“He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” (Revelation 22:20)
Everyone loves to speculate on the exact coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. The buzz lately about the Mayan calendar ending on December 21, 2012 has everyone in the same fever pitch that the Y2K scare caused. We saw that turn out to be much ado about nothing. If we are still around on the Mayan “D-Day”, it will be interesting to see all the press leading up to that day. We can be sure that CNN and Discovery Channel and all the others will overhype it more than ESPN does the Super Bowl (if that is possible). This incessant fixation on finding the exact day of the return of the Lord is unhealthy, yet so many believers are taken in by it. We have been talking about it for generations. I remember the early 80’s and how it was so certain to be “any day now” that people were doing all sorts of dumb things like selling their house or running up their credit cards or taking their kids out of school. Here we are 30 years and a full generation later, and the hype is still there. Just the other day I heard of a group predicting the rapture on May 9, 2011. I think the Lord sits in heaven shaking his head at that junk. What if May 9th was the day? Jesus would have to delay his coming just so that fringe nut group could not go through eternity bragging about hitting the date. Why don’t we just all shut up and let him come when he does? The more date setting we do, the bigger fools we become in the eyes of a skeptical world. They need Jesus. The more we fiddle-faddle with this, the less likely they are to trust him.
Jesus said, “Occupy till I come.” (Luke 19:13) He did not tell us to sit around and speculate on the exact date. The reason people want to do this is because they get some sort of sugar-high spiritual buzz out of knowing something others don’t know. The human race is infected with that disease from the garden. Eve was promised that if she took of the forbidden tree that she would “be as gods, knowing good and evil.” Our first parents desired to be “in the know” in an area God said would not benefit them. Billions of lost souls later, we still reap the consequences of that sin. Yet we never learn. We still have to know something others don’t. That is why you watch to 24 hour news channels. Ted Turner was not as dumb as they said he was when he founded CNN. He knew enough of human nature to sell us lemmings on the idea of around the clock news saturation. He recently gave $1 billion (with a B) to the United Nations – perhaps the biggest waste of money in the history of the world. He got it from suckers like us who cannot live by faith and trust God to take care of the details.
I believe the date of the rapture is clearly in the Bible. I also believe that God has hidden it from man until it happens. When we get to heaven, we will slap ourselves in the forehead and cry out, “Why couldn’t I see that?!” Until then, trust him. Occupy – do what he asked you to do. Clean up your life for his glory. Share the simple truth of a Saviour to those who desperately need him. If you knew for certain the rapture would happen on such-and-such a date, what would you do? If it was 3 months away, would you pay your mortgage? I wouldn’t. That’s one of the main reasons God won’t show us. He knows us too well like that.
Others will get all spiritual and say, “Well, if I knew, I would witness and clean things up and…” Why don’t you do those things now? Live every day like it was your last, because it might be. At the same time, you should live every day like you have a full life in front of you because your chances of that are just as great. God expects a full life lived for his glory from start to finish. He does not expect you to “hide your talents in a napkin” (Mat 25:24-25, Luke 19:20) by sitting around trying to know more than the next guy. God is not impressed with what you know. He knows more. He is moved by the heart that trembles at his word (Isa 66:2) and seeks to do it. God doesn’t care WHAT you know, he cares WHO you know – his Son Jesus Christ.
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