12 Minutes
There is this unreflective desire for the glorious prospect of seeing the Lord. This driving force comes from knowing the necessity of suffering before he comes. The decision to be found faithful and vigilant in our particular callings is to strengthen us until he comes. Our every response is to be biblical. Our pursuit is to be like him now. We must become a radically pure, holy, loving, sacrificial, Christlike person now. For that to happen the intensity of our hope, the devotion to nothing but the truth, is to be focused upon him. We are to be spiritually and mentally alert to satanic deception and every false teaching; we should be completely submitted to the word of God rather than being lawless or self-willed; and we should be cultivating strong faith in the sovereign goodness of God, so that we can endure to the end through whatever suffering comes our way.
Be weary of human nature... human beings have developed popular as well as intellectual and sophisticated ways of denying the existence of any divine law or standard. We have a tendency to attempt to override the mind of God. We have found a way to claim plausibility for creating our own truth, creating our own right and wrong, creating our own identity. Such lawlessness will be multiplied, will be increased, and that the effect is a tragic coldness of love among professed believers. Another of our pursuits to prepare for the Lord’s coming and its antecedent sufferings is to submit ourselves with spiritual intelligence and spiritual wisdom and spiritual reasoning and spiritual joy to the absolute standards of God’s law, of God’s every word for the sake of warm love, not cold love. I thank God for allowing His messenger to fuel my thoughts in this plea for our betterment. Let’s be faithful and vigilant in our particular callings. We have an assignment. We are to be wise. We are to keep oil in our vessels that our light keeps us morally and spiritually awake that we may know the way in the dark time when the cry is made for us to meet the Lord. Our gifts, resources, abilities, money, relationships, and spiritual discipline must be of such as God means them to be. These are the spheres where we do our job with faithfulness and diligence. Our life is to be guided with the sureness of seeing our God at His coming.
Consider the depth of the statement, “let this mind be in you”, in your readying yourself for Christ’s return. The mind of Christ...
Mark 13:32
Christ did not have such intimate knowledge of God the Father. This verse reveals the self-limitation of the real Incarnation of the Eternal Word. As a fully human individual, Jesus learned things as other human beings learn them, yet Jesus was fully God, and as God, He had infinite knowledge. In the passage before us He speaks in terms of his human nature. This statement of our Lord as to Himself can be explained only by referring to the ignorance of His human mind...indeed, a finite mind could not contain all knowledge. If there was to be real Incarnation of the Eternal Word, then the body He took must be a real body, and the mind a real mind. How His divine nature could be omniscient, and His human mind limited in knowledge, both being united in one person, is part of the mystery of the Incarnation, which we need not expect to solve. But to be limited in knowledge, does not necessarily involve erroneous information or conceptions. The human nature of the Incarnate Deity was infallibly preserved from sin, and so, we may believe, from error of judgment. And the Word prayed for our being perfectly reproduced in this character. Our discernment is to be predicated upon this proposition. No day is named, that every day may be hallowed by the sense of the possibility of its being the day of Christ’s advent. It helps to hallow each day of life, even in consideration of prophesied events, to realize that before its close we may be in the presence of Christ's glory.
Don’t let your familiarity with another hinder your discernment of truth. The whole truth measures motives, thoughts, intents as well as words and deeds. Intimate associations will be separated by the unexpected coming of Jesus. There will be no second chance. What is your personal relationship with Jesus? Are we prepared for the shaking?
