By Frank M. Keele

We… all of us in the church today lean towards being completely dependent on what others tell us. We have very few independent thinkers and even fewer who are willing to go to the standard works and the Lord Himself to obtain our answers. This is why we have an incorrect understanding of the Lord’s third appearance, we have never asked the hard questions of those who gave us our current understanding.

Our present views on this subject go back to Elder Charles W. Penrose who was an apostle and also served in the first presidency of the church. However, Elder Penrose was born in 1832, joined the church at the age of 18 and wrote his paper on the three events of the second coming at the age of 26, he would not be called into the apostleship for another 46 years.

And so we see that Elder Penrose was very young with very little experience in the church and was surly influenced by the beliefs or theories of others upon this topic. I find it curious that someone so young and with so little experience in the church ended up giving us the presently accepted doctrine on the Lord’s third appearance, don’t you?

So, lets look at what Elder Penrose wrote and then I’ll give you a couple of examples of why I find it so problematic, we read:

“The great and crowning advent of the Lord will be subsequent to these two appearances [to the New Jerusalem and to the Jews]; but who can describe it in the language of mortals? The tongue of man falters, and the pen drops from the hand of the writer, as the mind is rapt in contemplation of the sublime and awful majesty of his coming to take vengeance on the ungodly and to reign as King of the whole earth.

“He comes! The earth shakes, and the tall mountains tremble; the mighty deep rolls back to the north as in fear, and the rent skies glow like molten brass. He comes! The dead Saints burst forth from their tombs, and ‘those who are alive and remain’ are ‘caught up’ with them to meet him. The ungodly rush to hide themselves from his presence, and call upon the quivering rocks to cover them. He comes! with all the hosts of the righteous glorified. The breath of his lips strikes death to the wicked. His glory is a consuming fire. The proud and rebellious are as stubble; they are burned and ‘left neither root nor branch.’ He sweeps the earth ‘as with the besom of destruction.’ He deluges the earth with the fiery floods of his wrath, and the filthiness and abominations of the world are consumed. Satan and his dark hosts are taken and bound—the prince of the power of the air has lost his dominion, for He whose right it is to reign has come, and ‘the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.’” (Penrose, “Second Advent,” 583).

The nice thing about this statement is that Elder Penrose gives us some very obvious scriptural references which we can easily locate and review. For the purposes of this post I’ve highlighted just two of them. The first, where “The ungodly rush to hide themselves from his presence, and call upon the quivering rocks to cover them” is found in Rev 6:12-17, we read:

12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;

13 And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.

14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

15 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;

16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:

17 For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

So, the obvious problem of associating this even with the Lord’s third appearance is that it’s a sixth seal event and doesn’t describe anything that unfolds after the opening of the seventh seal, right?

Now for the second reference, “the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.” We find this in Rev 11:14-15, we read:

14 The second woe is past; and, behold, the third woe cometh quickly.

15 And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.

It was just two verses previous to this that we read about the two deceased prophets, lying in the streets of Jerusalem being call up to heaven, we read:

12 And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them.

So these verses are speaking about the Lord’s second appearanc… to the Jews!, “The kingdoms of this world are (to) become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ” at the sounding of the seventh angel, it is the third woe.

We first hear about the seven angels sounding their trumps back at the opening of the seventh seal, from Rev 8:1-2 we read:

1 And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.

2 And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets.

The sounding of these trumps and the associated events will lead us to the Lord’s second appearance, to the Jews, that’s what John tells us. It is then, when the Lord appears to His Jewish brethren that, “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ”. Our Lord will make an end to all nations at His second appearance… it shall not be postponed to His third appearance! Because that’s not what His third appearane is about.

In the mind of a young Charles Penrose, the Lord’s third appearance would bring vengeance and destruction to the nations and finally lead to Christ’s triumph over them as  we see in his above statement. To justify this preconceived notion he used every scripture he could think of that sounded like his notion… the problem was that he didn’t know what he didn’t know and therefore threw everything, including the kitchen sink into his statement, even if it was speaking about events back in the sixth seal, right?

Now, my purpose is not to pick on Elder Penrose, he was a great man with the purest of intentions and for sure has gone on to exaltation to my way of thinking. However, the Lord’s third appearance is something very different form what most of us think.

So what is the Lord’s third appearance all about? The answers are to be found in the standard works of the Church and shall be addressed in a future post…