Chapter VIII: The Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ for His Church Is the Most (3)

They have been hunted like wild beasts of the mountain. Like frightened beasts they have trembled at the sound of approaching footsteps and the sound of a shaken leaf has caused them to flee.

If their Lord was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, truly may it be said of them that they have been through the centuries a nation of sorrows and acquainted with grief; but the sorrows were unlike those of their Lord. He carried the sorrows, the griefs and woes of others that He might relieve them; they carried their own sorrows put upon them by the wickedness and cruelty of others until tears were their meat and drink night and day.

Behold how the prophecies have been fulfilled in respect to their land.

For centuries it has kept a sabbath of rest.

It has rested from the toil of man; harvests have neither been sown nor reaped, nor the vintage gathered save here and there as with the sword in one hand and the sickle in the other.

The land is there as a land just as it was in the days when the man of Nazareth walked by the shores of blue Galilee or trod the hills of Judah. The mountains of Moab draw their lines of beauty against the measureless deeps of an orient sky. The valleys lie between like fruitful bosoms where wheat and barley may grow. The olive trees stand dusky in the deepening shade. Pomegranate and apricot stretch forth their weighted boughs and the grapes in Eschol clusters hang purple in the slant of westering suns. It is even yet a land of brooks and fountains of waters and men may still dig iron and brass from out of its rugged hills.

Yonder in Bashan within the range of your eyes you may count sixty cities of stone, walls and roofs and windows of stone, great swinging doors of stone. The centuries have beaten the wind, the rain, the storms and flying sand upon them. They remain. They have outworn the centuries. They are silent. No footfall is heard upon the threshold. The houses are empty save for a fox, a swiftly gliding viper, or a belated Bedaween who may stable his horse in a deserted room where once a happy family dwelt in the long ago.

The stone cities are waiting and every stone in door and window seems to be crying out:

"We are waiting till they return whose right alone it is to live and dwell here."

But what of the nations that scattered them and made them to suffer?

Where is Babylon the proud empire that took them captive; where is Babylon the golden city that saw them hang their harps upon the willows, sit down upon the banks of the strange river and give way to weeping as they yearned for their own land again?

Where is Greece whose phalanxes swept through their fields and spoiled their vineyards?

Where is Rome whose iron legions took their city, put thousand on thousands to the sword, destroyed the beautiful temple once hallowed by a Saviour's feet and then drew a ploughshare over Zion that it might become a ploughed field as foretold? The Rome that sculptured on its triumphal arches the figures of the captive Jews it had led in boastful mockery at the chariot wheels of returning conquerors?

These nations in their ancient glory have disappeared, the Lord as He promised has made a full end of them.

But what of Israel?

The Jews have answered for them.

There are fifteen millions of Jews to-day.

They are the most vital and vigorous race on the earth. They are five times the number of all Israel who left Egypt; and they are but a sixth part of them--two tribes, Judah and Benjamin.

They are the money makers and money loaners of the world. They are the merchants, the bankers, the musicians, the professors in school, in college and university. They are the philosophers, the scientists, the electricians and chemists. They have furnished prime ministers, statesmen, judges and generals. Such a statesman as Disraeli who glorified England, such a general as Massena whom Napoleon characterized as the "child of victory."

If to-day you should seek a representative in every department of human genius and endeavour you would find that representative to be either a Jew or a Jewess.

Fifteen millions of Jews!

What are these fifteen millions of Jews but fifteen millions of proofs that the book we call the Bible is true, is inerrant, infallible?

Fifteen millions of demonstrations and fifteen millions of indubitable proofs.

By so much as they prove that God keeps faith with His warnings of woe and judgment, by so much will He keep faith with the promise of good He has made; by so much is it sure He will yet plant them as He has said in their own land and will do so with His whole heart and His whole soul.

Already the sound of their footsteps may be heard on the homeward march.

Zionism is now an immense fact.

The spirit of nationalism has come back to Judah.

The blue and white flag of David has been unfurled.

Diplomats in the nations' counsels agree there can be no settled peace between Europe and the East till the Jew is back in his own land and Judah once more a recognized political state; that the Jews are the only people all the nations will agree should have Palestine, and the words, "Jewish State" are words repeated in common speech round the globe.

England has driven the Turk out of Jerusalem.

The corner-stone of a five million dollar university has been laid upon that Mount of Olives where once the Son of God amid its lonely shades prayed and agonized, a begun fulfillment of the prophecy of Zephaniah that in the latter days the Lord would execute judgment on the Gentile nations that should be gathered there and to His restored and delivered people turn again a pure speech, no longer the stuttering and smattering phrase of Yiddish, but the old Hebraic tongue of their fathers.

