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Saturday, November 22, 2014

 

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Contents|| Preface || 1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 || 10 || 11 ||12 ||13 || 14 ||

 

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Christ on Earth Again


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CHAPTER XIV
SUNRISE


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WHEN Christ has returned to the earth to take charge of its distracted affairs, the sun will have risen upon our long and dark night, and the day will have begun.
This i's the figure made use of by the Spirit of God in David in his « last words", wherein he refers to this coming reign of Christ as "the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds" (2 Sam. 23: 4). The figure is beautiful and entirely applicable. A beautiful morning is always a joy, but how much more after a night of special trouble. Who that has endured the horrors of a prolonged night in circumstances of danger by land or sea, has not felt gladness when the sun has risen in brightness, and filled the sky and earth with beams of healing warmth and light? The very sparkle of the dewdrop and the brilliant emerald of Nature's smiling face, as it opens to the effulgence of the advancing King of Day, seems to thrill the heart with delight. Thus, in a sense inexpressible, it will be at the end of the earth's troubled history.
The Scriptures speak of the present state of things upon the earth as « the night " and Christ as the sun. How dark that night is-gross darkness we do not realize at first, because we naturally belong to the night, and owls and bats do not think the night oppressively dark. When our minds open to the light, then we see how dark is the night that has for so many ages oppressed the earth. Even men whose eyes have not been opened are aware that there is something terribly anomalous and evil in
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the present state of things. The sufferings of all classes, and the efforts of every kind to bring mitigation to the state of man, bear witness to the terrible truth. Even after so many thousand years, men are discussing whether life is worth living. What hope is there of any change if the instrumentality continues the same?
There has been improvement in the appliances of material comfort. We can travel more quickly, communicate more rapidly, manufacture more easily, and labour more cheaply. The employment of machinery in every department of human effort would seem to promise an age of rest and amelioration for all. But the promise is as far as ever from fulfilment. The blessedness of mankind is not increased by these advantages. Why? For lack of that supreme direction in the application of them which is necessary to get the blessedness out of them. This requires a governing will superior to man'sa will that not only knows what is good for man, but with wisdom and power to enforce it even against man, like a father in his own family.
So long as law rests with man, he will legislate in harmony with the inclinations and tendencies of man under whatever form of government he may devise them, and there must necessarily always be failure. It is not in the capacity of man to recognize the glory of God as the chief end of human life, and kindness to man as the chief law of human behaviour. There may always be a minority of exceptions: but it is not in their power to devize, still less to enforce, a system of law among men that will give these things their scope and effect. And even if the feeble minority were to become a majority, they could never protect any good system from the disintegrating effects of ceaseless change and the inevitable " decline and fall" that comes to the best and most powerful of human institutions.
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The one element that is needed can never be provided from human resources-the element of stability that would result from deathlessness and irresistibility in the administrators of a divine system of law. There is, therefore, no hope in human directions. Human politics are but the restless heavings of a turbid sea, on which governments become more and more what Carlyle used to call the drowned carcasses of animals floating in the current. The waves rise in response to the spouting gales, and there is plenty of activity, but no progress towards real human weal. The man who knows and believes the Bible is emancipated. from the necessity and pain of a vain looking in this direction for hope.
The messenger of good tidings will come; but never from the tumult of human chaos. He will come from the shining heights of Heaven's prevailing purpose. "God shall send Jesus Christ ... whom the heaven must receive until --" (Acts 3: 20-21). This is the hope, and the only hope. The past is the pledge of the future in the matter. Christ has been in the earth. The earth is already filled with his name. Let him come again, and all will be well. He was a blessing when he was here; he will bless as never before when he is in the earth again; for he comes to fulfil the long-standing promise that all families of the earth shall be blessed in Abraham and in his seed. He will do this in the only way in which it can be done, as even meditative intelligence now perceives: by setting up a single government that will absorb all others, and such a government as the world has never seen before-a government that cannot be successfully resisted, a government that cannot err, and a government that cannot be changed by decay'or death; a government governing in the fear of God, and in the love of man and in the practice of truth and mercy and justice 0; without respect of persons or permission of the people.
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This is the promise and pledge of divine wisdom and power. It is the true goal of human hope-the true end of human history. The world-wide tradition of " a good time coming" has no other foundation than this. It can never, in the nature of things, be realized apart from it.
They were no empty words in which Jesus proclaimed ,himself "the Light of the World", yet the fulness of their meaning will not be manifest till the day contemplated in the last words of Dayid -" He shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds". Many other beautiful declarations of the Scriptures on the subject will then have their full illustration, of which the following are a few examples :
" Arise, shine: for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising . . . Thy people also shall be all righteous: they shall inherit the land for ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified" (Isa. 60 : 1-3, 21).
" Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment. And a man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land" (Isa.32 : 1-2).
" He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth. In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth . . . He shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor . . . His name shall endure for ever: his name shall be continued as long as the sun: and men
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shall be blessed in him: all nations shall call him blessed " (Psa. 72).
"Sing, 0 heavens, and be joyful, 0 earth, and break forth into singing, 0 mountains: for the Lord hath comforted his people, and will have mercy upon his afflicted" (Isa. 49 :.13).
" In this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it. And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation" (Isa.· 25 : 6-9).
"Therefore my people . . . shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak; behold, it is 1. How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth ! ... Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem; for the Lord hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem . . . Behold, my servant shall deal prudently; he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high . . . The kings shall shut their mouths at him: for that which had not been told them shall they see, and that which they had not heard shall they consider" (Isa. 52: 6, 7, 9, 13, 15).
"Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his
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people, and God himself shall be with them and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away" (Rev. 21 : 3-4).
" And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him: and they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads. And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever" (Rev. 22: 3-5).
" And he said unto me, These sayings are faithful and true: and the Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to shew unto his servants the things which must shortly be done . . . He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus! " (Rev. 22 : 6,20).
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