The Lord's Coming

INTRODUCTION

The blessed hope of the coming of the Lord is dear to the hearts of all true lovers of the Lord Jesus.

• But the manner and the relative timing of His coming have caused deep and ofttimes bitter differences.

At the other extreme there are those who – in an audacious attempt to discredit "the word of the Lord" in 1 Thess. 4: 13-18 – attribute the origin of this precious truth to the wild utterances of a discredited and extinct sect.

• The 1908 article by WK exposes and dissipates the speculations – which, like the false report denying our Lord's resurrection in Matthew 28: 11-15 – are still being spread abroad, and deceiving many.

Other pages relating to J. B. Stoney: Biography: J. B. Stoney History: Early Years – Recollections: J. B. Stoney History: A Review of Truth: J. B. Stoney Ministry: J. B. Stoney Doctrine: The Person of Christ Other pages relating to W. Kelly: See references on Guests: My Stand 2: W. Kelly

G.A.R.

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THE  LORD'S  COMING Revelation 22: 15-21
The following is an extract from a reading at the annual meetings in Quemerford, Wiltshire, 1894. This was three years before the Lord called His beloved servant to Himself, after having been laid aside with illness for two years. Ministry by J. B. Stoney, New Series, 2: 469-480. See also Ministry: J. N. Darby - 4: Lectures on the Second Coming of Christ.
Key to Some Initials (? = unsure):
? James Boyd, ? D. L. Higgins, Highgate Joseph Pellatt ? London	F. E. Raven, Greenwich T. H. Reynolds, Burford J. B. Stoney, Scarborough

J.B.S. The first thing here is the fact of a distinct communication from the Lord. "I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and offspring of David, and the bright and morning star".

• Then in verse 17 there is response to it. No one could know what communication is but someone near Him.

• I hear people singing about the coming of the Lord who are not feeling the solemnity of it, they have not the gravity of it before them, they are not in a condition to say, "Come".

• No one can say "Come" but the Spirit and the bride. You may say it is individual, but the individual must have condition of heart and the sense of relationship, to be able to respond to this communication and say, "Come".

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THE  RAPTURE  OF  THE  SAINTS: WHO  SUGGESTED  IT, OR  RATHER  ON  WHAT  SCRIPTURE ? –  WILLIAM  KELLY
This article is from "The Bible Treasury", No. 92, August 1908, New Series, 4: 314-318. See My Stand 2: W. Kelly and His Ministry

When a bitter adversary of the Christian's heavenly hope sought many years ago to stigmatise it as having a foul and even Satanic origin, there were questions, in which he was compromised, too serious for any who weighed their import to notice so unworthy an insinuation.

• It is much to be doubted that the late Mr. J. N. Darby saw or heard of it; nor did I ever meet with it till lately, long after its dispersion far and wide.

• A recent American journal brought it first under my notice; but the idea was probably derived, directly or indirectly, from that source.

• I quote from a "little booklet" written with no small warmth on our side of the Atlantic by a clergyman.

• This one could appreciate if Christ's person or work were assailed; but is it not extravagant, if not unaccountable, in such a question where all agree in the general truth?

What must one think of a polemic who would extract an envenomed shaft to injure, if he could, the apostle Paul's preaching and teaching of "salvation", from the utterance at Philippi of the maiden with a spirit of Python?

• "These men are servants of the Most High God that announce to you the way of salvation".

• The then instrument of Satan was not so openly hostile as the slanderer of JND. On the contrary the enemy adopted the craftier policy of commending the apostolic testimony.

• But Paul, distressed by it, for it went on for many days, turned at length, and in the name of Jesus expelled the unclean spirit, disdaining such an ally.

• The spirit's talk of "the way of salvation", however, did not hinder Paul or his companions from proclaiming "so great salvation", which having been spoken by our Lord, was confirmed by those who heard, God also bearing witness with them.

