Hello and welcome. May I ask you a question? You have heard, possibly, that May 21st, 2011 will be the date of the rapture when the Lord Jesus comes for His elect people and gathers those who were in the ground, those who were in the graves, and He takes His people out of this world. This is going to be in the year 2011 and it will be on May 21st.
We have some time from now until then, so the question that I would like to ask you is what are you planning on doing “till He come,” until the Lord Jesus does return? What would be a good way of spending this time? Does the Bible give us any instruction? Does the Bible give us any ideas of what we should do from now until then?
Of course, if we are a true believer, if we are a child of God, our directives are clear. We are to bring the Gospel to the world around us in whatever way we can.
We are responsible for this because God has given us the task of being a watchman. We see the sword coming upon the land; therefore, we are obligated, we are duty-bound to share this information with everyone that we possibly can.
Even to the watchmen as well as to unsaved individuals, there is one particular command that will take us right up until May 21 st, 2011. We find this verse in 1 Timothy 4:13:
Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.
Yes, the Lord Jesus is in view here. He is the One who has promised to come again. He is the One who instructed us to pray the Lord’s Prayer, which states “Thy kingdom come.”
God’s people have been looking forward and desiring the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ for centuries. Throughout the centuries, the Lord’s people have been obedient, to varying degrees, to this verse that we read here in 1 Timothy 4:13:
Till I come, give attendance to reading…
So what are we to read? The magazines? The daily newspaper? Fiction? No, we know what the Bible is referring to. The Bible only speaks of one Book. When it encourages us to read, as it says in Matthew 24, “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation,” and in parentheses the Lord says, “(whoso readeth, let him understand).”
This is because we are living at a time, this day that we are in, which is the time of Great Tribulation that Matthew 24 looked forward to. In this day, we cannot trust our brother. We cannot trust any man. We desperately need to check out any teaching from the Bible that we hear.
So we go to the Bible itself and we read and we pray that the Lord would give us a right understanding as we follow His methodology “comparing spiritual things with spiritual” to make sure that our conclusions harmonize with everything in the Bible.
This is what Matthew 24 is saying. Do not listen to your church because in our day the church age is over. Since the church age is over, we are not to listen to the pastors; we are not to listen to the elders and teachers in the church. For one thing, they are failing to recognize this very important truth from the Bible. For another, the Lord has left the churches and congregations and so He is not blessing the work or the ministry of the teachers in the churches any longer.
So where do we go? We go to God Himself. It is His Word. We go to the Bible and we “give attendance to reading.” We cannot neglect this. If we neglect reading, we very well could “neglect so great salvation” along with it because the Bible tells us “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” If we are not saved, there can be nothing better for us or nothing more needful for us except to read the Bible, to place ourselves under the hearing of the Word of God.
Certainly, this is partly what is in view when the Lord Jesus tells us to “strive to enter” into the Kingdom. We cannot get ourselves saved. We cannot bring salvation to ourselves, but we do know that if God is going to save a person—if the Lord is going to grant someone repentance to salvation—it will be through the hearing of His Word.
Therefore, we must read and we must read as much as we can. As much as possible, we must read and pray, “O Lord, bless this Word to my heart. Please give me ears to hear and may You give me a new heart and a new spirit.”