The Parousia
The promise “I will come again” (John 14:3) has been associated -and rightly so -with the Scriptural foreview of the end of this Age and the winding up of affairs of this world preparatory to the inauguration of the new world order centered in Christ. There still remains some faith in medieval ideas of a twenty-four hour Day of Judgment, the annihilation of the earth, the immediate and final condemnation of sinners, and so on, in connection with this “coming again:’ but Christian thought is increasingly tending towards a more rational and satisfying view of the purpose of the Second Advent. More and more it is being accepted that the Lord Christ comes for the purpose of eradicating evil from human society by a process of evangelism and conversion, bringing as many as can be persuaded into a state of harmony and union with God, so attaining that element in the Lord’s prayer which looks forward to God’s Will being done upon earth as it is in heaven. But all of this is going to take a long time – the Book of Revelation echoes the ancient Jewish concept that it will require a thousand years -and it is this whole period of time which in the New Testament is called the parousia – the presence – of the Son of Man.
This word parousia is sometimes made the basis of a battle of ideologies, of variant views regarding the nature and manner, and sometimes the time relative to our present position on the stream of history, of the Advent. There is really no justification for this. Unfortunately the A.V. translators rendered parousia-which occurs twenty-four times in the New Testament -by “coming” in all but one instance, but in so doing they erred. They were probably swayed by the then universal view of the brevity of the Advent, one day only. In fact the word is not a verb, but a noun, and means literally the fact of being alongside, being here or present. Most modern translators render it “presence” in all its occurrences. No qualification of the word is implied; it does not indicate whether the one present is visible or not, neither does it include any idea of time or duration. It just means being present.
It is vital at this point to realize that the fact of our Lord being, or not being, visible to human beings at his Advent, or at least at the time of his arrival, has no bearing upon the reality of his presence. In the day when the Authorized Version was translated this aspect of Christian theology was very simply explained. Heaven, as believed by the scientific men of the day, was situated on the outer surface of a great “crystalline sphere” a kind of glass globe-which completely encircled the earth just outside of the sun, moon and stars, which themselves circled the earth. (This was known as the Ptolemaic cosmogony, superseded by more accurate ideas only in the late 17th century.) Christ, according to them, had only to descend through a few miles of atmosphere to the surface of the earth at his coming the second time. Today it is more easily understood that He comes to us, not from another place inside our universe, but from altogether outside it. One can by analogy picture the celestial world as existing upon a different wave-length, so that our Lord may conceivably be present upon the scene of earthly affairs without necessarily “tuning in,” as it were, to the material creation of which we and this earth are part, and so not be capable of perception by human senses, sight, hearing and so on. That was the position during most of the forty days between his resurrection and ascension; only upon occasion did He become apparent in a terrestrial body. The rest of the time He was incapable of perception by his disciples and yet still near them. If, as is indicated by Scripture, Satan, the Enemy, has been banned from Heaven since his sin and confined to earth, he also must be invisibly present in a similar manner. This fact might help to explain why the early stages of the Advent are described as being thieflike, unobtrusive, not detected by human eyes and ears, but only by the mental and spiritual faculties, rightly appraising the signs of the times. The outward manifestations, appealing to the natural senses, come later. And this leads to a consideration of the various elements which Scripture indicates as occurring during the parousia.
There is a climacteric point during the course of this period upon which all the constituent developments con- verge. Some end at this point, having commenced beforehand; others commence there and continue into the future. This climacteric is marked by the final overthrow of the power of evil and dominion of the rulers of this world-age, and the formal establishment of the sovereignty of the Lord Christ over the earth. Since the Church, the complete body of faithful dedicated Christian believers of all generations, is to be associated with Christ in the celestial sphere for the purpose of this sovereignty (Revelation 20:4, Matthew 13:43), they must have been already resurrected and “changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52) into his likeness before this point is reached. Likewise, since the earthly covenant people of God, Israel, purified and converted, is to be the Divine agent on earth for the evangelization of the world during the Millennium (Isaiah 49:6-9, 62:1-4, 66:19), their preparation and final ordeal (Ezekiel 38, 39) must also be completed before this point. On the other hand, since the power of Satan to influence men and incite to evil remains until the assumption of power by Christ but not beyond, his Millennial restraint (Revelation 20: 1) commences at this climacteric. It follows therefore that those Scriptures which depict the Advent as thief-like, unknown to man, unseen, describe that part of the parousia which falls before the climacteric, ie. during the closing years of this present age, for so long a period as the Scriptural descriptions of events can be identified as in process. During such period mankind at large is measurably or altogether in ignorance of the significance of such events or that the Advent has commenced; only the Church, the “Watchers” are conscious of the fact by means of their knowledge of the Scriptures and their spiritual discernment. Conversely, those Scriptures which depict the Advent as openly displayed, as a glorious spectacle universally seen by all men, describe that part of the parousia which falls after the climacteric, ie. the entire duration of the Messianic or Millennial Age, a time when “they shall see the Son of Man coming in power and great glory” (Matthew 24:30), “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together” (Isaiah 40:5).
On this basis the events of the parousia fall into the following categories, each of which would require quite a lengthy treatise if justice was to be done to the Biblical presentation of same, but will be only briefly alluded to at this present.
The first five are events occurring or culminating prior to the end of this present Age and the inauguration of the Messianic era.
