Second Coming
The ascended masters teach that the Second Coming of Jesus (descending in clouds of glory, as depicted in the Chart of Your Divine Self) is the descent of the Lord to quicken our soul’s consciousness of “his” Christ as “our” Christ—the Universal One, the Only Begotten of the Father. This is the common loaf, or light, we share and identify as our own Real Self.
Their message is that those who are caught up in the Spirit of Christ through their fiery hearts and the purified etheric vessel (waiting in this earthly life or in the next world) will see Jesus Christ descending, and through him know the image of the Son of God as the God Reality to which they, too, shall indeed ascend.
The biblical account
The etheric octave is the plane to which the Lord Jesus Christ descends (from the highest heaven where he is seated “on the right hand of God”[1]) in his “Second Coming.”
Paul described his coming as “with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God.”[2] He said that those who are one in Christ’s consciousness (those in physical embodiment as well as those who have passed on and are in the etheric plane) shall be caught up together in the clouds (the etheric octave) to meet the Lord in the air (in the plane of the Christ mind).[3]
By the Lord’s descending grace and our willing ascent on the path of attainment, we will meet in the etheric octave of the heaven-world and from there we will follow in the footsteps of Enoch, who by faith “was translated that he should not see death, and was not found because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.”[4]
And we will mount with Enoch the planes of heaven above, viewing their respective hierarchical orders. These include the plane of Jesus Christ’s habitation (“In my Father’s house are many mansions.... I go to prepare a place for you ... that where ‘I AM’, there ye may be also”[5]), the ascended master octaves of light, the realms of archangels, Elohim, and so on, all leading, spiral upon spiral of infinity, to the throne of the Most High God.
Thus, the etheric body and plane is the meeting ground of heaven and earth where, one by one, souls advancing up the mountain experience the Second Advent of Christ, the rapture, and the resurrection.
The First Coming and the Second Coming
The coming of Jesus Christ in the Second Coming has been long awaited by Christians. It is a very real event, but it is also a mystical one. As we await for him to descend in clouds of glory, we must look again and realize that he is already come. He is come to our hearts as we have acknowledged the Christ in Jesus, in Saint Germain, in the ascended hosts.
The First Coming of Christ is the manifestation of the Word incarnate in the Guru, in the Teacher, in the Hierarch. The Second Coming is the igniting of that flame incarnate in the chela, in the disciple, in the one who acknowledges “I am nothing, Lord, you are my Allness; be within me that Allness.”
Jesus Christ, in the Second Coming, has come to quicken our own Christ consciousness. This is the Second Coming. And therefore, it can come at any hour in any age. We are not waiting for an outer millennium, but we are pursuing diligently the inner millennium, that moment of alchemy when suddenly we realize, “Why, I AM the mystical body of God, Christ lives in me, Buddha lives in me, and I am judged of my Lord.”
Jesus teaches us that the Second Coming of Christ is when he comes to you as your Bridegroom, when you are able to receive him because you have walked a path of personal sainthood, you have your wedding garment. The Second Coming of Jesus Christ is the descent of Christ into your temple when you, yourself, become one with him, and you are that Christ Presence in manifestation.
The First Coming of Jesus Christ was his coming to set the example and to show what is the life, the Path, the works, the teaching, the example of one who has internalized the only begotten Son of God. Jesus did that for us, and the saints who followed him, who have led exemplary lives, who have made their ascension, have also demonstrated that path.
The Second Coming is the ascended master who comes to us and restores to our memory by the Holy Spirit all the things that he has taught us.
The timing of the Second Coming
Jesus has already come in his Second Coming as the ascended master. He is with us. He is teaching us. That is not to say that some will not experience him and see him coming in clouds of glory on a certain day. But we have to understand that revelation becomes very personal, and it comes to each one individually.
The true Second Coming may come at any time. It is not a one-time event of the centuries, but an hourly event. It came for John the Beloved prior to his ascension in his embodiment as the apostle who wrote the Book of Revelation. It may have come to some of us when we walked and talked with Jesus. It may come to us two thousand years later.
The Second Coming of Christ may very well come with clouds and great glory and the sound of trumpets and Jesus appearing in the heavens. That may be happening every day, but the world may not perceive it. Jesus is here with us now and always with us. And when we receive him in that Second Coming and the Word is internalized where we are, that is truly the Second Coming of Christ.
Recognizing the Christ
As disciples of the Word incarnate, we are meant to mirror the archetypal Christhood of the Avatar Jesus or Maitreya in our own individualization of the Word. This we can do every day. The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis is important for you to read, for it shows how to gather the virtues of the Christ and to live them and outpicture them in your life.
When we have attained to this level of the realization of the Christ within, we may also recognize the Ascended Master Jesus or Maitreya, or both, standing before us in their Second Coming. The Second Coming is not a function of the times, nor of time and space, but of the readiness of the soul. It is written: “When the pupil is ready the Teacher appears.”
There are two aspects to the Second Coming. The first is your receiving of Christ in your heart. When enough of mankind have accepted him, then they will see him coming in clouds of glory. They will be able to see him in the air because they already have him in their hearts and they have something with which to identify him.
In a time of wickedness of the people, many do not recognize the Christ. They did not recognize Jesus when he came because they themselves had not yet received the Christ in their hearts. John the Baptist tried to prepare the people for the coming of Jesus by calling them to repent of their sins and be baptized so that they could be washed of their impurities. They did not respond. And therefore, they did not recognize the Christ in Jesus. They denied him, they persecuted him.
