WHEN WILL THE LORD COME?
[p. 86] WHEN WILL THE LORD COME?
There are other parables in Matthew and Luke with similar teaching to this one. In all of them there are servants waiting for the return of their master, and exhorted to watch because the moment of his arrival is uncertain. There are two events to which these parables are commonly applied. Some teach that they refer to the coming of Christ at the end of the world. They cannot mean this, because as all Christians agree, according to Scripture, there is to be a millennium — a thousand years of peace and blessing — before the end of the world, and how can we “watch” for an event which we know to be a thousand years off?
Then another and more usual explanation of these parables is that they refer to death. The Scriptures show that the Lord’s coming is not death. Moreover, in all these parables the coming of Christ is spoken of as being at an unknown and unexpected time. Now this is not usually the case with death, which in the vast majority of cases gives full warning of its approach.
It is clear that these parables refer neither to the end of the world nor to the hour of death. Their application is to the coming of the Lord. Christ tells us most distinctly here that no man knoweth the day or the hour. If these servants had known that the master was not coming until morning, they would have gone to sleep, but he desired them to watch till he came, and therefore he did not tell them the hour of his coming. The Lord has not told us when He is coming, that we may watch for Him always. If it had been recorded that the Lord was not coming for nineteen hundred years, it would have robbed the early Christians, and all past generations of believers, of that “blessed hope” which had such a prominent place in the teaching of the apostles, and was such a cherished part of the faith which believers held in those early days.
[p. 87] Much discredit to the truth has been brought about by the vain imaginings of men who have pretended to discover from prophecy the exact date of the Lord’s return. One simple scripture is sufficient to disclose the unspiritual character of their pretensions. We always find that these men fix dates more or less distant from the present moment. If they say the Lord is coming in ten years, or one year, or next week, it is saying in substance, “My lord delays to come”, and that is the utterance of the wicked bondman (Luke 12: 45). The Lord’s coming may take place at any moment, and He expects every believer to be waiting and watching for Him.
But has not the world to be converted before Christ comes? In 2 Timothy 3 we have a prophetic description of the professing church in the “last days”. Do we read anything there about a triumphant gospel and a converted world? On the contrary, we find there a picture of evil which is almost identical with that which the Spirit of God has given us of the heathen world before christianity came into it. Compare this with Romans 1: 29 - 32.
Be not deceived; the future of the professing church is summed up in one dark word — apostasy. Soon Jesus will come and receive every saved soul, every true believer, to Himself. He will then completely disown the great mass of empty profession which will be left behind, spewing it out of His mouth (Revelation 3: 16). The professing church, deprived of every living member of Christ’s body, will continue its history on earth as Babylon, whose haughty pride and whose fearful doom are so vividly described in Revelation 17 and 18.
There is not one prophecy to be fulfilled before Christ may come. His coming is our present hope.
But does it not say plainly that it is “appointed unto men once to die”? The scripture in Hebrews 9: 26 - 28 speaks of Christ’s one offering and says, “Now once in the consummation of the ages he has been manifested for the putting away of sin by his sacrifice. And forasmuch as it is the portion of men once to die, and after this judgment; thus the Christ [p. 88] also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear to those that look for him the second time without sin for salvation”.
It is in the order of nature that men should die, but why is this stated here? Simply to bring out the fact that Christ has taken man’s place and endured the death and judgment which man and his sins deserved. The believer sees the judgment of his sins at Calvary, by faith reckons Christ’s death as his own, and has eternal life in the risen glorified Son of God. Read John 5: 24, where the word “judgment” is the same as that in Hebrews 9: 27, and say if our deliverance from death and judgment could be more complete. Everlasting glory be to God and to the Lamb!
If the Lord should tarry we may fall asleep, but “we shall not all fall asleep”. If the Lord comes this hour “we shall all be changed, in an instant” (1 Corinthians 15: 52), and have our bodies fashioned like unto His glorious body without dying at all.
Many scriptures might be quoted to show how real the hope of the Lord’s return was to the early Christians. The defrauded labourer, suffering injustice, was exhorted to “have patience ... till the coming of the Lord”, and was comforted by being told that “the coming of the Lord is drawn nigh” (James 5: 7, 8). The saints at Corinth were “awaiting the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1: 7). The believers at Thessalonica had been converted “to God from idols to serve a living and true God, and to await his Son from the heavens” (1 Thessalonians 1: 9, 10). The Lord’s coming was not to them a vague, visionary idea, of little or no importance, as it is, alas, to many believers nowadays. It was the object of their fondest hopes, a source of deepest joy. Are we, as believers, imitating their example? The Lord is coming. We are drawing near to the glorious and happy termination of our wilderness journey. “Behold, the bridegroom” (Matthew 25: 6).