The Coming Again Of The Lord Jesus Christ

by Geo. K. Kennedy, Sydney, Australia | Category: A Centenary Review Of Major Themes | Nov 1988

We wait to see the Morning Star appearing

In glory bright.

This blessed hope illumes, with beams most cheering,

The hours of night.

These simple but beautiful words of Miss Carson's hymn express the hope that is so precious to the believer. "I Jesus ... I am ... the bright, the Morning Star ... Yea; I come quickly" (Rev. 22:16,20). With this thrice repeated promise by the Lord Himself our Bible closes, and the beloved apostle John's response has been echoed in millions of believers' hearts - "Amen:

come, Lord Jesus".

Throughout the century of Needed Truth the expectation of the Lord's return has figured prominently. In October 1889, over 26 pages contributed by six brethren set forth truth relevant to a proper understanding of this hope. In 1954 it was the subject for the year; and the resultant reader interest provided nine questions for answering in 1955. From one of those answers we quote: "the Greek word parousia ... literally means a presence. The arrival of the Lord to the air is the beginning of His presence with the saints, but He is later in presence on the earth. There are two arrivals (or events), but two stages of His presence". Let us look at these two stages under the figures used

concerning the Lord - namely, "the bright, the Morning Star" (Rev. 22:16) and "the Sun of Righteousness" (Malachi 4:2).

The Morning Star

"Before the dawn the morning star shines in all its brilliance from the dark night sky. Just so will the Lord Jesus come to take His Church out of a world darkening for the judgements of the time of the end. To believers awaiting His coming to the air He will be the bright, the Morning Star!" (Focus, 1984, page 8).

In the night in which He was betrayed and shortly before He went out into the garden of Gethsemane where His soul was exceeding sorrowful even unto death, the Lord spoke to the comfort of the eleven disciples in the Upper Room. His words have no trace of doubt or uncertainty. "Let not your heart be troubled:

Ye believe in God, believe also in Me for I go to prepare a place for you.

And if I go... I come again, and will receive you unto Myself" (John 14:13). The outcome of Calvary was never in doubt; the battle would be won, the work of salvation finished. In due course He would return for His own. The promise is from His own lips.

Later, at the Lord's ascension, "as they were looking, He was taken up" and two angels witnessed that "this Jesus, which was received up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye beheld Him going into heaven" (Acts 1:9-11). The promise is from the lips of angels.

The apostle Paul was given direct revelation from the Lord concerning the gospel and His will for the saints. How greatly is our assurance settled when he writes:

This we say unto you by the word of the Lord ... 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: then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the cloud, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord (1 Thes. 4:1S-17).

The promise is from the pen of the apostle but by the word of the Lord. James, John, Jude and Peter also write God-breathed scripture about His coming.

The coming of the Lord for His saints will be to the air, not to earth. He will have His reward with Him, indicating that the proving of our works at His judgement seat will be immediate. He will not be seen or heard by the unbelieving world. But when we see Him we shall be like Him for we shall see Him even as He is. This is called a blessed or happy hope and is encompassed in that living hope to which we have been begotten.

In the experience of that coming the child of God will know the indescribable relief of a salvation so long awaited. "Our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation" (Phil. 3:20-21). "So Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time, apart from sin, to them that wait for Him, unto salvation" (Heb. 9:28). Believers in Christ "by the power of God are guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Peter 1:5). At the close of each day we may cheerfully say "now is salvation nearer to us than when we first believed" (Rom. 13:11).

The Sun of Righteousness

This world will be very dark after the Lord has taken Out of it those who trusted Him. Man's perverted wisdom, moral perversions, unbridled lust, aggressive violence and large-scale dishonesty will bring a period of time when men's hearts will fail them for fear. Religiously, politically, economically, environmentally and indeed in every facet of life there will be chaos because the great majority of the human race will have set aside the Word of God. The nations will rage against the Lord, the only unifying motive in an otherwise fragmented world.

Such pursuit of wickedness will cause the bowls of God's wrath to be poured out. Revelation chapter 16 stirs the imagination to what will be the grim reality of those times. There will be no atheists then when in hardness of heart men will blaspheme the God of heaven rather than repent. "Then shall be great tribulation, such as hath not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, nor ever shall be" (Mat. 24:21). The sixth angel pours out his bowl of the wrath of God when the kings of the whole world with their armies are gathered to Armageddon. And then in a fearsome, unimaginable catastrophic upheaval the Lord will come in His glory and omnipotent power to destroy them.

It is not possible to conceive what the condition of mankind and the earth will be like, and it will cry out for healing. The godly few will have taken up the words in Isaiah 64:1- "Oh that Thou wouldest rend the heavens, that Thou wouldest come down". They will cling to the promise "But unto you that fear My Name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings; and ye shall go forth, and gambol as calves of the stall" (Mal. 4:2).

The Lord will come as Son of Man:

and in righteousness He doth judge and make war ... And the armies which are in heaven followed Him upon white horses ... And out of His mouth proceedeth a sharp sword, that with it He should smite the nations: and He shall rule them with a rod of iron: and He treadeth the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God. And He hath on His garment and on His thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS (Rev. 19:11-16)

This will be

the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of His power in flaming fire, rendering vengeance to them that know not God, and to them that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus: who shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of His might, when He shall come to be glorified in His saints (2 Thes. 1:7-10).

When the Lord comes for His saints He comes to the air and they will be caught up (forceful seizure, an act of sovereignty without reference to any other) to meet Him there. When He comes with His saints He comes to earth and is identified with particular geographic places - the mount of Olives (Zech. 14:4), Edom and Bozrah (Isaiah 63:1), the valley of Jehoshaphat (Joel 3:12) and of course Zion and Jerusalem (Joel 3:16, 17, 21 et al.).

Present Responsibilities

These future events awaken us to present duties of which we may mention the following:

1. The Thessalonians were waiting for God's Son from heaven. In these days when the shadows of future times and the pieces of the prophetic jig-saw are coming into place there is an impetus for us to love His appearing by the exercise of practical righteousness for which there will be the gracious awarding of the crown of righteousness (2 Tim. 4:8). "It follows inevitably that the efforts of Satan to corrupt the Community will grow and increase" (C.M. Luxmoore, 1918, page 40). If other believers sleep it will not frustrate their being caught up to meet the Lord (1 Thes. 5:10) but in God's house "let us not sleep, as do the rest, but let us watch and be sober" (v.6). "And now, my little children, abide in Him; that, if He shall be manifested, we may have boldness, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming" (1 John 2:28).

2. It is quite evident from a careful reading of the Scriptures that John the Baptist preached the nearness of the day of the Lord in keeping with his prophetic charge. The day of the Lord was also being preached in Thessalonica, that it was near, held back only until the Lord comes to the air. Paul, by the Spirit, identifies the objects of its wrath as those who obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus. If we look for the Lord's coming to the air then it is those (unbelieving) of our day and generation who will experience the day of the Lord "cruel, with wrath and fierce anger"; "for the day of the LORD is great and very terrible: and who can abide it?"; "that day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress". In echo of John's words - "Who hath warned them to flee from the wrath to come?"

3. Will any living members of the Church the Body of Christ pass through the tribulation? The answer today is the same as it was in 1889 an unequivocal NO!. We have for a helmet (for the protection of our minds in peace) the hope of salvation. "Wherefore exhort (or comfort) one another, and build each other up, even as also ye do" (1 Thes. 5:11).

Geo. K. Kennedy, Sydney, Australia | Nov 1988
A Centenary Review Of Major Themes