His
world programme. He would come and set up His kingdom, and then through
the kingdom would come a yet wider, farther-reaching world
evangelizing.[185] This expectancy controlled their life and activity.
Through their faithful world witnessing He would come.

And as the knot is put on the end of the thread of revelation the very
knotted thread seems aglow with the glory of what is coming. The Bible
from end to end is a-thrill with expectancy, a hopeful watching for
something, aye, _for some One_.

A Calendar of Events.

We have been looking a bit closely at this knot in the end, the threads
composing it. Now we want to gather up all that we have been going over
with the light that comes from the other pages, so as to have some sort
of a simple, clear grasp of the truth. This will help our eyesight. We
can watch the horizon better. Our eyes will be steadier in the glare of
the lower lights, and sharper to see in the spells of darkness that get
thicker now and then.

It is interesting to notice that this book of the Revelation is a
calendar book. That is to say, it is not a calendar of dates but of
events. It gives coming events in the order in which they will occur.
Its table of contents becomes an outline of coming events. There is the
Man of Fire standing among the candlesticks. Then comes an hour when He
advances to the next step in His programme. Then, step by step, there
follow the occurrences until the kingdom is actually here. And then the
after events, when the kingdom's work is done.

It turns out that this thing of our Lord's return cuts a wider swath
than we are apt to think, if we don't stop to think. That is because of
_Who it is_ that is coming. An event takes on the size of the chief
person concerned. This Lord Jesus is the One through whom our world was
made in the early time, when there were no calendars. So His coming
naturally concerns the whole world. It concerns the system of evil in
which the world is entangled, and the evil spirit world so closely
interlocked with our own.

Then our Lord Jesus came amongst us as a man. He came as a Jewish man,
and to the Jewish nation. So His coming concerns the Jew and the Jewish
capital, Jerusalem. When He sent down His executive, the Holy Spirit, a
new organization was formed, the Church. So His coming concerns the
Church, and concerns it very intimately, for it is spoken of as a body
of which He is the head. When Jesus came it was to die for a world