In Jesus Holy Name November 19, 2018
Text: Mark 13:32-33
“The Day? The Hour? It’s a Secret”
For days we Californians have been amazed, astounded, transfixed to our television and youtube videos because of the fires. We see streets lined with burned out vehicles. We watch people video their escape through tunnels of fire. A father is praying, trying to calm his children as flames brush across the hood of the car. The scenes are terrifying. People had no time to escape. Some have been found in their cars. Others in their homes.
Authorities searching through the blackened aftermath of California's deadliest wildfire released on Wednesday the names of about 1500 people who are missing. Many of those missing are in their 80s and 90s. Officials in Northern California said Tuesday that search crews had found six more bodies, bringing the death toll from the so-called "Camp Fire" to 75.
95% of Paradise, California destroyed. I can not imagine. Your car. Your home, your place of work… all gone. The Adventist hospital sent out an alert, kicking off a fevered scramble to evacuate the hospital’s patients and staff before the flames consumed the town. Patients, many on gurneys or wheelchairs, were loaded into ambulances, police cars, and nurses vehicles.
The Woolsey fire raged in Thousand Oaks & Malibu, causing more than 200,000 thousand people to evacuate .
Wendell Whitmore, a 62 year old resident of Paradise who tried to drive out said: “There were flames to the left of me and flames to the right,” …. “The flames were up in the trees, all the houses were on fire. The fire was three feet from my car. The rubber around the windows was melting. That’s when I decided to get out and run.” “There were embers on the road, it was so intense, crackling,”
Someday the whole world will be on fire. There will be no escape when the Lord returns. “be alert” “watch” The signs of his coming will be visible.
One man who survived the “Camp Fire” said…. “We knew this day would come. Brush was dry. The forest had dead trees. Old brush littered the forest floor. We tried to be prepared but the fire, and the 50 mile an hour wind was too much.”
Mark 13 tells us that Jesus had been preaching in Jerusalem. He and his disciples left the temple area and walked across the Kidron valley; I’d call it a creek, and walked up the Mt. of Olives. It is a fabulous view back across the Kidron Valley of about a ½ mile, towards the city of Jerusalem and the temple mount.
The disciples were also looking at the ancient city with its beautiful limestone walls Jesus said, “Not one stone will be left on another, everyone will be thrown down.” His words were shocking. You see, the temple, with its 40 foot columns; and foundation stones weighing more than 100 tons seemed to be indestructible. Indestructible as, well, as a building as big as the Pentagon, or as tall as the Word Trade Center towers. It was unthinkable that anything could destroy the temple.
So shocking was Jesus’ comment, that later, as the Savior and some of His closest friends, sat on the Mount of Olives, gazing at the wondrous panorama of the temple complex, the disciples, very privately asked, “Jesus can you tell us when, can You give us some identifying signs of when the destruction of the temple is going to happen?”
Already then Jesus knew horrible things were going to occur before the end of the world. He knew the Romans would bring down the temple in 70 A.D. Jesus told of wars, rumors of wars, persecution, problems pestilence, tribulation and trails, the coming of false prophets who could perform miracles an falsely claim they represented God. One thing Jesus did not tell them was “when.” Which is why to this very day, wishing to nail things down and be prepared, not wanting any lose ends…. People have been trying to pinpoint the last day, the moment the Savior will return to this world in judgment. I’m sure many of us remember Harold Camping and his numerous predictions….. all nonsense of course.
We human beings are curious lot. We want to know when. We want to
know the day, the time. The disciples were no different. The Christians in Thessalonica were asking the Apostle Paul about the return of Jesus. They had questions. Paul writes in his 2nd letter: “God is just. He will punish those who do =not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus when He returns.
When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. ( I Thessalonians 1) …. “…He… will send his angels and gather his elect from the ….ends of the earth…..” (Mk 13:27) “The last Trumpet shall sound and the dead in Christ will rise from the dust of the earth…. To receive their glorified and resurrected body… ( I Thess. 4 & Philippians 3)
The disciples asked the expected question. “When will this happen?” “What will be the sign of your coming at the end of the age?”
Jesus said, “No one knows the day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor do I, only the Father knows.” “Keep watch….many will come in my name, claiming to be the Christ, and they will deceive many. Keep watch, because you do not know the day your Lord will come.” Be ready! It’s a fire prevention principle.
In all seriousness….how many of you have what they call a “go bag”? A bag you can grab in an emergency moment with your important papers, survival gear. Are all your family photos, wills, insurance policies on a “chip” in your “go bag”? No? Is that because you think you will have time? In Paradise some people went to bed. They thought they had time.
