Daily Devotionals

Devotional: September 25th

CHRIST’S COMING TO THE WORLD ~ II

He that cometh shall come, and shall not tarry. - Hebrews 10:37

In anticipation of that ultimate coming, in bodily form, the close of earth’s sorrows and the consummation of earth’s history, there are many comings of Christ through the ages; and like in principle, though lesser in degree, destructions of Jerusalem, and falls of the Roman Empire by Gothic invasions, and Reformations of the Popish corrupt Church, and French Revolutions, and American Wars of Slavery, and many another secular change by which the old order changeth, yielding place to new, are what the old prophets called " Days of the Lord," the same in principle as that last great day. Christ "comes," though He is always present in human history - comes to our apprehensions in eras of rapid change, in revolutionary times when some ancient iniquity is smitten down, and some new fair form emerges from the chaos. The electricity is long in gathering during the fervid summer heat, in the slow moving and changing clouds; but when it is gathered, there comes the flash. The snow is long in collecting on the precipitous face of the Alp; but when the weight has become sufficient, down it rushes, the white death of the avalanche. For fifty-nine (silent) minutes and fifty-nine (silent) seconds the hand moves round the dial, and at the sixtieth it strikes. So, at long intervals in history of nations, a crash comes, and men say: " Behold the Lord! He cometh to judge the world."

Surely, surely, it needs no words to enforce the thought that all who love Him and all who love truth and righteousness, which are His, and all who desire that the world’s sorrows should be alleviated and the world’s evils should be chastised and smitten, must lift up the old, old cry: " Even so! Come! Lord Jesus." The bride must long for the coming of the bridegroom. Burdened hearts that writhe and are afflicted with the sorrows of humanity, and hearts that plod wearily along some lonely path in darkness and in pain - these all lift up their cry to Him, the Avenger, the Lover, the Judge, the Purifier, that He would come with that rod of His mouth which slays the wicked, and that fiery indignation which burns up only the evil that is killing mankind.

The earnest belief in, and the longing for the coming of, Jesus Christ has been too much surrendered to one school of interpreters in unfulfilled prophecy, who have no greater claim to possess it than the rest of us. It belongs, or ought to belong, to us all. All the signs of the times, intellectual and social; the rottenness of much of our life; the abounding luxury; the hideous vice that flaunts unblamed and unabashed before us all; the unsettlement of opinion in which it is unbelief that seems to be " removing the mountains " that all men thought stood fast and firm for ever; - all these things cry out to Him whose ear is not deaf even if our voice does not join in the cry, and beseech Him to come.

Let your heart be so near to Him, your soul so full of His love and the longing for some of His presence, that you, too, may join in that universal prayer which the genius of the great Puritan has put into the music of these words: " Come forth out of Thy royal pavilion, oh. Thou Prince of all the kings of the earth. Put on the visible robes of Thine imperial majesty; take unto Thee the unlimited sceptre which Thy heavenly Father hath bequeathed Thee; for now the voice of Thy Bride calls Thee, and all creatures sigh to be renewed."

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