"This word He hath in fact spoken,—'Hereafter ye shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven,'—but it is a word of which there is no example. Even the mad pride of Roman emperors who demanded religious homage for their statutes has never gone so far as to conceive such an unheard of thought, and here it is the lowliest of men who speaks.. The word must be truth; for there is here no mean term between truth and madness."

LUTHARDT.

T

HE writer of this book is an optimist.
He is absolutely sure that a golden age

is swiftly coming to this earth. But he is not a blind optimist. His optimism is not the result of shutting his eyes to unpleasant facts; his eyes are wide open to the awful injustices that rule in human society as at present constituted. He is fully aware that there is a storm coming. He does not question that we are facing the wildest, fiercest, most appalling storm this old world ever passed through, but the storm will be brief and beyond the storm there is a golden day, such as philosophers and poets never dreamed. of. The writer is an optimist because he has deeply pondered and believes with his whole heart what the Bible teaches concerning the Second Coming of Christ. If he did not believe that, he could not but be a pessimist, knowing what he does of social conditions and the trend of human society today. In the Return of our Lord is the perfect solution, and the only solution, of the political and social and commercial problems that now vex

us.

In the truth concerning our Lord's Return is the safeguard against all current heresies, errors and falsehoods. One error after another is arising to deceive, if it were possible, even the very elect. One who knows the truth clearly revealed in God's Word concerning the Second Coming of Christ is proof against them all. For example, no one who knows the truth concerning the Second Coming of Christ could possibly be misled by Christian Science, Millenial Dawnism, Occultism, Theosophy or Behaism. It is remarkable how all forms of error touch the doctrine of Christ's Second Coming, and are shattered by the truth revealed about it in the Scriptures. Those who are ignorant of what the Word teaches concerning the Second Coming of Christ may fancy that they see in Madame Besant's "Order of the Star of the East" a preparation for the coming of Christ, but those who know the truth know that it is a preparation for the welcoming of the Antichrist, the Devil's imitation Christ.

୮

The truth of our Lord's Return is the most precious truth the Bible contains. It fills the heart of the believer with joy, and girds him with strength for the battle. It lifts him above the sorrows and fears and

necessities and trials and ambitions and greed of this world and makes him in all things more than conqueror.

All the quotations in this book are taken from the American Standard Version of the Bible. There can be little doubt that on the whole this version comes nearer to giving the exact and full force of the original than any other version now in common use, and space is saved by quoting directly from it in every case instead of quoting the Authorized Version and then putting in the margin the Revised Version, or the American Standard Version.