Are you ready for the end of time?

 

Here the length, and breath of Christianity!

To Be A True Christian Will Cost You

J.C. Ryle was a bishop of Liverpool. He has many amazing writing that one would enjoy. He was a prolific writer on many levels and leader in the church. One of my favorite quotes is

quote pulled from http://www.graceonlinelibrary.org/christian-life/the-cost-of-being-a-true-christian-by-j-c-ryle/ church, is cheap and easy work. But to hear Christ’s voice, follow Christ, believe in Christ, and confess Christ, requires much self-denial. It will cost us our sins, our self-righteousness, our ease, and our worldliness. All must be given up. We must fight an enemy who comes against us with thousands of followers. We must build a tower in troubled times. Our Lord Jesus Christ would have us thoroughly understand this. He bids us “count the cost.” – J.C. Ryle

pulled from http://www.graceonlinelibrary.org/christian-life/the-cost-of-being-a-true-christian-by-j-c-ryle/

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The reader of this volume will probably observe that some of the thoughts

and ideas are occasionally repeated. They will kindly remember that this

arises from the sermons which comprise it having been delivered at different

places, and at long intervals. I have thought it best and wisest, for many

reasons, to reprint them without alteration.

J C Ryle

Stradbroke Vicarage, August 1867


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If any one asks me what my prophetical opinions are, I am quite ready

to give him an answer. Cautious and doubtful as I feel on some points, there

are certain great principles about which I have fully made up my mind. I

have held by them firmly for many years, and have never had my opinion

shaken about them. I have lived in the belief of them for more than a third of

a century, and in the belief of them I hope to die. 
The older I grow, the more do I feel convinced of their truth,

 and the more satisfied am I that no other principles can explain the state of the Church and the world.

One thing only I wish to premise, before making my statement. 

The reader must distinctly understand that I do not put forth my prophetical

views as articles of faith, but only as my private opinions. I do not say that

nobody can be saved who does not agree with me about prophecy. I am not

infallible. I am very sensible that holier and better men than myself do not 

 see these subjects with my eyes, and think me utterly mistaken. I condemn

nobody; I judge nobody. I only ask liberty to hold and state distinctly my

own views. The day will decide who is right. It is the new heart, and faith

in Christ’s blood, which are absolutely necessary to salvation. The man who

knows these two things experimentally may be wrong about prophecy, but

he will not miss heaven.

The following, then, are the chief articles of my prophetical creed:

1.

I believe that the world will never be completely converted to Christianity

by any existing agency, before the end comes. In spite of all that can be

done by ministers, churches, schools and missions, the wheat and tares

will grow together until the harvest; and when the end comes, it will

find the earth in much the same state that it was when the flood came in

the days of Noah (Matt. 13:24-30; 24:37-39).

2.

I believe that the widespread unbelief, indifference, formalism and

wickedness, which are to be seen throughout Christendom, are only

what we are taught to expect in God’s Word. Troublesome  times, departures

from the faith, evil men waxing worse and worse, love waxing cold, are

things distinctly predicted. So far from making me doubt the truth of

Christianity, they help to confirm my faith. Melancholy and sorrowful

as the sight is, if I did not see it I should think the Bible was not true

(Matt. 24:12; 1 Tim. 4:1; 2 Tim. 3: 1, 4, 13).

3.

I believe that the grand purpose of the present dispensation is to gather

out of the world an elect people, and not to convert all mankind. It

does not surprise me at all to hear that the heathen are not all converted

when missionaries preach, and that believers are but a little flock in any

congregation in my own land. It is precisely the state of things which I

expect to find. The gospel is to be preached ‘as a witness’, and then shall

the end come. This is the dispensation of election, and not of universal

conversion (Acts 15:14; Matt 24:14).

4.

I believe that the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ is the great

event which will wind up the present dispensation, and for which we

ought daily to long and pray. ‘Thy kingdom come’, ‘Come, Lord Jesus’,

should be our daily prayer. We look backward, if we have faith, to Christ

dying on the cross, and we ought to look forward no less, if we have

hope, to Christ coming again (John 14:3; 2 Tim. 4:8; 2 Peter 3:12)

5.

I believe that the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ will be a real,

literal, personal, bodily coming; and that as He went away in the clouds

of heaven with His body, before the eyes of men, so in like manner He

will return (Acts 1:11).

6.

I believe that after our Lord Jesus Christ comes again, the earth shall be

renewed, and the curse removed; the devil shall be bound, the godly shall

be rewarded, the wicked shall be punished; and that before He comes

there shall be neither resurrection, judgment, nor millennium, and that

not till after He comes shall the earth be filled with the knowledge of the

glory of the Lord (Acts 3:21; Isa. 25:6-0; 1 Thess. 4: 14-18; Rev. 20: 1 etc).

7.

I believe that the Jews shall ultimately be gathered again as a separate

nation, restored to their own land, and converted to the faith of Christ,

after going through great tribulation (Jer. 30:10, 11; 31:10; Rom. 11:25, 26;

Dan. 12:1; Zech. 13: 8, 9).

