Title: The One Who Sees the End
Contents
Those who see the end (2 Peter 3:8-13)
Christians have eyes that see both the visible world and the invisible future world. The world invisible to our physical eyes is seen spiritually in the promise of God's Word. Because we look at the world after death, our attitudes and methods of living in the real world must be completely different from those living in the ordinary world.
When I was in middle school in the countryside, my graduation trip was mainly to Seoul. I was excited about a week before the trip. Sometimes, I had friends who couldn't even go on a trip because of their financial difficulties. The faces of those who can travel and those who cannot travel are contrasting. The friends who had been to Seoul for a few days were happy as if they had already come to Seoul, and their faces were bright. Those who are convinced of heaven will have the same sentiment.
Christians do not aim for life on earth. Instead of escaping from reality, you will live a life with the purpose of connecting reality with the afterlife. There are many ways of life that seem foolish to the world. However, there is a hidden truth that the Christian heart, who lives together after the end of the earth, lives with a vision of joy and hope that is very different from what other people understand.
The Apostle Peter, who had promised to come again just before his death (between about 67 and 68) when the persecution in Rome was intensifying, did not come immediately. told me to do it Through the text, we would like to re-examine how the saints should live history with the theme of [the person who sees the end].
1. These are people who participate in and live God's work of time.
8 “Beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.”
It is similar to Psalm 90:4, “A thousand years have passed in your sight, as yesterday, and as a watch in the night.”
If you believe in Jesus, you will be born again as the Holy Spirit and learn the will of God. When God creates and operates the world, we come to realize that everything is properly provided. Since God is different from humans, He is not limited by time or space and operates according to His good will. Here we learn two concepts of the history of time. One is the general time history of living yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and the other is the work of God.
The Greek word for time is chronos (historical) and kairos (historic) for God's time. After believing in Jesus, the saints are conscious of this Kairos time. So, we are nervous about God's will being done and we want to participate in God's work.
Heaven and hell were proclaimed after Jesus came to earth, and life on earth has come to an end in the real sense. So, if you become a saint, you can say that they are living an eschatological life because they live the world history in a meaningful way because they live with a sense of time while looking at the end.
So we pray and wait under the influence of the Holy Spirit for the right time to carry out the good will of God, either for ourselves or as a group. In the 70-80 years of the lifetime of a person living in the global village, I am trying to pray and live according to the Word to win victory in order not to loosely shake my purpose or lose sight of the eternal value for the benefit in front. This mental activity is the will to participate in the time of Kairos, that is, the work of God.
No matter how much time is required, I try to live according to the importance of the work. The fulfillment of God's will is not accomplished in the hasty time that man thinks, but only when God's good time comes. Therefore, if the Lord has promised that He will come, we just wait eagerly. If you try to live in God's time, you won't get tired, damaged, or fail.
Therefore, the center of the saint's life is to celebrate the Lord's Day of Judgment and deal with everything in grace and faith. It must be the Christian sentiment and personality of the saints.
Philippians 4:5 “Let your generosity be known to all, for the Lord is near.”
James 5:8 “Be patient with the way and be strong, for the coming of the Lord is near. 9 Brethren, do not grumble against one another, so that you will be saved. Behold, the Judge is at the door.”
Hebrews 10:37 “In a little while, and he who is coming will come, and he will not delay.”
Revelation 22:20 “The one who testified of these said, ‘Truly, I am coming soon.’ Amen, come, Lord Jesus.”
As you can see from these words, the Lord is expressed as the one who will come soon as if he is always with us, and in this consciousness, we are taught to persevere and live according to the good will.
2. Those who are convinced of the truth of the prophecy about the end of the earth
10 “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and in that day the heavens will depart with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and all that is on it will be revealed.”
The great event at the end of the earth is the fact that it will literally melt the earth and everything else. Sodom as revealed in 2 Peter 2. The fact that the judgment of Gomorrah was true and the judgment of the flood in Noah's day was historically true is a prophecy that the future judgment of the world will also be true. We believe in the truth of this prophecy.
The prophecies of the end of the world were prophesied through the Old Testament prophets, Jesus himself, and the apostles. The signs of the apocalypse that prophesied of various events that will occur before the end of the earth can be summarized in a few points. The end of the earth and the second coming of Jesus are events that will happen at the same time.
When Jesus prophesied the end of the earth and his second coming, he did not tell us the date, as Luther said, 'because he was concerned that we would relax and live comfortably'. According to the synoptic gospels tj (Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21;), Revelation, and the prophecies of the Old Testament (Dan 2:7;), when the time of the Lord's return comes, there will be signs of the last days.
