What is the Second Coming and why is it important?

The coming of the Lord Jesus is promised by Himself, and all the New Testament writers confirm this in their writings. The prospect that He would return was the hope of the early Christian believers. The Bible predicts the literal personal return of Jesus Christ to rapture His church, to judge the world and to establish His kingdom on earth.

Sometimes this is described as one grand event. At other times it is clearly divided into separate phases: His coming for His saints and His coming with His saints. In this issue of our magazine we are concentrating on the second of these: the appearing or public manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ. It will be a great day. His appearing will be glorious. He will return ‘in the glory of his Father', ‘in his [own] glory' and with ‘... great glory' (Matt. 16:27, 25:31 and 24:30). His return to this earth will also be marked by the manifestation of great power. He will return in the ‘glory of his power' (2 Thess. 1:9), and will employ angels of power (1:7) to establish His kingdom on earth.

In approaching this most glorious subject, we feel that we cannot do better than to lay before the reader the distinct testimony of holy Scripture to the broad fact itself, that our Lord Jesus Christ will come again — that He will leave the place which He now occupies on His Father's throne, and come in the clouds of heaven, to receive His people to Himself; to execute judgment upon the wicked; and set up His own everlasting and universal kingdom.

It would not be right to say that the coming again of the Lord Jesus will be two comings, yet it is clear from Scripture that it will be in two stages. The first will be His coming FOR His saints, the second His coming WITH them. The first is spoken of as THE RAPTURE, i.e., the catching up to the glory of those that are His; the second, as THE APPEARING, i.e., His manifestation to the world.

His second coming is in two phases. The first phase involves His coming to the air to take to heaven the Old Testament believers and the dead in Christ of the Church (and we who are alive at His coming). This is popularly called the Rapture (1 Thess. 4:16-17). Then just before the second phase of His second coming, His Appearing, the saved martyrs of the Tribulation are raised (Rev. 11:9-13; 20:4). They are the last dead believers. Therefore, the First Resurrection ends at that time.

Christ is coming first for His people; He is coming afterwards with His people in power and glory, and there is a certain interval between these two events. When he comes for His saints, He will be, as far as scripture shows, unseen by the world, and He will not come actually to the earth, but into the air: when He appears with His saints, every eye shall see Him, and all the kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him, for He is coming in judgment. Then He will come to the earth; His feet shall stand upon the Mount of Olives (Zech. 14:4).

This time it is about the same Christ coming again in power and glory, as "Lord of Lords" and "King of Kings". It is the greatest future event this world should expect. Christ will come to judge the evil and take possession of the earth and to establish his kingdom.

The return of our Lord Jesus Christ to Jerusalem will effect vast changes, not only for the city, for Judah, and for Israel, but for all the nations and peoples of the earth. His first coming and the teachings He left behind have wrought great moral results in some parts of the world, but Scripture never said that the whole world would be converted through these. It is at His second coming that the foretold world-wide changes will take place. He will first deal with Jerusalem, and from that centre blessing and order will radiate throughout the earth, and all nations will own the King whose throne will be established there.

Glory is founded on His first coming. That, morally speaking, surpasses all glory. It is the absolute display of what God is, when evil is come in. But only at His second coming will the actual result be made manifest. He comes to receive the church to Himself, the witness of sovereign grace, and to order the world (subject to Him in the power of His kingdom) in blessing, and so display the government of God. Till He comes neither can take place. We enjoy the full revelation of Him from whom all that blessing flows, and enjoy it here in a nature suited to it and flowing from it; but we wait for the results for ourselves and for this burdened world. We love His appearing. How is it with you? Are you linked with the world He subverts when He comes, or with Him who brings the fulness of blessing, though with judgment on what hindered it? Were He to come now, would it be your awaited joy and delight, or does it alarm and try your hearts? The Lord give you to answer before His face!

Let the reader give to this very weighty fact his most devout attention. The bright and blessed hope of the Lord's coming formed an integral part of the gospel which Paul preached, and of the Christianity of those who were converted by his ministry. That blessed servant preached a full gospel. He not only declared that the Son of God had come into the world to accomplish the great work of redemption, and lay the everlasting foundation of the divine glory and counsels, but that He had gone back to the heavens, and taken His seat as the victorious, exalted and glorified Man, at the right hand of the throne of God; and that He is coming again; first, to receive His people to Himself, and conduct them into the very innermost circle of His Father's house — the place prepared for them: and then to come forth with them, to execute judgement upon His enemies — gather out of His kingdom all that offend, and all that do iniquity, and set up His glorious dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.

Having, as we trust, fully established the fact of the Lord's coming, we have now to place before the reader the double bearing of that fact — its bearing upon the Lord's people, and its bearing upon the world. The former is presented, in the New Testament, as the coming of Christ to receive His people to Himself; the latter is spoken of as "the day of the Lord" — a term of frequent use also in Old Testament Scriptures.