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PART I.

STATE OF THINGS AND EVENTS TO PRECEDE THE INSTITUTION OF THE NEW WORLD.

CHAPTER I.

CHRIST'S SECOND COMING.

OUR Redeemer has once appeared upon Earth, and gone from it. According to abundant predictions of the Scriptures, he is to come again. The assurances of this, are so many and so clear, that argument need not be adduced in proof of it. But there is a question, whether the passages declaring this fact, are to be understood in their literal import. Many of them speaking of his coming, in a manner as if the event were very soon to occur, and some of them seeming to connect it with the destruction of Jerusalem, some persons have supposed it is to be understood in a figurative sense, and as having been fulfilled in the destruction of that city, accounting that event as his coming in a providential manner. But in numerous other passages the second coming of our Lord is so spoken of, and in such connections, as to show, we think, that his second, as his first was, will be a literal coming. The representations of the event, in these passages, are such, that the common-sense judgment rejects the inter

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pretation making the predicted appearing but figurative, and decides that the Scriptures declaring it and alluding to it, do, taken together, and in their connections, make it manifest that the period is to arrive when the Savior will again come personally to earth. This, after all that can be said to the contrary, must remain the sentiment of the mass of the readers of the Bible, generally. It being so, that the second Advent of the glorious Redeemer, as yet to occur, is to be looked for, the question arises, When will our Lord appear the second time?-and when will he judge the world? On this question there are two systems of belief, opposed each to the other, as comprised in the following propositions of the respective systems, represented in opposite col

umns:

Propositions of one system.

Propositions of the other system

The Apocalyptic Millennium, The specific and peculiar Miland the abundantly predicted lennium, described in the 20th kingdom of the Messiah, are Chapter of the Book of Revelaone and the same.

tions, be it what it may, is not identical with the so much promised kingdom of the Redeemer, but is another event, occupying a different period.

The second Advent, and day The second coming of our Lord, of final judgment, are to occur, to judge the human race, and to not before, but after the Sab-settle forever the affairs of this batic age of the. world, so much world, is to be at the end of six foretold in the Scriptures.

thousand years from the time of the creation, and before, and preparatory to its blissful rest. The judgment and conflagration The world is to be judged, all of the world, and the bringing of its works consumed, and its affairs its affairs to a conclusive settle- conclusively adjusted, at the endment, is not to be at the time ing of the present state of sinful when the present scene of wicked disorder, and at the tine when disler comes to a close, when the great apostacy is made to have

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