Not a Moment Too Soon
He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming quickly.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. Revelation 22:20 NASB
Quickly – I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t seem too quickly to me. Two thousand years and counting. Maybe God’s idea of quick is completely irrelevant to ours. There are plenty of days when I wish quick would have meant 1969 or 1972 or 1975, but now here I am, still waiting. I remember my grandmother telling me that she had a vision from God that she would not die before the return of the Lord. She passed away 25 years ago. I wait.
Then I think about the rabbis’ perspective. “Lord, please don’t come back yet. There are many who have yet to discover Your joy, to find Your grace, to know You. Please delay so that they will not be lost.” Why am I in such a hurry to make “quickly” a reality? Perhaps I am thinking only of myself.
But it does seem like a long time.
The Greek doesn’t help much. It is tachys. It definitely means “swift, as soon as possible, speedily.” No wiggle room there. Apparently the actor in John’s vision gave him the impression that it would soon be over. That’s hard to reconcile with the real result. Was John mistaken? Did the person in his vision say something else? Or are we required to go through the theological gymnastics needed to reconcile tachys with a twothousand year delay? I really don’t know. Perhaps that’s why the vision on Patmos tends to push me toward a Stoic attitude. Whatever happens, happens. “Que sera, sera” and all that. I just have no clue when or how. I am resigned to waiting while trying to adjust my attitude to that of the rabbis. But some days it just doesn’t help very much. Some days I just want it to be over.
Do you ever feel like that? “It’s time, Lord. I just don’t want to do any more. I just want rest. Can’t you come back and finish the job?” I suspect that one of my exhaustion points comes from not really having Shabbat. Maybe I wouldn’t be quite so ready for the closing curtain if I took a regular intermission. Maybe my cry for His coming is really just about needing rest. And the reason He hasn’t arrived is because we mostly don’t know how to rest even if He did return. We are way out of practice. What do you suppose it would look like if we were bored in the Millennium? In a world that can’t stand to stand still, I have allowed myself the dysfunctional pleasure of being continuously on the move. How will I fare in the Kingdom of Shabbat?
I guess I need more practice before I can truly say, “Come. Lord Yeshua.”
Topical Index: quickly, tachys, rest, Shabbat, Sabbath, return, Revelation 22:20
Sometimes when I think on that verse I as well wish His quick was as our quick, like a drive through or a fast speed internet connection. But, here’s the but, if we think about walking through a trial that seems to overtake our every facet of life and wrestle with all the pain and endurance it requires to make it through, then it feels like a quickly, when it is gone,and it’s over its over suddenly and the struggle is gone.
Could the quickly be in reference to that kind of not a moment to soon?
By the way I bought “The Prophets” by Abraham Herschel and on page 15 he talks about “His essential task is to declare the word of God to the here and now, to disclose the future in order to illuminate what is involved in the present” . When John had that vision couldn’t he have been referring to where he was in that present moment, the one where the trials and difficulties would hit a suddenly and it feels like a quickly happened?
Thanks for sharing Skip.
You Blink You Miss It
~ In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed ~
in the “twinkling of an eye..”
BOOM! – and it’s “over!” What was that? Where have all these people gone? What happened? And the newspaper(?) headlines will read: “Millions Missing” What is this “event” -yet to be? And (of course)- why the delay?
~ Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ; ~
that blessed hope!!
Yes. What a day, (glorious day) that will be!
He did say.. – “I’ll be back!”
Coming to claim His chosen Bride
All the redeemed and purified
Over the whole earth scattered wide
What if it were today?
In Christian missionary circles many believe the Lord won’t come back until every nation or people-group has heard the gospel of the kingdom, based on Matt. 24:14. Almost 7000 remain “unreached” and that’s based on a purely Christian perspective, not a Hebrew root/Jewish one, so there might be some parts of the witness still missing even in the “reached” ones. Do you think we can speed up Yeshua’s coming by healthy (for lack of a better word) missionary efforts?
I doubt it. The event is not determined by some human formula.
“Then I think about the rabbis’ perspective. “Lord, please don’t come back yet. There are many who have yet to discover Your joy, to find Your grace, to know You. Please delay so that they will not be lost.” Why am I in such a hurry to make “quickly” a reality? Perhaps I am thinking only of myself”.
