This was an old favourite of mine back at Bethesda, but was lost from my worship from “swimming the Tiber” onwards. The last loss was due to the perfidious influence of the Baptists, as I discuss (complete with YouTube video) in my post The Wesleyan Advent Hymn the Wesleyan Pentecostals Don’t Sing. It’s ironic that Bethesda, for all of the magnificence of this hymn, wasn’t much on talking about the second coming (outside of reciting it in the creeds, which Episcopalians were notorious for ignoring.) Life was just too good and our position in society too nice to see it overturned by something as drastic as Christ’s return.
On the other hand the church I’m in now spends quite a lot of time–too much, in some cases–on the subject. I say “too much” because each generation becomes fixated on the prophetic clock, produces a timetable and loses the plot on why we emphasise the subject, i.e. to prepare ourselves to spend eternity with Jesus Christ and to do the work he has for us to do while we’re here. The most famous example of that was The Late Great Planet Earth, whose author Hal Lindsey just went to meet God. The only and only time a professor made an overtly evangelistic appeal in my undergraduate years at Texas A&M took place when my Statics teacher (ironically that’s what I teach at Lee University) warned us of his impending return and encouraged us to read Lindsey’s book.
Positive Infinity 