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On: in an hour that ye think not the Son of man cometh
Source quotation · Charles Haddon Spurgeon · Watching for Christ's Coming
When will he come? Ah, that is the question, the question of questions! He will come in his own time. He will come in due time. A brother minister, calling upon me, said, as we sat together, “I should like to ask you a lot of questions about the future.” “Oh, well!” I replied, “I cannot answer you, for I daresay I know no more about it than you do.” “But,” said he, “what about the Lord’s Second Advent? Will there not be the millennium first?” I said, “I cannot tell whether there will be the millennium first; but this I know, the Scripture has left the whole matter, as far as I can see, with an intentional indistinctness, that we may be always expecting Christ to come, and that we may be watching for his coming at any hour and every hour. I think that the millennium will commence after his coming, and not before it. I cannot imagine the kingdom with the King absent. It seems to me to be an essential part of the millennial glory that the King shall then be revealed; at the same time, I am not going to lay down anything definite upon that point. He may not come for a thousand years; he may come to-night. The teaching of Scripture is, first of all, ‘In such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.’ It is clear that, if it were revealed that a thousand years must elapse before he would come, we might very well go to sleep for that time, for we should have no reason to expect that he would come when Scripture told us he would not.”
“Well,” answered my friend, “but when Christ comes, that will be the general judgment, will it not?” Then I quoted these texts, “The dead in Christ shall rise first.” “But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.” I said, “There is a resurrection from among the dead to which the Apostle Paul laboured to attain. We shall all rise; but the righteous shall rise a thousand years before the ungodly. There is to be that interval of time between the one and the other; whether that is the millennial glory, or not, this deponent sayeth not, though he thinks it is. But this is the main point, the Lord shall come. We know not when we are to expect his coming; we are not to lay down, as absolutely fixed, any definite prediction or circumstance that would allow us to go to sleep until that prediction was fulfilled, or that circumstance was apparent.”
Watching for Christ's Coming · Spurgeon Library transcription, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit 39, sermon 2302; header gives delivery 7 April 1889. Selected two complete conversational paragraphs in section I. Web transcription verified, not scan-collated; whitespace normalized.
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2026-09-11T16:24:26+00:00
When will he come? Ah, that is the question, the question of questions! He will come in his own time. He will come in due time. A brother minister, calling upon me, said, as we sat together, “I should like to ask you a lot of questions about the future.” “Oh, well!” I replied, “I cannot answer you, for I daresay I know no more about it than you do.” “But,” said he, “what about the Lord’s Second Advent? Will there not be the millennium first?” I said, “I cannot tell whether there will be the millennium first; but this I know, the Scripture has left the whole matter, as far as I can see, with an intentional indistinctness, that we may be always expecting Christ to come, and that we may be watching for his coming at any hour and every hour. I think that the millennium will commence after his coming, and not before it. I cannot imagine the kingdom with the King absent. It seems to me to be an essential part of the millennial glory that the King shall then be revealed; at the same time, I am not going to lay down anything definite upon that point. He may not come for a thousand years; he may come to-night. The teaching of Scripture is, first of all, ‘In such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.’ It is clear that, if it were revealed that a thousand years must elapse before he would come, we might very well go to sleep for that time, for we should have no reason to expect that he would come when Scripture told us he would not.”
“Well,” answered my friend, “but when Christ comes, that will be the general judgment, will it not?” Then I quoted these texts, “The dead in Christ shall rise first.” “But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.” I said, “There is a resurrection from among the dead to which the Apostle Paul laboured to attain. We shall all rise; but the righteous shall rise a thousand years before the ungodly. There is to be that interval of time between the one and the other; whether that is the millennial glory, or not, this deponent sayeth not, though he thinks it is. But this is the main point, the Lord shall come. We know not when we are to expect his coming; we are not to lay down, as absolutely fixed, any definite prediction or circumstance that would allow us to go to sleep until that prediction was fulfilled, or that circumstance was apparent.”