Tag: Second Coming of Christ

A.W. Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date March 22, 2026

“The Second Coming of Christ“

The Second Coming of Christ

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

December 28, 1958

We read the 72nd psalm together, that great psalm that begins, Give the king thy judgment, O God, and thy righteousness unto the king’s son. He shall judge thy people with righteousness and thy poor with judgment. This we read together earlier in the service.

This psalm was written to celebrate the accession of Solomon to the throne after the death of David. It may have been written by David before he got too old and tired to write, looking forward to the installation, coronation of his son. It may have been written by Solomon himself or more likely it was written by one of the prophets or seers that gathered round David’s throne and waited in his sanctuary, God’s sanctuary.

This psalm embodies a high prophetic expectation. Noble ideals are here, ideals of what a king must be or what a king should be. But as in many of the psalms that we call messianic psalms, the immediate serves as a prefigurement of the more remote.

There are of course two ways to look at any passage such as this, three ways to look at it, two of them wrong and one of them right. The wrong way is, as some of the commentators do, to find its historic meaning and rest at that. David was dying or had died, and Solomon was now becoming king and somebody was writing a coronation psalm. That was that and that’s it. That’s one way and that’s the wrong way.

Then there is another way and that is to see nothing here but Christ, to see a prophetic truth let down like a vacuum out of heaven above without any historic background at all and that’s a wrong way to look at.

But if we see it, as we must see much of the Bible, as having both an immediate and a remote application, the immediate being its historic meaning and the remote being its prophetic meaning, I think that is the right way to look at it because here we have Solomon being brought into the throne and making his accession to the throne but we also see here most surely another and a Greater than Solomon and a greater and nobler kingdom than Solomon’s.

We must not in any wise undersell the man Solomon because Jesus referred to him as being great and said Solomon in all his glory. That was Christ’s description of Solomon. He brought Israel to the zenith of its power, and he made stones in the street to be as gold. He built cities and he gathered to himself riches from all parts of the world. Undoubtedly Israel at under the reign of Solomon was one of the great little kingdoms of the world.

But you cannot read this 72nd Psalm for any length of time with anything like careful meditation until you find language that could not apply to Solomon. Let me read it to you.

For instance, just some for instances, passage here, verses 5 and 8 and to say no more.

They shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure throughout all generations. That could not possibly apply to Solomon because Solomon of course has long, long been dead and his bones have long ago turned to dust.

Then there’s this passage. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea and from the river unto the ends of the earth. That also could not describe Solomon’s kingdom because the kingdom of Solomon could be drawn, its boundaries could be drawn very, very easily.

And then that passage which says in verse 17, his name shall endure forever, his name shall be continued as long as the sun and men shall be blessed in him and all nations shall call him blessed. That I say again is stretching it too far. It could not be Solomon. Language is used here which has not yet been fulfilled.

Though this psalm had its origin I repeat at the nation of Solomon, there is language here which has not yet been fulfilled. Verses 4 and 7 for instance. He shall judge the poor of the people. He shall save the children of the needy and he shall break in pieces the oppressor. Or if fulfilled it could only have been on a very local scale. Verse 7, in his days shall the righteous flourish and the abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth. That could not possibly have been fulfilled by the man Solomon.

Then there is verse 11, yea all kings shall fall down before him and all nations shall serve him and he shall deliver the needy when he crieth and the poor also in him that hath no helper. This is asking too much to believe that even Solomon in all his glory could ever have seen anything like this.

Now there is only one way to look at this psalm. That is there is only one final way and that is to realize that it has a historic background. It was written at the coronation of Solomon and a great deal of it applied to Solomon. The other is that it is prophecy and much of it could not apply to Solomon but must apply to some other King that is coming.

Now that other King that is coming and verse 6 tells us the direction from whence he shall come. He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass as showers that water the earth. There is this other King. This could not possibly apply to the man Solomon. He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass and as showers that water the earth.

He might come and he might have come and brought prosperity to the nation and so by a stretch of poetic fancy we might have said that he makes the everything to prosper like grass but that doesn’t say it here. It says he shall come down like rain upon the mown grass and as showers that water the earth. The grass is mown not growing in its green lush beauty but mown and he comes down, not the descendant of David, but he comes down like rain.

Now what King has ever done this? Would you tell me? David did not, Solomon did not and could not, none of the others ever did. All down the years and no King has ever come down and no King has ever come and found his kingdom mown lying, lying flat like a field that has been mown and has been to it such as rain might be upon such a field.

Now things are said of this King of which we have read together tonight which could only apply to the Eternal Son. And the New Testament boldly shows that this King who is to come down is none other than Jesus Christ our Lord. If you are a believer in the New Testament, if you believed even a modicum, even a trifling trace of that which we were so frantically celebrating over the last week, then you will have to admit that this man called Jesus who was born in a manger had, was in direct lineal descent from David. Not from Solomon but from David.

I heard a man say on the radio and he couldn’t have been any more wrong if he had said two times two make nine. He said that Jesus Christ was a descendant of Solomon and therefore that being a descendant of Solomon, Joseph was his supposed father and by a kind of twist of circumstance there, Jesus could be a king through the line of Joseph. My brother, I can’t understand why a man should step to a microphone and declare something until he had checked it and when he hadn’t yet checked it.

The truth is that Jesus was not a descendant of Solomon at all but a descendant of Nathan. Solomon had in his line a man by the name of Coniah and that man Coniah was such a wretched make-believe of a king, and he had so sinned against God that God said hear earth, hear the word of the Lord. No descendant of this man shall ever sit upon the throne of David.

And so, he ruled out Coniah and thus he ruled out Solomon because Solomon was the ancestor of Coniah. So, the descendant jumped from the line of Solomon to the line of Nathan, and Mary was a direct descendant from Nathan. David, Nathan and on down to Mary.

