Why Watch and Wait? by Dr. Cumming

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 21, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 32.

Why Watch and Wait?

By Dr. Cumming

"Watch therefore; for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh." Matt. 25: 13.

THE promise of the Saviour's coming is the key-note of prophecy. "This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into Heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go." Again, "He will come in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory." Again, "Looking for that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of Jesus Christ, our God and Saviour." "We shall appear with him in glory." "The Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints." Again, said that ancient and afflicted emir, seated in the sunshine, on his Eastern plains, "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth." The Psalms are full of predictions of the advent of our blessed Lord. In the fiftieth psalm: "Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence; a fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about him. He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that he may judge his people. Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice;" or in New Testament language, "Come, ye blessed of my Father." And the Saviour himself tells us, in language the most graphic, "The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father, with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works." And Peter says, "When the Chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away." And John in the Apocalypse, says, "Behold, he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him." When Jesus said, at the close of that splendid vision which irradiated with its noon-day splendor the lonely island on the bosom of the Ægean, "Surely I come quickly," the last words of John, the beloved disciple, with which he closed his vision, were these: "Amen [so let it be]. Even so, come, Lord Jesus."

Christ is the end of creation and redemption; he is the perfection to which all imperfection soars; the glory to which all the fallen creation aspires; the great model to which humanity in its noblest specimens shall be conformed; the Sun of Righteousness, in whose light we shall see light.

But what is there in the promised advent of Christ that makes his advent the desire and the aspiration of all who know him? We desire his speedy approach because we shall see him as he is, not as he was—the Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief, wounded and stricken for our transgressions,—but crowned with the diadems of creation, providence, redemption; angels adoring, and prostrate millions casting their crowns in flashing showers at his feet, and saying: "Not unto us, but unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood; to him be glory and dominion forever and ever." If we believe in what he has done; if we love him as the Author and the Finisher of our faith, as the friend longs for the presence of his best friend, as the family longs for the return of its parent and its head, as the bride longs for the arrival of the bridegroom, when he comes to accept her as his wife, so must we, like John, desire the advent of him who comes to right a creation that has gone wrong, and to restore a glory that has passed away like a vision. Surely, when he comes amid welcoming shouts and hosannas, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord," we too will praise and glorify and worship him.

When he comes, we shall be like him. These bodies of ours, which have been so much deteriorated by sin, shall be restored and reconsecrated. Between Eve in ancient Eden before the fall, and the fairest of her daughters upon earth, there is, I do not say an infinite, but a very great contrast. In every instance, bodily as well as morally, the gold is become dim, the fine gold is changed, the wine is mixed with water, the crown of glory and of beauty is fallen from our heads. But at that day we shall rise in resurrection robes, the cold and corruptible garments of mortality consigned to the grave. There will be left no trace of corruption, or imperfection, or aught of the ravages and taint of a great primal sin. Eye, and ear, and all our senses shall be perfect as they shall be pure. This mortal shall put on immortality; this corruptible shall put on incorruptibility. Every sense shall be an inlet to joy; every sensation shall be as blissful as it is pure.

The Bridegroom will come, and those on whom the cold shadow of death has lain for many a long and weary year, he will waken from the sleep of death and bring with him. The babes that fell from the tree of life, and the gray-haired men that withered by the wear of years by its branches, the fair, the beautiful, the holy ones that we would have kept because we loved them, will all reappear, with not one blemish left upon a single brow; not one rude mark remaining on the spirit; not one sting in any heart; all sensations, bliss; all sights, beauty; all sounds, music. The bride shall receive the Bridegroom, and she shall no more go out; "and there shall be no more tears." How beautiful the Apocalyptic passage; it is almost music to hear it. And there shall be no more tears, nor sorrows, nor crying, nor death; all things shall be made new.

