Luke 18

Luke 18:6-8

CHRIST’S COMING AND THE ECLIPSE OF FAITHLuk_18:6-8. THE parable of the Importunate Widow is often quoted, but practically always with the purpose of illustrating importunity in prayer. The main object for which it was spoken is seldom so much as mentioned! People stop in the midst of the verse and utterly omit the Master’s words, “Nevertheless when the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth”? The fact remains, however, that the concluding sentence of this parable holds its most important truths. Let me state three of them in order, and emphasize by discussion; The Certainty of the Second Coming, The Occasion of the Second Coming, and The Query Concerning the Second Coming.THE OF THE SECOND COMING. It is a matter of definite Scripture teaching. A modern seminary professor raises the question: “Will Christ come again?” The New Testament long since answered that question—in fact, the answer fell from the lips of the Lord Himself—“I will come again”. When, therefore, He speaks in this text, He assumes that that question is settled and talks of what will take place “when the Son of Man cometh”. The strangest aspect of modern infidelity is found in the attempt of men to retain the New Testament at all, while denying the doctrine of the Lord’s Return. The very seminary professor who raises this question and answers it in the negative— admits that the promised return is on practically “every page of the New Testament Scriptures”; and his famed co-professor, while denying “millennial hopes” as “a millennial mirage”, consents that such was the “vivid expectancy of the ancients”, by whom he means the Old Testament writers, and the plain hope of the New Testament writers if we are to accept at face value their most lucid statements. A sincere minded modernist recently admitted, “If I believed in the utter authority and Deity of the Bible, I should be compelled to come to your conclusions concerning the Second Coming.” If this is not a matter to be determined by Biblical statements, then, pray, from what source shall we bring our decision regarding it? To admit that the Bible teaches the Lord’s Return and then to deny the Return, is to dispense with the Book itself, and introduce into one’s personal thinking that eclipse of the faith to which our text refers.It is a doctrine most often asserted. Premillennialists have taken pains to count the number of texts in which this promise appears in some form, and they give us the result in three figures. Even postmillennialists, while dissenting from the numbers suggested and scorning that method of Scripture testimony, are nevertheless compelled to consent to its repeated presentation in both Old and New Testament. If multiplied references to a doctrine do not determine its certainty, emphasize its relative importance and elucidate its real intent, then, pray, why study Scripture at all? It is little wonder that Christ, as His ministry draws to a close, should imagine any further discussion of His promised Return needless.

In so far as they had accepted Him as both Master and Lord, a single clear statement of truth was the end of controversy, while His repeated assertions concerning any matter of faith gives it the place of a fundamental. In our Continent-wide work, conservative postmillennialists who have attended conferences have been well-nigh as warm in their commendations of what has been said as were the people convinced from a premillenarian standpoint, and the only criticism they have made was wide of the mark—namely, “that the Lord’s Return” was “not a fundamental”.

If a doctrine of such importance, to which so much of Scripture has been devoted and which relates itself to every conceivable feature of Christian thinking and living is not a fundamental, then what must enter into any conception to make it basal truth?In this text the Master assumes the matter settled once for all. Some years ago the Dean of a Divinity School, speaking before a State Convention, said, “In Christianity nothing is now settled. The new view opens every possible question to debate and leaves it to the future for determination.” A man from the same school recently speaking tells us that “all religions are in the melting pot”, and the context proves that he puts Christianity with the rest. But when Christ stood in the midst of men and spake, He dealt with no uncertainty; He waited for the result of no experiments. He never hinted that what he declared as truth must be tested by time before it should be believed. On the contrary, He spake “as one having authority” concerning all doctrines on which He delivered His soul.

He uttered the word and it stood fast. It Isaiah 2,000 years too late to open the question, “Will Christ come again?” The man who proposes to debate that Isaiah 2,000 years behind the time; yea, rather more than 3,000, for it was Christ who spoke by the mouth of the Prophets, as surely as He spake by His own lips.

