Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ.
I. Let us settle what we really want in life, and we may safely shut our ears to many counsellors.
II. Let us learn more and more of the true Christ, and we shall not be led astray by false Christs.
III. Let us give ourselves to earnest practical living, and not gape after wonders.
IV. Let us not think that some other Christ is needed when we are surrounded by great and unwonted troubles. (Anon.)
The glory of the coming of Christ
The coming of Christ will be-
I. Preceded by frequent delusive turnouts.
II. A self-evident manifestation.
III. A time of judgment.
IV. A time of great distress of nations.
V. “With power and great glory.”
VI. For the salvation of the elect. (Anon.)
I. The Christian dispensation is disturbed by attempts of impostors to delude the unwary.
II. These attempts at imposture are accompanied by credentials likely to deceive many.
III. There is in our possession a test sufficient to unmask all pretenders. (Anon.)
Forewarned
Our Lord forewarns-
I. His own people of the danger of being led astray.
II. Of the manner of His coming-sudden, unmistakable.
III. Sinners of the certainty of judgment. Do we heed the warnings? Do we live as if we gave attention to them? (Anon.)
Christ’s advent not restricted
Take as an example of the twilight condition in which the Christian world stands to-day, the different opinions that its members have concerning the Lord’s second coming. Some say He came in judgment when the Roman army encompassed and subdued Jerusalem. “Lo I Christ was there;” and so He was, in that Divine Word of His which then and thus became visibly true. Others affirm that He came in the descent of the Holy Ghost; and so He certainly did, and by that Spirit He still abides and works here on earth, remaining with and in His Church always even unto the end of the world. Yes, Christ is here as well as there, in this temple as well as in that where the first disciples were gathered. Yet another voice says, “The Redeemer comes in every signal manifestation of spiritual life, in each great reformation and revival of faith, in each social uplifting of the people to holier desires and to a better life. In all of these Christ is, no doubt, present. By and in them He is evermore coming. And He comes, moreover, to each individual soul at baptism, at conversion, and in the Holy Communion. He comes into the secret closet of prayer and meditation. He comes to every open heart, and outside the closed door of others He stands, and knocks, and waits. Blessed truths are these, all of them. Christ does come by many paths to help the needy, and He comes with power. But no one of these comings is exclusive of the others. We are not to believe that Christ is altogether “here” or “there,” that His presence is entirely restricted to any single one of the many ways by which He has promised to bestow the blessings of His risen life. And all of these comings put together should not exclude from our minds the belief or the constant thought of that other coming, which is to be not as a combination or succession of separate star-gleams, but as the lightning, a body of glory covering the whole world, and reaching at once from the east even unto the west. (E. E. Johnson, M. A.)
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