5. What Does the Lord Say
About His
Second Advent?
The churches of Christ Greet You
(Romans 16:16)
We read in Matthew 25:31‑46
that the Son of Man who came the first time in lowliness and
poverty
will come again "in His glory,"
and all the holy angels will be with Him. Then He will sit upon the
throne of His
glory; all nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate
them and
pronounce sentence. That will come to pass on "the day
when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus
Christ" (Rom. 2:5‑16).
"Because He hath
appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness
by that
Man whom He hath ordained," Jesus Christ (Acts
No Visible Advent of Christ before Judgment Day
There will be no other visible coming of Christ;
for "the heaven must receive (Jesus Christ)
until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by
the
mouth of all His holy prophets" (Acts
Again we read (Hebrews 9:27-28), "As it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the Judgment: so Christ was once [that is, in His first advent] offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation," that is, to be "glorified in His saints" (cf. Matt. 25:34, 46). The Bible does NOT say He’s coming "the second time for the establishment of an earthly kingdom," but: "the second time unto salvation." This salvation, the deliverance from all evil (Rev. 21:4; 1 Cor. 15:23, 54‑57; Phil. 3:20-21), shall come to us at the same time, the same "hour," when all the dead, those who have done good and those who have done evil, will hear the voice of the Son of Man (John 5:28-29), "at the last trump” (1 Cor. 15:52), when "the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God" (1 Thess. 4:16; cf. Matt. 25:31; 13:41; 2 Thess. 1:7). It would be contrary to all pertinent passages to believe that there will be two future visible advents of Christ and two resurrections from the dead, one at the beginning and the other at the end of a millennium.
Millennialists believe that the passage 1
Thessalonians 4:14‑17
refers to a coming of Christ at the beginning of the millennium. Paul
writes
there: "For if we believe that Jesus
died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God
bring with
Him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord (cf. 1 Cor.
It is clear from the
very words which Paul uses in the above passage that he speaks
of the
same advent of Christ "from heaven
with His mighty angels” of which he writes in 2 Thessalonians
1:7‑10.
Here he describes the order in the same way as he does in 1 Corinthians
15:23,
51-52: First, those who have died in the Lord shall be called
to life; then,
we who survive shall be changed; and then, we "shall
be caught up together
with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and to be
ever
with the Lord," that is in eternal life. We dare not forget that
the
apostle neither here nor in 1 Corinthians 15 makes mention of the
resurrection
of the wicked, because it is his intention in both of these passages
to show
the certainty of the blessed resurrection of the believers at
the
glorious advent of the Lord on the Last Day. All the dead shall
hear His voice at the same day and hour (John
There certainly is no trace here (in 1 Thessalonians 4:13‑17), of a visible advent of Christ a thousand years before the resurrection of all the dead. Let us not forget that on the Last Day the Lord will be revealed from Heaven (2 Thess. 1:7); but if that is true, then He was NOT visible as a king on earth before the Last Day. And Paul says that beginning with the coming of the Lord "we shall ever be with the Lord," having been caught up together with the raised believers. Now if this were to happen already a thousand years before the end of the world, there would no longer be any saints on earth during all that time. And if there are no saints on earth, how can there be an earthly kingdom in which the saints take so prominent a part according to the idea of millennialists, and how could Satan instigate the nations to combat against the camp of the saints?
Let us beware of reading our own imaginations
into the Holy
Book (Deut.
The millenarians refer also to Revelation 20:4‑10
as
proof for a twofold coming of the Lord and a twofold resurrection. Lord
willing, we will show the meaning of this passage in a later lesson.
The second advent of Christ is closely connected
with the
resurrection of the dead. Therefore we ask: Will There Be Two
Resurrections
from the Dead?
Go To Mill 6: Will There
Be Two Resurrections from
the
Dead?
Return To:
Millennialism