So, Jesus being a son of Mary, but not a son of Joseph, could sit upon the throne of David. But if Jesus had been a son of Joseph even by adoption he could not have sat upon the throne of David because God had thrice cursed the line of Coniah and has said no descendant of this man can ever sit on the throne and Joseph was a descendant of Coniah.

Now Christ’s spiritual kingdom, some will say yes, that psalm, that 72nd Psalm is the description of the beautiful church, the work of righteousness, the work of hospitals and all the church has done, the reign of Christ over the earth.

You know friends, it seems to me that we ought to be a bit wiser than we are. We sing what is called a Christmas song. We sing Jesus shall reign where e’er the sun. Do you know that that is not a Christmas song at all? That is a song based upon the 72nd Psalm and it has to do with the coming back of the King Jesus and not with the coming of Jesus in the first place. Nothing in that song has anything to do with Jesus’ first coming but it has to do with His second coming. It’s not a missionary song either, it is a song having to do with Christ when He comes back to the earth again.

Now, the New Testament, I say, boldly declares that Jesus is this One and that it could not be the spiritual kingdom because there are things written into this psalm, acts and deeds are attributed to this King which he must be personally present to perform. Let me just read over here just almost at random. And he shall judge the poor of the people, and he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. And he shall have dominion from sea to sea, and the kings of Tarshish and the Isles shall bring presents, and the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. Yea, and all kings shall fall down before him, and all nations shall serve him. And he shall deliver the needy when he crieth, and the poor also, and him that hath no helper. And he shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence, and he shall live, and all the rest.

Now there has to be a King present for this to be fulfilled, and that King must be Jesus Christ our Lord. So since he has not yet come, then it’s reasonable to conclude that he must yet be coming. If he has not yet come, and there are predictions here that were not fulfilled in Solomon, and they were not fulfilled when the suffering Savior came to die, and they are not fulfilled in the spiritual kingdom we call the Church. And they must be and can be fulfilled only by the coming of a person to the world. Then, we must conclude that that person has not yet come.

And the Jew is right when he’s waiting for his Messiah, looking forward to the coming of another King. He’s wrong in believing that his Messiah did not come to die, but he is right in believing that the Messiah is coming to reign.

Now notice the conditions when he comes, conditions that did not prevail when Solomon was crowned as King over Israel; conditions that did not prevail when Jesus came to the world the first time, turmoil and war and threats of war, verse 3, and poverty and need abounded everywhere, and a cruel oppressor grinding the faces of men, verses 4, 12, and 13. Notice it. He shall judge the poor of the people. He shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor, and verse 12, he shall deliver the needy when he crieth on the poor also, and him that hath no helper. And he shall redeem their soul, and he shall live, and there shall be a handful of corn.

All of this did not exist at the time Christ came the first time. It has not been brought to pass during the time of the Church. This cruel oppressor, oh, there have been oppressors all right. We’ve had them all down the centuries. They have reigned a little while over a small part of the world, then they have gone like the Hitlers and the Stalins and the rest of them.

But there is pictured here a ruler or some oppressor who grinds the faces of men and rules by violence and deceit and pogroms and blood and intimidation. You find that in 4, 12, 13, and 14. And he will, by the time this new king comes, he will have reduced the world to mown grass and civilization as we know it will have passed away. My friends, we had better become realistic now about this and stop listening to the commentators and the politicians and the well-intentioned statesmen.

They are hoping to keep this country of ours from the terror of war. They’re hoping to keep it safe. There’s only been one real war ever fought on its shores and the last great wars never touched our land at all. And they’re hoping to keep it that way.

And I don’t mind telling you, selfish as it may be, that I’d like to have it kept that way while I’m around. And I’d like to have it kept that way while my family, my children are around. But it can’t be that way forever because this cruel oppressor will have reduced the world to mown grass.

Did you ever see a field standing green and lush and beautiful as a field of Timothy hay? My father used to grow it and we used to cut it. There it stands, deep, so deep and green that the rabbits can hardly get through. It’s so thick standing, so thick the rabbits can hardly get through. And then when the heads begin to bend over, full of seed, but not yet ripe enough to spoil it for food for the horses, they would come and cut it.

And when they cut that down, they would take it away and leave the field. You saw it on Monday, and it stood there deep and green and lush and thick and juicy and beautiful. You saw it on Thursday, and they had cut it and winnowed it and taken it clear away. And now there’s nothing left but stubble, stubble. And the scars where the field used to be.

And so that which we call civilization that stands today rests down upon science and investigation and research, rests upon a long tradition of learning, rests upon invention and discovery that goes back to the wheel. With this great civilization that we know, here it is, and it’s beautiful and green.

If you don’t believe it, get into an airplane and fly over our land and look down, even in the wintertime, and see the riches there. Or get into a train and start down, start toward the east and go down through East Chicago and Hammond and Gary and see those great machines there and those great tanks.

Why, we’re rich, rich beyond the dream of Midas. Civilization is rich, I tell you. And the poorest fellow that exists today has more than our fathers had. In America, we’re rich and lush like a field. But we’re told here that when He comes down, He’ll find the world like a moon field. And that civilization as we know it, now it doesn’t use the word civilization, but civilization as we know it will have passed away.

But you say, how can it be? How can that be? Listen, one man can do it, one man can do it. Wasn’t there a day when Germany was rich and way ahead in her science and strong and in her literature and art and music and all the rest? Didn’t one man come along and in ten years he had reduced Germany to rubble? And East Germany, they tell me, is yet rubble.

Did it not happen? Could it not happen? It could happen. It can happen. One man, one man, if he gets in the right place at the wrong time, can reduce a nation to rubble. And He shall come down, and when He comes, He’ll find civilization as we know it now having passed away.

You’ll have to shake your head hard to believe this, because you’re not likely to believe it. Because the optimists are everywhere abroad telling us that we’re going to soon conquer space, and that we are going to set up lines of communication with the far-off galaxies and all the rest.

