What does it mean that the end of all things is at hand (1 Peter 4:7)?

Nor is this truth confined to Paul. Its doctrinal exposition is not indeed, found elsewhere, but it is often alluded to as a familiar truth, forming the basis of practical exhortations. Thus Peter says — "The end of all things is at hand; be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer" (1 Peter 4:7). "The end of all things" is not death; and it cannot mean the end of the world, for the end of the world was not at hand. It was an event of the utmost magnitude, as the words import and at the same time one which might be speedily anticipated. Only one such event is elsewhere spoken of. The Lord's coming is held out as a present expectation, as an incentive to sobriety and watchfulness, and as a transaction of tremendous importance, closing God's present dealings, and bringing in an entirely new order of things. The coming, indeed, is here viewed in its widest sense, including both its parts, but that it is the coming there can be no doubt. And this event is said to be "at hand," and is used as a ground of exhortation to sobriety and prayerfulness.

Now the end of all things was at hand. The apostle, while speaking of the great principle of responsibility in connection with the testimony of God, draws the attention of believers to the solemn thought of the end of all these things on which the flesh rested. This end drew near.

Here, observe, Peter presents, not the coming of the Lord to receive His own, nor His manifestation with them, but that moment of the solemn sanction of the ways of God, when every refuge of the flesh shall disappear, and all the thoughts of man perish for ever.

Now we Christians have to remember that we have come to the end of all things. Obviously Peter did not mean that when he wrote — somewhere about A.D. 60, — the end of this dispensation was reached, but rather that the end dispensation was reached, that it is "the last time." The judge is quite ready as verse 5 has told us. He stands "before the door" (James 5:9), ready to enter the court and take His seat so that the judgment may begin. All things then were quite ready for judgment at the very start of this epoch in which we are living, and it is only the longsuffering of God which holds the judgment back as Peter's second epistle tells us. How sober and watchful to prayer should we therefore be.

More than this, we should be marked by fervent love amongst ourselves, and the utilization of every gift and ability to the glory of God, from whom all such things proceed. The world is a cold and critical place, the Christian circle should be a place of warm love. When love amongst Christians exists in fervour it expresses itself passively in covering a multitude of sins and actively in giving and hospitality. There are alas many sins even with true believers. The antagonistic world delights to advertize the sins of believers, proclaiming them upon the housetops. Love in the Christian circle feels them as though they were its own and covers them. When a Christian busies himself in advertizing the sins of some other Christian, he thereby advertizes his own carnal condition. Many of us would be rather careful not to advertize the sin of some other believer who happens to meet with us in our public gatherings. Are we as careful in regard to believers who do not meet with us?

Whatever we may have received from God we are to hold it in trust for the benefit of all saints. The grace of God is very manifold and various. This one may speak, that one may serve. He who speaks is to speak as God's mouthpiece. He who serves as in strength that God supplies; and thus those who benefit by the speaking or serving will trace all up to God and glorify Him and not the one who happens to be the vessel or channel of supply. Speaking "as the oracles of God" does not mean, "according to the Word of God," though of course we always should so speak. It means, speaking as a mouthpiece of His word. If a speaker comes to us telling us what he thinks, what are his impressions and conceptions, we end by thinking him a very wonderful man, and doing him homage as a kind of spiritual hero! If he, on the other hand, just gives us what really is the word of God, we are subdued and we glorify God instead of glorifying him.

(1 Peter 4:7,) "But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch to prayer." We must not forget that the apostle was writing to a little Jewish company, and no doubt had before his mind that the moment drew near when the Lord's word would be fulfilled, that everything should be upset, and not one stone remain upon another of the temple. But the verse goes further than that. Peter feels that a saint should be one who is always taking, as it were, his last step — feeling, I am on the threshold of all that God is going to bring me into, the world is just going to be judged, and therefore there should be temperateness, and watchfulness, and prayer. And if this were true in Peter's day, how much more true is it in ours! because one cannot but see that the elements which conduce to the bringing in of the Antichrist are powerfully at work now. There never was a time when even Christians were in such danger of letting go the foundations of their faith, thus paving the way for Christendom believing a lie, for man was not born to be an infidel. The devil is seeking to clear out the truths of Christianity, in order to get the house clean swept and garnished, ready for the entrance of the seven devils, by-and-bye. (See Matt. 12:43-45; 2 Thess. 2:8-12.)

