Sober and Watchful

First Thessalonians chapter 5. We are going to continue with this study we have been conducting on the Second Coming. Sometimes, during this season, I feel somewhat torn between Christmas sermons and sermons we have already begun, but I do not want to lose the thread of this very important teaching about the Second Coming; later, we will also have an opportunity to prepare for the Christmas season.

But the Christmas season actually celebrates the First Coming of Jesus as the fragile child, the baby in the manger, the suffering servant, the servant of God who was crucified. The Second Coming presents Him as the victorious Christ, amen?—coming on His white horse to gather His Church, so to speak, to celebrate the Holy Supper, the Supper of the Lamb. A glorified Christ, a Christ who comes to receive the rule and worship of all the nations of the Earth.

The Bible says that every eye will see Him; it says that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. The first time, many rejected Him; they did not recognize Him as the Son of God. At the Second Coming, it will be different. Even those who do not want to acknowledge Him will have to acknowledge Him. Many, like us, will worship and celebrate Him because we love Him and because we know that He is our Savior, who gave Himself for us on the cross. Others will have to do it under compulsion.

And we are going to see that there will be two kinds of people at the Second Coming: those who wait for, eagerly desire, and long for His Second Coming and are prepared for it; and those who have rejected Jesus and are not prepared for that day, which will be a day of wrath for them. We, however, do not have to fear that day, because it is a day of celebration and vindication for us.

First Thessalonians chapter 5 says: “But concerning the times and the seasons”—the times and the seasons—what is the apostle Paul referring to here? He is referring to a God who moves through history systematically, through ages and stages; it is like a Great Plan that He has. It is like the phases of a war or great conflict: generals have a strategy, they have an objective, and they unfold the war according to specific moments, specific interventions, specific battles, conquering one place first and then another.

That is how it is with the history of salvation. From the beginning of time, God has had specific moments, ages, facets, people, and periods that have followed one another exactly as the Lord desired; nothing escapes the Lord’s planning. And the Bible calls this the times and the seasons; it speaks of discerning the times, discerning the seasons, the moments in history, so that we can understand what God is doing.

So here, when the apostle Paul says, “But concerning the times and the seasons,” he is referring to different moments throughout God’s saving plan across history. He says: “But concerning the times and the seasons” that God has planned in His mind throughout history, “you have no need, brothers, for me to write to you, because you yourselves know perfectly well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” It is interesting that the apostle says, “You have no need for me to write to you.” Then why is he writing to them?

Well, I think he is partly being rhetorical. He is sort of assuming: Hey, you already know that, but just in case, let me tell you. It is important that we, as soundly taught and instructed believers in the churches, know about God’s times, the moments, history, and the things God has prepared for us. That is why I am taking this time, because I sense from the Lord that God is calling us precisely to be aware of the Lord’s plans.

We have to be instructed. If we pastors do not instruct our congregation about what the Lord intends to do, we will be taken by surprise when that time of the Lord comes. There are many Christians who have not been properly instructed about God’s purposes and plans, and that is why many congregations are being lulled to sleep and deceived doctrinally at this time: because they are not being indoctrinated, taught, and discipled properly concerning God’s plans. Many people live in complete ignorance of what God has in mind to do throughout history.

The apostle Paul, guided by the Holy Spirit, is here sort of assuming: Hey, you know this. God grant that the day may come when I say: Brothers, there is no need to talk about these things. I know you are very well instructed in them, but we are going to talk a little about them anyway to reinforce them, because it is never unnecessary to speak about matters so important and sublime.

“You have no need for me to write to you, because you yourselves know perfectly well”—and here comes the first powerful piece of teaching for this message and this text. Remember that we are studying different texts, okay? For those who have not been following my teaching, I believe this is the fourth sermon in which I deal with the Second Coming. There are many key texts that you need to understand and know, and be able to refer to in your own personal study of this very important subject. And this is one of them. I will be visiting other texts—I do not know whether I will have time this year, but next year—we will see how God helps us, because it is a doctrine that I feel it is time for us to study thoroughly.

