Review on the Scripture Doctrine of the Second Advent 9781463230401

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Review on the Scripture Doctrine of the Second Advent

Analecta Gorgiana

795 Series Editor George Anton Kiraz

Analecta Gorgiana is a collection of long essays and short monographs which are consistently cited by modern scholars but previously difficult to find because of their original appearance in obscure publications. Carefully selected by a team of scholars based on their relevance to modern scholarship, these essays can now be fully utilized by scholars and proudly owned by libraries.

Review on the Scripture Doctrine of the Second Advent

Anonymous

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gorgias press 2010

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2010 by Gorgias Press LLC Originally published in All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2010

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ISBN 978-1-61143-173-5

Printed in the United States of America

ISSN 1935-6854

R E V I E W ON T H E S C R I P T U R E D O C T R I N E T H E SECOND

OF

ADVENT.

The Second Advent; or, the Glorious Epiphany of our Lord Jesus Christ. Being an attempt to elucidate, in Chronological Order, the Prophecies both of the Old and New Testament which relate to that Event. By the Rev. John Fry, B.JI. Rector of Desford, int Leicestershire. London, 2 vols, 8vo, 182-2. [The conductors of the Biblical Repertory and Theological Review do not desire to make the work the vehicle exclusively of their own opinions, but are desirous of extending to their correspondents the liberty of advocating their own sentiments, reserving to themselves the right of deciding how far the opinions advanced can, with propriety, through their instrumentality, be presented to the public. They are, therefore, not to be considered as adopting the views presented by the author of the article on the Second Advent. As the subject, however, is one of interest, and has long been a matter of public discussion in England, it is probable our readers will be glad to see an exhibition of the

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different views there entertained respecting it. The extravagancies and eccentricities of many of the leading members of the " prophetic school" have thrown a discredit on the subject, which belongs properly to the individuals, and not to the investigations in which they are engaged.] " There is scarce a prophecy in the Old Testament concerning Christ, which doth not in something or other relate lo his second coming." This striking sentence is from the pen of Sir Isaac Newton, one of the very best writers on the prophecies; whose repute as an expositor would at this day have been greater, had his fame as a philosopher been less; few men having ever lived so well qualified to act at once as the hieiophants of nature and of revelation. Let the truth of the remark be conceded, and it furnishes us with the real clue—allowing of course for the inveterate moral pravity of the human heart—to the Jews' rejection of the Saviour. They confounded the predictions of his Jirst coming with those of the second. Of the second advent it was foretold that the Lord should come in state, in power, and great glory; that is, in a manner more accordant with the general expectation concerning him; that the end of his coming was to establish a glorious kingdom on earth; that he should coine with ten thousand of his saints; that the clouds of heaven and attendant hosts of angels should signalize his bright epiphany; that he should appear conspicuous in regal dignity, being " made higher than the kings of the earth;" that his people should share in the glory of this his manifestation ; that the kingdom and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven should be given to them: while on the other hand, all opposing powers of whatever name, " b e i n g adversary and evil occurrent," should be utterly and triumphantly put down. It is not surprising therefore, that with those splendid visions floating before their eyes; with the pomp and glitter of an august terrestrial kingdom held out to their hopes, they should have felt in all its force the contrast between the lofty style of their prophets and the lovvJj guise of Jesus of Nazareth, " whose father and mother they knew:" we can see with what disastrous facility they might have stumbled at this stumbling stone, at which they Hid stumble; and how natural that they should have been fatally scandalized at the claims and assumptions of the son of Joseph and Mary. By the powers

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of a judicial infatuation, a kind of sealing up of lite spiritual senses, they had entirely overlooked, or perverted by the most outrageous glosses, that whole class of predictions which spake of the necessary Antecedent " sufferings" of the Messiah, and fixed their eye entirely on " the glory that should follow." They were transported with the view of their expected Shiloh, as a mighty conqueror "lifting up the h e a d ; " but they could not see him " stooping to drink of the brook by the way," in the deep abasement of his lowly life and his ignominious passion. Their gross and carnal minds could have been easily intoxicated by such a representation of his glory as that given by John in the-Apocalypse, when he saw heaven opened, and the incarnate Word borne upon a white horse, the emblem of victory, his head crowned with many crowns, his vesture dipped in blood, and his retinue composed of the white-robed armies of heaven following him in shining rnyriads, as he moved onward to the overthrow of his enemies, and to the assumption of his promised oecumenical empire ; while at the same time, when they actually saw the Son of David entering Jerusalem in humble style, and approaching his teníale amidst the hosannas of the multitude, they had no eyes to perceive in this scene the fulfilment of the prophet's words : " Tell ye the daughter of Zion, behold thy king cometh unto thee meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt, the foal of an ass." If such then was the radical and ruinous error of- the Jews; if from this cause, when the Saviour of men came to his own, his own received him not, but hid as it were their faces from him; it may be questioned whether our danger at the present day is not. directly the reverse of this, viz. that of applying what is said of his first coming to his second, or in supposing that the prophecies which foretel the latter, are fulfilled in a spiritual coming of the power of his religion, and the more general extension of his kingdom on earth. That the expression " the coming of Christ," may in one or two instances have this import, is probable; but that in its primary and predominant sense it implies a real, personal, visible and glorious appearance of the Son of God, called in the Scriptures his " revelation from heaven," has been all along the faith of the church, and we see not how it can admit of doubt, as long as the following passages form a part of holy w r i t : " Ye men of [srael, why stand ye gazing up into heaven"? This same Jesus which is taken

