The greatest of our expectations is the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is uppermost in our minds. We constantly refer to it. “If the Lord remains away, we will do this or that.” Our prayers reflect our desire for his return. We are constantly on the watch for signs of his return.
The question for each of us is, “Are we ready?”
Considering that the return of Jesus is so very much in our thinking in these last days, that may appear to be an absurd question. “Of course we are ready!”, many will expostulate. “It is our greatest hope and expectation. We long for the day of his appearing”.
But this nagging question persists: “Are we ready?”.
What must we be ready for? Matthew, Luke, Mark and Paul, and even Moses in Genesis, all tell us that the decisive moment for which we must be ready is when the angel of Jesus is sent to us to invite us to come to meet Jesus.
Jesus himself told his apostles, and, through the pen of Matthew, let us remind ourselves again of the dramatic words:
“. . . they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory; and he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” (Matthew 24:30-31)
What will happen when the angel of Jesus appears to us, his elect, to gather us to meet Jesus? There are several passages of scripture which indicate that we will have a choice as to whether we will go with the angel. It seems that it will not simply be a matter of the angel appearing, and without further ado escorting us to meet Jesus. There will be an element of choice for us. How we respond to that choice will be determined by a decision we make now, before the angel comes.
There are at least three passages which give us this message – two from Jesus himself and one from Abraham. Consider, for example, the parable of the ten virgins:
In this parable, we have a scenario of the process to be used as Jesus returns:
The messenger did not merely come and escort the ten virgins to the bridegroom. He invited all of them to come out to meet Jesus. Five accepted the invitation and went immediately. But five did not go immediately, and instead, went to “do” something else (buy oil), thinking that once they had done that, they would be ready. But it was too late. The invitation came but once.
Lest we should think that this is the only reference to this question of choice when the angel appears, consider Jesus’ words in Luke 17. Here, he warns again that there will be some who will want to “do” something else when confronted with the angel’s invitation. Jesus reminds his hearers (and us his readers) about Lot’s wife, who was not ready to obey the call to leave Sodom, and looked back instead of going with the angel.
Specifically, he refers to a man who, when the invitation comes, wants to “do” something else – go down into his house to retrieve his goods so he can take them with him. Similarly, Jesus refers to another man working in the field who will want to turn back. He mentions in the same context that of two people in a bed, “one will be taken and the other left” (one will be ready and the other will not); two women grinding together – one will be ready to go, but the other will not:
“On that day, let him who is on the housetop, with his goods in the house, not come down to take them away; and likewise, let him who is in the field not turn back . . . I tell you, in that night, there will be two in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. There will be two women grinding together; one will be taken and the other left” (Luke 17:31-36)
This illustration of Jesus contains precisely the same message of choice (when the angel comes to us) as we saw in the parable of the ten virgins. Some will be ready to go to Jesus when the angel comes, but some will not.
What is it that caused these people of Jesus’ teaching not to be ready? They had not prepared their minds for the moment of the angel’s appearing and invitation. Jesus does not want his angels to simply collect us and escort us to Jesus. He wants to know if we really want to go to him. This is in keeping with the divine principal that God always gives us a choice – His way or our way. It will surely be the final test of our readiness for his return; our acceptance that, although we are utterly unworthy of this great invitation, we accept it, knowing that Jesus is our righteousness and that in him, our sins have been forgiven; our final act of faith exemplified in our willingness to drop everything immediately and go with the angel.
We are all busy with all sorts of things in our spiritual and personal lives in service to our God and Master, and it is entirely right that we should spend our time in doing these things. But in the end, none of these things will have anything to do with whether or not we are ready for the moment of the angel’s invitation.
Being ready involves an attitude of mind – now. We must not wait until the angel appears before making that decision. It is a decision which must be made now. Today, we must resolve to have an attitude of mind which says, in effect,
“Whatever my circumstances at that moment, wherever I am, wherever my children or my wife (or husband) are, I will go with the angel of Jesus. I will drop everything and go immediately.”
It will be a natural reaction for many at that moment to want to go and “do” something – get the children, turn off the stove, ring home, lock the car, change our clothes. Some may feel spiritually unready, and wish to have time to put their spiritual lives in order. But these sorts of things are merely symptoms of not being ready. If our lives are lived in total commitment to our Lord, we will have thought about these things already, and will be ready to respond to the call of the angel immediately. It is absolutely vital that we are ready to respond immediately, and that the decision to respond is made now. There will be no time to think about our response when confronted by the angel of Jesus. If we have not set our minds mentally in gear to say “Yes, I will go”, at that moment, we are in danger of not being ready to go with the angel.
There is a wonderful Old Testament event which captures and underscores the importance of being ready to go immediately with the angel of Jesus. We find it in the story of Abraham sending his servant to find a wife for Isaac.
Abraham tells his servant, “Go to my country and to my kindred, and take a wife for my son, Isaac.” (Genesis 24:4)
Here we have the remarkable picture of the servant (messenger, angel) being sent to take a wife (bride) for the son of promise, a bride who knew of, but had never seen, her intended bridegroom.
The servant said to Abraham, “Perhaps the woman may not be willing to follow me to this land . . .” (24:5). Abraham’s reply was unequivocal:
“If the woman is not willing to follow you, then you will be free from this oath of mine . . .” (24:8)
Again, we see an element of choice in the response of the woman who is to be the bride. There is to be no compunction in bringing her back. She must make the decision.
We know that the servant found Rebekah, and he knew she was the one. But her family were reluctant to let her go straight away. “Let the maiden remain with us a while, at least ten days; after that she may go.” (24:55).
The servant could not wait. “Let me go that I may go to my master”, he said. “They replied, ‘We will call the maiden and ask her’. And they called Rebekah and said to her, ‘Will you go with this man?’ She said, ‘I will go.’” (24:56-58)
Not a moment’s hesitation. Her response was immediate. She was asked by the servant to go to a strange country, away from all she had ever known, to marry a man she had never seen. And she said immediately and without hesitation, “I will go.” She was a gentile bride, and she married the son of promise. She was invited to go to him by a servant who, when he heard her say she would go with him, took her to her bridegroom who was ready waiting for her. In this, we have a beautiful foreshadowing of our acceptance of the angel’s invitation to go to Jesus, our bridegroom.
What would have happened had Rebekah refused to go with the servant? Abraham’s instructions to his servant had been “If she is not willing to follow you, you are free from this oath.” She would have been left behind, just as the five foolish virgins were, and the man who went down into his house to get his goods, and the man who wanted to turn back in the field, and the one who was left behind in bed, and the woman who was left behind at the grinding stone, and Lot’s wife.
We who are not natural-born Jews will be part of Christ’s gentile bride. An angel will soon come to invite us to go to meet the bridegroom. Just as Rebekah went to marry Isaac, the son of promise, we, too, will go to marry the greater Son of promise.
Are we ready to say to the angel who will come to us, “I will go”? If we do not make our decision now, and prepare our minds now for our instant response to that great invitation to go to meet Jesus, we may in fact be left behind.
The scriptures make it clear that Jesus will not immediately take up his role as “King of kings and Lord of lords”. A lot must happen before he is accepted as King over the whole earth. The very presence of the beast and his opposition to Jesus, along with many kings of the earth, indicate that Jesus will face much opposition in the early days of his return.