Here you have a very interesting piece of the doctrine of the Second Coming. It says: “For the day of the Lord will come”—how?—“like a thief in the night.” Like a thief in the night. How does a thief come in the night? Unexpectedly, when he is not expected, right? And one of the things about the Lord’s Second Coming is that it will come—the Bible is full of such references—when humanity is perhaps most off guard, when people believe that God has already forgotten about it, when history seems most under human control, and we are most imprisoned by time, space, our concerns, and our struggles. Humanity will be like: Ah, God does not exist; that is a fairy tale, an old wives’ tale; there is no need to worry about that.

Then, at that moment, God will come. There will be an element of sudden, unexpected surprise about the Coming of the Lord. So this is very important: He will come like a thief in the night. This is an element repeated many times in Scripture. If you go, for example, to Matthew chapter 25—I am not going to take too much time to read it—but there is Jesus Christ’s famous parable about the ten virgins. Do you remember that passage? (singing) ♪Will you be watching like the ten virgins? And at midnight the bridegroom arrived, and those who were unprepared—the ones who were prepared went away with Him.♪

That idea of these virgins—five wise, five unprepared, five foolish and senseless—waiting for the bridegroom who was coming. In those days there was no email, there were no telephones, there were no cell phones. They would say, “Well, the bridegroom is coming,” right? Let us say from Worcester or New York, and no one knew. It was like in our rural towns. Sometimes people arrived at midnight because the car they were traveling in broke down or whatever, and when they arrived, everyone would turn on the lights and prepare the stew or whatever it might be at two in the morning, because they did not have the conveniences we have in our time.

So imagine two or three thousand years ago or whenever it was: they were going to celebrate a wedding; all the people arrived, but they did not know what time the bridegroom or the bride or whoever was going to arrive. Suddenly: “The bridegroom has arrived!” And the foolish women were asleep with their faces—their faces—there was no time for whatever cream women put on when they sleep (laughter). But five of the girls, the maidens who were members of the bridal party, I would say, were waiting. They had their little candles ready, they had their oil there, their lamp ready, and when they said, “The bridegroom is coming!” they went, “Psh!” lit their lamps, and were ready. But there were five who were not prepared.

“Ah, he will come when he comes! Do not worry; he will come around nine in the morning because he is going to be traveling at night.” He arrived at midnight; he arrived at the unexpected moment, and these five virgins were unprepared. “Help us! Share some of your oil with us.” “We are very sorry.” The poor things were left all dressed up with nowhere to go; they could not take part. And that is what will happen to many people. There will even be one segment of the Church and one segment of humanity—and there will be another segment that will not be prepared when the bridegroom arrives to celebrate the Wedding Supper of the Lamb. Which group do you want to belong to? I hope it is the group of the five wise virgins, not the group of the five foolish virgins.

So there is a whole teaching, a vein of teaching in the Bible, that says the Coming of the Lord will occur when He is not expected. There is something else I cannot move past here without explaining it to you. Notice that the expression is: “The day of the Lord will come.” That term, the day of the Lord, appears frequently in the Bible, including in the Old Testament; several of the prophets speak of the day of the Lord.

It is a very specific term in Scripture. It refers to Judgment Day, a time of great affliction for humanity. It refers to the consummation, the complete fulfillment, the end of the age. It refers to the Second Coming. Now, it is not a literal twenty-four-hour day, but an age, a time, a period in human history. It could last months or years—who knows? No one can say with certainty—but it is called the day of the Lord; it is like the time.

Why do they call it the day of the Lord? Because it is as though the Lord says: “This is My day. Today I am going to deal with humanity as I have said throughout history that I am going to deal with it. This is My time. Until now, human beings have done whatever they pleased; now it is My turn,” in other words. That is why I believe it is called the day of the Lord. It is a day when the Lord will call humanity to account.

Until this point, God has been very gentle and very generous with man and with humanity, but that day is His day. It is the day of the Lord, when He will settle matters and call humanity to account, and the Bible says it will be a time of great affliction. It is God’s day, when He finally settles accounts with humanity; it is His turn to act. Wherever this term, the day of the Lord, appears—if you have a good concordance, a theology book, or a book teaching about the Second Coming, look up this term. Wherever this term appears, it refers to a terrible day of great anguish at the end of the age.

