He Shall Come Again

The coming of our Lord is set before us in the New Testament as the hope of the Church. There are over three hundred references in one form or another to this great event. Not death, but the Lord’s coming should fill the horizon of the Christian’s outlook on the future. This was the attitude of the early Christians, and this should be our attitude if we would be true followers of our Master… no one can think of the Coming of the Lord without finding in it an incentive to holiness, an inspiration to service, and a spiritual joy and satisfaction in the consciousness of reunion with the Master. The Creed simply states, in most simple terms, the Coming of our Lord to judgment, but Scripture goes very much more into detail, and distinguishes between the Lord coming to judge and reward His own people and His subsequent judgment of all men. Perhaps the truth is best stated when we say that the Lord will first come for His people (1 Thess. iv. 14-17), and then at some time afterwards He will come with His people (Jude 14), when they will be associated with Him in the judgment of the world (1 Cor. vi. 2).

Amid all the difficulties of modern life, the differences among Christian people, and the pressing problems awaiting solution, the one expectation of the Church is the Coming of the Lord. While we strain with every nerve to evangelize the world in this generation, our hope must ever be fixed on “that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Titus ii. 13).