Why I Preach the Second Coming
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Cleanness and morality are involved quantities in a Christian. The moment the new life of the risen Christ is wrought in a believer and he is linked up by the Holy Ghost to the glorified body of the Son of God he has in him all the impulse and power of the highest morality, the most exalted purity, the rarest spirituality and the discernment of spiritual things. All that is self-evident – but the Son of God came into this world and went through the amazing tragedy and sacrifice of the cross to do something more than to make us merely moral and good. He came into the world, He died the foreordained death of the cross that He might deliver us from death and the grave.
Death is the blackest and most shameful blot on the face of the earth, the grave the most repulsive of scandals, drawing the trench of its corruption and stain round the girdle of the globe.
To bring a human being into the world, give him no choice of father or mother, of place, of time and circumstance, endow him with a brain to think, a heart to feel and love and then set him face to face with death, hide from him the hour of his going like a criminal who knows not the hour of his execution; to allow the old to live till they are withered, shrivelled and helpless, a burden to others and a still greater burden to themselves, cursing the fact they must live and yet afraid to die; to take a young man in the splendour of his youth, on the threshold of assured success, snatch him away without warning from the parents devoted to him, the wife who loves him and the children dependent on him; and then leave them both, the decrepit and useless old and the needed young to drop into the tongueless silence of the grave, that silence broken only by the sound of the clods as they fall on the coffin lid or the plash of tears, or the choking sob; to allow the living whose hearts are torn and twisted and smashed by the robbery that death brings upon them to stand there and strangle themselves with the unanswered and unanswerable questions: “Whence,” “What,” and “Whither,” and then say all this is the work of a good, a compassionate, a tender and loving God, and that death is as natural as birth?
Nay!
Those who say and teach that death is as natural as birth are guilty of pure unintellectualism and are unwarranted deniers of the facts.
The birth of a child is like the coming of the dawn. It is like the note of a new and joyous song. It is the revelation of a new world, a world of life, of hope, of promised and larger activities. No one who is sane and true and wise will deliberately seek to hinder birth; but death! ah! everything is against death and by right against it.
Every fibre in the body repudiates death. Pain is the protest of life against it and the scout that brings in news of its approach. The brain, the mind, the heart shiver at it, not merely because of the native fear at the unknown, but at the mockery it makes of life, the uselessness of living a time, at the longest, so brief, so full of disappointment and bitterness, a life where plans are never accomplished nor hopes fulfilled, where tears and sorrow outweigh laughter and song.
Every remedy taken from materia medica, every operation of the surgeon’s knife that adds even a day to the sufferer’s existence, every hospital, every precaution and invention to prevent accident, all the genius exercised by man to conserve health and strength are a protest against death and a proclamation that it is unnatural, a discord and a wrong.
Every human being who has the slightest pulse of sentiment, who is not sunken in the soddenness of moral unconsciousness feels that death is the shadow shutting out the sun of day and hiding the stars of night, the false note that breaks the lilt in any song, the thief who takes the treasure no money can replace, the mocker who bids us readjust our days and live as though those whom we have loved and lost had never been a part of us, so that their going has put more of death in those of us who remain to live than life – even the brute beast feels and knows death is – an enemy.
Nor does God Himself leave us in any doubt about it.
He says death is an enemy; even as it is written:
“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”
And since in itself it is an enemy, it is, necessarily, the work of an enemy.
It is the work of an enemy who has the power of death.
He who has the power of death is – the Devil; even as it is written:
“Him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.”
The Son of God came into the world that He might destroy the Devil and his work of death.
He came to abolish death and bring life and immortality to light.
He came to make us something more than – just moral.
He came to make us – immortal.
There is only one man in the universe who has immortality; and that man is He who is our Lord Jesus Christ, very God and yet true and actual man.
There is not an immortal human being on earth to-day.
There is no such thing as an immortal soul.
But here I bid you halt!
Let no one take up this statement and go hence and say I teach the final annihilation of the soul.
He who should go forth and say that would be, after what I shall further tell you, a robber of truth and character.
On this round earth at this hour there is no man who has spoken more, written more and, under God, done more to rebuke and smite this slavering, slobbering, unintellectual and Devil-inspired deception known as Russellism, Christadelphianism and Seventh Day Adventism than the man who now speaks to you.
I affirm here that by the will of God the soul must exist forever whether it be in heaven or in hell; but, I say to you the preacher who seeks to deny and overthrow the doctrine of annihilation by defending the immortality of the soul is beaten before he begins. He has his pains for his labour. He can find no such expression as “immortal soul” in the Bible nor any such doctrine taught there. Above all, he is guilty of excuseless philological blundering. The soul is immaterial. Immortal is applied to that which is material. The words, “immortal,” and “immortality” are never applied in the New Testament to the soul – never! but always and exclusively to the body.
