Does the Old Testament truly predict a second advent of the Messiah?

Whoever carefully considers Old Testament prophecies must be struck by two contrasting and seemingly contradictory lines of prediction concerning the coming Messiah. One body of prediction speaks of Him as coming in weakness and humiliation, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, as a root out of dry ground, having no form nor comeliness, nor beauty that He should be desired. His visage is to be marred, His hands and feet pierced, He is to be forsaken of man and of God, and to make His grave with the wicked. (See Ps. 22:1-18; Isa. 7:14; Isa. 53; Dan. 9:26; Zech. 13:6-7; Mark 14:27.) The other line of prophecy foretells a splendid and resistless Sovereign, purging the earth with awful judgments, regathering dispersed Israel, restoring the throne of David in more than Solomon's splendor, and introducing a reign of profound peace and perfect righteousness. (See Deut. 30:1-7; Isa. 11:1-2, 10-12; Isa. 9:6-7; Isa. 24:21-23; Isa. 40:9-11; Jer. 23:5-8; Dan. 7:13-14; Mic. 5:2; Matt. 1: 1; Matt. 2:2; Luke 1:31-33.) In due time the fulfillment of messianic prophecy began with the birth of the virgin's Son according to Isaiah, in Bethlehem according to Micah, and proceeded with perfect literalness unto the full accomplishment of every prediction of Messiah's humiliation; for sin must first be put away, before the kingdom could be established. But the Jews would not receive their King in the form in which He was presented, "meek and sitting upon an ass and a colt the foal of an ass," and they crucified Him. (See Zech. 9:9 with Matt. 21:1-5; John 19:15-16.) But we must not conclude that the wickedness of man has baffled the deliberate purpose of God, for His counsels include a second advent of His Son, when the predictions concerning Messiah's earthly glory will receive the same precise and literal fulfillment as did those which concerned His earthly sufferings. (See Hos. 3:4-5; Matt. 24:27-30; Luke 1:31-33; Acts 1:6-7; Acts 15:14-17.) The Jews were slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken concerning the sufferings of their Messiah; we are slow of heart to believe all that they have spoken concerning His glory. Surely the greater reproach is ours, for it ought to be easier to believe that the Son of God would come "in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory" than that He would come as the babe of Bethlehem and the carpenter of Nazareth. Indeed, we believe the latter because it has happened, not because the prophets foretold it, and it is time we ceased to reproach the Jews for their unbelief. If it be asked how they could possibly be blinded to the evident meaning of so many and such unequivocal predictions, the answer is that they were blinded in exactly the same way that many Christians are blinded to the equally evident meaning of a far greater number of predictions of His earthly glory, namely, by the process of "spiritualizing" Scripture. In other words, the ancient scribes told the people that the prophecies of Messiah's sufferings were not to be interpreted literally, just as some modern scribes are telling the people that the prophecies of Messiah's earthly glory are not to be literally interpreted. The second advent is a promise to the church as well as to the Jew. Among the last words of comfort and exhortation addressed by our Lord to His perplexed and sorrowing disciples before He accomplished the sacrifice of the cross were these: "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also" (John 14:1-3). Here the Lord speaks of His coming again in precisely the same terms as of His departure. The latter was, we know, personal and bodily. If we say that the former is impersonal and "spiritual," surely to such a forced interpretation of simple language we ought to be constrained only by the most imperative and unqualified Scripture elsewhere. But no such passages exist. But we are not left to doubt upon this vital point, nor to draw conclusions of reason, however irresistible. In the very moment of our Lord's disappearance from the sight of His disciples, "Two men stood by them in white apparel; which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven" (Acts 1:10-11). To the same purport is I Thess. 4:16-17: "For 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 which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord."

We give this as a specimen, once for all, of the grand crisis which must transpire around Jerusalem. In how many Scriptures is not this "gathering of nations" predicted! It is, too, when the captivity of the Jews shall terminate; not at its commencement. It is no past crisis that is here described. It is certainly future. And it is when "the Lord God shall come, and all the saints with him." We know, by subsequent revelations, that there will be a coming of Jehovah manifested in the flesh. Is not the coming here spoken of that same personal coming? This prophecy does not reveal the mode of the coming which is predicted. We could not from this Scripture only, determine it. But surely, in the light of subsequent predictions, we may be assured that it is none other than the second personal return of the Lord Jesus that is here foretold.

As examples of such passages we may cite Isa. 42:1-4; 53:10-11; Micah 5:1-4. In these and many kindred passages the predictions as to His first coming in humiliation have been perfectly fulfilled. Who then shall say that there shall not be as perfect a fulfilment of His second coming in glory?

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.

The first verse of our chapter, as we saw, has in it predictions that found a fulfilment at the first advent of Christ. The second and third verses, however, make it clear that the main emphasis is on His second coming. Then it is that the fire of the refiner will come into action with purifying effect, and this means judgment as verse 5 states. The bringing of the advents together is not unusual in Old Testament prophecy. Take the later chapters of Isaiah for instance, where the humbled 'Servant' of Jehovah and the mighty 'Arm' of Jehovah, achieving His purpose, come before us. Isaiah 53, which predicts the sufferings of the Servant, begins by asking, 'To whom is the Arm of the Lord revealed?' In other words, 'Who identifies the glorious and irresistible Arm with the despised and humbled Servant?' This was not so plain in the days when the prophets spoke; but very plain in ours; so that we can all reply — Thank God, we do with joy identify them.

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.

The Old Testament abounds with predictions of the advent of the Deliverer, though it was not until the added light of the New Testament reached man that it was possible in many cases clearly to distinguish whether the reference was to His first coming to suffer, or to His second coming to reign.

The Old Testament prophets have much to tell us of the glories of this coming Day. They indicate not only its character, both in the way of judgment and blessing, but also that it depends altogether upon the Advent of the Messiah. When first they spoke, however, it would have been well nigh impossible to determine how much of their utterances related to the first Advent, and how much to the second. Theirs was a long-distance view, and both merged indistinctly one into the other; just as there are many distant stars which to the naked eye shine as a single point of light, and no one suspected them to be anything but one until powerful telescopes were turned upon them. Then at once they were discovered to be twin or double stars.

Yet each of these three prophets predicted God's future intervention in a way that would be altogether new. Isaiah foretold things that should be absolutely new. even, 'new heavens and a new earth,' brought about by the twofold advent of the Messiah; first as the humbled Servant, to suffer for sins, and then as the mighty Arm of Jehovah redeeming in power what He had first redeemed by His blood.

As is often the case in the prophets, the first and second comings of our Lord Jesus Christ are seen together in verse 1. The past coming of the sufferings of Christ; and the future coming, in the glories that follow, are put together. The present period in between, when the assembly is being formed in Christ, whilst He Himself is out of sight, is passed right over. The prophets see, as it were, two mountain peaks rising before their enraptured view; one nearer, the other towering in brilliant glory beyond; but the broad, rich, lowly valley between, in the which is the assembly, God’s habitation in the Spirit, is out of their sight. It is vain, therefore, to look for the assembly—the body of Christ—in the prophets. And in this connection, the headings of many chapters of Isaiah, put there by men, are very misleading. They read the assembly in, where God is speaking of the nation of Israel.