HE IS COMING SOON
One of the last times I had the privilege of being with our dear brother whom the Lord has taken, he was very weak and hardly able to speak. He just managed four words. The name of Jesus was mentioned and his face lit up. He said ‘He is coming soon’. I value these words, not only for the words themselves, but for the one who said them and the manner of that expression. How real it was to him; ‘He is coming soon’. This has been the hope of the church, the assembly as we speak of it, right from the very beginning of this long dispensation, two thousand years ago. Before the Lord went to heaven, He said to His lovers, “I go to prepare you a place” (John 14:2), and then “I am coming again, and shall receive you to myself that where I am ye also may be”, John 14:3.
That bright hope has burned in the hearts and souls of true believers right through this long dispensation. It was very real at the beginning. The believers at that time all expected the Lord Jesus to come back immediately, and the apostle Paul, in writing about that glorious moment when the Lord would come, said that “the dead in Christ shall rise first”, 1 Thess.4:16. What a company that is going to be, when the dead in Christ are raised from the grave. But then Paul wrote “we”, notice that emphasis in italics, “we, the living who remain” to the coming of the Lord. He says that twice over, showing how brightly it burned in his heart, and how real it was to him, “we, the living who remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds” (v.17). That includes this present company here today. I trust everyone here in this room can say that they belong to the Lord Jesus; that they know Him as their Saviour and they are waiting, longing, for that moment when He will come.
I feel challenged as to how real the imminence of the Lord’s coming is to me. There are many things we can look forward to quite legitimately, all if the Lord will, but is the imminence of the Lord’s coming more real to me than anything else that may lie? It might happen today; it could be before this meeting is over. We will lay our brother’s body in the grave in anticipation of the day when it will be raised, but the Lord Jesus might come even before that happens. His coming is so imminent.
Another verse says “the Spirit and the bride say, Come”, Rev.22:17. The Holy Spirit is indwelling the church, the assembly. He is longing, I believe we could say with reverence, to see all His labours brought to final fruition, that the bride, the assembly, might be saying “Come”. I remember a servant of the Lord, Mr Alfred Gardiner, speaking of this verse. He said that the Lord Jesus Himself says “I come quickly”; He awaits the word from His Father to come, and He is waiting on that moment to come quickly, but in the response of the bride, she does not say ‘quickly’, she just says “Come”. Our brother said that that means ‘Come now’. It is immediate.
May the immediacy of the Lord’s coming for us burn brighter and brighter as the days go by, so that His coming is looked for immediately. There is nothing, there is no event to be looked for, before the Lord comes, none whatever. It is now – ‘Come now’. Our dear brother lived in the light of that. The Lord Jesus is coming soon. I trust that these few thoughts might be of blessing to us all.
Grangemouth
10 June 2016
G.A. Brown