I do not know why people should not like to read the Bible, and find out all about this precious doctrine of our Lords return. Some have gone beyond prophecy, and tried to tell the very day he would come. Perhaps that is one reason why people do not believe this doctrine. He is coming, we know that; but just when he is coming we do not know; Matt.24:36, settles that. The angels do not know; and Christ says that even he does not know, but that is something the Father keeps to himself. If Christ had said: |I will not come back for 2,000 years,| none of his disciples would have begun to watch for him, but it is the proper attitude of a Christian to be always looking for his Lords return. So God does not tell us just when he is to come, but Christ tells us to watch. In this same chapter we find that he is to come unexpectedly and suddenly. In the twenty-seventh verse we have these words: |For as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth unto the west, even so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.| And again in the forty-fourth verse: |Therefore be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh.| Some people say that means death: but the Word of God does not say it means death. Death is our enemy, but our Lord hath the keys of death; he has conquered death, hell, and the grave, and at any moment he may come to set us free from death, and destroy our last enemy for us; so the proper state for a believer in Christ is waiting and watching for our Lords return. In the last chapter of John there is a text that seems to settle this matter. Peter asks the question about John: |Lord what shall this man do? Jesus said unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren that that disciple should not die.| They did not think that the coming of the Lord meant death; there was a great difference between these two things in their minds. CHRIST IS THE PRINCE OF LIFE. There is no death where he is; death flees at his coming; dead bodies sprang to life when he touched them or spoke to them. His coming is not death; he is the resurrection and the life, when he sets up his kingdom there is to be no death, but life forevermore. There is another mistake, as you will find if you read your Bible carefully. Some people think that at the coming of Christ everything is to be done up in a few minutes; but I do not so understand it. The first thing he is to do is to take his Church out of the world. He calls the Church his bride, and he says he is going to prepare a place for her. We may judge, says one, what a glorious place it will be from the length of time Hes been preparing it, and when the place is ready He will come and take the church to Himself. The deliverance of the church is one thing, judgment is another. Now, I cannot find any place in the Bible where it tells me to wait for signs of the coming of the millennium, as the return of the Jews, and such like; but it tells me to look for the coming of the Lord; to watch for it; to be ready at midnight to meet him, like those five wise virgins. The trump of God may be sounded, for anything we know, before I finish this sermon -- at any rate we are told that he will come as a thief in the night, and at an hour when many look not for him.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 16:03:55 +0000
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