Children love to play hide and seek. The one who is “it” waits a while and then loudly declares, “Here I come, ready or not.” The Lord Jesus Christ was not playing games when he said, “Behold I come quickly.'” He is coming, ready or not. Are we ready? If we are not ready now, when will we be ready? What are we doing to get ready?
Jesus warned us when he said, “Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.”
Will the Lord come in an hour when we think not? Has he given us signs to look for so his coming will not take us by surprise? Yes, he has. Are we reading the signs he has given us? Jesus challenged the Pharisees and Sadducee’s when they came tempting him and asking him to show them a sign. “He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather today: for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?”
They did not heed the signs Jesus gave them and, as a result, their future is bleak indeed. It will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for those who saw the signs and did not heed them.
Are we noticing how the nation of Israel prospers and how the generation ages that saw its birth? As the morality and violence of our times moves closer to Noah’s and Lot’s days, are we lifting up our heads looking for our redemption?
We often talk about the coming of the Lord and how wonderful it will be. That is true, if we are ready for his coming. It will not be true if we are not. The coming of the Lord will either be the most wonderful thing that ever happens to us or the most terrible. The Lord is not willing any should perish, but the fact is a great many will.
Why? Because the Lord is not gracious? No, he is gracious. It will be because we did not prepare for his coming; The prophet of God was instructed to warn King Asa, saying, “The LORD is with you, while ye be with him; and if ye seek him he will be found of you; but if ye forsake him, he will forsake you.”
To be forsaken by the Lord at his coming is the saddest thing possible to imagine and it does not need to be. We need to seek him now. We need to prepare to meet him now. Amos said, “Prepare to meet thy God, 0 Israel.”
Paul told us, “For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.”
Remember he is coming, ready or not. Be ready!
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One