Isaac Haldeman - Why I Preach the Second Coming

But in all His ministry of hand or word never does He speak save incidentally of His first coming. Always and in fullest degree He speaks of His Second Coming. Seated upon the Mount of Olives He affirms, after the cross shall have slain and stained Him and the grave shall have briefly held Him He will come again; but, just before He comes it will be as it was in the days of Noah – a time of materialism, sensualism, the culture of self-consciousness, an hour of boasting, pride, lawlessness and war; and when He is revealed it will be as with the driving judgment of the flood.

In the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew and the first part of the chapter He declares He is coming as the bridegroom comes – seeking the marriage hour of his bride.

In the last part of the chapter and as the climax of His bridegroom coming He will appear as the king of glory and the judge of the living nations.

When He stands before His guilty judges and their suborned witnesses and while they mock and deride Him He breaks His hitherto amazing silence not to demonstrate to them the truth of His incarnation nor the proof of His preexistence, but in calm and measured utterance to tell them that after they shall have put Him to death He will come the Second time; and they shall see Him descending from heaven seated upon the cloud of shekinal glory and with the power of God.

In Mark He is the householder who goes into a far country, gives to each of His servants a work to do, puts the porter on guard to watch the door of the house and announces that no one in heaven nor on earth knows when He will return. He will return, He will come the Second time. It will be in one of the four watches of the spiritual night. It may be at even, it may be at midnight, it may be at cockcrowing and it may be in the morning. Because it is certain He will come, but uncertain when He will come, each one who claims to be His servant is under bond to watch. The whole household must be in the attitude of watching, of readiness and expectation; and His word of exhortation and warning to His Church is:

“What I say unto you, I say unto all – watch.”

In Luke He is the nobleman who goes into a far country to get the title deeds of His kingdom and return. When He returns He comes first to His servants, gathers them to Himself and rewards them. After that with them He executes judgment on His enemies and then sets up His kingdom.

In the Gospel of John He eats with His disciples the last and memorial supper. He goes out with them, bids them lift their glances to the wide, extended sky where the jewelry of the night as the scattered largess of a king burns in the fire of opal, the purple and violet of amethyst and the white splendour of uncounted diamonds. He assures them these gleaming things are no fiction fire-flies of gaseous worlds in the making, but illuminated dwelling places in His Father’s house. He is going thither. He will ascend into that congeries of inhabited worlds and will prepare a place for them, a glorious palace home befitting their high estate; when all is ready He will come back and receive them in corporate unity to Himself.

His words are simple, but the simplicity is the simplicity of light and every accent is as the touch of peace to troubled hearts; for this is what He said:

“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.”

In the book of Acts, in the first chapter you have a scene no artist has really ever painted, no writer ever fairly portrayed and no mortal tongue can fittingly describe.

Our Lord is going up from the Mount of Olives. He is going up from the midst of His disciples. He is going heavenward. The disciples watch Him as He ascends. He enters a cloud. Do not, I beseech you, imagine for a moment this cloud is a fog bank, a mass of watery mist and vapour; it is the shekinal cloud which once covered the tabernacle in the wilderness and was the vehicle of His presence when Israel in that far time marched on their way to the promised land. It is His chariot of state. In this chariot sent to meet Him He passes between the onlooking worlds ever higher and higher till at last He takes His seat upon the throne of the Highest at the right hand of the invisible majesty.

Then, as through the dimness of their tears the disciples watch Him disappear, they hear a voice which says to them:

“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.”

“This same Jesus.”

Mark that well!

The Jesus who on the Sunday night of His resurrection did meet these disciples in the upper room and said to them as they shrank back into a frozen silence of hope and fear:

“Peace be unto you.”

“Why are ye troubled?”

“And why do thoughts arise in your hearts?”

“Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.”

Still these disciples were afraid, afraid it could not be true.

Then He showed them His hands and His feet that they might see where the nails had gone in, torn through the flesh and left eternal wounds as the chevrons of glory.

And still the silence of hope mingled with fear.

Then he said:

“Have ye here any meat?”

And they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb.

And He took and did eat before them.

He had said to them He was flesh and bones, not flesh and blood.

He was not flesh and blood because in the sin-offering all the blood must be poured out at the bottom of the altar, and He was Himself the antitypical sin-offering. He had poured out His blood. It had run as a living stream from every vein and artery.

Because He was the sin-offering in death, in resurrection He became for the first time a priest – high priest after the order, not of Aaron, but Melchisedec.

That very morning as the high priest He had ascended to heaven, within the vail, and sprinkled His redeeming blood (how is not revealed) on the eternal throne, changing it from the throne of judgment to a throne of grace. That night He stood before them He was their high priest, not of earth, but heaven. He breathed upon them, imparted to them the Holy Spirit – the Comforter – linking them to His immortal body. He remained with them, going and coming, during forty days, operating with them officially by and through the Holy Spirit as His unseen executive; for we are told that, “until the day he was taken up he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles;” and then, finally, as this scene in the book of Acts shows us, ascended to His high-priestly function and unceasing service of intercession.

He is seated in heaven now, seated there as the same Jesus who met His disciples that first Sunday night, the same Jesus who ascended out of their midst from Olivet. This same Jesus! The same not only in realistic, human body, but the same in character, full of the same measureless compassion and grace as when He sat on the well curb in Samaria and though thirsting as a real man for real water offered to give to the sinful woman who by divine and eternal ordination met him there, the water that should be in her as a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

This same Jesus is coming again, not a phantom, not an impalpable spirit, not a ghost Christ, but a Christ who is a real man of real flesh and real bones.

This is the key-note of the book of Acts.

He who died for men, who has sanctioned the Holy Spirit to operate in His name, speak in His name, reveal to us the things that are His and show us things to come concerning Him, He is coming again, coming not only as very God, the Holy One of Israel, He who has been exalted to be both Lord and Christ, but as this loving, tender, compassionate Jesus, and in a body that may be seen and handled – a body of flesh and bones.