THE SHORT COURSE SERIES

Edited by Rev. John Adams, B.D.


The Son of Man

STUDIES IN THE GOSPEL OF MARK

By Andrew C. Zenos, D.D., LL.D

Chapter 7

THE SON OF MAN IN THE WORLD'S FUTURE

Mark xiii. 26, xiv. 62 (Matt. x. 23, xxv. 13, 31, xxiv. 30; Luke ix. 26, xii. 40, xviii. 8, xxi. 27).

To the modern mind one of the most striking features of Apostolic and early Christian thought is the strength and widespread prevalence of the belief that Jesus was to make a second appearance very shortly. The man of the twentieth century is bound to ask: "How did this belief arise? and why was it so firmly and vividly held?" One answer to these questions is, that Jesus Himself predicted His early second coming. The scholarship of these latter days is largely behind this view. Grudgingly at first, and with many misgivings on the part of some, the concession has been made to exact historical research. Jesus did cast His message concerning the coming of the Kingdom of God into a form carrying in itself the idea of His own coming again in visible splendour, and that within the lifetime of His hearers.

But behind the utterances of Jesus and conditioning them lay the Old Testament picture of the Messianic reign. Whatever else this picture might or might not mean in detail to the mind of the time of Jesus, it did convey the idea of a dispensation of ideal conditions and invaluable blessings. And, since Jesus had not fulfilled in a visible and tangible form this promise of prophecy, if He was indeed the Messiah, the only logical inference must be that He had postponed this part of the Messianic work to a later date. He must then come again to complete His work. It might thus be said the belief in the Second Coming was an inevitable corollary of the acceptance of Him as the Messiah of Prophecy.

But modes of expression used by Jesus and the Old Testament conceptions of the Messiah are alike historical outcroppings of a more deep-rooted reality and a fundamental need in human nature which this reality meets and satisfies. The conviction that the Son of Man was to get complete control of the organisation of humanity and manifest His will in a perfect, and perfectly just, order of social life, would not have secured its hold on the minds of men, either in its Jewish or in its Christian form, were it not that the human heart at its best moments hungers just for that consummation, and that there is a real culmination for the Kingdom of God which satisfies this spiritual hunger. It is this that best explains both the words of Jesus and the enthusiastic acceptance and vigorous and joyful transmission of the truth of the Second Coming of the Master.

1. The Certainty of the Second Coming.

The assurance that the Christ would make a second entrance into the world of human affairs is interlinked with the fact of His resurrection and ascension. "He shall" come" means first of all that He is absent to the eye of the body, but real to the eye of faith; He rules as the King of glory. The term which the early Christians used was not "second" coming, or coming of any kind, but "Presence" ( Parousia ). It was the transformation of the existence of the Master from a hidden reality to an actively felt presence that appealed to them and impressed them, the change from faith to sight, the perfecting of the experience of companionship with Him in the restoration of ideal order to the world by the inclusion in it of the physical side of His being.

The Presence of the Master is from this point of view a bringing into visibility of the invisible. It is described as a "manifestation," a "revelation," an "appearing." "When he shall appear," "If he shall appear," says John (i John iii. 3). "When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested," says Paul (Col. iii. 4). When Paul would impress it upon the mind of the young Timothy that his duties as a servant of the gospel are of a most important character, he charges him by "the appearing (of the Christ)" (2 Tim. iv. 1). When he would commend to Titus a pure life as the subject of preaching, be points to "the hope and appearing of the glory of the Great God and Saviour Jesus Christ" (Tit. ii. 13). Peter likewise holds up "the revelation (A.V. "appearing") of Jesus Christ" (1 Pet. i. 2) as a ground for patient endurance of present affliction.

The assurance of the future disclosure of Him is even now a vivid reality and a guarantee of his continued interest in our present efforts and struggles. He has not gone from the world and left us with a fund of good, which henceforth we may use irresponsibly, which we may risk and possibly lose. He shall come again! Therefore all we do is of consequence to Him. Thus in all the allusions to the future Return as a "revelation," or "manifestation," there is a practical aim in view.

First of all, the hope of His coming again becomes "an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast." Men dared in the Apostolic days, and have dared ever since, to stand by what they have received from Christ, because they have known that He would justify them in their trust of Him, and prove to a gainsaying world that they were not deceived, that they had not misplaced their confidence. There were hours of temptation in those early days. There have been hours of darkness and trial ever since. Nor is the time for them past. All through these the call of the Master is the same: "That which ye have, hold fast till I come" (Rev. ii. 25). Thus has this hope worked out the conservation of gain in Christian experience. In facing all enmity, all opposition and effort to despoil one of his treasure as a Christian, let this word but be spoken and the soul is filled with courage and steadfastness.

