your heads; because your redemption draweth nigh.”

Interpretations of the book of Revelation are divided into three classes: (1) the PrÆterist (held by Grotius, Moses Stuart, and Warren), which regards the prophecy as mainly fulfilled in the age immediately succeeding the time of the apostles (666 = Neron Kaisar); (2) the Continuous (held by Isaac Newton, Vitringa, Bengel, Elliott, Kelly, and Cumming), which regards the whole as a continuous prophetical history, extending from the first age until the end of all things (666 = Lateinos); Hengstenberg and Alford hold substantially this view, though they regard the seven seals, trumpets, and vials as synchronological, each succeeding set going over the same ground and exhibiting it in some special aspect; (3) the Futurist (held by Maitland and Todd), which considers the book as describing events yet to occur, during the times immediately preceding and following the coming of the Lord.

Of all these interpretations, the most learned and exhaustive is that of Elliott, in his four volumes entitled HorÆ ApocalypticÆ. The basis of his interpretation is the “time and times and half a time” of Dan. 7:25, which according to the year-day theory means 1260 years—the year, according to ancient reckoning, containing 360 days, and the “time”being therefore 360 years [360 + (2 X 360) + 180 = 1260]. This phrase we find recurring with regard to the woman nourished in the wilderness (Rev. 12:14). The blasphemy of the beast for forty and two months (Rev. 13:5) seems to refer to the same period [42 X 30 = 1260, as before]. The two witnesses prophecy 1260 days (Rev. 11:3); and the woman's time in the wilderness is stated (Rev. 12:6) as 1260 days. This period of 1260 years is regarded by Elliott as the time of the temporal power of the Papacy.

There is a twofold terminus a quo, and correspondingly a twofold terminus ad quem. The first commencement is A. D. 531, when in the edict of Justinian the dragon of the [pg 1010]Roman Empire gives its power to the beast of the Papacy, and resigns its throne to the rising Antichrist, giving opportunity for the rise of the ten horns as European kings (Rev. 13:1-3). The second commencement, adding the seventy-five supplementary years of Daniel 12:12 [1335 - 1260 = 75], is A. D. 606, when the Emperor Phocas acknowledges the primacy of Rome, and the ten horns, or kings, now diademed, submit to the Papacy (Rev. 17:12, 13). The first ending-point is A. D. 1791, when the French Revolution struck the first blow at the independence of the Pope [531 + 1260 = 1791]. The second ending-point is A. D. 1866, when the temporal power of the Pope was abolished at the unification of the kingdom of Italy [606 + 1260 = 1866]. Elliott regards the two-horned beast (Rev. 13:11) as representing the Papal Clergy, and the image of the beast (Rev. 13:14, 15) as representing the Papal Councils.

Unlike Hengstenberg and Alford, who consider the seals, trumpets, and vials as synchronological, Elliott makes the seven trumpets to be an unfolding of the seventh seal, and the seven vials to be an unfolding of the seventh trumpet. Like other advocates of the premillennial advent of Christ, Elliott regards the four chief signs of Christ's near approach as being: (1) the decay of the Turkish Empire (the drying up of the river Euphrates—Rev. 16:12); (2) the Pope's loss of temporal power (the destruction of Babylon—Rev. 17:19); (3) the conversion of the Jews and their return to their own land (Ez. 37; Rom. 11:12-15, 25-27—but on this last, see Meyer); (4) the pouring out of the Holy Spirit and the conversion of the Gentiles (the way of the kings of the East—Rev. 16:12; the fulness of the Gentiles—Rom. 11:25).

Elliott's whole scheme, however, is vitiated by the fact that he wrongly assumes the book of Revelation to have been written under Domitian (94 or 96), instead of under Nero (67 or 68). His terminus a quo is therefore incorrect, and his interpretation of chapters 5-9 is rendered very precarious. The year 1866, moreover, should have been the time of the end, and so the terminus ad quem seems to be clearly misunderstood—unless indeed the seventy-five supplementary years of Daniel are to be added to 1866. We regard the failure of this most ingenious scheme of Apocalyptic interpretation as a practical demonstration that a clear understanding of the meaning of prophecy is, before the event, impossible, and we are confirmed in this view by the utterly untenable nature of the theory of the millennium which is commonly held by so-called Second Adventists, a theory which we now proceed to examine.

A long preparation may be followed by a sudden consummation. Drilling the rock for the blast is a slow process; firing the charge takes but a moment. The woodwork of the Windsor Hotel in New York was in a charred and superheated state before the electric wires that threaded it wore out their insulation,—then a slight increase of voltage turned heat into flame. The Outlook, March 30, 1895—“An evolutionary conception of the Second Coming, as a progressive manifestation of the spiritual power and glory of Christ, may issue in a dÉnouement as unique as the first advent was which closed the preparatory ages.”

Joseph Cook, on A. J. Gordon: “There is a wide distinction between the flash-light theory and the burning-glass theory of missions. The latter was Dr. Gordon's view. When a burning-glass is held over inflammable material, the concentrated rays of the sun rapidly produce in it discoloration, smoke, and sparks. At a certain instant, after the sparks have been sufficiently diffused, the whole material suddenly bursts into flame. There is then no longer any need of the burning-glass, for fire has itself fallen from on high and is able to do its own work. So the world is to be regarded as inflammable material to be set on fire from on high. Our Lord's life on earth is a burning-glass, concentrating rays of light and heat upon the souls of men. When the heating has gone on far enough, and the sparks of incipient conflagration have been sufficiently diffused, suddenly spiritual flame will burst up everywhere and will fill the earth. This is the second advent of him who kindled humanity to new life by his first advent. As I understand the premillenarian view of history, the date when the sparks shall kindle into flame is not known, but it is known that the duty of the church is to spread the sparks and to expect at any instant, after their wide diffusion, the victorious descent of millennial flame, that is, the beginning of our Lord's personal and visible reign over the whole earth.” See article on Millenarianism, by G. P. Fisher, in McClintock and Strong's CyclopÆdia; also by Semisch, in Schaff-Herzog, CyclopÆdia; cf. Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 1:840.