Well did a recent and much-esteemed minister of the gospel entitle his book on the Second Coming of Christ 'The Momentous Event'!¹ Momentous indeed will be that day when our great God-Man Redeemer appears on the clouds of heaven to call a halt to time and to bring down the curtain on earth's tortuous history. It will be an event of such magnitude for us all that we do well to make it the subject of our frequent meditation and our daily preparation. Indeed, our entire life ought to be little more than one long grooming of the soul for our introduction into Christ's majestic presence. Those happy children of earth who then find acceptance with him will lose all troubles and gain all joys; those, however rich here below, who fail in that last interview of all will lose all joys and spend eternity bewailing their unending losses.

An unearthly awe must possess our thoughts whenever we call to mind the momentous fact of Christ's Second Coming. It is the terminus at which all the saints have looked as, down the centuries, they have kept vigil here below. Deeply-felt emotions stir the hearts of God's people as they wait and work and watch, knowing with the passing of every year and the rotation of every season that 'the night is far spent and the day is at hand' (Romans 13:12). Grace gives instincts to believers and one of our instincts is to know that nothing matters in this world like the being right with God at the end of history. Here on earth many talk piously and many more scorn piety. But the intuition of a child of God has always been to look beyond false religion and irreligion, to that 'great and terrible day of the Lord' when the all-seeing eye of King Jesus will look with burning scrutiny into the secret recesses of every man's heart and life.

There are sensations in our heart when we think of Christ's return which are fraught with profoundest wonder. This is so first of all because of the nature of his Person. Our history knows of a multitude of kings and of great men. But here is now to appear at last the King of kings. When Jesus stands visibly upon the sky all eyes will see that this is superlative majesty. His is an essential and transcendent lordship, not inherited from his ancestors but his by virtue of Sonship within the ontological Trinity and his by decree of the Father in the everlasting covenant. The King who enters on the stage at our world's great finale is to be one whose presence will invest the name of monarchy with new lustre and beside whom all other kings will look and feel mere beggars.

But then too the coming of this God-Man fills us even now with awe because his appearing will be accompanied with alterations to the present order of things which are dreadful to contemplate. His hand will sweep aside the heavens and scatter the stars; his breath will extinguish the sun like a candle; his command will cause every mountain and island, every continent and ocean to vanish away like smoke. These shall be no longer. Now shall come the long-predicted hour when man's probation is over for ever and his day of accounting come. Not any more is to be heard the din of traffic, the bustle of commercial activity, the song of the drunkard, the peal of the wedding-bell, the din of war or the shout of victory. These and all such things are over now and they will never begin to exist again to all eternity. When Jesus comes the game of sin is up, the sinner's dream is over. Reality, God and judgment must now be faced by all mankind at last.

It will be exquisite misery to the unbelieving portion of our world at Christ's coming to discover that the One who is now come is the One whom they crucified. Little did men suppose when they rejected and pierced him (as all Christ-haters virtually do every hour) that the Jesus of Nazareth whom they crucified was the eternal Jehovah come in disguise! Not for nothing did our Saviour identify himself to the Sanhedrin with these apocalyptic words:

Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.Matthew 26:64

Doubtless, all sinners will guess his identity when the Saviour appears 'in the air' to be seen by 'every eye'. The Scripture makes it plain that they will then look on him whom they 'pierced' (Revelation 1:7). Jesus, so meek and mild in this day of grace, will be, and will be seen to be, of all possible enemies the very worst. There is no anger like the anger of a meek and gentle man when once he is roused to indignation. There will be nothing in all the catalogues of human anger to compare with what the Bible calls so ominously 'the wrath of the Lamb' (Revelation 6:16).

Some inkling of a coming Judgment Day is to be found among even heathen nations. The Greeks and Romans certainly had some very clear notions on that subject, whether learnt from conscience or from their remote ancestry — or perhaps by second-hand acquaintance with the Jewish Scriptures. But no pagan thought ever reached the height of foreseeing that mankind's Judge would be its Saviour and its God-incarnate. These sublime mysteries are to be gleaned only from the Word of God and they invest the coming of our Lord with peculiar poignancy and power.

