Glorification

"Who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory" (Phil. 2, 21 R. V.).

What is the end of the age for the church of Jesus Christ? What is the completion of God's purpose for her here? What does the Word of God teach concerning that end? We answer, first, that

The End of the Age for the Church is not the

Conversion of the World.

The absolute silence of the New Testament as to such conversion of the world in this age can have but one significance. There is none such taught because there will be none such. If the world is converted when Christ comes, why do the tribes of the earth mourn because of that coming? (Matt. 24:30). If the world is converted when Christ comes why do the kings of the earth, and the great men and the rich men, bondmen and freemen call on the mountains and rocks to fall upon them and hide them from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb? (Rev. 6:16). If the world is converted at the end of the age why does Paul say that the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven in flaming fire taking vengeance on

them that know not God, and punishing them with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord? (2 Thess. 1:7-9). If the world is saved at the end of the age why is it that “the wicked shall do wickedly"; that "evil men shall wax worse and worse," and that "iniquity shall abound," that is, overflow like the waves of the sea? Is this a description of a converted earth? The days of Noah were days of a wicked world in which in judgment "the flood came and took them all away." But Jesus says "so shall it also be at the coming of the Son of Man" (Matt. 24: 37-38). Surely the picture here is anything else than that of a converted world. If the world is saved when Christ comes again, why is it said that wicked men "blasphemed the God of heaven" and "repented not" of their murders, sorceries and other grievous sins? (Rev. 9:21). Why do the tares which the Lord says are the "children of the evil one," exist clear down to the end of the age if the world is converted at that time? If the world is converted when our Lord comes why does that converted world send the saints of God then upon the earth through the fiercest persecution that has crimsoned the earth since it came from the creative hand of God? (Mark 13:19). The reign of Bloody Mary, the horrors of the Inquisition, the martyrdoms of Rome's Colosseum, the Armenian massacres, when a hundred thousand saints went to God, all these pale before the tribulation which comes upon the saints of God in the age-end at the hands of

this converted world! Nay, the end of the age for the church does not bring the conversion of the world. "Christ for the world" is a great truth, for it is the truth of world-wide evangelization. But "the world for Christ" in this age is not true: for it is the error of world-wide conversion. The end of the age finds the condition of the world described in one word. That word is "mixture." Not the church merging into a converted world, but taken out from a wicked world. Not the good swallowing up the evil, but co-existing with it down to the very end of the age. Not the tares purged from the wheat but growing together with it until the time of the harvest. And "the harvest is the end of the age," says the Master. So until that end this mixture shall continue. Evil men shall wax "worse and worse." Inquity shall abound. There is not a shadow of teaching either from the lips of the Lord Jesus in the gospels or from the pen of the writers of the epistles that the Lord at His coming again shall find such a converted world. On the contrary:

And the end of the age the Lord Jesus comes again for the glorification and translation of the church out from the world into heaven to be “forever with the Lord."

The End of the Age for the Church is—

GLORIFICATION.

When the summer sunrise is flooding the heavens with crimson glory and bathing with radiance every face upturned toward it, each broad band of blue and gold which it flings athwart the painted sky points to one focal spot upon the horizon upon which all eyes are centered the spot at which the rising sun itself is about to burst forth in all its morning majesty and splendor. Likewise is this Book of God filled with myriads of glory-texts. They are the blue and gold light-bands of the Word, for they speak of Royalty and Kingship soon to come. Flooding with fore-glory the pages of the Book they all point forward to one focal spot of splendor upon God's horizon of the end-time upon which all eyes are centered. And that spot is the appearing again of the Lord Jesus Christ. He comes in glory and when He so comes His church is to be glorified with Him. Among the many teaching passages upon this vital theme are I Thess. 4: 13-18, and 1 Cor. 15: 50-58. Parts of both are here appended for our careful study.

But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.