Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 48:190 (Apr 1891)
Article: Theories Of The Parousia, Resurrection, And Judgment
Author: Smith B. Goodenow

BSac 48:190 (Jan 1891) p. 342

Theories Of The Parousia, Resurrection, And Judgment

Rev. Smith B. Goodenow

Some are getting tired of waiting for the coming of the Lord, and are beginning to deny that there is to be any such event. This is not strange, for the apostle Peter foretold, “There shall come in the last days scoffers, … saying, Where is the promise of his coming? “(2 Pet. 3:3, 4.) Some prominent teachers are renewing the apostasy that Paul complained of (2 Tim. 2:18), of those “who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already, and overthrow the faith of some.” They assert that Christ’s second coming and the judgment-day also are past.

Dr. Warren, editor of the Christian Mirror’, Portland, Me., has published a book entitled “Parousia,” which is exciting some attention, wherein this doctrine is urged, that the coming of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and the judgment-day, all were introduced at the destruction of Jerusalem in A. D. 70, and that they are taking place at the death of every individual ever since. That disaster to Jerusalem he calls the “Parousia,” or second advent of our Lord, and denies that any visible or bodily advent of Christ is ever to take place. But before closing his book, he fatally sweeps away his whole theory, by trying to make out the resurrection and judgment of each human

BSac 48:190 (Jan 1891) p. 343

being at death, as having begun with the ascension of Christ forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem!

In the last Bibliotheca Sacra, Rev. Dr. Fairfield has endorsed this doctrine, but has carried it to its natural result, by changing it thus: That every human being since A dam has had his resurrection and his final judgment at the time of his death; and that there is to be no other resurrection but that, no general judgment-day, no second coming of Christ except at the destruction of Jerusalem. The self-contradictory datings set for this scheme of resurrection (first at the conquest of Titus, then at the ascension of Christ, and finally beginning back from Abel,) would seem sufficient to nullify the whole theory. But, inasmuch as the new dogma is made to sound specious, by the array of a few passages ingeniously construed, in neglect of many Bible teachings to the contrary, so that some unwary minds are in danger of being misled,—the present brief sketch is given, not to argue the question, but only to show the utter impossibility of any such view.

The Lord Jesus Christ has declared, “Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in which all that are in grav...