• Argue, as adversaries might, from the fact that the apostle never wrote a word on the way of salvation before the evil spirit proclaimed this as his errand, he was not to be driven from the truth by the wiles of the devil; and woe would surely be to such as availed themselves of that craft to turn away from the glad tidings of God.

But let us turn from surmise to such facts as exist; for both assailed and assailant are departed.

• Though Mr. D., in general used to say little of himself, he does speak, in two pieces which appear in his Collected Writings, of the way in which light dawned on his heart as to the future according to the scriptures.

• The first bore on the change in the divine dealings with men at the end of this age.

• "But I must, though without comment, direct attention to chap. 32 of the same prophet [Isaiah]; which I do the rather, because in this it was the Lord was pleased, without man's teaching, first to open my eyes on this subject, that I might learn His will concerning it throughout – not by the first blessed truths stated in it, but the latter part, when there shall be a complete change in the dispensation, the wilderness becoming the fruitful field of God's fruit and glory, and that which had been so being counted a forest, at a time when the Lord's judgments should come down, even great hail, upon this forest; and the city even of pride be utterly abased" (Prophetic 1, pp. 165, 166).

Of that light which later shone on the heavenly side of the Lord's coming he speaks rather differently.

• "It is this passage [2 Thess.2: 1,2] which, twenty years ago [i.e. from 1850 when he then wrote], made me understand the rapture of the saints before – perhaps a considerable time before – the day of the Lord (that is, before the judgment of the living)."

The difference is this, that he expressly excludes "man's teaching" in the first case, which he does not even imply in the second.

• There he simply says that it was 2 Thess. 2: 1-2, which made him understand the rapture of the saints to be before the day of the Lord, but not a word about the Lord pleased to open his eyes in the same way: how he does not say, as there was no call for it in his criticism of M. Gaussen on Daniel the Prophet.

Now it so happens that, during a visit to Plymouth in the summer of 1845, Mr. B. W. Newton told me that, many years before, Mr. Darby wrote to him a letter in which he said that

• a suggestion was made to him by Mr. T. Tweedy, (a spiritual man and most devoted ex-clergyman among the Irish brethren), which to his mind quite cleared up the difficulty previously felt on this very question.

• No one was farther from lending an ear to the impious and profane voices of the quasi-inspired Irvingites than Mr. T., unless indeed it were JND himself
  • who had closely investigated their pretensions and judged their peculiar heterodoxy on Christ's humanity as anti-christian and blasphemous.

• As to this anyone may satisfy himself by the Collected Writings XV, the first two articles of Doctrinal 4, with strictures in six other vols., to which may be added, in a new edition, a longer paper that has been discovered since.

On the other hand Mr. Newton knew, as well or better than most at this time of day, such of the Newman St. oracles as reached ears and eyes outside.

• But he also knew that no serious brother in fellowship regarded them with less than horror, as emanating not from human excitement merely but from a demon accredited with the power of the Holy Spirit.

  

• Their sorrow was great over E. Irving as a man of rare ability, large gift as a preacher and teacher, and zealous to live the truth in faith and love.

• Though he was carried away pitiably by the claim of tongues and miracles, and by the yet more dangerous pretension to restored apostles and prophets, they thankfully observed, what was his humbling admission, that he received no such endowment.

• It was a striking difference from his associates; that he, much the most eminent of them all spiritually, should have been unvisited by the alleged new power from on high.

• Yet Irving was bolder than any in affirming the fundamental heterodoxy as to Christ's person, nay that His sinful humanity (may God forgive the blasphemy!) was the basis for the divine gifts, the spirit (whatever its source and character) coming as its seal.

But Irving was at least honest and outspoken; and however erring as he surely proved, God kept him personally from the evil energy which wrought in those to whom he bowed down with abject superstition, and took him away comparatively young but worn out, contrary to their confident predictions.

• Their apostles and prophets with the rest of what they called the fourfold gifts, shuffled and prevaricated in the way habitual among men under demon powers.

