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Eureka

AN EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE
Sixth Edition, 1915
By Dr. John Thomas (first edition written 1861)

 

 

Chapter 1

Section4 - Subsection 1

He Is Coming


 
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"BEHOLD he is coming with the clouds, and every eye shall see him, and whosoever pierced him; and all the tribes of the earth shall wail before him. Yea, verily; so let it be" (Apoc. 1:7).

IN these words is an exclamation which is designed to direct the reader's attention to Jesus and the Saints, as the !greek! ho Erchomenos, the One Yahweh who is coming as the anointed with the Seven Spirits -- "Behold, he is coming with the clouds."

The apocalypse begins immediately after the salutation with the announcement of the coming of Deity in Spirit, and concludes with the declaration, that "He who testifies these things (written in the Apocalypse) says, Verily, I come quickly"; and it points us also to the time when that coming may be expected, and in what sense "quickly" is to be understood in the warning recorded in 16:15, beginning, "Behold, I come as a thief! Blessed is he that watcheth," and so forth.

No event is more prominently set forth in the apostolic writings than the coming of the Lord Jesus in power and great glory. The prediction is not peculiar to the Apocalypse, though it is made one of its most glorious themes, or rather the most glorious of all.

Thus, when Jesus was preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, he said, "The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his messengers; and THEN he shall reward every man according to his works" (Matt. 16:27). And again, "When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy messengers with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory" (25:31). And referring to this time, he also said, "I, Amen, say to you, that ye (my apostles) who followed me, in the Regeneration when the Son of man shall sit upon the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, ruling the Twelve Tribes of Israel; ... ye shall receive a hundredfold, and shall inherit Life Aionian" (19:28). In these three testimonies, Jesus plainly teaches,

1. That the Son will come in glory and power;

2. That He will come with Holy Ones;

3. That He comes to ascend and sit upon the throne of His glory;

 

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4. That the Regeneration shall be at this epoch;

5. That the time for rewarding men according to their works is in this Regeneration Era; and,

6. That in this Regeneration Era the thrones of the house of Israel will exist again, and be occupied by the Twelve Apostles, then possessed of the life pertaining to the Aion of the Son.

 

Such are the points inculcated in the teaching of the Seven Spirits, or Logos, with which the Son of David's daughter was anointed without measure. It is in strict accordance also with the teaching of the same Spirit in the prophets. Thus, Jude testifies that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, "Behold, Yahweh cometh in his holy myriads (!greek!) to execute judgment upon all" (ver. 14). This is precisely what Jesus taught. Yahweh, the Eternal Spirit, in Holy Myriads, in clouds of Holy Ones, constituting "One Yahweh and One Name," cometh to execute judgment upon all; and in so doing, to reward every man according to his works. Yahweh in his Holy Myriads is the Son of man -- Daniel's !hebrew! ish-echad, MAN OF ONE (10:5), referred to by Jesus in the remarkable testimonies already adduced.

Moses, also, referring to the apocalypse of Yahweh, says, in Deut. 33:26: "There is none like the AIL of Yeshurun, riding heavens in thy help, and in his Majesty of Clouds. Mighty Ones of the East* is the refuge, even beneath the Powers of Olahm: and he shall drive out the enemy from before thy faces, and shall say, Destroy. Israel then shall dwell safely: the fountain of Jacob (shall be) alone upon a land of corn and wine; also his heavens shall distil dew. Thy blessings, O Israel (are these): who is like thee, O people saved by Yahweh, the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thy splendor? And thine enemies shall waste away because of thee; and thou shalt tread upon their high places."

[* later edition: The Eternal God.]

This testimony of Moses is symbolized in the Apocalypse. Hence the apocalyptic coming of Eternal Power manifested in Spirit-flesh, is the AIL of Yeshurun riding heavens in his clouds of majesty to help Daniel's people scattered among all nations. His clouds are the Mighty Ones of the East, the Powers of the Millennium, or Age to Come, styled in Apoc. 16:12, "the Kings from a Sun's risings." These are Israel's refuge, who shall expel the enemy from the covenant land, and cause them to dwell in it safely. They are the shield and sword of Israel, who shall make them a glorious nation, and subject all the nations to the majesty of Jacob.

