Readings for such a time as this(1): DO NOT BE CONFUSED When Jesus departed from this earth, the disciples watched Him ascend into the sky until they could no longer see Him. But they kept looking. Squinting their eyes against the glare, they stared into the heavens, as if expecting Him to come right back down again. It finally took an angelic nudge to shake these bewildered men from their preoccupation. The Living Bible paraphrases Luke’s account from the book of Acts: As they were straining their eyes for another glimpse, suddenly two white-robed men were standing there among them, and said, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing here staring at the sky? Jesus has gone away to heaven, and some day, just as he went, he will return!” (Acts 1:10–11 TLB) Those angels had an important point to make. Jesus said He would return and He will. In the meantime, it serves no good purpose to stand around staring at the sky. There’s work to do! Our faith assures us that He will return, but our focus must be on accomplishing the King’s business until that great day arrives. Setting dates for the Lord’s return is a lot like staring into an empty sky. It does nothing at all to advance His purposes on earth and distracts from our rightful focus as believers. Beyond that, date-setting can create a great deal of harm—and even tragedy. What Happened to the “Christian Century”? A hundred years ago Christians in this country anticipated the greatest century the world had ever known. Technology blossomed on every hand. Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and a host of other inventors busied themselves creating devices that would ease the path and lighten the load for millions of average Americans. Electricity began to illumine tall buildings and city streets. These were days of unbridled optimism, and the slogans arising out of this era reflected this positive spirit. You heard Christians say things such as “ever onward and upward,” or “the evangelization of our world in our generation,” or “the absoluteness of Christianity.” In the early days of 1900, a number of broad-minded souls launched a new journal they called The Christian Century. That’s what these Christian journalists thought they could look forward to in those dawning days of the twentieth century: a hundred years of peace, progress, and Christianization. In those days, reminders of “the soon coming of Jesus Christ” were looked upon as lunatic-fringe talk. Now we’re at the end of that century, looking back. And oh, how different the view appears from this vantage point! It has been an era of unparalleled brutality and moral meltdown. It might even be said that it has been the most un-Christian century since Jesus walked on earth. We are, as Timothy George has written: Awash in a sea of apocalypticism … end-times hysteria rules the airwaves and repeatedly surfaces as a distinctive feature [in] such bizarre and deadly tragedies as the Branch Davidian killings in Waco, the subway attack in Tokyo, and the recent carnage in Oklahoma City. If you listened to reports of any of those events, you heard someone, even secular newscasters, somehow connect them to talk of the millennium before us. We know that our Lord will return; we have taken note of the signs He listed for us and believe His return is imminent. Yet to invest time and energy and focus in seeking to set a specific date for that event is not only unwise, but a gross violation of Scripture. Date setters, of course, have been with us for centuries. In the second century, a group of Montanists were convinced that Jesus would come back to Phrygia, a region of Asia Minor. More recently, in 1983, Mary Stewart Relfe wrote that she had been praying to know the year of the Lord’s coming. As a result of those prayers, she now knew that World War III was just ahead—which would result in the partial destruction of the United States by nuclear attack. “It was,” she wrote, “one of the most tremendous divine revelations I have ever received from the Lord.” So specific was that “vision” that she produced a chart showing how World War III would commence in 1989, with the Great Tribulation following in 1990. According to the chart, Jesus Christ Himself would return to earth in 1997. Apparently, someone forgot to fax the Lord a copy of that chart. Reginald Dunlop, a California author of numerous self-published books, prophesied worldwide famine by 1986 resulting in enormous death tolls. The United States itself, he asserted, would feel hunger pains for the first time. It would be so bad, he insisted, that human body parts would be sold in stores throughout the nation. Lester Sumrall, a founder of the LeSEA Broadcasting Company, set his sights (along with many others) on the year 2000. He wrote: “I predict the absolute fullness of man’s operation on planet Earth by the year 2000 A.D. Then Jesus Christ will reign from Jerusalem for a thousand years.” Sumrall wasn’t alone in his dire predictions for the year 2000. Apocalypticists issue daily doomsday warnings; you hear it just about everywhere you turn. When television actor David McCallum hosted a major prime-time series on ancient prophecies, he warned that every futurist from Nostradamus to Edgar Cayce to the architects of the pyramids to the Bible itself has targeted the year 2000 for the end of the world. All of this discussion, of course, has resulted in a