A brief sketch of the prophetic Scriptures.
THOSE who are looking for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ are Christians, who know that He has been here and was crucified upon the Cross of Calvary for our sins; that He rose again from among the dead and has ascended into Heaven, where He now lives, the glorified Man, Christ Jesus, who is, and ever was and ever will be, “over all, GOD blessed forever.”
If He had never come as a Man into this world and accomplished the mighty work of redemption, we should have no Saviour today and still be in our sins, without hope and without God in the world. How much therefore we have to thank Him for.
When Satan caused our first parents, Adam and Eve, to sin (Gen. 3) God, in His love, came seeking them, but they, in their guilt, tried to hide themselves away, from God. Sin and the knowledge of our guilt always make us fear God. But God called them forth, and then they heard Him tell Satan that ONE—the Seed of the woman—was coming who would defeat him, though it would be through suffering.
After that, God made known, in His ways and His words, who that wonderful Person who was coming, would be. What He would do and also the blessing that would result to all men and the whole creation through Him. This is told to us in the various parts of the Old Testament.
But from Genesis onwards—from the moment sin came into the world—men and women who were taught of God, looked for the coming of Him who would be Emmanuel (God with us). They could not, however, understand what was the meaning of the sorrows that this great Person was to suffer, and that the glory which was to be His, followed after His sufferings (1 Peter 1:1111Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. (1 Peter 1:11)). God taught His people that this glorious Man was to be His Anointed, the “CHRIST.”
Centuries went by and even the people, whom God had called and blessed and to whom He had revealed His mind, forgot Him and got away from Him so that He had to deal with them in judgment and send them into captivity to their enemies, taking their kingdom from them and giving it to the Gentile power which eventually became the Roman Empire.
Except for one or two here and there, the people had lapsed into indifference and empty formalism, and it was when the people were like that that the Lord Jesus came into this world. A little Babe, born of a virgin, cradled in a stable outside an inn in Bethlehem. Before He came, He had sent His angel Gabriel to announce that He would be born of Mary and the Angel said to Joseph who was to, be the husband of Mary, “thou shalt call His Name JESUS, for He shall save His people from their sins.”
If He was to bless men, and have dominion from sea to sea, ruling in blessing throughout the vast universe of God, He must first destroy the power of Satan and, in doing so complete the mighty work of redemption for God, to His praise and glory. This meant for Him all the sorrows of His earthly life, and also all the bitter agony of the Cross of Calvary; especially those three hours of darkness when God laid upon Him all our iniquity. When, “He who knew no sin, was made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
What a joy it is to know Jesus as our Saviour; to be able to say, “He has saved me; I am His through His precious blood; and He lives for me now in Heaven at God’s right hand.”
Does it not make you long to see Him? Are you not glad to know that He is to have the glory? He already has it at the Father’s right hand; by faith “we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor.” Yet, in spite of changes on the surface of things the world of men and woman in which we live continues to go on very much the same as when He died, crucified by men.
Sin is so abominable in God’s sight that the Lord Jesus could not take any position amongst men except as revealing the heart of God to them; moving in and out amongst men in blessing, healing the sick, cleansing the leper, giving sight to the blind and making the dumb to speak and the deaf to hear; raising the dead. He was a stranger in this world, with no place where He could lay His head; despised and rejected of men —a Man of sorrows, making acquaintance with grief. (Isaiah 53). He could not take a place amongst the great in this world of sinners, and where Satan ruled. He came first as the Saviour of sinners—the Lamb of God that beareth away the sin of the world, and that is how we must first come to Him: as our Saviour and our Lord.
If we are His, those who have come to Him as sinners, needing a Saviour, then we know that we are amongst those who are precious to Him. He loves us as His Own and He has saved us in order that He might have us with Him eternally for the delight and joy of His own heart and to share His glory as the glorious Man Christ Jesus. All those who have believed on Him, since His death, resurrection and ascension, together form His Body, the Church, as we read, “Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it.” (Eph. 5:2525Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; (Ephesians 5:25)).
