Matthew 28:20 Teaching them to observe all things whatever I have commanded you: and, see, I am with you always, even to the end of the world. Amen. This is a factor in the life and work of Christ's Church with which persons do not reckon who look at her only from the outside, and judge of her strength and prospects as they would judge of any human society. They say that she will die out because this or that force, which has, no doubt, weight in the affairs of men, is for the time being telling heavily against her. If large sections of public feeling, or literature, or the public policy of some great country, or the influence of a new and enterprising philosophy, or the bias of a group of powerful minds are against her, forthwith we hear the cry, "The mission of the apostles is coming to an end; the Church of Christ will presently fail!" Do not be in too great a haste, my friends, about this. You have yet to reckon with a force invisible, and perhaps, as far as you are concerned, unsuspected, but never more real, never more operative than it is at this moment. You have forgotten the Presence of Christ. He did not retreat to heaven when His first apostles died; He promised to be with them to the end of time; He spoke not merely to the eleven men before Him, but to the vast multitude of successors who defiled before His eyes down to the utmost limits of the Christian ages: "Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world!" With us by His Spirit; with us in the great sacrament of His love; with us amid weaknesses, divisions, failures, disappointments. He is with us still, and it is His Presence which alone sustains His envoys, and which gives to their work whatever it has had, or has, or has to have, of. Parallel Verses KJV: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen. |
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