SOP - Had Adventists, after the great disappointment in 1844, held fast their faith and followed on unitedly in the opening providence of God, receiving the message of the third angel and in the power of the Holy Spirit proclaiming it to the world, they would have seen the salvation of God, the Lord would have wrought mightily with their efforts, the work would have been completed, and Christ would have come ere this to receive His people to their reward. But in the period of doubt and uncertainty that followed the disappointment, many of the advent believers yielded their faith. . . . Thus the work was hindered, and the world was left in darkness. Had the whole Adventist body united upon the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, how widely different would have been our history! {Ev 695.3} It was not the will of God that the coming of Christ should be thus delayed. God did not design that His people, Israel, should wander forty years in the wilderness. He promised to lead them directly to the land of Canaan, and establish them there a holy, healthy, happy people. But those to whom it was first preached, went not in "because of unbelief." Their hearts were filled with murmuring, rebellion, and hatred, and He could not fulfill His covenant with them. {Ev 696.1} For forty years did unbelief, murmuring, and rebellion shut out ancient Israel from the land of Canaan. The same sins have delayed the entrance of
modern Israel into the heavenly Canaan. In neither case were the promises of God at fault. It is the unbelief, the worldliness, unconsecration, and strife among the Lord's professed people that have kept us in this world of sin and sorrow so many years.--Manuscript 4, 1883. {Evangelism, Page 696.2} Are we to attain a level of holiness never seen before, will we ever meet that prerequisite? We must therefore do some thing never done before. From God’s viewpoint there is no delay. The sovereignty of God is our assurance. SOP - We have not cast away our confidence, neither have we a message dependent upon definite time, but we are waiting and watching unto prayer, looking for and loving the appearing of our Saviour, and doing all in our power for the preparation of our fellow men for that great event. We are not impatient. If the vision tarry, wait for it, for it will surely come, it will not tarry. Although disappointed, our faith has not failed, and we have not drawn back to perdition. The apparent tarrying is not so in reality, for at the appointed time our Lord will come, and we will, if faithful, exclaim, "Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us" (Isaiah 25:9). {Manuscript Releases Volume Ten [Nos. 771-850, Page 270.2}.
Zechariah 4:6
How can the testimony of Jesus speak of delay being "not so in reality"? How can we harmonize delay and nearness?
Here we have two ways of looking at the same event. From our viewpoint, there has been a delay because we have not done the work we should have. But from God's viewpoint, there is no delay. He has not put His plans entirely in our hands. He is sovereign; He is in control; He has His "appointed time." Faith in God's power: it is divine power that gives success. Those whom God employs as His messengers are not to feel that His work is dependent on them. Finite beings are not left to carry this burden of responsibility. The delay is ours...in doing our work. But the time determined is God’s. And the promises and threatenings of God are alike conditional. And God knows when His called “are ready”. But in truth there is more in our readying whether in nearness or delay. Our readying is to exhort the third angel's message and Sabbath reform, and then call God's people to purify their souls through obedience to the truth. It is the unbelief, worldliness, unconsecration, and strife among the Lord's professed people that have kept them in the world so many years. Where is the holy living and diligent witnessing? The Lord is not delayed...we are hindering his return. Our being ready is more about preparation than about time. A people will be ready when the Lord comes. Their spots and stains will be removed beforehand - pride, passion, slothfulness, envy, evil-surmisings, and evil- speaking. Overcoming sin must be done in this life: not one error of character
will be removed when Christ comes. We must learn and reason to cultivate heart-holiness and to live with purpose. God says that we can hasten the coming. God is allowing our godly living to actually affect His timetable. We are to live out the new covenant realities. We are to take advantage of the divine delay to join in God’s redemptive purposes.This truth should actually fuel our patience and passion as we prepare for our Lord’s return.
Matthew 24:44
We are to “be ready” when every event is presented to us. Our all-important readiness is being born again. We must live in prayerful, watchful readiness for “all that is about to happen.” Do not allow your heart to be weighed down with mundane matters of worldliness. Don’t engage in any conduct that will damage your careful watchfulness and prayerfulness. Interesting scenarios are taking place. We would do well to take them all seriously, in order to be “ready” for whatever is coming while we are alive on this earth. May I strongly suggest that be wise to seek the fullness of the Holy Spirit; both the new birth by the Spirit and the baptism with the Holy Spirit. All that we receive from God is by His grace. But that does not remove from us our obligation to apply that grace in our lives and to expend every effort to “make ourselves ready” for presentation to our entering into the perfect character of Jesus. We must be “ready believers”. The key is “readiness”.
I Peter 3:15
If you are ready, when you are ready, Jesus Christ holds a very special, central place in your heart; and as a result you are “ready always to give an answer” to those who see something in you that causes them to ask about your hopefulness, your optimism. Do it with gentleness and reverence. Make clear to all the truth of the event. And that answer, of course, is the blessed hope that you have in Jesus Christ.
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