p. 35 | The Blessed Hope by William W. Andrews

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 23, 1858

The Blessed Hope.

By William W. Andrews

THE hope of the body is one. The true hope of every creature is to attain its perfection. All long and strive for that which shall complete and crown their being. There is amongst all ranks of living things an instinctive or intelligent reaching forward towards that maturity which shall consummate the end for which they exist. So the hope of the church stretches onward to her perfect standing, when her Lord will present her to himself without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, and give to her the inheritance of the kingdom. Nothing short of that event, by which the "one body" shall attain its predestined power and glory, can satisfy the desire which His promise would kindle in her heart. Death is not the perfecting of the saint. If it is the deliverance of the spirit from sin and sorrow, it is the consummation of the curse unto the body. A disembodied spirit is not a perfect man, and cannot perform the work of a perfect man. The dead must be raised in the likeness of their Lord, before they can receive their inheritance, or serve him in the ministries of his kingdom. They rest from their labors—from all labors—and wait for their crown. Their hope is the redemption of the body, when Jesus shall bring them with him at his coming, and clothe them with their house which is from heaven—the body of incorruption—in which, being like him, they shall see him as he is, and be ready to be used by him in the eternal administration of his government. From beneath the altar they ever cry, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" Rev. vi, 10. They look forward with joyful desire to the time when "the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ;" when "he shall give reward unto his servants, the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear his name;" and "the meek shall inherit the earth." The rest and peace in which they are now abiding, is not the glory of the kingdom when their reward shall be the fellowship of Christ's throne; and as he could not be seated at God's right hand, till first he had triumphed over death, so neither can his members reign with him so long as they lie bound under the captivity of the grave. It must be remembered, too, that the hope of the body is one, common to all, and to be obtained by all at once. Of the holy men of old, who obtained a good report through faith, the Apostle says: "these all received not the promise; God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect." They have not received the promise yet, nor can the dead be made perfect till the number of the elect has been completed, and all are prepared to take their places in that polity which consummates and crowns all the works of God.

And as the hope of the sleeping saints is the resurrection of the body, so the hope of the living is, not to be unclothed in death, but to be clothed upon in the translation, when mortality shall be swallowed up of life. Enoch and Elijah were types of the faithful who shall survive unto the coming of the Lord, in whom the change from the corruptible into the incorruptible shall be accomplished without tasting of the bitterness of death. "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." This is the hope of our calling—the living hope unto which we are begotten by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead—the hope of life, not of death. And if the faithful who sleep in Jesus, sheltered from the storms, and freed from the pollutions of this evil world, think it long till their Lord appears to raise their bodies out of the dust; how earnestly should we stretch forth the head to catch the sound of his approaching footsteps—we, to whom the battle is fierce, and the burden heavy, and the stain of sin deep in the soul! Oh, how has the church ceased to war against death, yielding herself in passive hopelessness to its usurped dominion, and accounting its rest her chief reward, instead of pressing forward to that manifestation of the sons of God, in the glory of the resurrection, for which even the earnest expectation of the creation waits!

And not for our own sakes alone, nor for the sake alone of the sleeping saints should we long for the return of our Lord and Saviour; but that the earth, now groaning and travailing in pain, may be delivered from the curse. For the promise that the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head, includes in its large reach of blessings the redemption of man's inheritance by the casting out of him who usurped it, and the purging away of all the evil with which his slimy presence has defiled and infected it. The earth was made for the revealing of God's glory, through the possession and enjoyment of its manifold treasures, free from all curse, by man standing in his allegiance to his Maker; and though the purpose was frustrated by the fall of the first Adam, it shall be accomplished in the second, who will cause the Father's will to be done forevermore. He has already in his own person, triumphed over the seductions of the serpent, and proved himself against all temptation, the obedient Son, worthy to take up the forfeited scepter of man's dominion, and rule in righteousness for God; and he now waits only for the completion of the company of joint heirs that shall rule with him, to come forth to redeem and purify and bless his purchased inheritance. They are right who are looking for righteousness and peace to fill the earth, and make glad the obedient nations; but they are wrong who look for it, before the Man who is the heir shall come forth to make it his own eternal dwelling place. He was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, to pay the price of the redemption; and then crowned with glory and honor, and invested with the right of dominion over all the works of God's hand; "but now we see not yet all things put under him," and the next step shall be his actual and visible government of the creatures. It is an idle dream which now possesses so many that the church is to bring in the kingdom in the absence of the King. There is not one word for it in all the Scriptures. It contradicts the exhortations for continual watchfulness for Him—not for death, but for Him who is the conqueror of death,—which imply the possibility of his coming in any generation, and therefore the certainty of his coming before the long, fixed period of the millennium, which is the time for rest, not for watching—it is inconsistent with the foretold humiliation and sorrow of the church during the whole of this dispensation, in which she is to walk in his footsteps, and be perfected by the fellowship of his sufferings; it robs her of the blessed hope by which alone she can be purified, and towards which the Apostles ever struggled to lead her—the hope of being like him and seeing him as he is; and it entangles her in worldly schemes and alliances, and so eats out all faith in the heavenly citizenship. The nations are to be blessed, and the earth, unto the uttermost parts of it, is to see the salvation of God, but it shall be when the time comes that the saints possess the kingdom; [Dan. vii, 22.] which is not during the Bridegroom's absence, for the church is the desolate widow called to fasting and mourning, and the word to her ever is, "Be patient unto the coming of the Lord." The last temptation by which Jesus was assailed when he was led up into the wilderness is now spreading its cunning seductions all around us, and we are looking to gain the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, before the time that the Father shall give them to his Son.

The one great hope for the whole creation, towards which, blindly and unconsciously, if not with intelligent desire, all are reaching forward, is the "marriage of the Lamb." It is the hope of the church who shall then be one with the Lord in all his glory, and power, and fullness of blessing. It is the hope of the nations, who shall then know the blessedness of righteous rule. It is the hope of the sore-burthened earth, which longs to be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. And it is the hope of the Lord himself, whose heart yearns over his church, purchased with his own blood, but still lying in the desolateness of death, or amidst the defilements of this evil world, and whose word of promise is, "Surely I come quickly." Let our response ever be, "Even so, come Lord Jesus." Let our hearts be broken through our sympathy with the burdens and sorrows of all, and let us utter in His ear continually the cry that shall hasten the common deliverance—William W. Andrews.