POST-MILLENNIAL TESTIMONY.

That the view here presented of the literal coming of Christ and the expectation of the first Christians is correct is admitted by Post-millenarians themselves. These admissions will doubtless surprise the reader if he has given no attention to the subject, and they are offered at this point in the argument, with the hope of awakening attention to a precious but sadly neglected truth. It is to be feared that very many are accustomed to bow with unquestioning submission to the authority of Commentators and of eminent Theologians, especially of their own Church; and that very few are like the Bereans whom the Holy Ghost commends as “more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so,” (Acts xvii: 11). If any of the former class are led to look over these pages it may possibly excite their interest to see what is said concerning the second coming of the Lord by some of the most popular writers who are looking for the conversion of the world before His personal return.

Dr. Charles Hodge, commenting on the words, “Waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” (1 Cor. i: 7), says; “Waitings patiently expecting, compare !Pet. iii: 20, or expecting with desire, i. e., longing for. Compare Rom. viii: 19, 20, 23. The object of this patient and earnest expectation of believers is the comings i. e., the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. The second advent of Christ, so clearly predicted by himself and by his Apostles, connected as it is with the promise of the resurrection of his people and the consummation of his kingdom, was the object of longing expectation to all the early Christians. So great is the glory connected with that event that Paul, in Rom. viii: 18-23, not only represents all present afflictions as trifling in comparison, but describes the whole creation as looking forward to it with earnest expectation. Compare Phil, iii: 20. Tit. ii: 13. So general was this expectation that Christians were characterized as those ‘who love his appearing,’ 2 Tim. iv: 8, and as those ‘who wait for him,’ Heb. ix: 28. Why is it that this longing for the coming of Christ is awakened in the hearts of his people? The Apostle answers this question by saying that the first fruits of the Spirit’ enjoyed by believers in this life are an earnest, that is, a foretaste and pledge, of those blessings which they are to receive in their fulness at the second advent. The Spirit, therefore, awakens desire for that event. See Rom. viii: 23. Eph. i: 14. The same truth is here implied. The Corinthians had received largely the gifts of the Spirit: the consequence was they waited with patience and desire for the revelation of Christ, when they should enter on that inheritance of which those gifts are the foretaste and pledge. If the second coming of Christ is to Christians of the present day less an object of desire than it was to their brethren during the apostolic age, it must be because they think the Lord is ‘slack concerning his promise,’ and forget that with him a thousand years is as one day.”

Here Dr. Hodge declares that the second advent of Christ was the object of longing expectation to all the early Christians. Is it so now? Of course it will be replied by some that it is; but notoriously it is not. What! that an object of longing expectation to which no allusion is ever made in sermons, or in private conversation?  That an object of longing expectation, the bare mention of which in a public discourse or in the public prints is regarded as a token of disagreeable eccentricity, if not of positive aberration of mind? That an object of longing expectation which will place the man who holds it under the ban of popular opinion in any Church in the land? Nay; nay; Christians at the present day may have a longing expectation of reaching heaven after death, but it is glaringly untrue to affirm that the second advent of Christ is now the object of longing expectation to the great mass of those who profess to be His disciples. Let the consciousness of those who deny His pre-millennial advent, and let the observation of all decide whether Christians as a rule are looking with eager desire for His personal return.