I do not propose to adduce all that might be quoted from the prophets concerning the coming of Messiah in his glory and power, but

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simply a specimen, to show upon what the sayings of the Apocalypse are founded. I shall therefore only add one or two more.

Thus, in Isaiah 28:16, it is written, "Behold, saith Adonai Yahweh, I lay in Zion for a foundation a Stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation." Now this stone had been tried, but it has not yet been laid in Zion; for when laid, it is a foundation that will not be removed. Jesus is this stone; but hitherto he has proved only "a Stone of stumbling and a Rock of offence" to Israel, as the same prophet predicted in ch. 8:14. It is necessary, therefore, that he return to Jerusalem, as he himself predicted in Matt. 23:39, that his power may be established there, and not be plucked up; and that it may be proclaimed to the cities of Judah, saying, "Behold your Elohim." Hence, because of this necessity, the same prophet has said, in ch. 40:10, "Behold, Adonai YAHWEH will come in might, and his power (shall be) a ruler for him: behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him"; or, as Jesus taught, "when he comes, then he shall reward every man according to his work." His work has to be performed after he comes. Hitherto, he has only been making preparation; when this is complete, then "Behold, he comes with the clouds!" And having accomplished the work he comes to do, then, as Jesus taught, "the Son of man will sit upon the throne of his glory"; or, as Isaiah expresses it in ch. 24:23, "Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when YAHWEH of armies shall reign on Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem; and in the presence of his Ancients (there shall be) glory". "And in this mountain, YAHWEH of armies shall make unto all the peoples a feast of fat things. And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all the peoples, and the veil that is spread over all the nations. And he will swallow up death in victory; and Adonai YAHWEH will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth" (25:6-8).

Such is the work to be accomplished when he comes with the clouds; a work which will constitute Zion a saved city, and the worker her salvation; hence the prophet speaks on this wise: "Say ye to the Daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him" (62:11).

But, not only did Enoch, Moses, Isaiah, and indeed all the prophets, predict the coming of Messiah in power and great glory, according to the teaching also of Jesus himself before his ascension; but the apostles also, after that remarkable event, dwelt often and fondly upon it, as the great theme of hope and expectation. Thus, after they had been assured by angelic personages that "the same Jesus who had been

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taken up from them into the heaven should so come in like manner as they had seen him go into the heaven" (Acts 1:11), they went forth and proclaimed it in all the habitable. On the day of Pentecost, Peter declared that he who had ascended, even Jesus whom they had crucified, had been raised from the dead, for the future purpose of sitting upon the throne of David his ancestor, which every Jew present knew could only be fulfilled by Jesus coming back to Jerusalem in power; for to no other locality did the throne, or seat, of David's kingdom belong (Acts 2:30). And not long after this, he told the Israelites in the temple, that the absence of Jesus from Palestine was only temporary. "The Lord," said he, "shall send the Anointed Jesus (who was before preached) unto you, whom heaven indeed must retain until times of restoration of all things, of which the Deity hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets, !greek! from the Aion's beginning." In other words, when "the times and seasons" apocalypsed shall arrive, the era of Israel's national regeneration will have come. It will then be time to restore the kingdom again to Israel, which implies the ingathering of all the tribes of that race, from the outlying countries of the earth; the conquest of the Holy Land from "the powers that be," and the moral purification of the nation, upon the principle of faith in Jesus as Son of Deity, and King of the Jews, and obedience to whatever form of truth he may be pleased to prescribe.

Afterwards Paul announced to the learned and polite Athenians, that the Deity purposed to rule the inhabited earth by the Anointed Jesus, whom he had raised from the dead for this intent; and in all the cities he visited, he proclaimed Jesus as the future king of all nations, by which he turned the habitable upside down (Acts 17:6,7,31). This was in effect preaching the coming of the Lord in power; for unless he returned, and that with power, he could not do the things declared.

