Come Soon

I think I hear something. I don't know if it's always been there; I've only been alive for 29.9 years. But there's definitely a sound.

I've been studying Revelation in a class at church, and I've been surprised at the things I've been learning. I thought I knew everything there was to know about end times. But it seems that every time I approach the subject God has something new to add. Is it just me, or is this a church-wide revelation? Are we being given keys to understanding things that Christians for thousands of years haven't been able to make heads or tails of? I'm starting to believe so.
Before this class, I had never thought about the fact that those seven churches mentioned in Revelation 3 might be the seven periods of church history that we have just come through. Some might say that is reading into the text, but if it is, it's kind of uncanny how well the idea fits. How astonishingly obvious the idea becomes when you start with Ephesus thinking of that first Jewish church and end up in Laodicea thinking about the modern church!

What does it all mean? I don't know. Surely nothing more than it has meant for two thousand years. But perhaps His Spirit is allowing us to see just a bit further into the crack that is our future. Not dates and times, of course, because Jesus said we don't need to know those. But if the time is drawing near, if the season is approaching, and we are paying attention, might we not begin to notice a change in the weather?

I do love and see more clearly now that I have had children the example Jesus used to explain his coming. It is like a birth. You wait forever for the child to come. When nine months is upon you, you are sure that little one is never going to leave your womb, and you are destined to be pregnant forever. But suddenly, out of nowhere, come the contractions. Birth pains, Jesus called them. Like wars, talks of wars, earthquakes, natural disasters, and famines. They will continue to get stronger and stronger, steadier and more regular. But He said don't be afraid. Don't worry about the contractions. When I was in labor it wasn't my contractions that had all the nurses and doctors scrambling for gowns and gloves and instruments, it was my dilation.

Jesus told us what the "dilation" is. It's the Gospel. Keep an eye on that. When it's gone out to the whole world, spread the entire 10 cm of civilization, then the time has come.

And though I think we still might have some work to do, I would venture to say that the number of unreached people in the world is a small number compared to what it was prior to the onset of the age of technology. That's an exciting thought, isn't it?

Anyone else hear a trumpet sound?