Does the Bible teach that there would be two comings of the Messiah?

God's programme, as foretold in the Old Testament, had two great events in view — the first and second comings of Christ. Until He came the first time, over nineteen centuries ago, it was not possible to distinguish clearly between the two, for many of the prophecies pass almost insensibly from things accomplished at His first advent to those which await accomplishment at His second. Some pious students of the prophecies, who lived in the centuries before Christ, noticed discrepancies, and tried to account for them by the theory that there must be two Messiahs: One who suffers, and One who reigns in glory. The true solution, as we now know, is that the one and only Messiah was to come first to suffer and afterwards come again to reign.

Messiah would therefore be from David's lineage, but also a holy Babe born of a virgin. Added to these revelations is this, that He would be none other than God Himself in Manhood's form, and a Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, yet the Anointed of God reigning in glory. It is not difficult to apprehend that the prophets and the disciples of the Lord were perplexed with these enigmas. In the light of the New Testament, and having the Holy Spirit to teach us, the outline of the whole picture is plain: Messiah is both God and Man, and His first coming was to make God known and to accomplish redemption, and His second coming to fulfil all that remained of the prophecies of old.

These three appearings, as we may call them, of what grace to us do they speak! He appeared on earth to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. He appears now in the presence of God for us. He will appear for them that look for Him the second tine without sin to salvation. A second appearing of Messiah was a thought foreign to Judaism. For the second appearing Christians look — an important and comforting article of their faith. A Christ who has been here and has died, a Christ who is in heaven, a Christ who will reappear — this is part of the Christian man's faith; and he can look with hope for the reappearing, since he knows that the question of his guilt was settled when atonement was made.

The full answer to all this is that God Himself was going to intervene in a very personal way. In the first verse we have in the first place, 'My messenger', or 'angel.' 'He is to prepare the way before Me'; the 'Me' here evidently being Jehovah. Then, thirdly, there is the 'Lord', or 'Master', who is the 'Messenger', or, 'Angel of the covenant', clearly distinguished from the angel first mentioned. In this very close way the coming Messiah is identified with the Jehovah who sends Him. In this remarkable verse the two advents are predicted, though not clearly distinguished: a feature we also see in Isaiah 61:2. At His first advent the messenger sent in advance was clearly John the Baptist, who prepared the way of the Lord, and came in the spirit and power of Elijah, though not the Elijah of which Malachi 4:5 speaks, for he is to come before the great and dreadful day of the Lord in judgment. John came after the fashion of Elijah, but before the coming of the Messiah in grace, who is the Master, identified here with Jehovah.

Christianity is come to us now; but when really known, it is not at all a mere question of prophetic testimony, even though this be of God, but there is the preaching of the gospel by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. The gospel sets forth present accomplishment — redemption now a finished work as far as the soul is concerned. At the same time, the day is not yet come for the fulfilment of the prophecies as a whole. This is the important difference here revealed. There are three distinct truths in these verses, as has been often remarked, and most clearly, as we have seen. "Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the appearing of Jesus Christ." Then the prophecies will be fulfilled. Thus the Lord Jesus, being already come and about to come again, brings before us two of these stages, while the mission of the Holy Ghost for the gospel fills up the interval between them. Had there been only one coming of Christ, then the accomplishment that we have now, and the fulfilment of the prophecies that is future, would have coalesced, so far as this could have been; but two distinct comings of the Lord (one past, and the other future) have broken up the matter into these separate parts. That is, we have had accomplishment in the past; and we look for future fulfilment of all the bright anticipations of the coming kingdom. After the one, and before the other, the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven is the power of Christian blessedness, and as we know also of the church, no less than of preaching the gospel everywhere.

So the prophecy here, as is usual in the Old Testament, has both advents in view. The same feature meets us in chapter 61:2, for, when the Lord Jesus read this in the synagogue at Nazareth, He stopped in the middle of the verse, knowing that the latter part of it referred to His second advent in power and not His first advent in grace. A single star shines in our night sky but when seen through a telescope it proves to be two. So this predicted advent of Jehovah in the person of the Messiah, is discovered to be two advents in the clearer light of the New Testament.

So, as we said, both advents are here predicted, and the exact fulfilment of the first part gives us the assurance that the second part will in its season be fulfilled with equal exactitude.

But there was a difficulty they asked about. They had seen the Lord in His millennial, kingly glory. He was the Christ — the Anointed. But the scribes taught that Elias must precede and herald the advent of Messiah. Were the scribes right? Or was that current teaching to be abandoned? The Lord at once answered. He does not negative the thought of Elijah's appearing, but points to John the Baptist as His own immediate forerunner, who came in the spirit and power of Elijah (Luke 1:17). For there are two advents of Christ — one in humiliation, the other in glory. The former had then taken place. For the latter Israel must wait. The scribes thought only of the latter, overlooking the prophecies about Messiah's humiliation and death. Hence their difficulty: how could the prophecy of Malachi be harmonized with the fact of Messiah's appearance at that time, of which the three disciples had not the shadow of a doubt? "It is written of the Son of Man" (Mark adds, ver. 12) "that He should suffer many things, and be set at nought." Had that been laid hold of by the scribes, they would have discerned that a path of humiliation, ending in death, must precede His advent in power (Isaiah 52:13—53:12).

He concludes His reading with the words, "to preach the acceptable year of the Lord," and closed the book in the middle of a sentence, for in Isaiah it is added, "and the day of vengeance of our God." In this way He separated the two events very pointedly. Sitting down, He told His audience, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing" (v.21). This prophecy of Isaiah could be true only of the Messiah; therefore it is absolutely true that the Lord Jesus is the Messiah of Israel. Anyone falsely making this claim would be a wicked imposter. But the day of vengeance was not to be fulfilled yet. Old Testament Scripture had not indicated that grace would be preached for a long time before the day of vengeance took place, but it has continued for nearly 2000 years, He who has closed the Old Testament book of prophecy for the time being will Himself be the One to open the book again to disclose the day of vengeance. Thus the whole dispensation of the grace of God intervenes at the present time, which includes the birth of the Assembly, the Church of God, at Pentecost and the rapture of the Church to glory at the coming of the Lord.

This unity of these two distinct events, making them two parts of the same event, is plainly expressed in a statement of Paul, and is illustrated in a prophecy of Isaiah. The apostle speaks of the hope and the epiphany of the Second Advent as a single event for the Christian (Titus 2:13), and the Jewish prophet, in a single sentence, foretells Messiah's introduction of the day of grace and the day of judgment (Isa. 61:1-3). No interval of time between the two events is noted in either of these passages; but that there is an interval in both cases we learn elsewhere in Scripture.

Take first the prophecy in which the Spirit of Christ speaks concerning Himself as Jehovah-Messiah Who was coming. In the synagogue of Nazareth, the Lord read aloud from this part of Isaiah, declaring to the audience, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your ears” (Luke 4:16-21). Then the Lord with apparent abruptness rolled up the book and sat down. He had ended His reading in the middle of a clause. Why? The prophecy declared that His mission was twofold: “to proclaim the acceptable year of Jehovah and the day of vengeance of our God.” In the prophecy the proclamation of the “acceptable year and the gloomy “day” are united as a single service of Christ. But the Lord, by His own lips, showed that the fulfilment of the second half of the clause has been deferred, and that in His Advent to this world a wide interval of time separates the “acceptable year” from the “day of vengeance,” though the announcement of both events appears in the prophetic utterance of Isaiah as a single phrase, only one half of which was fulfilled by the First Advent of Christ.