2 Thessalonians 2:1 Now we beseech you, brothers, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together to him, 1. The exact word occurs only again in Hebrews 10:25, and that gathering is typical of this. When we meet in the House of God, for prayer, praise, instruction and communion, we are practising for that other gathering, which shall be perfect. The verb, however, occurs in two other places: one is where our Lord reminds Jerusalem how He would have gathered her children together. That idea of safe keeping, cherishing under the wing of the mother, is involved in the "gathering" of the Second Advent. The other text is Mark 13:27, the interpretation of the text before us. 2. The text is used not as a terror but as an attraction. "We beseech you by it," as those who would not part with it for their life. The Advent, as a regathering, is full of consolation. But it implies — I. DISPERSION. There are senses in which this is tolerable. The severance of nations by dividing seas and deserts, and by the Babel judgment of divided tongues, is no affliction. It is as a type that we must read it to enter into its significance for sorrow. 1. It tells of sons and mothers parted for a lifetime by calls of duty or self-made necessities; of friends closer than brothers bidding each other a long farewell at a noisy station or a sea-washed pier; of vows of lifelong friendship broken in sudden passion; of discords which a breath would have healed; hence severance. 2. There is a dispersion of divided tongues concerning Christ in God's behalf. Men made offenders for a word; men unable to read in identical phrase some microscopic doctrine; men, kneeling in the name of one Saviour, imputing wilful blindness to one another. 3. Then the uncharitableness of individual men must be made the watchwords and heirlooms of parties and Churches. Creeds and articles must adopt the quarrel, and anathematize the deviation as a crime. So Christ's house is divided. 4. Behind and beneath all these dispersions there lurks the giant disperser, Death. Those unaffected by the other dispersions are all doomed to suffer from this. 5. But the greatest is sin. Brothers and friends may part and not part; even in this life they may be divided, and yet know that they have one home and Father. But sin divides even in its joining. Where sin is there is selfishness, and selfishness is severance. II. THE REGATHERING. To Paul, and to all whose hearts are large and deep, there was a peculiar charm in the thought of this. "I beseech you," as though no motive could be more persuasive. 1. The scene thus opened is august even to oppressiveness. Expanded from one end of heaven to the other, enhanced by multiplication of generations, till it has embraced all the living and dead who have possessed the one Divine faith which makes the communion of saints, it overwhelms and baffles the soul's gaze. 2. But we must seek to refine and decarnalize our conceptions. "There is a spiritual body," doubtless like that of the risen Jesus which entered the room whose doors were shut. We must reassure ourselves by thoughts of the possibility of a communion in which mind shall touch mind, and spirit breathe into spirit, and soul kindle soul with no cumbersome machineries or limiting measurements. 3. Even now we feel within ourselves an instinct of the regathering. There are those who profess to have the key of death, and to hold commerce with the departed. We could better believe them if we found in their supposed communications profiting or solemnity. But the instinct of reunion is there; we read it even in its follies. 4. Still more do we long and yearn in ourselves for that kind of union which can come only to the immortal. Here we meet and part with a sense of unrest which leaves us to the end hungry and desolate. To the friend of our souls we cannot say one half of what we meant to say, and that was not fully understood. Our love he read not, and our passing humours he took as a changed affection. But then friend shall meet friend in absolute oneness, knowing as known, because loved as loving. 5. The condition is "unto Him." There are many human heavens for one Divine. We picture to ourselves a future bright with earth's joys, and cloudless of earth's troubles; but have we remembered that "the light thereof" is the Lamb. The promise of the text is vocal only to the Christian. Conclusion: Make now the great decision. If we will here trifle together, live for the world, neglect Christ, mock at sin, we must look abroad for some other hope: there is none for us in the gospel. The Advent regathering is for those only who in life "have loved the appearing." (Dean Vaughan.) Parallel Verses KJV: Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, |
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