My radio went out on me last night, and I didn’t hear my favorite professor talking about space. It’s kind of a verbal comic strip to me, I like to hear it. But he talks about space, the space age. And we ignore the fact that time and space and distance and stars and planets and satellites don’t count. What counts is people. What counts is people.

And if you if you had all the beautiful satellites, handmade and man-made satellites in the world circling the earth, or if you had the ability to get into a scooter and scoot to Venus or Mars or beyond that to Saturn and ride around on Saturn’s rings. If you had a population of the earth that had been reduced by an oppressor, reduced to nothing, and civilization destroyed, and all of our fine halls of learning destroyed, and our books burnt, and our art galleries destroyed, and our medicine and scientific knowledge of how to cure diseases and hold back diseases.

If that’s all destroyed, and all goes down under the impact of that great oppressor. I haven’t named him yet, that great oppressor, but you know who he’s going to be. He’s going to be that one that may yet now at this moment be living in the world.

I don’t know that he’s been born, but he could be living in this world now. He could be, I wouldn’t know where to look for him, I’m not that learned in the Scriptures, and I don’t think anybody else is, I’ll whisper that to you.

But I don’t know where to look for him, but I know that that’s the oppressor that can destroy civilization and can tear it back down. But you say if we have civilization destroyed, we couldn’t live. You say if I didn’t have my electric blanket I’d die. Yeah, you’d die. If you didn’t have your electric blanket, you’d live like your parents lived, your great-grandparents. Oh, if I didn’t have my refrigerator how could I live?

My mother used to put milk under running water and keep it that way. Used to have a spring and she’d put milk there and have it so that it was sunk just almost to the level of the lip of the crocks, they call it, and the water kept it. Why, we got along without all these things.

If I didn’t have my car, I don’t know what I’d do. Well, I’m grateful for other people’s cars. I’ll admit that. But you can get along without them, sure you can live without them. We can be reduced and everything now that we know as civilization can be destroyed.

Remember, there have been at least seven civilizations, and some of them have been perhaps not mechanically as great as ours, but you’d be surprised to know how far advanced some of them have been.

So we’re going to be reduced, my brother, and the book of Revelation pictures this mown world briefly by means of wars and plagues and massacres and natural disasters. The world will be, more than half of the earth’s population will probably be destroyed, and the cities of the world will be reduced until they’re not cities anymore but rubble, and all industry and commerce among men will be ended, and we’ll be back to bartering again, and all rule by law will have temporarily ended, and every man will do what’s right in his own eyes, and ended will be all order and system on earth, and all that’s left will be displaced persons.

You say, I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it. Well, you have less faith then than some of the politicians have, you have less faith than some of the thinkers have. H.G. Well believed it, and George Bernard Shaw believed it, and thinking men who dare to think are ready to say that the human race can’t continue the way we are, we’re going to destroy ourselves.

Will you explain to me how two nations like the United States and Russia, will you explain to me how two nations which if they were to become friendly with each other, and Russia were to lay down the idea of world conquest, America could be her best customer, and she could be a customer of ours, and we could both prosper, and by interchange of ideas.

Why, can you tell me why two nations must walk around with guns on their hips ready to draw, each one waiting to see who’s going to draw first? I tell you; how do you explain people? How do you explain men? How do you explain what’s in man? All the Russian people I know are nice people, I don’t know a mean Russian, I don’t know one Russian that isn’t decent. But something’s gone wrong over there, and certain God dishonoring, God dishonoring atheistic men turn themselves over like Judas to the, for the devil to come in.

And so, they are now busy making right to be wrong and wrong to be right, hating, and out to conquer the world. Naturally, we’ve got to be ready for them. When a man writes a book and tells you that he’s going to rob your house at 12 o’clock Thursday night, you’re not going to go to bed, you’re going to stay up with a ball bat and a gun or have a cop around the corner.

And that’s why in the United States we have to keep going as a nation, as a Gentile nation, as a nation under the Noahic covenant. We’ve got to keep our army and our navy and our rockets and all the rest up, because they’ve written books saying what they’re going to do. Old Skinhead over there, every once in a while, reminds us he’s going to bury us. You know old man Skinhead. Every once in a while, he smiles that vodka smile of his and says we’re going to bury you.

Boy, oh boy, I’ve known folks after they’ve been buried to get up and walk around again. I have a conviction that he can’t bury us, but that’s something else again. I don’t want to get into that. I’m talking about the future over there, that future that lies out ahead of us there somewhere.

Before it’s all over, we will have torn at each other’s vitals and let blood until we’re drenched in blood. And by means of bombs and various other methods of destruction, we’ll have destroyed the cities of the world, destroyed civilization, and all that’s left will be displaced persons.

Then the Scripture says He shall come down. He shall come down to the mown world. He shall come down to rejuvenate the world. That wasn’t Solomon. That wasn’t baby Jesus born of the Virgin Mary. That is the Jesus who was grown to manhood, was crucified, dead, and buried, and was raised again from the dead. And He’ll take over completely.

God will give His judgments unto the Son. For Jesus says God Himself judges no man but has given all judgment unto the Son. And He will take over completely. And He will not play along with political parties. All political parties are crooked. They lie, they deceive, they’re scurrilous. It’s scurrilous the way they lie about each other, and then shake hands when it’s over as though it didn’t matter.

He will not play along with any front, any Christian front, or any other front. He will not play along with any ideology, for ideologies are born out of the fallen brains of men. He will sweep them all aside as a woman sweeps the floor with a broom. He’ll sweep them away as selfish and bad. And He will rule. He Himself, He will rule by force, but He will rule in justice and mercy. And the strong robbers He will put down, and the humble poor He will deliver.

You see, the population of the earth won’t be destroyed. So don’t let anybody tell you that it will. I did not say that it will. I said that the cities of the world, maybe all of them, certainly many of them, probably most of them, will be destroyed. And civilization will be destroyed, as we know it now. But you can live without civilization, and believe it or not, you can live without cities. There will still be people.

