d, unlimited living; and because this
desire in all its full accomplishment can come and the first notes
of infinite triumph alone be struck and the song begin by the Coming
of our Lord Jesus Christ--I preach His Second Coming.

VIII

The Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ for His Church is the Most
Imminent Event on the Horizon of Time

BETWEEN us and the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in glory to Mount
Zion to set up and establish His kingdom there are many predicted
and consecutively fixed events.

Between us and the moment when our Lord shall suddenly and secretly
descend to take the Church to Himself into the place prepared, hold
her in security above the woe hour coming on all them that dwell on
the face of the earth and then bring her back to reign and rule with
Him in glory, there is not a single, predicted event; and this--in
the very nature of the case.

In the nature of the case because this age in which we live is a
parenthesis between the kingdom postponed upon the one side and the
kingdom to be brought in upon the other.

In this age God is not seeking to convert the world, but to take out
of it a people for His Name.

It is an age of selection and therefore an age of election.

When you take some things out of the midst of other things there
will be, not only a first one, but necessarily a last one.

As there was a first one elected, called out and taken into union
with a risen Lord, so must there be a last one who shall be called
through the Gospel, quickened by the Spirit and bound up in
indissoluble union with a living Lord.

When that last one is called and responds to the life-giving power
of the Spirit the Lord will descend into the upper air and take the
completed and corporate Church to Himself--the dead raised, the
living changed.

When that last elect one will be called you do not know, it is not
known to a single soul on earth.

Since you do not know when the last elect of God shall be called,
and it is sure the Lord will come when that last elect one is
called, then you do not know when the Lord will come; and so far as
you are concerned, and so far as any revelation otherwise is given,
it may be any hour and, therefore, "any moment"; consequently the
Coming of the Lord for His Church is--imminent.

Thus the imminency of the Lord's Coming for His Church is grounded
on election.

Imminency is so absolutely linked up with election that you cannot
deny imminency without