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“Then we which 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.” – 1 Thess. 4:17

 We were sitting in a park under the shadow of a large tree. A conference was being held in the stately house behind us, but today the weather was so beautiful that we could have our meeting out in the park. The view of the lake, with a dense forest in the distance, was lovely.

 Our gathering at this time was not an official one. I had mentioned a couple of times in my lectures the second coming of the Lord Jesus, and several people had expressed a desire to know more about this subject. So I offered to tell them what I knew about the subject some time between our scheduled sessions.

 I began by giving them an illustration: “A telephone operator was called each day by the same person and asked for the time. After some months of this she asked the inquirer for the reason of his daily call. ‘At twelve sharp I have to give a whistle signal,’ the man said. Startled, the girl answered, ‘And I always set my watch by that very whistle signal.’”

 That is the world today. There is no foundation, no certainty, no safe objective standard.

 The Bible, however, is our Standard time.

 “Give me a place outside the earth on which to rest my lever and I will move the world,” Archimedes said.

 We possess this “Archimedes’ fulcrum” in the Word of God.

 The great blessing of our time is that the world is aware of the fact that it is bankrupt. The widespread middle-class contentment, which gave the world its false sense of security up to forty years ago, has vanished. The whistle signal has deviated too much from true time, and as a result people have lost confidence in it. These are the days in which the trumpet of every Christian must sound no uncertain note.

 The world complains that there is no longer a future. But we find in the Bible that one out of every twenty-five texts speaks of the assured future of the kingdom of God at the coming of His Son. There is no one who fears His coming so much as the devil; and it has been a victory of the devil that the greatest consolation which the Bible grants us has been changed into a subject of theological controversy.

 Jesus Himself, Paul, Peter, and John, all state in unmistakable language that there will be a point in time at which Jesus will return. This momentous event will be so glorious to them who belong to Him that it is written, “Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” Then they will be with the Lord forever. To those who do not love Him there will be judgment and tribulation. It is very clearly written, “But exhort one another daily.”

 There will be signs of the times, of which we must be observant. To those who do not belong to Him Jesus will come “as a thief in the night”, but the children of God “are not in darkness, that that day should overtake them as a thief.” (1 Thess. 5:2,4)

One of the most outstanding signs of the times is the return of the Jews to the land of Israel. Frederick the Great of Prussia once said, “If one wants to know the time on the clock of world history, let him observe the Jews.”

 Our confession of faith speaks of the second coming of Christ only as the judgment of the living and the dead. To those who are in Christ this judgment will be the glorious moment in which they will be manifested as the redeemed.

 To the world the second coming of Christ will mean the end of Satan’s dominion over the world, the end of the rule of the prince of this world. For Jesus is coming to take possession of His own inheritance. It will be an invasion by the Owner Himself who has promised: “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5). Then “the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14). Therefore, those who love His appearing, pray with St. John, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20).

 “But I don’t understand anything of all that I am hearing,” said a young woman. The other listeners, too, admitted that this was unfamiliar territory to them. Yet this conference was not being held for unchurched laymen. All of these people were attending the conference because they desired, more or less, to discuss and to be trained in the methods of proclaiming the Gospel in their own surroundings. To these convinced Christians, the second coming of Christ was totally unfamiliar ground.

 “When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8)