THE LAST THINGS (1)

The Bible bids us look forward to those things specially which certainly are in the future. There are many things in it, of more or less importance, which are to us uncertain, which we cannot foresee. There are three things of supreme importance, which are absolutely certain, which every one may confidently expect. These are included in the comprehensive description, our “latter end.” They are included by theologians under the head of “the last things.” Absolutely certain, waiting every one of us, are Death, and Judgment, and Eternity. And the Bible bids us live our present life in the view and expectation of these supreme realities.

There have always been men who bid us think only of the present; who tell us that to occupy ourselves with the future is folly, is to distract our minds from present duties and enjoyments.

The word of God, however, bids us not only look upward to things unseen, but forward to things yet to come, and regulate our present dispositions, conduct, life with a view to these. And it tells us that this view to supreme realities in the future is one instrument of producing the Divine virtue of wisdom, whose ways are ways of pleasantness, whose paths are paths of peace (Proverbs 3:17), which leads us not merely to temporal comfort and success, but to eternal bliss and glory. In truth, the due consideration of our “latter end,” of “the last things,” cannot fail to lead us to the “wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24), must “shut us up to the faith” of Jesus Christ the Saviour. If any man has not believed, it is on this account, among others, that he has not duly considered Death, and Judgment, and Eternity.

1. Death

(1) “It is appointed unto men once to die” (Hebrews 9:27). This is one great fact in the future history of one and all of us. Our soul must part from our body. We must part from the world. We must face the king of terrors. We must pass through the dark valley of his shadow. Wisdom, prudence, commonsense declare, that our life is a madness unless we are prepared to die; for life is uncertain, death is certain.

(2) According as we live, so we shall die. In one way or other we are all preparing, we are prepared to die our death; we are making the death that is before us; either weaving for him a thorny crown of terror, or weaving for him a flowery crown of festive gladness. On the one hand, there is the death of the wicked, crowned with terrors, robed in darkness, dragging them away from their only life, and laying them, spiritually dead, beneath the lightning bolts of an angry God: this death they have prepared for themselves (Proverbs 1:24-31). On the other hand, there is the death of the righteous (Numbers 23:10), invested with a certain shadowy awe and darkness to their flesh and blood, but robed with gladness, crowned with flowers, to their spirits. He has no power to injure them (Romans 8:38, 39); he has been conquered by their Redeemer (1 Corinthians 15:55-57); he does but lead them, as the Redeemer’s servant, through a dark valley (Psalm 23:4), and lay them gently asleep (1 Corinthians 15:6-13), on the bosom of a reconciled God, lull them into a sleep from which they instantly awaken to the joys of paradise (Luke 23:43). This death they have prepared for themselves, by believing in Christ, taking Him for their ever-living Redeemer (Job 19:27); by dwelling in Christ, and having Christ dwelling in them, who is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25), in whose service death becomes but the messenger to call the children home (Luke 2:29, 30).

(3) The date of our death is ordinarily uncertain, though comparatively near. It is near comparatively, in comparison with the whole duration- of our being as eternal, even though many should reach the three-score and ten, or four-score years or more of extreme old age. And though we were to live a thousand years, that old age itself, our whole time on earth, would be but a span, “a parenthesis between two eternities”; our life on earth would be but a shadow, a breath, in comparison with that eternal existence on which we enter at its close. The mountain looks large when I am at its foot; at a few miles’ distance, it begins to dwindle; seen from the moon, it is no larger than a mole-hill; looked for from the distance of the fixed stars, it has altogether disappeared. So, as seen from the eternal world, the space between our cradle and our grave is but a step, a line; our life is but an instant, in which we linger on the shore, and look upon the rower that is coming to bear us away on the shore-less ocean. But, short though it be, the life that is given us is supremely important. It is the only opportunity we have of preparing for death, and all that lies beyond. “Behold, now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). Surely it is our only true wisdom to be duly prepared for death, by being in Christ, and having Christ in us, who has conquered death; to be earnest and instant in the work, for “the work is great, and the time is short, and the Master is at hand.”

The date is uncertain. Like all other things, it is certainly foreknown, because foreordained by God (Psalm 31:15). But ordinarily, the precise date of our death is hid from ourselves (Matthew 24:42-44). He may come at any instant. Not only the old man, but the middle-aged, the youth, the child, may be called hence in a year, a week, a day, an hour. Consequently, we ought to be always ready for death, i.e., always in Christ, the resurrection and the life; so that, come when he may, we may be ready, he may lead us from a sorrowful mortality to a joyful immortality (Matthew 25:6-13).

We ought to sit loose to the world; to be as warriors in the field, in the face of the enemy, sleeping on their arms, ready to spring up full armed at any instant when the battle-cry may sound; not like the base scum of camps, who tarry by the spoil, and load themselves like thieves, and gorge themselves like vultures, and in so doing lay themselves open and helpless to the sword and the terror of the foe (Luke 12:6-21).

James MacGregor

[James MacGregor (1830-1894) was a Free Church minister and Professor of Theology at New College, Edinburgh (1868-1881). This is from his Christian Doctrine (1861)]