Come, Lord Jesus! -- Fulfilled or Unfulfilled?

Come, Lord Jesus! -- Fulfilled or Unfulfilled?

Below is the 32nd of multiple excerpts of commentary on the Book of Revelation from The Parousia, the late 19th-century masterpiece on the Second Coming by James Stuart Russell. "THE EPILOGUE [OF THE BOOK OF REVELATION]. "Chap. xxii. 6-21 [Rev. 22:6-21].---‘And he [the angel] said unto me, These sayings are faithful and true: and the Lord God of the spirits of the prophets sent his angel to shew unto his servants the things which must shortly be done. And, behold, I come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book. '"‘...He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly! Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. "‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.’ "This epilogue at the conclusion of the book corresponds with the prologue [Rev. 1:1-8] at the commencement, and exemplifies the structural symmetry of the composition. Still more remarkable are the emphasis and frequency with which the approaching fulfillment of the contents of the prophecy is affirmed and reiterated. Seven times over it is declared, in one form or another, that all is on the point of being accomplished. The statement with which the book opens is repeated at this close, that the angel of the Lord has been commissioned ‘to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass.’ The monitory [admonishing] announcement, ‘Behold, I come quickly,’ is thrice made into this concluding section. The Seer [John] is commanded not to seal the book of the prophecy, because ‘the time is at hand’ [Rev. 22:10]. So imminent is the end that it is intimated that now it is too late for any alteration in the state or character of men; such as they are so must they continue: ‘He that is unjust, let him be unjust still’ [Rev. 22:11] The invocation addressed by the four living creatures to the expected Son of man, ‘Come!’ (chap. vi., 1, 3, 5, 7, [Rev. 6:1-7]), is repeated by the Spirit and the bride; while all that hear are invited to join in the cry: and, lastly, the final expression of the whole book is the fervent utterance of the prayer, ‘Amen! Come, Lord Jesus’ [Rev. 22:20]. All these are indications, which cannot be misunderstood, that the predictions contained in the Apocalypse [Revelation] were not to be slowly evolved as ages roll on, but were on the eve of almost instant accomplishment [in the 1st century, thus intelligible to the book's original readers]. The whole prophecy, from the first to last, relates to the immediate future, with the solitary exception of the six verses of chap. xx. 5-10 [Rev. 20:5-10, the loosing of Satan from prison after the Millennium]. Nineteen-twentieths of the Apocalypse, we might almost say ninety-nine hundredths, belong, according to its own showing, to the very days then present, the closing days of the Jewish [Old Covenant] age [i.e., the Jewish-Roman war that commenced in A.D. 66 and ended with Rome's destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in A.D. 70]. The coming of the Lord is its grand theme: with this it opens, with this it closes, and from beginning to end this event is contemplated as just about to take place. Whatever else may be dark or doubtful, this at least is clear and certain. The interpreter who does not apprehend and hold fast this guiding principle [of 1st-century imminency] is incapable of understanding the words of this prophecy, and will infallibly lose himself and bewilder others in a labyrinth of conjecture and vain speculation. "So ends this wonderful book; so elaborate in its construction, so magnificent in its diction, so mysterious in its imagery, so glorious in its revelations. More than any other book in the Bible it has been sealed and shut to the intelligent apprehension of its readers, and this mainly on account of the strange neglect of its own unambiguous directions for its right understanding. [J.G.] Herder, who brought his poetical genius rather than his critical faculty to the elucidation of the Apocalypse, asks,--- "‘Was there a key sent with the book, and has this been lost? Was it thrown into the sea of Patmos, or into the Maeander?’ "‘No!’ answers an able and sagacious [Biblical] critic, Moses Stuart, whose labours have done much to prepare the way for a true interpretation,--- '‘No key was sent, and none was lost. The primitive [original 1st-century] readers---I mean of course the men of intelligence among them---could understand the book; and were we for a short time in their place we might dispense with all the commentaries upon it, and the theological romances which have grown out of it, that have made their appearance from the time of John’s exile down to the present hour.’ "But perhaps a better answer may be given. The key [of imminent fulfillment in the 1st century] was sent along with the book, and it has been allowed to lie rusty and unused, while all kinds of false keys and picklocks have been tried, and tried in vain, until men have come to look upon the Apocalypse as an unintelligible enigma, only meant to puzzle and bewilder. The true key has all along been visible enough, and the attention of men has been loudly called to it in almost every page of the book. That key is the declaration so frequently made that all is on the point of fulfillment. If the original readers were competent, as Stuart contends, to understand the Apocalypse [Revelation] without an interpreter, it could only be because they recognised its connection with the events of their own day. To suppose that they could understand or feel the slightest interest in a book that treated of Papal councils, Protestant reformation, French revolutions, and distant events in foreign lands and far-off ages, would be one of the wildest fancies that ever possessed a human brain. From first to last the book itself bears decisive testimony to the immediate fulfillment of its predictions. It opens with the express declaration that the events to which it refers ‘must shortly come to pass,’ and it closes with the reiteration of the same statement,---‘The Lord God hath sent his angel to shew unto his servants the things which must shortly come to pass.’ ‘The time is at hand.’ ... "As for the majority of interpreters [who regard Revelation as still awaiting fulfillment], it is scarcely possible to conceive a more absolute and reckless disregard to the express and manifold directions contained in the book itself than that which they have exhibited in their arbitrary speculations. Of willful perverseness no one will accuse them; but it seems unaccountable that scholarly and reverent students of divine revelation should either overlook or set aside the explicit declarations of the book itself with regard to its speedily approaching fulfillment; that they should, in spite of those plain assertions to the contrary, lay it down as an axiom that the Apocalypse is a syllabus of civil and ecclesiastical history to the end of time; and that they should then, in defiance of all grammatical laws, proceed to invent a non-natural method of interpretation, according to which ‘near’ becomes ‘distant,’ and ‘quickly’ means ‘ages hence,’ and ‘at hand’ signifies ‘afar off.’ All this seems incredible, yet it is true. Language [based on the futurist interpretation of Revelation] serves only to mislead, words have no meaning, and interpretation has no laws, if the express and repeated declarations of the Apocalypse do not plainly teach the speedy and all but immediate fulfillment of its predictions. "It ought to have occurred to the interpreters of the Apocalypse that it was an overwhelming a priori [self-evident] presumption against their method that it required an immense apparatus criticus [supplementary data], vast stores of historical information, the lapse of many ages, and ‘something like prophetic strain,’ to produce an exposition satisfactory even to themselves. Of what value such [distant future] ‘revelation’ could be to the primitive [original 1st-century] believers, who with trembling hearts obeyed the injunction that sent them to the baffling task of studying its pages, it is not easy to see. Nor is it much more value to the mass of modern readers, who must have a high critical faculty to be able to discern the fitness and truthfulness of the interpretation offered, and to decide between conflicting interpretations. It is no wonder that, occupying such a false position, the defenders of divine revelation laid themselves open to the assaults of such [Biblical] sceptics as [D.F.] Strauss and ‘the destructive school of criticism,’ and, taking refuge in non-natural interpretation, endangered the very citadel of the faith. It must be acknowledged that a culpable negligence of the ‘true sayings of God’ on the part of Christian expositors has often given a vantage ground to the enemies of revelation [those contending that Jesus and the apostles were deluded about his Second Coming] of which they [the skeptics] have not been slow to avail themselves. "Without undue presumption it may be claimed for the scheme of interpretation advocated in these pages that it is marked by extreme simplicity, by agreement with historical facts, and by exact correspondence with the symbols. There is no wresting of Scripture, no perversion or accommodation of history, no manipulation of facts. The only indispensable apparatus criticus is [the Jewish historian] Josephus and the Greek grammar [of John]. The guiding and governing principle is implicit and unwavering deference to the teachings of the book itself. The apocalyptic data have been the sole landmarks regarded, and it is believed that they have not been insufficient. To assume