Are we sorry because of this, beloved? Does it ever break the heart into sighs and groans before our God? Sad and solemn, if we feel it not thus--and terrible, when we deliberately talk to ourselves of making a captain again. And this we do when the pastime and the pleasures of the sons of men again give animation to our hearts, or when their honours or their pursuits become again our objects. Lot’s wife, beloved, had got beyond Sodom, and that, too, in company with the elect, when it was found that she was still there, in such a sense as to perish with the city. Israel was as far as the wilderness of Paran, and that, too, in company with the ark of God, when it was proved that they were still amid the flesh-pots of Egypt. Serious remembrances for us all! holy warnings, that we wanton not with those lusts and enjoyments, which once we watched and mortified. "Of that day and hour knoweth no man"--are the solemn words by which the Lord refuses to pledge the moment of His return to His Jewish remnant. Matt. xxiv. 36. That moment is to be to them as the thief of the night, or as the hour of the woman in travail. So as to death. If it come on any of us without a moment’s warning, the Lord has not been untrue to any pledge He has given. And so as to the rapture. In no case is the day or the hour pledged or made known. All is included in _one_ word of deep and holy import--"Watch"--and that one word is addressed to all: "What I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch." Whether the close to us be by death or rapture--whether it be to Israel by being taken or left--the day and the hour remain alike untold; no pledge of it is promised at all. Each and all are set on the watch-tower. _We_ wait for "the Son from heaven;" _they_ will have to wait for "the days of the Son of man;" but neither of us know the hour that closes the waiting. That is common to them and to us. We stand in equal condition with them as to this. But together with this there is a difference. The Jewish Remnant are given signs. That is, they are told of certain things which _must_ precede "the days of the Son of man," though they are left ignorant of the day or the hour of that appearing. See Matt. xxiv. 32-36. The saints now gathering to the hope of the "Son from heaven" are, on the contrary, not given any such signs, or told of any necessary precursory events.