8.

I believe that the literal sense of the Old Testament prophecies has been

far too much neglected by the Churches, and is far too much neglected

at the present day, and that under the mistaken system of spiritualising

and accommodating Bible language, Christians have too often completely

missed its meaning (Luke 24: 25, 26).

9.

I do not believe that the preterist scheme of interpreting the Apocalypse,

which regards the book as almost entirely fulfilled

or the futurist scheme,which regards it as almost entirely unfulfilled

, are either of them to beimplicitly followed. The truth, I expect, will be found to lie between the two.

10.

 I believe that the Roman Catholic Church is the great predicted apostasy

from the faith, and is Babylon and Antichrist, although I think it highly

probably that a more complete development of Antichrist will yet be

exhibited to the world (2 Thess. 2:3-11; 1 Tim. 4:1-3).

11. 

Finally, I believe that it is for the safety, happiness and comfort of all true

Christians, to expect as little as possible from churches or governments

under the present dispensation, to hold themselves ready for tremendous

convulsions and changes of all things established, and to expect their

good things only from Christ’s second advent.

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The student of prophecy will see at a glance that there are many subjects

on which I abstain from giving an opinion.

About the precise time when the present dispensation will end, about

the manner in which the heathen will be converted, about the mode in

which the Jews will be restored to their own land, about the burning up

of the earth, about the first resurrection, about the rapture of the saints,

about the distinction between the appearing and the coming of Christ, about

the future siege of Jerusalem and the last tribulation of the Jews, about the

binding of Satan before the millennium begins, about the duration of the

millennium, about the loosing of Satan at the end of the thousand years, about

the destruction of God and Magog, about the precise nature and position of

the new Jerusalem, about all these things, I purposely decline expressing my

opinion. I could say something about them all, but it would be little better

than conjecture. I am thankful that others have more light about them than I

have.

 For myself, I feel unable at present to speak positively. If I have learned

anything in studying prophecy, I think I have learned the wisdom of not

‘making haste’ to decide what is true.

I am well aware that the views I have laid down appear to many persons

very gloomy and discouraging. The only answer I make to that charge is this:

Are they scriptural? Are they in accordance with the lessons of history and

experience?

To my mind they certainly are. I see human failure and human

corruption stamped on the conclusion of all dispensations preceding our

own. I see much in the present state of the world to make me expect that the

present dispensation will not end better than those which have gone before.

In short, there seems an inherent tendency to decay in everything that man

touches. There is no such thing as creature perfection. God is teaching that

lesson by all His successive modes of dealing with mankind. There will be no

perfection till the Lord comes. The patriarchal, the Mosaic and the Christian

dispensations all tend to prove this. Those words of Scripture shall yet be

verified, ‘I will overturn, it: and it shall be no more, until he come whose

right it is; and I will give it Him’ (Ezek. 21:27). When the Lord Jesus comes

back to earth, and the tabernacle of God is with men, then will there be

perfection, but not till then. God will have all the glory at last, and all the

world shall confess that without God, man can do nothing. God shall be ‘all

in all’ (1 Cor. 15:28).

The one point on which I desire to fix the eyes of my own soul, is the

second personal coming of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To that ‘blessed

hope and glorious appearing’, I wish, by God’s help, to direct all who read 

 this volume. God forbid that anyone should neglect present duties!

 To sit idly waiting for Christ, and not to attend to the business of our respective

positions, is not Christianity, but fanaticism. 

Let us remember in all our daily employments, that we serve a Master who is coming again

If I can only stir up one Christian to think more of that second coming, and to keep it more prominently before his mind, I feel that the volume will not have been published in vain.

If any one ask me why I have chosen this particular period for the

republication of these prophetical tracts, I think it is sufficient answer to

point to the times in which we live. I do not forget that we are poor judges of

our own days, and are very apt to exaggerate their importance. But I doubt

much whether there ever was a time in the history of our country, when

the horizon on all sides, both political and ecclesiastical, was so thoroughly

black and lowering. In every direction we see men’s hearts ‘failing for fear,

and for looking for those things that seem coming on the earth’. Everything

around us seems unscrewed, loosened and out of joint. The fountains of

the great deep appear to be breaking up. Ancient institutions are tottering,

and ready to fall. Social and ecclesiastical systems are failing, and crumbling

away. Church and State seem alike convulsed to their very foundations, and

what the end of this convulsion may be no man can tell.

Whether the last days of old England have really come, whether her

political greatness is about to pass away, whether her Protestant Church

is about to have her candlestick removed, whether in the coming crash of

nations England is to perish like Amalek, or at length to be saved, and escape

‘so as by fire’, all these are points which I dare not attempt to settle: a very

few years will decide them. But I am sure there never was a time when it

was more imperatively needful to summon believers to ‘cease from man’, to

stand on their watchtowers and to build all their hopes on the second coming

of the Lord.

 Happy is he who has learned to expect little from Parliaments

or Convocations, from Statesmen or from Bishops, and to look steadily for

Christ’s appearing! He is the man who will not be disappointed.