Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. (Revelation 19:10)
John is given a vision of things to come. Understandably awed and overwhelmed he falls to worship an angel. The angel quickly and forcefully corrects John to worship God. It is only God Himself, the sole triune God who we are to worship… and we are to worship God!
In this inspired unveiling to John, while exiled on Patmos, we are given a description of Jesus as being the spirit of prophecy. No wonder the opening words of this final New Testament book are quick to remind the reader it is a ‘revealing’ or The Revelation of Jesus Christ.
Concerning prophecy and end-times— I remind you the danger of two extremes. First is sensationalism. It tends to demonstrate itself in date-setting, or perhaps a compulsion to identify the Antichrist. In recent decades it was not uncommon to see this. We are not to speculate about the exact date of the Lord’s coming. Jesus can come at any time, and He is coming on the Father’s schedule, not on a date set by a person (see Matt. 24:36 & Acts 1:7).
Prophecy teacher, Ed Hindson reminds us, God’s clock, the clock of history, is ticking away. Never speeding up, nor slowing down. It just keeps ticking, continually and relentlessly, moving us closer and closer to the end of the age. How close we are to the end will only be revealed by time itself.
There is a second extreme… that of the one who scoffs about the promise of His coming (see II Pet. 3:3-4). We see, and hear, much scoffing in our current culture about His coming. Sadly this includes the church culture too. It is certainly not unusual. In fact, many react negatively to any mention of signs of the end times. They suggest it is foolish and unwarranted to look or speak of trends and developments that Biblically point us to end times scenarios. Beware of such an attitude.
Why? Consider the words of Jesus towards the elite of His day regarding His first coming—When it is evening you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red’; and in the morning, ‘It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times.
Jesus fulfilled well over 100 prophecies during His life on earth, and He indicted the Jewish leaders for missing the signs of His first coming. Oddly, most people of His day missed the clear signs that confirmed He was God—signs of visible miracles confirming the invisible truth of His deity. Those were the signs verifying His first coming. What about the signs of the Second? Consider Heb.10:25
Exhort one another, and so much more as you see the Day approaching.
Notice we are to see. So be watching, be looking, see clearly The Day approaching!
Maranatha!