I would like to take the time—and perhaps I will next year—to take that doctrine of the day of the Lord and analyze it through the many texts that are there, because they provide a fairly consistent teaching about that period. The Great Tribulation is also partly implied there. It is a day of great anguish for humanity; it is a day when nature will rebel and a time of great cataclysms, of great signs in the heavens, on the earth, and in the seas—a time of great terror for humanity. You do not want to be in that time without being certain where your eternal destiny lies. You want your relationship with Christ to be clear.

For the Church, that is a time of hope. The Lord Jesus Christ says: When you see these things happening, lift up your heads, because it is the time of your deliverance, okay? But for humanity it will be a time of great, great anguish, and that time will arrive unexpectedly, when people least expect it, when they are least prepared, when the nations are immersed in their worldly pursuits, in their worldly affairs. Then that day will come.

It says: “He will come like a thief in the night.” Verse 3: “For when they say, ‘Peace and safety,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them, like labor pains upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.” One possible scenario is that when peace treaties are made among the nations, a day could come when it seems as though there will no longer be war because there are agreements among the nations, and the nations will say something like: “Wow, we have solved the problem of world war.” And when it seems that God is no longer needed to make peace among men, when they have lowered their guard, that is when God delivers the sucker punch.

When humanity is ripe and people believe they can do without God, that will be the moment of the Second Coming. God loves drama; God is the playwright par excellence. And it says: “And they will not escape.” There will be no escape. When God determines something, no one can escape.

I have been watching an extensive documentary about the First World War, which later unleashed the Second World War, from which emerged the Cold War and a number of other things, at the beginning of the twentieth century, in 1914. And one of the things that strikes me is that there was a series of alliances throughout Europe, very powerful alliances among the nations: Russia, Germany, the Austro-German Empire, Hungary, and other countries, England. All these countries had established treaties of peace, harmony, and cooperation with one another.

And yet, when the time came to begin the war, World War I, because of an assassination that took place, a young student set off the entire disaster of World War I, because the nations were already prepared, everyone was armed to the teeth, and many technologies of war had emerged, along with new weapons and all that. And when that moment came, no one really wanted to enter the war, but, ironically, the peace treaties they had were the very things that dragged them into it. For when the Austro-German Empire—or rather, the Austro-Hungarian Empire—declared war against one of its neighboring countries, Serbia, that unleashed a chain reaction. Those who were allied then—on the one hand, Russia was allied with this Austro-Hungarian Empire and therefore declared that it had to enter the war; Germany, on the other hand, then went to help another of the countries—and before anyone knew it, all the countries were involved in a war.

The United States, which did not want to enter the war, also had to enter the war. They could not escape, because the very machinery of war, their own treaties and alliances, dragged them into the war, one of the most destructive and terrible wars humanity has ever known. And that is how it happens. I believe that when the moment arrives in which God says, ‘This is the time,’ no matter how much they may want otherwise, they will be dragged into suffering, they will be dragged into violence, they will be dragged into killing one another and destroying one another. The wrath of God is terrible; it is terrible when man rebels against God’s purposes—they cannot escape. The Lord will laugh at them, Psalm number 2 says.

Then: ‘Sudden destruction will come upon them, like labor pains upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.’ It will be a time of great war; great alliances will be unleashed; the Antichrist and other things that are already prepared in God’s drama will go into action. They will not be able to escape; they will not be able to resist. Their peace treaties will not work for them.

But how beautiful that the next verse is like a gentle whistle and a cool breeze on that stormy horizon. It says: ‘But you, brothers, are not in darkness, so that that day should overtake you like a thief.’ We, the children of God, dwell in the light. For us, that day should not be a startling, unexpected, surprising, terrible day of judgment, of regret over what we did or did not do. It should be a day of: ‘Wow, at last what God promised has been fulfilled.’ If we are prepared, that will be how the children of God feel.

So it is a word of comfort. Again and again throughout the teachings about the Second Coming, there is this idea: for one group of people within humanity, it will be a terrible day; but you, children of God, believers in Jesus Christ—those who, as another passage says, have lived and have fallen asleep or died in Christ Jesus—do not have to worry. Just as we do not have to worry about personal death: whether we die or live, we belong to the Lord, the Word says. A Christian should not be terrified of death because we are prepared, amen? We dwell in the light of Christ; we are not in darkness.

