“THEN COMES THE END, when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when He shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign, till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For He has put all things under His feet. But when He says all things are put under Him, it is manifest that He is excepted which did put all things under Him. And when all things shall be subdued to Him, then shall the Son also be subject to Him that put all things under Him that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:24-28).
“THEN COMES THE END.” Hallelujah! The end of sin and sorrow, of blood and tears, of pain and death, of bereavement and loneliness, of sickness and isolation, of devilish instruments of war, of bombers killing their thousands of defenceless women and children, the end of unrighteous might on the throne and righteousness persecuted and in prison. Yes, “then comes the end.” Hallelujah!
If ever there was a time when saints are feeling the pressure of the state of the world, it is at the present time. What a spectacle! The world destroying itself. For what is war? It as the piling up of millions of rifles, cannon, tanks, aeroplanes, bombers, warships, and the drawing into the devouring maw of war the manhood of the nations, and the slaughter and maiming of millions, leaving in its train bitter tears and desolation of widows and orphans.
At the present moment, it lies in the power of one man, uneducated, uncultured and untrained for rule, a man probably possessed by an evil spirit, to say whether all this devilish work shall begin, the end of which no one can say. Probably he will perish in the conflagration his own hand will start.
There is, thank God, an end to all this, and it lies in the power of the pierced hand to bring it to pass. The Meek, not the ambitious monster overmastered by lust for power, but the Meek shall inherit the earth. There shall come a blissful time of quietness and peace and righteous rule, and this sinful earth shall have her last chance. Christ upon the throne; Satan bound in the bottomless pit.
“THEN COMES THE END.”
Yes, an end of that which distresses and saddens and oppresses, but an end which leads to a beginning, a beginning without an end, a beginning which is indicated by Him who will sit on the throne, saying, “Behold I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5).
There is another side to all this. We have delineated man’s side, and it is without a single redeeming feature. There is One who is going to hand up the kingdom to God, even the Father. He does this, not as the eternal Son, but as the SON OF MAN. The Lord Jesus Christ is the great Mediator between God and man. We are told, “There is one Mediator between God and man, THE MAN, Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). There will come a time when all that the Lord Jesus came into the world to do, and which He is now accomplishing by the Holy Spirit during this dispensation, and what is to follow, will have been accomplished. When that point is reached “THEN COMES THE END.”
We read the prophecy of this in Psalm 8. It is a night psalm, for David is contemplating the moon and the stars. When he looks at the night heavens and sees the stars innumerable, he is overwhelmed with the sense of the littleness of man. He exclaims. “What is man (Hebrew enosh) that Thou art mindful of him?” Man (enosh) a sinner, frail, passing away, a shadow and gone in a moment, in contrast with these mighty orbs of night that stud the heaven, and continue throughout the ages. But there breaks in a glorious light. The psalmist continues, “And the Son of Man (Hebrew, Adam) that Thou visitest Him.” This Son of Man was made a little lower than the angels. Who could that apply to but the Lord Jesus Christ? He, the eternal Son in the unity of the Godhead, comes into the world as the Son of Man. This was a title our Lord constantly applied to Himself when on this earth.
Hebrews 2:9 says, “We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels” (quoting Psalm 8:5, how wonderful is the unity of Scripture!) “FOR THE SUFFERING OF DEATH.” The New Testament affords the fuller light and tells us the Son of Man born to have universal dominion over all things must die.
Why must He die? The answer is that He is “the Mediator of a better covenant” (Heb. 8:6), not the first covenant, a covenant of demand, given with the accompaniment of thunder and lightning, earthquake, the sound of a trumpet, in thick darkness, so terrifying that even Moses said, “I exceedingly fear and quake” (Heb. 12:21). The new covenant is a covenant of grace founded on the death of Christ. In the Tabernacle it was typified by the blood-stained slab of pure gold on the top of the ark, a propitiary, a mercy-seat, a meeting place between a Holy God and the poor sinner in his heinous guilt. This is the happy work of the Son of Man, the Mediator. So the Lord Himself said of the palsied man, “But that ye may know that the Son of Man has power on earth 10 forgive sins (He says to the sick of the palsy), I say to thee. Arise and take up thy bed, and go into thine house” (Luke 5:24). And so he did. Paul and Timothy writing to the Corinthian church said, “God… also has made us able ministers of the new testament (covenant)” (chap. 3:6). Later on they speak of themselves as “ministers of reconciliation” (chap. 5:18), and go on to say that they are ambassadors of Christ, God beseeching man through them to be reconciled to Himself. Thus they acted in Christ’s stead.
So through our Lord Jesus Christ, either in Person when on this earth, or by the Holy Spirit through His servants, the blessed stream of blessing to man is flowing and will flow on till the end is reached. But there will come a point when all that God sets out to accomplish will be completed. If now it is a stream of blessing flowing through the administration of the Son of Man, we must remember the Father has given to the Son “authority to execute judgment … BECAUSE He is the Son of Man” (John 5:27). So we read in 1 Corinthians 15:28 that all things shall be subdued to God, either subdued by grace, or by the crushing power of divine judgment. As the line of the hymn puts it,
“Drawn by mercy or compelled by might.”
1 Corinthians 15:23 brings us to the point of the resurrection of all that are Christ’s. The judgment of the wicked is stated in the next verse. All rule, all authority, all power, that raises its head in opposition to God will be put down. Where will little lilliputian, totalitarian dictators stand in that day? What sort of opposition will they be able to bring forward, “whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming” (2 Thess. 2:8)? Then when all power is put down and the wicked dead shall have been judged, and banished to the lake of fire, “THEN COMES THE END.” Hallelujah! The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. No enemy. No death. No pain. No crying. All new, eternally new, never to grow old.
The Son of Man will then hand up the kingdom to God, even the Father. He will ever be the eternal Son in the unity of the Godhead, He will ever be Man in the glory of God, manhood assumed by Him shall be for ever. John the Seer saw in vision in the glory, “a Lamb as it had been slain” (Rev. 5:6). Stephen looked up to heaven and saw Jesus there and exclaimed as he was being battered to death, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56). These Scriptures prove that the same Jesus the disciples saw go into heaven is the Jesus they saw on earth when risen from the dead, a real Man, yet the eternal Son—one blessed Person, inscrutable mystery.
How we can thank God for those words, “THEN COMES THE END.” They rest upon our spirits as a blissful benediction. What a prospect is ours! Hallelujah! “God … all in all.” Finality reached. “God … all in all.” Hallelujah!