Set Your Alarm

 

2 Peter 3:10-18

Why do most people arm the alarm before going to bed, is it to protect their stuff or is it to protect themselves and their families from the ones who would break-in to their home?  The answer is to do both, but often we become complacent, no one in the neighborhood has been broken-in-to so we go to bed without setting the alarm.  This is not conjecture on the writer’s part, it has been in reports from the insurance industry and the FBI; we just do not believe it will happen to us.   The thief is counting on you being complacent, and it makes his job so much easier.  The Holy Spirit has used the example of the thief in the writing of both Peter and Paul to explain the Second coming of the Lord.  The First coming of the Lord brought hope for all people, it introduced the author of Grace and Peace, the Second coming of the Lord is referred to in Scripture as the Last or Great day of the Lord.

But we have become complacent or we just do not believe, and for a wise person who knows the thief is coming they prepare, they so to say set the alarm.  Never in the history of mankind has the stage been set, has Scripture been fulfilled, Jesus is coming back soon.  When Jan and I were in Jerusalem a few years back, we went to the Eastern gate. Facing the Mount of Olives on the eastern side of the Old City of Jerusalem is the Golden, or Eastern Gate. The Bible indicates that Jesus passed through this gate many times while he was in Jerusalem. Jewish religious tradition teaches that the coming Messiah will enter Jerusalem through this gate. To prevent this, the Muslims sealed the gate during the rule of Suleiman.  That gate is still sealed, and what is so astonishing is that pagan Muslims put more faith in Christ’s return than most Christians.  In Malachi 4:1 &5 gives this word picture of that great day: “For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble.  The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of host, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.  Verse 5, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.” 

Peter refers to the day of the Lord’s coming in this way: “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.”  The question must be asked, will anything you value, anything you put all your energy into be left?  The Holy Spirit speaking through the apostle Peter gives some insight into that question.  “Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn!  But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

If you have grown complacent, wake-up, set your alarm, Jesus is coming back soon!

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice