To this the Church replies with its last recorded prayer:
“Amen, even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
When you close the book you feel the next thing is—the Coming of the Lord.
If the value of a statement or doctrine 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, is stamped 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 their 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, sees light in the grave and immortality assured, would be but as a broken reed, a garment of beauty torn and shredded, or as a harp whose main chord had been snapped asunder.
[II]
The Second Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ is Bound up With Every Fundamental Doctrine, Every Sublime Promise and Every Exhortation to High, to Holy and Practical Christian Living
IT is bound up with every fundamental doctrine.
The resurrection from the dead, the transfiguration of the living, the judgment seat of Christ, the judgment of the living nations, the consequent judgment of the white throne, the rewards of the righteous and the punishment of the wicked.
It is bound up with every sublime promise.