To be immortal means to have a deathless, incorruptible body like unto that of the Son of God.
This, and this alone – as related to man – is Scriptural immortality. The Son of God came into the world to give this boon of immortality to men.
This is the supreme objective of redemption.
Till that objective is obtained redemption is not complete and the blood of the cross is not justified.
Do you call the redemption of Paul complete so long as his body lies mingled with the dust of the highway by the banks of that yellow Tiber where he was slain?
Do you call complete the redemption of those you love and I love so long as the Devil like the strong man armed with the law holds the mortgage on their bodies and keeps them in his dark and worm-filled house – the grave?
It is true, blessedly true, thank God, the moment a believer dies he is absent from his home in the body and immediately present at his home with the Lord in the third heaven, in the beautiful country of Paradise, in the Holy City, the place prepared.
It is true the dear departed ones are clothed with the white robe of immaculate light woven on the unjarring looms of heaven, a temporary clothing which preserves their form and makes them visible and recognizable to one another; but with it all they are disembodied, and in spite of the comfort and the consolation of it, in spite of the fact that their state is “far better” than this at its best, still they are souls whose vehicle is no longer body, but spirit (wherefore after death they are sometimes spoken of as spirits); nevertheless, the Son of God did not come to make us eternal, even if happy – ghosts.
If Christians should continue to die and should remain as white clothed ghosts in heaven forever they would be an incongruous environment and abiding scandal to the immortality of the Son of God Himself. A living, immortal man shining in a glorified human body surrounded by bodiless souls forever! What a contradiction that would be, what a scandal, indeed. It would be the declaration that the Son of God had power to rise from the dead, make His own body immortal, impervious to death, but in respect to those for whom He died and who died trusting in His promise He either did not have the power or did not care to keep His promise.
Such a conclusion in either member of the proposition is impossible. It is impossible, for no such postulate as inability or faithlessness can be laid against the Son of God.
By His own immortality as the first-fruits of them that slept, as the ordained forerunner and sample of all those whom He has redeemed He is, and in the nature of things, under bonds to give immortality to each, to raise the dead and transfigure the living in His likeness.
As the dead can be raised and the living changed only when He is personally present then He must come to this world again to give that immortality of which seated on yonder throne in heaven He is the promise and the pledge.
He made this promise by the grave of Lazarus.
Standing there with His cheeks wet with tears of sorrow over the one He loved and in profound sympathy with the grief-stricken sisters, groaning in Himself, not merely as one who was under the spell of sorrow and heartache, but full of “indignant protest” (this is the meaning of the word “to groan”) against the havoc of death as the work of that being whom we so familiarly call “Devil,” without stopping to measure his dignity, malignity and power, He said:
“I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:
And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
Wondrous, gracious, far reaching and full of measureless comfort is the promise, but nine out of ten who repeat it seem never to have comprehended the full import of it.
For this is what He meant.
Listen to it as I quote it in its fullness of intent:
“I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet – when I come again – shall he live:
And whosoever liveth and believeth in me – when I come again – shall never die.”
Nor is this a fictional fancy of mine, but the direct declaration of the Holy Spirit to the Church speaking through the Apostle Paul; for he says:
“Behold, I shew you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then (and not till then – not when we die and go to heaven, but when the dead are raised and the living are changed – then – and not till then) shall be brought to pass the saying that is written (written by the Prophet Isaiah in the twenty-fifth chapter of his prophecy), death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
And mark it well, the context of this Holy Ghost promise is the declaration that the resurrection of the dead, the transfiguration of the living, this changing from mortality to immortality will be the resurrection and the transfiguration of those who are “Christ’s at His coming.”
Yes! He will come.
He will descend from heaven with a shout of command. He will pass it on to the archangel. The archangel will pass it to the angel who is called the “trump of God.” He will cause a sound, a blast, an utterance of power at which the doors of graves of every sort shall open outward, every secret hiding place of the purchased dead will be revealed and the sacred dust will bloom with life; for, in the body of every regenerated soul there is planted the germ of the new body; and just as the buried seed is linked by the unseen air to the fructifying sun in heaven and as at a given moment we call the germination is quickened and at last comes forth in new form yet the same essential embodiment as when planted; so, the regeneration nucleus of the new body is held by the Holy Spirit (of which the air is the symbol) to the risen, glorified body of the Son of God in heaven; and no matter what may befall the body in which it was buried it will abide to that hour we call the resurrection and transfiguration and at the shout, the voice and action of the trump of God will come forth in the glow of unfolded and eternal beauty as the sheath, the house, the home, the perfect dwelling place, the royal robe of the souls the Lord shall bring with Him; while the living shall flash forth in the same immortality and glory.
