The Blessed Hope "Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13). One summer morning we were awakened at a very early hour. The first faint flush of dawn was painting the horizon. Back of the mountain summit a strange light was shining. As seen through the patches of foliage in the treetops it seemed like a brilliant electric arc light. The swaying leaves caused it to shimmer and gleam, appear and disappear with puzzling regularity. By and by it reached the sky-line. As it tipped the treetops a stray telephone wire moved across its face, bisecting it like the cross-hair of a telescope. In a moment it had shaken itself free, even from this partner, and stood out sharp and clear in all its beauty above the scarp of the mountain. And then as it flooded the scene with light like molten silver we recognized the daystar. Never had it seemed so large, so radiant, so flooded with glory as when it broke forth from the forest that summer morning in a new and strange place to us, and with unfamiliar and unaccustomed surroundings. So, emerging from the pages of this Book of God, is the splendid truth of the return of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, to this earth. It shines with the coming glory of Him who says of Himself, "I am the bright and Morning Star." Prejudice and dullness of spiritual vision have hidden it from the eyes of multitudes. But the cross-hairs of God's telescope of prophecy are centered upon it as the supreme and absorbing event of the end of this age. It has grown in beauty and radiance to God's own children until now it fills the horizon of their thought and expectation as never before, and God calls upon us to be "looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ." Concerning it, let us note first that It is the Hope of the Word. Throughout the entire New Testament the one supreme hope to which the heart and mind of the believer is constantly turned is the return of His Lord and his own glorification with Him. We cite but a few of the many passages pointing to it: "Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13). Your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life shall appear, then shall ye also appear in glory" (Col. 3:3-4). "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth Unto them that look for Him shall He ap- "This same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11). "And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me to give to every man according as his work shall be" (Rev. 22:12). "Behold, He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him" (Rev. 1:7). It is the Hope of the Heart. It is now more than eighty years since the emancipation of the slaves of the British West Indian colonies. Historians tell a beautiful story of this momentous event. The day set for their emancipation was the first day of August. The night before, many of them, it is said never slept at all. Their hearts were so eager with expectation they could not close their eyes. Thousands of them gathered in their places of worship for prayer and praise to God for bringing to them this freedom. Some of their brethren were sent to the nearby hilltops to view the first gleams of the coming dawn. These reported by signal to the waiting ones below when the dawn of the fateful and jubilant day was breaking. Day of all days was it to them, when they should pass from the thralldom of human ownership to the liberty and independence of the new life. Who can picture the hope that thrilled their innermost hearts as they watched for the dawn of that day. Likewise a great emancipation day is coming for the children of God. The enthralment of sin is to be forever broken; infirmities are to give place to infinities; corruption is to be changed to incorruption; mortality is to clothe itself with immortality; feeble and changeable fellowship is to be transmuted into endless and unbroken communion with our Lord; limitation and imperfection of service is to give way to boundlessness and perfectness of ministry throughout all eternity. And all this is to come with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now the supreme and unerring witness of the coming of our Lord is the Word of God. The Spirit tells us (2 Peter 1:19) that "We have a more sure word of prophecy unto which ye will do well to take heed." To this Word of prophecy we are to take earnest heed. As we brood, meditate and pray over it, the blessed hope will become increasingly real and precious to our souls. And the witness of the Word of God is, as we have seen, most clear and emphatic as to this great truth. But by and by is to come another witness. For we are admonished in the same verse above that we are to take heed to this word of prophecy "until" a certain time. Until what? "Until the day dawn and the day-star arise in your hearts." Jesus Christ is the Day-Star. "I am the bright and Morning Star," He says of Himself. These West Indian slaves, when they saw the first streaks of dawn of their day of freedom, sent back witnesses to their fellows that the long looked for moment was at hand. So, just before Jesus appears, the witness in the Word to the blessed hope will culminate in a special witness in the heart. Just before He comes, God will give to us an overwhelming jubilant, intense consciousness that Jesus is about to break forth from the heavens which have so long contained Him. The Spirit of Christ within will witness to our spirit that the moment has arrived. The Day-Star will arise in our hearts as the fore-running witness of His rising in the heavens. God will give to us a fore-thrill, as it were, of the power of the Spirit of glory which in a moment more shall transform the bodies of our humiliation into the likeness of the body of His glory. It is the Hope of Heaven. "Being the children of the resurrection" (Luke 20: 36). Do you remember our Lord's wondrous statement about these resurrection bodies when the Pharisees tried to entrap Him by one of their foolish questions? They had supposed the case |