Saturday: Working Emphasis Is the First Coming, Not the Second
WEEK 6
SATURDAY
WORKING EMPHASIS IS THE FIRST COMING, NOT THE SECOND
Acts 1:9-11
We note the third tendency toward times-and-seasons religion instead of power for witnessing. The New Testament teaches, I believe, the second coming of Christ. So I believe he will come again to reign. But of that coming I have no timetable, nor do I have any map of the future. He said I wouldn’t know and added, “It isn’t for you to know”; it isn’t in his purpose for us to know. It is purposely veiled. Why? For the simple reason that if he had pulled aside that veil, we would have been so drawn by curiosity that we would have fixed our attention upon future events as Christ will unfold them instead of fixing our attention on events now as we can and should mold them. Religion would have been escape, escape into the future instead of making the present livable for ourselves and others. Instead of making a new age, we would speculate on the next age; this one would decay. That is exactly what has happened to many people. I know of a nurse devoted and able and effective until she got wrapped up in “signs of the times” and in his coming again. It completely unfitted her to carry on her nursing profession. She is a complete failure as a human being, living on relief and compensating for her ineffectiveness by getting more and more intensely interested in the things to be. In the meantime, the things that are, deteriorate—her health, her influence, her very person. She is a times-and-seasons Christian instead of a witnessing and winning Christian.
The working emphasis in the New Testament is on the coming of Jesus in incarnation; in his death and resurrection; on the coming of the Holy Spirit giving power to witness to the living, serving Christ now. Its gaze is upon that; its glance is toward the Second Coming. But if we gaze at the Second Coming and glance at the first, then we have lost the “single eye”; and the “whole body” of effectiveness is “full of darkness.” The times and seasons will take care of themselves if we witness to him who controls them.
Lord, help me to live this day so that if, at nightfall or noonday, your Son should come, I would lift my eyes from my task and greet him with joy. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: My gaze is on Jesus; my glance is on the past and on the future.