Luke 1:33 - The Biblical Illustrator

Bible Comments

And He shall reign--

Christ’s everlasting kingdom

The everlasting kingdom.

There is no reason to doubt that the right and true and the holy shall have the victory. All dominions hostile to Christ must give way. All kingdoms incompatible with His must be dissolved. The kingdoms of this world have their symbols in the lion, the bear, the leopard, and the fourth dreadful and terrible beast: and by a law universally proved, their passions and discord shall precipitate their own destruction. But Christ’s kingdom has nothing anarchical, because it has nothing sinful in it; it has not one element of decay, because into it nothing that defileth can enter. Suns shall grow pale, stars shall become dim; the crescent shall wane, the crucifix shall fall from the hands of him that holds it; and Christ’s kingdom shall extend over all the earth, and all shall bless Him, and be blessed in Him. We see already tokens of that day. I take a bright view of the coming days. What progress do knowledge, science, education, Christianity, the Bible, make everywhere throughout the world at this moment? Do we not see the whole human family drawing nearer to each other? Do we not see the two great nations, America and England, speaking a tongue that promises more and more every day to become the tongue of the whole world? Do we not see all languages, however diversified, becoming reducible to two, three, or four at the very most,--Christians becoming less earthly, and Christianity less alloyed? What are these but the tokens of the approaching glory; voices in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord; messengers sent before to announce that the bridegroom cometh? I see flowers of paradise begin to bloom in many a desert. I see upon all sides the sea of barbarism and superstition begin to ebb, and many a dove take wing, and fly over the length and breadth of the world’s chaotic flood, giving tokens that the Prince of Peace is on His way, warning us that the sound of His approach already breaks upon the ear. Let us hail the twilight; let us urge on, as far as we can, the coming day. (Cummings.)

Christ the key to the world’s history

The great Swiss historian, John Von Muller, gives the result of his life-long labours, extracted, he says, from seventeen hundred and thirty-three authors, in seventeen thousand folio pages, in this striking confession: “Christ is the key to the history of the world. Not only does all harmonize with the mission of Christ; all is subordinated to it. When I saw this,” he adds, “it was to me as wonderful and surprising as the light which St. Paul saw on his way to Damascus, the fulfilment of all hopes, the completion of philosophy, the key to all the apparent contradictions in the physical and the moral; here is life and immortality. I marvel not at miracles; a far greater miracle has been reserved for our times, the spectacle of the connection of all human events in the establishment and preservation of the doctrine of Christ.” (Prof. Henry B. Smith.)

Luke 1:33

33 And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.