their worshipers that they submit to a servile yoke; our God offers a "yoke that is easy and burden that is light." It is the yoke of a holy and supreme love. » The gods of the heathen demand that their followers shall pay for their sal- vation, and practically a salvation that is to save them from their gods, from the malevolence of their gods. Our book provides a salvation that only asks us to receive ijt "without money and without price," for "as many The "parousia" or "arrived presence" of the Lord, in person, is everywhere, in both Testaments, set before the Church as her great and "Blessed Hope;" and, although certain events "must needs come to pass first," yet the duty of watching and waiting every moment, and being ready for the Lord's arrival is enforced in the most solemn manner in the preaching of Christ and His Apostles the one sublime event is ever set before the eyes and pressed upon the hearts of all true believers. It is -of the very essence of the Christian "Hope" to be constantly at every season, "watching'' for the Lord's appearing. The spiritual exercises of the heart, by i which the possession of the Hope authenticates itself, are no other than daily "waiting," "watching," praying," "looking for" and "loving" His appear- ing. Apart from the experience of such exercises, the Hope becomes a mere ab- stract idea, powerless to stimulate or sanctify. S'o important is this Hope that the Lord has ' tied it to the administra- tion of the Lord's Supper, to the burial of believers, and used it as an ¡argument for the repentance of the sinner. In fact it stands connected with every doc- trine of the New Testament. The Lord Jesus has always been "coming quickly," ever since the holy apostle breathed that sweetest, and shortest prayer, "Come Lord Jesus." Every event in history is a footfall of His approach. Every revelation of Him- self, in blessing, or judgment, to indi- viduals, churches, or nations, is a com- ing of the Lord, and the last step of His "Coming," coincides with the first step of "Arrived Presence". One of the signs of the "Last Times" is the scoffer asking, "Where is the promise of His parousia?" as if it were
as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." "For by grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves; it. is the gift of God." And we are saved unto God, for it is declared concerning the saved that "they shall see his face"; and when they see his face, "they shall be like him, for they shall see him as he is." Glorious consummation! And all this,lies open here in this book, "The word of God, which liveth and abideth forever." a failure, using the Lord's delay to dis- credit the prediction—a delay Peter ex- plains as due to the Lord's "long suffer- ing" toward the impentinent—just as He bore with the ungodly before the Flood. And the "slothful servant" uses the same argument, becoming worldly and unwatchful. But He will come. And if, as John tells us in his First Epistle, second chapter, "Worldliness and antichristianity" are the two great moral signs of "the last time," and that his day was a type of the time preceding the "parousia" of Christ, he is an unread and unobserving man who cannot see, as he looks over Christendom, that both these signs confront him everywhere in their appalling magnitude. We do well to give heed to the three great safe- guards against these destructive ele- ments in the last apostasy (1) "Love not the world nor the things that are in the world; if ¡any man love the world the love of the Father is not in him"; (2) "Let that abide in you which ye have heard from the beginning"—the "message," or pure, unadulterated Gos- pel of the coming King, if that remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son and in the Father;" and (3) the Holy spirit, or the "Unction" given to all true believers. "The anointing which ye have received of Him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you; but, as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth and no Jie—even as it hath taught you, so ye shall abide in Him." These three safeguards against worldliness and anti- chrstianity, viz., (1) the withdrawal of the heart from the world, (2) the un- veiling of the Word, and (3) the in- dwelling of the Spirit, are the security of the believer against the antichrist "lust," and the antichrist "lie" of the last times. How important they are for us today!
The Coming of the Lord By Nathaniel West
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