“Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away. 32. But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. 33. Take ye heed, watch and pray; for you know not when the time is.”
All of the Christians that I know believe that Jesus is coming again. For the past 2,000 years since Jesus ascended to the Father, people have wanted to predict when all of the end time things will happen. Any who have ever tried to set a date and took their followers with them in their prediction have ended up embarrassing themselves and their followers. Why won’t people just believe Jesus when He says: “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father only.” The clincher for me is when He says: “neither the Son.” Why would I think that I could know something that Jesus did not claim to know? I have written before and said in churches that I am not on the time and place committee, but on the preparation committee. This is where I want to come down in this article. Jesus said: “Take heed, watch and pray; for you know not when the time is.” In other words, Jesus is telling us that we are to stay prepared for His coming at all times. The words “take heed, watch and pray” grabbed me as I read this. What does Jesus mean by this? I think that Jesus means that we are to watch what we think. I think you will agree with me that one of our greatest battles as Christians is in our thought lives. Satan loves to play with our minds, and he loves to get us to listen to and look at things that will give us impure thoughts. Proverbs 23:7 warns that “As (a man) thinks in his heart so is he.” The problem with impure thinking is that what starts in our minds, ends up in our hearts, and what is in our hearts is often what we act on, or at least obsess on. We can’t always help the thoughts that cross our minds, but we can erase them before they reach our hearts. One of the problems of the world is that we think up bad things and dwell on them. What would you want to have on your mind if Jesus came for you today? You have probably already guessed that the next point is that we are to watch what we do. God told the Israelites at one point that they were doing things that even the Canaanites would not do. God judges us based on what we do, but that is no surprise to us. We need to also realize that people around us notice what we do too. We might think that we are doing something wrong in secret, but somebody, somewhere, will find out. Our witness to the world depends on what we do. I often hear people criticizing people about their actions though they are in church every Sunday. People aren’t blind, nor are they deaf. God is watching what we do, and that should be enough to make us stop and think about what we do. What would you want to be doing today if Jesus returned for you? Would you want to be doing what you normally do, or would what you normally do be an embarrassment to you? Finally, we are to watch what we allow into our minds and hearts, and what we allow ourselves to do. We have a God-given will, and we can allow or not allow the wrong things to take up housekeeping in our hearts, minds and actions. I’ve never met a person who said that he or she was not aware of right and wrong. Even when I did Bible studies in the two prisons in our county, I never had a prisoner raise his hand and say that he did not know right from wrong. We do wrong because we give ourselves permission to do so. We have the will to do good or to do wrong. What would you allow into your minds, hearts and actions if you knew that Jesus was returning today? Jesus is coming – take heed!!! Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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