CHRIS MCCANN·Wednesday, August 8, 2018 ·READING TIME: 5 MINUTES
“We’re not to be interested in the timing of Christ’s second coming” – says the man at a certain time of day he knows, and on a day of the week he knows, and on a month he knows, in a year he knows, in a century he knows.
“Forget about knowing the time of the end” – says the man who knows exactly how old he is; and who knows exactly the length of time he has worked at the place he’s worked; and who knows exactly the length of time he’s been married.
“What’s wrong with you, just live your life without concerning yourself about the time of Christ’s coming” – says the man who knows the timeline for the bus he takes to work; and the time schedule for the train; and the time schedule for the plane he plans on catching to take his summer vacation.
Everywhere we turn in this life we find time relationships that govern all activity. This is natural since God has made us creatures of time.
Ecclesiastes 3:1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
We have a natural time oriented curiosity about all things. Questions such as, “How old are you?” “How long have you worked there?” “How long have you been married?” “How long has America been a nation”? “What time is it?” “When’s dinner?” “What hours do you work?” “When does the game start?” And on and on and on. Time, time, time, everywhere connected to everything.
Take a challenge. Try to think of something you do or that others do in this world that does not involve time? Go ahead, take a few minutes to think about it (oops! “few minutes” is a time reference).
It’s in our nature to think of everything in relationship to time. So, even on a natural level you would think that mankind would be tremendously interested in the Biblical calendar of history, and in calculating time paths from one key historical date to another. And most of all, we would think that man, a natural creature of time, would have a tremendous interest in information that had to do with the timeline for the history of the world?
And yet, what is man’s response to the idea of looking into Christ’s coming and the end of time? No man knows. Don’t bother. Don’t worry about it. Just live your life. He’ll come when He comes. Try telling the same individual that about the bus he’s waiting for? "Don’t worry about it, it’ll come when it comes”. Or tell the man at work, “We don’t know when the work day will end. We don’t worry about that kind of thing in this office.” Or say to the sports enthusiast waiting to watch the championship game, “The game will be on TV but they are not revealing the day or hour when it will air.” A thousand other examples could be given. Without knowledge of time, this world would soon be thrust into a constant state of chaos. Time, and knowing the time, is essential in practically every other situation we experience in this world.
“But don’t worry about knowing the time for the end,” we’re always told. Somehow, multitudes of professed Christians think that’s not important to know.
However, the Lord Jesus Christ thinks it’s important. It was so important for His first coming that He pronounced a judgment upon those that knew it not:
Luke 19:44 And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.
The unsaved people of the world try their best to ignore all time references that poke a hole in their fantasy of living forever in this world. God’s elect people, however, understand that this world will soon come to a very definite conclusion. The Lord has granted His people a desire to look into the matter and a heart to understand both time and judgment:
Ecclesiastes 8:5 Whoso keepeth the commandment shall feel no evil thing: and a wise man’s heart discerneth both time and judgment.