That Gospel Sermon on the Blessed Hope

No. 16
A Sermon delivered by D. L. Moody, the Evangelist, at the Great Chicago Tabernacle, Jan. 5, 1877. Repeated in the Boston Tabernacle, April 29th.
In 2 Timothy, 3:16, Paul declares: All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; but there are some people who tell us when we take up prophecy that it is all very well to be believed, but that there is no use in one trying to understand it; these future events are things that the church does not agree about, and it is better to let them alone, and deal only with those prophecies which have already been fulfilled. But Paul does not talk that way; he says: All scripture is ... profitable for doctrine. If these people are right, he ought to have said: Some scripture is profitable; but you can not understand the prophecies, so you had better let them alone. If God did not mean to have us study the prophecies, he would not have put them in the Bible. Some of them are fulfilled, and he is at work fulfilling the rest, so that if we do not see them all completed in this life, we shall in the world to come.
I do not want to teach anything to-day dogmatically, on my own authority, but to my mind this precious doctrine--for such I must call it--of the return of the Lord to this earth is taught in the New Testament as clearly as any other doctrine is; yet I was in the church fifteen or sixteen years before I ever heard a sermon on it. There is hardly any church that does not make a great deal of baptism, but the New Testament only speaks about baptism thirteen times, while it speaks of the return of our Lord fifty times; and yet the church has had very little to say about it. Now, I can see a reason for this: the devil does not want us to see this truth, for nothing would wake up the church so much. The moment a man takes hold of the truth that Jesus Christ is coming back again to receive his friends to himself, this world loses its hold upon him; gas-stocks and water-stocks, and stocks in banks and horse-railroads, are of very much less consequence to him then. His heart is free, and he looks for the blessed appearing of his Lord, who at his coming will take him into his blessed kingdom.