AN OUTLINE OF THINGS TO COME
What I propose to you, dear friends, is to consider the book of the Revelation this evening and to see what light we get in it as to the mind of the Lord in connection with His coming.
Of all the books of the Bible there is none which is so intimately connected with the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ as this book; and I propose presently to read portions of it and then speak of it in a general way, in order that we may have an outline of it before our souls. I do so with the earnest hope that every one of us may be encouraged to take it up and read it prayerfully.
It is the only book of the Bible to which a special and peculiar blessing has been attached in connection with the reading of it: “Blessed is he that reads, and they that hear the words of the prophecy, and keep the things written in it: for the time is near” (Rev.1:3). I want to incite you to read it for yourselves and take up the blessing that is attached to so doing, and then, through the help of the Lord, you may be able to get perhaps a little understanding of it – for that is, I think, the force of “hear” and “keep” in the verse just quoted – and thus receive the fulness of the blessing. We do not want fanciful interpretations, but a little plain understanding of the mind of the Lord in the book, because there is not only a blessing on those who read, but on those who “hear” and “keep” what is written. We should be greatly affected moreover by the fact that we are on the very verge of the accomplishment of those things of which we read.
The book is intensely valuable in that we see in it the end result of certain streams that are at work all around us today. It shows us, if I may so say, the result of various streams which are running on every hand – streams in some of which God finds His pleasure, and others which incur His intense displeasure. We see streams which are for the pleasure of God resulting in a scene of unspeakable blessing, and streams which are of His displeasure ending in the darkest judgments. The great consequence of this for every subject and obedient heart must be, that if we find a stream running today of which this book shows us that it results in the judgment of God, the only course is to keep ourselves absolutely apart from it. But if, on the other hand, it shows us that the result of certain streams is what is for God’s eternal satisfaction and pleasure, it is for us to be found in the current of them with our whole hearts, even though our doing so entails contempt and reproach at the hands of the men of this world, in whose eyes they are despised. So that as we read and understand, we learn which streams are to be avoided, and which to identify ourselves wholeheartedly with as being for God’s pleasure.
Now I will read a few portions and seek to give you an outline of the book, which may, through the Lord’s blessing, help you in the reading.
Rev. 1:3-20; 2:4; 3:16; 4:1-4; 19:4-21; 20:1-6; 21:1-5
Do not be discouraged if at the first reading you do not understand much. Your first blessing will lie in the impression you will get from reading it prayerfully. There are two blessings set before us. There is a blessing on the one who reads, and therefore if you take the book and simply read it, you get a blessing, and when you have read it through five or six times, and get some measure of understanding, you will receive the further blessing pronounced on those who “hear the words” and “keep the things written”. These two blessings are proposed to us, and they lie within the reach of the youngest child who can read, because the Spirit of God will take care to be true to His promise. I want, therefore, the Lord helping me, to give you such an outline of the book as may help to put the truths contained in it somewhat in order in your soul as you read it.
It is well, dear friends, that when we come to consider such a subject as we have before us this evening, we should take a look over the face of this whole globe on which we are set, and see in a general way what is the state of its inhabitants. Now to that end we shall have to have God’s view, and take account of its inhabitants at the present time as they are before Him. I think we shall find that they are divided into four very distinct and definite classes.
If we take one, we shall look upon it, thank God, with very great pleasure. We shall look upon the members of the body of Christ in this world – millions and millions of them, all well known in heaven, every one of them united by the Spirit of God to the living glorified Head who sits at the right hand of God, and each one tenderly loved and cared for by Him, the great Shepherd and Overseer of their souls (1 Pet.2:25). He knows them every one, and we rejoice in that beautiful utterance of the Spirit in 2 Timothy 2, “The Lord knows those that are his” (v.19). We may know but very few indeed, but the living Head knows every one of them and wherever they may be found, even if sunk in the deepest degradation, as Lot was in Sodom, yet, as truly united to Him by the Spirit, He sees in them the members of His body, and He takes the greatest interest and delight in every single one of them.
