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This tremendous scene!
Winslow, "The Coming of the Lord, The Crown and Consummation of Spiritual Life"
Pause, then, for a moment, and contemplate, with the eye of faith, or if you
have no faith, with the eye of imagination, this
tremendous scene!
Look at that point, far away in the ethereal regions, where the gradually
lessening form of our Savior disappeared from the gaze of His disciples, when He
ascended to heaven. In that point see an uncommon, but faint and undefined,
brightness just beginning to appear. It has caught the roving eye of yon
careless gazer, and excited his curiosity. He points it out to a second, and a
third. A little circle soon collects, and various are the conjectures which they
form respecting it. Similar circles are formed, and similar objections made, in
a thousand different parts of the world. But conjecture is soon to give place to
certainty; awful, appalling, overwhelming certainty. While they gaze, the
appearance, which had excited their curiosity, rapidly approaches, and still
more rapidly brightens. Some begin to suspect what it may prove; but no one
dares to give utterance to his suspicions.
Meanwhile the light of the sun begins to fade before a brightness superior to
his own. Thousands see their shadows cast in a new direction, and thousands of
hitherto careless eyes look up at once to discover the cause. Full clearly they
see it; and now new hopes and fears begin to agitate their breasts. The
afflicted and persecuted servants of Christ begin to hope that the predicted,
long expected day of their deliverance is arrived. The wicked, the careless, the
unbelieving, begin to fear that the Bible is about to prove no idle tale. And
now fiery shapes, moving like streams of lightning, begin to appear indistinctly
amid the bright, dazzling cloud which comes rushing down as on the wings of a
whirlwind. At length it reaches its destined place. It pauses. Then, suddenly
unfolding, discloses at once a great white throne, where sits; starry,
resplendent, in all the glories of the Godhead; the Man Christ Jesus! Every eye
sees Him; every heart knows Him.
Too well do the wretched, unprepared inhabitants of earth now know what to
expect, and one universal shriek of anguish and despair rises up to heaven, and
is echoed back to earth. But louder, far louder, than the universal cry, now
sounds the last trumpet; and far above all is heard the voice of the Omnipotent,
summoning the dead to arise and come to judgment. New terrors now assail the
living on every side, no, under their very feet, the earth heaves as in
convulsions; graves open, and the dead come forth; while, at the same moment, a
change, equivalent to that occasioned by death, is effected by Almighty power on
the bodies of the living. Their mortal bodies put on immortality, and are thus
prepared to sustain a weight of glory or of wretchedness, which flesh and blood
could not endure. Meanwhile, legions of angels are seen, darting from pole to
pole, gathering together the faithful servants of Christ from the four winds of
heaven, and bearing them aloft to meet the Lord in the air, where He causes them
to be placed at His own right hand, preparatory to the sentence which He is to
award to them, everlasting life.
Christian, if you would gain more and greater victories over the world than you
have ever done, bring this scene often before the eye of your mind, and gaze
upon it until you become blind to all earthly glory. He who gazes long at the
sun becomes unsusceptible of impressions from inferior luminaries; and he who
looks much at the Sun of Righteousness, will be little affected by any alluring
object which the world can exhibit.
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