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be one of its concomitants, I Cor. 15:23, I Thess. 4:16, and Jesus assures us that He will raise
them up at the last day, John 6:39,40.44,54. According to Thayer, Cremer-Koegel, Walker,
Salmond, Zahn, and others, this can only mean the day of the consummation, — the end of the
world. Another one of its concomitants will be the judgment of the world, Matt. 25:31-46,
particularly also the judgment of the wicked, II Thess. 1:7-10, which Premillenarians place at the
end of the world. And, finally, it will also carry with it the restoration of all things, Acts 3:20,21.
The strong expression “restoration of all things” is too strong to refer to anything less than the
perfect restoration of that state of things that existed before the fall of man. It points to the
restoration of all things to their former condition, and this will not be found in the millennium
of the Premillenarians. Even sin and death will continue to slay their victims during that
period.[Cf. Thayer, Cremer-Koegel, Weiss, Bib. Theol. of the N. T., p. 194, note.] As was pointed
out in the preceding, several things must occur before the Lord’s return. This must be borne in
mind in the reading of those passages which speak of the coming of the Lord or the last day as
near, Matt. 16:28; 24:34; Heb. 10:25; Jas. 5:9; I Pet. 4:5; I John 2:18. They find their explanation
partly in the fact that, considered from the side of God, with whom one day is as a thousand
years, and a thousand years as one day, the coming is always near; partly in the Biblical
representation of the New Testament time as constituting the last days or the last time; partly
in the fact that the Lord in speaking of His coming does not always have in mind His physical
return at the end of time, but may refer to His coming in the Holy Spirit; and partly in the
characteristic prophetic foreshortening, in which no clear distinction is made between the
proximate coming of the Lord in the destruction of Jerusalem and His final coming to judge the
world. Sectaries have often made the attempt to fix the exact time of the second coming, but
these attempts are always delusive. Jesus says explicitly: “But of that day and hour knoweth no
one, not even the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but the Father only,” Matt. 24:36. The
statement respecting the Son probably means that this knowledge was not included in the
revelation which He as Mediator had to bring.
2. THE MANNER OF THE SECOND COMING.
The following points deserve emphasis here:
a. It will be a personal coming.
This follows from the statement of the angels to the disciples on
the Mount of the Ascension: “This Jesus, who was received up from you into heaven, shall so
come in like manner as ye beheld Him going into heaven,” Acts 1:11. The person of Jesus was
leaving them, and the person of Jesus will return. In the system of present day Modernism
there is no place for a personal return of Jesus Christ. Douglas Clyde Macintosh sees the return
of Christ in “the progressive domination of individuals and society by the moral and religious
principles of essential Christianity, i.e. by the Spirit of Christ.”[Theology as an Empirical Science,
p. 213.] William Newton Clarke says: “No visible return of Christ to the earth is to be expected,
but rather the long and steady advance of His spiritual Kingdom. . . . If our Lord will but