Since you do not know when the last elect of G.o.d shall be called, and it is sure the Lord will come when that last elect one is called, then you do not know when the Lord will come; and so far as you are concerned, and so far as any revelation otherwise is given, it may be any hour and, therefore, "any moment"; consequently the Coming of the Lord for His Church is--imminent.
Thus the imminency of the Lord"s Coming for His Church is grounded on election.
Imminency is so absolutely linked up with election that you cannot deny imminency without denying election; and to deny election is to deny G.o.d Himself, deny Him in the very essence of His own prerogative, the prerogative of foreordination, of decree.
The imminency of the Lord"s Coming for His Church is grounded on the Lord"s own declaration that He is coming for her as a thief comes.
This is His declaration and warning to the Church at Sardis, that Church which is the symbol of Protestantism in the closing hours of the age. The warning is given to the pastor, through the pastor to the Church and through the local a.s.sembly at Sardis to the whole Church.
This is what the risen Lord actually says:
"Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard; and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will arrive over thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will arrive over thee."
The characteristics of thief coming are marked and clear.
The thief does not come with strident voice, with thunderous noise, nor in open daylight, but between the midnight and the morn, with shodden feet, silently, softly, and takes the treasure while all in the house are sunken in the depths of sleep.
When the sunbeams of the morning pelt the eyelids of the laggard sleepers they awake to find the thief has come and gone and in his going has taken the treasure with him.
If the symbol be of avail and not a mere exercise in logomachy then will the Lord, indeed, descend in the moral and spiritual night of the world while men are sleeping and in fancied security pleasantly dreaming.
He will descend unseen, unnoted. If men shall hear the sound of a trump it will have no greater significance to their spiritually deaf ears than any other pa.s.sing sound. He will take, not the "great house" of religious profession, but those alone in that profession who have been regenerated and are indwelt by the Spirit, the dead who have fallen asleep in His name and the living who abide in Him.
Above all--imminency is grounded in the integrity of the Son of G.o.d and His apostles.
Unless all language is a deception; unless the promises of G.o.d are a baited lie; unless the apostles of Christ are the most shameless of all wanton tricksters; unless the Son of G.o.d Himself is the coolest traitor to truth who ever fooled the trusting hearts of needy men; unless He is the one being of all others who had the subtle and effective genius of making promises that fill the ear and are broken to the heart; unless He was the most skillful of all deceivers and rejoiced with malignant delight in deceiving the souls of men and thus proved Himself to be not the Son of G.o.d at all but the very son of falsehood, then seeing He is the reverse of all that, is in truth the very Son of G.o.d and truth itself, by His own unqualified statement, by its very character as exhortative warning His Coming must be and is--imminent. It is on the threshold of unfolding history and the gates of heaven are ajar ready for His Coming. So imminent is it that there is nothing between us and that event of events but the shout of command, the voice of the archangel and the shattering sound of the trump. So imminent that there is not the thickness of an eyelash between us and that moment when the door in heaven shall open wide and His voice with all compelling power shall say, "Come up hither."
Listen to what He says:
"Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come."
Watch! because He is coming.
Watch! because you do not know what hour He will come.
Watch! because as the householder He said He might come in any one of the four watches, at even, at midnight, in the c.o.c.kcrowing or in the morning.
He did not come at even.
Surely the midnight has come. It is dark enough spiritually. There is not only enough of sorrow, sin, confusion and unbelief in a G.o.dless world, but rank treason to the truth and repudiation of the written Word in the professing Church to call it spiritual midnight.
It seems sometimes like the c.o.c.kcrowing.
There are sounds of chanticleer, blasts of trumpets, changing of the guards and sentinels of old customs and ways, and echoes in the events now unrolling that prelude the great morning and the great day.
There is nothing certain about the hour but its--uncertainty.
Watch! because you may be alive at His Coming.
That is the word of Holy Scripture and not my suggestion.
Listen to the Apostle: "We which are alive, and remain unto the coming of the Lord."
The Apostle said that for his generation.
He said it not under his own mistaken idea as the Chicago department of "sacred literature" would suggest, but under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of the Holy G.o.d.
Paul as a mere man might make mistakes just as the modern theological professor not infrequently does.
The Holy Spirit speaking through Paul could not make a mistake Himself, neither could it be possible for Paul under the direction of the Holy Spirit to make a mistake.
Paul was led by the Holy Spirit to believe it possible the Son of G.o.d might come in his day.
What Paul under inspiration said for his generation, he said for our generation.
He said it for you and for me.
Because no man knows the hour when the Lord will come it might be in your hour and my hour.
The Master Himself said:
"You know not what hour your Lord doth come."
Who is he who will have the hardihood to fix the hour when the Master has said no man knows?
Who is he who will put a thousand years between the Church and her returning Lord?
Where is the difference between a thousand years" delay and one moment that can be fixed by any man?
If the Lord says you do not know the hour and necessarily do not know the minute of the hour, if you fix a minute between us and the Coming you deny the words of the Son of G.o.d Himself that the minute and the hour are unknown.
Who is he who has it all fixed and polished and pumice stoned to the exact date?
The Lord has said no man on earth knows, not an angel in heaven knows. He Himself took the place of a servant and by the exercise of His omnipotent will residing in His eternal and unchanged personality as Son of G.o.d and G.o.d the Son, shut out the knowledge of it from His humanity, from Himself as man, and said He did not know when He should come.
Admit that a revelation has since been given to Him as a man or that He has taken the ban off His human side Himself and that He knows when He will come for the Church and the exact hour of His appearing in glory; admit this if you like and for the sake of argument (although there is not the slightest shade of a shadow of evidence for such an argument) it still remains that no such revelation has ever been given to the Church; neither has the restriction of the Son of G.o.d to His disciples been removed. You remember what He said just before He ascended!
This is what He said:
"It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power."
That this restriction was for the Church is the declaration of the Apostle. This is what he said to the Church at Thessalonica:
"Of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you."
Why had he no need to write to them?
Because the day of the Lord, he said, should come as a thief, and as that day is introduced by the Coming of the Lord for His Church, then His coming for the Church was, as He Himself afterwards declared in his letter to Sardis, like the coming of a thief. This Coming Paul had described in the fourth chapter of his first letter to the Thessalonians.