Pastor David B. Curtis
Pastor David B. Curtis
The light, which the past Second Advent throws upon the problem of Future retribution has already been indicated. Other far-reaching consequences result, some which it now remains to suggest and enumerate.
Our relation to political and social movements - That which lies nearest to the heart of God our Father is the welfare and happiness of the masses of the people in this and every other country. The Almighty Himself is on their side against all selfish privilege and all unjust and iniquitous laws. It must be so, for He hates unrighteousness, and He sent His Son to be the Saviour not merely of a few individuals but of the. whole world. The poorest, the vilest, the most ignorant of our fellow-men are in very deed our brothers for whom Christ tasted the shame and the agony of death. And yet there are thousands of Christian people of undoubted sincerity and earnestness who deliberately and on principle hold aloof from all political and social movements. They declare that the condition of things on this earth is certain to go from bad to worse. It is quite useless, they assert, to attempt to make the world any better. All our hopes for humanity should be centred on a still future Second Advent! Christ Himself, they would have us believe, is coming ere long to take the supreme control into His own hands and establish an earthly Kingdom of God. And meantime, amid the awful sin and misery and oppression that are around us- while strong men and delicate women and innocent children agonize and die by the thousands beneath the crushing weight of evils which wise legislation and united Christian effort would do much to diminish or destroy-we, forsooth, may rightly sit with folded arms and upturned eyes awaiting His arrival! And this too notwithstanding the fact that according to the common belief His advent has already been postponed for nearly two thousand years, and therefore, for aught we know, may be postponed for two thousand years longer!
This religious quietism is founded on a huge blunder. The second coming of Christ on which so many false hopes have been based is now an event of the remote past. The belief that it is still future is equivalent to an unintentional denial of the truth of some of the plainest words He ever uttered. The sovereignty of the Lord Jesus and His saints was established over the earth more than 1800 years ago. He must continue to reign until God puts all His enemies under His feet (I Cor. xv. 25). God's Kingdom has come. [1] It is now our solemn duty and our most glorious privilege to claim our share in all political and social movements which have for their object the welfare of our brothers for whom Christ died. He wants to make use of us in diminishing and destroying the evils that abound in the world. Whatever of time or of money, of strength or of influence we may possess, it is for us to place it all at the absolute disposal of Jesus Christ, for the benefit of our fellow-men. Thus we shall become co-workers together with Him in causing the will of God to be done on earth even as it is done in heaven. Thus we shall hasten the day when He will surrender the Kingdom to God even the Father-and God shall be All In All (I Cor. xv. 24).
The gain to the cause of Christ, and of humanity would be enormous if the religious earnestness of all Ills followers were to run in earthly and mundane channels.
The early date of the New Testament - In the fact of the past, second advent we have a sure proof of the genuineness and early date of the books of the New Testament. It is generally admitted that after the destruction of Jerusalem belief in the immediateness of'Christ's return to the earth began to grow obsolete. It is at least certain that the many varied statements to be found in the gospels and epistles predicting that His return would. take place within the lifetime of His contemporaries have been persistently ignored by the church from that time to the present. These predictions run absolutely counter to the beliefs on the subject that have prevailed ever since the destruction of Jerusalem Therefore they cannot have been the invention of a later age. And if the predictions are genuine and authentic the books in which they are contained must be genuine and authentic too.
The divinity of Jesus - A conviction of Christ's divine nature and a belief in His past second advent confirm and strengthen each other. If, to begin with, we believe that He was in an absolutely unique sense the Son of God, this leads to supreme confidence in His words whether or not they are supported by human testimony after the event. To all who accept His divine -authority His predictions are merely history anticipated! To such Christian believers no event of the past is more sure than the fact that the Lord Jesus personally and visibly returned to the earth at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. He Himself promised to do so, and in spite of the silence of history they know that He must have kept His word!
On the other hand, to begin with, we may be sceptical as to Christ's divinity. Yet, even then, the known fulfilment of so many of His predictions establishes His supernatural foreknowledge, and becomes a reasonable guarantee for the fulfilment of the whole. We know from Josephus and others that thirty years beforehand Jesus was able to predict many of the events. which preceded and accompanied the destruction of Jerusalem.
