The coming of Christ is an event to be eagerly anticipated. Says the Psalmist, "Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad ;. . . . Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein: then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice before the Lord: for He cometh, to judge the earth. He shall judge the world with righteousness and the people with his truth" (Psa. 96.11-13). An event which is depicted in such glowing terms can only be beneficial to those who experience it.

The general idea, inherited from the past, is that the Advent will be a sudden and unexpected event. The world will be going about its business, unsuspecting, when without warning Christ will appear in the sky with attendant angels, descending to earth, where He will immediately raise the dead from their graves and summon all, dead and living, before his throne for judgment. All this comes from the poetic imagery of the Bible, imagery which has to be used in order to convey the spiritual truths involved to people of many different mental outlooks in many different generations. In this century it is necessary to interpret the Scriptures in the light of our present understanding of the purposes of God and the nature of both the other world and this world.

The revelation of Christ to the world at his Second Advent is a progressive one, embracing a great many significant events, some in this world and perceived by men, some in the other world and therefore not perceived by men. This fact was understood by some Christian thinkers so far back as the second decade of the 19th century, when the apparent imminence of the Advent began to be advocated. At a series of conferences organised by well-known British ministers and Church leaders from 1826 onward one of the theses, not universally accepted but finding definite support in many quarters, was that the Advent consists of two stages, a preliminary one in which the Lord would be present unknown to men in general for the purpose of gathering his Church to heavenly glory, followed by a second stage at which He would be revealed with his Church to the whole world. This view of the Advent, originating in England, was later taken up by some sections of the American Adventist movement and is now more fully developed. The modern view is that this unseen phase of the Advent embraces the whole of the last century and that the returned Lord can be thought of as standing behind the scenes overruling and directing the course of world events so that the final disintegration of world power marking the actual end of the Age will come at the Divinely pre-ordained moment, when Christ will be revealed to all men in the glory of his Advent and take his place as earth's new universal ruler.

What is to be the nature of that revelation? How will men realise his coming and accept his rule when He thus appears? Is He to be manifested to the natural sight, or in the persons of some among men who are to be his representatives, or by the logic of events? We are of course dealing here with the impact of the spiritual world upon the material, the celestial upon the terrestrial, and so little is known about that celestial world. Modern knowledge makes it possible to think of that world and its occupants existing on a different wave-length, so to speak, so that whilst being a real world, a real environment constituting the home of real beings adapted to that environment, such beings and such environment are of necessity imperceptible to human senses. Our Lord after his resurrection did break through the barrier to manifest himself visibly to his followers, once as a gardener, again as a stranger, once to Thomas in his pre-crucifixion likeness—and yet on the other hand, to Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road in another-worldly glory so unendurable that Saul fell to the ground, temporarily blinded. It may be discreet to say that it is not possible to be dogmatic as to the means by which our Lord will be manifested to men at his revealing, only that it will be completely satisfactory and conclusive to the observers. And it may well be that the most telling evidence will be the increasingly obvious fact that the evil and disruptive forces and institutions of the world are being progressively curbed and eliminated by a power which men can neither understand nor withstand. There will not be wanting, at any time during this transition period between this world and the next, men and women who know what these things mean, have been expecting and awaiting them, and will proclaim their significance in no uncertain voice.

AOH