Hello and welcome. Time is flying! This is an expression that we often find people using in this world. It is true that people who are living their lives in this world apart from God and apart from serving Him also notice that time quickly passes by. They spend the days of their lives involved with education, in an occupation, in family life, in marriage, and in raising children, as the world also notices this passage of time.
I remember a couple of songs from about 20 or 30 years ago that really related to the quick passing of time. It is very interesting to see how the world views this passing of time. One was called “Time Passages.” Another song had as part of its lyrics, “Time keeps on slippin, slippin, slippin…into the future,” which is a true statement.
No one can stop time; however, there was an occasion in the Bible when the sun stood still as the Lord fought for Israel. But, really, time continues on an onward march, going on until that appointed day, and we have learned that this “appointed time” will be May 21, 2011, which will begin the “day of the Lord.”
By the way, time will still continue after May 21 for a period of five months, which will be one hundred and fifty-three days of our calendar. Then finally on October 21, God will destroy this world and universe. The whole creation will be destroyed and then recreated into “the new heavens and the new earth.”
We have from now until then just a short space of time. It is a fact that time keeps on “slippin…into the future.” Our time to bring the Gospel, if we are true believers, has grown incredibly short; and our time to hear the gospel, if we are not yet a child of God, has also grown incredibly short. Time is flying and this is normally the case, as the Lord wrote in Job 14:1:
Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.
This is a good summary of life as normal in this world; because even if we were to live the expected lifespan of 70 or 80 years, as established by God in Psalm 90, and even if we were to live a full and long life, the day would eventually come for each one of us when God would come and take away our spirit in death. We would be at the same point that we are now, because each one of us has now been given this notice from the Bible.
This is very similar to an individual who goes to the doctor and discovers that he has cancer. The doctor informs him, “You have a very short time to live.” So what does this individual do?
After the original shock wears off, it takes him maybe a few days to assimilate this knowledge. Then he would look at his life and he would realize how vain and how lacking in meaning his life had really been. Over the short space of time that he had left, he would try to live his life in a more honorable way.
This is how the people of the world react to such news. However, the child of God must also take into account his life and look at his days.
Have you ever done this? Have you ever looked over the course of your life and reviewed how you have lived up to this point?
With many of us—and I am afraid that this is true with me, too—it is not a very pretty sight as we look back on the days of the years of our lives and we see just how much time and how much of our lives we have wasted and let go by.
The child of God who has been given “a new heart and a new spirit” desires to do it God’s way and to serve God. This is why we find it very hard to see any worthwhile endeavors that we were involved with in times past before we were a believer.
Now, however, we have an incredibly worthwhile endeavor to occupy our time with until this “great day” arrives. What is this incredibly worthwhile endeavor that we can be busy occupying our time with? It is sharing the Word of God. It is warning people as “a watchman” that time is short, as God commands us to do.
You are not going to see your retirement and live a life of ease in Florida or California or in some other vacation spot. No, you are never going to get there, because time is too short. Instead, this is the time to warn the people that the sword is approaching, as God commands us in Ezekiel 33. In Ezekiel 33:3-7, it says:
If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people; Then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul. But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand. So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me.
This is our task. Our overwhelming desire is to share this information that is coming from God, because it is coming from the Bible and no other source. God commands us to “warn them from me.”
May the Lord work in us “both to will and to do of his good pleasure” to perform that which He would have us do today. With the few days that we have remaining, may we utilize each day to the utmost of our abilities to serve God in sharing this information that “the end of all things is at hand” and that time is very, very short.