Christ's Return--A Second Away

Sunday night was recovery time from a hard week end—Friday night-dinner with friends; Saturday afternoon- Fort Worth Stock Show; in the evening- the rodeo; Sunday morning- church, afternoon- homework with three kids. At 10:30 Robert, an executive in the rocket-paced world of High Tech Entertainment and Devices, tried to climb into bed to get some sleep before his alarm went off at four o’clock. His flight to Seattle left at 7:05am. His meeting for lunch and a 1:30pm business session with J. Allard, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for Design and Development, took him six months to set up. It meant millions or bust for the development group Robert was leading.
He set his alarm, rolled over, and was gone into dreamland.
“Honey, what are you doing? Why are you still in bed?”
Robert loved his wife, but her words hit his growing consciousness like a death sentence. His plane left at 7:05 and the digital numbers on his bedside clock read 7:30 as he grabbed it and frantically checked to see why it had failed to sound the alarm. A missed flight, a missed appointment with a Microsoft Vice President—his career was over.
Sleep is one of life’s sweetest delicacies—except when you’re supposed to be wide awake.
In Romans 13:11-14 the Apostle Paul sounds the alarm for the Roman believers to wake up. Jesus died in AD 33. It is now twenty four years later. For Paul this meant it was no time to be asleep. Christ could come at any second. For us it is now one thousand nine hundred and seventy five years later. Was the 1st Century Apostle naive about history and foolish to think that Christ’s return was imminent in AD 57? What should we believe about the nearness of Jesus Christ’s return today and what should we do about it?
When I was a kid, the European Common Market was the harbinger of the Ten Toes of Daniel's image. Now some of my prophetic colleagues tell me that Baghdad will soon be the world capital and the Ten Toes are ten Islamic nations already challenging Western power. Then I open up to Jonathan Edwards in the Colonial days and I discover that he believed that the French were the forces of Antichrist. All this guessing causes many believers to deconstruct the coming of Jesus and His promise loses its power over our daily lives.
Before you throw out the immanency of the Bridegroom's return for His Bride, read what Paul had to say to your family in AD 57 about the closeness of the parousia, and don't neglect to listen to Paul's advice about how we need to get serious about this.
He doesn't ask you to go to another prophetic congress. He asks the folks that I work with here in Texas not to go boozin and womanizing on Friday or Saturday night. Instead, he challenges them to allow the Light to radiate their unbelieving friends as they see the concrete ethical changes in their character because they know Jesus. Instead of getting drunk, they are to be full of the Spirit. Instead of fighting and dividing over music, styles of liturgy, and what they do or do not eat and drink, they are to be united in loving care for one another.