That is why the Psalmist could say, “Thy word was in my tongue”. The Deity of Jesus Christ determined, the certainty of the Second Coming is forever settled in Heaven, for He hath spoken, “I will come again”. But this Scripture presents a second suggestion:THE OF THE SECOND COMING.“Shall not God avenge His own elect which cry day and night unto Him, though He bear long with them? “I tell you, that He will avenge them speedily” (Luke 18:7-8). In the light of this context our text involves three things regarding that occasion: The judgment of His people’s opponents; the justification of His people’s plea, and the promise of a speedy sentence.The judgment of His people’s opponents. Throughout the Word of God, Abraham’s seed are known as the people of the Lord—“His own elect”. Again and again the flood of the Old Testament is used as a type of judgment in the Lord’s Return. Christ said,“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the Coming of the Son of Man be. “For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noe entered into the ark, “And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the Coming of the Son of Man be” (Matthew 24:37-39). Noah was God’s chosen one in the antediluvian days. His very relationship to the Lord, his becoming the subject of special promises and the exponent of prophecy, made him to be at once rejected and scorned by unbelievers about him. The world that then was, hated alike the child of God, the Word of God and the Will of God. “The flood came, and took all away. So shall also the Coming of the Son of Man be”. God’s people have been in the world and it has treated them evilly. They have been opposed and persecuted, and as He appeared in the flood for the judgment of the wicked and justification of Noah, so He will come again to avenge His people and judge the world in righteousness. “In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear thou not; and to Zion, Let not thine hands be slack.

The Lord, thy God, in the midst of thee, is mighty; He will save; He will rejoice over thee with joy; He will rest in His love, He will joy over thee with singing”. * * And again, “Behold, at that time I will undo all that afflict thee: and I will save her that halteth, and gather her that was driven out; and I mil get them praise and fame in every land where they have been put to shame”. It is a truth that the final judgment of the lost will be postponed until the millennium ends, but it is also a truth that the judgment of Judah’s oppressors and of Israel’s enemies waits nothing but the reappearance of their King.In reading this parable, people often apply it to the Church.

In one sense “the children of Abraham by faith” share in the fulfillment of every promise made to the children of Abraham by flesh; but the primary application of this promise is to God’s ancient people for whose avenging He will surely come.His reappearance will be the justification of their plea. In spite of their unbelief, they have desired a King, and in spite of their blindness, they have prayed for the light, and in spite of their crucifixion of the true Christ, they have yearned for Israel’s Messiah. Every sin necessitates a judgment and the crime of all the centuries—the crucifixion of Christ—could not escape the wrath of a righteous God; and yet the grace of God is such that it is impossible for Him to keep a continuously deaf ear to the prayer made in sincerity. It is a truth that the “Lord hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into captivity before the enemy. And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty is departed; her princes are become like harts that find no pasture, and they are gone without strength before the pursuer”, “She had no comforter”, and yet her cry, “O Lord, behold my affliction”, will not be disregarded. Her confession, “I have rebelled against His commandment”, when made in penitence, will move the heart of God.

Her pathetic plea, “I am in distress; my bowels are troubled; mine heart is turned within me, for I have grievously rebelled”, when finally voiced, will bring the avenger’s blessing and “the Lord will not cast her off for ever”. God will yet make good His promise, “Behold I will take the Children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land: and I will make them one nation * * and one King shall be King to them all.

There shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all: nor shall they defile themselves any more with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions * * and David My servant shall be King over them; and they * * shall dwell in the land, * * even they, and their children, and their children’s children for ever”. Oh, what an hour when He shall come!The avenging of the Lord’s elect waits the reappearance of God’s Son to sit in power and judge in equity. That is another occasion of His back-coming.The imminence of it all is here suggested. “I tell you that I will avenge them speedily”. That word does not determine the time. It leaves the day of Israel’s recovery and of her opponents’ judgments to be determined by God Himself, but it enheartens believing Israelites with the blessed hope, as His phrase “in an hour when ye think not” or “the day of the Lord draweth nigh” causes the Gentile convert to enjoy a blessed expectancy. A Jew, therefore, who believed on Scripture perfectly, could join the Christian Gentiles in singing:“So I am watching quietly every day. Whenever the sun shines brightly, I rise and say, Surely it is the shining of His Face! And look into the gates of His high place beyond the sea, For I know He is coming shortly to summon me. And when a shadow falls across the window of my room, Where I am working my appointed task, I lift my head to watch the door, and ask if He is come: And the angel answers sweetly in my home, ‘Only a few more shadows, and He will come.’” THE QUERY THE SECOND COMING. “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth”? (Luke 18:8). Shall He find faith on the earth? That is a question that amazes one! If I were a postmillennialist, that question would more than amaze me; it would stagger me. If I had believed and taught that when Christ came all men on the earth would entertain faith, and the millennium would have been in full force upon the earth a thousand years, I should look upon such a question as little short of foolish. If I knew no distinction between “the Church” and “the Kingdom”, and did not realize that the first was only a partial evangelization of the world, and the second was its full and final subjugation, I should at this very question join in the opinion of those ancients who judged Jesus “beside Himself”. But, knowing full well that the Bible prophesied an apostacy on the part of Christendom; knowing full well that it predicts a denial of His Deity, a derision of His shed Blood, and a scoffing of His Second Coming for the last days, I find this question in harmony with a fuller study of the Word. “Let no man deceive you by any means, for that day shall not come except there be a falling away first”.

