DEAR reader, are you aware of it? The Lord Jesus Christ is coming again? Thousands on every hand are waking up to this solemn, yet blessed fact. There is an unmistakable and growing conviction in the minds of God’s people all over the world―a conviction based upon the truths of His Word―that the Church’s history on the earth is about to close; that the Lord Jesus is coming to take His bride away to the Father’s house on high.
Are you, my reader, awake to the reality of this solemn matter, and what it involves? If not, may the Holy Spirit use these few pages to awaken your precious soul, “lest coming suddenly He find you sleeping” (Mark 13:3636Lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. (Mark 13:36)).
Many who know something of the doctrine of the Lord’s coming, seem to get their souls engrossed with “events” which they think have been, or are to be fulfilled, rather than with the blessed Person Himself who is coming.
A man of distinction has been far away, and his loving wife, who has long been looking for his return, receives tidings that he at last is coming. She watches for the first indications of his arrival. She sees preparations in many ways are being made in view of his return. But, whilst she is not indifferent to all these things, the uppermost thought in her heart is that he is coming.
Now, dear reader, there may be certain events happening today which seem to indicate that the time cannot be far distant when the “Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings” for the remnant of Israel who “fear His name,” and with consuming judgment for the wicked, (as we read in the last chapter of Malachi), but the Christian’s immediate hope is the return of Christ Himself as “the Bright and Morning Star,” as He calls Himself in Rev. 22:1616I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star. (Revelation 22:16). Using His own precious, personal name, He says, “I Jesus have sent Mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the Bright and Morning Star.”
Now, the morning star appears in the heavens before the rising of the sun. It is between the time that He comes as the “Morning Star” and the time He appears as the “Sun of Righteousness” that the terrible judgments spoken of in Revelation will visit the earth. Then will that terrible consummation of wickedness and lawlessness, that “man of sin,” the antichrist, come upon the scene (2 Thess. 2); then, too, the “time of Jacob’s trouble” (Jer. 30:77Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it. (Jeremiah 30:7)), and “the great tribulation” (Matt. 24:21, 2221For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. 22And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened. (Matthew 24:21‑22).) through which a remnant from Israel will be preserved like the three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace. Then those in professing Christendom who have “not received the love of the truth that they might be saved,” will be given over by God Himself to a “strong delusion to believe a lie, that they all might be damned who believe not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess. 2:11,1211And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: 12That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 Thessalonians 2:11‑12)). Then indeed there will be signs—signs of an appalling character, with heart-crushing sorrows, so that “men shall seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them” (Rev. 9:66And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. (Revelation 9:6)). But remember that all these are to be expected after the “Morning Star” has risen, and not before, ―i.e., after the Church, Christ’s heavenly bride, has been caught away from the earth to meet the Lord in the air.
Oh let us never forget that it is Himself who is coming “to gather His ransomed ones home!”
When he was about to leave his disciples―full of sorrow because they heard Him say He was now to leave them to return to the Father―He comforts them with this: “Let not your heart be troubled,” He says: “ye believe in God, believe also in Me.” As though He had said, You trusted in God without seeing Him, and now that I am going away from you out of sight, put the same confidence in Me. Then He makes this promise to them: “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”
Looking for “events” instead of for Him sadly robs the heart of that freshness and comfort which is the believer’s true portion in view of this heavenly hope. Indeed, the enemy has been but too successful in making the gracious promise of His coming to appear, as much as possible, like an angry, judicial threat; whereas, as we have seen in John 14, it was our precious Lord’s way to comfort the fainting hearts of His trembling followers. And when the inspired apostle, years afterward, writes his first letter to the bereaved and persecuted young converts at Thessalonica, he adds, to what he had just been telling them of the Lord’s coming, this short but significant sentence: “Wherefore comfort one another with these words.”
Let us turn to 1 Thess. 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), and carefully examine these words of comfort: “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; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, TO MEET THE LORD in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
Now notice that it was a real living Man, the Lord Himself; who was going to descend from heaven. It was the Lord Himself that they were going to meet in the air. At their conversion they had been taught that the “same Jesus” who had, by His death and resurrection, delivered them from “the wrath to come” was coming again; and they “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait [not for certain prophetic events to be fulfilled, but] for His Son from heaven” (1 Thess. 1:9,109For they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; 10And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come. (1 Thessalonians 1:9‑10)). And again, in writing to the Philippians, Paul says, “Our conversation (or citizenship) is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ;” i.e., they were on the outlook for a Person, and that Person the well-known, loved, and trusted Son of God.
Now, where that blessed Saviour is not known―where His finished work is not trusted, nor His authority bowed to, there is little wonder that the news of His near approach should strike the conscience with terror and dismay, as in religious Jerusalem of old, which “was troubled” at the tidings that the promised King was born (Matt. 2:33When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. (Matthew 2:3)).
But, beloved fellow-Christian, it ought not to be so with you. We ought, most assuredly, to be exercised about the suitability of our walk and ways to Him who is coming; and if we lay the promise of His speedy return to heart, we certainly shall be, for “Every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself even as He is pure” (1 John 3:33And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure. (1 John 3:3)). Neither should we forget, that “we shall all be manifested before His judgment-seat;” when all our service shall be reproduced, and “every man receive his own reward according to his own labor.” But He is first coming for us, as a loving Bridegroom to take home His bride; and when we give account of ourselves before Him we shall be in glorified bodies like unto His own.