Yes! the dust of death shall bloom and mortality shall put on immortality at the Coming of the Lord.
And I for one want Him to come.
I have loved ones waiting within the gates of the upper city for that morning hour.
I have one there my heart in these days yearns to see.
But a short time ago death with rude and sudden hand snatched from me my only child, the son of my heart; a son grown to splendid young manhood; a son who loved me, reverenced me, believed as I believe, a member of my own Church, baptized by my own hand in early days: a son on whom I hoped to lean in peace if the shadows should deepen round me ere my Lord might come. And in the going of that beloved son of mine the light of day has seemed at times to fail, the stars of heaven have grown so dim and far away I think of them often as tears of distant eyes that pity me. There are moments when I crave him as a hungry man does food and as a thirsty man in desert ways yearns for a draught of limpid waters. I have a hurt here in the heart of me no medicine of earth can cure; but because I know when the Lord comes this son of mine shall rise and I shall meet him and the old glad life renew in larger, richer, fuller measure; and because I know there is only the sound of the trump between me and that longed-for hour; that the door of heaven is always ajar and my Lord may come at any moment and bring us to the hand clasp and the love embrace again, I bear my hurt, I rest in the Lord and preach this blessed hope to other hearts that ache – the Coming of Him who is the resurrection and the life and whose last earthward utterance to His Church is:
“Behold, I come quickly.”
IV
Not Till Our Lord Jesus Christ Comes the Second Time Will the Church be Exalted into Her True Function of Rulership Over the World
THE Church was not sent into the world to convert or Christianize it.
It was sent into the world to preach the Gospel to every creature.
It was not to condone the world but to condemn it.
With its twin doctrines of Incarnation and Regeneration it was to ring the knell of evolution and deny the hope of any saving energy in the flesh.
It was not to flatter, to paint, to gild nor endeavour in any wise to reform or organize the world.
It was to deal with the world, with the system called the world, as a ship pounding to pieces, and pounding helplessly, upon the rocks of fallen human nature, the dethronement of God in the soul and the enthronement and exaltation of self-interest in the soul.
The Church in its ministry and widely commissioned effort was to plunge, as a well-equipped and perfectly manned life-boat may do, into the sea and surf of natural and Satanic things and get men out of an old system under the doom and judgment of God into Christ as the head of a new system under grace and the coming glory of God.
The Church was not to build up a kingdom during the absence of the Lord.
On the contrary, she was to recognize herself as the affianced bride of a rejected king and coming bridegroom.
She was to walk in separation from the world, refusing the seductive enticements of her would-be lovers and with an upward and heavenly look serve while she waited for a returning Lord.
The Lord did not come.
The Church grew weary of her vigil.
She exchanged the heavenly for the earthly look.
She met the Devil and felt the magic of his bewitching glances.
He had led her Lord to the mount of temptation. He had shown Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. He offered them to Him on condition that He would turn His feet out of the pathway that led to the sacrificial cross. He offered them on condition that He should refuse to go to the cross and there in the agony of His soul and body and on the loom of His vicarious sufferings weave the seamless robe of divine righteousness for sinful men.
The Lord refused.
The Devil turned and slew Him.
He now led the willing Church to the same mountain height of temptation.
He tempted her with the same temptation he had offered her Lord: The rulership of the world.
If she would turn aside from a heaven-ordained bridegroom and a king whose face she could not see, she might win the world as her kingdom and rule it in spite of the cross.
The offer of world rulership sounded pleasant in her ears.
She yielded.
She fell into the arms of the world.
The world became her paramour.
She became the world’s mistress.
Out of that ungodly and sensual alliance was born the illegitimate child, that woful ecclesiastical offspring, we call the Roman Catholic Church.
The Roman Catholic Church became the Holy Roman Empire.
The Empire was the Church.
For long and dismal ages the Roman Church exhibited to perfection the evil, the folly and fatality of that false and deceptive proposition that the Church is the kingdom of Christ on earth.
Then came the Reformation. It so smote the Catholic Church that men imagined the tiara to be broken, crushed and scattered to the winds forever.
They were mistaken.
It came from underneath that blow almost as if it had risen from the dead.
To-day it is more populous than ever, having a membership of at least two hundred millions. It has a more intensely emphasized solidarity. It is filled with enthusiasm, with ever-increasing arrogance and persistent aggression.
It is the religious incubus of the hour, the spiritual paralysis of nations and their most dangerous political menace.
With brazen effrontery and calculating boldness it has its clutch upon the throat of this Republic, controls its government from the Presidential office down through army and navy, has open mass in the shipyards of the latter, in camp and barracks its priests are masters and its wily knights of Columbus have obtained governmental favours and consideration the Young Men’s Christian Association would not dare to claim.