Verse 5 says: ‘For you are all’—what?—‘children of the light and of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.’ That is a rich and prevalent theme in the Scriptures. We, the children of God, dwell in the light, in the open, in God’s day. Our lives are open to the Lord and open to our brothers and sisters. We are people of truth and light. Now, where do destruction, death, the devil, and sin operate? In darkness—in what is dark, hidden, secret, underground, and subversive. That is where the enemy moves like a snake, burrowing beneath the ground and slithering close to the ground to carry out his destructive actions.

So he says: Do not worry. He will come like the thief who moves in the darkness, but you do not have to worry, because you do not dwell in darkness; you dwell in the light, in the day. He moves in the night; we move in the light. So that is important. ‘Therefore, let us not sleep as others do, but let us watch and be sober.’

Before going into that little point there, which is very important, let me tell you something about this matter of the light, because it is a precious theme and it also has a very important ethical theme concerning behavior and life for us. For I believe that these doctrines are not merely theoretical and theological in their abstract and academic aspect, but that they have implications for life—for the day, the now, and the here in which we live: how we behave, how we live, and what we are.

So, even though I do not have much time to speak to you about much more, I want to pause at that point: ‘We are people of the light.’ You dwell in the light; you live in the light. I am a man of the light, a woman of the light; we must dwell in the light. Look at an interesting passage, John 11:9 and 10, where the Lord, in the context of Lazarus and his resurrection, says: ‘Jesus answered and said, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? Whoever walks during the day does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But whoever walks at night stumbles, because there is no light in him.”’ For the disciples were afraid that if they went to raise Lazarus, the Jews who hated Jesus would be there waiting for Him in order to harm Him, as indeed happened.

But the Lord said: What does it matter? I move and I live in the light; that is why I am not afraid of those who want to harm Me. And when I was meditating on that passage a few days ago, I was struck by the fact that when someone lives in the light, they do not live in fear. When you know that your accounts are clear with God and with your brothers and sisters, you do not have to hide from anyone. You do not care if they speak ill of you, want to harm you, or if there are demons that want to destroy your life. You dwell in the light, and your Heavenly Father covers you.

The woman or man of God who dwells in a clean, clear, simple, pure life, treating others well and living as Christ lived, does not have to fear the things that may happen. Affliction comes, pain comes, suffering comes, struggle comes, and it does not matter, because my life is in God’s hands. I do not have to be afraid: ‘Oh Lord, what will happen if I die?’ No, you are at peace because you live an open life, because you are an open letter. The person who fears death and the problems of life is the person who is always scheming, who is always doing hidden things; those people live full of fear.

But the person who dwells in the light is at peace even if others come to harm them or want to do anything whatsoever to them. They are at peace: Do not worry; Christ Jesus has my back, no matter what they may say. I wrote here: ‘We are people of the light and not of darkness. We must reject everything that resembles darkness. Lying’—we could spend quite a bit of time here working through each of these things, but I am not going to do that.

‘Lying, pretense, falsehood, hypocrisy, deceit, gossip, murmuring, manipulation, malice, scheming, speaking ill of others behind their backs, being calculating, manipulating people, using others for our own purposes.’ All those things and many more belong to darkness. The child of God is an open letter.

We must distinguish ourselves by being people into whose hands others can place their lives and say: ‘I am at peace because that person will take good care of me; they will not stab me in the back. They will not harm me. They will not do anything detrimental to my health or my life. They are a good and kind person; they are honest and straightforward; their yes is yes and their no is no.’ That is what it means, brothers and sisters.

Many people think it only means not killing, not stealing, not committing adultery, not committing the major sins. No. The ethics of the child of God is this: to be straightforward—an open man or woman of the light. My brother, my sister, if in any way you or I are not in that light right now, let us repent. Let us ask the Lord: ‘Father, help me to dwell in the light. Help me to be an open letter. Help me to be a transparent person, someone whom people can see, turn their backs on, and remain at peace because they can trust my honesty and my generosity.’ So I believe that is the point, isn’t it? Since we are children of the light, and since we dwell in the light and not in darkness, we do not have to fear the one who moves in darkness, nor do we have to fear when the day of darkness arrives.