Then if we take another look, we find intermingled with the members of the body of Christ – associating with them from day to day in the ordinary business of life – a great crowd which we can only look upon with the greatest distress in our souls. It is composed of those to whom the glad tidings of the grace of God have been proclaimed, but it has not affected them. They are still unbelievers; they have heard the gospel; they know all about the coming of Christ for His own; they know in a sort of a general way, perhaps, what is going to take place afterwards. But sad to say, they have never believed; they have never received the Holy Spirit and therefore have never been baptised by one Spirit into one body (1 Cor.12:13) and they are without Christ, without hope, and without God in the world (Eph.2:12). They are going on in their sins, part and parcel of the world that has cast out and rejected the Lord of glory, a vast crowd alas, who have heard but have never accepted the glad tidings of the grace of God! They swarm around us. We need not go outside the island of Barbados to find them – they are on every hand – they know about Jesus, they know about His precious blood, they know these truths in their minds, but they have never let them down into their souls, and they stand outside the body of Christ. Alas! Alas! that it should be so.
Then if we look again, we shall find another company in which the blessed glorified Lord at the right hand of God is greatly interested, and I will tell you who they are. They are the children of Israel, the people whom God chose in a peculiar way, that they might be His own earthly people. They have been guilty of an awful crime – they have murdered their Messiah when God sent Him to them, but God has never given them up, and they are all under His eye. We may see a few Jews now and again. Do not treat them with contempt. They are God’s favoured earthly people; there are none like them, they are the only earthly nation God ever chose. Though the blood of their Messiah rests upon the nation, God has never given it up. The Lord Jesus came to them as their Messiah and they would not have Him, but He has not forgotten them though He has gone into the presence of God. Shall I tell you how it has come to pass that the Jews have never been swallowed up in the mass of the Gentile world? Because the glorious One who has gone up to the right hand of God has preserved them by His mighty power so that they are a distinct and definite nation and people; and let us bear it well in mind that God has a counsel and purpose with regard to them which He is going to carry out.
Three out of the four classes have thus passed under our notice. We have the members of the body of Christ; secondly, those who have never believed the gospel; and thirdly, the children of Israel – God’s favoured earthly people. Then outside all these are those who have never heard the gospel of the grace of God at all. Just think of it. Over nineteen hundred years have rolled away since Jesus came to this world; nearly nineteen hundred since He died and the Holy Spirit came down, and yet we find that many of the inhabitants of this world are sunk in the deepest darkness and hardly know anything of God or His Christ! Such is the condition of things on the face of this earth as we take God’s view.
Now I will indicate to you, as the Lord may help me, how each one of these four companies is going to be taken up by God in the immediate future, for we are on the very verge of the carrying of all these things into effect.
First of all then, we will speak of the members of the body of Christ, those who are “the living, who remain to the coming of the Lord”, 1 Thess.4:15. We must not, however, forget that there are millions and millions of Christians who have gone on before. These believers have fallen asleep in Jesus. Then as we trace back before the time when the members of the body of Christ began to be taken to be with Him, we find 4000 years during which time those in whom the Spirit of God wrought – millions of saints beginning with Abel, the first trophy of redemption, and reaching right away on until the very end of Old Testament times – fell asleep in faith of that which was yet to come. They all form part of the blood-purchased possession of the Lord Jesus Christ. So that we may say that, for almost 6,000 years, there has been a continual dying of those who have been the subjects of mighty redeeming grace and not one of them has been overlooked. Some have been burned at the stake and their ashes flung to the winds; all sorts of things have happened to them, but they are all in safe keeping. Six thousand years have passed, but God knows about every single one of them, and in the glorious moment when Christ comes, all the sleeping saints of those 6,000 years will be called forth from the tomb and the living changed in one moment. Then “we, the living who remain, shall be caught up together with them” – the sleeping saints – “in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and thus we shall be always with the Lord”, 1 Thess.4:17. That is the great moment when the Lord Jesus Christ will carry into effect the first part of His coming, when He will translate from this world, by one mighty shout of power, every one of His blood-bought possessions from Abel right down to that moment. … One mighty shout and He will call the whole redeemed company up to see Him in the air. … I think the shout of the voice of everlasting love will drown out everything else to our souls. That one mighty shout will reach our ears and in the twinkling of an eye we shall go to see Him in the air.
But now, dear hearers, we must turn to some very serious considerations which are set before us in this book. The first chapter is introductory and gives us a vision of the Lord Jesus walking in the midst of that which professes His name on earth. We do well to consider it. He is presented in holy discrimination and with restrained affections, for the condition of the church is not suitable in His eyes. John felt the change in His attitude and fell at His feet as dead. How different from the time when he had laid his head on Jesus’ bosom at the last supper. But the church has fallen and the first step to individual recovery is in the apprehension of His attitude. Then, in the power of His right hand laid on us, and hearing His word “fear not”, we can become one of the overcomers to whom He holds out such precious promises in His addresses to the churches which follow.
