But there is a very different theory of the coming of
the Lord as the hope of His Church, which many teach, and which many more
receive, as though it were unquestioned truth.
It is said that
there shall be a secret coming of the Lord Jesus Christ; that at this secret
coming His believing people who are in their graves shall be raised, and the
living changed, and that a secret rapture of the Church shall then take place;
that this secret coming and secret rapture are our hope, and not the manifested
appearing of Christ in the clouds of heaven.
It is said that
after this secret removal of the Church, the full manifestation of human evil,
for some years at least, will take place, during which time shall be the
display of the power of Antichrist, the persecutions foretold in the
Revelation, the extreme trials of Israel, the unequalled tribulation; and that
at the end of this will be the manifestation of Christ visibly coming with His
Church in the cloud of glory.
This is the doctrine of the secret coming of Christ
not taught in the Word of God, but if, in what has been previously said, there
is any point of truth, then this whole system stands in distinct contradiction
of what the Scripture reveals. It is refuted by whatever speaks of the Lord's
coming in the clouds of heaven when every eye shall see Him, as being our hope;
but it was to this that the beloved Apostle responded, “Even so, Amen”: by
whatever speaks of events for which the people of Christ are to watch and wait,
and for their right acting in which they have received instruction--by whatever
tells us of the last power of evil being destroyed by the Lord at His coming,
and not before--and by whatever speaks of the first resurrection occurring
after the last anti-Christian persecution, and not before. It is likewise
contradicted by specific and individual Scriptures, which, in simple testimony
or in legitimate deduction, would be conclusive to a mind subject to God's
Word.