Already there are papers in Jerusalem published in Hebrew, schools are taught and many speak in the ancient language.

Many Jews are going back to Palestine.

Many more are there now than returned from Babylon.

They are going back as the Word of God foretold, in utter and absolute unbelief and bitter repudiation of the idea that Jesus of Nazareth was their foretold and foreordained Messiah.

They are going back with the vail upon their eyes and as blind as in the day when their fathers caused Him to be crucified by Roman hands.

They are going back to a time of anguish of which Jeremiah solemnly warns as "the day of Jacob's trouble," and our Lord describes as the tribulation, "the great one," the like of which the world has never seen and will never see again.

They are going back to be set up by a league of ten nations and to enter into an alliance and covenant with its godless head as their political and false Messiah.

They will suffer until there shall come upon that generation all the righteous blood shed upon the earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zacharias, the son of Bacharias who was slain between the temple and the altar, and the blood of the Son of God which they invoked in judgment on themselves and their children in that fatal hour when Pilate convinced of the innocence of Jesus and wishing to let Him go had washed His hands in water, putting the responsibility of the crucifixion upon them as a people. Then it was they cried that terrible cry:

"His blood be on us, and on our children."

But then as now, and always since the days of Elijah, there was and is an elect remnant in Israel.

For their sakes the Lord will come.

He will descend with His host to Mount Sinai, the place of the law; the spot where Israel rejected grace and sought that covenant which neither they nor their children have ever been able to keep.

He will sweep with His mighty army to Jerusalem.

He will overthrow the Gentile nations gathered there under the Devil-incarnate Antichrist.

He will stand upon the Mount of Olives.

The elect remnant will behold Him come.

They will look upon Him whom their fathers pierced.

They will fall down in anguish before Him.

They will mourn for Him as one mourneth for his only son.

They will take up the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah and make it their confession of faith and bitter, self-accusing lamentation.

They will say:

"We did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."

And in that hour, in that day of days shall there be a fountain opened to the house of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and uncleanness.

The Lord will cause Jerusalem to be rebuilded "upon her own heap." He will ordain the erection of that temple in which He shall establish the throne of His holiness.

Like David He will reign first over Judah. After that He will send Gentile messengers like "fishers" to seek out and find the descendants of the ten lost tribes. They will respond to the proclamation that will be made and to the search that will be instituted in that eastern land and among those peoples whither they were first carried away. There will be many impostors among them; but the Lord will make them to "pass under the rod" as when the true sheep are struck with the owner's mark and as they take up their journey Zionward all who are not of Israel will be purged from their midst.

Those who are really of the covenant people will be quickened, regenerated, and when they enter the land will be welcomed by Judah and Benjamin.

They shall become one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel. One king shall be king to them all. They shall not be two nations any more, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms at all. The Lord will make a covenant of peace with them and multiply them and set His sanctuary in the midst of them forever. His tabernacle shall be with them. He will be their very God as He shall be the God of the whole earth. They shall be His peculiar people. All the Gentiles shall know that He has set them apart for Himself when they behold His temple erected in their midst, the most wonderful building in all the earth.

And thus will be fulfilled the prophecy concerning Israel quoted and emphasized by the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul that the Deliverer should come to Zion and turn away ungodliness from Jacob and that all Israel--that is--Israel united and as twelve tribes, should be saved.

It is at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, then and not till then that the solemn and covenant promises of God made to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob will be fulfilled and united, redeemed, regenerated and saved Israel set in their own land as the center and channel of blessing to the earth.

And because there can be no permanent peace in the world till Israel has been restored; and because I wish to see, not only peace among the nations and Israel reaping the blessings of the unconditional covenant of God's grace and unchanged faithfulness, but because I yearn to see the hour when the Lord shall enter upon His own inheritance and justify Himself before heaven and earth as Judah's Lord, as Israel's God and turn the accusation of His cross: "This is Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews" into the pean of His coronation as such, I preach the Second Coming.

VI

Only at the Second Coming of the Christ of God Will a Government of Everlasting Righteousness and Peace be Established Upon the Earth

IT was the original purpose of God to make the people of Israel the head of nations, place them in Palestine as the geographical center of the earth, make them its political center, send His own Son to be their incarnate king, use them as a channel of earthly and spiritual blessing and make this world the most perfect and happiest spot in all the wide universe.

They failed to meet their opportunity.

Then the Lord transferred the possibility of world rulership from the Jews to the Gentiles.

He did this by handing political power and authority to Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon.

This rulership and sway of the world descended in its ordained and foretold succession down through Medo-Persia with its incorporation of Babylon, through the temporary but immensely extended empire of Greece which under Alexander included both Babylon and Medo-Persia, and after that the colossal and magic empire of Rome, swallowing up as it did the three empires or kingdoms which preceded it.