Then in verse 6 Paul says: ‘Therefore, let us not sleep as others do.’ There is a second level of practicality and consequence there. He then says, ‘Since we belong to the day, let us not sleep,’ because people do not sleep during the day, but at night. Now, what is he referring to here? He is referring to this: Do not fall asleep spiritually. Do not be overly confident about the world and about life.

There are people who are so caught up in the cares and the web of life that they have lost awareness of what is happening around them. They are so caught up in making money, having a large house, reaching the pinnacle of their profession, being recognized and respected by others, and building a great name for themselves in the world that they plunge headlong into living life solely for sensuality, money, fame, friends, pleasure, the things of this world, and the vanity of this world—giving large sums of money so that their name will be put on a building at Harvard, or creating a foundation so that their name will remain there, as so many artists do nowadays.

Nowadays, an artist who does not have a foundation is nobody, and there are consultants whose sole job is to advise artists about what kind of foundation will promote their name and their reputation. ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,’ says the writer. Some people are so caught up in the things of the world that they have blinders on like horses; they see nothing but the world and the here and now.

And the apostle Paul says: Do not be like that; do not fall asleep. That is why there is this idea that we should be sober. It says: ‘Therefore, let us not sleep as others do, but let us watch and be sober.’ That word captivated me because I read it twice in that passage. The matter of being sober also appears in verse 8, which says: ‘Let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love.’ And that word ‘sober’ captivated me. I looked it up in the original Greek. The word is nefomen, nefomen, which means—it is a Greek term referring to keeping one’s senses sound, seeing reality just as it is. It means seeing and looking at things sensibly, not allowing oneself to be deceived, and not becoming overly enthusiastic about the concerns and fashions of this world.

I have always been fascinated by that word, by being sober, by sobriety. As I see it in Scripture, sobriety is a mark of the mature Christian: being sober. To me, as I say, a sober person is someone who sees things just as they are, the opposite of a person who is drunk on the world, who is so intoxicated by what the world offers. A trend appears, and they have to be the first to buy the latest shoes, the latest dress, the latest earrings, whatever it may be, the latest hairstyle, whatever it may be; both men and women are like that nowadays.

Nowadays, well, all the men are shaving their chests and their backs because they are the first ones to go over there and pay 200 dollars to get a Brazilian wax—I do not know what that is called (laughter)—even in places that should not even be named. May the Lord rebuke the devil, right? Or women have to be like Twiggy, weighing 90 pounds, and off all the women go, even though they do not look good, thin, wasted away, and bony, because that is the latest fashion.

And brothers and sisters, that kind of person is not fitting; that kind of attitude is not fitting for the children of God. The man of God, the woman of God, always stands upright. You see them—it does not mean that they do not adapt in one way or another or that they are uninformed—but they are not running after this and running after that: ‘Oh, what happened? Let’s go over there! Oh, Christ is over here; let’s go over there! Oh, they are performing miracles there; let’s move there!’ The child of God stands firm. They are like a great ship that does not move easily. Now, if it is one of those tiny little boats, it turns on a dime.

But the child of God is a sober person, do you understand? Someone tells them, ‘Oh, look, this is happening over there.’ ‘Oh, okay, thank you. That is good. Well, I am going to think about it; I am going to pray about it.’ They weigh things. They are not out there, as they say, flowing along behind every wind of doctrine. There are people out there—you know, I do not know—they change fashions or churches as often as they change their shoes or hairstyle. That is terrible. That is how it is in these times; there is an effervescence. There is this thing going on. Today they are Buddhists, tomorrow they are Hindus, the next day they are Pentecostals, afterward they are Hare Krishnas—it is really something; people are hungry. The children of God are sober; they are watching, their eyes are observing the times.

‘Watch and pray, because you do not know the day on which the Lord will come,’ says the apostle Peter. We must be sober; we must watch. That is what sober means to me; it is a quality of the believer. Their enthusiasms are not overly extreme, nor are their depressions. Someone comes along who looks like the Second Incarnation of Jesus Christ, and they are not dazzled—‘Oh!’ No, they remain calm, measuring in the light of the Word. What does the Word say? That sobriety is very important. It is a quality that I love about Christian maturity, and one day we are going to explore it further.