• Take a single sentence of his out of many, "I believe it to be most orthodox, and of the substance and essence of the orthodox faith, that Christ could say until his resurrection, Not I, but sin that tempteth me in my flesh" (The Orthodox Catholic Doctrine of our Lord's Human Nature, p. 127, London, 1830).

• And when Mr. Robert Baxter challenged this doctrine as false, Irving could reply that the spirit in their prophetess, Miss E. C., had laid down that B. had departed from the truth which Irving had maintained, the Lord being pleased with him for it. This was confirmed by another prophetess, Mrs. C. (Baxter's Narrative of Facts, etc. pp. 104, 105).

But I willingly bear my testimony to Mr. N. that he never to me thought of attributing the source of the so-called doctrine, the rapture of the saints, to that seducing spirit.

• It was new, however, to hear that Mr. Tweedy, who died full of blessed labours in Demerara, was the one who first suggested, as a decisive proof from scripture, 2 Thess. 2: 1-2.

• I so implicitly believed in his telling me the truth as conveyed in Mr. D.'s letter to himself, that it did not occur to me to question Mr. D. about it.

• I knew the latter to be generous in acknowledging readily any debt of the kind he owed to other brethren, having experienced it in my own case and in that of Mr. Bellett, if not of more still.

• Indeed it was very touching to observe that one, to whose richly suggestive help so many were indebted, was himself so frank to own any fresh thought of value in another, and to manifest his simple-hearted pleasure, not only in hailing the accession but in adding to the evidence of its truth, as he so well could and did, while pointing out its importance.

Further, when Mr. N. named to me the disclosure of Mr. D.'s old letter, things had reached a very high temperature, and on no question more than the one before us.

• Mr. N. had issued the first edition of his "Thoughts on the Apocalypse" in parts, completed in 1844; and Mr. D. was at that time bringing out in parts his "Examination" of it, as able a volume as he ever wrote, not only in my judgment thoroughly subversive of the "Thoughts", but establishing on a sound basis the grand truths which were sought to be undermined.

• Now BWN was no neutral, but abhorred it in divine things as much as JND or anyone.

• Christ's relation to God had not yet come into controversy, nor the righteousness of God; but he was quite right in feeling the immense moment of God's revealed mind as to the Lord's coming, the heavenly calling, the church of God, etc.

• These truths he opposed through his prophetic system, which was sadly narrow and crude, however assured he might be of its certainty. His antagonism to Mr. D. and his teaching as incompatible had already come out clearly and decidedly, though the open breach did not occur till some months after.

On that humiliating breach there is no call to speak here. It was followed about two years subsequently by the distressing discovery of a systematic heterodoxy, one part of which, singular to say, appeared in the Second edition of the vol. 2 of the Plymouth "Christian Witness", an article of BWN on the Doctrines of Newman St.

• The Editor (JLH), through the loan to his wife of MS. Notes on Psalm 6, divulging doctrine revolting to his spirit, deemed it his duty to Christ and the church, that it should appear with his comment, no matter what the secrecy enjoined might be or any possible consequence.

  He (JLH) also disclaimed all knowledge of this "Second" edition, like most of the elder brethren also, being already provided with the first. This it is well to state, as an effort was made to show that people were inconsistent in complaining later of what was in circulation long before. The fact is that an active teacher of the system (WBD) acknowledged, just before it was exposed, that it had been fully canvassed in their large meeting for eight years before, and that the party were fully made up in it. He too with N.'s chief associates renounced it in print.

• Mr. N. hastened to defend his scheme of thought, and thus first laid open what had been working too long in the dark.

• JND, providentially detained beyond the time when he meant to go abroad, was thus called to deal with it searchingly, and with such effect that the most trusty of N.'s fellow-workers who remained broke down in confession of their fatal departure from the true Christ, owning the evil to be worse than what was known and laid to their door.

• Even BWN, threatened with the desertion of his friends if he did not retract, sent out (26th Nov., 1847), "A Statement and Acknowledgement respecting certain Doctrinal Errors".