It rules your cities, holds the balance of political power and can, when it will, elect a President, and will promptly do so when the candidate for that high office shall be willing, as already it has been done by the present occupant of that office, to visit the Vatican or officially recognize the civil as well as religious authority of the Pope or receive the Apostolic delegate of the Papal See.
The clutch of Romanism with its strangle hold is on the throat of what remains of Protestantism.
Protestantism is the after birth of the Reformation.
Protestantism repudiated all the temporalities of Rome but held on to the proposition that the Church is the kingdom of Christ on earth.
Protestantism is to-day broken up into multiplying fragments. If there be any unity remaining in it it is the unity that comes from the compromising denial of the convictions that led to the original break into fragments; a unity that hopes to maintain itself by classifying many of its former convictions as “non-essentials” and thus constitutes a combination that must become more and more colourless and inefficient in respect to doctrine.
Some of its theological institutions are nothing better than clearing houses of infidelity and the curricula made up of Jericho theology. It has universities in which many of the professors have been graduated in Germany, having passed through the poison gas factory of the Berlin university, and under the camouflage department of “sacred literature” are sending out the mentally and spiritually asphyxiating poison of German rationalism, inoculating every fresh lot of newly made ministers and would-be missionaries with rank unbelief and Bible repudiation, distributing the poison into the back counties as well as municipal centers until there are scores of men who once stood for a whole Gospel and a certified Word of God who now stand first on one foot then on the other debating with themselves whether this Scripture that was once considered holy and sufficient is after all a revelation from God or an invention of man.
A large number of men who are at the front in the teaching, the management, the organization and control of the churches of the different denominations repudiate practically every fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith.
They deny the Virgin birth.
The denial of the Virgin birth puts a stain upon the mother of Jesus as of a woman who has broken wedlock and sends her son forth as a bastard, an illegitimate who had no legal right to come into the world; and then illogically, if not hypocritically, those who deny it bid us take this son and make Him the exemplar of righteousness, forgetting or ignoring the self-evident fact that if, indeed, He had but a human and natural father then was He bred in sin and unfit to be set up as the supreme standard of righteousness and holiness among men.
There are those who deny the sacrificial character of the death of the cross.
They repudiate atonement by the shedding of blood.
When we tell them it is written without shedding of blood there is no remission and it is the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, that alone cleanseth from all sin they fling up their hands in protest, tell us we are to be numbered among the figures of the past and that the theology we seek to maintain is the theology of the butcher shop, the barbarous doctrine of the shambles and the shadow of old-time tribal gods whose vengefulness and wrath could be appeased only by the murder of a victim.
They repudiate the doctrine of the bodily resurrection of the Lord.
His body has long ago mingled with the dust of Palestine and been blown afar by careless winds. If He rose at all it was as the principle of righteousness and truth, whatever such a resurrection may mean. They will no longer tolerate the insistent need of regeneration. It has been said that “if a man is well born the first time he does not need to be born the second time.”
In the nature of the case such teaching rejects our Lord’s bodily ascension to heaven and His session as a glorified man who is very God at the right hand of the Father.
Above all, and as a further consequent of such an attitude, teachers of this class repudiate with an almost hysterical outcry, not only the thought that the Lord will come a second time to this world, but that those who love Him and yearn to see Him will ever behold Him coming in visible glory so that they may stand face to face with Him and get the very touch of His hands upon them in the vital benediction for which they are longing.
These advanced teachers repudiate the Bible as the inspired, infallible, inerrant Word of God,
The Pentateuch, the writings of Moses, is a bundle of folk lore, Moses himself a fiction no more substantial than Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The historic books of the Old Testament are unreliable and therefore not history at all. The book of the prophet Isaiah instead of one author has many, each in turn contradicting the other. The book of Ezekiel from its incomprehensible wheels as they flash by the banks of the river Chebar to the impossible temple and its animal offerings with the ever-deepening river flowing out of it, is as mystic as the amazing cherubim which the prophet seeks, but apparently fails, to describe. The prophecies of Daniel were written long after the events they pretend to foretell. From Genesis to Malachi the Old Testament is in reality the mixed history of a tribal people with a national god whose attributes and demands are no more authentic and authoritative than those of the gods of Greece and Rome.
The New Testament while a degree of advance on the Old by reason of the progress of the times and the more cultivated environment of its origin is not a whit more divinely inspired. The three Synoptic Gospels are witnesses summoned to court where their success is the contradiction and confusion of the story they attempt to tell. The book of Acts is a combination pamphlet put together by the followers of Peter and Paul as an attempt to compromise between the one who was the Apostle to the Circumcision and the other who was the Apostle to the Gentiles.