Did you ever try to destroy an anthill? Did you ever take a shovel and throw it in all directions? Well, you had destroyed the anthill, but the ants were still going everywhere. And if you don’t look, you’re in trouble. They’re still there. You didn’t kill them when you destroyed their anthill.

And so, you can destroy cities and make cities impossible, untenable. We can fix it so we can’t live together housed in cities anymore because of danger. We’ll have to separate and dissipate and scatter in order to exist. The people will still exist, that is what’s left of them, and it will be a good percentage of them, maybe half of them. The people of the world will still live.

And so, He’ll find them, and He’ll rejuvenate them. And that’s strong robber that brought the world down, He will destroy, and the humble poor He will deliver.

I ask you, why does He not come now? Why does this Lord Jesus not come now? Why does the father of the house wait till the house is burning before he comes to rescue his family? Why does the general wait till the city is filled with blood before he comes to deliver it? Well, He only comes where He’s wanted, my friends. And as long as there is human hope, men do not want Him to come down.

Stand up in either house of Congress when it opens next month and say, Mr. Speaker, I’d like to say a word. Special privilege as an American, I don’t know where they’d allow that. I would get up and say, all of your laws can’t save us. The only hope is for Jesus to come back.

You know what? The sergeant at arms would lead me quietly out. He’d lead me tenderly and kindly, because he figured he had somebody on his hands, and he would signal a policeman. The policeman put his arm around my shoulder and said, come on Pop, I know he’s coming, sure, I know he’s coming. And I’d tell them the truth and they wouldn’t believe it.

Go to Buckingham Palace, go where you will, go down to Springfield, go down to City Hall and tell them. Nobody will believe it, because we don’t want Him. He would embarrass us. Jesus Christ would embarrass us.

You know, they tell that old story about the Kaiser, and I think it’s true, that the Kaiser was a Lutheran Christian, you know, something, some kind of a Christian. He’s a church man, and he used to have a great preacher come and preach to him. The preacher came and preached on the second coming of Christ, and the Kaiser said, let’s have no more of it. His coming would ruin my plans.

We ruined His plans for him, if you want to know who did it. I had the uniform on a while, too. No, it wasn’t the Civil War, it was the First World War, and it didn’t amount to much. I never got any near the front lines in Virginia.

Well, that was the Kaiser. He said, he’ll ruin my plans, and there isn’t a politician but one who would say the same thing. And if you called the great big leaders of the Democratic Party together and said, Jesus Christ will come before November 4th, 1960. Senator Kennedy would feel terrible, because he wants to run. So would this egghead brother up here, a neighbor of ours, a nice chap incidentally, brilliant. But he wants to run, and they all want to run. The coming of Jesus to the world would embarrass us.

And if you’d go to the United Nations and say, gentlemen, you’ve been at it here now for nearly twelve years, and you’ve done nothing but fight. And the language that’s come off of your debating floor, your parliamentary floor, has been more vicious and abusive and scurrilous than you could hear in a bar room. Give it up. Give it up. Jesus is coming. They’d lead you out. Nobody would believe it.

So, my friends, as long as we think we can get along, the Lord will let us get along. Just as long as the Church thinks she can get along, He’ll let her get along. That’s why I’m afraid of the churches that have so much money, and I’m afraid of the churches whose ministry is so well educated.

And I’m afraid of all these new mule barns that we’re putting up and calling them modern buildings. I’m afraid of all our crammed schools and our packed seminaries and our boys trained in psychiatry and other witchcraft. I’m afraid of all this because it means we’re a rich church, and a rich church doesn’t send for God. Methodology–we’re learning how to do things.

Grandmother used to go out and whip up something, bake it, and now it’s called methodology. Will you tell us how you do this? What is the motivation back of it? Well, she said, my family is hungry. But you can’t talk like that now. It’s all in the language of silly psychology.

So as long as the world can get along, and as long as the Church can get along, just as long as we think we’re going someplace. I’ve been running around telling people now for 20 years that evangelical Christianity is rotten from the ground up.

We’ve lost the power to worship. We’ve lost our separation. We’ve lost our sense of the presence of God. We’ve lost our yearning after holiness. We have lost our humility. We’ve lost our meekness. We’ve lost our saintliness. All we have is methods and big buildings and personalities.

I’ve been trying to tell people that, but they don’t want to listen. They send for me to come and tell them, and then they shake my hand, pat my shoulder, and say, that was wonderful, and then go back into conference and vote against everything I told them.

You know that, Bill? They do that. I could make money. I could really make money. I could make money going around conferences, preaching to preachers, constantly writing letters saying, I can’t come. They want me to come and tell them what they don’t believe and won’t accept. The evangelical Church can get along without God a while longer, and God’s just going to let her get along. But when the terror comes and the cruel oppressor reduces the world to rubble, then He’ll come down.

But you say, where is the Church in the meantime? Well, when I was growing up as a young man and preaching, we had what we called pre-tribulation theory of the coming of Christ. That meant this. It meant that there was going to be a seven-year period of tribulation which would be this reducing that I’m talking about. All prophetic believers teach this, only I’m calling it by another name. You didn’t recognize it. But that’s the tribulation.

But that just before that tribulation begins, Christ is coming and taking away all of his redeemed ones away from him. And only the unredeemed are going to be here to go through the tribulation. I’ve always believed that, and I hope it’s true, and I want to believe it still, and I’m not teaching the contrary.

But it’s a significant thing that in recent times there have been some very serious re-thinkings of this. The first time that anybody said anything to me about it was Dr. Torrey’s daughter. We were sitting together at a breakfast. I was preaching and she was there for some reason or other, I don’t remember what. Didn’t she used to teach at Wheaton? I think she was teaching at Wheaton at the time.

And we just dropped into the, she’s old and retired now, but we sat down at the breakfast table together and we began to talk, and she began to ask me questions. And she said, what do I think about it?