Mr. Barnes, commenting on the text, “Our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ,” (Phil, iii: 20), says, “That is, it is one of the characteristics of the Christian that he believes that the Lord Jesus will return from heaven, and that he looks and waits for it. Other men do not believe this, (2 Pet. iii: 4), but the Christian confidently expects it. His Saviour has been taken away from the earth, and is now in heaven, but it is a great and standing article of his faith that that same Saviour will again come, and take the believer to himself. See Notes on John xiv: 2, 3. 1 Thess. iv: 14. This was the firm belief of the early Christians, and this expectation with them was allowed to exert a constant influence on their hearts and lives. It led them (1) to desire to be prepared for his coming; (2) to feel that earthly affairs were of little importance, as the scene here was soon to close; (3) to live above the world, and in the desire of the appearing of the Lord Jesus. This was one of the elementary doctrines of their faith, and one of the means of producing deadness to the world among them; and among the early Christians there was, perhaps, no doctrine that was more the object of firm belief and the ground of more delightful contemplation, than that their ascended Master would return. In regard to the certainty of their belief on this point, and the effect which it had on their minds, see the following texts of the New Testament. Matt, xxiv: 42, 44. Luke xii: 37. John xiv: 3. Acts i: 2. 1 Cor. iv: 5. Col. iii: 4. 1 Thess. ii: 19. 2 Thess. ii; 1. Heb. x: 37. James v: 7, 8. 1 John iii: 2. Rev. xxii: 7, 12, 20. It may be asked, with great force, whether Christians in general have now any such expectation of the second appearing of the Lord Jesus, or whether they have not fallen into the dangerous error of prevailing unbelief, so that the expectation of his coming is allowed to exert almost no influence on the soul. In the passage before us, Paul says that it was one of the distinct characteristics of Christians that they looked for the coming of the Saviour from heaven. They believed that he would return. They anticipated that important effects would follow to them from his second coming. So 'we should look.”

Hackett, a distinguished Baptist Commentator, remarks, on the passage, “He shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you,” [Acts iii: 20], “Nearly all critics understand this passage as referring to the return of Christ at the end of the world. The similarity of the language to that of other passages which announce that event, demands this interpretation. The Apostle enforces his exhortation to repent by an appeal to the final coming of Christ, not because he would represent it as near in point of time, but because that event was always near to the feelings and consciousness of the first believers. [The italics are his]. It was the great consummation on which the strongest desires of their souls were fixed, to which their thoughts and hopes habitually turned. They lived in expectation of it; they labored to be prepared for it; they were constantly, in the expressive language of Peter, looking for and hastening unto it. It is then that Christ will reveal himself in glory, will come ‘to take vengeance on them that obey not the gospel, and to be admired in all them who believe;’ will raise the dead, invest the redeemed with an incorruptible body, and introduce them for the first time, and for ever, into the state of perfect holiness and happiness prepared for them in his kingdom.' The Apostles, the first Christians in general, comprehended the grandeur of that occasion; it filled their circle of view, stood forth to their contemplations as the point of culminating interest in their own and the world’s history, threw into comparative insignificance the present time, death, all intermediate events, and made them feel that the manifestation of Christ, with its consequences of indescribable moment to all true believers, was the grand object which they were to keep in view as the end of their toils, the commencement and perfection of their glorious immortality. In such a state of intimate sympathy with an event so habitually present to their thoughts, they derived, they must have derived, their chief incentives to action from the prospect of that future glory; they hold it up to the people of God to encourage them in affliction, to awaken them to fidelity, zeal, and perseverance, and appeal to it to warn the wicked, and impress upon them the necessity of preparation for the revelation of that day; for examples of this, compare xvii: 30, 31; 1 Tim. vi: 13; 2 Tim. iv: 8; Tit. ii: 11; 2 Pet. iii: 11, etc. Some have ascribed the frequency of such passages in the New Testament to a definite expectation on the part of the Apostles that the personal advent of Christ was nigh at hand; but such a view is not only unnecessary, in order to account for such references to the day of the Lord, but at variance with 2 Thess. ii: 2. [That he is wrong here will be clearly shown]. The Apostle Paul declares there, that the expectation in question was unfounded, and that he himself did not entertain it or teach it to others. But while he corrects the opinion of those at Thessalonica who imagined that the return of Christ was then near, neither he nor any other inspired writer has informed us how remote that event may be, or when it will take place. That is a point which has not been revealed to men; the New Testament has left it in a state of uncertainty. ‘The day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night;’ and men are exhorted to be always prepared for it. It is to be acknowledged that most Christians, at the present day, do not give that prominence to the resurrection and the judgment, in their thoughts or discourse, which the New Testament writers assign them; but this fact is owing, not necessarily to a difference of opinion in regard to the time when Christ will come, but to our inadequate views and impressions concerning the grandeur of that occasion, and the too prevalent worldliness in the church, which is the cause or consequence of such deficient views. If modern Christians sympathized more fully with the sacred writers on this subject, it would bring both their conduct and their style of religious instruction into nearer correspondence with the lives and teaching of the primitive examples of our faith.”

