p. 611 | The Lord Is Coming by S. S. Times

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 15, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 39.

The Lord Is Coming.

By S. S. Times

To us who live more than eighteen hundred years after Christ spoke the promise that he would come again, the silences of the time may be most instructive. As each succeeding year rolls round to the season which reminds us of the coming of our Lord, the question of a scoffing and self-sufficient culture becomes keener and more persistent: "Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation."

It is not that there is more infidelity in the world than ever before, or that there is more reason now than formerly to despair of the future of that spiritual kingdom against which the gates of hell shall not prevail; but it is that the antichrists who are already come into the world seem better furnished than ever before for their warfare against the faith. A Christless and selfish naturalism, hostile not only to Christianity, but to every form of religion, offers itself as a substitute for that reverent and loving trust in God which our Lord teaches; a proud and frivolous literary culture announces itself as the one sufficient object of life; a boasting science, which is baffled by a few red sunsets, loudly proclaims that it has sounded the depths of the universe, and found no God.

And the fruits of it all are evident. From over the seas comes the news of the gathering blackness; Europe is an armed camp; anarchy growls at our very doors; and our modern civilization threatens, except grace prevent, to end in dynamite. Even nature seems to sympathize with the general uneasiness of society. The pestilence stalks abroad; and earthquakes leave their accustomed tracks, to shake portions of the earth hitherto accounted most stable.

Meanwhile, as in the early days of Christianity, it is the duty of every believer to wait hopefully for the coming of the Lord. It has not pleased the Father to make us to know the times and the seasons of the coming; it has pleased him that we should look for it hopefully, and be ready for it when it comes. It is not a thing with which we have no concern; we shall see it, every one of us. Wherever there is a keen personal trust in the Saviour, there will be a joyous looking forward to the time of his coming,—a willingness to hail his coming though it should flash upon us this very day. He who has that living faith will have no faltering in his belief of the last promise of the New Testament, no fear to breathe anew its last prayer. "He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus."—S. S. Times.