The sound of a coming Christ is no new thing to faithful ears, yet it ever carries an edge of awful joy. You cry, "This is the last generation," and I will not stand here to calculate days and seasons, for the Father has kept those in His own power. But this I know: the hour is coming, the hour par excellence, the master hour, when the voice of the archangel and the trump of God shall shatter the silence of every sepulcher. If we are near that hour, and who can say we are not?, then the cry which heaven repeats to a slumbering world is what the prophet thundered long ago: "Return, return, return." O that every soul within earshot would hearken to it!
Think not that you may postpone this business. Life is a vapour; the fever may seize thee, the sudden stroke may lay thee low. The voice of God bids thee return now, this very hour, from thy evil way. What is that evil way? It is the broad road of self-righteousness and unbelief, the path of formal religion without the life of God in the soul. You may have pierced Him by your neglect, by your secret sins, by your cold heart in the pew. Yet still the word sounds: "Return, O backsliding children, for I am married unto you." The Shulamite hears the lower voices crying, "Return, return," and she answers them with her feet as well as her lips. So must you.
But let me pluck another string. The whole Christian life is drawn in one line: coming unto Christ. "To whom coming," says Peter, not, "to whom having come," as though the matter were finished, but a perpetual motion of the soul toward its Lord. If Christ be coming to the world in clouds of glory, how much more must you be coming to Him in daily trust and hourly communion! Come for spiritual food, for cleansing, for garments of righteousness, for everything. The child frets not about the philosophy of coming to its mother; it simply comes, because its heart draws it. So let your soul be drawn with the cords of love to the living Stone, chosen and precious. To come short of this intimate, continual coming is to risk coming short of the promised rest. Be not of those who heard the word but mingled it not with faith; lest, with the wilderness wanderers, your carcass fall and you enter not in.
The last great census shall be taken. The sheep shall be divided from the goats, the counterfeits cast out, the jewels numbered. What a register will that be! How many who now sit in the chief seats may find themselves bidden to take a lower room, and many a weeping penitent who dare not so much as lift his eyes to heaven will be called up higher! "The last will be first, and the first, last." If you feel yourself to be the very chief of sinners, a brand half-burned and nothing worth, yet hear the gospel: the grace of God measures not by your short yardstick. A living faith in Jesus Christ, simple and sincere, saves the soul. That faith is a returning, a coming, a clinging.
Therefore, I charge you, make no delay. Whether this be the last generation or the next, the hour of your own departure ticks on the clock of eternity. The graves are ready, the Judge is at the door. Oh, that you would return! Return from generous profession to heart-felt repentance, from dead works to living faith, from the fading shadows of worldliness to the substance that is in Christ Jesus. Then, when He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, you shall not wail among the kindreds of the earth, but shall lift up your head with joy, for your redemption draweth nigh. Even so, come, Lord Jesus; come in the clouds; and come first in the chariot of Thy saving mercy to this waiting heart.