Excerpt from The Christ Has Come: The Second Advent an Event of the Past; An Appeal From Human Tradition to the Teaching of Jesus and His Apostles

History, of course, is constantly repeating itself, and great events may present a striking analogy to one another. Yet, although the illustrations of a passage of scripture may be many, the meaning intended to be conveyed by it is in every case direct and simple. The judgment of Babylon, or Nineveh, or Jerusalem, may be a type of every other similar judgment, and is a warning to all nations and ages. But this is very different from saying that the language in which that judgment was predicted was fulfilled only partially when Babylon, or Nineveh, or Jerusalem fell, and is yet awaiting its complete fulfilment. Scripture, like other books, has one' meanin g [that] which it had to the mind of the prophet or evangelist who first uttered or wrote it to the hearers or readers who first received it. [this meaning] is to be gathered from [the Scripture] itself without reference to the adaptations of fathers or divines, and without regard to a priori notions about its nature and origin. The office of the interpreter is not to add another [signification], but to recover the original one: the meaning, that is, of the words as they struck on the ears or flashed before the eyes - of those, who first heard and read them. Now, unless Words do not mean what they say, it is certain that not only in the Apocalypse and the Epistles, but also in the Gospels, the second coming of Jesus had narrow limitations of time assigned to it. These coincide unmistakably with the winding up of the Jewish age at the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 a.d. The New Testament writers were entirely of one mind as to the speedy advent of the heavenly King and the heavenly kingdom. In the four gospels Christ's own pre dictions on the subject are numerous and emphatic, and are expressed in great variety of language. The words attributed to Him are free from all ambiguity. To deny (as some do) that His utterances are correctly reported is to strike a fatal blow at the integrity of the Gospel records, and to make it uncertain what His real teaching on any subject was.

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