When we speak of the second coming of the Lord, we mean that the blessed Son of God who came into the world to save sinners, who died for us and was raised from the dead, and who ascended to sit on the right hand of the throne of God in heaven is personally coming again.

Is this fact or fiction? For the answer we turn to the authority of the Word of God—the Holy Scriptures in this issue of Moments for You. It is quite striking (as one who searched it out tells us) that the second coming of Christ is mentioned 318 times in the 260 chapters of the New Testament.

It is important to notice that the Scriptures clearly teach that the second coming of Christ is in TWO ASPECTS. The FIRST ASPECT will be His coming to the air to remove the church from the earth, raise the bodies of all believers who have died, and change all believers to be conformed to His resurrected body of glory. This is "that blessed hope" the apostle Paul refers to in Titus 2:13. This is spoken of in 1 Thessalonians as the coming of the Lord FOR His saints. The SECOND ASPECT of His coming is revealed in the last part of the verse: "And the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ."

There will be seven years of tribulation between these two aspects of the coming of the Lord. Scripture teaches that the church will not go through the tribulation. This and other truths concerning His coming will be found in the following articles.

What I wish to briefly bring before us is the practical bearing the Lord's coming should, and will, have on the believer if we not only hold the truth as to it, but if the truth of His imminent return grips our hearts and directs our lives. It is not so much the event we look for momentarily as it is the looking for HIMSELF, our loving Saviour and Lord!

1. It will purify our lives. "Every man that hath this hope in Him [set upon Him] purifieth himself, even as He is pure" (1 John 3:3).

2. It will sanctify us. (set us apart to Him from the world and its evils) "And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thess. 5:23).

3. It will make us patient and able to endure. "The Husbandman … hath long patience … be ye also patient; stablish your hearts; for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh" (James 5:7,8).

4. It will inspire our zeal. At the end of the chapter about the coming of the Lord in a twinkling of an eye, the exhortation is: "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord" (1 Cor. 15:58).

5. It will comfort the sorrowing. After the revelation of the rapture in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, it says "Wherefore comfort one another with these words" (verse 18).

As to the unsaved, the second coming of Christ should cause an immediate turning to God in repentance, putting faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He may come at any moment. The day of grace will abruptly end. The door to heaven will be closed, and judgment will fall on all who are left on earth, "because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved" (2 Thess. 2:10). May the Lord richly bless the truth presented in this issue to every reader.