But this failed to satisfy those aggrieved. Mr. N. did confess his awful sin "in holding that the Lord Jesus came by birth under any imputation of Adam's guilt, or the consequences of such imputation"; but he put a similar issue on His being made of a woman.

• Think of including Christ with the many constituted sinners!

• This he gave up; but he never disclaimed the horrible falsehood that He was under the curse of a broken law as a born Israelite, not vicariously, but in His own relation to God.

• No one any longer alleged against him his perversion of Rom. 5: 19 (first half); but he gave no sign that he renounced his evil teaching against the Lord, as "come of a woman, come under law".

• On the contrary, in a "Letter on subjects connected with the Lord's Humanity" (Oct. 1848), the latest known to me in which Mr. N. brought out his own doctrine on Christ's relation to God, he maintained the principles of the obnoxious tracts withdrawn for reconsideration – all, save involving Christ in Adam's guilt.

• He had "used wrong theological terms, and a wrong application to the fifth of Romans" (p. 32)!

It is plain that this system is semi-Irvingite, and though rejecting sinful humanity, comes to the same result of overthrowing His person directly, and indirectly the work which depends on His person.

• No doubt he wrote often on His work, and on justification by faith; but what is the value, as I told an eminent religious leader, of faith in a false Christ?

• Living faith is in the true Christ of God. Now it is one fully implicated in his kinsman's heterodoxy who dared to impute to an Irvingite spirit the doctrine of the church's rapture!

  Dr. S. P. Tregelles was a cousin of Mr. B. W. Newton.

• Far from me to say a needless word of one who is no longer alive to speak and explain.

• Now I was not with the new departure of Park St., nor approved of proceedings that led up to and followed it, and have reason to feel grief for that which there is good ground to impute to others.

• But unbroken deep regard to a great and good man, [ J. N. Darby ] an uncompromising champion for Christ's glory and God's truth, makes it an imperative duty to expose so low an effort of polemical rancour.

If there had been no letter from Mr. D. to Mr. N. stating the actual source, it was a rash and wicked surmise to say or think that "it was from that supposed revelation that the modern doctrine and the modern phraseology respecting it arose".

• That a vexed and vindictive spirit might thus imagine under a lamentably sad temptation, one can readily understand.

• But can any fair mind in God's presence, if he knew no other facts, conceive a greater improbability than JND adopting the utterance of what he believed a demon as a truth of God?

On the face of it, the "supposed revelation" [among the Irvingites] declared that, within three years and a half, the saints would be caught up to the Lord, and the earth wholly given up to the days of vengeance.

• The power came upon another at the same time confirming the rapture of the saints within three years and a half.

• Mr. N. 's words are purposely quoted from the article in the "Christian Witness", though at hand is Baxter's Narrative from which he drew the information.

• This betrays a source and character totally different from Mr. Tweedy's suggestion, or Mr. Darby's letter, for the doctrine [the pretribulation rapture of the saints] which became a factor of force not only among brethren so-called but among saints of God largely throughout the world.

The oracular utterance was grounded on the ordinary system, which Mr. BWN shared, of making the Lord's coming a link in the chain of prophecy.

• The rapture was to be within three years and a half from the time of prediction; as the voice then or afterwards taught that those described in Rev. 7 and 14 (for they confounded the two companies) would be the saints caught up.

• But all such ideas are baseless, and prove the absence of any real intelligence as to the book of Revelation.

• In neither case is there a translation to heaven, which takes place between Rev. 3 and 4.

• For the saints are still viewed as in the churches on earth according to the one chapter; and in the other they are seen under the symbol of the twenty-four crowned and enthroned elders.

• During that interval Christ must come to fetch them on high. The hope is thus carefully kept in scripture from confusion with the prophetic account of God's dealings with Israel and the Gentiles which follow.

