He is Coming Again! / Part 1

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Scripture references are from the King James Version Bible.
(This message is also included in the hardback book, Feasting on the Word,
Copyright 1992 by Thru the Bible Radio.)

In World War II when General Douglas MacArthur withdrew from the Philippines – after Pearl Harbor and before the surrender of Corregidor – he issued his now famous statement: "I will return." For several years millions of people in the Orient hung onto these three words as the only ray of light in the darkness of tyranny and oppression. They were words of hope; they were words of promised deliverance for people around the world.

MacArthur did return. He returned with a vengeance. Not stopping at Manila, he went on to Tokyo to receive the surrender of the proud nation of Japan on the deck of the battleship Missouri. Although he was, after all, a frail human being, he kept his promise. He did return.

Before the Lord Jesus Christ left this earth to return to heaven, He said, "I will come again." These words have been the hope and comfort of millions of believers for the past twenty centuries. He, as the glorified Christ, repeated these words to the apostle John on the lonely island of Patmos. Here He sharpened His promise and delivered it in a dramatic way, "And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me" (Revelation 22:12). He did not mean that He was coming soon – that is not what He said. He said that His coming, with all that it entailed, would occupy a very brief time – "I come quickly." The book of Revelation closes the Bible with His affirmation, "He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen." This is the last promise that has come to us from heaven. "I come quickly." And these words have been the comfort of His own for twenty centuries.

It is the thought of some that the Revelation is a book filled only with that which is frightful and sensational. There are symbols of wild beasts, monstrous creatures; there are convulsions of nature, thunders and lightnings and earthquakes; there are trumpets of judgment and bowls of wrath. But all of these are incidental. They are the freaks one sees in the sideshow. The main event is the return to this earth of Jesus Christ. Christ‟s return is the central truth, the primary meaning of this book. The prevailing purpose of Revelation is to say just one thing: "I will come again."

The book of the Revelation opens with the statement: "The Revelation of Jesus Christ." The word "revelation" comes from the Latin revelatio, an unveiling. The Greek word is apokalupsis, the removing of a veil. By transliteration apokalupsis is our word "apocalypse." The Revelation is the apocalypse or the unveiling of Jesus Christ.

At Christ‟s first coming He was not revealed – rather He was concealed. "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us," says John 1:14. The Word (Christ) was made flesh and took upon Himself the tabernacle or the tent of flesh. Just as God had manifested Himself back in the Old Testament through a tabernacle with all sorts of coverings and curtains that shut man out from Him, so the Lord Jesus came in a tabernacle of flesh. He was put in the concealing wraps of a human body. God was not revealed when Christ came the first time. It still can be said, "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him" (John 1:18). Christ, when He came, declared God; He exegeted Him, let Him out in the open where, for the first time, one can see the heart of God. Yet we have not seen God. The first coming of Christ was not the revelation of Jesus Christ. The revelation of Jesus Christ takes place at His second coming. Actually the first and second comings of Christ are component parts of a whole.

At His first coming the great word was grace. He came that men might experience something of the grace of God. When He comes the second time, the preeminent word will be glory. Men will see for the first time the glory of God. When He came the first time He was veiled in human flesh; when He comes the second time the veil will be removed and every eye shall see Him. For the first time men will see God!

Since the first and second comings of Christ belong together, we shall place them together. First we shall consider the contrasts between the first and second comings of Christ, then a comparison of the two comings, and finally the completion – the second coming of Christ completing His first coming.

Contrast

Let us see the first and second comings of Christ in contrast. Listen to the writer to the Hebrews:

So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. (Hebrews 9:28)

When Christ came the first time it was to settle one question and one alone – the question of sin. He did not come to solve the problems of government nor to set before the world a philosophy of living. He came the first time to settle the sin question, to die for the sins of the world. When He comes the second time He will solve the governmental problems, the political and social dilemmas that harass our world. But up to this moment He deals only with the issue of sin in your heart and in mine. This is the preeminent contrast between the first and second comings of Christ.

It is interesting to note that the Scriptures make the contrast very sharp. He came the first time riding on a little donkey. He will come the second time riding a white charger. The first time He came to an out-of-the-way place, riding on a common beast of burden, in the womb of a woman! I challenge you to show how God could have humbled Himself more completely. The first time He came as Savior. The second time He will come as Sovereign. He will come in devastating majesty – listen to John describe it:

I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. (Revelation 19:11)

Coming the first time in weakness, in meekness, in obscurity, He will come the next time in power to assert His will over all the earth; and before Him every knee shall bow!

When He came the first time the door of the inn was shut in His face, slamming so loudly that after about two thousand years it still can be heard. My friend, He is being shut out today. Even during the Christmas season which commemorates His birth, He is shut out. Oh, the cash registers ring so loudly that you may not hear the slamming of the door, but it is slamming, shutting Him outside. However, for His second coming we read of a door opened in heaven out of which He rides as King of kings and Lord of lords. The first time the door of the inn was closed; the second time the door of heaven will open. What a contrast!

His coming was shrouded in secret. Very few knew when He came the first time. When Jerusalem closed its shops that Christmas Eve it did not know what was taking place, and it cared less. Even Bethlehem did not know. Today the whole world knows when a head of state visits another country, but the whole world did not know that the Son of God came to Bethlehem, and it does not know it after all these years!

God had said that His birth, His life and His death should be characterized by lowliness. Isaiah put it this way:

And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots. (Isaiah 11:1)

Why did Isaiah, who repeatedly mentioned the fact that Christ was the Branch of David, say in this instance that He was the Branch of Jesse? The reason is obvious when you look closely at Mary and Joseph. Jesse, the father of King David, was a peasant. When Jesus came, the royal line of David had been reduced again to peasantry, and Jesus comes as a Branch of Jesse, the peasant. Listen to Isaiah as God speaks of His life:

Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him; he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. (Isaiah 42:1)

But before He comes in judgment:

He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. (Isaiah 42:2, 3)

Of His death He writes:

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (Isaiah 53:3)

These Scriptures were ignored by the scribes in Jesus‟ day – which is the reason they did not believe the wise men who said, "Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him" (Matthew 2:2). The scribes answered in effect, "The prophecy is that Christ will be born in Bethlehem, but anybody knows He is not down there now. The newspaper reporters are not there; the photographers are not there. No deliverer has arisen in Bethlehem. We know He has not come" (see Matthew 2). They were wrong because they had ignored the Scriptures that spoke of His lowliness.

They all were looking for a King
To slay their foes and lift them high:
Thou cam’st, a little baby thing
That made a woman cry.
– George Macdonald

Yet let us not be too harsh with them for being dubious and not going with the wise men to worship Him. You see, they had other Scriptures that led them to believe that He was coming as a king in great power and glory.

Next Part 2.