Since the division of Rome into Western and Eastern empires the rulership of the world has been maintained by the various nations composed of those people dwelling in the territory once occupied by Rome.

The world has been ruled by Turks, Spaniards, Germans, by the French and by the English.

The Gentile nations in this special and prophetic territory have been the world rulers.

It has been peculiarly Gentile rulership and in Scripture is called, "The times of the Gentiles."

Gentile times, Gentile rulership has lasted for twenty-five hundred years.

It has been an amazing rule.

It has been a rulership that has revealed the genius, the brilliance and the God-given powers of man.

It has been a rulership that has revealed the iniquity, the sin, the mad ambition and devil-inspired policies of man.

In all the twenty-five hundred years of this Gentile rule there have not been one hundred consecutive years of universal peace.

It has been twenty-five hundred years of war, of rapine, murder and measureless lust.

Cities have been destroyed, fields have been laid waste, women have endured the last outrage. Children have been orphaned, right has been upon the scaffold and wrong upon the throne, prison chains have been for virtue, silk and velvet for vice, civilization after civilization has been destroyed, the earth has been filled with anguish beyond the power of tongue or pen to describe, and blood enough has been shed through man's inhumanity to man to float all the navies of the world, and money and treasure enough wasted to have provided a palace for every man and woman on earth.

A little less than five years ago men everywhere were talking of peace and safety.

Christianity and civilization were walking hand in hand.

Christianity or that which professed to be Christianity had accepted all the claimed benefits of civilization.

Rapid transit, the telephone, all the triumphs of applied science were announced as the by-products of the Gospel. Even though the churches were becoming more or less empty and the people were turning away to other centers of instruction or enlightenment or consolation or hope, preachers were everywhere and with great insistence announcing that the world was growing better every day and that we were rapidly approaching the purple and the gold of millennial times. The hour was not far distant when the lion and the lamb should lie down together. There was much talk about the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. People were coming together and having a better and more disinterested estimate of each other. Religion was ceasing to be dogmatic and precise and becoming more and more a profession that was free from restraint.

Christian ministers in the pulpit and supposedly wise men in the counsels of the nations with optimistic utterance announced that the days of barbarism had passed away, the brutality of war was at an end. Men and nations would no longer adjourn their differences to the field of battle. A magnificent palace of peace had been erected in that country that had for centuries been the bloody ground where Europe settled its political issues. In this splendid home of arbitration the nations were to meet as friends and brothers and calmly arrange and solve all matters that had hitherto kept them menacingly apart.

War had become so abhorrent to what was called the Christian sense of the nations that mothers were exhorted to banish from the nurseries anything that might suggest the thought of war, such as trumpets, drums or toy guns. So completely had the peace idea pervaded the mind of the people, the idea that peace had come to stay and nothing must be tolerated that would even hint at war, that a soldier or a sailor wearing the uniform of his country was no longer acceptable in a public place, were it a restaurant, a music hall or even a church.

Men who were opposed to spending a dollar to make a nation ready for the possibility of war were hailed as the advanced thinkers and the men worthy of the suffrage of the people; while those who contended human nature had not been changed, that a nation was simply the individual grown large and the jealousies, the covetousness and ambitions of governments would always make it possible for the strong to prey upon the weak and for the unprincipled under the guise of national necessity to attack their unprepared neighbours and therefore just as much as a city rests in confidence with the presence within it of a well-equipped police force, equally so the comfort and security of peace could be best maintained by a nation governed by right principles whose army and navy were ready to resist successfully any unjust assault upon its honour or integrity, were treated with pity, if not scorn, as still under the spell of benighted and barbaric days.

"Peace and safety!" these were the pleasant words that lulled a pleasure-seeking and money-making generation into self-satisfied rest and the mirage of millennial days already arrived.

Then, suddenly, like a bolt out of a clear sky, or the overflow in raging lava tide of an unsuspected volcano, the most stupendous, ghastly and brutally devilish war the world has ever known was on in all its fiendish fury, sweeping from England to the Euphrates and from the Rhine and Danube on the north to the glittering sands of Africa on the south, rolling its waves of blood and sending its sickening and indescribable horrors through those lands and among those people at one time constituting the four kingdoms to whom God had committed the rulership of the world; that region occupied by Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome and whose administration of world affairs is called "the times of the Gentiles."

To-night ten millions of the world's flower of manhood lie rotting in their graves. Six millions of women and children have been starved to death. Women have been unspeakably ruined, children mutilated and flung as helpless debris upon the charity of strangers, suffering their orphaned estate and not knowing why.

