When a new doctrine
is taught as if it were a revealed truth, it behoves every Christian to inquire
on what Scripture testimony it rests; and unless this is satisfactorily set
forth, what is taught ought not to be accepted. This will apply very definitely
to the system of the secret rapture and secret coming. When the hope of our
Lord's second advent was revived as a point of definite teaching, when it was
seen that until that day the ancient promises of blessing would not be
fulfilled, there were those who thought of this one point of prophecy almost
exclusively: if they turned at all to prophetic detail, it was with a kind of
supposition that everything had been accomplished that was needful to introduce
that day. They knew that the apostles had taught intervening events, the
corruption that should take place in the Church from false teachers, etc.; they
knew that the knowledge of such truths had once been a right thing, and that it
had not been inconsistent with the hope of the coming of Christ; but now
there was a kind of supposition that such prophecies had been exhausted, and
that there might be a kind of momentary expectation of the Lord's appearing.
This supposition was, apparently, not then connected with the belief in a
secret coming or a secret rapture.
But when a closer
study of prophecy had led to the conviction that many things remained
unaccomplished, such as must precede the reign of Christ, there was an
unwillingness to give up the opinions previously conceived--there was an
endeavor to hold the prophetic detail without giving up the thought of the
coming of Christ, apart from the possibility that any intervening events could
be part of our expectation. This led to the adoption of theories by which
definite points of revelation were explained away; and for the support of which
it became needful to maintain that the moral power of the hope of the Lord's
coming is lost, if any intervening event, any sign, is supposed to be a portion
of truth. This, if deliberately held, would show that the apostles, and the
Apostolic Church, who, as a fact, knew of certain intervening events, did not
so hold the hope as to apprehend it in its moral power.
The tone of thought
thus arrived at was quite different from that which recognised that intervening
events had once been known, but in which it was assumed that they were now
exhausted.
But still it seems
as if it were some time before a secret advent of the Lord and a secret rapture
of the Church had a definite and systematic place. It was rather as if the coming
of Christ had been divided into two parts: indeed, there were those then
who said that He would appear in glory, and when He had taken the Church
He would cease to be seen until He came to crush the powers of evil, and then
reign. This would, however, be virtually a second and third coming; it would
err in the fact of addition to Holy Scripture, as well as in that of
contradiction to its testimony.
But when the theory
of a secret coming of Christ was first brought forward (about the year 1832), [7] it was adopted with eagerness: it suited certain preconceived
opinions, and it was accepted by some as that which harmonized contradictory
thoughts. There should, however, have been a previous point determined, whether
such contradictory thoughts, or any of them, rested on the sure warrant of
God's written Word.
Thus the
doctrine held and taught by many is, that believers are concerned not with a
public and manifested coming of Christ in the clouds of heaven with power and
great glory---not with His appearing when every eye shall see Him, and when He
shall sever the wicked from among the just, but with a secret or private coming,
when the dead saints shall be secretly raised, the living changed, and both caught
up to meet the Lord in the air--that the shout, the voice of the archangel, and
the trump of God, do not indicate anything of publicity, for the ear of faith alone
shall hear them--that the Church shall meet the Lord, not at His visible coming,
but in order to remain with Him, at least for years, before His manifested advent--that
after this secret coming there shall be in the earth a full power of evil put
forth amongst both Jews and Gentiles--that there shall be a time of unequalled
tribulation and great spiritual perils (with which the Church has nothing to
do)--and that this condition of things shall end by the manifest coming of the
Lord. [8]
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[7] I am not aware that there was any definite
teaching that there would be a secret rapture of the Church at a secret coming,
until this was given forth as an "utterance" in Mr Irving's Church,
from what was there received as being the voice of the Spirit. But whether any
one ever asserted such a thing or not, it was from that supposed revelation that
the modern doctrine and the modern phraseology respecting it arose. It came not
from Holy Scripture, but from that which falsely pretended to be the Spirit of
God, while not owning the true doctrine of our Lord's incarnation in the same
flesh and blood as His brethren, but without taint of sin.
After the opinion of a secret advent had been adopted,
many expressions in older writers were regarded as supporting it; in which,
however, the word "secret" does not mean unperceived or unknown, but
simply secret in point of time. Thus in a passage of Milman—
“Even thus amidst
thy pride and luxury,
O! Earth, shall
this last coming burst on thee,
That secret coming
of the Son of man;
When all the
cherub-throning clouds shall shine, Irradiate with His bright advancing sign,
When the great
Husbandman shall wave His fan”, etc.
The third line
was taken up as if it taught the new doctrine of this secret coming; whereas
the whole passage (even if it had any theological value) teaches a coming in power, glory,
and publicity, in contrast to that which is private: so, too, as to other writers,
whose words were sometimes used.
Sometimes from
a hymn being altered, writers appear to set forth a secret rapture of which
they had never heard, or against which they have protested.
[8] In 1863 I heard it publicly and definitely
maintained, that the secret coming is the second coming promised in Scripture, and that the
manifest appearing of our Lord is His third coming. Many seem to think this who
do not say so in definite words. But a third coming is something very different
from His coming again.
