THE KING’S BUSINESS
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He will come w;ith His believing peo ple to the earth, then there will fol low a long succession of events con nected with His coming. Second, The Bible makes it very plain that the Coming of the Lord Jesus will be a personal coming. In Acts 1:11 we read, “ 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." And Paul said, “ The Lord himself shall descend from heaven.” And Jesus Himself said, “ I will come again (John 14:3"). ■ The Second Coming o f Christ then is not merely the coming of some great moral reformation or spiritual uplift; it is the coming of Jesus Himself. We have a way o f speaking of a re vival of religion as the coming of Christ. In a sense it is a coming of Christ, but there is to be a personal return of our Lord, a coming of this very same Jesus in His own person Nothing else will satisfy the heart of the believer. When I was a pas tor in Minneapolis, a godly minister of the Gospel, a man who I believe really loved his Lord, for he had made sacrifices for Him, wrote an essay on The Second Coming of Christ in which he said, “We must not look for the personal return of our Lord, but must learn to see Him and be satisfied with Him as coming more and more in all the wonders and glories of this closing 19th cen tury.” In other words, we were not to exoect the Lord Himself to come but should see the fulfilment of His promise of coming again in the elec tric telegraph, in the telephone, in the improvement of our steam railways, in the advance of social conditions and civilization; this, according to this minister, was the coming prom ised in the Bible. I have said that I believe this minister really loved his Lord, but I could never understand
shout, with the voice of the arch angel and the trump of God; it is certain that on that occasion those who sleep in Jesus were not raised and living believers were not trans formed and clothed upon with a body like unto the glorious body ’of our risen Lord, they were not caught up to meet the Lord in the air. All things were not restored at that time. Besides this, years after the destruc tion of Jerusalem, we find John still looking forward to the Lord’s com ing (Rev. 22:20). And it was long after the destruction of Jerusalem that John himself wrote the record of the Lord’s words to Peter at Gali lee concerning himself: “ If I will that he tarry till I cpme, what is that to thee? follow thou me. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren that that disciple should not die; yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee ?” It is clearly evident then that the very plain, explicit and definite pre dictions of Christ Himself and the Apostles regarding our Lord’s Return which were quoted above have not yet been fulfilled in any historic event that has yet occurred nor in any series of events. The coming again of our Lord Jesus so frequently men tioned in the New Testament as the great hope of the Church lies still in the future. II. The Manner of His Coming. Now let us turn to the manner of our Lord’s Coming Again. First of all, it needs to be said that there will be different stages in our Lord’s Return. He is to come first in the air whither His believing peo ple are caught up to meet Him. After a period of dealing with His people' in the air, judging them and reward ing them according to their works,
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