R.A. Torrey: “The Return of the Lord Jesus”

The truth of our Lord’s return is the most precious truth the Bible contains. It fills the heart of the believer with joy, and girds him with strength for the battle. It lifts him above the sorrows and fears and necessities and trials and ambitions and creed of the world and makes him in all things more than conqueror.

The coming again of Jesus Christ is the one doctrine with which God commands us to comfort sorrowing saints. There is no other truth which has such comfort in it for intelligent believers when they are called upon to pass through deep sorrow as that of the return of the Lord and what it involves for us and for those who have fallen asleep. Time and again in writing those who have lost for a time those whom they love, I have obeyed God’s commandment and used the truth of our Lord’s return to comfort them, and many have told me afterwards how full of comfort this truth has proven when everything else has failed.

It is clearly revealed in the Word of God that the time is coming when our Lord Jesus, who was once despised and rejected of men, is to be acknowledge as King and rule here on earth. The time is fast hastening when the angel will sound his trumpet, and there shall be great voices in heaven saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and His Christ and He shall reign forever and ever.”

To the true believer, the coming again of Jesus Christ is not something to dread, but it is the brightest hope the future holds for us, and it should be the object of our eager desire and longing anticipation. The last prayer in the Bible is also the cry of every intelligent Christian heart, “Amen; come Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20). Our attitude toward the coming again of Jesus Christ is a good index of our spiritual state.

~ From The Return of the Lord Jesus