All the genius, the science and invention of man with poured out, unlimited wealth, have been drafted to produce the most terrifically destructive means of war. All the boasted progress and culture of the preceding centuries were called upon to wage the contest until it should affright even the participants themselves. Clouds of poison gas filled the once sweet and vital air of spring time and summer mornings. Human beings wearing hideous masks and looking like other world monsters rushed in mad onslaught upon one another. They burrowed in holes and trenches like wild beasts concealed in their lair and waiting for the prey. Through the startled heavens winged things like huge vampires vomiting fire and blood took their way over cities, towns and unprotected hospitals, leaving behind them the dead, the dying and the tortured. Hunger with its sunken cheeks, and pestilence with its green eyes, its slavering lips have trod the earth till horror with wordless anguish has kept vigil by the blackened hearthstones of ruined homes and deserted firesides.

To-night, the fields of Flanders where the poppies grow and where the dead who died too soon and lie almost too thick to count, are as though a mighty juggernaut had rolled its fearful wheels over them, crushing both man and earth together into one monstrous pulp of hopeless ruin.

To-night France, where the lilies were wont to bloom, is torn and ripped in all the one-time beauty and fascination of her white and winding roads, poplar fringed, in the culture of her fruited gardens, her orchards and her royal forests, as though some monstrous creation of pre-Adamite days had survived and broken through all restraint of all the ages to riot and gorge himself with unlimited delight of destruction.

All this after two thousand years of professed Christianity and the constant iteration that the Church was slowly winning its way to the ruler-ship of the world; that each hour the world was growing better and more and more the principles of the Christ of God dominating the universal heart of man.

The world awoke to find its heart unchanged and war with aggressive animalism still the underlying and primal force in man.

To-night in face of all this, in face of the solemn declaration of the Son of God that during the whole time of His absence there would be war and rumours of war, and specially within the territory once occupied by Rome; that there would be distress of nations with perplexity, men's hearts failing them for fear for looking after the things that should be coming on the earth; that the people like the waves of the sea should be roaring, uttering their discordant voices in the thunder of protest and bitter discontent, breaking the bonds of old customs and lashing the times with lawlessness and unprecedented crime; in face of the warning of the Apostle Paul that in the last days, that is to say in the closing hours of this age, there should be, not peaceful but perilous times; that evil men should wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived; in the face of the inspired assurance of the Apostle James that as this dispensation should draw to its close Capital and Labour should stand in bitter attitude to each other; that the accumulated wealth of a special class called "rich men" should be "heaped together" that they might be spoiled and that miseries should come upon them; that on the one side should be the aggression of the profiteers and on the other the violence of those who would refuse to be exploited; in face of this assurance of industrial and class war; in face of the fact that the softest toned apostle whose pen is always transcribing the word "love," and who has reached the highest and most sublime definition of God as love; in face of the fact that this apostle affirms the hour will come when the whole world under religious, political and devilish inspiration will rush to conflict, that everywhere will be heard the tramp of armed men and the gathering of the nations for a war such as the world has not yet seen; in face of the picture which this apostle of love paints where the armies of the world are seen gathered in battle array against the Lord Christ and His right to reign; in the face of this divine warning the statesmen of the world are assembled in counsel at Paris, the world's capital of pleasure, in a palace once dedicated to lust and wanton self-gratification, whose panelled ceiling and mirrored walls are filled with and reflect the scenes and glorification of war, that by the stroke of a pen, by a series of resolutions, they may constitute a league of nations bulking so big that every threatened wave of future war may be flung back as when the dykes of Holland reject the sea.

The astonishing and suggestive thing is that in the making and remaking of the map of Europe and Asia undertaken by the framers of the league, they are, all unconsciously, restoring the outlines of the old Roman Empire and preparing the way for the final and desperate revival of Rome under the form of ten confederate nations, with its last kaiser, that dark and woful figure, the man of sin, the son of perdition, the Antichrist.

And there are Christian teachers who see in this league another herald of the millennium before Christ comes which they so sedulously preached previously to the war. They see in this league an evidence that the Lord Jesus Christ as the Prince of Peace is in reality reigning over the earth and bending the nations to His will for the reign of peace.

In the whole history of theological exegesis and interpretation I know of nothing so utterly faulty, illogical and wholly unscriptural as that exegesis which teaches the angel song at Bethlehem to be the announcement of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ as the Prince of Peace and that as such He should establish it among the nations after His ascension to heaven and during His absence from the world.

The angels sang glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to "men of good will."