The second and third chapters – mark these divisions – give us a little history, put in seven–fold pictorial form, of the whole course of the church’s residence here in this world. I do not go into the details of this history now. It would be too great a subject for the present occasion, but I do say this, that if you study it with exercise of heart before the Lord, it will produce in you a state of moral preparedness for His coming, for you will learn what He hates and you will separate from it, and you will see what He approves and you will seek to be an overcomer and answer to it. This much, however, we have sorrowfully to notice, that starting with Ephesus, where the beginning of decline in departing from first love is brought before us, the account of this history closes with the sad picture of Laodicea, where such a condition of things is presented under the eye of the Lord Jesus that He says He is about to spue it out of His mouth.
To the church as represented by Philadelphia, He says, “I have set before thee an opened door”. What is the answer in Laodicea? She closes her door against Him and leaves Him standing outside and knocking for admission. Solemn fact! and yet we have to face it that at the end, this shall be found in the professing church of God on earth, that they have closed their doors against the heavenly Bridegroom and settled down to the enjoyment of the world. Will He forget them? No, no more than He forgot Lot in Sodom when the judgment was coming. Lot went down and found his dwelling place there, but when Sodom was about to be overthrown he was dragged out with the loss of everything. And so when the Lord Jesus comes for His assembly, He will, alas! find many of His people hand in hand with this world, going on with its ways and with its politics, and He will love them too much to leave them to its judgment. He will snatch them by His mighty power out from the world. The Lots will be snatched out of this Sodom world, because the Lord Jesus will never overlook any of His blood–bought people.
But do you want to meet Him like a Lot, snatched out of Sodom? Would you like that He should have to put out His mighty hand and snatch you away from all those associations so dishonouring to Him? Will you go to Him – your Lord – like a poor miserable Lot snatched out of Sodom? What do you think of it? Do you think that that is the way to meet the heavenly Bridegroom? … Beloved friends, may the Lord wake us up! If you will study the second and third chapters you will find that the blessed Lord will put His finger upon a great many things that spoil us for the moment of the rapture. The original meaning of the word ‘rapture’ is not ‘joy’, it is ‘snatching away’. The snatching away will take place, and when it does, shall we see Him with joy or with shame?
These two chapters discover to us many things that might cause us to meet Him with shame, but they also encourage us to persevere in the course which will cause us to meet Him with joy. You will notice that in every address, He speaks about the one who overcomes. How blessed to be found in the midst of present conditions as one who has overcome the prevailing evil and who is ready to see the Lord! Do not be content with saying, ‘I have my sins forgiven and that is all I want, and He will take me to Himself when He comes’. Of course He will, but it will be with very great loss to you. What things may be remembered in heavenly glory I do not know, but this scripture often comes before me in this connection, “whosoever shall have been ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of man be ashamed when he shall come in his glory, and in that of the Father, and of the holy angels”, Luke 9:26: Let it stir us up, for mark you, if He comes at twelve o’clock tonight, and I have lived until five minutes to twelve ready for Him, but in the last five minutes I was not ready, I shall suffer loss, for that moment will never return. What does it matter if I have lived for seventy years in this world watching and waiting for the heavenly Bridegroom if at that moment of His coming I am not found in that attitude? I know He will gather up every bit of faithfulness in view of the kingdom, but what I want to press is that in the moment of the rapture, when He takes His assembly to Himself, it is open to us each to minister to His heart the joy that He is looking for.
What does it avail if an earthly bride should disregard her bridegroom’s tastes and ideas, and present herself to him on the wedding day dressed in such a fashion as he can find no pleasure in? Is it any good for her to say that she will try to do better at the next opportunity? No, she has had her one opportunity, and she has lost it for ever! She will never be able to make amends for it, and as long as she is a living woman, she must carry in her mind the sense that she was not pleasing to her husband on the wedding day. I want to ask you, will you please the heavenly Bridegroom when He comes? If He finds you in that day sunk in business – hunting after money, groveling in this world – do you think that you are going to be for His pleasure?...
Now we have to consider these things, and if you take up the second and third chapters of the book with exercise of heart you will come into the presence of Him who has the sharp sword with two edges; whose eyes, like unto a flame of fire, try the heart and the reins; whose feet are like unto fine brass; who looks right down into your soul and uncovers to you secret workings of the flesh that you little suspected. You will find yourself before Him who is holy and true, and the faithful and true witness, as He scrutinises the church in its earthly condition. You will rise in the power of His grace to separate yourself uncompromisingly from everything that is unsuitable to His holy eyes, and turn yourself to Him with real, true, bridal affection, with the one earnest longing desire in your soul that you may overcome everything and be to His pleasure.