Trench, a well known and accomplished Episcopal writer, remarks, on the parable of the Ten Virgins, “When it is said in the parable that the bridegroom did actually tarry, we may number this among the many hints, which were given by our Lord, that it was possible the time of his return might be delayed beyond the expectation of his first disciples. It was a hint and no more; if more had been given, if the Lord had said plainly that he would not come for many centuries, then the first ages of the Church would have been placed in a disadvantageous position, being deprived of that powerful motive to holiness and diligence supplied to each generation of the faithful, by the possibility of the Lord's return in their time. It is not that he ‘desires each succeeding generation to believe that he will certainly return in their time, for he does not desire our faith and our practice to be founded on an error, as, in that case, the faith and practice of all generations except the last would be. But it is a necessary element of the doctrine concerning the second coming of Christy that it should be possible at any time, that no generation should consider it improbable in theirs. The love, the earnest longing of those first Christians made them to assume that coming to be close at hand.”

Similar testimony could be quoted from a number of writers, who teach that although eighteen hundred years have passed since the first Christians looked for the personal return of our Lord to the earth, Christians now should not expect Him for at least a thousand years; and thus exert all their great influence to divert attention from a precious truth which they themselves are forced to acknowledge shines forth in the New Testament as the resplendent object of the believer’s hope. But it is needless to quote from others after presenting the testimony of Dr. David Brown, the great post-millennial authority, whose book “On The Second Advent” is claimed by his admirers to be unanswerable. If Christians would practically receive the statements from his pen that follow, nothing more could be desired by those who are raising their voice in defence of a grand but almost forgotten doctrine of God’s word. These statements are here given in the precise form in which they are found in his work.

“Are there no anti-premillennial tendencies,” he asks, “which require to be guarded against? I think there are. Under the influence of such tendencies, the inspired text, as such, presents no rich and exhaustless field of prayerful and delightful investigation; exegetical inquiries and discoveries are an uncongenial element; and whatever Scripture intimations regarding the future destinies of the Church and of the world involve events out of the usual range of human occurrences, or exceeding the anticipations of enlightened Christian sagacity, are almost instinctively overlooked or softened down.”—[Page 9].

“Nor let any one ask. Of what consequence is it whether the one opinion or the other be the correct one.? For if this be what the Spirit has seen fit so specially to reveal, it must be worthy of being held fast by us; and whatever view we take of it will necessarily give its hue to all other statements of Scripture regarding the earth.”—[Page 11].

“Pre-millennialists have done the Church a real service, by calling attention to the place which the second advent holds in the word of God and the scheme of divine truth. If the controversy which they have raised should issue in a fresh and impartial inquiry into this branch of it, I, for one, instead of regretting, shall rejoice in the agitation of it. When they dilate upon the prominence given to this doctrine in Scripture, and the practical uses which are made of it, they touch a chord in the heart of every simple lover of his Lord, and carry conviction to all who tremble at his word; so much so, that I am persuaded nine-tenths of all who have embraced the pre-millennial view of the second advent, have done so on the supposition that no other view of it will admit of an unfettered and unmodified use of the Scripture language on the subject—that it has its proper interpretation and full force only on this theory.”—[Page 13].

“With them we affirm, that the Redeemer’s SECOND APPEARING IS THE VERY POLE-STAR OF THE Church. That it is so held forth in the New Testament, is beyond dispute. Let any one do himself the justice to collect and arrange the evidence on the subject, and he will be surprised—if the study be new to him—at once at the copiousness, the variety, and the conclusiveness of it.”—[Page 14].

