The Golden Future

Part 4 Christ–A king

The greatest event of history since the Crucifixion is the coming again of Jesus Christ to complete the work He commenced two thousand years ago. From Pentecost onward the Christian Church has hoped and prayed for that day when the Lord will return to fulfil the promise He gave to His first disciples. The imminence of His return has been proclaimed and prophesied to almost every generation since that time, but the fact that so many lurid happenings have been associated with that coming has, in this matter‑of‑fact day, thrown the age‑old expectation into disrepute. The frequent attempt of well‑meaning Christians to fix upon a definite day for the visible appearance of Jesus in the clouds of heaven; and the equally frequent failure of these predictions, has disinclined a great many from paying any attention to such an apparently visionary subject.

It is certainly true that many Christians still expect the coming of Christ to be accompanied by terrific convulsions in Nature—rending rocks and falling mountains, hosts of trembling sinners brought up from the grave to hear their sins rehearsed and be condemned to everlasting punishment, a few saintly ones caught away to heavenly glory and the world and all that it contains burned up. All this is an inheritance from the crude religion of medieval times and it dies hard. But die it must and die it will. The vivid symbols of scripture were never intended to be interpreted in any such wildly literal sense, and such beliefs are born, not of the reasoned teaching of Jesus, but of the dark and terrifying mythologies of paganism.

The return of Christ is to be a time of universal rejoicing. He comes to inaugurate a reign of righteousness over the earth which has as its object no less an end than the extermination of evil. The time of His return is marked by the downfall of those man‑made institutions and systems which are founded upon unrighteousness. His lightnings which enlighten the earth (Psa.97:4) reveal the inherent rights and privileges of every man and hence His return is the signal for a great clamour on behalf of liberty. The kingdoms and governments of this present order of things will crumble and vanish away, the "hills melting like wax at the presence of the LORD" and the "mountains being carried (cast) into the midst of the sea" (Psa.97:5, and 46:2), and amidst the strife and confusion of this great Time of Trouble upon the nations (Matt.24:21; Dan.12:1) there will ring out, clear and commandingly, the voice of One having authority: "Peace, be still." (Mark 4:39) And just as it was in that day when those words were first uttered during the storm on the Galilean lake, there will be a great calm.

The return of Jesus to this earth, and His revelation to all, therefore, is definitely an event to be expected. Our knowledge of the spiritual world makes it no longer necessary to insist that He must be seen with the physical eyesight, descending from the upper atmosphere, before the fact of His coming can be accepted, for the Lord’s own words to Nicodemus make it clear that a spiritual being comes and goes "as the wind" and is not discerned as such by the natural sight. It is evident also that after dwelling among men in the days of His First Advent and propounding that teaching which will eventually save the world, He returned to His Father’s throne to wait whilst that teaching had its effect. The world at the First Advent was not ready for the full revelation of all that the principles of Christianity can and will yet do for man; it was ready only for the germ of Christ’s teaching, and it is that germ which for two thousand years has worked in the hearts of a relatively small proportion of earth’s millions whilst the remainder have held to the laws of evil and reaped their bitter harvest.

Christ returns to establish a new order of society the spiritual administration of which will be in the hands of those who during the past two thousand years—the "Christian Age"—have come into heart‑harmony with His teachings and by reason of a consecrated devotion to His message and service are thoroughly trained in every aspect of Divine Law. These faithful followers of Jesus Christ—called variously in Scripture the "Church," the "Bride of Christ," the "Little Flock," are those to whom the educational and uplift work of the next Age can be safely entrusted. Christian disciples who have learned well the foundation principles of their faith and have manifested their profession in daily life will have achieved a balance of judgment and a clear apprehension of right and wrong which is lacking in many of even the noblest of men and women today; and it is just these characteristics which will be needed in the administration of that coming day when all men will be required to hear the Word of God, and make choice of their eternal destiny. It follows therefore that the first work to be accomplished by Christ at His return is the gathering to Himself of His faithful "saints" who all through this Age have been "looking for…[His] glorious appearing." (Titus 2:13) To be made like their Lord, the definite promise of the New Testament, these must be "changed" from earthly to spiritual nature, thus becoming an exception to the purpose of God for mankind in general. Such passages as 1 Cor.15:35‑58, and 1 Thess.4:14‑18, describe this change to the spiritual world as the great hope and destiny of the Christian Church, and it is from their new environment in that spiritual world that these risen ones will administer the affairs of this new Kingdom.

Thus is the world, a groaning creation, travailing in pain together, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God. (Rom.8:19) In that day when the power of the Almighty Father is manifest in that new social order, which is the Kingdom of God upon earth, all people will look up into the heavens and will realise that, even as He promised, Christ has come.