Oh! brethren, if you are mixed up with anything that will not meet His approval, set your face to get out of it, and seek grace from Him that in the moment when He comes to receive you, He may receive you with joy. May the Lord grant to us real earnestness of soul that we may see to it whether we are really and truly ready for the coming of the heavenly Bridegroom. So I press it upon you that in the second and third chapters there is moral preparation for the coming of the Lord.
Now in the fourth chapter, we get a vision of the raptured company. In the twenty-four elders seated upon the golden thrones with crowns of gold on their heads and white raiment and palms in their hands, the whole raptured company is presented to us. You will not find the assembly, as such, uttering her voice in the whole book from the fourth to the twentieth chapters, but what you will hear over and over again is the voice of the redeemed company, but that redeemed company includes a great deal more than the assembly, thank God! It includes all the Old Testament saints. Is it not a joy to your heart that you are going to sing, with Isaiah and Ezekiel and all the rest of the Old Testament worthies, the matchless triumphs of Christ’s redeeming grace? We are going to sing with them the value of His atoning death. We are going to proclaim together the infinite value of His precious blood that brought us all in to stand in the presence of the living God for ever more. It will be the one great universal song of redemption and the notes will be common to the whole vast redeemed company. It is a great joy to me that I shall join in the song. Men of old will rise from the dead; they will come up and be introduced into things they little thought of. They will come up in the resurrection and find that they are sons of God, for they are “sons of the resurrection”, Luke 20:36. Then they will understand, as they never understood before, the mighty consequence of redeeming grace. I grant you there are different families and circles, and one has illustrated it like this. Perhaps the notes of that song, in which all joined at the first, will be raised a little bit by the Spirit of God and there will be some who will not be able to follow on, and then a little higher still, and as the notes of the song are raised higher and higher, there will be at last only one company singing and that is the assembly, for the assembly will sing a song which will not be sung by any but her. Every ransomed family may stand round and listen with rapture and delight as the assembly sings a song in which they cannot join, for she will be singing the praise of the First-born. She will sing in the full intelligence of the place of sonship, in association with the First-born to which she has been called, and proclaim in her song His infinite worth and acceptability before God. Marvellous time! marvellous moment! when the note will reach its very topmost bar and the assembly renders to God the full praise that His heart waits to receive. The church is in glory.
Now I must say a little – one hardly knows how to drop to such a theme – about those who surrounded the church on earth, maybe some people in Barbados, and maybe some of the people in Chapman Street Hall tonight, who though they have heard the glad tidings over and over again are not in the body of Christ, and the rapture will come and the saints of God will be taken away and they will be left behind. They will all be judged! God shall send the working of error “that all might be judged who have not believed the truth, but have found pleasure in unrighteousness”, 2 Thess.2:11,12. Hopeless shutting out to everlasting judgment, without one solitary ray of hope! They will believe the working of error and what will be the consequence of believing it? They will receive on their forehead or in their hands the mark of the beast, and what shall be their portion? Hearken to me, listen to this voice from God, “he also shall drink of the wine of the fury of God prepared unmixed in the cup of his wrath”, Rev.14:10. Is that what you are risking? Oh! my hearer, if that is your condition, let me plead with you, get away to the blessed Lord Jesus Christ this very moment and have to do with Him. He will receive you, He will take you just as you are, He will wash you in His precious blood, and give you His Holy Spirit, by whom you will be baptised into His body, and you shall know what it is to be one of the company who wait to hear the shout that will call us up to meet the heavenly Bridegroom. And, I ask you, why not? You children of Christian parents, make no mistake. Do not think that because your father and mother are Christians; because they brought you to the waters of baptism and you were baptised, that that is going to avail you. If your soul has not been moved to living faith in Christ, you will be left behind in that day for the wrath of God. Oh! that I might warn you, and entreat you too, as in the love of Christ, that you get away to the Saviour of sinners now. This class shall all be cut off in the judgments; not one shall escape. How solemn!