publishing boom: Doomsday books and tabloids ring the chimes at cash registers across America in unprecedented numbers. I’ve used several words to describe such date-setting … terms such as unwise, harmful, and hurtful. Yet somehow those words don’t quite capture how I feel about such preoccupations. Frankly, I think a better word is senseless. Date-Setting Is Senseless When you begin to set a date for our Lord’s return, whose calendar will you use? The current calendar in use in the West is reported to have been started by Dionysius Exegis in A.D. 532. His idea was to date year one from the time when, by his calculations, Jesus was born. Today scholars agree that Dionysius was off at least four years which means that since Christ was probably born in 4 B.C., the year 2000 actually falls in 1997. But Dionysius was, of course, a late comer in the calendar game. The early Church was already operating by the Julian calendar which Julius Caesar had established because he was fed up with the errors of the Roman calendar. In the meantime, the Greeks had their calendar and so did the Egyptians and the Babylonians and the Anglo Saxons. Is that what Stonehenge is? And the ancient Mayans and even the Muslims had to start with their own calendar. Of course, the Hebrews were operating by a calendar dating retroactively from their calculated date for the creation, 3761 B.C. By that figuring, our year 2000 will be about 5761 on the Jewish calendar, not a very apocalyptic sounding year when you come to think about it. Nowadays, of course, we have all kinds of technology and informed datings of the international fixed calendar and the world calendar and the perpetual calendar. And we could ask what calendar is in use across the galaxies, in the star clusters, in the nebulae. Is God going to have the last trump blown on the whole heavens in order to honor Dionysius’ four year miscalculation back here on little, tiny Earth? When the apostles crept up to Jesus at his ascension and put the question of the apocalyptic time to him, our Lord replied gently but firmly, “It is not for you to know the times or the dates the Father has set by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” Only God knows what time it is in Alpha Centauri, on the moons of Vega, in the Epsilon Andone system, or on Obi Island here on Earth. And only God knows when these times will run out. After all, the Bible tells us that God is timeless. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. So the next time somebody comes up to you and informs you that the world is ending in A.D. 2000, ask them, pull yourself up to your full height, look them right in the eyes and say, “Yeah? By whose calendar?” Be assured that God’s clock is the only one worth setting your watch by. Do you see what I mean? Date-setting is senseless! Why would anyone do such a thing? Why would they try to calculate, in our calendar, a period of time that the Lord says we can’t know anyway? It makes no sense. In fact, it is more than senseless; it is sinful. Date-Setting Is Sin In 1 Thessalonians 5 we read these words: “But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night” (vv. 1–2). Has a thief ever called you to schedule his burglary at your home? That would be a decent, polite thing to do, wouldn’t it? Can’t you just hear a call like that? “Um, if you’ve got your calendar handy there, I’d like to shoot for a week from Tuesday. Would it be convenient for you to be gone from your home? I mean, would that work out for you? How about 2:00 A.M.? Fine. Thanks for your cooperation.” When the Bible tells us that our Lord will come “as a thief in the night,” it is making the point that we don’t know when that time is. It is unannounced. It is unscheduled. It is unexpected. If any one thing is consistently taught in our Lord’s Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 and 25, it is this: Since we don’t know the time of His coming, we need to be ready at all times. Walk with me through these verses in Matthew 24 and 25. • But of that day and hour no one knows, no, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. (24:36) • Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming. (24:42) • Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not expect Him. (24:44) • The master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him and at an hour that he is not aware of. (24:50) • Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming. (25:13) And in Mark 13:32, a parallel passage, we read, “But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” All of these words were written concerning the Second Advent. But if those things are true of that event, they are just as true—and even more so—of the Rapture, which is the first part of the Second Coming. The Lord said you are not going to know the hour or day or week or year. Yes, it is imminent. It could happen at any time, even before the next beat of your heart. But NO ONE knows when that moment will be. Before we leave this point, I’d like to nail down three truths in your heart. 