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.
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.
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