“Delightful thought! that the close of the believer’s career is to be regarded as merging in the solemnities of the second advent—that the beams of his Lord’s glory should be seen brightening the horizon of his present abode. The last companies of the disciples shall be sitting, perchance, at his table—their hearts burning within them, as the bleeding love of his first advent rises before their view, and longing for the daybreak of his second appearing. They scarce venture to hope that the time for the flight of the shadows has come. Yet remembering those endeared words, ‘As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till he come,’ the question steals across them. What if it should be even now? Scarcely has the thought taken possession of them, when, lo! a strange sensation is felt by them all. The spirit of each glows and brightens as never it had done before. Each looks to his fellow, as if to ask. What is this? It is ‘the day-star ARISING IN THEIR HEARTS! (2 Pet. i: 19). In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, their Lord is with them! It is himself. He has come at last, in the glory of his second appearing, and themselves and the poor earthly tables at which they sit are transfigured into shining guests and a table never to be drawn!

“There is still another class of texts—the most delightful, perhaps, of all, and certainly the most telling upon the heart—in which the widowed condition and feeling of the Church, while our Lord is absent from her in the heavens, are brought to view. And from whom do we get this idea in its perfection? Is it from the Apostles expressing the feeling which his absence created in the hearts of his loving people? No; it is from Christ himself, intimating what he expected at their hands—taking’ it for granted that they would not be able to do without him. . . . Would it be incongruous in the Church to mourn and feel desolate in the presence of her Lord? Not less incongruous, it seems, is it not to cherish the feeling of desolation in his absence, . . . Written communications and tokens of affection from the absent one are dear to affection—but only when himself can not be had. Christ’s word, and the seals of his love conveyed to our hearts by the blessed Spirit, are inexpressibly dear to his loving people—but only in the absence of himself. And never do we please Christ so much as when we ‘refuse to be comforted,’ even with his own consolations, save in the prospect of his Personal Return”—[Pages 17-19].

Then, after showing conclusively that the coming of Christ can not possibly mean death, he says, “To put the expectation of one’s own death in place of the prospect of Christ’s appearing, is to dislocate a beautiful jointing in divine truth—to destroy one of its finest collocations. Here it is, as expressed by the Apostle: ‘The grace of God which bringeth salvation, hath appeared unto all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.’ [Tit. ii: 11-14]. Here both comings of Christ are brought together; the first in ‘grace’—the second in ‘glory’; the first ‘bringing salvation’—the second, to complete the salvation brought. To the first we look back by faith—to the second we look forward by hope. In the enjoyment of the fruit of the first, we anticipate the fulness of the second. Between these two the Apostle here beautifully places the Christian’s present holy walk. These are the two pivots on which turns the Christian’s life—the two wings on which believers mount up as eagles. If either is clipped, the soul’s flight heavenward is low, feeble, and fitful. This is no casual collocation of truths. It is a studied, and with the Apostle, a favorite juxtaposition of the two greatest events in the Christian redemption, the first and the last, bearing an intrinsic relation in their respective objects.”—[Pages 23, 24].

After making such remarkable admissions as these throughout the book, at the close he says, “Nor is it in regard to the personal appearing of the Saviour only that pre-millennialists will and ought to prevail against all who keep it out of sight. There is a range of truth connected with it, which necessarily sinks out of its scriptural position and influence, whenever the coming of Christ is put out of its due place. I refer to the RESURRECTION as a co-ordinate object of the Church’s hope, and to all the truths which circle around it, in which there is a power to stir and to elevate, which nothing else, substituted for it, can ever possess. The resurrection life of the Head, as now animating all his members, and at length quickening them from the tomb, to be for ever with him—these, and such like, are truths, in the presentation of which pre-millennialists are cast in the mould of Scripture, from which it is as vain as it were undesirable to dislodge them.”