Well, it never occurred to me. I had been taught, you know, all my life that I didn’t have to worry about the tribulation. The Antichrist would never appear until Jesus was taking His people away. And she said, I wonder if we can prove that in Scripture.

And she went to the Word of God and jarred me terribly. I don’t know what she believes now, but I do know this, that among the fundamentalists and evangelicals everywhere, there is a strong rising of the belief that the church is going to see some of the tribulation. That’s called the post-tribulation theory. You know, if they don’t want people to know what they mean, they put words on it like pre-tribulation and post-tribulation.

Well, pre-tribulation means that you don’t have to worry. Go ahead, make your money, have your fun, fool around, live as you please, stay home as much as you want to, you’re born again, it’s all right, you got eternal life, you can’t lose it. Everything’s okay, and when the Lord will see to it that you never get into the tribulation, He’ll zip you away like a flash of light, and only the poor modernists will be down here to go through the tribulation, and the Jews.

Brothers and sisters, maybe that’s true, but you know I have a passage of Scripture that bothers me an awful lot. Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and the cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth, watch ye therefore and pray always that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man. Pray earnestly that you might be counted worthy to escape these things and to stand before the Son of Man.

But the doctrine that I can live like the devil, and yet I’ll be taken away from the tribulation, I cannot accept.

One man said, Won’t it be a great day when the saloon, the roofs of the saloons will have holes in them, where the Saints of God went zipping through? Yeah, one man preached that. He actually did. I could tell you his name, but I’m nice. I wouldn’t do it.

He went further than that. He said some things about halfway houses and harlotry and how the Saints of God would suddenly disappear from those places. I consider that as great a heresy as Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Oh Brethren, I hope that God’s dear Church will be saved from the mowing. I hope she’ll be saved from the tribulation, and she can be if she will. For he says, pray always that ye may escape these things and stand before the Son of Man.

But I ask you now, do you actually think that the Church of Christ deserves to escape the tribulation days, or do we deserve a good trimming? Personally, I think we deserve at least a little bit of fire. I think we have it coming.

We’ve fought and we’ve been evil and we’ve lived without God. And Fundamentalism has said goodbye to the Holy Ghost and denied that he can fill men and tried to prove that he can’t. We’ve linked up with Hollywood and Broadway and big business and we’ve imitated the world, and we’ve been making ourselves over in the image of Adam all we can, and then comforting ourselves by saying, why, it’s all right. We’ll be taken away before the tribulation.

I think that’s carnality on the loose, my brother. I can only say to you, let us pray that we may be right. We may not go down under surfeiting and drunkenness and the cares of this life, so that the coming of Jesus may come upon us unawares.

But you know, I want to press this thought yet and close, that our help is coming down. After all, our hope must come down.

People say, let’s raise something. There’s hardly a church anywhere but raising something. Have you noticed that? They’re raising something. You know, the Bible says help will come down. There’s hardly a church anywhere but building something or organizing something. And you’ve got it to do, I suppose, a certain amount of it.

But I’ve got a conviction that if we knew more about God and we would put away some of our ancient, worldly traditions and would try to live like Bakht Singh and his crowd and pray through on things instead of trying to organize them, I believe we’d get further.

But God will send help down to a distraught, blood-drenched, grieving world. When Israel had been for four hundred years in bondage and now, she was at the peak of her suffering, God said to Moses, I have seen and I have heard and I am come down and I will deliver. They cried unto Him in their pain, and He heard, and they cried unto Him in their sorrow and He saw. And He sent Moses to deliver them.

If we would call unto Jesus, if the Church would call unto Jesus instead of organizing something or trying to raise something, if we would pray even so, come Lord Jesus, come, come quickly, I believe we’d get further and do more toward bringing to pass and fulfilling the Scriptures than we will by trying man’s methods.

I want you to meet me Wednesday night in that old building. We’re going to go over there where we can be close to each other and spend an hour and a half in prayer, asking God that He might do an unusual thing for us in these coming days.

Well, we needn’t run the hazard. Don’t go out now and give me a black mark and say, Tozer doesn’t believe in the pre-tribulation theory of prophecy. Yes, I think I do. Maybe it’s just downright cowardice that makes me want to believe it, because I don’t want to face up to the Antichrist.

But I think that if you would press me, I’d have to tell you this. I don’t think the Church will go through the tribulation, but I think she’ll enter into it. She won’t go through the final sorrows, but she will suffer the beginning of sorrows. The Church of the living God will know something of the anguish of the beginning of sorrows, the first terrible pains of the rebirth of a world. But the Lord will come and take her away, so she won’t have to go through it all.

So, there’s a compromise, if you please, between the post and the pre. Maybe they’re both wrong. Maybe God will have to do something to us we don’t yet know about, to prepare us for the hour when He comes again for His people.

But anyway, the King has come, and the King will settle all this problem of some having too much and others not having enough. He’ll settle this problem of trouble between unions and men who own factories, labor and capital. He’ll settle the problems, He’ll settle them all, and He’ll settle them not by sitting around the table and discussing it. He’ll settle it by sweeping the whole mess out and establishing His own kingdom and shall rule from the river to the ends of the earth. And His name shall endure forever, and His name shall be continued as long as the sun and men shall bless Him, be blessed in Him, and all nations shall call Him blessed, blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who only doeth wonders things. Amen and Amen. Let us stand.

Tags Second Coming of Christ

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Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date March 6, 2022

“The Blessed Hope of Christ’s Coming“

PDF Formatted Transcript DownloaD

“The Blessed Hope of Christ’s Coming”

Author and Pastor A.W. Tozer

July 6, 1958

We are continuing in the book of Titus, the second chapter of the book of Titus. The man of God says, for the grace of God, that bringeth salvation to all men hath appeared. Teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ. Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.

Now, I have on a previous occasion dealt with some care with that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, and living soberly and righteously and godly in this present world. Now, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the Great God and of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Those words will engage our attention for a brief time.

