“He who testifieth these things, saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” Rev. xxii. 20.
1 When our Lord was going away, He said He would quickly come again; yet knowing that by “quickly” He did not mean what would be at first sight understood by the word, He added, “suddenly,” or “as a thief.” “Behold I come as a thief; blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments.” [Rev. xvi. 15.] Had His coming been soon, in our sense of the word, it could not well have been sudden. Servants who are bid to wait for their master’s return from an entertainment, could not, one should think, be overtaken by that return. It was because to us His coming would not seem soon, that it was sudden. What you expect to come, you wait for; what fails to come, you give up; while, then, Christ said that His coming would be soon, yet by saying it would be sudden, He said that to us it would seem long.
Yet though to us He seems to delay, yet He has declared that His coming is speedy, He has bid us ever look out for His coming; and His first followers, as the Epistles show us, were ever looking out for it. Surely it is our duty to look out for it, as likely to come immediately, though hitherto for near two thousand years the Church has been looking out in vain.
Is it not something significant that, in the last book of Scripture, which more than any other implies a long continuance to the Christian Church,—that there we should have such express and repeated assurances that Christ’s coming would be speedy? Even in the last chapter we are told it three times. “Behold I come quickly; blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book.” “Behold I come quickly, and My reward is with Me.” And again, in the text, “He that testifieth these things, saith, Surely I come quickly.” Such is the announcement; and, in consequence, we are commanded to be ever looking out for the great Day, to “wait for His Son from heaven;” [1 Thess. i. 10.] to “look and haste unto the coming of the day of God.” [2 Pet. iii. 12.]
It is true, indeed, that in one place St. Paul cautions his brethren against expecting the immediate coming of Christ; but he does not say more than that Christ will send a sign immediately before His coming,—a certain dreadful enemy of the truth,—which is to be followed by Himself at once, and therefore does not stand in our way, or prevent eager eyes from looking out for Him. And, in truth, St. Paul seems rather to be warning his brethren against being disappointed if Christ did not come, than hindering them from expecting Him.
Now it may be objected that this is a kind of paradox; how is it possible, it may be asked, ever to be expecting what has so long been delayed? What has been so long coming, may be longer still. It was possible, indeed, for the early Christians, who had no experience of the long period which the Church was to remain on earth, to look out for Christ; but we cannot help using our reason: there are no more grounds to expect Christ now than at those many former times, when, as the event showed, He did not come. Christians have ever been expecting the last day, and ever meeting with disappointment. They have seen what they thought symptoms of His coming, and peculiarities in their own times, which a little more knowledge of the world, a more enlarged experience, would have shown them to be common to all times. They have ever been frightened without good reason, fretting in their narrow minds, and building on their superstitious fancies. What age of the world has there been in which people did not think the Day of Judgment coming? Such expectation has but evidenced and fostered indolence and superstition; it is to be considered as a mere weakness.
Now I shall attempt to say something in answer to this objection.
1. And first, considered as an objection to a habit of continual waiting (to use the common phrase), it proves too much. If it is consistently followed up, no age ought ever to expect the day of Christ; the age in which He shall come (whenever it is) ought not to expect Him;—which is the very thing He has warned us against. He no where warns us against what is contemptuously called superstition; but He expressly warns us against high-minded security. If it be true that Christians have expected Him when He did not come, it is quite as true that when He does come, the world will not expect Him. If it be true that Christians have fancied signs of His coming, when there were none, it is equally true that the world will not see the signs of His coming when they are present. His signs are not so plain but you have to search for them; not so plain but you may be mistaken in your search; and your choice lies between the risk of thinking you see what is not, and of not seeing what is. True it is, that many times, many ages, have Christians been mistaken in thinking they discerned Christ’s coming; but better a thousand times think Him coming when He is not, than once think Him not coming when He is. Such is the difference between Scripture and the world; judging by Scripture, you would ever be expecting Christ; judging by the world, you would never expect Him. Now He must come one day, sooner or later. Worldly men have their scoff at our failure of discernment now; but whose will be the want of discernment, whose the triumph then? And what does Christ think of their present scoff? He expressly warns us, by His Apostle, of scoffers, who shall say, “Where is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation … But, beloved (continues St. Peter), be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” [2 Pet. iii. 4, 8.]