Faith will wane as the age draws to its close; and when the Church of God is caught up to meet the Lord in the air, the world will have a period of utter infidelity. The darkness of those days will comport perfectly with the tribulation of prophecy, and the distress of that time will be commensurate with the prevalent skepticism.

The brief space that precedes the reappearance of Christ in this world will be the darkest the world has seen since God demanded of its enveloping darkness, “Let there be light”! Has not the Apostle said, “This know, that in the last days perilous times shall come, For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof”.Are not those days approaching? Is not the shadow already on the sun? Does not the eclipse of faith increase? Are not men turning by tens of thousands “to old wives fables”, the fable of an Annie Besant, the fables of a Kate Tingley, the fables of a Mary Baker Eddy, the fables of the Modernist, the fables of the Federationist? I read recently the statement of a man who said, “When I was preparing for the Gospel ministry, I came face to face with the question as to whether the Bible was the Word of God.

So impressed was I by the vital and primary importance of that question that I laid aside all other studies and gave myself to the undivided and concentrated attention of its settlement. Every known difficulty was faced, every doubt analyzed, every inquiry pursued to the farthest point of investigation possible to me.

Not only my life work, but my life itself depended upon the outcome, and before I could take another step in the direction of what I thought my calling that question must be settled.”And that is the vital question today, for minister and layman alike. Have we a Bible? Have we a basis of an intelligent faith? Have we a revelation upon which to feed? Have we a God in whom to trust? It may sound strange to be asking questions like these after twenty centuries of Christian teaching, but the very crisis to which we have come demands the determination of that subject.

He spoke the truth who said, “The time has come when there must be lines of discrimination between those who love the truth and those who are hostile to it. If the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a myth, the man who believes that must stand on that side, and I on this, for I cannot stand with him.

If he affirms that the Scripture assertion, ‘without the shedding of blood is no remission’, is both ‘futile and foolish’ (as some who sit in professors’ chairs have done), then the Christian must determine whether to stand against them or fall himself into infidelity. The hour has struck, the breaking up of Christendom has begun, the rock of division is erected, and ‘that Rock is Christ’.”He had his eyes upon an apostate Christendom when he raised this question, “When the Son of Man cometh shall He find faith on the earth”? Already we can begin to understand; already we can begin to see why He so spake. The most amazing spectacle that angels have ever witnessed, since they began their study of man’s conduct on the earth, is the sight of the church wearing the Name of Jesus Christ managed and manipulated by men who insist upon retaining His Name while tearing to shreds His Bible, and disputing the sagacity and certainty of His speech, and even His very God-head. The shadows increase; the eclipse grows; the day of the Lord draweth nigh.What shall have displaced it? When Christ raised that question, “Shall He find faith on the earth”?

He knew perfectly well that men would not put away the great doctrines of the Book without providing a substitute for the same. He knew perfectly well that for Christ—the God, they would substitute Jesus—the ethical preacher; that for His Virgin Birth they would substitute natural generation from Joseph; that for His miracles they would substitute mental manipulation; that for His shed Blood they would substitute the spirit of self-sacrifice; that for His resurrection from the grave they would substitute an ethical idealism; that for His “sure Word of Prophecy” they would substitute twentieth century philosophy; that for His Blood bought Church they would substitute a federation of Christendom, and that for the great commission they would substitute a scheme of world-improvement.When I was a younger man and preached these prophecies, I was in grave doubt whether I should live long enough to see them converted into history.

I stand all amazed at the rapid march of events. I am at once astounded, and yet steadied in my Scriptural faith, by the thought that history is running today with the force of a Niagara into the deep, sure channels of prophecy. A few years ago when I published a book entitled “The Crisis of the Church”, my complacent world-improvers called it “a wolf’s cry”. Now they are all talking of the “crisis” to which the ages have come, and are creating “a federation” of forces with which to solve the new problems. They talk of a “new age”; they talk of a “new obligation”; they talk of a “new revelation”; but it is the same old age coming to its close; and it is the same old obligation resting more heavily, and the only way to meet the demands of the first and discharge the burden of the second, is by the same old Revelation.In the last ten years we have seen movement after movement. Each one has been heralded in stentorian tones; each one has been guaranteed by stupendous sums of gold; each one has been vocalized by a circle of Ciceros, and each in turn has proven itself “a spasm” that passed and left the world improved in nothing.The most colossal of them all was known as “The Interchurch World Movement”.

It was fostered by men of international repute; it was backed by almost unthinkable millions; its machinery turned spindles in every part of the earth. The hum of them was so loud that hardly any other sounds could be heard.