1. The destruction of the pseudo-Christian apostasy called by Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2 the “Man of Sin” In his own day, he said, this apostasy was present in incipient form but could not be manifested until a “hindering power” was removed. It would then increase in power arrogating to itself the prerogatives of Christ, and would ultimately be destroyed by the “effulgence of his parousia” (presence). History has justified St. Paul’s prediction by the emergence within the Church in early centuries of the thesis that the Church was to rule the world during this Age in the name of Christ. The power of paganism, the official religion of the Roman empire, precluded such development until the time of Constantine, early 4th century, when paganism was abolished and Christianity made the State religion. The “hindering one” being thus removed, there grew up, side by side with but separate from the true Christian Church, an ecclesiastical-secular system of rule which ruled Europe, and all lands into which European influence penetrated, in the name of Christ but alien from his spirit. The “Holy Roman Empire” of the Middle Ages, the Inquisition, the various combinations of Church and State which have existed, all were aspects of this system. The 19th century saw its decline and end; from the French Revolution in 1789 to the loss by the Roman Catholic hierarchy of temporal power in 1870 the process continued, and it might fairly be said that the latter date marked its destruction (as a temporal or secular power) by the “effulgence of his presence.”
2. The progressive disintegration of the political and so2cial order of this world, marked by the wars and revolutions, descending eventually into complete anarchy, foreseen by our Lord in Matthew 24 and elsewhere as “signs of his presence, and of the end of the Age’ “ Christians throughout the 19th century saw this coming; the FrancoPrussian war of 1870 precipitated the forces of change which were accelerated by the world war of 1914, the Russian revolution of 1917, and the second world war of The commercial troubles of the present only accentuate this process and justify our Lord’s reference in Luke 21:25, 26 to “distress of nations with perplexity” and “men’s hearts failing them for fear.” Revelation 18 affords a vivid symbolic picture of the effect upon the nations. All this, rightly understood, is characteristic of what our Lord referred to as the “days of the Son of Man,” the early days of his presence.
3. The long-desired and long-expected restoration of the 3nation of Israel to its own land, predicted by so many of the Hebrew prophets as associated with Divine intervention in human affairs at the end of this Age, which in New Testament language is synonymous with the Second Coming of Commencing with the Zionist Congress of 1897 when the first movements were initiated, the British conquest of Palestine in 1917 and the Balfour Declaration for the national home for the Jewish people, increasing immigration leading to the proclamation of an independent State of Israel in 1948, to the “six-day” war of 1967, the ancient predictions have been fulfilled in such manner that they could not be fulfilled again. All these events signify the presence of the Son of Man.
4. The gathering to celestial life, by means of resurrection, of the complete Christian Church, including those who are still living during this period. A prominent teaching of the New Testament is that our Lord at his Advent will first thus gather his Church to himself and afterwards be revealed with them in glory to all It follows that a space of time separates the two events. Unlike the previous three events, there can be no outward or humanly perceptible evidence of this gathering although there will be at the later revelation. It is certain though that it must be completed before the end of this Age and the commencement of the outwardly manifest phase of the Advent, and probably some little while before the end. Whether such resurrection is the work of a moment, an immediate and synonymous “rapture” of all, or the process is spread over a period of time, may be debatable in the absence of clear Scripture statements, but the fact that the other events of this initial phase are spread over about, and at least, a century or more may easily warrant the conclusion that the “change” of the Church is spread over a period. There would seem little reason for it to be otherwise, and it could thus be expected that each one on “finishing his course” is translated “in the twinkling of an eye” to join the assembly of the saints above.
5. The final onslaught of evil forces of this dying world against the converted nation of Israel, assembled in their own land, confident that God will deliver them; and that unprecedented deliverance which is at one and the same time the end of this Age with all its evil, and the manifestation, to all mankind, of Christ with his Church in heavenly power, for the world’s This must come after the gathering of the Church and it ends that period of the Advent which has been hidden and unseen from the world in general, and commences that which is apparent to all.
The implication of all this is that during this whole period the presence of our Lord has been an accomplished fact, although unrevealed to human sight.
After this climax to the age come those events which appertain to the Millennial Age and so also belong to the parousia.
6. The “binding of Satan” A vivid picture in Revelation 20 shows an immediate consequence of the assump- tion of earthly dominion by Christ to be the restraining of Satan’s powers of deceit and seduction “that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years should be ” This of itself will prove a tremendous incentive to right living and avoidance of sin on the part of mankind.
7. The resurrection of the dead. Numerous scriptures 7 assert that the dead will return and be afforded a full and final opportunity to eschew all wrong-doing and declare themselves for loyalty and allegiance to God in the saving grace of Jesus Christ. This involves a stupendous work of world evangelization which will be carried on by the Church from heaven and the Israel nation upon earth. The consequence will be that none will be lost who can possibly be persuaded to respond to the appeal of the Gospel and be
8. The renovation of the earth. The promise is that the 8”desert shall blossom as the rose” The earth, the Godgiven home of mankind, has been polluted and devastated by man’s mishandling of its amenities and One of the great works of the Millennium will be the rectifying of the damage that has been done and this will be by the labors of mankind. In all of this men will learn the meaning of the original Divine injunction to administer and have dominion over the earth, and will do so for the good of all (Genesis 1:26, 2:15).
9. Finally comes the end, when the processes of this 9 earthly reign of Christ have done their work in recon- ciling to God all who prove capable of reconciliation, sin and sinners are no more, and the race of mankind is ready to enter into the eternal state. At this point Christ “delivers up the Kingdom to God, even the Father … that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:24-28). The purpose of the Second Advent will have been achieved. This is the end of the parousia.
– Bible Study Monthly