That is the testimony o f Scripture. That is the promise of our Lord, and that was the very first message our ascended Lord sent back to the gazing disciples immediately after a cloud had received Him out of their sight. We believe He is coming soon. For nineteen hundred years the promise of that glad event has spurred on the church of God and given courage to His sorely tried followers, and we know that now, this very moment, we are nearer that day than we have ever been before. Never before has this blessed hope meant more than it does today with the world in the throes of a death struggle and the nations seeking their. own destruction. After six thousand years of man’s efforts to build a Utopia, we see the world in the greatest struggle of its history; barbarism and paganism threaten to engulf the nations, and satanic onslaughts endan ger all that is precious and dear to the cause of liberty and prosperity. Is there then no hope? Must this carnage go on forever and forever until man has invented such engines of war that all o f hu manity must perish by its own invention? The answer is this—Jesus Christ is coming back again, and when He comes the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, and men “ shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah 2 :4 ). Enoch looked for the coming o f the Lord in power. That man who is the great type of the rap ture in the Old Testament, we are told in Jude, prophesied concerning our Lord’s coming as fol lows : . . . Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thou sands of his saints, To execute judgment upon all, and to con vince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and o f all their hard speeches ivhich ungodly sinners have spoken against him (Jude 14, 15). Job who lived before Abraham or shortly after, looked for the comirig o f the Lord, and says, For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God (Job 19:25, 26). David looked for the coming again o f the Lord in glory, and cries out in Psalm 2:4-6, He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion (Psalm 2:4-6).
Isaiah looked for his glorious coming, and cried: For unto us a child is bom, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder . . . Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with jus tice from henceforth even for ever . . . (Isaiah 9:6, 7). Then after four thousand years He came. The Jews thought that when the Messiah came He would immediately establish the Kingdom. The secret of this present age of His rejection by Israel and the calling out of a Bride to reign with Him
at His second coming was unknown to them. So when the Saviour came as a “man o f sorrows” in stead of a triumphant King, and went to the Cross instead of the Throne, they could not understand it, and they rejected Him. And no wonder, for all their Old Testament prophecies had told far more about His glorious reign (still future) than His death and crucifixion. When He began to reveal to the disciples that He must die, they were great ly confused. They had looked for a triumphant King who would sweep His enemies away before Him, and set up the Kingdom, and naturally when He set His face to the Cross they questioned, “What about all the hundreds of Old Testament prophecies concerning Your glorious reign? Are they all un true? Will they not be fulfilled, and have we all been mistaken?”
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TH E KING'S BUSINESS
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