In Such An Hour When Ye Think Not

IN SUCH AN HOUR AS YE THINK NOT

by Pastor Jim May

Matthew 24:44, "Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh."

D-Day, June 6, 1944 was one of the greatest days in all of history. Beginning just after midnight, the allied forces began what was to be called "the longest day" as Operation Overlord got under way.

After four years of war, the allies were going to invade German-occupied Fortress Europe. D-day marked the beginning of the end for the Third Reich. Germany had been preparing for years for this invasion, building a fortress along the Atlantic sea wall 1,800 miles from Holland to the Brittany Peninsula.

They sent their best strategist, General Erwin Rommel (the Desert Fox), to prepare for the invasion that would come. For eight months he strengthened the coastal barricades. He pushed himself and others to the breaking point, working day and night for a June 20th completion deadline. But, on the morning of June 6th, the fifty-one year-old General was 500 miles away, in Germany sleeping.

Thinking that nothing would happen, he had taken a three-day holiday to be with his wife on her birthday. The invasion took place at a time and a place that he, and the German high command, didn’t think it would come. They thought they were prepared. They thought that they might be invincible. But they didn’t remain vigilant and ready, and they paid the price in defeat.

The United States of America had to learn this same lesson on a quiet Sunday morning as the year 1941 was coming to an end. At 7 AM on December 7th, 1941, the Japanese destroyed the Navy’s Pacific fleet in a matter of a few hours. Our recovery took four long years of fighting as the Marines and the army hopped from island to island in the South Pacific, rooting out the Japanese and destroying their ability to fight. Millions of lives were lost and trillions of dollars spent on the war. So many less lives could have been lost, and World War II could have been brought to a much quicker end if we would have just been ready, watching and waiting. But there was a heavy price to pay because the enemy struck at an hour when we least expected it.

Surely we are living in the last days. Signs of the times are everywhere and there’s a feeling in the air that all of the things around us are going to soon change.

We, in the church, know that Jesus is coming soon. I hope and pray that we are watching and waiting for His coming. But I know that most of the church world, and none of the worldly crowd, are ready.

What a price must be paid for those who are found sleeping when Jesus comes to catch His bride away!

If you are a part of the church that is watching and waiting, almost breathlessly, anxious for the coming of the Lord, that will be a welcomed day. Oh what a glorious day it will be when my Jesus I shall see. When I look upon his face; the One who saved me by His grace. That will be a glad reunion day!

But for the rest of the church, who doesn’t go in the rapture, and for the whole of sinful man, that will not be a welcomed day. It will be a day that great tribulation shall be unleashed upon the world and upon those who were not watching and waiting.

Satan’s forces of evil will invade the shores of earth in an all-out effort to annihilate mankind once and for all. There will arise a tide of evil the likes of which this world has never seen before. It will make the death camps at Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Treblinka, seem like a Sunday School picnic by comparison. The terrible reign of death and destruction that will come upon this earth for that last seven years of earth’s history under the rule of Satan, will beggar description.

Yet, all the warnings, all the chastisement, all the preaching, all the teaching and all the judgments that God can bring to bear to get man’s attention, are going largely unnoticed as men travel headlong into eternity without God into the Lake of Fire.

I fear that most of those who call themselves Christian are asleep. They have spent years learning of the Second Coming of Christ. They have planned to go in the rapture. They talk about it all the time and they believe it’s coming, but they just don’t remain vigilant.

Jesus told us what was going to happen when He comes again in Matthew 24:37-41, "But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left."