09. The Cross Pledges Christ’s Return

The Cross Pledges Christ’s Return

Secondly,the cross is the pledge of the return of Christand the reunion of loved ones who have gone before. In1 Thessalonians 4:14-16, we read these words, they are very important: “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent [go before] them which are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout ….” Our faith in the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is the cause of our expectation of His coming. A friend of mine was speaking about the coming of the Lord to a prominent minister in one of the great cities of England, and the minister said, “My dear fellow, it is a beautiful, poetic dream.” But you cannot dismiss such a thing as the coming of the Lord that occupies such a place in the Word of God, in an airy fashion like that. The argument of the apostle Paul is simply this, if the one coming of the Lord was a deed planned in the love of God and carried out by the power of God, the other coming of the Lord cannot be a dream only—the one hangs by the other, the one is the cause of the other, the one is the ground of the other. The first coming of our Lord and its purpose is the ground of our hope that the second coming of the Lord will be a fact, and that its purpose will be realized. To the denial of the personal coming of the Lord Jesus Christ the answer is the cross. You must do away with the cross if you are going to call the coming of the Lord a mere poetic dream (I fancy of a few). The cross is the pledge of the return of Christ.