The Second Coming of the Lord, by Chauncey Giles

from Chauncey Giles, The Second Coming of the Lord (Philadelphia: Lippincott 1903)

Table of Contents

 

Forward

There are several central questions arising from the idea of God coming to earth: If He is omnipresent, how can it be said that He "came" anywhere, since He was already everywhere to begin with? Why would He bother to come?  Couldn't an omnipotent God fix anything that needs fixing in the entire universe which, after all, He created? Why would He, then, go through the procedure of coming to our tiny mote of a planet, lost in the middle of that almost unimaginably huge universe? And when He did come - again, this is God Himself – why does there appear to have been so little result?  When He came the first time, He spent His time in one small country, only preached for three years, and allowed His human body to be killed by His adversaries. Since that time only a minority of the human race has even believed that He was who He said He was, let alone followed His teaching. Furthermore, why was His first coming not good enough, so that He had to come again, and only – in terms of the time scale of the universe - a short while later?

We learn from the revelation given through Swedenborg that, in fact, there are answers to all these questions, most of which have to do with the (huge) implications of human beings having spiritual free will. Those answers are reviewed in this thoughtful and inspiring book.  

Kurt Simons

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