How wise it was of God to place upon the seat of Judgment One who is a man and a sufferer at men's hands, as all his people have been! No bold sinner can ever hurl at his dread Judge the accusation that He does not know what it is to be tempted, to feel pain or to face death. For Jesus has felt all this and endured it sinlessly. The sinner before the bar of 'the man Christ Jesus' will be 'speechless'. His own conscience will inform him that he has no cloak for his sin – especially not for his sin of refusing the free pardon offered to him while in this life. Men may despise a gentle Saviour now; but they will rue it eternally when once he steps down to sit on the Judgment seat and summons them to look him in the eye.

O how wasteful of precious time is our poor, foolish world! Day passes after day. Year follows year. So the centuries go by. Yet men grow no wiser in their use of time. Each moment of our earthly life affords us all a golden opportunity for repentance and reconciliation with God. Week after week, Sabbath after graciously-given Sabbath, Christ and the Cross are preached to mankind as the one and only way to heaven. Given the brevity of life and of all human time, one would expect to see whole streets of men, whole cities — indeed, whole continents of men — hurrying to press into Christ's kingdom while yet the door stands open. But the mass of men pass ever onwards towards the great Last Day as heedless of the impending hour of Christ's coming today as they were in Noah's day. 'History teaches that history teaches nothing'. Not one in a thousand spends ten seconds in a day pre­paring for this coming 'momentous event'! 'There is a way that seems right unto a man'. So begins a famous Proverb. 'But the end thereof are the ways of death' (Proverbs 14:12). It seems right to men to follow one another in their pursuit of earthly wealth and pleasure. It seems right to live only for today; to leave tomorrow's reckoning till we get there; to hope that 'our luck will be in' when health and life run out and when we too must grapple with eternity, as all the generations before us have had to do.

But this is the sure way to death — to that 'second death' from which there is to be no escape. No man ever tumbled into heaven by accident. No man will find himself worthy of eternal life who did not in this life exert himself to find Christ and to be his disciple. The happy-go-lucky man is, in the things of God, a lost man. They who now fear nothing, not even the Lord's return, will one day discover that they have only postponed their fears. A sinner's fears are coming to meet him fast. His death will be a double-death when it comes. For when a careless sinner dies he has nothing ahead of him but cares. A Christless man's eternity will be one long, unbroken midnight of fear

O that the nearness of Christ's return might be a fact engraved upon the consciousness of every Christian! O that every preacher would have this truth etched as with a pen of iron and the point of a diamond upon the table of his heart! Our time for witnessing and for preaching is fast ebbing away. Souls are flying every moment into the great eternity beyond time. When once the Master rises up and beckons to the attendant angel, the trumpet of doom will sound and men's destinies will be fixed forever in heaven or else in hell. It would be a wholesome exercise for every preacher daily to recall the Saviour's words: 'The night cometh, when no man can work' (John 9:4).

The coming of Christ will be no less momentous for good to God's people than it will be for ill to the wicked. The picture presented to us in God's Word is beautiful and comforting in the extreme. As the cockerel heralds the coming of the new day, so will the trumpet's blast announce the endless, joyous, cloudless, day of everlasting redemptive glory for the sons of God. At last the Jubilee will come. The long, dark night of sorrow will be ended for the saints. Jesus himself will put his head out of heaven to call them up higher. Like a cloud the ransomed of the Lord will rise up into the air to meet him at his coming whom they have loved and lived for here on earth. 'This is our God, we have waited for him' will be their universal anthem (Isaiah 26:8).

As by a hidden magnetism, the power of Christ will lift up to himself all and only those who are his. There will be two in a bed, in the field, at the work place. 'One shall be taken and the other left' (Luke 17:34-36). Election and the covenant promise will mean everything to men then, when those whom God has loved and washed in the blood of Christ are marshalled before the face of King Jesus in the air.

Exquisite and ineffable will be the comforting sense of privilege which the redeemed will know at this momentous event. What a world of bliss it will be to each lowly Christian to hear the Master call him by name and bid him welcome forever into His loving presence! 'Fear not: for I have redeemed thee. I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine', will Christ say to them (Isaiah 43:1).

Let every tired Christian in this busy, secular age often recall the mighty truth of Christ's momentous return. Often let him pause to refresh his spirit with this hope:

Soon we shall see Jesus!