Look at yonder bent and withered frame—that body racked with pain, and worn out with years of acute suffering. It is the body of a saint. How humiliating to see it like that! Yes; but wait a little. Let but the trumpet sound, and in one moment that poor crushed and withered frame shall be changed, and made like to the glorified body of the descending Lord.
And there, in yonder lunatic asylum, is a poor lunatic. He has been there for years. He is a saint of God. How mysterious! True; we cannot fathom the mystery; it lies beyond our present narrow range. But so it is; that poor lunatic is a saint of God, an heir of glory. He too shall hear the voice of the archangel and the trump of God, and leave his lunacy behind him for ever, while he mounts into the heavens, in his glorified body, to meet his descending Lord.
Oh! reader, what a brilliant moment! How many sick chambers and beds of languishing shall be vacant then! What marvellous changes shall then take place! How the heart bounds at the thought, and longs to sing, in full chorus, that lovely hymn,
"Christ, the Lord, will come again,
None shall wait for Him in vain;
I shall then His glory see:
Christ will come and call for me.
"Then, when the archangel's voice
Calls the sleeping saints to rise,
Rising millions shall proclaim
Blessings on the Saviour's name.
"'This is our redeeming God!'
Ransomed hosts will shout aloud:
Praise, eternal praise, be given.
To the Lord of earth and heaven!"
Amen and amen!
How glorious the thought of those "rising millions!" How truly delightful to be amongst them! How precious the hope of seeing that blessed One who loveth us and who gave Himself for us! Such is the hope of the Christian, a hope concerning which there is not a single line from cover to cover of the Old Testament. "The word of prophecy" is of all importance. We do well to take heed to it. It is an unspeakable mercy for those who find themselves in a dark place to have a bright lamp to cast its light athwart the gloom. But let the Christian bear in mind that what he wants is to have "the day star arising in his heart;" in other words, to have his whole heart governed by the hope of seeing Jesus as the bright and morning Star. When the heart is thus filled and ruled by the proper Christian hope, then the eye can intelligently scan the prophetic chart: it can take in the whole field of prophecy as our God has graciously opened it before us, and find interest and profit in every page and in every line. But, on the other hand, we may rest assured that the man who looks into prophecy in order to find the church or its hope there has his face turned the wrong way. He will find "the Jew" there, and "Gentile" there, but not "the church of God." We earnestly trust that not one of our readers will fail to lay hold of this fact—a fact, we may safely say, of the very deepest moment.
But it will perhaps be asked, "Of what use, then, is prophecy? If indeed it be true that we cannot find aught about the church on the prophetic page, of what possible use can it be to Christians? Why should we be told to take heed to it if it does not immediately concern us?" We reply, Is nothing of any value to us save what immediately concerns ourselves? Shall we take no interest in anything unless we ourselves form the immediate subject thereof? Is it nothing to us to have the counsels and purposes and plans of God laid open before us? Do we lightly esteem the high favor of having the thoughts of God communicated to us in His holy word of prophecy? Surely it was not thus that Abraham treated the divine communications made to him in Genesis xviii.: "Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?" And what was that thing? Did it immediately concern Abraham? Not at all. It concerned Sodom and the neighboring cities, and Abraham had no stake in them. But did that prevent his interest in the divine communication. Did it hinder his appreciation of the mark of special favor in his being made the honored and trusted depository of the thoughts of God? Surely not. We may safely assert that the faithful patriarch highly esteemed the privilege conferred upon him.
And so should we. We should study prophecy with all the interest arising from the fact that therein we have unfolded to us, with divine precision, what God is about to do on this earth with Israel and with the nations. Prophecy is God's history of the future; and just in proportion as we love Him shall we delight to study His history; not indeed, as some have said, that we may know its truth by its fulfilment, but that we may possess all that absolute, that divine certainty as to the future which God's word is capable of imparting. Nothing can be more absurd, in the judgment of faith, than to suppose that we must wait until the accomplishment of a prophecy to know that it is true. What an insult offered—unwittingly, no doubt—to the peerless revelation of our God.