What Should We Know and When Should We Know It?

Friday, October 28, 2011

7:56 AM

Two things have kind of fallen together for this morning's musings.  In my daily walk my New Testament readings have been from Revelation for the last week or so.  I don't know about you but I find Revelation to be one of the most cryptic and hard to understand books in the whole Bible. 

The other thing is an article I read this morning about a pastor that is retiring from his ministry.  This particular pastor has three times predicted the end of the world and been wrong.  The most recent time being October 21, 2011.  I want to be very clear here.  My intention is not to mock this pastor but to ask a question:

What should we know and when should we know it? 

People have been curious about the end times for as long as I can remember.  It's natural to want to know what lies ahead, what does the future hold?  What is cool is that the Bible gives us lots of clues.  Some of those clues are pretty general like:

Matthew 24:4-8(NKJV)

4And Jesus answered and said to them: “Take heed that no one deceives you. 

5For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. 

6And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for £all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. 

7For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, £pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. 

8All these are the beginning of sorrows.

These are things that are general and are going on right now but have also been going on for generations.  As you can see verse 8 says "All these are the beginning of sorrows". 

Here is another example of the general:

Matthew 24:9-12(NKJV)

9“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. 

10And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. 

11Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. 

12And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. 

Again you could easily make the case that these things are happening right now but has also been happening for years.

Now let's look at a couple of the more specific examples:

Matthew 24:15(NKJV)

15“Therefore when you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’ £ spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place” (whoever reads, let him understand), 

When you see new idols or something like that being constructed right in the middle of Jerusalem, that is a lot more specific and I would think easier to recognize.

Or how about this one:

Revelation 8:8-9(NKJV)

8Then the second angel sounded: And something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood. 

9And a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.

Again pretty specific and I would think hard to miss.

So the Bible has given us clues, but my question is, to what purpose?  Are we supposed to try to pinpoint the day so we can all assemble with our suitcases packed, ready to go?  Or are we supposed to use this info in a more general way to let us know that God has given us a task, to bring people to Christ, and we better get busy because we don't have all day. 

My own personal belief is that it is the latter.  Here is what Jesus said in Matthew:

Matthew 24:36(NKJV)

36“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of £heaven, but My Father only.

We have Jesus speaking here and He says that only God knows.  Jesus knows He's coming back, but even He doesn't know exactly when!  So if Jesus doesn’t know the exact time and date, why should we?

So where does that leave us?  If we take the Parable of the 10 Virgins found in Matthew 25 as our guide, we need to be ready and prepared.  How do we do that? 

First by accepting Christ as our Lord and Savior.  Then by continually seeking God with all of our hearts, minds, and souls.  By being in the word daily.  By praying and seeking God's will for our lives, and then actually doing all we can to fulfill that vision that God has for our lives (whether we want to or not because sometimes it is scary or hard). 

So it may be tomorrow or it may be in thousands of tomorrows, but as long as are continually seeking God we will be OK, and that's all we really need to know!