This being the tenor of Paul's teaching, when he wrote letters to the ecclesias he had gathered, he addressed them as "waiting for the Apocalypse (or revelation) of our Lord Jesus Anointed"; and concerning certain things affecting himself, he exhorted them to "judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come ... when every man shall have recompence from the Deity" (1 Cor. 1:7; 4:5): and in 15:22,23, he told them, that "they which are Christ's, shall be made alive at his coming."

In writing of the saints of Philippi, he is very explicit. "Our !greek! politeuma, or commonwealth," says he, "subsists in heavens; out of which we look for the deliverer, the Lord Jesus Anointed, who shall transform the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his* glory" (ch. 3:20,21), and to the Colossian believers, he

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says, "Your life is hid with the Anointed One in the Deity. When the Anointed, our life, shall appear, then shall ye also be manifested with him in glory" (ch. 3:3,4). The citizenship of the saints "subsists in heavens" -- in the holy, and most holy states. They put on Christ in the obedience of faith, and are then "in him"; and through him have access to the Divine Father. In putting him on, their names are engraven on his breastplate, and their citizenship begins. Their names are with him within the veil, while they are in the heavenly state, the ecclesia, upon the earth, where, as members of his body, having their hearts sprinkled with the blood of sprinkling from an evil conscience, and the body washed with pure water (Heb. 10:22), they are waiting for his Apocalypse; and "by them who are looking for him," says Paul, "he shall be seen of them a second time without sin for salvation" (Heb. 9:28).

[* The Second Edition has, the body of this glory, which does not seem to be correct.]

Of this manifestation upon earth "a second time," he writes copiously in his letters to the saints in Thessalonica. He mentions it five times in his first epistle; and three times in his second. "You turned from the idols to the Deity, to serve the living and true Deity, and to wait for his Son from the heavens, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath which is coming." And in relation to them, he says, "What is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye before our Lord Jesus Anointed in his presence?" "The Lord stablish your hearts unblamable in holiness before the Deity and our Father, in the presence of our Lord Jesus Anointed, with all His holy ones."

And when some of them were sorrowing for the loss of brethren who had died, he exhorted them not to grieve as the heathen who have no hope. "For," says he, "if we (the saints) believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also them who have been sleeping, the Deity through that Jesus, will lead out with him. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we, the living, who are surviving unto the presence of the Lord, shall not precede them who have been sleeping. For the Lord himself in command, with a voice of an archangel, and with a trumpet of Deity, shall descend from heaven, and the dead in the Anointed shall arise first; afterwards, we, the living, who are surviving, together with them, shall be hurried off in clouds unto a meeting of the Lord in air; and thus we shall be at all times with the Lord. Wherefore, comfort one another with these words" (1 Thess. 1:9,10; 2:19; 3:13; 4:14-17).

Such is the manifestation of the Lord to his saints. But while he appears thus to their joy and glorification, he is apocalypsed as a consuming flame upon the enemy. "For you who are being afflicted,"

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says he, (there shall be) "rest with us in the apocalypse of the Lord Jesus from heaven with angels of his power, in a fire of flame, inflicting vengeance upon them who know not Deity, and who obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Anointed; who shall pay justice, Aion-destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his might, when he shall come to be glorified with his holy ones, and to be admired with all who believe in that day." Those who know not Deity, and obey not the gospel of the Lord Jesus Anointed, are of the Apostasy; whose Prince is the Lawless One, called by Paul "the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition... whom," says he, "the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and annihilate in the manifestation of his presence" (2 Thess. 1:7-10; 2:8).

Lastly, upon this point, we remark, that Paul instructed his contemporaries who looked for the presence of the Lord Jesus Anointed, and their gathering together around him, that the day of that apocalypse should be preceded by an apostasy from the truth, which should attain great and powerful development. This Apostasy exists in what is called "Christendom," in all its "Names and Denominations"; and is largely treated of in the Apocalypse. It will shortly attain that maturity which precedes annihilation. The coming is for this purpose, that when abolished, "the knowledge of the glory of YAHWEH may cover the earth as the waters cover the sea" (Numb. 14:21; Isai. 11:9; Hab. 2:14; Apoc. 18:1). The Day of Christ is now at hand; the signs of his coming are abroad in the earth; and blessed will they be who are watching and prepared.

 

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