Then in the sixth chapter we begin to read about the judgments, what are called the providential judgments, and as we go on we read about the trumpets, and then about the vials of judgment being poured out – how awful it is! But in the midst of it, God is going to gather out His people Israel (chap.7); Israel shall be purged as in a furnace. The Jews, the two tribes that were primarily guilty of the rejection of their Messiah, will pass through terrible judgments, and a small remnant only will be saved. The great mass will go on in unbelief and at last will receive one of whom you will read in the book – the beast that had two horns like a lamb (chap 13:11). He is the antichrist; he will deceive the poor Jewish nation and will persuade them that he is their Messiah, but will deliberately lead them to destruction. A little remnant, however, taught by the Spirit of God, will escape into the wilderness and there be nourished of God for three and a half years (chap.12:14), and after that He will bring them back into the land and bring to them the lost tribes of Israel – Jeremiah 30 and 31, Ezekiel 37 and many other scriptures. There will be a people who have apparently no protector but who are being watched over by their heavenly Messiah with a jealous eye. He will see that remnant company gathered back into the land, and He who has never forgotten His earthly people will look down upon them gathered there with an eye of intense delight and pleasure, and He says, they shall be as the apple of His eye and none shall touch them (Zech.2:8).
And then there will come up a great host, under the hands of the beast, the great political head of the revived Roman empire – what we may speak of as the Western confederation of the last days – to wipe them out. He will say, I will destroy them, I will put my hand upon them, and root them out that they may be no more a people. At that moment, the heavens will be opened and Christ will come with all His armies (Rev.19:11) and He will take things in hand and smash the power of the beast to pieces and destroy his army and cast him and the false prophet, the antichrist, into the lake of fire. No, He says, you shall not touch them; I brought them together to reign over them, and I preserved them from all their enemies and I will bring them through safely. And so the Lord Jesus will come down and His blessed holy feet shall stand again upon the Mount of Olives, the very spot that He left when He went to heaven, and the hand that was pierced at the cross will be stretched out again to bless the people who are so dear to His heart. He will hold them secure from all evil, and break up every opposing force, and when there comes a tremendous host from the North (Ezek.38) He will utterly overthrow it, for no enemy shall touch them. The nation of Israel shall be gathered into their land, and shall be a people there to the joy of their Messiah’s heart. Oh! what a moment for Him when He comes from heaven in majesty and power, and all the hosts of heaven with Him to reign over the people who are so dear to His heart.
He is coming back with His raptured saints to reign gloriously where He had been cast out with shame, and what a glorious day is coming for His earthly people! A beloved servant of God whom I knew in my young days used to illustrate this dealing of the Lord with Israel in this way. There was a time, he used often to say, when the Israel train was on the main line of God’s purpose, but it had been shunted into a siding while the church express goes through to glory; but after that, God will bring the Israel train out of the siding and put it again on the line of His purpose.
But now mark, there is something else that we have to consider. There is that fourth company, all those who have never heard the gospel of the grace of God. Is it not right to go and preach the gospel to them? Yes, by all means; but there is a glorious day coming for them and a wonderful message is going to be sent to them. You will find it indicated in chapter 14: “And I saw another angel flying in mid-heaven, having the everlasting glad tidings to announce to those settled on the earth, and to every nation, and tribe, and tongue, and people”. That is the gospel which will go out to the millions of those who have never heard the gospel and an immense number that no man can count will receive it. It will be carried to them by the Jewish brethren of Christ (Matt.25:40), and millions upon millions will believe it. Alas, dear friend, there will be those that will not believe it; they will treat the messengers with contempt, they will see them suffer hunger and give them no meat, thirst and give them no drink, naked and clothe them not (Matt.25:42,43). And what will become of them when the King comes and sets up His great assize on earth? Do not run away with the idea that in Matthew 25 it is the judgment of the dead that is in view. It says “But when the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit down upon his throne of glory, and all the nations shall be gathered before him” (v.31). There is not a word about His sitting to judge the dead; it is wholly a question of the judgment of the living nations. How did they receive the messengers that He sent unto them? Those who will receive them will be “the sheep” and those who will not receive them shall be “the goats”. The goats are going to be cast into perdition and the sheep He is going to take into the earthly glory of His kingdom, and they will have the joy of eternal life . They will pass for one thousand years into a condition of things where death will not be known, except for wilful sin. What a wonderful time!
Now we have seen how all four classes are dealt with. The heavenly saints will have gone to glory; the rejecters cut off by judgment; the remnant of Israel will have been gathered out. All those who never heard the gospel of the grace of God will have heard the everlasting gospel; the sheep will have been gathered out and gone into the kingdom, while all the rejecters of divine testimony will have been thrust out in the everlasting darkness.