Therefore He cannot have been mistaken when He solemnly went on to declare that at the end He Himself would be personally present and actually seen. This conviction is likely to be followed by faith in His divine nature. To anyone who believes in the past Second Advent, Christ will no longer be a mere man, however beautiful His character and however sublime His teaching God Himself judges no man but has committed all judgment unto the Son, that all may honour the Son even as they honour the Father (John v. 23).
"Where are we now ?" - It is at once evident that the past Second Advent vastly changes the aspect of the New Testament. Most of the predictions uttered by Jesus and His apostles have already been fully and exhaustively realised. This at first sight may appear very perplexing Yet, unfamiliar and unwelcome though the truth may prove, the fact must be faced that to us the latter half of the Bible is mainly a record of what is now the past-a portion thereof having been given in the form of predictions before the event. It does not on that account lose its value and significance for its. The Scriptures as a whole have simply to be viewed, more emphatically than ever, as having originally been a Jewish book. They contain, among other things, a complete history of God's dealings with His chosen people from the call of Abraham down to their destruction as a settled nation. They exhibit to every succeeding generation the awful consequences of rejecting the Divinely-appointed Saviour, and the unspeakable blessedness of those who truly love and obey Him. Truly saintly and consecrated believers of the apostolic age formed the church of the first- born. Of His own will He brought them forth that they should be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures (James i.18). By His kindness in Christ Jesus to the Church of the first-born, God has made manifest to all succeeding ages the exceeding riches of His grace (Ephes. ii. 7). [2]
It is true that our curiosity as to the details of the future is ungratified. Some may impatiently enquire-" Then what have we left? " The reply is that we still know sufficient for our salvation, and have within our reach all the resources we need for living a useful and Christlike life, and dying a peaceful and triumphant death. Upon our acceptance there is pressed the unspeakable privilege of belonging to the Church of the later-born. By laying hold of the almighty grace of God, we may grow so faithful to duty and so Christlike in character that for us there shall be no real death and no judgement This is so because the man who is made thus truly and vitally one with the Redeemer comes not into judgement, but already has passed out of death into life, (John v. 24), Otherwise we shall have our place in the world-wide resurrection and world-wide judgement of which we have definite announcements in John v. 29 and Rev. xx. 11. [3]
(1) The expression "a better resurrection" (Heb. xi. 35) is very noteworthy. The ancient Jews believed that man exists in three or four successive places or conditions. (1) EARTH. (2) HADES, or the intermediate state, which has PARADISE as one of its departments. (3) The final states of Heaven for the good, and Gehenna for the bad. The Lord Jesus Christ has proved to us the truth of this Jewish belief by Himself adopting and teaching it. To pass from one of these places or conditions may simply mean to rise to life in another! Hence there are probably six kinds of resurrection. (1) From earth to Hades - It was in this sense that Christ proved the resurrection when arguing with the Sadducees (Matt. xxii. 31 ; Mark xii. 26; Luke xx. 37). Jehovah was still the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Therefore these men were still alive in the intermediate state. (2) From Hades to earth. The following instances of resurrection are of this sort the two young men raised to life by Elijah and Elisha (1 Kings xvii. 22 2 Kings iv. 34), the man whose dead body touched the bones of the prophet (2 Kings xiii. 21), the ruler's daughter (Matt. ix. 25), the widow's son at Nain (Luke vii 15), Lazarus (John xi. 44), Dorcas (Acts ix. 40) and Eutychus (Acts xx. 12). (3) From Hades, or Paradise, to heaven. In the New Testament this is, distinguished by the name of the First resurrection (Rev. xx. 5). Saints of the highest rank who had previously left the earth and had remained in Paradise (the outer court or garden of heaven) until the coming of the Kingdom of God in 70 A.D. passed with Christ at the second advent through the veil into the most holy place- the innermost sanctuary of heaven itself. This was the resurrection from among the dead which the. apostle Paul passionately desired to share in (Phil. iii. 11). It had been expressly predicted by Christ in John v. 25. (4) From Daniel xii. 2 ("Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and to shame and everlasting contempt ") it is probable that a resurrection of the wicked also took place at the second advent; and that some men who had previously passed from earth to Hades, having proved themselves utterly and therefore irrecoverably bad, now passed from Hades to Gehenna into the fire prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt. xxv. 41), and were completely destroyed, (5) From the time of the second advent onwards truly saintly and approximately Christlike believers enjoy a special privilege. For them the intermediate state has been abolished. In their case, resurrection means passing immediately at death from earth to heaven itself. (6) It is an awful thought that even in this brief mortal life some men may prove themselves utterly and therefore irrecoverably bad. If there be such, it is possible that their final judgment follows at once the death of their bodies, and that they pass without further delay from earth to Gehenna.
