But, in addition to the name and nature of Jesus—the Angels added a promise of comfort regarding Him. “He shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.”[49] Jesus shall come again!
When a beloved brother or friend whom we love is taken from us by death, how cheered we are by the thought of rejoining him in a brighter and better world. Even in earthly separations, how cheering the prospect of those severed by oceans and continents meeting once more in the flesh—the associations of youth renewed and perpetuated—and the long-severed links of friendship welded and cemented again! What must be, to the bereft and lonely Christian, the thought of being restored, and that for ever, to his long-absent Saviour? Jesus shall come again!—it is the Church’s “blessed hope”—the day when her weeds and robes of ashen sorrow shall be laid for ever aside, and she shall “enter into the joy of her Lord?” It is His return, too, in a glorified manhood. That same Jesus shall so come! Yes! “so come,” in the very body with which He bade the sorrowing eleven that sad, farewell! He left them with His hands extended, and with blessings on His lips. He will return in the same attitude to greet His expectant Church, with the words, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”
And if it be a comforting thought, “Jesus still the same, now seated on the Mediatorial throne,”—equally comforting surely is the prospect that it will be in all the unchanging and undying sympathies of His exalted humanity, that He will come again as Judge. “God hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom he hath ordained.” He shall come, not arrayed in the stern magnificence of Godhead! As we behold Him, we need not crouch in terror at His approach. Humanity will soften the awe which Deity would inspire. We can rejoice with Job not only that our Kinsman Redeemer “liveth,” but that, as our Kinsman Redeemer, “He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth!”
Would that we more constantly lived under the realising power of this elevating thought—“Soon my Lord will come!” “Of the times and the seasons ye need not that I write unto you.” It is not for us to dogmatize on the unrevealed period of the “glorious appearing.” The millennial trumpet may in all probability sound over our slumbering dust—the millennial sun shine on the turf which may for centuries have covered our graves!—But who, on the other hand, dare venture to question the possibility of the nearer alternative?—that the Judge may be “standing before the door”—the shadow of the Advent Throne even now projected on an unthinking and unbelieving world! “He that shall come will come, and will not tarry!”—Although it be true that eighteen hundred years have elapsed since that utterance was made, and still no gleam of the coming morning streaks the horizon—although the calculations and longing expectations of the Church have hitherto only issued in successive disappointments, yet the hour is nearing! As grain by grain drops in Time’s sand-glass, it gives new significance and truthfulness to the Divine monition—“Behold, I come quickly!”
Ah! if He may come soon—if He must come at some time, how shall I meet Him? Will it be with joy? Am I shaping my course in life—my plans—my schemes—my wishes with what I feel would be in accordance with His will? Am I conscious of doing nothing that would lead me to be ashamed before Him at His coming? It would save many a perplexity—it would soothe many a heart-ache, and dry many a tear—if we were to make this great culminating event in the world’s history, with all its elevating motives, more our guide and regulator than we do;—living each day, and all our days, as if possibly the very next hour might disclose “the sign of the Son of Man in the midst of the Heavens!” Not building our nests too fondly here—not too anxious to nestle in creature comforts, but occupying faithfully the talents to be traded on which He has committed to our stewardship; straining the eye of faith, like the mother of Sisera, for His approaching chariot; and amid our griefs, and separations, and sorrows, listening to the sublime inspired antidote—“Stablish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.”
Blessed—glorious—happy day! And as His first coming was terminated by His Ascension, so will there be a second Ascension at His second Advent, with this important difference, however, that, as in the former, He left His Church behind Him, orphaned and forlorn, to battle in a world of sorrow and sin; in the other, not one unit among the rejoicing myriads, bought with His blood, will He debar from sharing in the splendour of His final entrance within the celestial gates. “The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout—with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then they who are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
“We must not stand to gaze too long,
Though on unfolding heaven our gaze we bend;
When lost behind the bright angelic throng,
We see Christ’s entering triumph slow ascend.
“No fear but we shall soon behold,
Faster than now it fades, that gleam revive,
When issuing from his cloud of fiery gold,
Our wasted frames feel the true Sun and live.
“Then shall we see Thee as Thou art,
For ever fix’d in no unfruitful gaze,
But such as lifts the new created heart
Age after age in worthier love and praise.”