A few years since I overtook a little boy about six years of age, as he leisurely sauntered along the street. As I approached him he was singing a little song of his own composing. A tiny ditty it was! Three words took in the whole of it― “At ten o’clock I at ten o’clock! at ten o’clock!”
He seemed so thoroughly absorbed with it, and repeated it so very often, that my curiosity was aroused to inquire what he could mean by it. After a few kind words, he opened out his little heart to me. It appeared that his mother had been from home for some time, but that his father had received a letter to say she would be home that very day “at ten o’clock.” I need hardly say that the little fellow’s carol needed no further explanation. The news of his mother’s return had filled his heart. No doubt he had sadly missed her, and ardently longed for her return. But she was coming—coming “at ten o’clock,” and who wonders that this news made his little heart to sing?
Now, why should it be otherwise with you and me, dear Christian reader, when the tidings of our Lord’s return reaches our ears? Have we not tasted the sweetness of His love? Did He not suffer and die for us? Has He not kept us all along the way since first we knew Him—relieving us of many a burden, succoring and sympathizing in many a sorrow, restoring us after many a fall? Words cannot express how dear we are to Him. Ah, dear brother or sister, it is as we think of Him that our hearts warm with desire to see Him.
“Lord Jesus, when I think of Thee,
Of all Thy love and grace,
My spirit longs and fain would see
Thy beauty face to face.”
Not long since, a Christian lady said to me, “When I think sometimes of the Lord’s coming, my heart fairly leaps within me;” and a little girl I knew years ago―only eleven at the time―said, after returning from an errand at dusk one evening, “Mother, as I came up the lane just now, I saw the clouds moving so swiftly along the sky, I stood still, and looked up; for if the Lord Jesus were just coming, how I should like to be the first to see Him!” Now, what was the secret of this peace and joy in the bosom of that dear child as she stood all alone in that quiet country lane, and at evening twilight, longing for a glimpse of His blessed face? It was just this: She knew and trusted Him, “whom having not seen ye love;” she knew that, through His death for her, all her sins were forgiven.
But perhaps some one might say, “I should not be in such calm quietude if I thought He were coming at once, though from my heart I do trust His precious blood.”
Ah, then you are forgetting who it is that is coming. It is the “same Jesus” who once, “weary with His journey sat thus on the well,” and asked the poor Samaritan woman for a drink of water, only to give her the living water―the same who met the funeral procession outside the city of Nain, and gave back to the widowed mother her only son―the “same Jesus” who allowed the sinful woman in Simon’s house to tell out her love in tears and kisses at His blessed feet; yea, the very “same Jesus” who spoke such wondrous words of grace and mercy to the dying robber at Calvary! It is He, HE HIMSELF, who is coming!
Would you have proof of this? Read, in Acts 1, what those two angels said to the disciples on Mount Olivet. Their Master had just left them and gone to heaven, but not without first taking special pains to impress upon them that He was not a spirit, but a living Man with flesh and bones, whom, if they doubted His word, they could handle and see for themselves (Luke 24:3939Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. (Luke 24:39)). “Ye men of Galilee,” say the angels,... “this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven” (Acts 1:1111Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven. (Acts 1:11)).
Eighteen hundred years in the glory has not changed Him in the least. The self-same Person that Martha went forth to meet, after her brother’s death, is He for whom we wait; and should we “fall asleep” before He returns, the same Jesus who said, “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that I may awake him out of sleep,” will at His coming awake us too, that, like Lazarus, we may sit at the feast with Him “in saint-thronged courts above” (See John 11;12). Why, then, should we fear, when such a blessed Friend is coming from heaven to meet us?
“Surely I come quickly” is His cheering promise; and is it not due to such a lover as He that our hearts should respond, and say, “Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:2020He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. (Revelation 22:20)).
I’M waiting for Thee, Lord,
Thy beauty to see, Lord,
I’m waiting for Thee―for Thy coming again.
Thou’rt gone over there, Lord,
A place to prepare, Lord,
Thy home I shall share at Thy coming again.
‘Mid danger and fear, Lord,
I’m oft weary here, Lord,
The day must be near of Thy coming again.
‘Tis all sunshine there, Lord,
No sighing nor care, Lord,
But glory so fair at Thy coming again.
Whilst Thou art away, Lord,
I stumble and stray, Lord,
Oh, hasten the day of Thy coming again
This is not my rest, Lord,
A pilgrim confessed, Lord,
I wait to be blest at Thy coming again.
E’en now let my ways, Lord,
Be bright with Thy praise, Lord,
For brief are the days ere Thy coming again.
I’m waiting for Thee, Lord,
Thy beauty to see, Lord,
No triumph for me like Thy coming again.
And the spirit and the bride say, Come.
And let him that beareth say, Come.
And let him that is athirst come.
And whosoever will,
Let him take the water of life freely.
(Rev. 17.)