1. No One Knows the Time of Christ’s Return It is pure folly to set a date for the return of the Lord. We don’t know it. The angels don’t know it. God the Father knows when it will occur and all we can do is prepare ourselves for that day—for it is coming soon. I can appreciate the wisdom of the Father’s decision to keep this matter hidden away in the counsels of God. If someone really did know in advance the date of the Lord’s coming, he or she might decide to live in sin right up to the appointed week, then suddenly repent and get ready for the big moment. “Come on,” you say, “that’s absurd! No one would do that.” Oh yes, they would! I’ve been studying human nature through the thirty-plus years of my ministry, and that is precisely what would happen. Other people would stop everything they were doing to sit on a hilltop to wait for His return. Remember William Miller, who divested himself of all that he owned, as did all of his followers? If we knew the day and hour of Christ’s return, we wouldn’t be able to make any future plans or establish long-term commitments or relationships. In His infinite wisdom, the Lord chose not to reveal to us the exact time of His return. He told His followers, “It’s not for you to know. It’s not your worry. You just go out there and be My witnesses—in your hometowns, in the neighboring towns, and then all over the world.” Personally, I’m thankful He set it up that way. I seem to have my hands full dealing with the past and the present. I’m willing to let the Lord handle the future. Perhaps you, too, grew up with the adage spoken so often in my home: “I don’t know what the future holds, but I know who holds the future.” David wrote, “ ‘You are my God.’ My times are in Your hand” (Psalm 31:14–15). That’s enough for me. When we try to bull our way into mysteries held in the heart of almighty God, we enter into domains where we do not belong. No one knows the date of our Lord’s return. Don’t let any man, woman—or angel—tell you otherwise! Some folks have asked me why I get so upset with those who make specific predictions about the future. The simple fact is, there is only one rule for a prophet in the Bible. How do you know a prophet is a real prophet? Deuteronomy 18:21–22 tells us simply: “And if you say in your heart, ‘How shall we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?’—when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.” If you read the rest of that passage, you discover that when a person made a prophecy in the name of the LORD and it did not come true, that man or woman was to be stoned to death. It was a capital offense without appeals! I’m not suggesting we do that today, but one question keeps burning in my mind: If someone wrote a book and went on television or radio and said, “This or that is going to happen at such and such time; I guarantee it,” and it didn’t happen—why would you want to listen to that individual ever again? Why? I can’t understand that. Just imagine if I were to stand behind my pulpit at Shadow Mountain Community Church and say, “Friends, on January 1 in the year 2000, Jesus Christ is coming back. His feet will touch down in El Cajon, and we will all gather here on this campus to witness the event. Bring a sack lunch.” That might stir up a bit of excitement around here—until January 2. And then, I would be out of a job. I’d be making burritos at the local Taco Bell. Why should you ever come back to listen to me preach again? You shouldn’t—and I wouldn’t expect you to. How could it be, then, that someone will go on record by setting a date for the Lord’s return, and then—even though it doesn’t happen—people go right on listening to him? People rush out to buy his next book. I can’t comprehend it. It is wrong to make such predictions because the Bible says, “No man can know …” For that matter, not even the angels know. 2. No Angel Knows the Time of Christ’s Return Not even the angels know when Jesus will return to the planet He departed two millennia ago. Look with me again at our Lord’s words in Matthew 24:36: “But of that day and hour no one knows, no, not even the angels of heaven.” Think about that for a moment. The Bible says that no one in either the natural world or the supernatural world knows the day of Jesus Christ’s return. The angels, of course, have constant access to the throne of God. They always wait before Him, listening for His commands. Isaiah 6 tells us they hover around His throne. Matthew 18 tells us they are in intimate communion with God. Jesus even revealed that angels will be the agents of judgment at the Second Coming and will gather the believers who survive the Tribulation. Yet in spite of all this, they don’t know the date set by the Father. My friend, we have been deceived and bamboozled. Can you imagine the brazen audacity of a man or a woman who would assert that he or she knows something that not even the angels by the throne of God know? What arrogance! And yet so many in the Christian community seem ready to lap it all up, again and again. Strange as this may sound, I believe that many of these preoccupations have their source in Satan himself. Why? Because if we are standing around staring into the sky, we’ll never get the gospel to Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the world. If we focus on mysteries we were never intended to unravel, we will neglect and abandon the Master’s ongoing work in this day and time. We simply won’t have time or energy to do the work of God. That, I believe is (and has always been) Satan’s goal. Those he cannot dissuade, he will distract. The angels don’t know the date. And are you ready for a shocker? The Son of man didn’t know either. 