The Second Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ is Bound up With Every
Fundamental Doctrine, Every Sublime Promise and Every Exhortation to
High, to Holy and Practical Christian Living
IT is bound up with every fundamental doctrine.
The resurrection from the dead, the transfiguration of the living,
the judgment seat of Christ, the judgment of the living nations, the
consequent judgment of the white throne, the rewards of the
righteous and the punishment of the wicked.
It is bound up with every sublime promise.
The recognition of the dead, the overthrow of Satan, the deliverance
of creation, the triumph of God and Christ and the eternal felicity
of the saints.
It is bound up with every exhortation to high, to holy and practical
Christian living.
We are not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together as the
manner of some is. On the Lord's day we are to break bread and drink
the fruit of the vine, show forth the Lord's death and make known to
heaven and to earth that the only ground of approach to a holy God
is the sacrificial offering and vicarious sufferings of the Son of
God and God the Son, and that on the ground of His atoning blood as
our sin offering and personal substitute we claim Him as redeemer,
saviour and interceding priest.
We are to love God and love one another.
We are not to judge one another.
We are not to cast stumbling blocks in each other's path.
We are to walk worthy of our vocation.
We are to let our moderation be known to all men.
We are to be patient, long-suffering and forbearing.
We are to engage continually in prayer and supplication.
We are to live blamelessly before men and holily before God.
As pastors we are to shepherd the sheep over whom God has made us to
be overseers.
We are to feed the flock, not with the philosophies and fictions of
men, but with the truth of God.
We are to restore the wandering, sustain the weak and comfort the
sorrowing.
We are to go to the house of mourning and give consolation to those
who are Christians and who weep above their Christian dead.
As preachers we are to preach the Word. We are to preach in season
and out of season, and to exhort with all long-suffering and
doctrine.
We are exhorted to this high, this holy, this exalted and practical
Christian living, this reincarnation of Christ in daily experience,
this translation of His character, this manifestation of His guiding
and ruling presence, not by the fact that we must die and appear
before God, but by the fact the Lord Himself is coming, may come at
any time, that any moment we may meet Him at His judgment seat.
In all the universe of God there is nothing so impressive as the
thought that you, that I, that we must give a personal account to
God for the manner in which we have used our time, our talent, our
opportunity and substance; and when we are told--as we are told in
Holy Scripture--that any moment we may be summoned to give an
account of our stewardship, and that without dying, just suddenly,
without a moment's warning, translated bodily and with all the sense
of the daily life we have been living upon us into the presence of
Him whose name we have been professing--impressiveness has reached
its ultimate and exhortation the fullest leverage of appeal.
And he who says the Coming of Christ considered as a doctrine, as a
truth or a motive, is not intensely practical and all-compelling to
Christian devotion and service, is either blindly and excuselessly
ignorant of the Word of God or brutally and perversely guilty of
denying a truth that flashes like lightning from one end of the
Bible to the other and illuminates every hortative passage in the
Word of God.
When thus you are face to face with the indisputable fact that every
basic doctrine of the Christian faith, every outshining promise of
hope, of comfort, of consolation, of abiding peace, every appeal to
the noblest and purest life as a Christian, every demand that the
Christian shall unceasingly be the light of heaven in the spiritual
darkness of earth is bound up inextricably with the fact of the
Second Coming, it carries with it the inevitable corollary that the
Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ as a certified and imminent
event is the very sum and substance of all available motives that
can lead to a life of practical service to God and man.