Article April 9, 1960 Issue

THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST

ALBERT F. ENGEL

Some Christian sects teach that the second coming of Christ involves the reappearing on earth of the physical Jesus. The coming of the Christ is demonstrable and is in accord with the teachings of Christ Jesus. Anticipating the material return, however, of one already beyond the pale of mortality must entail ultimate disappointment. The Christianly scientific interpretation of Scripture clearly bears this out.

When the master Metaphysician said (John 14:3), "If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also," he evidently meant much more than a casual reading of the text might convey. Jesus' further statement (verses 16, 17), "I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him," helps us to understand that what was to come was not a physical but a purely spiritual concept.

If we are to reassure human thought on this subject, the first great necessity is to explain that the physical Jesus was human, born of Mary. But Christ is the ever-present spiritual manifestation of the divinity which Jesus understood and interpreted through his healing words and works.

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