In Matthew 24, Jesus explains the coming of the end. We are a lot like the disciples; they really wanted to know when it was going to happen. If I knew when, I could plan better, right? If it was really soon, I could start getting ready. If it was a long way off I could put off getting ready! But Jesus makes it perfectly clear in Matthew 24:36 that we can’t know. He says, “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.”
The Jehovah witnesses and many others have asserted supernatural knowledge of the coming of the end, but all predictions have failed. Lately, someone has said the end would come in 2012! Relax, no one knows. Someone once said, “It might be well for all of us to remember that, while differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal.” The time of the end is something nobody knows, and God wanted it that way for a reason.
While on a South Pole expedition, British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton left a few men on Elephant Island, promising that he would return. Later, when he tried to go back, huge icebergs blocked the way. But suddenly, as if by a miracle, an avenue opened in the ice and Shackleton was able to get through. His men, ready and waiting, quickly scrambled aboard. No sooner had the ship cleared the island than the ice crashed together behind them. Contemplating their narrow escape, the explorer said to his men, “It was fortunate you were all packed and ready to go!” They replied, “We never gave up hope. Whenever the sea was clear of ice, we rolled up our sleeping bags and reminded each other, ‘The boss may come today.’” The hymn writer Horatius Bonar exhorted us “to be ready for the last moment by being ready at every moment…so attending to every duty that, let Him come when He may, He finds the house in perfect order, awaiting His return.” The trump may sound anytime. How important for us as Christians to be “packed and ready to go!”
Chuck
“Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” Matthew 24:42