Till He Comes | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Sep 23, 1875

Till He Comes.

In the churchyard of Hurstmonceux, not far from the venerable ruin of that name, is a short quotation from Scripture on the tombstone of one well known and loved, whose life is so graphically pictured in "The Annals of a Quiet Life." "Till he come" was the simple yet pregnant inscription. Well did it express the faith hope and love of the departed!

"Till he come." The body sleeps in the quiet grave until that day when the Lord shall come. "If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him." What a glorious hope! "The Lord himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the arch-angel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord." Such was the hope expressed by the inscription, "Till he come."

Death is not the hope of the Christian. Falling asleep is but an incident. We look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our body of humiliation, that it may be fashioned like unto his body of glory.

There is a great difference between holding the doctrine of the second coming, and "waiting for his Son from Heaven." One may hold the doctrine very clearly and intellectually, nay combatively, and be but a tinkling cymbal. "To wait for his Son in Heaven," as did the thessalonians, manifests a power of walk and conversation in holiness. "He that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." "Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be dilligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless"—Observer.