(V. 7). In this verse the Apostle sums up the Christian attitude to the world that he is passing through. It is a world of excess and riot in which men do their own wills, gratify their lusts, and speak evil of the Christian, who is made to suffer for righteousness' sake, who suffers patiently, and who suffers in the flesh rather than yield to sin. In the presence of the world's evil and his own suffering, the Christian is to remember that the end of all things is at hand. The end, with all that it involves, whether of judgment for the unconverted or blessing for the Christian, calls for sobriety and watchfulness with prayer, sobriety in view of the end to which all is leading, watchfulness as to all that is around, and prayer in relation to God.

In v.6, it is because Christ is ready to judge that the Gospel was preached to them that are dead. It is not said the Gospel is preached to them, nor that it was preached to those who were dead. They are dead now, but the Gospel was preached to them when they were alive. This again refers to the days of Noah (Ch.3:20,21). The object of the preaching was that, while they might be judged according to men in the flesh (as men speak evil of a believer--v.4), yet they might live according to God in the Spirit. This would be the normal, proper result of the preaching received. Noah's family re-ceived it and suffered from men, but lived, while others died. How insignificant is man's callous judgment compared to living according to God in the spirit!But it is only very briefly that present conditions will exist: the end of all things is at hands The end is not merely a termination, but that which God has in view, a conclusion of eternal character. Time is but transient, however long it may seem. Sober watchful prayer Is therefore only becoming. We have no time for laxity.

And of greatest importance is fervent love among the saints. For love is the warmth and energy of God's own nature, in which believers by grace have a share. Light may expose sin, but love covers a multitude of sins. It is certainly not that we are to count-enance or protect what is evil, but love will lead another to Judge his own sin, and thus it is covered, not emblazoned abroad, God delights is such warmth of love.

Throughout, we have seen that the apostle is really showing us the government of God — for the Christian, the Father's government; but even in this government of the Father, He has respect to the world as that, the need of which He cannot forget. Thus, His people must honor Him in it, or He must honor Himself at their expense. This government of God, then, more or less, appears all the way through. We are now distinctly reminded of it in that which is pressed here, "the end of all things is at hand." The end of all things is, in fact, in judgment, although necessarily, in order to bring in the blessing that is beyond. That judgment is looked at, for the believer, in fact as begun already. Judgment is already beginning at the house of God, and this is shown in the fiery trial through which the saints are passing, in which they are at the same time partakers of Christ's sufferings. We have seen already, in the Hebrews, that this does not at all hinder such suffering having a character of discipline at the same time for those who pass through it. Judgment is begun, then, at the house of God; but if it be often in this case a fiery trial, the seriousness of which they are made to realize, what will it be when it is no more the righteous that are in question, but the ungodly and the sinner? "If the righteous be with difficulty saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?" We are necessarily reminded of responsibilities in connection with this, and the reward is also set before us. All this is stamped with the character of the whole book.