Now it is the purpose of God, that just as Eve shared with Adam all the glory that was his, as given to him by God, before the fall, so the Church is to share throughout all eternity, the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Heir of all things. But we can never enter into this while we are here on earth, because the inheritance of our Lord Jesus Christ is the whole universe of God and not only this earth. We also have a place with Him in the Father’s house, as He tells us in John 14:1-41Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. 2In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. 4And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. (John 14:1‑4). He went to prepare a place for us in the Father’s house, and we are waiting His coming to conduct us there. He Himself is coming for us, and the mode of His coming and our going are referred to in 1 Thessalonians 4:14-18,14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. 15For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. 16For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. 18Wherefore comfort one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4:14‑18) and also Philippians 3:20-2120For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: 21Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. (Philippians 3:20‑21).
This second coming of our Lord for His own has been the hope of Christians ever since the Lord Jesus went into Heaven, and it is today the daily expectation of all those who truly believe that He is coming, and are waiting and watching for Him in spirit.
He has given us no indication as to when He is coming, but in referring to it in Revelation 22. He says, “Behold I come quickly.” That is, His coming will be a very quick movement of His from Heaven and into the air to call us away. Evidently so far as the world is concerned, it will be a secret transaction; all they will know is that the Christians have disappeared, just like Enoch, who walked with God and God took Him, unknown to anybody. Also Elijah was taken up into Heaven and his going was only seen by Elisha, who received a double portion of Elijah’s spirit. Those of us who have by faith seen Jesus go up into Heaven, now have a double portion of His Spirit (we are indwelt by the Spirit of God), and we are the only people on earth who are in the secret of where the Lord Jesus is today.
So He is coming, and it may be today. What a wonderful effect it would have upon us if we really knew that today was to be our last day on earth; that at any moment we may see Jesus and be with Him where He is. We would not want to be found, by Him doing or allowing anything that we would be ashamed of at His coming.
Well, He is coming; coming FOR US because we are HIS, the purchase of His blood, and redeemed to God. We are loved with the same love as He is loved with, by the Father, and in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, HE IS COMING.
But after He has come for His Church, this world of men and women will continue to go on only it will go from bad to worse spiritually, although there may be great developments in the realm of science and men’s knowledge. But people will become more and more estranged from God and’ more under the dominion of Satan.
Some of God’s earthly people (Israel) will have a desire after God and they will be looking for their Messiah, Christ. They will understand, as they do not now, the meaning of the prophecies concerning Him; especially the prophecies of Daniel, Zechariah, and Isaiah, and they will be looking for Him who is to come. This coming of the Lord Jesus is usually referred to as “His Appearing,” and it is connected with His coming in majesty and power to take the Kingdom away from Satan, and man under Satan.
Evidently after the church has gone to be with Christ Satan is going to raise up two men of great power, along with the development in Europe again of the Romish System. One of these two great men will have his headquarters in Rome, and the other in Jerusalem, which will then have its temple rebuilt, and where the Jews will be driven and will have found a home again in Palestine.
These two wonderful men are going to bring about a condition of things in the world, which will be so perfectly according to the desires of fallen men that the Jews will think the. Millennium has come, and they will accept the great man in Jerusalem as their Messiah; but he is really Antichrist. After a short period they will be undeceived. First of all the great man in Rome takes all power out of the hand of the false system, the Romish Church, and says he and he alone is to be worshipped as God. The other great man in Jerusalem is of the same mind and in league with the political head in Rome, and he sets up in Jerusalem an image, to which he gives life and commands that everyone shall bow down and worship this image, under penalty of death.
This will be the period of the Jews’ “great tribulation” in which certain faithful ones, like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in Daniel’s time, will not bow down and worship, and they go right through this awful time, which is only ended by the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ with all His triumphant saints, to take His Kingdom and bring in the glorious millennial reign on this earth.
After His millennial reign, during which Satan is chained and evil is restricted, Satan is loosed again for a short period to show that the hearts of men are unchanged, for they flock to his standard and he dares to lead them against the. Lord and His hosts, only to be finally defeated, never to rise up again but to be condemned to the Lake of Fire eternally. Then the Lord Jesus brings in the glorious eternal day of blessing for all the children of men, and all creation. Then He will make the whole creation smile and hush its groan.
J. F. English.