Gaebelein Interval between Coming for the Saints and coming with the Saints is a short one chapter 20 page work.
Extract from Module
A. C. Gaebelein, 80 Second St.
1902.
THE INTERVAL BETWEEN THE COMING OF THE LORD FOR HIS SAINTS AND WITH HIS SAINTS.
That there is a marked interval between the coming of the Lord Jesus to take His saints up to Himself, and His coming with His saints, cannot well be disputed. Indeed, if we had not in Scripture distinct instruction as to the first stage of our Lord’s coming, His coming for us, and our rapture, it would have been impossible to understand those many passages which speak of His “coming with us,” and our “manifestation with Him” (Zech. 14:15; 1 Thes. 3:13, Jude 14, Col. 3:4). It is certainly necessary that there should be a “gathering unto Him,” before there can be a coming or manifestation “with Him.”
Then, the first of these is never brought into view in connection with the Lord’s public testimony, nor does it ever appear in the Apostles testimony to the world. But this is in admirable harmony with all that is known of Jesus’ love to His own. The first distinct announcement of His coming for us was given just at the moment and in the circumstances in which it might be expected. “On the night on which He was betrayed,” when the traitor had “gone out,” and “it was night,” when for the first time the disciples began to feel the sorrow of the parting and absence of which He had often spoken; then it was that His love placed before them His coming again in its earliest stage and first object and intent, as the first point of their blessed hope.
They had before 3 heard of “the days when the Bridegroom should be taken away,” but, possibly occupied with the glory of the Kingdom, they had failed to realize what His absence meant. But it was very different now. He said, “Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me; and as I said to the Jews, Whither I go ye cannot come; so now I say to you” (Jn. 13:33). There might still be very little intelligence among the disciples, but there was that night, through the word spoken, love’s deep exercises towards His precious person: and consequently “sorrow filled their hearts because of what He said,” and their common sorrow was, as usual, expressed by Peter. There was, we well know, much self-will and self-confidence mixing with his love to his Lord, but it was surely love that asked, “Lord, why cannot I follow thee now?” We are thus entitled to say that it was just because He had roused into exercise, and drawn forth their expression of their love to Himself, that Jesus now for the first time declared to His disciples His coming again, in its first intent and act. “Let not your heart be troubled: ye are many mansions; if it were not so I would have told you.
I go to prepare a place for you. And 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” (John 14:1-3).
We could never have learned “the rapture of saints” from this passage alone; but without this passage accuracy as to the rapture of saints would be little worth. Accordingly, there is not any portion of the Bible to which suffering saints so often turn for comfort as that which we have just quoted.
And this may show that all saints are, in their hearts, “waiting” or “looking for Him,” though they may be ever so little taught, or ever so ill taught, respecting prophecy. At the same time, it should be remembered that intelligence in the
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revelations made respecting His coming, as in all truth, can only be in proportion to our love of His person, for that is ever accompanied with lowly and loving reception of the word.
The comfortable words of Jesus “I will come again and receive you to myself; that where I am ye may be also,” were all that was needed, and all that could be profitable, for the time when they were uttered. The manner of His coming, and the particular mode of their reception by Him, they needed not then to know; it was sufficient to know that He Himself was coming for them, and that then they should be “forever with Him.” But a time came when saints, waiting for their Lord’s return, needed to be instructed more fully respecting the manner of His coming for them, and the place and mode of their reception to Himself. And it is not a little remarkable that the revelation of these details, was occasioned by a love and a sorrow closely akin to that which educed the first assurance that His second coming was to have for its first object, the “gathering together of His saints unto Himself.”
Paul had for a few weeks preached the Word of God in Thessalonica, and a large number of souls had received that word “in much affliction and joy of the Holy Ghost.” Paul was immediately driven from the city by Jewish hatred.
But though thus speedily deprived of the apostle’s presence, the church of the Thessalonians had become the brightest example of faith, love and patience; and there is reason to believe that, more distinctly than any others, the saints at Thessalonica assumed and maintained the attitude of expectants of the Lord’s return. They “turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God; and to wait for His Son from heaven” (1 Thess. 1:9, 10). Modern millennarianism too often neutralizes its own testimony, and obscures
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the hope for which it contends, by teaching that a long series of events announced in prophecy must precede the Lord’s coming to receive His saints to Himself. The Thessalonian expectants knew nothing as necessarily intervening the fulfillment of their hope.
Nevertheless, the joy of that hope was speedily beclouded with sorrow. Some of the waiting saints died and a new fear arose in the hearts of those who remained. This it was which became the occasion of a new revelation concerning the Lord’s return to receive us to Himself: that revelation was brought forth as the solace of their sorrow, and effectually removed the fear which filled their souls. “But,” says the apostle, “I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them that are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as the others which have no hope” (1 Thess. 4:13).
Gaebelein Interval between Coming for and coming with the Saints
More Modules on the Second Coming
- Anderson Robert – The Coming Prince
- Bounds – The Ineffable Glory: Thoughts on the Resurrection
- Boyce – Abstract of Systematic Theology
- Brooks Glorious Day of the Saints Appearance
- Chitwood, Arlen L (1989) – Olivet Discourse
- Cooper, David L. – Messiah in His Historical Appearance
- Gaebelein Interval between Coming for and coming with the Saints
Gaebelein-Interval-between-Coming-for-the-Saints-and-coming-with-the-Saints.gbk_.twm
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