Now, if you will note here, and it’s always well to follow punctuation carefully in our King James Version, and not break into verses without regard to punctuation. If you will notice what it says here. That the grace of God teaches us to live–looking. It teaches us to live. Of course, there are some adverbs coming in between, soberly, righteously, godly, and the phrase, in this present world. But, it doesn’t in anywise destroy the force of the passage, teaching us that we should live–looking.

Now, I want to just talk about that a little bit, that the Christian lives–looking. That is, the Christian life is a joyous anticipation. Everybody knows what anticipation does for human life. If you did not have some hope of something you planned to do, somebody you hope to see, some advance you hope to make, your life could soon level down to a drab, colorless existence that wouldn’t be worth the living. If you were to take joyous anticipation out of the hearts of men, the suicides in the world would be so many, that literally there would not be enough technical help to dispose of the dead. We must have something to look forward to. We should live, looking, says the Holy Spirit here to Christians. We Christians should live–looking.

Now what is it that a Christian looks forward to? A Christian looks forward to what the Bible calls, the blessed hope, which is the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ. Now this is the epiphany that the churches talk about the shining forth, used for the coming up of the sun, and used also for the coming of Jesus Christ to the world. Used of His first manifestation to the world and also used of His second. The churches, the ritualistic churches that follow the church calendar, have certain times when they celebrate the Epiphany, the shining forth, the coming, the appearance of Jesus Christ our Lord.

And the Bible also talks about another epiphany, a shining forth. The two of them are found together in the Books of Timothy. Paul wrote Titus, from which the text is taken; he also wrote First and Second Timothy. And here’s what he says, God, who has called us, saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, there, after an eternal purpose.

I want you to understand I’ve said this and continue to say it because it is a very basic spiritual truth, that the Bible-taught Christian is not an orphan. He is not somebody who by some accident has happened upon a book and is now a Christian. He is a part of an eternal purpose which God purposed in Christ Jesus before the world began. And this eternal purpose says, the Man of God is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

Now, those are all past tense expressions. That’s something that has in our modern English, has been done. Now, if you have the same kind of Bible I have of columns, just cast your eye up, just a quarter of a page and you will read these words, where the man of God says, same man writing in a different letter, to the same man. I give thee charge in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and before Jesus Christ, who before Pontius Pilate, witnessed a good confession. I give thee charge that thou keep His commandment without spot, unrebukable until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which in His times He shall show. Who, is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen or can see, to whom be honor and power everlasting. Amen. Now, below, he has brought life and immortality to the light through the appearing of Jesus Christ our Lord. That’s one. He will show in His own times, at the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ, who only hath immortality dwelling in life.

Now, there we have the two epiphanies, the two shinings forth set before us in sharp, beautiful contrast, the one to the other. We should live–looking. And what are the directions, for there is not one, but there are two. What are the directions that a Christian should look in his living?

Well, at our communion services, we often quote, in fact, almost always quote, somewhere, we do show forth His death till He come. A Christian is one who deeply appreciates the past for what has been done, but who does not anchor to the past knowing that the past is a prelude to the future. And therefore, his gaze is sometimes back for reassurance, and sometimes forward in happy anticipation. When he looks back, he sees the Epiphany, the shining forth of Jesus Christ, to be born of a virgin, to suffer under Pontius Pilate, to be crucified, dead and buried, to rise again from the dead the third day, to go to the right hand of God the Father Almighty to be seated there at that right hand ever making intercession for His own

That’s the past, but then we tear our eyes from the past and gaze into the future. So that time when He shall appear, and there shall be another world epiphany, when He shall be shown forth to the world as the Potentate and King, the only Potentate, the only King. The way they’re getting rid of Kings these days, it looks to me as if we were kind of cleaning house for the coming of the Lord. There was a day when we had so many kings, every third fellow you would meet in Europe, either was a king or was related to one. But now, either they aren’t kings or they’re ashamed to admit they’re related to them. We don’t have many kings left, very many potentates left, nor plenipotentiaries.

I remember when we had a confluence of big shots, political big shots come to this country some years ago. I listened on the radio to the speeches and the introductions and they talked about the plenipotentiaries and potentates. Well, the plenipotentiaries and potentates are sort of petering out. And we don’t have so many of them anymore, because the Lord is bringing us to a time when it shall be seen who is the only potentate who only hath immortality; who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords who dwells in the light which no man can approach unto, to Whom be glory and honor everlasting.

Now, even if we should die, yet, we will see this Epiphany, this awaited revelation. Because in 1 Thessalonians 4, notice that again. We’re just reading from the Bible itself. Paul says, for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and all churches do believe that Jesus died and rose again, or they’re not churches. Even so, them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. For this, we say unto you by the Word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not go before them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout and with the voice of the archangel. And the trump of God and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then, we which are alive and 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.

Isn’t it rather ironical that we reserve the reading of passages like this for funerals? Isn’t it rather a cynical twist of the human mind, or of the devil, himself that we should have taken all such beautiful passages as say, John 14? Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me, that we should take these and reserve them almost exclusively for funerals.

My dear little old mother was a great lover of flowers. She raised them and had flowers every little spot where a flower could grow she had flowers. But she insisted that they grow, that they have their roots in the ground. When they were cut and put on a table, she shied away from them. The reason being, she had gone to so many funerals, and had seen so many cut flowers, and it smelled the heady fragrance of so many bouquets for the dead, that she instinctively associated the smell of cut flowers with the coffin. So, Mother didn’t care for cut flowers. She liked the kind that grew in the ground. They reminded her of sunshine and rain and wind and clouds and birdsong and beauty. Whereas cut flowers reminded her of the dead.