The angel who spoke to the shepherds keeping the temple sheep for the morning and the evening sacrifice was testifying to them that there was no longer need to keep the sheep for such a purpose. The day of animal sacrifices had passed, the living God had provided the true sacrifice, He who was born beneath the chaplet of heaven's music, the Lamb of God ordained before the foundation of the world. He had been born into the world that He might make peace by the blood of His cross, not between man and man, not between nation and nation, but between man and God. He had been born to die and by His death reconcile a rebel world to God; on the basis of this sacrifice yet to be and when He should have risen from the dead as witness of the efficacy of His death He would bring peace to every soul that should be of good will--every soul that should surrender to the will of God by believing on Him, offering Him by faith as a sacrifice and claiming Him as a substitute. Every such soul should be at peace with, and have the peace of, God.

This was the meaning of that natal hour at Bethlehem.

The angels were not singing over Him as the Prince of Peace who had come to abolish war among the nations, but as the ordained sacrifice who should bring peace between the individual man and his God. And yet--He is to be the Prince of Peace and reign and rule as such over the earth, putting an end to war and establishing perfect peace among the nations.

The promise of His reign and rule as the Prince of Peace is clearly set forth in Scripture; as it is written in the book of the prophet Isaiah:

"Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his peace and government there shall be no end."

But when? Where?

Listen:

"Upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom to order it."

And hear what Gabriel says to Mary when he comes to announce to her that she has been chosen of Almighty God to give birth to the Messiah of Israel.

The angel says:

"Thou shalt call his name Jesus . . . He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:

And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end."

He is to be the Prince of Peace when He sits upon the throne of united Israel in their own land and not before.

He was born in fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah.

He was a Son given. The Son of God who was God the Son.

He was a Son given and became a child born.

He grew up to the station of manhood.

He entered upon His pre-arranged ministry.

At the appointed hour and to the very second foretold by Gabriel to Daniel and in the exact manner announced by the prophet Zechariah He rode into Jerusalem, went into the temple, claiming it as His Father's house of prayer and by so much declaring Himself to be the Son of the Highest and the heir of David's throne.

The shout of the multitude had announced Him officially.

They had said:

"Hosanna! Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord."

In crying this aloud they were fulfilling the prediction of Zechariah.

He had, under the vision of God, looked forward to this hour and with the Spirit of God upon him had exhorted the people who should be alive when Jesus should come to acclaim him.

He said:

"Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem; behold thy King cometh unto thee; he is just, and having salvation (political as well as spiritual salvation); lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass."

The multitude were shouting as Zechariah said they should shout. They were confessing that He who came that day up the slopes of Zion was the Prince of Judah and King of Israel.

He came to His own, but His own received Him not.

Instead of the diadem of David He got a crown of thorns. Instead of the sceptre of Israel He got the vine stick of a Roman centurion thrust through His rope-tied hands. Instead of a throne He got a malefactor's cross. Instead of a robe of royal purple He got the winding sheet of the dead. Instead of a palace He got a borrowed grave.

The Jews have paid the price of that blindness and betrayal. The man-slayer who unwittingly slew his neighbour or was even ignorant of it at the moment sooner or later found he had to flee from the avenger of blood instantly upon his track. He became an exile from his home, forced to dwell in a provided place called the city of refuge. He could not return to his home till the second coming of a priest.

The Jews were guilty, as a nation, of manslaughter.

They were deceived and involved by their leaders. They really did not know that He whom they hounded to death at the last was not only the covenant king of Israel, and the Holy One of their fathers, but the Prince of life.

Because of their blindness, blunder and sin they were cast out of the land. Because, even though in ignorance, they slew their King, they were exiled by the judgment of God from their home. They deprived the Lord of that land that was His through the covenant of Abraham, and the Lord in turn deprived them of the right of dwelling in the land. They should be exiles so long as He was an exile. Nor can they return till He comes the second time as a priest, not after the order of Aaron, but Melchisedec; for it is written that He shall be both a king and priest upon His throne.

Only can the Jews return and be owned nationally of the Lord when He shall come.

He will come and He will come as the Prince of Peace.

He will not come, I repeat, with the olive branch in His hand and the cooing dove nestling upon His shoulder.

Nay! not at all!

He will come as the Avenger of His elect, as the Son of man, as the judge of all flesh.

He will come to overthrow the combination of Devil and man.

His Coming will be the climax of old and outworn ages, the beginning of the new.

The glory of His Coming cannot be described.

Through years of meditation and continued effort at description I have exhausted my vocabulary and worn to tatters the oft-repeated phrases with which I have sought with heart full of adoring enthusiasm to announce the wonders of that hour.

If all the suns and systems were turned into speech till every flaming center of light were an adjective with increasing emphasis of qualification and expression the attempt to put into words the glory of that Coming would be a pitiful and overwhelming failure.

He will come surrounded by an innumerable host whose hallelujahs shall so vibrate that the very heavens will roll apart at their soundings.

