The Christian seasons of Advent and Christmas have traditionally been a time of looking back to that blessed event of the coming of God in the flesh in the Child Jesus of Nazareth, when God stepped out of eternity into history, into time and space in the humble role of a suffering servant. But more and more my mind and heart have become focussed on another event, the blessed hope, the return of Jesus Christ in glory at the end of the age. Jesus is no longer a little child in a manger. He is our great God and Savior, clothed in majesty and power and seated upon the throne of the Universe. That is the Jesus we will see with our own eyes at the close of the age. Christians seem to be divided into two camps regarding biblical prophecy. There is the small vocal minority of date setters who seem to keep missing it, and then there is large generic group who feel that prophecy is too complicated to understand or perhaps irrelevant to our lives. But there is a more scriptural position which recognizes that, regardless of the date, we should be fulfilling the instructions of our Lord, who warned us to be in a constant state of preparedness and expectancy. We should be urgently fulfilling His last and great commission, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature...and these signs will accompany those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it shall not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover." I have never before in my life had such an abiding sense of the urgency of this command of the Lord, and the imminence of His return. I realize I throw myself completely out of the company of that intellectual circle who have spiritualized away the scriptural warnings and promises of the Second Coming of Christ. Aforetimes I reasoned thus, but now I have become Christ's fool.
The return of Christ is not indicated by all the bad things happening in the world. Jesus said in Matthew 24, "And you will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end." The single event that will signal His return is that "this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a witness to all the nations, and then the end shall come." Though the media hasn't exactly picked up on it, we are in the midst of one of the mightiest outpourings of the Spirit of God that has ever taken place in the history of mankind. Many have wished for a new Pentecost. My friend, it's here, and it's growing. Presently there are 200 million Pentecostal/Charismatics in the world, and their growth is explosive, with the expectation of 300 million by the close of the century. Mighty things are happening where the gospel is being preached in third world nations. Through the preaching of the German evangelist Reinhardt Bonnke in Africa, 200,000 people were won to the kingdom of God in a single service. That's bigger than many denominations. Walls that formerly closed out the gospel are falling down all over the world. We have witnessed in just a couple of years the collapse of communism in Russia and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. That great arm of propaganda of the Soviet state, the publishing company Pravda, is printing Bibles. Christians are being invited into communist countries to help set up school curriculum changes. With the advent of satellite communication we are at a point where this preaching of the gospel to all the nations has become an immediate possibility. We are living in the most exciting and dangerous times ever known to man. As the proverb says, it is shameful to find a son sleeping in harvest. It's time for changing our priorities. It's time for one last great push. It's time to draw near to God, to receive His anointing for ministry in whatever area He has called us, and to go for it. Make your New Year's resolution this year to consecrate yourself wholly to the Lord and the Advent of His kingdom on earth. You'll have the most exciting year of your life as you step out of the smallness of self-interest into that grand plan of God - supernatural Christianity.
@ copyright 1991 by Scott H. Northrup. All rights reserved.