We need to be careful in expressing things with confidence about matters that are meant to remain a mystery until the time of their revelation. I am not impressed by human confidence. I’ve listened to interviews and read accounts from people who speak with confidence of things only the Spirit will reveal in God’s timing. These confident accounts have been expressed about things that will remain a mystery until the day God decides to make them known.
Three times in the last chapter of Revelation, the Lord said, “I am coming soon.” According to our measurement of time, His definition of soon is not in line with our measurement of time. The last 2,000 years of Church history require that we adjust our thinking. Jesus said, “Look, I am making everything new!” (Revelation 21:5). Jesus will make everything new, even how we see and measure God’s timing.
When John wrote about the New Jerusalem, what he saw would require the leading of the Spirit to receive that revelation because only the Spirit could provide such an other-worldly understanding. “So, he took me in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and he showed me the holy city, Jerusalem” (Revelation 21:10).
Paul related a similar experience. He described how the Spirit revealed to him a mystery of God: “I was caught up to the third heaven fourteen years ago. Whether I was in my body or out of my body, I don’t know—only God knows. Yes, only God knows whether I was in my body or outside my body. But I do know that I was caught up to paradise and heard things so astounding that they cannot be expressed in words, things no human is allowed to tell” II Corinthians 12:2-4).
To prepare us for the Lord’s coming, in whatever timeframe He decides to come back, will require that we embrace what cannot be completely defined or understood in this life without a revelation from the Spirit. All our studies and all our best intentions cannot produce that kind of revelation. At the time of that revelation, we will have one of God’s mysteries defined in ways that only God’s Spirit can provide.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Garris Elkins
Featured Image by Jeroným Pelikovský from Pixabay