"The end of all things,'' says the apostle, "is at hand." We are to live in the constant thought of that. It is easy indeed to take the long time since such words were written to make an argument for at least less vivid expectation of the end announced. But that is not the way in which the Spirit of God would teach us to use it. It would make us rather say, "The night is far spent," and therefore we may surely realize the day to be at hand. We know of no long interval before us. To interpose one involves the thought of the wicked servant, "My Lord delayeth His coming." The brightness of our lives consists in bringing the eternal things, to which the coming of the Lord introduces us, into the present. Thus to have it ever before us in the most vivid way can be no loss, but gain. There still remains for us scripture such as this. If the apostle could say in his day, "The end of all things is at hand," with how much conviction may we say it at the present time? The result is, as he puts it here, that we are to be sober, not allowing ourselves to take a roseate view of that which is manifestly going on to judgment; and with this we need watchfulness to prayer. How little, indeed, have we learned the value of that of which Scripture makes so much! — "praying always," "watching unto prayer." When we consider that God has opened to us in this way a wondrous store of blessing, which He only seeks on our part the longing desire to possess ourselves of in order to make it practically ours, what value must there not be to us in prayer! And it is as we are enriched in such a way that we find ability for that outflow out of an abundance which the apostle, as we shall see, insists upon here. Love is but that which necessitates the outflow, and he urges that above all things we should be fervent in love among ourselves. "Love covereth a multitude of sins." We are apt to be driven in upon ourselves by the disappointment we may meet in the conduct of others; but love is the spirit that overcomes in this way, and we must not let it suffer defeat. The very nearness in which we are brought to one another, and the dearness of the relationship which we have to one another, will make us feel, and should also make us feel, the more the failure in any way to act according to this relationship. That is a necessity of the case, while at the same time it should awaken in us the consciousness of our own shortcomings, which will not allow the building up of pride by the failure of others as to which we mourn. Love covereth sins: it does not needlessly expose them, does not talk about them without some plain demand for it; does not dwell upon them, but upon the things that are good, in which, as the heart abides, the life is cheered and brightened, and we get courage for the way. Then, love is bountiful: does not merely give, but delights in giving. Thus he presses the using hospitality one to another without murmuring at the demands which it may make upon us; and finally, the apostle bids us, as to whatever gift we have received, — where everything that we have as Christians is in fact a gift, — that we realize the responsibility necessarily connected with this, and that we minister it as those who are but stewards of the manifold grace of God." It is divine fulness in which we are filled up; and what capacity for ministry, as well as what responsibility, is involved in this! If any speak, he is thus to speak "as oracles of God" — a remarkable expression! It is not "according to the oracles of God," still less, "according to the Scriptures," as most probably we are disposed to take it; but it is as uttering from God that which is in His mind — a thing for which the presence of the Spirit in us is manifestly the most perfect qualification. If we were only subject to the Spirit and yielded up to Him, how thoroughly should we be able to communicate to one another that which was in fact God's wisdom for us all — not merely scriptural, but the living ministry of the Spirit for the need, whatever it might be! Then if any one minister, he is to do it as of the ability which God supplieth; he is not left to any competency of his own. He is to learn to use the abundance which God has for him as the Lord taught His disciples when, in view of the need of the multitude around, which they were plainly unable to supply, He says: "They need not depart; give ye them to eat." How surely would this be so with us if the faith which works by love were more the full reality that it ought to be! And here the apostle is not speaking simply of teaching or evangelizing, which would be covered by what he has said just before, but of any kind of ministry, in which, if we have faith to reckon upon the bounty of God, such faith can never in fact be disappointed. We cannot imitate, of course, a faith like this; and we must be truly with God in order that we may be able rightly to exercise it.

The apostle turns now to exhort them concerning that which would make them realize indeed the end to be near; for the last days, according to Scripture, are not days of ease and comfort for the people of God; they are not days of the prevalence of good, but of evil; and in all this is involved, however different may be the expression of it, how much trial for those who at all costs would walk with God! Christians were not to think it strange, then, concerning the trial through which they would pass, though it might be a fiery trial to be felt, and which could only fulfil its purpose, in fact, by being felt. A trial is meant to try, and this is what the apostle presses upon those to whom here he writes. They must not think it a strange thing — a thing foreign to what might seem to suit the followers of the Lord of glory. How easy it is, in fact, with Christ upon the throne, to think that therefore Christians must find a good place in the world instead of tribulation, although the Lord has in the plainest way admonished us that it will be otherwise! We are not to be taken out of the path in which He walked, and therefore not out of the circumstances which made the path what it was. All this would only make the coming glory more expected, more rejoiced in, and, when it would actually come, a cause even of larger joy. All recompense would be found in it, while it is true that for the present time also to be reproached for the name of Christ involves itself a necessary blessedness. "The Spirit of glory and of God" rests upon those who suffer thus. It could not be otherwise. Christ could not fail His own who are earnest in the desire not to fail Him. Suffering of another sort would, of course, be inconsistent with the suffering for Christ. To suffer as a murderer or a thief, or an evildoer of any kind, or even as concerning themselves with things which were not theirs — such things would be incongruous for the Christian; but the suffering coming on him on that very account, because he is a Christian, can be no cause for shame. It is given him, on the contrary, to glorify God. So will He be most manifestly glorified. Think of Stephen's face, and how it manifests this; and we are not to take these things as if they were wholly exceptional, but pictures with deep and blessed meaning for ourselves.

