Christ's Advent: Sudden as Lightning, Visible to All

Matthew 24:27 compares our Lord's return to lightning flashing across the sky. Joseph S. Exell's Victorian exposition unpacks two essential truths.

First, Christ's advent shall be sudden. The masses will be unprepared, as unsuspecting as a city when lightning leaps from black clouds and completes its arc in an instant. The world will continue its ordinary business—buying, selling, building—when Adonai arrives.

Second, His coming will manifest with intense, vivid splendor. Lightning fills the entire sky, leaping from east to west with no hiding place between. When that searching light of judgment comes, it will penetrate the captive's cell and expose all secrets. What an arrest will take place!

Exell identifies three responses to Christ's return. Skeptics say natural science explains away the signs. Others refuse belief, asking "Where is the promise of His coming?" But God's own people cry, "Come, Lord Jesus; we have been looking for Thee."

The lesson demands urgent obedience: seek to promote only what survives the final fire. A historical eclipse over America's Congress in the early nineteenth century terrified lawmakers into panic—yet a venerable Puritan rose and reminded them of their duty, refusing to abandon post when darkness fell.

Our response to Christ's imminent return must echo that Puritan courage: steadfast in duty, faithful at our posts, waiting for the lightning.