- Overcomer Literature Trust
- Swindon
- Wiltshire
‘The Hope before Us.’
By D.Mackay
The study of prophecy is not the hope of the Church. It is full of interest but it is not the hope of the Church. The hope of the Church is something much more precious, it is a living Person and His return. Some might think, ‘I have not the knowledge, I have not the Hebrew or Greek’, all I ask is, ‘Have you a heart for the return of our blessed Lord’?
“Yes, I am coming soon” (Rev. 22 v20). A couple of millennia is soon in His mind, for the desire to return oversteps all millennia. Our response, from a heart which forgets all those hundreds of years and everything else, should be to say, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus".
What is the practical application of the hope? “Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning” (Luke 12 v35), includes all that we ought to be and all that we ought to do. We ought to be as those who are ready to serve, not in confusion and disorder, but ready for the action, ready for anything. Not like those going to sleep, but those who are putting on the armour of good soldiers, with the belt of truth about our waist. We ought to be letting our light shine, because in the mid-night darkness we are waiting for God’s Son from heaven.
"You are the salt of the earth . . . you are the light of the world” (Matt.5 v13-14). “Let your light shine”, not by any forced artificial method by which we pump up oil and make great spurts or large fireworks on great occasions. There are ‘firework Christians’ who seem to blaze up occasionally and then relapse into a sleepy state, waiting for some other blazing time when they can make some further wonderful demonstration and do something great. That is not the testimony of our blessed Lord. I believe that we all have need of patience, a patient continuance in well-doing. When we look at the Lord’s coming we will find it often connected with patience, “Be patient, for the day of the Lord is near”. Sometimes, in our little corner of God’s vineyard we feel paralysed and think, ‘If I could only preach, but I do not have the gift’, and instead of bearing our testimony, in daily life, with our light shining, we get disheartened. “Let patience have her perfect work” (James 1 v4), we need patience.
True religion consists in visiting the fatherless and widows, and we can all do that. It is not some great work, some spasmodic effort, it is by that constant living in communion with the absent One, filled with His oil and showing forth His light, that we fulfil the command, “Let your lights shine”.
If you look through the Word of God you will find that there is scarcely a subject, scarcely a practical instruction connected with the Christian life, that is not linked with the coming of the Lord. Take holiness, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (1John 3 v2-3). Everyone who has this hope of being with Him and being like Him, “purifies himself even as He is pure".
Jesus heart goes out towards us and says, “What I say to you I say to all, watch”.
This Practical Hope.
The saints in heaven and the saints upon the earth are waiting for the return of the Lord Jesus, but better and brighter than this, the Saviour is waiting patiently till He shall take to Himself His great power and reign. When we share in fellowship at the Lord’s Table we “proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes” (1 Cor. 11 v26). It is the one visible link between the two advents of our Lord, that blessed supper that He originated. The one visible link between the death of Christ on Calvary and the crowning glory that is to fill the whole world, is the breaking of bread and the tasting of the wine.
Are we in sorrow? Have we lost loved ones? “The Lord Himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord for ever. Therefore encourage each other with these words” (1 Thess. 4 v16-18). We need to comfort one another with these words. Whatever we look at around us or within us, we have the glorious fact that our Lord is to return, that right is to take the place of wrong and that the Prince of Peace is to take the throne usurped by him who is the prince of the power of the air. The Lord is coming! We may not have to face death at all. There is no certainty, we take whatever the Lord sends. We pray that we may have peace in our times, but whatever comes, amid the overturning of nations and the wreck of kingdoms, the Christian can be calm, calm amid war, famine, pestilence, sword, destruction or nakedness, knowing that in all these things we are more than conquerors, and so we patiently wait for God's Son from heaven. He will return to put down all rule and authority, and break principalities and powers. He will come to make all wrongs right, to chain the prince of darkness and to reign gloriously. This is our hope, this is our blessed expectation.
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