You don’t know

Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming. – Matthew 24.42

As far back as my mind can remember in my Christian life people have been trying to figure out when the Lord is coming back. I have watched people try to read newspapers headlines and breaking news from television and chats on discussion boards and all the websites to try and use the news to figure out when the Lord is coming back.

In the past I have found myself caught up in all that. I loved all the novels and films and speculation. No one actually tried to pin down the ‘day or the hour’ because the Bible says that no man can know what, but there were plenty of guesses as to the year!

Even today there are newspaper eschatologists out there who tell all about this is a part of the mark of the beast and this country or that country are Gog or Magog or who the Antichrist might be. Bar codes, electronic scanners, chips in credit cards, credit cards security codes, and many other thing. have been indications of the mark of the beast. The Soviet Union, Germany, the EU, Iraq, and Iran have all been interpreted to be Gog and/or Magog. Everyone from Ronald Reagan to various EU leaders to Barack Obama have been identified as Antichist.

I guess all that is okay, as long as we don’t take it too seriously.

The Bible puts a different perspective on things. Jesus put it simply – ‘Keep watching, because you don’t know when I am coming.’ When Paul wrote to the Thessalonians he said ‘I don’t need to tell you about the times and seasons of Jesus coming’ before he went on to tell them how to live while they were waiting.

In fact, whenever we read about the Lord’s return the focus in not on the when, but on the how we should live.

I don’t know when Jesus is coming back. I have stopped trying to guess. All I do know is that it could be today and that every day brings us one day closer. Therefore I need to live in vigilant expectation so that my life will glorify Him to the very end.