The scoffer may say to me:
“All men will die,” but God’s Word assures me, “We shall not all sleep” (1 Cor. 15:5151Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, (1 Corinthians 15:51)). The Lord is coming presently, and those who know Him will pass up into glory without death. I know that men scoff at the idea of the Lord’s coming, just as the child of Edom says in Isaiah 21:11-1211The burden of Dumah. He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? 12The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will inquire, inquire ye: return, come. (Isaiah 21:11‑12).
“Watchman, what of the night?”
Well, what is the night? The night is the time of the absence of Jesus, and the morning will be when He returns. And the Apostle Paul says:
“We are not of the night nor of darkness” (1 Thess. 5:55Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. (1 Thessalonians 5:5)). He calls the Christian a child of light, and of the day. The Christian is in the night, but not of the night: he is of the day, and he is going on to the day.
Now, what do I hear the watchman say, in answer to the scoffer? Listen:
“The morning cometh.”
The morning will surely come, a morning without clouds for every believer, a morning of clear shining after rain. After all the night of sorrow, we look for the coming of the Lord as the Bridegroom of our hearts, and O! what a moment it will be when He comes, and the children of the day rise to meet their Lord in the air. O, happy saints! blessed are ye who belong to the Lord, and are of the day. The apostle, in writing to the Romans can say:
The Apostle does not mean that we are more sure about being saved, but that the hour of our deliverance out of this scene, body, soul, and spirit, is nearer than when we believed. The Lord is about to take us to the place to which we belong. Where does a Christian belong? To heaven. Where does a man of the world belong? To earth. Ah, but, you say, if I were to admit that I belong to heaven, I should have to shake off a good deal of the world. Well, that would do you no harm. It is a very good thing for a man who is running a race to shake off a hindrance.
Would that we could see clearly that the Christian belongs to heaven, to Christ, who is there, and that he is not of the night, but is a child of light, and belongs to the day. He is looking for the morning, and he is fitted for it by his Saviour’s work.
Now that the night is far spent, and the day so near at hand, it is high time to awake out of sleep. Why? Because we are going to be judged? No, but because our salvation is nearer than when we believed.