The Lord will come in His threefold glory, the glory of the Father, the glory of the angels and His own glory: the glory of His eternal and unbegun sonship with the Father, as chief of the angels and as that man who is very God, as that God who is real and immortal man. Then will He set up the kingdom, the government for which the ages have dreamed and groaned and guessed and prayed.

That hour of hours!

Satan bound, iniquity overthrown, God and Christ and the Holy Spirit ruling in the lives of men. The very air surcharged with the righteousness of God; so surcharged that he who thinks a lie shall fall dead in the tracks where he meditated it. No longer need of judge, of jury, of prison bars, nor hangman's rope, nor electric chair.

An hour when no longer the scarlet poppies of hate, of jealousies and mad ambition shall bud and blossom into war. War over forever, swords beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks. Every man the same right as any other man, the right to sunshine, to air, to water, the beauty of the landscape and all the usufruct of earth.

That hour when no man shall call another his master; when no longer a man shall toil and bend his back and break his heart for a stipend of bread; for a hole in the ground and the worm of corruption as mistress of his bed.

That hour when life shall be worth while and when the centuries of peace and perfectness of actual being shall pass on till they are counted as eternity.

And because this government of peace and splendour and all the outflowing possibilities of a world in which righteousness shall reign and God shall be first can be brought about only by and at the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; because until He does so come wars and sorrows and the darkness of sin will continue; because all the legislation of man and all the leagues of nations will utterly fail to establish permanent peace; because in spite of the best endeavours of all the merely moral forces in the earth there is nothing can keep this system called the world from going on the rocks; because only the hand of God's Christ can break the bands of iniquity, quiet earth's fever pulses and putting down all authority bring in the peace that never can be broken; because when He comes the government of right and truth and the life that is really worth while shall come; and because from my heart I want to see that longed-for hour of heaven on earth, I preach the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

VII

It is at the Second Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ that the Earth Will be Delivered from the Bondage of Corruption and Transformed into the Paradise of God

WHEN man fell creation fell.

It fell because creation in respect to this earth was headed up in him.

God placed a ban upon it, a restraint of its fruitfulness.

Instead He gave liberty to thorns and briars and poisonous, creeping things.

You may plant your garden, you may plant your orchard, set your vines and sow your fields. You may go to sleep and rest and think your work is done, that nothing remains but to awake again and receive the looked-for fruit and harvest.

When you do awake you will find the poisonous, creeping things have climbed over your wall and fence, have glided in among the good seed, flung their tentacles of death about them and are slowly, surely strangling the life out of them.

If you would have your garden to grow, your orchard to yield its fruit, your vineyard to hang out its purple clusters, your harvests to ripen in the kiss of sun and developing touch of caressing winds, then you must rise early and toil late. For every acre of worthful land you must crown your brow with the sweat of unceasing and exacting toil.

The earth is in bondage. It is held in the close, the gripping and relentless bonds of corruption.

Everywhere and in all things is the corruption of the dead.

The very air you breathe is dust from the mingled bones of the dead. The earth is crammed with the dead of man and beast. The grain that is reaped and the flowers that bloom grow forth from the fatness of the grave and the impulse of corruption, watered by tears distilled from the heartache of the generations old who have sorrowed above that grave and wept and hoped in vain.

Put your ear to the bosom of old mother earth and you will hear a moaning and lament like unto women in travail who seek to bring to the birth.

I am told the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now; that it is on the tiptoe of expectation with neck and head stretched out waiting for the Coming of the Son of God and all the sons of glory.

O yes! creation in all her borders is crying out for the Son of God to come.

It is crying out from all its rivers, from the moan of the sea, in the shiver of earthquake and the rush of the lava tide from the red throat of the flaming volcano. It is crying out in the heat of burning deserts, in every pain that is felt, in every tear of anguish that stains the face and speaks the agony of the heart, in every clod that falls with its accent of woe upon the coffin lid, in all the bitterness, the shame and tragedy of a sin-smitten and Devil-hurt world; everything in nature from rock and worm to man is crying out: "Come, Lord Jesus, and build again this broken and ruined earth of thine."

He will hear the cry.

When He comes He will take off the ban.

He will deliver from corruption.

The earth will no longer shiver as an aspen.

Fear will no longer walk forth like a tyrant and set the pulses beating or hold them strangling.

Briars and thorns and fiend-like weeds and smothering, choking things that have kept the earth in barrenness where Eden-like gardens should have bloomed, and, thank God, all graves, will disappear. The desert shall bloom as the rose, the earth shall be renewed, made beautiful, and all creation loosened from its prison bonds shall sing and echo with unending harmonies in every freely fruiting and growing thing throughout all its delivered and happy borders.

