“Great Things for Grievous Times”
TOPIC:“The Greatest Promise of the Savior”
By Rev. Dr. Reg Dunlap
TEXT:John 14:2-3
“…I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place
for you, I will come again…”
Without doubt the return of Christ is the great hope of every Christian. Listen now to these important words of J. Barton Payne, who in his book, The Imminent Appearing of Christ, wrote: “The hope of the church is not that it may live unharmed through the tribulation, or that it may be removed from the earth before the tribulation. Its fundamental hope is not even for its own rapture or its resurrection. Rather, the blessed hope for which every Christian heart should be yearning is the `appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ'.”
So the hope of the Christian is the second coming of Christ. Such hope burned within the heart of the Apostle Paul. He called it the “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13). This first-century Christian forever looked forward to the return and reign of Christ. To the Colossians Paul wrote: “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). To young Timothy Paul wrote: “…and Lord Jesus Christ, who is our hope” (I Timothy 1:1).
The popular notion that there is no hope for the world, that modern man is doomed, is only true when God and His returning Son are left out of man's concept of life and history. This is one thing that Paul would never do. With eager eyes and expecting heart he scanned and searched the blue sky each morning with the prayerful thought, “Perhaps today the Lord will come.” Paul lived on the brink of eternity.
How different were the words of the famous British philosopher, Bertrand Russell, who wrote this statement of gloom and doom: “No fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave.” Certainly this man never knew the Bible and what it has to say about Christ. It is the most hopeful book in all of the world.
Let us consider the return of Christ under these three separate headings - the Announcement of it; the Accomplishment of it; and the Arrangement of it.
I.
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