What a wonderful time of continual revival it will be! But that much abused word "revival" will have its sweet, original meaning restored. It will mean a re-living, a new life of the Spirit coming, that will naturally include the body, too.
Such are the events, near and far, which some day will come up over the horizon of our common life, ushering in a new day. And we are bidden by our Lord Jesus to _watch_. We watch for Him, and for anything that tells us His coming is nearing.
Watching means wakefulness, an ideal, a purpose, an expectancy, and a daily life under the control of wakefulness, ideal, purpose, and expectancy. That our Lord Jesus will actually come to this old earth and reign, this is the ideal. That we shall, by grace, be true to Him in everything, day by day, during this waiting-time, this is the purpose. That _we_ shall indeed see Him come, and be caught up into His presence without death, this is the expectancy.
That this shall all be a real thing to us, _controlling_ all our relationships, our gold, and our life, and that we shall reverently, thoughtfully seek to understand what He has told us about it, this is the wakefulness. This is what watching means. Our bodies may be asleep, our brains and hands absorbed in the day's task, but our hearts can be awake for the sound ahead of the coming of His feet.
"But how can you watch for Him if there are intervening events?" So the question came to me this summer by a thoughtful, godly minister who looks for His coming. And I said: "Because His coming is one of a little group of events which cluster about His coming."
The crowd stands watching at the railway station in England to see the king's train come in. Yet they know that before it comes the pilot-engine will come, running ahead about so many minutes to insure the safety of the way. The coming of the pilot-engine heightens the intensity of watching, for now soon the king will come.
The watcher in the sick-chamber, weary with the long night's anxious vigil, goes to the east window to see if day is coming. There comes a bare lighting-up in the east, just a slight lessening of the darkness that is everywhere. But even this much brings a sigh of relief. The sun itself may not be seen for two hours or more. But you know without looking at the clock that the sun is coming and is near. Its presence near sends the light far ahead.