I wonder:
Does the rabbinic perspective conclude that all work of redemption, salvation, discovery of grace, discover of of joy is over? That’s it; blam!, the door to the kingdom is closed when He returns?
Apparently it’s over for some
BE READY!!!
“For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes
to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.”
Matt 24: 27
“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels
of heaven, but My Father only.”
Matt 24:36
“Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming
at an hour you do not expect.”
Matt 24:44
THAT’S THE TIME LINE.
BE READY!!!
If Revelation was written in AD 69 – 70 the coming quickly could refer to the destruction of the temple and judgement on Israel as prophesied by the Lord. The coming of the Lord is used at times to refer to a coming to bring judgement. In that case He certainly did come quickly. But this verse can also be translated in several ways such as “I am continuously coming quickly Amen be continuously coming Lord Jesus.
It gets confusing, but I now hold to the view of “when He comes, His bride will go”. Occupy until He comes and it doesn’t really matter…all things are in His Hand. He will be right on time in any coming as always!
Your dating of Revelation seems a bit early.
A thought I’ve pondered for some time, 2 Corinth 5:6-8, indicates to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord… Our lives on Earth are truly short, if we see the Lord after our last breath, that’s pretty quick..
Isn’t ‘hastening the Lord’s return’ a mistranslation of that verse anyway? It seems that putting the onus on us (interesting three words!) to speed His coming puts us in the control room!
Wasn’t the majority of prophecy given with conditions? If this, then that, just like the promises? And if there are inherent conditions then are those stated conditions on our end, or on His? And if they are on ours, then does that not, in fact, “put us in the control room” for real? And if that is so, then does not “come quickly” be something that would be defined by us, not by Him? And if it has not exactly been that, then would that not be our fault, not HIs?
Sobering thought. I know that He would not want our agony prolonged, but if this prophecy is conditional on us, then we apparently are not wanting that as badly as He. I am struck silent.
It wouldn’t surprise me if it is…but on the other hand…has the Lord not given us the responsibility to reach people/nations? That’s pretty hefty too. And He seems to choose to do a lot through us, in partnership; not in spite of us.
My post was in response to John Adam’s. I assumed clicking the reply button after his comment, it would show up as such.
“Quickly” ?
As others have pointed out, I feel that “suddenly” is a more appropriate understanding in the context here. Yahshua said that he is coming as a thief in the night. And burglars usually show up suddenly taking the home occupant completely by surprise!
The problem with the Rabbinical sentiment: “Lord, please don’t come back yet” is it mirrors the same posture taken by mainstream and evangelical Christian missionaries. The typical modus operandum of missionaries in their fundraising solicitations is: Send in the $$ so we can get to all those thousands of souls before they are “lost” having never even heard the name of Jeesus. This is a great technique for fundraising but it is lousy theology! Yeah, I can picture Yashua urgently telling the Father: “Today we lost another 10,000 souls because those lazy lukewarm Christians are not getting the job done.” ! Our God is, as Brad Scott says sometimes, “way too smart” to turn control of anything over to His children. He did that a long time ago with a dude named Adam when He gave him a mandate to rule planet earth and we are still living with consequences. :-(( And it was hardly a case that the Father was caught by surprise!
Here’s the deal as I see it. Both the rabbis and the missionaries need to study carefully 1Corinthians chapter 15, 1Thessalonians chapter 4 and Revelation chapter 20 for there a blind man see that there are two resurrections up ahead and three judgments. So anyone who misses the first resurrection of first fruits will come up in the “rest of the dead” ( see Rev. 20) second resurrection at the end of the 1000 year reign of Messiah. “As in Adam ALL die, so in Christ shall ALL be made alive” (1Cor.15:22) Paul could not be more clear there in 1 Corinthians on the order and sequence of things in God’s chronological plan. I do not know why many brethren want to continue believing Hellenistic, Egyptian, Persian and Hindu mythical garbage about going off to heaven when they die or frying in this other myth called hell for time without end, instead of believing the chronology of two resurrections and three judgments revealed in the three chapters I mentioned above.
