ONE IS TAKEN AND ONE IS LEFT
By
D. M. PANTON
THE
appalling fall in the Churches today, the all but universal undermining of
belief in the Word of God, the advance in all nations of an ever-growing
lawlessness; these are but some of the symptoms that remind us of our Lord's
words:- "When
these things begin to come to pass, LOOK UP, and
lift up your heads" (Luke 21:28).
Look up for what? A rending heaven, and
a descending Christ. And the Lord gives
what He reveals as a peculiarly convincing proof of a closing crisis. "When the [fig tree's] branch
is now tender" - when
ESCAPE
Now,
the Lord gives us a studied simile, revealing once again that God acts on
identical principles in different ages, so that what He has done
is a photograph of what He will do. "As were the days
of Noah, so shall be the presence of the Son of Man." The deliverance in Noah’s day was double. "By faith Enoch
was translated that he should not see death; and he was not found, because God
translated him" (Heb. 11: 5). There was
a complete and miraculous heavenly disappearance before the world-wide judgment
of the Flood came. But there was another deliverance in an earthly escape. "The long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while
the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved through
water?" (1
Pet. 3: 20). So, our Lord says, it will be again. The faithful of God’s earthly people,
ONE TAKEN
So
now we arrive at the extraordinary act of God which He is about to repeat. "Then shall two
men be in the field;* one is taken, and one is left: two women shall be grinding at
the mill; one is taken, and one is left" (Matt.
24: 40). Obviously, their
disappearance takes place before the Tribulation judgments have devastated
earth’s fields and harvests, and while ordinary business engagements - in the
field or in the factory are going their normal round. We are at once startled by the complete
passivity of those removed. In
counselling
[* A "Field"
in Scripture, (according to our Lord’s interpretation of "the tares of the field" (Matt.
13: 38), is "the world".
"He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; the field is the
world."
**
"The abomination of desolation," is to
stand in "the holy place". That is, in the
UNWARNED
And
the consequences will be just as blank as in the olden days. The disappearance will no more startle the
godless from their eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, than
the world trembled at the disappearance of Enoch or the
HUMBLE BELIEVERS
For
us the removal is full of extraordinary instruction. Most significant is it that our Lord draws the
rapt from the humblest classes - farm labourers and peasant women. "Hearken, my
beloved brethren, hath not God chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith,
and heirs of the kingdom which he promised to them that love him"*
(Jas. 2 : 5). And it is no mass removal: in this field, a
man is gone; in that home, a woman that is all. And mentally, at the moment, they are utterly
unprepared had they known the day, they would have gathered assemblies of the
saints for prayer; had they known the hour, they would have been on their knees
on the field and in the allotment. Luke’s
example is still more significant: "there shall be
two on one bed"; a married couple, asleep, and suddenly one is
gone.
[* To love God is to obey His commands: "Abide ye in my love. If
ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even
as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love" (John 15: 10). Dear ‘brother,’ can you not see
that this promise is conditional? ]
WATCH
The
lesson our Lord Himself draws becomes overwhelming. "Watch therefore:
for ye know not on what day your Lord cometh"; "your Lord"; that
is, both him in the field and she at the mill are both servants of Christ
needing to be forever watchful. It is
vital to remember that to ‘watch’ is far more
than to hold Second Advent truth: it is to square all our life to the
Judgment Seat of Christ. The removal
is no act of sovereign grace, for their ignorance of the date would be totally
immaterial, as it would depend solely on our conversion; whereas ignorance of
the date can be met solely by perpetual readiness. So our Lord says :-
"Be ye also READY; for in an hour that ye
think not the Son of man cometh" (Matt.
24: 44).
DENIAL OF THE
ADVENT
So
now we face the gravity of the facts today. The signs around us today simply palpitate
with the imminence of the Advent; at any moment the removal may happen; the
whole world is conscious of imminent crisis. Yet what is the attitude of the Church? In almost all the groups of the Church, it
is a scattered minority only that await the return of
the Lord; and the immense majority deny any such return of Christ at all. A Bishop has expressed it thus: "I hate it on three grounds: first, it is pessimism; second, it
disturbs and divides our people; and third, it cuts the nerve of missions".
And to cloud and darken it still
further, the great majority of prophetic students, while thoroughly fundamental
and evangelical, openly and studiedly deny that watchfulness has anything to
do with rapture: either conversion is the sole qualification; or else they
assume that none of us will escape the most awful Tribulation the world has
ever known, or ever will know.
CONDITIONS OF
RAPTURE
Our
whole lives, therefore, should be controlled by the conditions of rapture
given by our Lord. Three signal
Scriptures assert, broadly, deeply, decisively, that a set attitude of
watchfulness is essential for the disciple's disappearance. Our Lord invokes us to continual prayer
for rapture. He says:- "Take heed to
yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting
and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.
... Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that
ye, may be accounted worthy to escape all these things
that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man" (Luke 21: 34 A.V.). To pray for that of which we are already
possessed is unbelief: to assume our certainty of rapture is to make this
prayer of our Lord unprayable. Again, our Lord explicitly promises
deliverance to a watchful disciple. He says:-
"Because they didst keep the word of my
patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of trial, that hour which is to come
upon the whole world to try them that dwelt upon the earth. I
come quickly" (Rev. 3: 10).
On the Philadelphian Angel’s having kept "the word of His
patience" - the Lord's delaying of His Advent - Christ lodges the
sole and entire reason of the Angel’s removal. This is in beautiful keeping with Enoch’s
experience. "God translated him: for before his translation
he hath had witness borne to him that he had been well-pleasing unto
God" (Heb. 11: 5). Again, our Lord levels a solemn warning
at the unspiritual disciple. He says:- "Blessed is that servant, whom his Lord when He cometh shall
find so doing. Of a truth I say unto
you, that He will set him over all that He hath. But if that
servant" - the same
man - "shall say in his heart, My Lord delayeth
his coming; and shall begin to beat the menservants and the maidservants, and
to eat and drink, and to be drunken; the Lord of that servant shall come in
a day when he expecteth not, and in an hour when he
knoweth not" (Luke 12:
46). What this means is seen by
our Lord’s word to the Sardian Angel:- "If therefore thou shall not
watch, I will come as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour
I will arrive over thee" (Rev. 3: 3). The peril is an unconscious survival, unrapt, into the Great Tribulation. COULD ANY TRUTH BE MORE POWERFUL TO MAKE US
SQUARE OUR WHOLE LIFE TO THE ADVENT?
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