THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD.
By Sophie L. Schenck
[Sophie L. Schenck, in Christian Work.] “But as the days of Noah were, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be.” Matt. 24:37. WHAT will be the condition of this world at the time of our Lord’s coming? Will it be Christianized, peaceful, holy, in sympathy with God, in loyalty to our Lord Jesus Christ? Will the world continue to grow better through the increasing power of a conquering Gospel, all ungodliness and infidelity and false religions and iniquity being rooted out, or compelled to hide their ugly heads? What will be the attitude of this world’s inhabitants toward that event? Will they be looking and waiting for it, expecting it all the time, as the next thing to occur, influenced by the belief that the day of the Lord will come like the lightning’s flash? that it is nigh at hand? There are different opinions on these questions freely and frequently expressed. But there can be but one fact concerning them—our Lord has answered them. He likens the time of His coming to the days of Noah. The inhabitants of the earth then were totally indifferent to the approaching event. They did not believe the Flood would come in their generation. Noah was told of it, and while building the ark warned them, but they would not listen to him. This state of things lasted till the day they went into the ark. The godliness, worldliness, unbelief, gaiety, self-gratification, forgetfulness of God and corruption, reigned up to the very time that the door of the ark was closed and the waters rising and falling caught them and hurled them to their doom. So it was in the days of Lot and the destruction of Sodom. Here, as with the Antedeluvians, they continued their revelries, their strife for gain, their unbelief, until the heavens darkened, and out of the unusually black cloud burst the rain of fire and brimstone. Probably till the last moment they called it a bugbear, altho the day brake with as bright a sunrise as ever gilded mountain top, or drove away the shades from the green valleys. Our Lord says, as was the world, as were the people in Noah’s day, and in Lot’s day, so shall they be in the day of His coming. So will people be wrapped up in unbelief and carelessness and corruption when He shall come. Not willing to believe that that day is at hand, and so not making it the subject of expectation and preparation, they will go on as ever in their work and play, their sinful gratifications and unlawful employments, and the day will burst upon them like a clap of thunder out of a clear sky. Does that look like a millennium, the fruits of an all-controlling Gospel? There will be no more a millennium before our Lord’s personal return than there was when the rain began to fall, after God shut Noah into the ark; no more than there was in the city of Sodom, on that brilliant morning, whose noon witnessed its terrible overthrow in sulphurous flames. Let us notice another thing: Noah and those with him were in the ark before the rain came down. Lot and his daughters were in Zoar when the storm descended. So, before our Lord’s day opens, He will have removed His redeemed. “For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which 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 be ever with the Lord.” How many who read these lines will be of those who refuse to believe that He is soon to come, and like the people in Noah’s and Lot’s time will be left to weep and wail over their blind folly? Standing as we are on the threshold of a new year, should we not listen to the warnings in the Word of God, and study the signs of the times, which all point to fulfilled prophecies and to the nearness of the second coming of the Lord and the disappearance of His church from the earth? The time is short. “Behold the Bridegroom cometh.” Are you ready?