Far be it from me to get crossways with such luminary minds as Nephilim-Hunter-68 or Sword-of-Yah-33 on the interwebs, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that what Jesus said contradicts the notion that by their assessment, and the assessment of many others Jesus is late, and He should have been here by now. Who be thou? This comes to mind each time I run across such declarative statements, insisting that God and His perfect timing missed a step because He was not in harmony with their machinations.
It was Jesus who said that all these things must come to pass
but the end is not yet. It would be refreshing to see someone quoting Jesus
when it comes to discussions on the last days and His imminent return than just
pulling dates out of a hat, and when the date we pulled out of a hat comes and
goes, we just rummage in the hat for another date.
Matthew 24:6, “And 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.”
In hindsight, it turns out Jesus was right, and all the folks
who set dates as though it were a competition turned out to be wrong. Who could
have seen that one coming?
When people insist that Jesus miscalculated His return, it
tells me they’ve never taken His words to heart or given them more than a
cursory glance. What some consider long past the end Jesus calls the beginning,
and that is something that must be acknowledged and processed lest we shake our
fists at the heavens and call God a liar because Jesus didn’t return during our
presupposed timeline. We worked hard on that timeline, too. We laid out all the
reasons why we believed such and such a thing had to happen by such and such a
date but never bothered to confer with the Word of God to see what Jesus had to
say about it.
I’m not talking about the day and the hour—Jesus said no man
knows it, although some claim they do. I’m talking about the signs and events that
we would see preceding His return, signs and events that will allow us to gauge
the closeness of the fulfillment of His promise.
Jesus never broke a promise, and He’s not about to start now.
He is returning! He said He would, and I believe Him at His word, for He’s
never given me a reason to doubt Him. It should be enough to know that He is
coming back. For many today, it’s not. It’s all well and good that He is
returning, but we want to know when, and we hope that if we insist it should be
before all the things the Bible says would happen during the last days, then
He’ll acquiesce and do as we demand. He should know we’re pampered, sensitive
souls with an aversion to hardship, and He should accommodate us.
If that’s not enough to sway Him, then we throw being special
into the mix as well. As to why we think ourselves special over any other man
or woman in the world or over generations that have come and gone, I couldn’t
say. I don’t suffer from that particular malady. What I do know is that God is
no respecter of persons, nor does He show partiality.
He sees that kid in sub-Saharan Africa trying to squeeze the
last drop of water from a dry spigot on par with the most well-respected
individual of the Harris Tweed and elbow patches crowd. His only metric is
whether we’ve been washed and made clean by the blood of Christ and have
humbled ourselves and repented at the foot of the cross.
Far too many people today are under the misconception that
they’re special because Mom and Aunt Melba insisted it was so, even though
there was no evidence to substantiate the claim. That mindset has carried
through into adulthood, and although, objectively speaking, they’re well within
the parameters of mediocrity by any metric, they see it as exceptionalism
because no one dared to tell them the truth and inspire them to aspire to more
than showering once a week and learning how to microwave Hungry Man frozen
dinners.
Even if you happened to be born with a specific type of
pedigree, well-heeled and educated beyond the community college or high school
diploma standard, those things may make you special in the eyes of man, but
they will do nothing to sway God’s opinion of you or change the way He sees
you.
The things men value most are metrics God does not take into
account. For one to be a leader of men, the world says they need presence and
gravitas, a rich vocabulary, and an ability to be sharp-witted, yet God chose
Moses, who was not shy about reminding God how he was of slow speech and a slow
tongue. To anyone looking from the outside in and weighing God’s selection
process, Moses did not seem like the ideal candidate. Even Moses tried to point
out that he was not the right man for the job and that he lacked the skills he
deemed necessary to sway Pharaoh.
Exodus 4:10, “Then Moses said to the Lord, “O my Lord, I am not
eloquent, neither before nor since You have spoken to Your servant; but I am
slow of speech and slow of tongue.”
God would hear none of it, and His anger was kindled against
Moses for his repeated attempts to compel God to find someone else. What Moses
had yet to fully grasp was that God chooses the vessel, and as long as the
vessel does not resist and become brittle in the potter’s hands, He will fill
it with the power the vessel needs to do great exploits in His name.
On the other hand, the things that men dismiss and wave off are the metrics by which God will one day judge everyone as they stand before the great white throne. God weighs the heart, the inner things, the things men cannot perceive save by the power of the Holy Spirit, and though men might claim the Lord with their lips, He knows the truth of their hearts, for all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea, Jr.
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