When our blessed Lord comes, all creation will be purified and reconsecrated. Some think that this earth has become so vile that the sooner it is extinguished the better. They think that it is unworthy of God to retain an orb so poor, so sin-stained, and that it had better be canceled and a lovelier placed in its orbit. There is no prediction of such a catastrophe in the Bible. The deeper we penetrate the arena of nature, the clearer is the proof that annihilation is not possible, and certainly is not fact. But apart from this, would it not be a grievous loss were a world of so historic antecedents as ours expunged from its orbit, and dismissed over the depths of oblivion forever? What! shall the atmosphere breathed by the incarnate God cease to exist? Shall the flowers that those eyes looked on, and the sweet sound of brooks, and waters, and winds, those ears heard, be all extinguished forever? Shall the Mount of Olives, from which he rose; the Mount Tabor, on which a transient gleam of his glory rested, be thrown down? Shall Calvary and Gethsemane be only names of things that no longer are? I cannot believe it; all the instincts of my nature revolt against the idea, and the instinctive desire in our hearts to perpetuate and preserve those historic scenes of the past, are ripples from the great tide of eternity, and in their measure they tell us God will not destroy scenes that superstition may, in its imperfect economy, pervert, which Christians treat only as they deserve, when they reverently remember them.

To destroy the earth would be to acknowledge and seal the success of Satan. What was the devil's attempt? To get the earth and us with it. What is he now? He is the prince of the power of the air. We don't see him, but he walks in our homes; he is here or there, for he goeth about seeking whom he may devour. He or his servants may now be whispering, "Oh! it is all nonsense; don't believe these things; you have your business to attend to; you must not enter into religious speculations."

Such a result would interrupt or reverse the great process that God has constantly pursued, and end the analogy that runs through all inspiration. The great law in revelation is not to destroy, and create other things instead, but to take old things and purify and restore them, so as to make them what they were or should be. All the Saviour's miracles are indications of this. When he opened the eyes of the blind, he did not take out the old orbs, and put in new ones, but he renewed the old ones. And when he unstopped the ears of the deaf, or laid the fever of the sick, or made the lame leap as the roe, or when he quickened the dead—these and indeed all his miracles were restorative and beneficent, as well as miraculous and divine. And therefore we believe the earth will not be destroyed. Indeed, Scripture expressly promises "a new heaven and a new earth." St. John does not say, I saw another heaven and another earth, as he would have said if it had been something substituted for the old. But does not "new" mean "another"? Certainly not. For instance, we read, "If any man be in Christ he is a new creature." Does not that mean that his identity disappears, and that he becomes another man? Not at all; he is changed, regenerated, transformed, and becomes new only in the noblest and intensest sense of that word. So this earth will be made a new earth; it will be disinfected and purified; the last fire will refine it as gold and silver; and Jesus, the great High Priest, will wave his priestly hand over it, and on that earth which has shared in our descent and has become corrupt, literally, not figuratively, its deserts will rejoice, its solitary places will blossom like the rose, the lion shall lie down with the lamb, and a little child shall lead them. These are not stray fancies, but assured facts and prophecies that must be accomplished. God has so written it in his holy word, and he will so arrange it in his providence.

When the Saviour comes, what will he do? He will come to prove that redemption is no failure; that his own word is no fable. Some cry, "Where is the promise of his coming? since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were." Others say, "Let us eat, drink, and be merry." But the believer says, Come, Lord Jesus, come speedily. And when he comes, he will show that not one jot has fallen under the least promise, but all has been exactly fulfilled; that Christianity, in the numbers of its converts, in the splendor of its theories, in the results and issues of its conflicts, is no failure, but has the pre-eminence in all things. That ancient servant Moses, that stern prophet Elijah, and all that believe in the Lamb, shall meet on a mountain the glory of which shall not fade, and in a day which shall have no night, and a blessedness which shall have no end. It will be seen that redemption was no mistake; that Christianity was no cunningly devised fable; that all that it predicts, but which thousands scoff at, and all that it claims, which thousands repudiate, it truthfully predicted and justly claimed,—all things made new; God in the midst of his people; the bride presented to the Bridegroom; creation restored; the earth animated by a new spirit; and all things purified, glorified, elevated, ennobled, will attest, as the voice of many waters, as the voice of a great multitude. "Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints."