"There has been much error and fanaticism connected with it." Yes, and with every other Bible doctrine. "˜Trove all things; hold fast that which is good." Most of the heresies of to-day come from the unsanctified learning of Post-millennialists, and most of the worldliness of the churches comes from those who say: "My Lord delayeth His coming."

"˜Well, we know all men must die, and death is the Lord's coming to me."

Two mistakes. It is declared in the New Testament that we shall not all die, but a generation of saints will go like Enoch and Elijah, and no two events stand in stronger contrast than death and our Lord's coming.

"But if I am a Christian shall I not be saved and all right You will be saved, but not all right, for your crown of reward, unless you obey the plain and repeated command to watch.

"The prophecies are mysterious, and I really do not get time to study this subject of the Lord's coming."

About one-third of this whole Bible is prophecy. Will you neglect or slight this third of God's revelation?

Take time, dear brother, from something else of less importance and study this subject now rising into such towering prominence. Stop trying to run the world and all sorts of societies and clubs in the church.

The Jews were reproved again and again for not studying and understanding their own prophecies. Indeed, it was on account of this neglect and blindness that they rejected and crucified the Lord.

A special benediction is pronounced on him that readeth and heareth the great prophetic book of the New Testament. Rev. 1:3. Perhaps if we should put this doctrine into the form of a popular novel and infuse it with heresy, some of our preachers would find time to read it and give it a pulpit boom.

"But it paralyzes missions and cuts the nerve of Christian endeavor."

How can truth paralyze the cause of truth? The proud fiction of taking the world for Christ cannot do as much good as the truth. But the most practical answer to this objection to preaching the Lord's coming can be found in lives, such as those of Spurgeon, Guinness, Muller, Hudson Taylor, and nearly all the evangelists in the world, as well as most of those now going to foreign missions.

"I do not want to make a hobby of it." Very well, but how many times have you preached upon it? do

not know as I have ever done it at all." Then do not fear as yet.

"Well, it makes the gospel a failure and Christianity a defeated power."

If the gospel had promised the conversion of the world in this dispensation, or even any one nation of the world, it would have been a most dismal failure for the last eighteen hundred years.

It promised an election of grace, a Gentile Bride called out of the nations for the Son of God.

It has succeeded in the purpose for which it was sent. Acts 15:14-17; Luke 19:13.

Post-millennarians make the gospel a failure.

Never has any country, city or hamlet been "taken for Christ."

All who labor faithfully to fulfill the Great Commission will attain a triumphant success and a glorious reward.

It is not true among sinners that "all truth has power to authenticate itself." Men do not take the remedy and on this account are lost.

Christ and the Apostles never staked the truth of Christianity on its prevalence. Mohammedanism has made far more rapid progress than Christianity, and Buddhism has far more adherents. A religion may spread, either because of its truth that appeals to the higher nature of man, or because of its error that appeals to his baser nature.

Success is doing your duty. Faithfulness brings the reward. Matt. 25:21.

Let me kindily and earnestly entreat my brethren in the gospel ministry to candidly and prayerfully consider the following reasons for preaching the Coming of the Lord:

1. Christ and the Apostles command us to preach the whole truth, and especially this part of revelation. Acts. 20:26-27; Tit. 2:15; Eev. 22:10.

2. Christ and the Apostles preached it almost constantly, speaking of it in the New Testament more than 300 times. The Apostles preached, not "Jesus and death," but Jesus and the resurrection."

Almost every page presents examples.

The Old Testament speaks of the Second Coming more than ten times as often as of the First Coming. The Apostolic Church held and taught the imminence of the Lord's coming and watched for it. 1 Cor. 1:7; 1 Thess. 1:9-10. They would have doubted the piety of one who did not love his appearing. 2 Tim. 4:8.

3. We sin at a dear rate if for sinister motives we neglect to study and preach this doctrine. Never before was so much clear light thrown upon it, and never before were we so near this grand event. It requires strong willfulness to shut the eyes to this flood of light now overflowing Christendom. Luke 12:47; John 12: 35; Rev. 22:18-19.

Wonderful progress is being made in these last times in the study and interpretation of prophecy.

4. We may well fear a blight on our ministry for this neglect, and we shall certainly suffer loss when the Lord comes, if we are unfaithful heralds of His coming. It is already manifest that the evangelists and ministers who love and preach "That blessed hope" are most blest in winning souls and edifying the body of Christ. They preach a full, rich gospel. The most heavenly man of the Old Testament is Daniel, and of the New Testament the Prophet John, the special prophets of the Lord's Second Coming. Study prayerfully Matt. 7:22-27; 24:48-51; Heb. 9:28; 10:25-37.

May God save us from the fate of those who do not "look for Him," nor "love His Appearing," Who can tell what it will be?

5. This is "present truth"' of ever-increasing moment and fitting adaptation to the times, as "we see the day approaching."

Some truths are always equally important, while others have a special, temporary or local importance. The ministry of Enoch, Noah, Jonah, Lot and John the Baptist pertains to the latter class. As God heralded judgments and warned men through them, so in these "last times" no small part of our ministry should herald,

"The King that comes in mercy;

     The King that comes in might;

To terminate the evil

     And diadem the right."

Matt. 24:45-46; 16:3; 25:6. The Holy Spirit shows us things to come. John 14:26.

6. Preaching the imminence of the Lord's coming is a vehicle of reviving power for the Laodicean church, and of salvation for sinners. Enoch used it with the Ante-diluvian apostates. Jude, 14:15.

If the professing church had been blessed with a faithful ministry and leadership in the teaching and preaching of this "Blessed Hope," it would not have been in its present unbelief and worldliness.

This is emphatically a separating and a purifying hope. It Separates, Consecrates and Concentrates its devotees. I do not know a church in which this blessed hope is faithfully preached and vitally believed that has dancers, card players or theater goers in it, or that would hold a fair, festival or entertainment to raise money.

If anything can arouse the Bride from her slumbers, her frivolity, or from dallying in the lap of the Christ-rejecting would, it must be the advent cries of the coming Bridegroom, Judge and King, scattered all through the New Testament, and surely nothing can arouse the sinner like the solemn proclamation of that day of wrath which will come as a snare, like a thief, like a flash of lightning! "Maranatha" should be our watchword in these last times.

7. This proclamation is a prophetic means of hastening the coming, the crowning and the kingdom. It helps to bring in the Gentile Bride, by stimulating to the fulfillment of the great commission. Matt. 24:14; 2 Pet. 3:12.

Directly contrary to the theory of some who oppose us, or at least fear evil from our doctrine, the preaching of it by pastors, evangelists and missionaries has been used of God as the chief means of reviving the missionary spirit of the present generation. Its rare and reviving power is filling the world with devoted missionaries and loving evangelists. Study it and preach it, my brother.