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THE KING’S BUSINESS
mated mission of the Church suggest ed, and that is the first consummation that the Second Coming of the Lord means, the consummation of the mis sion of the Church. You will find it in Acts 15 :14: “Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gen tiles, to take out of them a people for His name!’ That is the mission of the Church of Christ, to take out.from the world a people for His name. “Go*ye into all the world, and preach the Gos pel to every creature.” “Ye shall be witnesses unto Me,” “beginning at Je rusalem,” and widening in the circle, “unto the uttermost parts of the earth.” The mission of the Church of Christ is to bear testimony for Christ to all the world. The enduement of the Holy Spirit is the needful equip ment for that. The conquest of the world will not be brought about completely by the witnessing of the Church. The con quest will come when the King ap pears, with the reserves called out from heaven, and many other things in earth that will take place. When the King appears, all the kingdoms shall be taken. The Church is to wit ness until that event and the world conquest will be consummated at the coming of the King. It is a part of God’s program for the conquest of the world. It appears from this, then, that the Church is not a parenthesis of failure. “Upon this rock I will build my Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” All the powers of darkness will not prevent the Church of Jesus from consummating its mis sion of testimony to this world, in preparation for the coming of the King. Well, then, is the world growing better? No, it is not; and I believe it is not because the Bible says so. Things shall wax worse and worse. Again I believe it is not because I have
all the time, for that is what He has told me to do. But there are some things to intervene, I think, between this, as the Scriptures reveal, and the coming of Christ with His saints. There will be something intervening between the coming for and the com ing with, and we cannot go into that. There are two sides to the one Com ing, the Coming for and the Coming with, with a very dark and terrible interval between the two. When He .comes with His saints, it will be to set up the Millennium, which will last a thousand years, and Satan loosed for a season, and then the Great White Throne and the Final Judgment. My first reading of the Bible led me to that view, and though I have met some brethren who have departed from it, all they have said has not convinced me yet. It seems to me that that is an outline of the plan of the ages. TWO CONSUMMATIONS. Now, if you will turn to Acts 1 again, you will find this program for the world’s conquest very plainly out lined. “Ye shall receive power,- after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto Me, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the utter most parts of the earth” (v. 8). We usually stop there; we ought not. “And when He had spoken these things, while they beheld, He was ta ken up ; and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And, while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; which 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. The Mission of the Church. 1. We have in that the consum
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