For a thousand golden years under a new heavens and beneath a pure sky where the air shall flow round it as a river of crystal from the throne of God the earth will roll onward to the music of its sister spheres keeping time in the great diapason of the universe that owns and celebrates the glory of God; then, at last, it will pass through gates of fire and come forth into that new orbit, as that new earth wherein is no more dividing sea, storm swept and full of the wrecks of ships, of greater wrecks of hopes, and tiled with the white bones of the dead; that new earth where there shall be no more night with its hidden evil and its long and darksome hours in which the sufferer yearns for morning light, no more tears, nor sorrow, nor pain, nor any more that black and ever multiplying horror they call death; that new earth that shall be no longer the footstool, but the exalted and special throne of God--the center of the universe.

Into this new and perfect earth the Church shall descend--a company of redeemed, blood-washed, immortal sons of God.

The Son of God and God the Son Himself shall descend and dwell there. Then for the first time shall the children of God behold in Him the full lineament of their Father's face; for, though He be the eternal Son He shall be seen and known as the "everlasting Father," or "the Father of the everlasting age."

The onlooking worlds as they swing in their chorus of adoration about this radiant and omnipotent center will learn and proclaim the immense truth that this earth was created, not merely as an expression of the wisdom, genius and might of God in His function as a creator, but as the arena of redemption, as the spot whence in all the wide empire of His power might be known and felt the pulse beat of His heart. As the innumerable hosts of heaven sweep around this center of grace and redemption, as they behold beings who once were lost in sin, wrecked and ruined beyond human hope or angelic aid, now immortal, holy, happy sons of God, they will break forth in ever increasing songs of adoration and shall say as they sing till the universe shall repeat it again and again:

"Behold, the glory of God is not alone in his majesty and might, in his holiness and omnipotence, but in his love."

They shall take up that marvellous passage in John 3: 16 and cry it aloud so that it will ring with accumulating praise to Him who first uttered it:

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

And all the host of heaven shall proclaim:

"God is love. God is love."

All this consummation is to find its initial at the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And because I want to see this earth freed from the stain of sin, the torture of pain, the accents of sorrow, the terror of tears, the hour of dying, the black and shameful grave, the trench of corruption and the Devil's ministry of death; because I want to see a worth-while world where no longer the earth shall turn from night to morn and then from morn to disappointing night again, but shall glow forever in the light of an endless morn; because I want to see a world where the purposes of God in love, in benediction and unfailing grace are no longer seemingly contradicted by untoward events and conditions, by problems that with the best apologies for the divine character no human genius can solve or balance, but are written in high and lifted testimony brighter than the stars of any night and stronger shining than any sun of day; because I want to see a world where man shall be the enthronement of God and shall glorify Him as such, and where every atom of earth shall be full of His love and redolent with His praise, and where life shall be only another name for joy and the unending and the ever new unfoldment of it, the actual joy of unreserved, unlimited living; and because this desire in all its full accomplishment can come and the first notes of infinite triumph alone be struck and the song begin by the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ--I preach His Second Coming.

VIII

The Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ for His Church is the Most Imminent Event on the Horizon of Time

BETWEEN us and the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in glory to Mount Zion to set up and establish His kingdom there are many predicted and consecutively fixed events.

Between us and the moment when our Lord shall suddenly and secretly descend to take the Church to Himself into the place prepared, hold her in security above the woe hour coming on all them that dwell on the face of the earth and then bring her back to reign and rule with Him in glory, there is not a single, predicted event; and this--in the very nature of the case.

In the nature of the case because this age in which we live is a parenthesis between the kingdom postponed upon the one side and the kingdom to be brought in upon the other.

In this age God is not seeking to convert the world, but to take out of it a people for His Name.

It is an age of selection and therefore an age of election.

When you take some things out of the midst of other things there will be, not only a first one, but necessarily a last one.

As there was a first one elected, called out and taken into union with a risen Lord, so must there be a last one who shall be called through the Gospel, quickened by the Spirit and bound up in indissoluble union with a living Lord.

When that last one is called and responds to the life-giving power of the Spirit the Lord will descend into the upper air and take the completed and corporate Church to Himself--the dead raised, the living changed.

When that last elect one will be called you do not know, it is not known to a single soul on earth.

Since you do not know when the last elect of God shall be called, and it is sure the Lord will come when that last elect one is called, then you do not know when the Lord will come; and so far as you are concerned, and so far as any revelation otherwise is given, it may be any hour and, therefore, "any moment"; consequently the Coming of the Lord for His Church is--imminent.

Thus the imminency of the Lord's Coming for His Church is grounded on election.

Imminency is so absolutely linked up with election that you cannot deny imminency without denying election; and to deny election is to deny God Himself, deny Him in the very essence of His own prerogative, the prerogative of foreordination, of decree.

