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From Here to Forever
Thessalonians 4:16
. Said the prophet of Patmos: “Behold he cometh
with clouds; and every eye shall see him.”
Revelation 1:7
.
Then the long-continued rule of evil shall be broken: “The king-
doms of this world” will become “the kingdoms of our Lord, and of
his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.”
Revelation 11:15
.
“The Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth
before all the nations.”
Isaiah 61:11
.
Then the peaceful kingdom of the Messiah shall be established:
“The Lord shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places;
and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the
garden of the Lord.”
Isaiah 51:3
.
The coming of the Lord has been in all ages the hope of His true
followers. Amid suffering and persecution, the “appearing of the
great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” was the “blessed hope.”
Titus 2:13
. Paul pointed to the resurrection to take place at the
Saviour’s advent, when the dead in Christ should rise, and together
with the living be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. “And so,”
he said, “shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one
another with these words.”
1 Thessalonians 4:17, 18
.
On Patmos the beloved disciple heard the promise, “Surely I
come quickly,” and his response voices the prayer of the church,
“Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
Revelation 22:20
.
From the dungeon, the stake, the scaffold, where saints and mar-
tyrs witnessed for the truth, comes down the centuries the utterance
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of their faith and hope. Being “assured of His personal resurrection,
and consequently of their own at His coming, for this cause,” says
one of these Christians, “they despised death, and were found to
be above it.
The Waldenses cherished the same faith. Wycliffe,
Luther, Calvin, Knox, Ridley, and Baxter looked in faith for the
Lord’s coming. Such was the hope of the apostolic church, of the
“church in the wilderness,” and of the Reformers.
Prophecy not only foretells the manner and object of Christ’s
second coming, but presents tokens by which men are to know when
that day is near. “There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon,
and in the stars.”
Luke 21:25
. “The sun shall be darkened, and the
1
See Daniel T. Taylor, The Reign of Christ on Earth: or, The Voice of the Church in
All Ages, p. 33.