In another direction the same confidence becomes a strong motive for watchfulness. All expectation begets vigilance. The evil we expect stirs us to watch and be ready to meet and fight it. From this point of view, considering the effect of His coming on the weak and those who might be found in default of duty, the Master compares His coming to that of a thief in the night. The emphasis is on the uncertainty as to the time. Watchfulness is a needed means to preserve from the despondency and the running low of the powers which result in letting go and giving up. "Watch, therefore, for ye know not the day nor the hour" (Mark xiii. 33).

But there is another sort of watchfulness resulting from expectation of good. "When the Son of Man cometh shall he find faith on the earth?" (Luke xviii. 8). He shall. Because there shall be many who shall be eagerly looking forward to the privilege and the blessing of fellowship with Him. Being assured that at least, so far as it concerns them, His coming is not in wrath but in love, they shall strain their eyes even as children do upon the road on which they expect momentarily to see the gladdening figures of their absent parents. These are they whose prayer does not cease to ascend day nor night: "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus."

Once more, this confidence becomes an aggressive power, working out purification and progress. For, after all, life, if it shall be worth while, must be something more than a mere struggle for existence, a mere battle for the defence of a treasure, no matter how great and precious. There must be before it a prospect of advancement. The possibility of increasing its gains must be guaranteed to it as well as the possibility of conserving its gains or the original fund entrusted to it. "And every one that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure" (1 John iii. 3). For he reasons that that which he is to be, and that which he ought to be, it is worth while for him to begin to be, since "we know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." Growth in all that pertains to the type of life begotten by the Son of Man is given a strong impulse and motive.

The early Christians were not only buoyed and sustained by the expectation of the Second Advent of the Master, but also stimulated to most astonishing missionary efforts. This means that it was with them a hope and not a fear. At the end of the tenth century in the history of the Church, the same expectation revived. The end of the world at the close of the first millennium of Christianity was preached by many and believed by more. But, instead of resulting in purer lives and more earnest efforts to spread the gospel, it issued in excesses and riots of licentiousness such as have rarely been surpassed in any period. Those who looked forward to it were filled with fear; they were morally paralysed and petrified; they were carried away helpless victims to the evil that was in them. "Maranatha" (The Lord cometh) does indeed become anathema "if any man loveth not the Lord" (i Cor. xvi. 22). To serve as a conserving and stimulating influence, the belief in the Presence of the Christ must be a living hope.

2. The Manifold Aspect of the Hope.

While the conviction that the Master shall reveal Himself in the future is a constant and universal accompaniment and fruit of Christian faith, it assumes a large number and variety of forms. Some of these are apparently contradictory of one another, and those who entertain them are apt at times to appear to one another as not holding to the conviction at all.

In some Christians a sense is developed of the Master's presence and companionship as a living and powerful reality in such a manner that they cannot conceive of Him as either ever having gone away or as coming again. Bodily and material reappearance would add nothing to the comfort these have in the sense of His nearness. What could be the meaning, for instance, of a Second Coming to a person like Frances Ridley Havergal, who said that she could not conceive of the ascension of Christ, since to her He was always present? Or could one like Charles Spurgeon take any personal interest in a visible Second Advent who is reported to have said, that never for even fifteen minutes in his experience had he missed the sense of Christ's nearness to himself? And what shall we say of the long line of mystics who habitually saw their Saviour not merely in ceremony and symbol, but in day-dream and night vision? who held converse with Him and addressed Him not merely in prayer and sacrament, but in the privacy of the monastic cell as well as in the publicity of daily labour? Who both saw Him and heard Him "whether in the body or apart from the body they knew not"? Surely all these could not, except by a violent break from the logic of their own experience, think of a material Second Coming as of vital import to them; surely, if they use the language of the apocalyptists, it must be because of inability to avoid using forms of thought current in their environment.