Nēphōmen, he says: "Let us not sleep like the rest, but let us watch and be" nēphōmen, "let us be sober, for those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night." In other words, nighttime is when all humanity’s shameful deeds are committed, yes or no? That is when all the ugly things happen: people are killed, people rob one another, they do all the things you know about; it is night, the shadows, the darkness. The child of God dwells out in the open, in the light, in the brightness of day.

Then it says, "but we"—there is that contrast, right? Here is this group destined for destruction, waiting for the moment God has appointed for them, when He will seize them and catch them in their own foolishness and in their own intoxication with the world, time, space, and history. It says, "but we," once again that gentle breeze, that major key; "we who belong to the day, let us be sober"—nēphōmen again—let us be sober, "having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and the hope of salvation as a helmet."

That is what He calls us to, right? By the way, I cannot pass over something interesting here; this is a little bonus for you, right? It says, "having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and the hope of salvation as a helmet." We have to be careful: many times, when the apostle Paul speaks about certain things and systematizes them, we sometimes make them more technical than the Lord actually intended.

You know that in Ephesians chapter 6 he speaks of the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, the readiness of the Gospel, and all these things, and we have turned that almost into a technology of the believer’s armor. In this case, notice that instead of saying the shield of faith, he says the breastplate of faith; he switches things around. The apostle Paul was not really interested in creating a mantra, a repetitive prayer about the Christian’s armor. What he means is: look, we protect ourselves with the elements of the Gospel—with the Word of God, faith, the Holy Spirit, the righteousness by which we live, and these things. Whether you use it as a breastplate, a shield, or a shoe does not matter; what matters is that you put it on somehow.

We do not have to deify these things. This also happens with the gifts: we say, "Oh, there are 9 gifts," or "11 gifts," because that is what it says in 1 Corinthians chapter 12. In other passages, in Romans, there are other gifts, and there are still others elsewhere; and I believe there are other gifts that God is inventing even today, in the twenty-first century, that were not even in the Bible. God is infinitely creative; we cannot reduce Him to one single thing. And sometimes we do that. I see that here, right? As I say, this is an extra little bonus to encourage you to be flexible, agile, and creative in the way you view the Scriptures. I do not even know whether you realize what I am saying, but if you do not, give Him glory anyway; it is all right, do not worry, okay?

Then verse 9 says: "For God has not appointed us to wrath." You do not exist for wrath. Child of God, take a grace pill right now, okay? Relax, rest. God loves you; God is pleased with you. Unless you are a hardened scoundrel who is using the Gospel to carry on with your shameful behavior. Now, if you are a child of God, you love God, you acknowledge your sin, you want to do what is right before God, you love the Lord’s commandments, you want to be holy, you know that God is faithful, that He is righteous, that He is holy, and you believe His Word—even if at some point you make a mistake, fall, sin, or stumble—if you repent, acknowledge your sin, confess it before God, and seek healing, the Lord is at peace with you; the Lord forgives you.

The Christian life is a life of grace and forgiveness, as long as we are seeking to please the Lord in everything—do you understand me? Because it is not a matter of saying, "Okay, grace, grace, grace, so do whatever you please." Do not abuse the Lord’s generosity; do not abuse His mercy, because that is extremely dangerous. But if you sin because you fell, as every human being tends to do, there is restoration for you; there is grace. You are not a child of wrath; you are a child of God, a child of blessing. God is pleased with you; God loves you, right?

When a child makes a mistake, you do not kick him and throw him out of the house; you restore him, reestablish him, forgive him, and bring him back into the heart of the home. We cannot live under condemnation; no child of God should live under condemnation, under darkness. "Oh, God is angry with me. Oh, I have to please God; I have to do this so that God will be..." No. God loves you. That is the default posture of God. His heart is, first of all, that He loves you, and then He does whatever He does from there. But if you are right with God, if you love God through Christ Jesus, live confidently, live in the light of the Gospel, live a simple life.

"Who will condemn the children of God, if God is the one who justifies?" it says. Okay? You understand what I am telling you, right? So Paul says here: "But we are not children of wrath." God has not appointed us to wrath. You do not exist to be a prisoner under God’s wrath; you exist to be an object of God’s grace and mercy through the blood Christ shed on the cross of Calvary. "God has not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ."