1) The advent of the false prophet and the antichrist
2) The Great War, Economic Airports, and Global Warming
3) Spread of the gospel worldwide
4) Unprecedented martyrdom of saints
5) Great change in the celestial body
6) The Second Coming of Jesus
I'm talking about the back.
So what is the present time? We must become saints who know when we are living and live according to God's economy according to the times. In various ways, the Bible commands the saints to prepare for the end times.
Verse 11, “When all these things will be solved in this way, what kind of people ought you to be, with holy deeds and godliness”, Peter emphasized holy deeds and godliness.
Holiness is the essential quality of saints. It is God’s own way of thinking and personality that is distinct from secularism. It is a distinct idea and philosophy. Holiness is sanctified by truth, sanctified by the blood of Jesus, and sanctified by repentance.
2 Timothy 3:1-5 “Know this that you will know that the times of suffering will come in the last days, 2 when people will love themselves, love money, be proud, proud, slanderers, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,
3 Heartless, unrepentant, accusing, unrestrained, ferocious, not fond of what is good, 4 treacherous, selling, hasty, self-sufficient, lovers of pleasures more than the love of God; 5 There is a form of godliness, but it denies the power of godliness turn away from such people.”
James 5:3 “Your gold and silver have rusted, and this rust will be a witness to you and will eat your flesh like fire, for you have amassed wealth in the last days.”
2 Timothy 4:3 “The time is coming when people will not receive sound doctrine, but having itching ears they will accumulate many teachers to suit their own desires.”
Romans 13:11 And ye know the time, that the hour has already come to awaken from sleep, for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.” don't say
commanded (Acts 1:7). Nevertheless, there are some people who have been ignoring the Bible to prophesy and blackmail the date, and some have been judged as heretics, and there are still others who prophesy the date. It is a prophecy of heresy that rebels against the Bible.
However, we must live a life full of the will of the Lord by being faithful to the word of knowing the time when the Lord's coming is near. Only faith in the truth of the prophecies about the coming Lord can only be strong. 1 Kings 8:56 "Blessed be the LORD, who hath given peace to his people Israel, according to all that he hath promised; and none of his good words which he hath given through his servant Moses, are not fulfilled."
3. Those who eagerly long for heaven and wait for it
Christians who look to the end are those who look to heaven at the same time. They are those who eagerly long for heaven and wait for it.
As Cable Morgan said, 'I'm not waiting for death, I'm waiting for the second coming of Christ'. That's right. We are waiting for the kingdom of heaven to be brought to the Second Coming of the Lord while looking at the end.
12 “Look and yearn for the coming of the day of God. In that day the heavens will be burned and dissolved, and the elements will be melted with scorching fire. 13 We hope for a new heaven and a new earth, in which we will dwell according to his promise. It's a report"
Here, the original word for longing for, speuvdw, has the meaning of 'to hasten and rush'. Heaven is not about coming when the time is right, but about waiting eagerly and in a very rushed manner to get there. The saints do not risk their lives on the cultural elements seen on earth. The world is interested in what to eat and what to wear. But what we care about is noble and there are many things the world does not know.
2 Corinthians 4:18 “We do not look at what is seen, but on what is not seen, for what is seen is temporary, but what is not seen is eternal.”
Hebrews 11:16 “They now long for a better homeland, which is in heaven; therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, but has prepared a city for them.”
Therefore, preaching and Christian activities that do not emphasize the blessings of the world more precious than the resurrection or heaven are meaningless. Such cultural things can also be found in other religions. A believer without waiting for the afterlife is not the light of the world. He is nothing special.
A believer who does not long for heaven is not a saint in the true sense of the word. Those who do not know salvation. The key to salvation in Christianity is going to heaven. Even if you don't know what blessings you have received on earth, if you can't go to heaven, everything is in vain.
Today, we are living in the last days that people speak with the same voice. Even in the world of distrust, various statistical predictions about the future make us uneasy about the global resource depletion, the danger of nuclear weapons prepared for war, global warming, and the destruction of the ozone layer in the atmosphere.
People's hearts are full of selfishness, and politics and society inflated with lies darken the future of our society. We certainly live in a future of uncertainty.
The saints can rejoice even more. The future we are looking at is because the day of the Lord will come again. The historical consciousness of the saints who see the end at this time can be said to be the one who has overcome the world. No matter how things change, people who wait for the Lord Jesus who will bring the new heavens and new earth are not afraid of this world.
I pray in the name of the Lord that you and I, who are fulfilling the duties of the saints from the perspective of the end while waiting for the Lord to come again, will be praiseworthy saints on the day of the Lord's coming.
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