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from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." " Behold he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him." With such plain declarations as these before us, it is easy to see that the interpretation of this phrase, the Second Coming, given by bishop Hind in his Lectures on Prophecy, is to be received with especial caution. " It may bo proper to observe, that the second advent of the Messiah is not, like the first, confined to one single and precise period, but is gradual and successive. This distinction is founded in the reason of the thing. He could only come, in person, at one limited time. (Why 9) He comes in his power and providence, through all ages of the church. His first coming was then over when he expired on the cross. His second commenced with his resurrection, and will continue to the end of the world. So that this last coming of Jesus is to be understood of his spirit and kingdom; which is not one act of sovereignty exerted at once, but a state or constitution of government subsisting through a long tract of time, unfolding itself by just degrees, and coming as oft as the conductor of it thinks fit to interpose by any signal acts of his administration." (Lect. on Proph. p. 102.) In opposition to this spiritualizing view of the subject, we would refer the reader to bishop Horsley's masterly sermons on our Lord's prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem, and would beg his attention to the following remarks of Mr Fry, the title of whose work stands at the head of this article, on the prophecy of Enoch, mentioned by Jude : " Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all," &c. " This unquestionably has no relation to the first advent. That was an errand of mercy, and not of judgment. T h e preserver of the prophecy is our expounder, that the particular objects of this judgment were ' the mockery in the last time.' T h e reader is requested carefully to bear in mind the contents and circumstances of this very ancient prophecy, since we shall often have occasion, aa we proceed, to refer to it. It clearly ascertains that in the most ancient times, the church possessed a prediction that the Lord would come with his holy ones, to execute judgment upon an apostate race of men that should be on the earth in the last days. It is certain, from the same exposition, that the sending of the flood upon the world of the ungodly in the days of Noah, fulfilled not this prediction. Taught by this, we should be very careful in our con-

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sideration of subsequent scriptures, how we apply to any remarkable visitation of Providence, the awful and tremendous prognostication, ' The Lord cometh.' Not the destruction of a world, with whatever agencies of angelic powers effected, had fulfilled Enoch's prediction of the Lord's coming, with his holy myriads, to execute judgment." As the fact of a second advent of some kind is universally admitted, the nature and the time of this advent are the only points susceptible of controversy. Presuming that the foregoing remarks and quotations sufficiently establish the doctrine of a personal and visible coming of the Son of God at some period of future time, it becomes a point of ineffable interest to ascertain what light the scriptures afford us towards giving the era of this stupendous event. W e are far from deeming such inquiries either presumptuous or profitless. On the contrary, we ask no higher or plainer warrant for the most prying researches into the "times and seasons" of the great occurrences of prophecy, than the example of the prophets themselves. They "searched diligently what, or what manner of time*, the spirit which was in them did signify when it testified before hand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow." T h e apostle in these words doubtless had present to his thoughts the case of Daniel, ch. xii. who discovered such an intense anxiety to know the time when the prophetical "wonders" declared to him should be accomplished. " A n d I heard, but I understood not j then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things V' Now we see not why this spirit of scrutiny is not as lawful in the readers of the sacred volume as in its writers. W e are aware that it is not unfrequently regarded as a species of impiety to attempt to determine the mysterious era of the second advent, or of the end of the world. T h e rebuke given by Christ to his disciples after his resurrection is supposed to amount to a solemn

* A recurrence to the original of this passage, (1 Pet. i. 11.) will show that its tiue import, as gathered from the English translation, is liable to be misapprehended. 'Egiovayric in ritu (xaigov),» wi/ov K*