"I Come Quickly... "

The personal return of our Lord Jesus Christ is a prospect which should never be absent from the outlook of the believer. Yet there is constant danger that we allow this momentous and imminent event to recede into the background of our thoughts. The speed of modern life and the bewildering array of activities which present-day civilization has brought tend to steal our time and absorb our thinking. The need to guard against being over-occupied with "things" was emphasized here recently. Daily recollection of our Lord's promised return is a safeguard against the insidious danger to which we have alluded.

From a reading of the epistles, it is apparent that the prospect of the Lord's second coming was prominent in the outlook of the early disciples. This was because the apostles gave this truth a conspicuous place in their preaching. Indeed, we may well question whether "the blessed hope" is today given its proper place in the preaching of the gospel and in the ministry of the word among God's people. This should be a matter of exercise by all who essay to preach and teach. We all need our vision diverted from the trivialities and vanities which occupy the' attention of the world in general. To the spiritually-minded believer, there is no more powerful counter-attraction to "the vain glory of life" which appeals so strongly to the flesh, than the purifying hope of our Lord's return. In this respect, the church of God in Thessalonica gave a worthy example. Paul writes of them that they "turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven" (1 Thessalonians 1.9,10).

In the divine arrangement for God's people in the weekly Remembrance of our Lord Jesus Christ in the breaking of the bread we have a precious foreshadowing of our Lord's personal return. "For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death till He come," wrote Paul (1 Corinthians 11.26). In the Remembrance the sufferings of Christ and the glories that shall follow are preciously associated. This connexion of the past with the future is beautifully expressed in Horatio Bonar's well-known hymn, so often sung at the breaking of the bread:

For that coming here foreshown,

For that day to man unknown,

For the glory and the throne,

We give Thee thanks, 0 Lord.

Many things we do in life lose much of their significance by mechanical repetition. Here is something which is enhanced, not tarnished, by repetition. It becomes increasingly precious to us because it reminds us of our soon-coming Lord, whom not having seen we love (1 Peter 1.8). Let us, then, by our daily personal recollection and our weekly collective Remembrance, look backward to the Cross, upward to the throne, and forward to the glory.

unknown | May 1967
Comment By Torchlight