The moment Jesus appears in the sky….there will be no time left. Everyone knew the Santa Anna winds were coming. Everyone knew the brush was dry. Everyone knew the forest floor was littered with dead trees… The signs were there.
In Acts chapter 1, when Jesus had ascended into heaven the angels spoke to the disciples and said, “this same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” When he returns the opportunity for preparation will be passed. Our eternal destination depends on the preparation that we have already made.
The exact day and hour of our Lord’s return is a secret. When that day arrives, “the voice of the archangel will sound forth with the trumpet call of God and the dead in Christ will be raised from the dead.” The exact day and hour is a secret….but there are warning signs so that we can be prepared. When you approach a city street with a traffic light….and you see yellow…. You are to prepare to stop, not race through it. It’s a warning sign. “Prepare to stop… cross traffic is about to move.”
(take out your bible and look at these warning signs of Jesus.)
Jesus begins with a warning in Mark 13:5. There will be false prophets, individuals who claim to be Jesus. Do not be deceived. V 7 Nations will be at war. V 8 There will be famines and earthquakes. V 9 Believers will be persecuted. This is exactly what has happened in Iraq and Syria to the Christian believers. Christians can expect to be hated because of their lifestyle which is committed to imitating Jesus.
How close are we to the end of the world?
Since 1947, a magazine called the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has kept the “Doomsday Clock” to show how close we are to global catastrophe. As the situation in the world gets better or worse, the hands of the clock are set closer or further away from midnight. On January 25, 2018 the clock was set at two minutes till midnight, the closest it’s been since the height of the Cold War in 1953. The scientists cited the proliferation of nuclear weapons as a major reason to adjust the clock.
Are we dancing with disaster?
Recently Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his country had developed a new “super-missile” that can not be stopped by conventional defense systems. Footage accompanying the announcement seemed to picture a missile heading toward the US.
Consider these headlines:
“When Will We Have Another World War? History Says Soon.”
“Battered, Bruised and Jumpy—The Whole World is on Edge.”
“Is the Global Economy Facing a Financial Armageddon?”
The situation in the world has become so unstable that catastrophe could happen at any moment. We’re hearing people use words like “Armageddon” and the “End of Days” to describe what may lie ahead for planet earth.
Many people are preparing for the worst. We are constantly encouraged to buy “My Patriot Supply” or other survival kits …..organizations are offering to provide emergency food that will last 25 years…
When I was a child, my mother taught me a bedtime prayer I said every night. It
goes like this: “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” Although I never thought about it when I was young, it’s a heavy thing for a five-year-old to pray, “If I should die before I wake.”
What if that bedtime prayer finally came true? What if, after years of rising and shining, the sun doesn’t come up for you? What if you knew this would be your final day on earth? What if you knew you would not live to see another sunrise? What would you do? How would you live?
Beginning with faith in the crucified and risen Jesus, the Apostle Paul wanted his friends in the new Christian Church in Thessalonica, to be encouraged and have their hope restored. He wanted them to remind them that Jesus Christ is alive, and seated at the right hand of our Heavenly Father. When He returns He will raise all who have died and give to all believers their glorified resurrected, immortal body.
The risen Jesus gives hope, and not a feeble, frail, fragile kind of hope. This hope is based on knowledge, on fact, on proof, on the reality of the risen Jesus.
Now the rest of the world, the unbelieving world, may not know what happens when they die. It is just one more of their unknowns. They’re not sure. Do we just disappear into a void? Do we come around and try again? Do we become something else, someone else, anything else? There is no comfort, no reassurance in these unanswered questions. All they do is leave us standing at a gravesite without security, without sanctuary, without safety, and mourning as those who have no hope.
For believers it is different. Jesus rose from the dead. He is the first to do so in this new covenant between God and humanity. He was the first to be given a glorified body, not limited by time and space. He is not the last. On Judgement Day, He is going to bring with Him all those who have already died in the faith. Our brothers and sisters, mothers, fathers, friends will not be as we remember them. Forgiven and saved, yes, they will come back whole, perfect. What will they look like?
I don’t know. Some have told us they have seen their loved ones. Young, Vibrant. Joyous. All I can say is that they will be as God always wanted them to be. The ravages of illness, pains of persecution, the sorrows of sickness, the lines of age will be gone. That is the future hope we are given because Jesus rose from death and the grave.
There is more. A risen Redeemer gives us hope for right now. As time wears us down, as the years take their toll, as we suffer pains and problems, believers know that these difficulties will not have the final word. Our memories may slip, our bones may crack, our eyes become less clear, and the volume of our hearing may be turned way down. But this is not the end. This is not our end.
The signs are present. Be alert! Don’t worry! Watch! Be prepared! Have your “go bag” packed. Be sure that your eternal “go bag”…is Jesus.