The imminency of the Lord's Coming for His Church is grounded on the Lord's own declaration that He is coming for her as a thief comes.

This is His declaration and warning to the Church at Sardis, that Church which is the symbol of Protestantism in the closing hours of the age. The warning is given to the pastor, through the pastor to the Church and through the local assembly at Sardis to the whole Church.

This is what the risen Lord actually says:

"Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard; and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will arrive over thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will arrive over thee."

The characteristics of thief coming are marked and clear.

The thief does not come with strident voice, with thunderous noise, nor in open daylight, but between the midnight and the morn, with shodden feet, silently, softly, and takes the treasure while all in the house are sunken in the depths of sleep.

When the sunbeams of the morning pelt the eyelids of the laggard sleepers they awake to find the thief has come and gone and in his going has taken the treasure with him.

If the symbol be of avail and not a mere exercise in logomachy then will the Lord, indeed, descend in the moral and spiritual night of the world while men are sleeping and in fancied security pleasantly dreaming.

He will descend unseen, unnoted. If men shall hear the sound of a trump it will have no greater significance to their spiritually deaf ears than any other passing sound. He will take, not the "great house" of religious profession, but those alone in that profession who have been regenerated and are indwelt by the Spirit, the dead who have fallen asleep in His name and the living who abide in Him.

Above all--imminency is grounded in the integrity of the Son of God and His apostles.

Unless all language is a deception; unless the promises of God are a baited lie; unless the apostles of Christ are the most shameless of all wanton tricksters; unless the Son of God Himself is the coolest traitor to truth who ever fooled the trusting hearts of needy men; unless He is the one being of all others who had the subtle and effective genius of making promises that fill the ear and are broken to the heart; unless He was the most skillful of all deceivers and rejoiced with malignant delight in deceiving the souls of men and thus proved Himself to be not the Son of God at all but the very son of falsehood, then seeing He is the reverse of all that, is in truth the very Son of God and truth itself, by His own unqualified statement, by its very character as exhortative warning His Coming must be and is--imminent. It is on the threshold of unfolding history and the gates of heaven are ajar ready for His Coming. So imminent is it that there is nothing between us and that event of events but the shout of command, the voice of the archangel and the shattering sound of the trump. So imminent that there is not the thickness of an eyelash between us and that moment when the door in heaven shall open wide and His voice with all compelling power shall say, "Come up hither."

Listen to what He says:

"Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come."

Watch! because He is coming.

Watch! because you do not know what hour He will come.

Watch! because as the householder He said He might come in any one of the four watches, at even, at midnight, in the cockcrowing or in the morning.

He did not come at even.

Surely the midnight has come. It is dark enough spiritually. There is not only enough of sorrow, sin, confusion and unbelief in a godless world, but rank treason to the truth and repudiation of the written Word in the professing Church to call it spiritual midnight.

It seems sometimes like the cockcrowing.

There are sounds of chanticleer, blasts of trumpets, changing of the guards and sentinels of old customs and ways, and echoes in the events now unrolling that prelude the great morning and the great day.

There is nothing certain about the hour but its--uncertainty.

Watch! because you may be alive at His Coming.

That is the word of Holy Scripture and not my suggestion.

Listen to the Apostle: "We which are alive, and remain unto the coming of the Lord."

The Apostle said that for his generation.

He said it not under his own mistaken idea as the Chicago department of "sacred literature" would suggest, but under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of the Holy God.

Paul as a mere man might make mistakes just as the modern theological professor not infrequently does.

The Holy Spirit speaking through Paul could not make a mistake Himself, neither could it be possible for Paul under the direction of the Holy Spirit to make a mistake.

Paul was led by the Holy Spirit to believe it possible the Son of God might come in his day.

What Paul under inspiration said for his generation, he said for our generation.

He said it for you and for me.

Because no man knows the hour when the Lord will come it might be in your hour and my hour.

The Master Himself said:

"You know not what hour your Lord doth come."

Who is he who will have the hardihood to fix the hour when the Master has said no man knows?

Who is he who will put a thousand years between the Church and her returning Lord?

Where is the difference between a thousand years' delay and one moment that can be fixed by any man?

If the Lord says you do not know the hour and necessarily do not know the minute of the hour, if you fix a minute between us and the Coming you deny the words of the Son of God Himself that the minute and the hour are unknown.

Who is he who has it all fixed and polished and pumice stoned to the exact date?

The Lord has said no man on earth knows, not an angel in heaven knows. He Himself took the place of a servant and by the exercise of His omnipotent will residing in His eternal and unchanged personality as Son of God and God the Son, shut out the knowledge of it from His humanity, from Himself as man, and said He did not know when He should come.