And we find the same thing true of such a delightful passage as this, let not your heart be troubled. There’s Jesus cheering up his people. And isn’t it unfortunate that we have relegated this to the dead with the cut flowers, and the silent tread, and the sonorous, solemn tone of the minister. Isn’t it too bad that we can’t see that this is the Lord calling His people to look forward with anticipation to the Father’s house and the many mansions? So it is with the Thessalonian passage here. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again. Soon as you start to read that, you look around for the coffin. And you wonder whether, who died and how you got at the funeral without knowing it?

Well, the simple truth is, this is not for funerals only. This is the word of the Lord for all of his people, all of the time. I tell you again. I’ve said this many times. In fact, I don’t say anything anymore that I haven’t said many times before. But I tell you again, that there are lots of worse things than dying. Dying is one of the easiest things possible, and one of the most delightful for a Christian, so that we ought not to associate all the hopeful promises of the Lord with dying, and dying with something we don’t want to do. The Lord says, that we are to live, looking. That is, there’s anticipation there. What do we anticipate, or rather, who is it that we anticipate? Well, he says, the great God and Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord. You know, the great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. That Christ is God is taught here. Do you hear me, that Christ is God is taught here, this is the book of God. And that Christ is God is taught in that book all through that book.

Now, there are some who consider that Christ is not God. That He is only a very, extremely good man. Oh, nearly as good as Albert Schweitzer, but that He is a very good man. Not as wise as Albert, because He didn’t know of course how to perform operations and cure up the yaws by an injection of penicillin, but they’re willing to put Him along at least with Albert Schweitzer, but He is not God.

My brethren, why can’t we be honest with ourselves. I have a great deal more respect for an out and out unbeliever who stands up and smiles and says, I respect your faith, but I don’t own it. I don’t have it. That can say with Emerson, why should the robe on him allure which I could not on me endure? He said, I like a church; I like a cowl; I love a prophet of the soul; Yet not for all his faith can see, would I that cowled churchman be. Why should the vest on him alure, Which I could not on me endure? I confess I’m modernizing the English, but that’s it generally.

And the man said, now, I respect your right to believe. I don’t care what you believe, but I just don’t believe it. I respect that man. I could shake hands with him and live alongside of him and borrow his hose and lend him my grass cutter. I have no trouble with him and be perfectly tolerant, and he with me and I with him. But what I can’t understand, is the person who says I am a Christian, and then denies or doubts or holds in foggy uncertainty, the deity of the Son of God. My brethren, why don’t we do one thing or the other? Why don’t we get over onto one side or the other? If the people of the Lord, or the people who claim to be people of the Lord, were just to get over on one side or the other, what a fine housecleaning we’d have. It wouldn’t be any trouble, no difficulty, we wouldn’t fight. We’d still be Americans together. But at least we’d know where we stood. So many of us, we don’t know where we stand.

Now, when they said Jesus was God, the old scribes of Jewish days thought he was blaspheming. The Unitarians of the day reject His deity, many liberals reject His deity, and many cults reject His deity. But the man called Paul, who wrote as he was moved by the Holy Ghost said, we look for the great God and Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, either he was wrong, or else somebody is wrong today. And I have decided that I’m going to go along with Jesus, who claimed to be God, and with John and Paul and Peter and Jude and Luke and Mark and Matthew and James, who said He was God, rather than going along with those who doubt that He is God. For to doubt or deny the deity of the Son of God is to reject the Holy Scriptures.

And you will have a perfect right to reject the Holy Scriptures, remember that. Nobody is bound in any wise to accept the Holy Scriptures. You can reject the Scriptures and you will get no argument from me whatsoever. I would never spend one minute of my time arguing with anybody, not even pleading with anybody to believe the Book of God, because not all men have faith. And if you have not been touched by the mighty Holy Ghost, you won’t have faith. You know, the Presbyterians in their prime, taught election and predestination. And they believe that when God touched a man, he believed, he believed. When he was touched, he had to have some work done on him, some previous work done on him before he could believe.

That’s pretty well gone down the drain now, but I still happen to believe it. I believe that no men can come unto Jesus Christ except the Father draw him. And if the Father draws the man, if that mystic something settles on the man and draws him toward the Son of God, he’ll come. And when he comes, he’ll believe and when he believes he will be saved. That’s Bible my brethren. The whole book of Gospel of John teaches that. And our spiritual fathers, the Methodists and Baptists and Presbyterians thought that, well, the Methodists taught it, but not with such finality, perhaps as our Presbyterian forebearers.

But nevertheless, we’re live now between two mighty events. His appearing to redeem us and His appearing to glorify us. This then is interim. It is interim, but it is not vacuum. I cannot find in my Bible where any man is ever called to live in a vacuum, that he is called to live in a spiritual emptiness, looking no direction. The Bible says we live in an interim between two epiphanies, two mighty, world-shaking events: the appearing that brought life and immortality to the light through the gospel, and the appearing that shall show to all the world who is the only Potentate, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, worthy to rule the world.

Now, between those two appearings we stand. And you say, well, when is this second appearing going to take place? Now, you won’t fool me like that. I’m too wise an old trooper ever to give myself up to a prophecy of when another appearing will take place. Frankly, my brethren, I don’t know. I can always answer all questions, either by giving you information which is reasonably accurate or by saying I don’t know. And in this case, I say, I don’t know. Don’t be too hard on people who have set dates and been fooled, because they meant well. But the Lord says, no man knoweth, not even the Son, save the Father which is in heaven. He knows. But we do know that we look for His appearing.

And incidentally, if you imagine that this is some kind of cultism or some sort of strange borderline or fringe doctrine, let me tell you that the Dutch Reformed church believes in it. Let me tell you that the Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Baptists, the Nazarenes, the evangelicals, and you can just name them up and down the line and there isn’t one church that exists today, that believes the Bible but what also believes that there’s to be another shining forth, another shining forth. When he was shown forth, being born in a manger, will shine forth wearing the robes of royalty. Not one. They have differences of opinion about how it will take place. And I for my part, don’t care one little bit how it takes place. I haven’t the remotest care how it takes place.

