Crisis, climax zero hour, the crash! Is that how it is to be? Is there something catastrophic round the corner? Are we sitting on a volcano grumbling to erupt? But isn't it all very stupid to talk like that? 

Scaremongering is a mean business and we want none of it. Yet - and this is a remarkable thing - if you were to confide your fears to the man in the street, he wouldn’t think you mad! He is very worried himself when he thinks about it. The press, TV and radio pour the whole wretched story of a chaotic world into our laps. We cannot escape it. The violent insanity of our age threatens to undo civilisation and throw us back to an early barbarism where high principle, moral standards, common civility and God himself have no meaning. History, of course, is a series of crises. That’s how we fix dates in our mind. Crises tumble one on another thick and fast, or history books would be as stuffy as the multiplication table.

 Is something quite extraordinary likely to happen in our time - a crisis of crises? If we try to interpret history, one guess is as good as another: and if we try to piece the confusing bits of current events together to make a pattern, we get nowhere. Are we entirely at the mercy of human wisdom to discern the future - man’s wisdom has proved pretty threadbare - or is there some authoritative source to enlighten our poor, bewildered minds about what it is all coming too? Yes, GOD! From Adam onwards God has divulged His secrets to men He could trust. God told His prophets in the Old Testament, who in turn told the people, of sure and certain eventualities. The people for the most part could not have cared less. They ridiculed the communications as the fantasy of disordered minds, and did some of God’s prophets to death for their pains. But it all came about just as God had said and passed into history. The fact is, God is not uncommunicative. "Surely the Lord does nothing without revealing His secret to His servants the prophets" (Amos 3:7). But we are born cynics, our inherent belief in a communicating God blinds us to His truth. We stumble on in our darkness, which becomes the more dense by reason of the stupid prejudices we pick up by the way. It is not difficult to believe the words of St. Paul, The god of this world (the devil) has blinded the minds of unbelievers" (2 Cor. 4:4). But the light of God is the answer to the darkness of man. We become intelligent and understanding when we abase ourselves before the God only wise and let Him teach us from His Word, the Holy Scriptures.

1. What Crisis?

Crisis ahead? What crisis will be? It was an hour of crisis for the redemption of the world when Christ stood bound before the high priest of Israel, facing the Cross, and all hell was let loose to destroy Him. Majestic in bearing He spoke in that hour of the big, ultimate crisis of the ages. He told it in simple, unadorned words. The high priest was stunned by His announcement; he was outraged; he rent his rich, high priestly robe and strode from his judgement-seat muttering, "Blasphemy! blasphemy!" It was a candid plain spoken utterance. Christ said, "Hereafter you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven" (Matt. 26:64). The Jewish high priest recognised the context in which the Prisoner had spoken, and that was why he could not believe his ears. That context was Daniel’s prophecy, chapter 7, verses 13 and 14. Listen to the sublime words: "I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came One like the son of man, and He came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him. And to Him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations and languages should serve Him; His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom one that shall not be destroyed." And this itinerant preacher of humble birth was putting Himself into that prophecy! Had He not been accused of making himself God? What wonder that the Jews were crying for His death! But Who is He, this strange Prisoner at the bar? Son of man? Yes, of course. But He claimed to be the Son of God as well! How incontestable the evidence that His claim was true! Listen to how later theologians defined the nature of this Person: "The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin . . . so that two whole and perfect natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided . . .Who truly suffered, was crucified, dead and buried . . . to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for the actual sins of men." So runs Article 2 of the Prayer Book. Then He was beleaguered by His malicious adversaries and hounded to the Cross, but before long He would be "seated at the right hand of power" and one day He would come "on the clouds of heaven!"

"Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God," said Peter on behalf of the disciples (Matt. 16:16), and from that time the Lord opened up more fully to them on His approaching death and its more distant sequel, "For the Son of man is to come with His angels in the glory of His Father" (Matt. 16:27). This coming of His was much in His mind as the cross drew nearer and the days became more sinister. He made it the focal point of some of His parables. Two days before the Cross He discoursed to His disciples on the slopes of Olivet, ". . . then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven . . . and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with the power and great glory" (Matt. 24:30). That lengthy discourse was related in all its parts to this crisis of His descent in power, and He drew it to its conclusion with the words, "when the Son of man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then will He sit on His glorious throne" (Matt. 25:31). These pronouncements of the Eternal Lord can mean nothing but what they say. As He ascended up into heaven from His disciples and was lost to their view, so will He descend from heaven until His feet touch down again on this planet. The bewildered men stared incredulously skyward, as well they might, when their Lord went up. Was it a sudden hallucination or was it really happening? Two angels were sent - "two men in bright apparel" it says - to reassure them and to confirm the long term sequel of what He had told them. "Why do you stand looking into heaven?" they asked. This Jesus, Who was taken up from you into heaven, will come again in the same way as you saw Him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11). In the same way? His own self? Bodily? Visibly? Yes, else words have no meaning.

This crisis is enough to set our little minds reeling! The world will never have known anything like it before. At His first advent on that first Christmas Day, few were in the know. some shepherds, some Eastern sages, and who else? But the whole world will be thunderstruck by His second advent. Nothing will be less expected or more unwelcome! And all will know within hours! "As the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of man be in His day" (Luke 17:24).

"The coming crisis?" we ask. Crisis indeed! Crisis to be followed by many crises. There will be the crisis of His unsparing judgement on sinners, for man cannot get away with it. People who reject God, refuse Christ, despise the gospel, these who are a law unto themselves, will find that, after all, they are accountable to the God to Whom they owe their life, breath and all things. There will be the crisis of Christ’s judgement of the nations. There will be a sorting of them out and without any reference to the UNO, not by superficial judgments of colour and race, democratic or totalitarian, East or West, but a deep probe into motive and attitude which He, Whose eyes are as a flame of fire, will have no difficulty in discerning. There will be the crisis of Christ’s, assumption of earthly power and suppression of all opposition. "Ask of Me," said God to His Son, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession" (Psalm 2:8). He has asked, and received! But He patiently waits in heaven for the time to take possession. The contract was signed and sealed long ago. The Cross redeemed the world to God, and God has donated the whole to the King of His choice, His Son. He comes to reign! There were loud voices in heaven saying, "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever’" (Rev. 11:15). We have prayed, "Thy kingdom come," and come it will with the arrival of the King! Crisis? Crisis indeed! Everything in the hands of the mighty Christ! "All things were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together" (Col. 1:17). Note, everything that exists, exists for Him, and all at the coming crisis, will pass under His control.