that no mistakes have been made would be preposterous; but succeeding travellers by the same [past-fulfillment] route will soon correct what is proved to be erroneous, and confirm what is shown to be right. "It has been the object of the writer to demonstrate that the Apocalypse is really the reproduction and expansion, in symbolical imagery adapted to the nature of a vision, of our Lord’s prophetic discourse spoken on the Mount of Olives [as recorded in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21]. That discourse, as we have shown, is one continuous and homogeneous prediction of events which were to take place in connection with the Parousia [Second Coming], the coming in His kingdom of the Son of man, an event which He declared would happen before the passing away of the existing generation, and which some of the disciples would live to witness [Matt. 10:23, 16:28, 24:34, 26:64; Mark 9:1, 13:30, 14:62; Luke 9:27, 21:32, 22:69; Rev. 1:7]. Similarly, the Apocalypse is a revelation of the events accompanying the Parousia, but entering far more into detail, and displaying far more of the glory and felicity of ‘the kingdom.’ "Eighteen [now 20] centuries ago, as the Seer gazed on the glorious vision of the city [New Jerusalem] whose walls were of jasper, and its gates of pearl, and its streets of pure gold, he was assured again and again that ‘these things must shortly be done,’ and that ‘the time was at hand.’ Standing on the verge of the long-expected Parousia, listening for the footfall of the coming King, knowing that ‘the end of the age’ [Matt. 13:39, 13:40, 13:49, 24:3, 28:20; 1 Cor. 10:11; Hebrews 9:26] must be imminent, and looking eagerly for ‘the day of the Lord,’ how could it be otherwise than that St. John and his fellow-disciples should believe themselves on the point of witnessing the fulfillment of their cherished hopes? How could it be otherwise, when the Lord Himself, giving His own personal attestation to the assurance of His almost immediate advent, declared thrice over, in the most explicit terms, ‘Behold I come quickly;’ ‘Behold, I come quickly;’ ‘Yea, I come quickly’? "We are thus led to the conclusion, alike from the teaching of the Apocalypse and the rest of the New Testament scriptures, that in the days of St. John the Parousia was universally believed by the whole Christian church to be close at hand. It was the promise of Christ, the preaching of the apostles, the faith of the church. We are also taught the significance of that great event. It marked a new epoch in the divine administration. Until that event took place [at the time of Jerusalem's fall] the full blessedness of the heavenly state was not open to the souls of believers [Hebrews 11:40]. "The Epistle to the Hebrews teaches that until the arrival of the great consummation something was wanting to the full perfection of them who had ‘died in faith’ [Hebrews 11:40]. The same thing is taught in the Apocalypse. Until the ‘harlot city’ [old Jerusalem] was judged and condemned, the ‘holy city’ was not prepared as the habitation of the saints. We are given to understand also that the close of the Jewish dispensation, the abrogation of the legal economy, and the destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem [in A.D. 70], indicated the dissolution of the peculiar [special] relation between Jehovah and the nation of Israel. The nation had rejected its King, and the King had judged the nation; and the Messianic mission, both for mercy and for judgment, was then fulfilled. The faithful remnant were gathered into the kingdom, or ‘the new Jerusalem,’ and the whole frame and fabric of [Old Covenant] Judaism were shattered and destroyed for ever. The kingdom of God was now come, and He who for so long a period had conducted its administration, its Mediator and Chief, now that He has crowned the edifice, resigns His official character and ‘delivers up the kingdom’ into the Father’s hands [1 Cor. 15:24]. His His work as Messiah is accomplished; He is no longer ‘a minister of the circumcision’ [Romans 15:8]; the local and limited gives place to the universal, ‘that God may be All in all’ [1 Cor. 15:28]. This does not mean that the relation between Christ and humanity ceases, but that His mission as King of Israel is fulfilled; the covenant-nation no longer exists; there are no longer Jews and Gentiles [Gal. 3:28], circumcised and uncircumcised; the Israel of God is wider and greater than Israel after the flesh [1 Cor. 10:18]; Jerusalem which is above is not the mother of Jews, but is ‘the mother of us all’ [Gal. 4:26]. "It was in the full view of that glorious day, which was about to ‘open the kingdom of heaven to all believers,’ that the beloved disciple made response to his Lord’s announcement of His speedy coming, ‘Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!’ [Rev. 22:20]"