Tne Crowning Heresy Tke Satanic Denial o f the Permanence o f Christ’s Flesh. Is He Coming Again in a Body? By T. MARSHALL MORSEY
“He that was and is and is coming or ‘the coming one’.” This form, just as it is here used, without the article, is used to speak of Christ’s second coming elsewhere in Scripture: Matt. 24:30, “ Then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn and they shall see the Son of Man ‘coming’ on the clouds.” Luke 13:35, “ Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.” There are many other passages using the present participle of this word in this future sense. There is, however, a stronger proof in the word itself. The nature of the original word is of such that its present participle must of necessity have a future meaning, in relation to a defin ite destination. If I am looking for a friend to pay me a visit, as long as I can say “ he is coming” or "my com ing friend” or “ my friend coming in person,” his arrival is future. He may be on his way, he may he in sight, hut I can only thus speak until he arrives. After his arrival the tense must of necessity be a past tense. This present tense used in a future sense is, further, very significant, for it expresses the be lief of the apostles and early church concerning the Master’s imminent re turn. By no possible translation could this refer to Christ’s first coming. Naturally one wonders why this should be considered such a great heresy as to attach to it the title Anti- Christ. If this is the spirit of the Anti-Christ that means that this is the great teach ing that the Anti-Christ will deny. But why should he deny particularly “ Christ coming in the flesh?”
A certain professor in a theological seminary maintains that Pre-Millenial- ism is the “ crowning heresy of today.” Therefore, I have entitled this discus sion, “ The Crowning Heresy.” The Second Epistle of John attacks with severity the false teachers and gives directions as to how to treat them. It is not the purpose of this ar ticle to discuss these various kinds of false teachers and how to treat them, interesting though that is, for it is contested ground. We want to discuss here the mean ing of verse 7, “ For many deceivers are gone forth into the world, even they that confess not that Jesus Christ com- eth in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the Anti-Christ.” There has been some discussion as to the meaning of this— “ cometh in the flesh.” Some have given to it the same meaning as in I Jno. 4:2-3., where “ come” is a past tense and refers to Christ’s first coming, the Incarnation. This inter pretation has been due to the fact that in both, the one spoken of is branded as an Anti-Christ. We shall refer to the explanation of that later. The question now before us is this: Is it possible for this phrase here used to refer to the first coming of our Lord? Westcott, theprince of all Greek New Testament scholars, whose work of textual criticism of the New Testament was so magnificently done that all work since has been hut a rehash of his work, states that this refers to Christ’s Second Coming. According to Thayer,the present participle of the Greek word for “ come” always means future time: Rev. 1:4,
Made with FlippingBook HTML5