Its organizations were out of number; its orators demanded every platform and sought to coerce every pulpit. Its objective was nothing short of the establishment of “a world civilization,” modeled somewhat after the mind of Jesus; and amazement took hold of every advocate of this new scheme at the sight of a man who was unwilling to surrender his convictions and join the crowd. But some of us believed that to join any crowd in which the authority of the Book was debated; that to join any crowd in which the Deity of Christ was distrusted and the efficacy of His Blood was derided, was nothing short of spitting in the face of the God whose breath made the Book possible, trampling underfoot the holy Blood wherewith we were sanctified, freshly crucifying and putting to an open shame the Christ who loved us and on Calvary gave Himself as our substitute.Personally, we have no objection to affiliating with Christians of other denominations. We have done that since the day when our college life commenced. We made deliberate choice of a college of another denomination for education, and have never had occasion to regret it. In our first pastorate we planned and led a movement for a union meeting of all the churches in the city, under Mr.

Moody. Twenty-three years ago we founded the Northwestern Bible Training School on an interdenominational, though strictly evangelical basis.

The choicest friends we have in the world, the best beloved brethren I have in Christ, belong quite as often to fellowships that wear other denominational labels as they belong to my own.But we could not consent to that wider movement, the Inter-church, in which special loyalty to the authority of the Bible was demanded of no initiate; confidence in the Virgin Birth was not required of any participant; trust in Calvary’s Blood was never so much as mentioned among its leaders, and the Scriptural Return of the Lord Jesus was more often excoriated and scoffed than it was entertained as that “Blessed Hope” which the Bible describes.The century is one of peculiar personal freedom! Men who want to do so may go on making their contributions of time and thought and cash to churches, Y.M.C.A’.s, colleges, universities, theological seminaries, and the rest, without so much as asking for what they stand; but as for us, our time, our thought, our money must follow our conviction, and only those individuals, those enterprises and institutions that hold to the utter authority of the Bible, the certain Deity of Christ and the final fulfillment of prophetic Scripture, can receive the same.In my reading recently I came upon a thought that is worthy of consideration. The crisis hour to which we have come will admit of no false movements. Since the morning stars sang together, the ages have seen no moments of such importance, and such divergence as the present. Men who think correctly now will have part and lot in placing the crown of authority destined for the brow of Christ; the men who think falsely now will put additional thorns in the crown of the suffering Son of God. Men talk about “a civilization as dominated by the Spirit Christ”.

That is not the need of the hour! Civilization that professes to be Christian cannot save, else Germany would not be in mortal agony, enduring the curses of its own unbelieving course and culture.

Any program that proposes the mere exaltation of civilization despises the prophecy of Daniel to the effect that the civilization of this age will yet be ground to powder and driven from the face of the earth as the chaff of the threshing floor scatters with the rising of the evening winds.Opposing prophets now stand at the parting of the ways, and every man must make up his mind to which of them he will pay attention. On the one side we have a prophet of God who, like another John the Baptist, points always to Jesus the Christ; and while pointing to Him, properly names Him “the Lamb of God”. On the other side we have the Modernist, like Pontius Pilate, pointing to the same Man, but seeing in Him none other than Jesus, the son of Joseph and Mary; and His exclamation voices His creed, “Behold the Man”!When John the Baptist said to two of His disciples, “Behold the Lamb of God”, they followed Him and became themselves disciples of Jesus, and devoted servants of His will; and when Pontius Pilate pointed to Him and said, “Behold the Man”, the people that heard him laid hands on Him, took Him out and crucified Him. The centuries have in no sense affected this custom; the people who see in Jesus the Lamb of God the Father’s anointed One, become His true disciples, and the glad servants of His gracious will; but the people who see in Jesus only the man from Nazareth, the example in ethics, the adjudicator of labor difficulties, the moral example to be copied, by their own definition crucify Him afresh and put Him to an open shame. The first are the true representatives of Christ and the Church; the second are the exponents of modern civilization and culture. The first preach at home and abroad for the purpose of making converts to Christ by the regeneration of the Holy Ghost; and the second enter the same fields for the purpose of advancing civilization, affecting a world-improvement and giving the crown to accomplishment in the name of Christianity.Choose ye this day which you will have!

Tomorrow your time of choice will have passed and the clear cry of the advancing Christ will have brought this age to an end, disproving the false philosophies of those who scorn His promised Return, to establish in the world a reign of righteousness, produced not by the propagation of culture but by the personal rulership of the Lord Himself. In that day two great classes will be found.

One of them will ascend into the air to meet the Lord, drawn up by the affinities of a mutual affection; and the other will be found face buried in the dust of the very world they thought to improve, and their cry will not be to the crowned Lord, but rather to the rocks and mountains, “Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb”.