Beloved friend, we have now come to the dawn of a glorious day for this earth. When the Lord Jesus will have come and raptured His assembly to glory, what will be left on earth? … Every one who had been the subject of new birth, the work having been completed in their souls, will have been taken to glory … Years of judgment will have rolled by, and what do we find now? We find a wonderful change has come over this poor earth … All those who received the everlasting gospel have been born again, the nation of Israel who have attended to the testimony given to them have been born again; and in the glorious day when the Lord Jesus sets up His throne in this world, there will not be a single inhabitant of the globe but what has been the subject of the workings of divine grace. What a day when the blessed Lord Jesus Christ will set up His throne with a people like that to reign over! The cities or the nations will pass away. London, Paris, Brussels, Bucharest, Berlin, Petrograd – homes of vice and wickedness, every one of them – they will go to wreck and ruin. But He will make the desert blossom like a rose. He has been keeping part of the earth as desert. Man can do nothing with the sandy wastes, but the Lord Jesus will cause the wilderness state to cease. He will put His throne in Jerusalem, and the whole earth, peopled by a regenerate race, will be subject to His sceptre for one thousand years.
How will it end? It will end in this way. Did the millennium day begin with people wholly born again? Did they beget children? Yes. Were the children born again? Not all of them. As parents in this time may pass into glory but their children be left behind for judgment, so will it be in that day. At the end of the millennial day there will be a vast number of people who have been under the sceptre of Christ but who have only yielded a feigned obedience. When Satan comes out of the abyss at the end of the thousand years they will rise in rebellion, and the last judgment of God, the fiercest of all, will fall on them. Fire will come straight down from heaven and consume them all (chap.20:9). Of course, all those who have been born again will be preserved in this last final overthrow, and they will be carried over – we are not told how – into the eternal state in all the fulness of resurrection life.
Thus the millennial day will end, and the wrecks of great cities and the earth and all that is therein shall be burnt up. He will bring in a new earth by His word; “Behold, I make all things new” (chap.21:5), purged from all the works of man, and the holy city, the assembly, will be a dwelling place for God and His saints through eternal days.
Now we have come to the end, the grand and glorious consummation of all God’s ways in grace. The history of flesh and blood is closed; the ways of God with man are over, the new heavens and new earth appear (chap 21:1).
This is the hope of our souls, and so we look on beyond the millennial day, beyond the last final outbreak of rebellion, and there shines in glory before our delighted souls a vision of a world where God shall dwell in the holy city with His people for ever more, outside flesh and blood, and there shall be no more sorrow, or crying or death, and there shall be no more pain (chap 21:4).
Beloved friend, this is but a little rapid outline, but now as I close I want to urge you to study the book. You say, are all these things found in it? Yes, every one of them. Read it, read it earnestly, read it prayerfully, and pray that God by His blessed Holy Spirit may put you in readiness for the coming of the Bridegroom; that you may be indeed as one of those who will receive Him with joy. To you, my unconverted friend, I say, Read the book – read it. You say, I do not understand it. Never mind, take it and read it. Perhaps by the very things recorded in it, the Spirit of God may speak to your soul. So to every soul in this hall tonight I make this earnest appeal. Take the book of the Revelation into your hands and read it prayerfully, seriously, and as you read, you will get blessing. As a brother in the Lord told me, ‘I read a great deal and I seem to get an impression on my spirit’. That is to be greatly desired, and I will venture to say this to the youngest, that if you read the book you will get an impression in your soul of what is going to happen. You will read of falling kings and nations, of terrible things coming up from the pit to destroy men, and afflict their souls, and when you have put down the book, you will say, Everything that is evil will go to its own place, and everything that is holy, just and good will go to its own place. While the everlasting song of joy rings from the new creation world for ever, there is one place where there is everlasting silence and darkness, where “the wicked are silenced in darkness”, 1 Sam.2:9. To one or the other of these places you are journeying tonight.
May the Lord stir up souls, stir us all up, beloved friends, that we may see how we stand in relation to this stupendous question of His coming to intervene with the course of things in this world, to set the world in order by judgment for the establishment of His kingdom, to reign for one thousand years, and then deal with the final apostacy. God will bring forth the new heavens and the new earth where He will dwell in them for eternal days with His ransomed saints.
Address at Bridgetown, Barbados, 1917
George W Ware