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drink offering (spendomai), and the season for my departure (analusis) has come near."
Here the Apostle uses the substantive instead of the verbal form, but the parallel is most
evident. That which he desired and was willing for in Philippians has come to pass in
II Tim. 4: There is no possible chance of missing the meaning of analusis. "My
analusis" must mean "my dissolution," my departure, my return. Phil. 1: 23 must be
interpreted in the light of the certainty of II Tim. 4: 6. The only return that analusis can
indicate is death. This also is the meaning of analuġ in Phil. 1: 23. If there is a difficulty
in the linking together of death and of being with Christ, without any explanatory clause
to bridge the intervening period, it is not the only one of its kind, and must not influence
our decision. II Cor. 5: 8 brings the two together without feeling the necessity for a
parenthetical explanation. If any should say, Is it possible that Paul would desire to die?
they could also ask, Is it possible for him to be willing to be absent from the body? for
although "and to be present with the Lord" (or to be with Christ) immediately follows,
Paul himself had taught that it was not until raised from the dead that any could hope to
be "with the Lord." In Phil. 1: the Apostle is speaking of his own feelings to those who
knew well his doctrine and hope. Under such circumstances he expresses himself in a far
different manner from the way he would if he were stating formal truth. To have made a
digression and explained his belief regarding the state of the dead and any special feature
of his own hope since the revelation of the mystery, while it would have been doctrinally
true, would have been false to feeling.
One other mistaken view has helped to lend colour to the interpretation that Paul
desired the "return of the Lord," and that is, that Paul's hope at that time could be thus
expressed. We believe that Paul, entertaining the hope connected with the mystery, was
not looking for the Lord to return, but for himself and fellow-members to be "made
manifest with Him in glory," "looking for that blessed hope, and the manifesting of the
glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ."
The A.V. is certainly not inspired, neither is it perfect, and many many times we feel
how much truth has been hidden or distorted, but we feel that in this particular case, with
the one correction already suggested relative to the words "I wot not," that it is a good
rendering. If the R.V. margin be noted, "I do not make known," then all the rest can
remain as giving at least the sense of the original. "The pressing out of the two into a
third"; the rendering of a word which means return in the sense of the returning of a
body to its elements (the scriptural idea of death) as though it could fitly be used of the
"return" of the Lord are figments, merely the zeal of those who, while holding the general
truth regarding the intermediate state, have intruded this truth into a passage which does
not require it.
There are several words which the Apostle uses when speaking of the coming of the
Lord; there is parousia, meaning personal presence, epiphania, a manifestation,
apokalupsis, a revelation, but there is no passage where the Lord is said to have an
analysis, a "return." Had such an expression been common to the epistles, some excuse
may have been found for reading it in Phil. 1: 23, whereas the reading itself is isolated
and unsupported by any other scripture. Luke 19: 12 is the only passage that can be
brought forward, and this is of itself enough to condemn the application to Phil. 1: 23,