It is a question whether "the disciple whom Jesus loved," the author of the Fourth Gospel, was not the prototype of this class of Christian. To him the coming again was identical with the coming of the Comforter. For does not he report Jesus as saying: "I will not leave you desolate: I come unto you"? (John xiv. 18 ff.). In this familiar and precious passage, Jesus, according to John, uses the word "come" of Himself, of the Father, and of the Holy Spirit; and in such a way as to blur the distinction between the coming of the three. Of Himself He says, "I go away, and I come unto you." And of the joint coming of the Father and Himself He says, "If a man love me... we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." The key to the complicated usage seems to be in the expression: "He that loveth me... I will love him, and manifest myself unto him." The coming of the Comforter was only the flooding of the world with the light that was to reveal the presence of the Lord Himself, and since the Father was revealed through Him only, His own manifestation was to be the manifestation of the Father. Yet it cannot be without significance that the same Gospel is silent on the apocalyptic Second Coming. If the Master was to be present in power among His loved ones, His physical manifestation to the world could possess for them only secondary interest

There is another type of believer to whom the presence of the Risen Redeemer is a fact of experience, but not in the immediate form of the mystic. While he does not associate the presence of the Lord with a material phenomenon, neither does he altogether dissociate it from the world of material facts. He feels it through the medium of palpable signs and emblems. His heart burns within him as he discourses with the mysterions stranger by the way, but it is only "in the breaking of bread" that the Master is "known of him."

There is a large class of devout souls whose spiritual senses are dulled by the humdrum hubbub of daily routine. But when they withdraw from the din and strife of worldly interests and employments and tall under the spell of an elaborate and impressive ritual, especially if it be enriched with suggestive associations interwoven into it through generations of human experience, their apprehension of outward matters is in its turn lulled to sleep, and the gently awakened spiritual sense recognises the "Vision of His Face." While they muse the fire burns, and in the accompanying glow they see the Lord.

Others are not as sensitive to spiritual realities. They must be startled by soulstirring occurrences. Some escape from monotony by some great crisis in public affairs; the explosive detonation of a sudden and stupendous calamity, rising above all the din and turmoil of life like a clap of thunder, is needed to arrest these in their course and to enable them to see the Lord in the momentary lull following the event.

Still others can only feel the nearness of the Great Companion in the fellowship of service with Him. As they gird themselves to the task of relieving suffering or righting wrong, of bringing cheer into darkened places or healing and restoring the broken and bruised, they remember His words when He said, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these little ones, ye have done it unto me," they penetrate the disguise and discover the Christ.

It is related of one of these devout souls, a cobbler by trade, that he had the assurance of his Saviour in a dream that on the next day He would visit him in his shop. Whereat the faithful one made himself ready for the promised call. From his basement bench he would lift his eyes to the side-walk above and listen to the tramp of footsteps, and eagerly imagine that each successive passerby might be the Master. And from time to time he would leave his bench, go up the street and invite some weary one to sit down and rest in his humble quarters, and offer him refreshing food and drink. The evening came. The Master had failed to keep his promise. But during his night's sleep the Master stood once more beside his bed, and as he humbly reminded Him of His unfulfilled promise, the Master told him that every weary one he had taken in and refreshed and cheered during the course of the day was Himself in disguise.

But there are also other souls who are not favoured with the privilege of the Vision of Christ in any of its forms. They do not doubt the testimony of their brethren who have glimpses of Him, or of those who live in His ever present companionship; but for themselves, they must look into the future for that full and intimate fellowship which their hearts crave.

3. The Spiritual Value of the Parousia.

For every Christian the fact cannot help but be of the utmost importance, that there is a promise of a larger blessing and of a purer joy in the future through Christ's presence in the world. What is the essential meaning of the promise? We shall not go far astray if we find the answer in some such form as this:

1. All the powers of the world, known and unknown, are in the end to work out God's will of love, and through Christ manifest to the entire universe His goodness and truth. Mere spectacular display is certainly far from the inner thought of Jesus when He speaks of His own coming in glory with the "angels." Angels are ministering spirits. So are the forces of nature, and so may become the wills of men. All shall in the end be brought into harmony with His plan and purpose.

2. Christ's thought shall be the standard of discrimination for all and in all matters. Men and things shall be brought more and more to His ideas as a basis of approval and disapproval. Borrowing the imagery of antecedent methods of thought, Christianity has from age to age clothed this aspect of its hope in vivid pictures of a specific event, including terrible Judgment, like that of the "'Dies iræ, dies illa." But the interest underlying and conveyed by these is always that Christ's will shall be the rule not only to guide, but also to measure His action after it is done.

3. Relationship with Christ shall be free and intimate. At present the spirit struggles with a thousand hindrances in its effort to reach the bosom of its Master. At His coming it shall have access to Him unforbidden and uninterfered with by any. Therefore it prays: "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus."