Something huge is coming. Something we haven’t seen before. And it’s already started.
I guess I should say, Someone really big is coming. But when you talk of Jesus’ coming it tends to conjure images of a rider on a white horse and loud trumpets and dragons and beasts from the sea. And that isn’t quite the picture I want you to have. Not quite, but not so very unlike, either.
In Ezekiel 1-3 the prophet has a vision where he encounters God in all his majesty, and God is so glorious that Ezekiel struggles to describe him. Then God commissions him and says, “Go now to the people of Israel and speak my words to them.” He tells Ezekiel that the people will not listen, but he must go anyway.
At the end of the vision Ezekiel returns to the exiles in Babylon and he says, “I sat among them for seven days – deeply distressed.”
What was he distressed about? Was it the vision of God so glorious? Was it the weight of the commission God had placed on him? Or was it the sin of the people? We don’t know. Just as I don’t know why I am deeply distressed at this time. But I am.
I have sat distressed for a long time. And I’ve sat with my mouth shut. Ezekiel sat for seven days. Seven is a number of fullness and completion in scripture. So when the time was complete, God spoke to him and sent him. The time for me to sit distressed in silence is over and I have to speak. That’s why this blog is here.
It was 2009 when God first began to speak to me about his coming. But in the last two years he has impressed it upon me with increasing urgency. And as I’ve studied and prayed and read about his coming I’ve realised that God doesn’t ever come how we expect him to.
God first appears to Jacob in an awesome dream as the God of his fathers. But the next time he reveals himself as a Judo master.
To Moses he is first a burning bush, intriguing and mysterious. But at Sinai he comes upon the mountain with lightning bolts and smoke and flashes of fire.
When the Lord appears to Joshua before the fall of Jericho he comes, not as that terrifying lawgiver of Sinai, nor the holy cloud of the tabernacle (i.e. not as anything Joshua had seen or heard of previously), but as Commander of the Armies of Heaven. And he was so ordinary looking that Joshua mistook him for a soldier.
Jesus, too, never seems to come as we expect him to. First a little baby, descended from a prostitute, born amongst animals, and growing up in obscurity; then a wandering prophet who doesn’t seem to keep the law; and at the end sentenced like a criminal and dying just when things are starting to get good. Even in his resurrected body he is mistaken not for a king but a gardener! The disciples seek him among the dead but he is more alive than they are, and he comes, not through the door but walking through walls.
Everything is unexpected and surprising, and not at all like what we knew before.
This is how God comes.
And God is coming.
I’m going to say that again, a little bigger this time and with a funky font just in case you didn’t hear me the first time.
God is coming!
(Seems I don’t have any funky fonts).
I believe this is what we must prepare for as much as I know that this is what I must say.
The New Testament doesn’t always speak of Christ’s coming as a physical appearance. In John 14.16-18 his “coming” is in the form of the Holy Spirit.
“I will ask the Father, and he will give you…the Spirit of truth….I will come to you.”
A few verses later he talks about coming spiritually with the Father to make his dwelling with those who love him.[1] Revelation 2 & 3 also speaks of a spiritual coming to his Church (although not always to let the good times roll!).
So when I say that God is coming, I’m not necessarily talking about the Second Coming. Nobody knows the day or the hour of that coming. It may be tomorrow. It may be in another thousand years.
I mean he is coming in a form that is unexpected and may shake the foundations of our faith. God is coming in power, and that’s both a reason to rejoice and a reason to be afraid.
Over the next few weeks I’m going to be talking about what that means and why just saying it in some random blog isn’t enough. We have to act. The picnic is coming to an end. God’s going to come through his Church with a sword. And you and I can either be wounded by it or we can wield it. Which one of those occurs for us will depend on what we do now. I’ve believe I’ve been sent with a message, and that message is both blessing and warning.
Each time God has spoken to me about his coming he’s brought me to scriptures that tell us to rejoice about it. But he’s also led me to passages that speak of his judgement. Sometimes they say both at the same time:
Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes,
He comes to judge the earth.
-Psalm 96.13[2]
In the prophet Amos’s day the people hoped for what was known as “The Day of the Lord”. It was an evolving concept but by this time Israel understood it as the Coming of God in judgement on their enemies (hopefully including a little fire and brimstone but, if not, at least some marauding hordes from Assyria to pillage and plunder. Yay!). Shockingly for Israel, The Day of the Lord turns around and bites them.
Amos tries to warn them that God’s Coming won’t be at all as expected…
Woe to you who long for the day of the Lord!
Why do you long for the day of the Lord?
That day will be darkness, not light.
It will be as though a man fled from a lion only to meet a bear,
As though he entered his house and rested his hand on the wall
Only to have a snake bite him.
Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light –
Pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?
-Amos 5.18-20[3]
…but they can’t hear. Their ears are blocked – perhaps deliberately. Or perhaps they’re just like Jesus said:
“ever seeing but never perceiving,
and ever hearing but never understanding;
otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!”
-Mk 4:11–12.
Listen, I don’t know the ins and outs of it; I don’t know when; and I’m not exactly sure I know why. But God is coming, and he’s coming soon. What we’re experiencing now – this shaking that’s going on in the earth; all the uncertainty, violence, and craziness – that’s just the birth pains. And they’re going to get closer together and a lot more intense before we see what is born.
This is not at all how I planned to start my blog. But I feel the time is short and I have a sense of urgency as I write this. Churches are playing games. And where they’re not playing games they’re asleep (or unconscious).
Look, I come like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake…
[But] as the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept.
At midnight there was a cry,
“Here is the bridegroom!”
Wake up!!!
[1] “The one who loves me will be loved by my Father…and I will manifest myself to them….and we will come to them and make our home with them.
That word translated “manifest” means “reveal” or “to become visible” and comes from a root meaning “to appear”. As he bids farewell to his disciples, Jesus is telling them that he will, in some spiritual sense, reveal himself to them.
[2] See also Joel chs.1-3 where the Day of the Lord is firstly judgement on Israel, then God’s mercy and deliverance for them, then restoration. Finally, the Day of the Lord becomes judgement on their enemies.
[3] See also Joel 1.15
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