We have revealed to Us An Unchangeable God; And An Unchangeable Saviour (the Ruler and the Judge of men). Unchangeable Principles of Right and Wrong are also laid down in the New Testament which we shall find it blessed to observe, and shall neglect at our deadly peril.
"Is God the God of Jews only ? Is He not the God of Gentiles also ? Yea of Gentiles also ; if so be that God is one, and He shall justify the circunicision by faith, and the uncircuincision through faith " (Rom. iii. 29-30). " A righteousness of God hath been manifested-- even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus unto all that believe ; for there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short, of the glory of God " (Rom. iii. 21, 22). 94 "For the Scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on Him Shall not be put to shame, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek (ie., Gentile) ; for the same Lord is Lord of all and is rich unto all that call upon Him, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved " (Rom. x. 11-13).
A child does not need to be informed what his parents will do to-morrow. he only needs to he able to trust them. A servant does not need to be infornied what his master will do to-niorrow. He only needs to know that his master is a good man and one who can be trusted. And the supreme need of humanity is not to be informed of the details of the future, but to be able to put absolute confidence in GOD THE FATHER ALMIGHTY and in JESUS CHRIST HIS ONLY SON. History repeats itself. and God is ever repeating Himself, He always distinguishes between a man's faults and the man himself. His attittide of severitv towards sin, and of long suffering pity and forbearance towards all but the most hardened and hopeless of Sinners is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. It will be our own fault, therefore, if through failure to put ourselves into direct personal relations with our Creator, and failure to study the Bible and the life of Christ who is the express image of the Father, we remain ignorant of the character of the God with whom we have to do.
The Millennium - The word Millennium denotes the"thousand years" of Rev. xx. 3, 4, during which the dethroned ringleader of evil is placed under restraint, and the saints reign with Christ. It stands for an exceedingly long period which began at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem (ie., soon after the book of the Revelation was written), and has not yet terminated. The reign of the saints with Christ is therefore not on but over the earth, the Greek word [ep-ee' strongs 1909] being capable of either translation. " Millennium " is thus only another name for the " Kingdom of God " or " Kingdom of heaven," meaning by these phrases not merely the sovereignty of Christ over the human race, but the sovereignty of Christ and His saints. The near approach of the Millennium was unceasingly insisted upon throughout the New Testament. John the Baptist, Jesus, and the apostles, all agreed in solemnly proclaiming that the Kingdom was at hand; and we confidently believe that it was established in heaven over the earth in 70 A.D.*
From I Cor. xv. 25 ("He must reign till God hath put all His enemies under His feet"), we know that the whole duration of the Millennial Kingdom intervenes between Christ's second advent and the end of that Kingdom when He will surrender it to the Father. "Christ the first-fruits, then (ie., afterwards) they that are Christ's at His coming Then (afterwards, or later on) cometh the end." Compare the intervals and successive stages denoted by the word "then" in Mark iv. 28 : "First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear."
*For further discussion of the question of the Millennium the reader is referred to the preface to the second edition.
[1] i.e. it has come to the world as a whole. But it has yet to be realised in the hearts of countless individual men and women.
[2] See also the Preface, page xxvii.