Second Coming, and the promise of
the bruising is made in Eden, then the first promise of the Coming
is made in Eden; and as you see rising above the figure of the
fallen first man the figure of the Second man, you hear for the
first time the story of the Second Coming of the Second man; and
thus the story and the doctrine of the Second Coming begin with the
very beginning of the Book.

For three hundred years Enoch walked amid the slime, the slush and
the uprising tide of human iniquity in a God-hating and God-defying
world. Then one day God took him out of all the riot and wrong of it
without dying into the heaven of His glory; and the Apostle Paul
writing to the Corinthians of the Second Coming affirms there will
be a generation who will continue alive till the Lord comes; and
thus Enoch is a type of that deathless generation and by so much a
prophecy of the Second Coming.

For one hundred and twenty years Noah preached righteousness to a
world from which the death penalty had been removed, a world
surrendered to conscience (and let it be well remembered conscience
is not the gift of God nor evidence of grace but mark of fallen man,
the shadow of God's throne before which the "accuse" and "excuse" of
the soul witness to human guilt), a generation given over to
unrestrained fallen nature; a generation of murder, assassination,
violence, war, utter brutality, sickening sensualism, the invasion
of fallen and lust-seeking angels, rank spiritism, diabolism and
mocking laughter at God and the things of God.

Suddenly, without warning, God called Noah into the ark (the
building of which had awakened the derision of the revellers in sin
and the would-be wise men of the hour) shut the door and bolted him
in. At the end of seven ominous days in which the darksome clouds
hung low and threatening, the windows of heaven were opened, the
fountains of the deep broken up and the flood fell, sweeping away
all save Noah and his family in the ark. When the judgment waters
had subsided Noah and his family came forth to set up a new and
distinct dispensation in the world.

Seated yonder on the Mount of Olives in the shadow of the cross,
looking forward to His Second Coming and backward for an
illustration that should forecast the times and leave no excuse for
exegetical and interpretative theological blundering our Lord said
as it was in the days of Noah so should it be when the Son of man
should come the Second time.

Without wa