A man called me just before I came down here, and he said, Mr. Tozer, you don’t know me, but I’m in trouble. I said, I didn’t sleep all night last night, I went to bed at seven, got up at seven and didn’t close my eyes all through the night and I’m in deep difficulty. Will you pray for me? And I said, yes, I will pray for you and also, I want to give you this verse, that the Lord will not suffer you to be tempted above what you’re able to bear. And he said, but you didn’t quote the rest of the verse. And I said, well, I couldn’t quote all the Bible at one sitting. I said, I gave you that part of it. Well, he said, the rest of it is, but will with the temptation make a way of escape. Now, what is my way of escape? And I said, my friend, this is just the neat, little way the Lord works with people. He promises them a way of escape. He leads them out and saves them, but he doesn’t show them how ahead of time. If the Lord were to take you aside and give you a schedule, or up in Toronto, they’d say shedule of future events, your head would get so big there isn’t a hat in Cook County would go down on it, not one. You would lose your humility and become so proud, you couldn’t keep from telling you wife and everybody else but what you knew about the future.

So, the Lord says, I will make a way of escape, but you leave the way of escape to Me. And so the Lord says, looking forward to His coming. And I said, when will it be Lord and what will be the signs? The Lord said, now, don’t ask me questions. You leave that to me. And you trust Me and I’ll take care of it. Just believe that there’s to be a shining forth. So I believe there’s a shining forth. And so this is interim.

But what are we to do in this, live in a vacuum? No. We are to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. Soberly, that is my relation to myself. Righteously, that is my relation to my fellow man. Godly, that is my relation to God. And so, there are the three dimensions of the Christian’s life, soberly and righteously and godly; God and others and myself. And you can’t get out of that. And it’s a strange thing that as brilliant as the human mind is and as utterly wonderful as it is, still, we cannot escape these three dimensions. We cannot get beyond them, any more than you can jump into the fourth dimension in space. You’ve got to stay within them. Everything that you can think about, that touches humanity in your life, everything has to do either with yourself, with somebody else, or with God, and there’s no fourth place. Only three. That’s where you live. And so we live soberly and righteously and godly.

Then why? Why did the Lord say there’s to be another epiphany, a shining forth. Why did He say that. He did it because he that hath this hope in Him, purifies himself even as He is pure. The Lord did it. Oh, could we could we pull an illustration out of the air? Suppose that a man has been away. And, oh say, he’s a soldier and he’s been on some duty in some far-away country, in the Far East or in Europe. And he hasn’t been home for a couple of years. And he calls transatlantic telephone and says, I will be in at such and such a time by Air France or some other of the great lines. And I will land at such and such a field and I’ll take a taxi. I should be there by 3:10.

Well, you know what they will do, Mother and the girls? They will clean up that house as it’s never been cleaned up before. They will busy themselves fixing things up. And then the girls will dress themselves up in their finest and wait for their father. Now, that’s what anticipation does. It gets you ready or tends to want to make you want to be ready and to get your work done, and be ready when he comes. So, he that has this hope in him, he purifies himself even as our Lord is pure.

So, the hope of the shining forth, which is yet future, is not a foolish notion held by certain cults. In fact, a very few cults hold it. It is a doctrine held by our fathers back to Paul, Augustine, and all the church fathers down the years. They varied I say in regard to detail and schedule, but they never varied one little bit with regard to the overt fact. He is coming and there is to be a shining forth. And so in the meantime, we do show the Lord’s death until He comes. And there is the beautiful meaning of the Lord’s Supper.

I had not planned to bring this up at all, and this is not dragged in by its ears in order to fit. But just here that I have received of the Lord what I delivered, that the Lord took bread the night He was betrayed and when He’d given thanks, He’d break it. And He said, take and eat. This do in remembrance of me there. That’s the remembrance of the epiphany that was. And as oft as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord’s death until He come. And there is the epiphany that will be. So, that is one of the meanings among many, of the supper of the Lord, that we remember that he died for us. We remember that He’s coming for us. That He died for us is a fact. That He’s coming for us is a fact. How His death for us could prepare us to meet Him, we do not know. When He’s coming, we do not know. That He’s coming, we are certain.

So now, we do show the Lord’s death until He come. Only this you say, what qualifies a person for the Lord’s Supper? The answer is soberly, righteously, godly. Let a man examine himself. Is he living soberly, righteously and godly in this present world, looking. That’s all. Let a man examine himself.

How have you been living? Soberly? Or have you let yourself go? Have you forgot you’re a Christian when you were out on your vacation? Did you do a lot of things you wouldn’t do if you had been home? Strange isn’t it how it works? A tame, domesticated Maltese-type of husband who says yes dear, yes dear all year-long, goes away on convention. And the tamer and the more domesticated he was while staying at home with Mama, the more of a long-eared donkey he made out himself when he got in a strange city on convention. It’s almost always that way.

Now, that ought never to be so of Christians. A Christian is one who carries his shrine with him. His sanctuary is in his heart. And whether he is traveling somewhere to see relatives out in the mountains for a rest wherever it is, he should never be out of his sanctuary. He should be in the holy place because the Holy God is with him and living in his heart. Lo, I’m with you always, even unto the end of the world. How’s it been with you this last week? Have you lived soberly? How’s it been with you and your neighbor? Have you lived righteously or have you had a tiff with somebody two doors away? If you have, don’t take communion this morning. How has it been with you and God? Have you kept up your prayer life and your devotional life and your Bible loving life? I don’t say you haven’t and I don’t ask those questions in a tone of voice tending to accuse. I’m just inquiring.

Now our friends, the brethren will meet us and we will have the Lord’s Supper. We take it once a month in this church, every first Sunday. It’s not for members of this church, but members of the church of Christ. And if you qualify–sober, godly, righteous living and confident faith in our Savior–you join with us because you’re a member of our church anyway, whether we ever saw you before or not. Let’s gather.

Tags God, Grace, Second Coming of Christ, Tozer