The Blessed Hope | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 9, 1869

The Blessed Hope.

We are, at present, living in the land of our adversary. We are absent from our Lord. We walk by faith, not by sight. We are liable at any hour to close our eyes in death. Ours is the land of the dying and the dead. Our dearest friends are being cut down all around us. The tenderest associations are ready, at any moment, to be dissolved. Here have we no continuing city and no abiding place. Nevertheless our hearts are cheerful in God. Everything that we can desire is ours by promise. Our faith in the things promised, and our love for them, give to the promise a divine reality. We hope for the things promised. This hope is of such unspeakable worth to us that we are made rich by it, though at present acquainted with poverty and want. Though we have nothing, we possess all things.

We are not in possession of the good things, only as they are ours in the promise of God. But we rely upon that with such confidence that it is to us almost as though we had the things promised. We cheerfully wait its fulfilment, and murmur not at the inconveniences we experience. This is our night of watching. But we know that the morning will dawn. Our hearts yearn for the coming of the long-expected day. We know that our Lord must return in his glory before we can enter upon our inheritance. He must bind our great adversary before he delivers our dear friends who sleep in the silent dust. He must slay death before our land shall be in strict truth, “the land of the living.” He must purge sin from our earth by the fires of the last day, before the curse can be removed from it. We can have no Paradise in the absence of our Lord. We do not even desire to have our inheritance till we can have our King with us. He has promised to come again. We depend upon that promise. We never can be satisfied till we behold his face. His return shall change our world. Now it is the land of Edom. But when he shall transform it, then it shall be the Canaan of promise. Thenceforward we shall weep no more, for we shall never be separated from our Lord. All the family shall then be united, and death shall never enter the family of Adam the second, as it has that of Adam the first.

Christ Must Return.

If our Lord should fail to return again, then all our hopes of future blessedness must fail. He has gone away to prepare a place for us. John xiv, 1-3. If he should lose his interest in our behalf, or forget to return for us, then we can never be with him. He has pledged himself to come again. Certainly, we must depend on the fulfilment of this promise, for we cannot go to him. But we may be sure that he will not come for his people till he has first prepared the place for them. When that is accomplished, his word pledges him to return. It is the event on which is suspended all our hope. For with his return come the resurrection, translation, immortality, the crown of life, and our gathering together unto him. 1 Cor. xv, 51-54; 1 Thess. iv, 14-18; 2 Thess. ii, 1; 1 Pet. v, 4.

When he says, “I will come again and receive you unto myself,” he does not mean to say that he will send the consumption, or the small pox, or the typhoid fever. No, that would do us no good. It is not the pains of dissolution, but the change to immortality, that we desire. Our Lord must come himself. He will never send our “last enemy” as a substitute for himself. 1 Cor. xv, 26. The most of his people are even now in the cold embrace of death. We have already enough of death. But our Lord comes to destroy that cruel monster. He comes to awaken his people, and to give them immortal life. His coming is with the sound of the trump of God. When that trump breaks upon the ear of the silent sleepers, in one moment of time every one of them shall awaken to immortal life. And all the living saints shall, at the same moment, be changed to immortality. Then the angels of God shall gather all the saints to the presence of Christ, thenceforward to be forever with him.

The Signs of Christ’s Advent May Be Disregarded.

It is a prevalent idea, that the signs of the advent cannot have been witnessed, because the mass of mankind have no faith in any such thing. The public seem to consider it a settled question, that the signs of Christ’s advent will be such as to compel faith on the part of those who witness them. Yet it is perfectly evident from the teaching of our Lord, that such is not the truth. In Matt. xxiv, our Lord gives a list of signs of his advent. Then he adds: “When ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.” Verse 33. But he proceeds to say, that “as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.” He says of the antediluvians, that they “knew not till the flood came and took them all away.” He adds concerning his second advent: “So shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.” We may be safe in concluding,

1. That the signs of Christ’s advent will be of so marked a character that all who have faith in his word will be able to know from their fulfilment that he is even at the doors.

2. But that these signs will not be such as to compel wicked men to believe. They will have no idea that the day of God is at hand. They will, therefore, completely deceive themselves in this matter, by explaining away the tokens of the coming Judgment.

3. And this is wonderfully illustrated by our Lord’s reference to the case of the old world. Though the people were warned by Noah, yet such was the power of unbelief that when the deluge came it took them all by surprise. And in the last days, though the faithful watchman gives the world warning, the day of God shall come upon the world as a thief. So it is evident that God will give signs sufficient for faith to grasp, but not such as to compel unbelief to acknowledge their warning voice.