Is Celebrating Christ's Birth More Important Than Anticipating His Return?

This December 25th, people in church pews all across the world will celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ (a date, by the way, that some historians say is not accurate). 

I wonder how many of the people in those churches will be stirred with excitement because they will also hear about the promise of our blessed hope, which is the return of Christ Jesus?

There is nothing wrong with looking back, as long as we also look forward.  His story starts in a manger, but it does not end on the cross.  Scripture tells us over and over again that there is so much more to come! 

In the words of Isaac Massey Haldeman:

"If the value of a statement or is to be measured by the number of times repeated, then, since from Genesis to Revelation, in every form of human language, the Second Coming is proclaimed upon almost every page of the Bible, is inwrought with every fibre of truth it finally presents; since in the New Testament alone it is mentioned directly and indirectly more than three hundred times, as there is no other theme in the Bible that approaches it in frequency of repetition, it should seem that this event and doctrine of the Second Coming with all its promises and certified consequences should easily be of supreme and all-compelling importance; and because the Holy Spirit has made it of such importance I am under bonds to preach it.  Those who persist in saying it is incidental, secondary and sporadic might well be said to be of that class of theological disputants who never study the Bible; for the fact is should you cut out every reference to the Second Coming, its cognate truths and all the events to which it gives emphasis, you would have but a fragment of the Bible; and the Book upon which faith is founded, from which hope casts its glances heavenward, see light in the grave and immortality assured, would be as a broken reed, a garment of beauty torn and shredded, or as a harp whose main chord has been snapped asunder." 

From Why I preach the second coming.  Published in 1919.

The Passover and the Lamb

I am reading the Old Scofield King James Study Bible, which provides a wealth of wonderful insights about the types in Scripture.

Scofield writes that the Passover is a type for Christ the Redeemer, because the Israelites had to find a lamb without blemish and it was kept up for four days to be tested.  Just as Jesus was tested by Satan and His holiness was pure.

During the Passover, the lamb was slain and the blood was applied as instucted in Exodus 12:7:

Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs.

Reading this passage, I had a picture in my mind of the blood being applied to the door in the shape of a cross.  Scofield does not note this, but he does write that the blood applied constituted protection from judgment.

I also had a visual of the Lord passing over the homes of the Israelites while taking the firstborn children from the Egyptians.  Although believers will meet the Lord in the clouds when we are raptured, I could not help but think that this account in Scripture, like so many others, is God's way of showing us that we will be protected when He returns to earth to judge all those who do not believe in Him.

Most of my writing here is geared to believers who are growing in their faith, but if you have not professed your belief in Jesus as your Saviour, I pray that you will fall to your knees and do so right now.

God has been very patient with man since the death and resurrection of His Son.  But the period of time that He has allowed for mankind to receive His Gospel of Grace is finite and will come to a close at the rapture.