3. Not Even the Son of Man Knew the Time of Christ’s Return Do you believe that? Look at Mark 13:32 again. Notice what it says: “But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (emphasis added). Many people struggle with this passage. They wonder, How can Jesus be omniscient and not know the time of His return? But at the time Jesus spoke these words, He had voluntarily divested Himself of the independent use of His divine attributes. When Jesus uttered those words recorded in Mark 13, He did not know the time of the Second Coming. But when He rose from the dead and received His glorious resurrection body, He knew. And He knows now and looks forward to that glorious day. That being the case, tell me—how in the world could someone discover what no man knows, what no angel knows, and what even the incarnate Son of God did not know when He was on this earth? Where does one go to get that sort of information? Christians need to believe what the Lord said about no human knowing the date or the time. If you are not willing to believe what Christ said about that, then why would you believe anything He said about His return? There is only one who knew the time—our heavenly Father. And the very fact that we cannot know gives us reason every day for leading holy lives. We know that Christ is coming back, even though we do not know when it will be. It is sinful to do what the Lord has told us not to do. The book of James tell us, “Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do, and does not do it, to him it is sin” (James 4:17 NASB). To willingly, voluntarily deceive people by doing something God says you cannot and should not do is wrong. I would be guilty of the grossest kind of irresponsibility if I were to use my influence and do something like that as a pastor and preacher of the gospel. God keep me from ever seeking to persuade God’s people regarding something I have no way of knowing! But there is a subtlety to date-setting I want us to notice as well. Date-Setting Is Subtle Speculation requires nothing from you. Have you ever thought about that? You may know how many toes there are on the beast in Daniel’s vision. You may have memorized intricate charts on the book of Revelation. You may have twenty-seven theories on how to calculate the number of the Antichrist. But to know all that and not have the message come home to your heart is to be subtly sent down a cul-de-sac. It may even cause you—or others—to miss the highway to heaven. Here are a few subtle things that begin to happen when you become preoccupied with prophetic times and dates. 1. Date-Setting Defeats Urgency Titus 2:11–13 says this: “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.” That’s the motivation for our life. If we knew He was coming back on the second Tuesday of next month, the only urgency we would have would be for a few days before then. But when we are not given the date, but rather given the assurance that there is a date, preparation will always be an issue! While I was growing up, we weren’t allowed to participate in a number of activities. One of the items on that list was attending movies. I remember preachers who would come to our church for evangelistic meetings and say things like this: “What if you were in the movie house and the Lord came back?” Do you remember anyone frightening you with those words? How would you like to go to heaven from the movie house? That used to put the fear of God into me! I remember passing a movie theater as I walked downtown and feeling a little shudder travel up and down my spine. I remember thinking to myself, I’m not going in there! No way, man. As soon as I walked through those doors the Lord would come back! One time when I was seventeen years of age, my parents went away on a trip and gave me the run of the house while they were gone. It was the first time they had ever done this. Home alone! They told me they thought I was mature enough to take care of things while they were gone, and that was that. Friends, I must confess to you, I let the dishes pile up … I let the laundry pile up … I let everything pile up. And the frustrating thing was that I didn’t know exactly when they were coming back. I knew they would be coming home sometime within a three-day window—but I didn’t know exactly when. So you can guess when I cleaned up everything. It wasn’t at the end of the three days; it was at the beginning. I had the house spick- and-span before that window of time arrived. Why? Because I wanted to be ready when my parents returned. I wanted them to be proud of me. I wanted to show them I was worthy of their trust. I didn’t want to be ashamed when their car pulled into the driveway. That’s the whole purpose of teaching on the imminent return of Jesus Christ. We are to live in a constant state of readiness. When you set dates—or allow others to set them for you—it takes away the urgency. That’s the very reason why the Lord designed this program the way He did, so that we would always be ready. I remember reading a story Dr. Charles Swindoll told in a book called Rise and Shine some years ago. Chuck talked about a time when he was in school, working in a machine shop. He worked with an old-timer named Tex. Ol’ Tex had a kind of invisible sensor down inside. He seldom had to look at the clock. He always knew when it was getting close to that last whistle. Without fail, Tex was all washed up and ready to punch out a couple of minutes before the whistle blew. On one occasion, Swindoll reminded him that it was about time to start getting ready for quittin’ time, and he never forgot that man’s reply. He told Chuck, “I stay ready to keep from gettin’ ready for quittin’ time.” I like that. How do you prepare for the Lord’s return? You stay ready to keep from getting ready. Because if you do stay ready, you never have to scramble around to get ready, do you? And that’s the impact the thought of the Lord’s return ought to have on us. Because He may return at any time, we should live our lives as the book of Titus tells us—in a godly, righteous way, so that we might always be ready. 