Two Comings, One Christ

Now learn, over and above the question immediately in front of us, where your mistake begins. We hold that the prophets set out two characters belonging to the Christ, and foretold that he would come the same number of times. The first, of course, is the coming in humility, when he had to be led “like a sheep to be sacrificed, and like a lamb silent before the man who shears it, so he did not open his mouth” — and there was nothing handsome even in his face. For the prophet says of him: “We announced concerning him: he is like a little child, like a root in a thirsty land. There was no beauty in him, and no glory. And we saw him, and he had no beauty and no grace; his face was without honor, falling short of the sons of men — a man set under the blow, and one who knows how to carry weakness.” That is, the Father had set him “for a stone that people stumble over,” and had made him “a little lower than the angels”; and so he calls himself “a worm and not a man, a disgrace among men, and the refuse of the people.” These marks of lowliness fit the first coming, exactly as the marks of grandeur fit the second. [a]

For at the second he will be made no longer “a stone that people stumble over, a rock that trips them,” but “the highest cornerstone”: rejected here below, taken up above, and raised on high so that all things may be brought to completion. He is that “rock,” too — we have to admit it — which is read of in Daniel, cut out of a mountain, which will smash the statue of the kingdoms of this world and grind it to powder. Daniel said this about the same Christ’s second coming: “And look: one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven, came to the Ancient of Days and stood in his sight; and those standing by led him to him. And royal power was given to him, and all the nations of the earth, each according to its race, and all glory, will serve him. His power is everlasting and will not be taken away, and his kingdom is one that will not be spoiled.” Then, certainly, his face will be an honored one, and his grace will not be “falling short of the sons of men”; for then he will be “in the bloom of beauty beyond the sons of men.” The psalm says: “Grace has been poured out on your lips; that is why God has blessed you forever. Strap your sword on your thigh, mightiest one, in your bloom and your beauty!” And the Father, for his part, after making him for a while somewhat lower than the angels, “crowned him with glory and honor and put all things under his feet.” Then they will “come to know the one they pierced, and will beat their breasts, tribe by tribe” — because in days gone by they did not recognize him when he was held down in the humility of a human condition. Jeremiah says: “He is a human being — and who will come to know him?” For, as Isaiah says, “Who will declare his birth?”

In Zechariah, too, in his own person — and indeed in the very mystery of his name — the Father’s truest priest, his own Christ, is drawn in two sets of clothes, with the two comings in view. First he was dressed in filthy clothes, that is, in the indignity of flesh that could suffer and die, while the devil stood opposing him — the same devil who put the betrayal into Judas, and who had tempted him even after his baptism. Next he was stripped of those filthy clothes and dressed in a robe down to his feet, with a turban and a clean headband: the clothing, that is, of the second coming, since he is shown to have reached “glory and honor.” And you will not be able to say that the man pictured there is the son of Jozadak. He was never dressed in filthy clothes at all; he was always in the priest’s robes, and he was never stripped of the priest’s office. The “Jeshua” meant there is the Christ, priest of God the most high Father. At his first coming he came in humility, in human form, able to suffer, right up to the time of his suffering; and through every stage of it he was himself made a sacrifice for us all. After his resurrection he was “dressed in a robe down to his feet,” and named priest of God the Father forever.

Let me interpret the two goats the same way — the ones that used to be offered on the fast day. Do they not also point to the two stages, one after the other, in the character of the Christ who has already come? They were a pair, and alike, because the Lord’s general appearance is the same in both: he is not going to come in some other form, since he has to be recognized by the very people who once hurt him. But one of them, tied about with scarlet, was driven out by the people outside the city to its destruction, with cursing and spitting from everyone, with tearing and stabbing — plainly marked with the tokens of Christ’s suffering. He too was wrapped in a scarlet robe, spat on by everyone, loaded with every insult, and crucified outside the city. The other, offered for sins and given as food to the priests of the temple and to no one else, gave clear evidence of the second appearance: once all sins have been wiped away, the priests of the spiritual temple — that is, of the church — are to enjoy a kind of public distribution, a spiritual one, of the Lord’s grace, while everybody else goes on fasting from salvation.

So then: the predictions of the first coming clouded it over with figure after figure and dragged it down with every kind of dishonor, while the second was foretold plainly and in a way altogether worthy of God. The result is that by fixing their eyes on that one alone — the one they could easily understand and believe, the coming in honor and glory — they have been misled, and not undeservedly, about the more obscure one, and certainly the less impressive one: the first. And so to this day they insist that their Christ has not come, because he has not come in majesty; and they take no notice of the fact that he had to come in humility first.

It is enough, for the moment, to have followed the course of Christ downstream this far, in the order it ran, and so to have proved him to be exactly what he was regularly announced to be. Out of this agreement among the divine scriptures we can understand — and can believe — that the events once predicted to happen after Christ have in fact been carried out by God’s arrangement. For if the one after whom they had to happen had not come, then those events, whose future occurrence prophecy tied to his coming, would never have taken place at all.

So then, if you see the nations of the whole world from that time on coming up out of the depths of human error to God the Creator and to his Christ — and you would not dare to say that this was never prophesied, because if you did say it the Father’s promise would be put to you at once, as we have already pointed out: “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession.” Nor will you be able to claim that David’s son Solomon, rather than Christ the Son of God, is what that prediction is about; nor that “the ends of the earth” were promised to David’s son, who reigned inside the one land of Judea, rather than to Christ the Son of God, who has already lit up the whole world with the rays of his good news. In fact a throne “to the age” fits Christ, God’s Son, better than Solomon — a king of one time, who reigned over Israel alone. For today nations are calling on a Christ they did not use to know, and today whole peoples are running in a body to the Christ they knew nothing of in days gone by — then you cannot argue that a thing is still to come when you can see it happening. Either deny that these things were prophesied, when they are there in front of your eyes; or deny that they have been fulfilled, when you hear them read out. And if you fail to deny either one, then they have their fulfilment in the one about whom they were prophesied.