Paul said that no man could confess that Jesus is Lord without the Holy Ghost.[6] This means that in order to perceive the Christ in anyone, we have to receive the Holy Spirit. When we have that Spirit, we can confess the Christ as being the true identity of every son and daughter of God, the real spark of life. When we can begin to acknowledge that, then we will see the Master Jesus descending in a cloud.
The appearances of Mother Mary to thousands of people all over the world are an example of this. The Christ in Mary was recognizable by many people because they had Christ in their hearts.
In the Second Coming, we will not only see Jesus coming in clouds of glory, but all of the saints, all of the masters who have gone before us of whom the Book of Revelation speaks, “they who overcame by the blood of the Lamb.”[7] And these are the ones who are robed in white and who stand before the throne of God. These are the ones who have gone before us in the Christ consciousness.
The Everlasting Gospel
► Main article: Everlasting Gospel
The Bible prophesies the coming of the Everlasting Gospel in the Book of Revelation. There flies in the midst of heaven an angel that has the Everlasting Gospel to preach to the men of earth.[8] This event is thought to precede the Second Coming.
We understand that this Everlasting Gospel is here now. It is a thoughtform and a matrix of the mind of God like a swaddling garment, like a sphere of yellow fire that surrounds the earth. It imparts to all people the sense of the universality of religion, the oneness of all religion and the universality of the Christ. People are very much aware that this Christ who was in Jesus is a Universal Presence who is also with them—that Presence prophesied in Jeremiah as the coming of The Lord Our Righteousness.[9]
We believe that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ has taken place, that he has descended in clouds of glory, that this ascended master has descended to earth, has delivered his message of the Everlasting Gospel, is continuing to do so. And the prophecy that every eye shall see him applies to every eye that is in that vibration and wavelength where he is caught up by the Spirit of his resurrection to the plane of perception. This does not occur simultaneously. It occurs not according to time and space, but according to the individual soul’s capacity to receive him.
The Second Coming has occurred
In his 1989 Thanksgiving Address Jesus explained that “the so-called Second Coming has occurred and recurred” and that from November 23, 1989, unto the end of the age of Pisces, “I shall have appeared to everyone on every plane of this Matter house....
I come, then, in the appearance prophesied,[10] and I come again and again and again, my beloved, for the so-called Second Coming has occurred and recurred. So understand, beloved, that I am in the earth as foretold, and I am here to fulfill the prophecy that every eye shall see me.[11]
Blessed hearts, I have called you to be my own, my disciples, my apostles. I have called to you to be the Christ.[12] I have called, beloved, that the multiplication of my Body, which is broken for you, might be that my Electronic Presence should move in the earth through you and that my Sacred Heart upon your sacred heart might amplify that threefold flame and that open door of the heart whereby through us, one upon one, my Self superimposed upon your self, the souls of earth might enter into the path of discipleship unto the same fulfillment of the Law that you yourselves are realizing and have realized in some measure.[13]
The Second Coming for the many
The Ascended Master El Morya gives his vision for what the Second Coming can mean for all, not only the few:
Let us, then, summon from the holy energies of the elect the power that will cause mankind to correct the distortions upon the screen of life and awaken the masses of mankind to the mighty power of the resurgent Christ image—that the Second Coming of Christ come not only to the few but to the many, that the elect be summoned from the four corners of the earth, and that the world itself no longer dwell in shadow and blight but in the abundant life envisioned by the Master Jesus, the abundant image envisioned by every Master of the Great White Brotherhood, the piercing white light of the sacred fire.[14]
And I say unto you: if you know not what to do, then pause and seek the flame of God’s holy will, and then move forward and continue the race. Follow the star and arrive at the place where you will be the full outpicturing of the Christ in manifestation for all mankind to see and behold the only begotten of the Father come forth again in the Second Appearing and the third appearing and the millionth appearing, after each lifestream shall have also manifested likewise, until the entire earth shall become a diadem of stars—stars in such number that the entire universe shall see and know that the holy will of God, the will of the Christ, is come in each man into manifestation.
To this end do we serve in Darjeeling. To this end do we stand with the evolutions of this planet. Will you stand with me this day?[15]
We are in the Age of Aquarius. It is a time when there are many advanced souls who have lived before, taken the initiations in other lives, and who are purified and standing ready for the Second Coming, for the rapture. There will come a time when they will be quickened. And when they ascend in these mass ascensions from the hillsides that have been prophesied, we are certain that Jesus Christ will be in their midst; and so it will be a literal fulfillment of the prophesy of the Christ descending and some among mankind ascending to his Presence.
For more information
Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Path of the Universal Christ, Section 9, “The Second Coming.”
Sources
Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Lost Teachings on Your Higher Self, pp. 69–71.
Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Path of the Universal Christ, pp. 122–125, 126–127, 130.
- ↑ Mark 16:19; Acts 7:55–56; Rom. 8:34; Col. 3:1; Heb 10:12.
- ↑ I Thes. 4:16.
- ↑ I Thes. 4:17.
- ↑ Heb. 11:5.
- ↑ John 14:2–3.
- ↑ 1 Cor. 12:3.
- ↑ Rev. 12:11.
- ↑ Rev. 14:6.
- ↑ Jer. 23:6.
- ↑ Matt. 24:27–31; Mark 13:24–26; Luke 21:25–28.
- ↑ Rev. 1:7.
- ↑ See Elizabeth Clare Prophet and Staff of Summit University, Walking with the Master: Answering the Call of Jesus, chapters 1, 4, 5.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 145.
- ↑ Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Morya: The Darjeeling Master Speaks to His Chelas on the Quest for the Holy Grail (Corwin Springs, MT: Summit University Press, 1983), p. 270.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 328.