Let us then enquire what should be the moral influence of this knowledge upon our souls. To answer the question we will not, on this occasion, travel beyond the scripture at the head of this paper. Peter then says, "Be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer," or, as it really is, prayers. By "sober" is meant that quietness and gravity of mind, that solemnity of feeling, which is produced by the Spirit of God in the hearts of those who enter into the character of the approaching end of all things. It is, on the other side, a mind freed from the intoxicating influences of this scene, and thus marked by an absence of all levity, and by the possession of that subduedness and reverence which flow from walking before God in the sense of the shortness of the present period, and of the coming judgments. The Lord's own words may be cited in the same connection: "Take heed to yourselves," He said to His disciples, "lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. … Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man." And it will be noticed that the Lord, even as Peter, presses constant prayer upon His disciples. In Peter it is "prayers," showing, we cannot doubt, that he had the united prayers of the saints in his mind. How much need to remember his exhortation! Valuable as teaching or exhortation are in their respective places, in the prospect of the end of all things, if realized in the soul, prayers would be felt by all to be more suitable. It would be so f the end of life were before us, and much more will it be so in the contemplation of the dissolution of all things. We may well ask ourselves if we watch sufficiently unto prayers, watch against every hindrance to our being together for this end, and watch to lay hold of every opportunity for pouring out our hearts together in the presence of God.

One other thing the apostle emphasizes: "And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins." This exhortation clearly reveals that he has the saints in their mutual relationships in view, that he thinks of them as a company called out of the world, and indeed not of the world, even as Christ was not of the world. And the Lord also before His departure enjoined His disciples to love one another as He had loved them. Likewise the apostle desires that beyond everything they should be distinguished by mutual fervent love. This shows that Peter, no less than John, had drunk in, and lived in, the remembrance of his Lord's exhortations before He departed to the Father, and that he was now led of the Spirit to write to his fellow-pilgrims, and to press them home upon their hearts, in view of the end of all things, on the ground, as he says, that love shall cover the multitude of sins. God's love has "covered" the multitude of our sins, and that same love, acting through us in the power of the Spirit, will cover the sins of our brethren. In the absence of the manifestation of brotherly love, and when our hearts are chilled, instead of the love which is not easily provoked, which imputeth no evil, which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things (1 Cor. 13), we become suspicious, harsh, and censorious; and then envy and strife springing up, there follow confusion and every evil work. Let us then lay to heart this injunction of the apostle's, and especially now that so many premonitions of the end of all things are appearing on every hand, so that we may be marked by this fervent love, and thus be ever striving after unity and its expression in the circle of our fellowship.

But the word here flowing out of faith in the impending end of all things is, "Be discreet therefore," that is of sound mind spiritually; "and watch," or be sober, "unto prayers:" a very different attitude from absorption in the newspaper, and in each exciting movement west or east, so often to fade and disappoint the superficial readers of prophecy. Hope like faith looks to God, expects in patience, and does not make ashamed. The Christian ought never to forget that he is a Christian, and follows the crucified but glorified One, content — yea rejoicing — to endure till we reign together with Him at His appearing and kingdom. It is not our place to thunder and lighten, as those under the law were bound to do, at the revolt of Israel and at the passing enormities of the Gentile powers. When we are translated, it will be for the godly remnant on earth to take up the cry once more, "How long, Sovereign Master the holy and true, dost not thou judge and avenge our blood on those that dwell upon the earth?" Blessed saints will they be, but no more Christians in the full sense than the O.T. saints before us.

In view of this end of all that we see, we ought to be sober, and watch in order to pray. We ought to have the heart thus exercised towards God, who changes not, who will never pass away, and who preserves us through all the difficulties and temptations of thus passing scene until the day of deliverance which is coming. Instead of allowing ourselves to be carried away by present and visible things, we must bridle self and will and commune with God.