2. Date-Setting Promotes Apathy When you lock in on a date for our Lord’s return, you become mesmerized, which in turn causes you to lose your sense of direction. It also has a ripple effect on those around you. People may begin to respond to you as Peter predicted in 2 Peter 3:3–4. That passage says, in effect, “Since the beginning of time, people have been saying, ‘Where is this so-called coming of the Lord? We keep hearing, He’s coming, He’s coming, but He still hasn’t come. I don’t think He’s going to come at all!’ ” And they use that as an excuse for not preparing themselves or changing their lives. The fact of His imminent coming should keep us always watching, always waiting, always urgently working. Every morning when we get out of bed and every evening when we turn out the lights, we should whisper to ourselves that this could be the day of all days, this could be the night of nights when we will see our Savior face-to-face. In Romans 13 Paul writes: “And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light” (vv. 11–12 NIV). His coming is nearer now than when Paul penned those words. That’s obvious, isn’t it? For that matter, His coming is nearer now than when you received Him as your Savior. It is nearer today than it was yesterday. It is closer now than when you began reading this chapter. With all my heart, I believe He could call us home today. I want to be ready for that moment, don’t you? But you undercut that keen sense of urgency when you begin to set specific dates and times. You begin to live carelessly, rather than in perpetual readiness and anticipation. Wendy Murray Zoba, associate editor of Christianity Today wrote about an occasion when her middle son, Benjamin, was very young. Benjamin had heard more than one sermon about receiving the Lord Jesus Christ. And the little guy certainly seemed well tuned to the heart of God. He was a kind, unselfish little boy and old enough to grasp the meaning of giving his heart to Christ. But when asked about it, he kept repeating that he just wasn’t ready. All of this troubled Benjamin’s father. Why did his son resist talking about this crucial matter? And then came a morning when the family sat around the kitchen table eating their cereal and little Ben announced he was ready to give his life to Christ. He got up from the table and went upstairs. Benjamin’s mom and dad looked at each other and decided they’d better follow. As they opened the door to his room, they expected to find their boy on his knees in prayer. Instead, they found him folding his Star Wars pajamas in his little Sesame Street suitcase. “Benjamin,” his dad said, “what are you doing?” “I’m packing,” he replied. “Why are you packing?” “Because I’m going to heaven.” And then that mother and father understood the reason why their child had hesitated to give his life to Christ. Benjamin thought that the moment he made that decision, he would have to leave his parents and literally move to heaven with the Lord. The writer concluded that story by saying, it would be wonderful if we could all possess the faith of little Benjamin. We should have our hearts so fixed on Christ’s appearance that the attachments of our earthly life would pale in comparison. When you think about it, every day we get up in the morning is our last day on earth … until God gives us another one. And just as little Benjamin left his soggy cereal to pack his suitcase for heaven, each day of our lives is filled with the promise and possibility of an immediate change in residence. From the grind and routine of our workaday schedule … to a reunion in the clouds. From the weights and worries of life on earth … to the wonder of our Father’s house. From the aches and pains of a deteriorating earthly tent … to a glorious new body that will be forever young. From the frustrations and loneliness of life under the sun … to an eternal morning in the presence of the Son. Because we know the Lord could come today or tomorrow, we pack everything we can into the day God has given us. We should never allow our age or illness or hardship or work or anything else to take away from the excitement and the urgency and the adventure of living every day for almighty God. When you know that just around the corner everything will be resolved, you can live your life wide open for the Lord Jesus, always anticipating, always looking for His momentary return. Benjamin had his pajamas and toothbrush packed. Whenever God was ready, he was ready. Sons and daughters of God shouldn’t live any other way. Jeremiah, D. (1999). Until Christ Returns: Living faithfully today while we wait for our glorious tomorrow (62–78). Nashville, TN: Word Pub. - via Logos 5
Posted on: Sun, 09 Jun 2013 20:27:44 +0000
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