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Posted by Cecil Spivey on January 02, 19103 at 12:50:46:
THAT BLESSED HOPE
We wish all of our readers a blessed New Year. For believers in Christ it will be the most blessed of all if this year turns out to be the year of our Lord's coming for His own.
How long the present dispensation of grace will be prolonged we do not, and cannot, know. Even St. Paul, who was commissioned to make known the glorious truth of the rapture of the Church, did not know. He never dreamed that God would linger in mercy for more than 1900 years, for in I Thes. 4:16-18 he says: "We who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall be caught up." Thus instructed Bible-believers in every generation since his day have rightly been on the alert for their Lord to come for them, for they know that "the days are evil" and every hour is an hour of grace.
To the Philippians the Apostle wrote: "We look for the Savior," to the Thessalonians: "[Ye]. Wait for His [God's] Son from heaven," and to Titus he says that we should be "looking for that blessed hope, and the appearing in glory of...our Savior, Jesus Christ" (Phil. 3:20; I Thes. 1:9,10; Tit. 2:11-13).
With the Lord's coming and the close of "the dispensation of the grace of God" so much nearer than it was in Paul's day, we say to the unsaved:
"Receive not the grace of God in vain. ...Behold, NOW is the accepted time; behold NOW is the day of salvation" (II Cor. 6: 1,2).
And to the saved we say: "Buy up the time," take advantage of every opportunity to win the lost to Christ, for "the days are evil" (Eph. 5:16) and the day of grace may soon be brought to a close.