A recent survey of American Protestant clergymen by CHRISTIANITY TODAY showed, in representative sampling interviews, the following results: 93 per cent of the fundamentalists, and 76 per cent of the conservatives, maintain that the doctrine of the Second Coming of Christ is essential and should be preached; 26 per cent of the neoorthodox ministers consider the doctrine essential; and only 30 per cent of the liberal clergymen held that it should be preached. All in all 26 per cent of the clergymen interviewed did not think that the doctrine of the Second Advent of Christ was essential to their teaching or preaching. When a convocation of church delegates from around the world met in Evanston, Illinois, a few years ago, Life magazine reported that only 10 per cent of the American Protestant clergymen questioned found any significance in the doctrine of the Second Advent.
We once interviewed a minister who had gained some reputation as an authority on the Second Advent of Christ. He recalled that for ten years he hadn’t preached on that theme from his pulpit. He had heard too many preachers who knew more about Antichrist than they did about Jesus Christ, who knew more about “the great tribulation” than they did about regeneration. Some premillennialists caused him to lean toward postmillennialism; some post’s made him favor the pre’s! Finally he became something of a “panmillennialist”—everything would “pan out” all right when God was through in history! But, forced to face the fact of his cowardly position, during the years when he eschewed eschatology in his pulpit he engaged in a serious study of the subject, discovering that a vast body of Scripture spoke definitely of the Second Advent of the Lord.
“If the Scriptures say anything at all with clearcut, ringing force,” said the clergyman, “they say that Christ will one time return to the earth that crucified him. To efficiently complete man’s redemption he must invade history again as certainly as he invaded it once. Once the far left-wingers tried to make out that the disciples put in Jesus’ mouth those things which he himself speaks about his own return. But lately we don’t hear so much about that. To those who accept as authentic the sayings reported to Jesus in the Gospels the promise is clear—‘and then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory’ (Luke 21:27) and ‘For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be’ (Matt. 24:27).”
Jesus And His Disciples
The Gospel of Matthew gives a vivid account of the disciples putting a plain question to Jesus; what was to be the sign of his coming, and of the end of the world (Matt. 24:3)? Jesus might have answered this question with one of the enigmatic statements he was capable of; but he replied to it with sincerity and simplicity. Perhaps, after all, he felt that his followers were justifiably interested in such a vast subject! Why should he be unwilling to offer information on it?
So Jesus answered them. As far as we can discover he gave a more extended reply to this question than to any other the disciples asked him. The reply has many points. Many things will happen in connection with his coming. People will be misled by false teachers. There will be fraudulent christs. Wars will come, and rumors of wars. Nations shall attack nations; famines and earthquakes will take their toll. Christians will be persecuted. The hatred of nations will fall on believers. Faith will dwindle. Perfidious prophets will arise. Wickedness will spread to worldwide proportions. Some strange “abomination of desolation,” predicted by the prophet Daniel, will occur. A vast tribulation will shake the earth, worse than any before it, worse than any to come after it. There will be some sort of solar disturbance. The sign of the Son of man will appear in the heavens. A trumpet will sound. Angels will appear and gather God’s chosen ones from the four winds. Men will be as oblivious of the approaching doom as men in Noah’s day were unaware of the coming flood.
An article in Redbook magazine (August 1961) asserted that only one per cent of the ministerial students interviewed in several well-known American seminaries are convinced there will be a second coming of Christ. Although these young seminarians do not find the return of Christ a paramount theme, Jesus, when questioned about it by his followers, gave them an impressive sermon on it. To be sure it has been argued that Jesus was talking about the collapse of Israel and the fall of Jerusalem rather than the end of the world; but it is difficult for some of us to understand how this was the “end” to which he referred—seeing as how the Gospel was to be “preached in all the world, for a witness unto all nations” before that “end” came (Matt. 24:21)!
Consider also Jesus’ words: “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved.…” Obviously such a global cataclysm could not be comprehended in the destruction of one ancient city! Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki saw tribulation as great, if not greater, than Jerusalem when it fell to Rome. Indeed, confronted by this mind-staggering picture which Jesus drew in response to his disciples’ query regarding his Second Coming we seem forced to decide that he was wrong about the whole thing—or else what he predicted is yet future.
Modern Man’S Unbelief
Naturally Christ’s reappearance seems an absurd idea to many in this age of automation. But is the idea more irrational to science than the doctrine of justification by faith to the mind of the philosopher? What could be more irrational than the idea of a holy God loving unholy men, and his justifying the ungodly? Is this not unreasonable in the light of human wisdom? It disturbs our system of a moral accounting; it jars our neat plan for punishing the guilty and rewarding the just. Is it not, in the hard light of “reality,” something of a theologian’s dream? Even the Bible scribes had to admit that it was “marvelous”; but it was the Lord’s doing! Even so shall the completion of our redemption, at the coming of Christ, be the Lord’s doing.
When we asked one minister what he thought of the Second Coming of Christ he said, “Such a phenomenon, making God a mighty Magician, is fit only for dreamers!” Still, God might have appeared as something of a cosmic Thaumaturgist had we been on hand to witness Creation! And the resurrection of Christ from the tomb may seem rather “magical” if we try to encompass it with test tubes and slide rules.
One man, after hearing a sermon on Christ’s second advent, cried, “Only a child could believe that God would indulge in such fantastic goings-on!” But it was Jesus who said that unless a man be converted and become as a little child he could not come to realize God’s kingdom. God’s “fantastic goings-on” have never been too easy for the dedicated earthling to accept! “Father, Lord of heaven and earth,” Jesus once prayed, “… thou has hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes” (Matt. 11:25).
The doctrine of Christ’s return is not, of course, for those who put the ideas of the naturalists above the Word of God. It is only for those who are yet naive enough to believe the Scriptures, which Jesus said could not be broken. And it is interesting to observe that these same unbreakable Scriptures predict that men generally will not believe in the Lord’s return. “… there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation” (2 Pet. 3:3–4).
Still, a considerable host of men, even in this day when the SAC-eagles roar and our rockets are tilted at the stars, with the necessary theological naïvete, agree with the staggering unsophistication of the Scriptures: “… unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time” (Heb. 9:28).
They believe, with Jesus, that the Scriptures cannot be broken, and that he will come again as certainly as he came the first time. The Scriptures were right about him once; they will be right about him once more. He came the first time in humiliation; he will come again in exaltation. Once he had not where to lay his head; the next time he will have crowns to give his own. He came once and was judged by men; he shall come again and be the judge of men.
There was a Babe in Bethlehem; a Teacher on the mount; a Saviour on a Cross; a Lord triumphant over the tomb. There shall be a King on the eternal Throne. Multitudes are looking, as multitudes have always looked, for the King’s appearance. They wait for him, unshaken by communism, unstaggered by pragmatism or existentialism, undaunted by Bultmannism. Two hundred decades of time away from the closing cry of the Church’s mighty Book, believers take it up still—“Even so, come, Lord, Jesus!”
At the Tomb
Why do you look among the dead
for him? Whom death cannot destroy
you seek in vain where mourners tread;
why do you look among the dead?
The tomb is bare, the guards are fled,
and earth has lost despair to joy.
Why do you look among the dead
for him whom death cannot destroy?
TERENCE Y. MULLINS