What good news that is: despite being as we are, God still loves us and has appointed us to receive blessing. "Our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep"—there is the word "sleep" again—"we may live together with Him." That is what God wants. He is preparing a mansion, a four-bedroom condominium, and a spaceship for you to sail among the stars when you have nothing to do in eternity, all prepared for you. God wants to be with you, and He wants you to be with Him.

So whether you die or live, or whatever may happen in your life, you are secure, because you will be together with Christ Jesus in the Heavenly Homeland. What assurance that is, brothers and sisters. Your retirement plan is secure; inflation cannot enter there, recession cannot enter there. That Fiscal Cliff they are talking about nowadays cannot enter there; Democratic or Republican machinations cannot enter there; the machinations of those wicked people in Corporate America cannot enter there. What does enter there, brothers and sisters, is simply the faithfulness, love, security, generosity, and grace of your Heavenly Father, in that place where it says the thief cannot enter, where there is no corruption and no decay.

It is yes and amen; your calling is secure, your Heavenly Homeland, your place in heaven, is established and sealed. Your retirement plan suffers neither loss nor decay. Then it says: "Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing." That is the conclusion of all this. Musicians, please come over here. That is the conclusion.

Hey, brothers and sisters, we children of God have lost that eagerness for the Coming; we have lost that comforting aspect of the doctrine of the Second Coming. But it ought to be continually on our lips, this idea that: hey, Christ is coming—take heart, rejoice. When sickness comes: Christ is coming; take heart, do not worry, there is blessing. You lost your house: do not worry, Christ is coming; there is a house God has prepared for you. Your bank account shrank more than you thought it would: that is all right, do not sweat it; God is with you, God is waiting for you there.

Obviously, we are not going to be escapists, but we are going to use that as a dose of grace and blessing, of comfort and hope for our lives. Hallelujah! We have to encourage one another. The doctrine of the Second Coming must take on urgency and reality. And I encourage you—child of God, daughter of God, man or woman who is here, whether you are a visitor or whatever the case may be—listen, do not allow yourself to be stupefied; do not allow yourself to become drunk with love for the world. Do not be like drunkards who do not know where they are going and do not have a logical, sober, sound mind that sees things as they are. Do not deceive yourself; be sober, alert, realistic.

God created this world; the destiny of this world is in God’s hands. You are not a coincidence; you are not a lost star in the universe. There is coherence in your life; there is design in your life. You are a soul created by God, brought out of the anonymous darkness of nonexistence to live in this world and perceive this reality because God has a purpose for you. God brought you out of unconsciousness and switched on that light so it would walk in this world, because He has a purpose for you.

You have to live with that understanding. We do not live simply for ourselves; we live because a God created us for a purpose, so live that way. Be sober; surrender your life to Jesus Christ, entrust your life into the hands of the Lord Jesus, live life and look at life—interpret life—in the light of the values and teachings of the Word of God. That is your protection; that is what keeps you safe, so that when the Day of Judgment comes, the day of darkness, the day of Tribulation, you may say: "Amen, glory to God, I am safe. I have my spaceship ready; I have my protective bubble, which will not allow evil to come into my life, because I am confident—my soul is secure. I do not fear the thief who can kill the body, because my soul is secure with the Lord; he cannot touch it."

Today I invite you to settle your accounts with God and begin processing your papers in the Kingdom of God. Let us bow our heads at this moment, and we want to make sure that everyone here is clear about Jesus and what awaits us.

If you have not surrendered your life to the Lord Jesus Christ, if you are merely a religious, God-fearing person but have not clearly signed your covenant with the Lord, I would like to encourage you today to surrender your life to Jesus Christ and say: "Lord, I want to belong to the light. I do not want to be merely a historical being; I want to be an eternal being as well. I do not want to belong only to time and space; I want to belong to eternity, to infinity, to the spirit. And I know that only through the Spirit can I attain that identity. Today, Lord Jesus, I invite You to enter my life, and I want You to be my Savior and the guarantor of my eternal destiny. And so, Lord, I acknowledge You as Jesus, Son of God, Savior of humanity, and Savior of my soul."