Jesus Is Not A Slacker: Are You Ready When He Comes – Regardless When He Comes?
Word-Of-The-Day: ‘The Lord is not slow (or slack) in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.’ (2 Peter 3:9); ‘But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.’ (Psalm 33:11)
There are many ‘experts’ out there who discuss and provide their thoughts on the End Times and the book of Revelation. While I have read the ‘Left Behind‘ series and taught a Bible study on Revelation a few years ago, to be honest I am not into all the prognostications of the End Times or the talk of them occurring in our lifetime. I am more of a ‘it will happen when it happens‘ with the mindset of ‘be ready – and make sure those around me are ready‘ when the Tribulation begins.
Many Christians are of the Pre-Tribulation mindset when it comes to the End Times, or when Jesus will come to claim His bride, the church in what we call ‘the Rapture’. Many believe He will come and Rapture His people before the Tribulation to save us from the horrors of the Antichrist’s rise and the series of Judgements that follow.
However, there are others (including myself) that don’t see a Pre-Tribulation clearly marked in Scripture. I am more of the belief the Rapture will occur either ‘Mid-Tribulation’ or ‘Post-Tribulation’, as God has historically never spared the Righteous from the corporate wrath of His people.
Think of Daniel and the ‘Pep Boys’ (Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego) during the exile to Babylon; or Joshua, Caleb and other Faithful Israelites who had to walk along the doubting tribes for forty years in the desert. (I often think of my experience in Army boot camp; when one screwed up, the entire platoon paid for it through extra ‘PT’, or cleaning details.)
The Post-Tribulation Rapture was the stance of Christians until the mid-1800’s, so Pre-Tribulation Rapture is fairly new. My mindset on this is I pray that those who believe in a Pre-Tribulation Rapture are correct, but we all should be prepared, Spiritually at least, to go through the Tribulation, in whole or in part.
Think of your hurricane preparations. We pray that hurricanes stay away this year from southwest Florida (and after last year, this would be most welcome). However, this hope must be tempered with the possibility that we may yet have hurricanes come our way later in the season. We pray for the best, but we should also prepare for the worst.
The danger of many End Times’ prognosticators is they focus on only Pre-Tribulation Rapture, and this could give a false sense of ‘I don’t have to prepare myself for the Tribulation‘. But ask, ‘what if?’; it is better to be of the mindset of preparing to face the hardships of the End Times, and have the ‘Pre-Trib’ Rapture occur, then not to be prepared at all.
Should the Rapture not occur beforehand, many Christians, weak in Faith, may either turn away from Jesus or become jaded and hard-hearted, and simply start thinking, ‘Why is Jesus a slacker in not coming for me now?’
Jesus is not a slacker. In previous discussions I’ve had with others on Pre-Tribulation vs. Mid-Tribulation vs. Post-Tribulation theology, a question that comes up often is, ‘If we are at the beginnings of the Tribulation, shouldn’t He have come already? What’s He waiting on?‘ We also go through storms or at least issues in our lives that we may think, ‘OK, Lord – I’m really over this <insert your issue here>. Why haven’t you come to clear this up? I’m waiting…’.
Peter touches on this in 2 Peter 3, as he describes the timeline Jesus is on. Basically, Jesus is on His timeframe, not yours. Remember that He is not in our universe but we are in His universe. Peter describes that time is meaningless to God (to God, 1,000 years is like a day, a day is like 1,000 years… (Psalm 90:4, 2 Peter 3:8)), which makes perfect sense when you consider God is eternal and exists in all times at the same time. He is now at and seeing Creation, the Crucifixion, and the 2nd Coming at the same time, and He will always be at each ‘now’.
So to God who is Eternal, who exists across the eons (billions of years) of time, it is not so much that He is patient with us as He knows exactly when He needs to intervene in our lives, for His good as well as our good. He will send Jesus for His people when He sees that last person who knows will accept His Salvation, in free will, repent and receive His Grace – not a moment before, not a moment after – not on our timeframe but on His.
We see things differently, as we live time in a linear fashion. We don’t know what will happen a minute from now, but God does. At 8:45AM on 11 September 2001, we were all having a typical day; someone was likely having a bad day trying to balance a financial spreadsheet in their office of the World Trade Center’s North Tower, and their spouse was at home having a cup of coffee after wrestling with the kids to get them off to school.
No one (except for God and the terrorists) had the idea that, ‘Hey, a plane may hit the Tower one minute from now’. Yet that is exactly what happened. But God knew that plane was going to hit at 8:46AM. He knew who was going to survive, and who would be killed. He knew there would be stories of grief, and stories of gratitude. In all cases, God’s timing was and is impeccable.
I’m certain there were people that day who were saying, ‘OK, Lord – why did you have my train run late today? I’ll be late for work!’, or ‘Lord, I’ve been sick for five days and I have an important meeting today. Why haven’t you healed me yet?’ But the Lord’s timing is impeccable, and to many who survived that day it was to perhaps give them extra time to repent, or to witness to one other person.
Jesus is not a slacker, but instead knows exactly what you need when you need it. Will He come Pre-, Mid- or Post-Trib? He will come when He needs to come, not when we think He will come for us. Jesus will come when God tells Him to come regardless of when we want Him to come. It’s 11:00AM now, what happens at 11:01? I don’t know, but God does. We shouldn’t worry about when He will come, but we should be concerned of the answer to this question: ‘Are we ready when He comes?’ Jesus may even come in the next minute, are you ready?