As Brithsh general Allenby ( needlessly it seemed) delayed a day before going into Jerusalem to take the city back from the Ottoman Turks so that he would go in at the precise prophetic time designated by the Father, so will Yahshua come back to take over planet earth as King of Kings at the exact moment the Father has already designated. Missionaries may be wonderfully well meaning in their efforts but nobody will influence, delay or speed up this most dramatic moment of human history – the return of the King!
Brad Scott is right. And missionaries still have a job to do but they will do well to get their theology right before they go out in the field :-))
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The reply button thing bothers me too. It used to work properly so one could reply to a specific person but it is not that way currently. I have written to the techie for the site but gotten no reply. Please fix it Mr Techie person!!! 🙂
@Dawn McL – Yes I’m aware of the problem. It has to do with a update that came from WordPress and it’s effecting many sites. There isn’t anything that can be done until WordPress releases a update to fix that. It’s not from the programing that I used to build the website, it’s at the core WordPress framework files. However, you can be assured that I will implement the fix once it’s available. Thank you for letting us know.
Until the fix is made available, my suggestion would be to add a @ before the name of the person your responding to, as I did in this post.
Me, I don’t want to come back. The reality of our being “born” on earth is just “death” from heaven, consisting of a life of everlasting challenges, anxiety, sorrow and heartache interrupted by moments of ecstasy. “Life” as we know it is banishment from Heaven, paradise, the “Garden of Eden” for our sin of having disobeyed God when we were already “living” there in Atonement with Him just as were “Adam and Eve.” I can’t imagine anything so banal as spending a thousand years on earth.
“Here” and “there” and “quickly” are relative terms of our mind of time and space. There is no “here” or “there” and there certainly is no “time” wherever “there” is. God doesn’t know “time” slowly or quickly. He is eternal, that means without time.
So “there” it is you might say.
Wow, you certainly have a Platonic (Augustine) view of this world. And no wonder you wish to leave. But this isn’t the biblical view of the world.
@Mark Randall – Thanks. Good idea and thanks for taking the time to spell out the issue. I will wait patiently. 🙂
Although this time it seems to work properly-I think. We’ll see when I hit submit.
Skip – Which Bible?
Do you mean “Which Bible has a different view of the world than Plato’s dualism?” Answer: all of them. Research the history of Platonic dualism and its impact on the early church fathers. Plato’s thought is responsible for the idea that the “spiritual” or heavenly world is the desired place while the material earthly world is to be left behind as corrupt and evil. This is fairly common in the idea of the “new” heaven and “new” earth. But Genesis begins with the idea that the world was created perfectly. There is no need to leave it behind, only to restore it to its original. You can find the idea of restoration throughout Scripture but you won’t find the idea of escaping to a heavenly existence. Even Yeshua’s comments about “one left and one taken” reverse the usual Platonic idea. The one LEFT is the righteous one.
Could the “quickly” be a reference to the fashion of his return not the timeliness of it?
The high priest was called a “thief in the night” when he occasionally walked the temple ground in the evening to light the garments of the night temple guards that fell asleep.
Quite hilarious TW, but seriously that is how I’ve felt too in times past, wishing I could simply disappear into thin air, rather than facing one episode of heartache and betrayal after another. But knowing it is for trimming and refining for His Kingdom, and for revealing the 30-60-100 fold of His people, it is a privilege to be here to be trained for His purposes. HalleluYAH. Yes, it has been too long a time. I feel like a living “sacrifice”, hopefully acceptable to ABBA.
“In a world that can’t stand to stand still, I have allowed myself the dysfunctional pleasure of being continuously on the move.” I have known many who are in this category, they can’t seem to sit still, but there are some, who look forward to rest days completely spending time with ABBA, enjoying midrash with others.
Thank You, ABBA for rest days where we are “obligated” to rest and not do anything outside of sitting at Your feet to hear from You from Torah.
Skip, your continuously on the move is a wonderful blessing to many around the world
who have needs to be fed with your knowledge to glean from your insights, to be delivered from false indoctrination. But we are so glad you do take time off for your photography, which also brings us to see things in a different light. Thank you!
Shalom!