What a short and strange announcement-I COME QUICKLY! Imagine these words posted in large letters all over the walls of your town. What effect would be produced upon the inhabitants?
As they awake one morning, and begin to stir about, they see everywhere around them the words, "I COME QUICKLY." What can they mean? They are on everybody's lips. The children on their way to school stand and stare at them for a few moments in mute astonishment. The merchant hurrying to business wonders, with perplexity as he sees at every turn the startling sentence: "I COME QUICKLY." Neighbors too gather together in little knots to discuss with curious interest in singular announcement that overspreads their city.
"I COME QUICKLY!" What mean these words?
"Bah!" say some. "They mean nothing at all. Why bother our heads about them. We have no time for such foolishness. Let us be off to our business and our pleasures, and dismiss them from our minds."
Reader, we need not wait till some future day to see these words, for if you will turn to the last page of your Bible you will see the very sentence, "I come quickly," three times over.
Not a few there are, no doubt, who treat this message with scorn and indifference. So far as all interest on their part is concerned, they might just as well never to have been written. And if they ever do give them a passing notice, it is but in the words of the last day scoffers: "Where is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." 2 Pet.
The scoffers continue to be as heedless as were the people in Noah's day and, as certainly as they were destroyed, these too shall be overtaken by destruction when "the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night."
On the other hand, thank God, there are those that believe this word. Is the reader among this number? If so, let him open his Bible and read the last chapter of Revelation.
"Behold, I come quickly." v. 7.
"Behold, I come quickly." v. 12.
"SURELY I COME QUICKLY." v. 20.
Does the reader say: Something is going to happen; some event is going to take place; some prophecy is to be fulfilled? No, will he not rather say, Some Person is coming? Yes, a PERSON is coming! 1 Thessalonians 4:1616For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: (1 Thessalonians 4:16) announces His soon coming. "For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first."
Let this thought lay hold of the heart, that the coming of the Lord is not merely concerned with events that are to take place, and prophecies that are to be fulfilled, but with the return of a real, living Person, and that Person none other than Jesus, my Savior, Shepherd, and Friend.