• The like distinction is not less carefully marked by the coming of the Lord in 1 and 2 Thess. with other corresponding scriptures, and has nothing in common with the Irvingite voice in its unfounded and false application to the prophetic part of the Apocalypse.

Whatever men think, scripture (in the capital seat of the revelation of Christ's coming for the church, 1 Thess. 4) is express, that the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we the living that remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

• All must believe in this rapture at some time, for it is surely the common hope of Christians.

• The humbling fact, even among prophetic students, is that it has occupied so little their hearts and lips.

• But allowing this, why should any who wish to decry its prominence rush to the malignant conclusion, that it was derived from an Irvingite source, by those who are and have ever been as far as possible from such teaching, and who deem it utterly antichristian?

Ah, yes; but the "modern phraseology" – that tells the tale! Is it then that "the rapture" betrays the tainted source beyond a doubt?

• What a blinding preoccupation must have possessed the mind which drew such an inference!

• It is true that in the Dictionary of Dr. S. Johnson, and even in that of the much lauded Richardson, "rapture" is wholly absent in the sense before us. Webster, and Worcester also ignore it. It is an inexcusable blank.

• For it is not a modern "phraseology", but employed as in this case two or three centuries ago by well known authors of choice expression.

An early use of the word "rapture" for actual removal out of the present scene by power is by Shakespeare (Pericles, Act 2, sc. 1, near the end).

• This however applies, not to the Lord for heaven, but to the sea, "the rapture of the sea".

• As there is no other expression for the idea in our tongue, we cannot afford to lose it. But in fact it did not become obsolete.

• On the contrary it is employed, and in its scriptural application to divine power catching up to heaven, by men of celebrity for their language.

• John Milton, who, whatever the splendour of his style in prose and verse, is not one to be relied on for soundness in the faith, or decent respect for prelates however pious, did believe that
  • "Thou, the eternal and shortly-expected King, shalt open the clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the world", and of course to reward so sober, wise, and religious a commonwealth as that of England!

• But no reference of his to heavenly hope do I know; and hence he had no need of such a word.

• But in the same literal sense he does use its kindred "rapt" in Paradise Lost, III, 522, "Rapt in a chariot drawn by fiery steeds", and in Paradise Regained, II, 39, 40, "For whither is he gone, what accident hath rapt him from us?" Nor is he by any means the only old English poet who so wrote.

But let us pass to the graver roll of divines, which any can verify without trouble.

• Bishop Joseph Hall in the most popular of his writings, "The Contemplations", so entitles Elijah's translation to heaven, "The Rapture of Elijah" (Hall's Works, II, p. 80, Oxford, 1837).

• A second is Dr. Thos. Jackson, Dean of Peterborough, born after Bishop Hall but deceased before him; in whose second folio (p. 1068) we read of the "taking up" of Enoch and Elijah, yet in the Table of the third it is their "rapture" (ed. 1673).

• A third and later witness is the still more celebrated Bishop Jeremy Taylor, who in vol. VI. 548 of his Whole Works, a new ed. 1828, uses "rapture" twice over for Paul caught up or rapt up; and he has the credit of being considered one of the refiners of the English language.

From the Episcopalians of that early day I turn to Non-conformists, not so far back but by no means modern;

• Matthew Henry's Exposition of the O. & N. Test. VI on the scripture before us, "At, or immediately before, this rapture into the clouds, those who are alive will undergo a mighty change", etc.

  Of course it is known that Henry only left MSS. for the latter half of the N.T., and that D. Mayo completed the Epistles to the Thessalonians. But this only confirms the fact that "rapture" was commonly known in that day. instead of being a modern phrase due to Irvingite vagary.

The last that we need is the respectable Dr. John Guyse, who wrote the Practical Expositor (i.e. of the N.T. in three quarto vols.). The Second ed. of 1761 now lies before me.

• In his paraphrase of 1 Thess. 4: 17, he says of the dead saints raised, "and we with them shall be carried up by a divine rapture", etc.