December 18
Habakkuk 1:1--2:3
Psalm 143:7-12
Proverbs 30:7-10
Revelation 11:11-19
The Appointed Time
“Then the Lord replied, ‘Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it lingers, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.” Habakkuk 2:2-3
“The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said, ‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Messiah, and He will reign forever and ever.’ The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your people who revere your name, both great and small—and for destroying those who destroy the earth.” Revelation 11:15, 18
There is an appointed time of the end. God is not sitting up in heaven trying to decide when it would be a good time to send Jesus to rapture the church and then start the tribulation period. He knew before He ever created time how many days were on the calendar. He isn’t winging it. There is an appointed time for everything that happens. Only God knows what those appointed days are, but they are set, fixed and immovable. God gave the prophets hints that they recorded in Scripture so that we could be prepared when the time comes. He gave Paul and John and some of the other New Testament saints further revelation about the times of the end. But no one has the whole picture. The people in the early church thought Jesus was going to return in their lifetimes and there have been believers in every generation who have watched for Him. He didn’t give us a date because if He had told the New Testament believers that He wasn’t going to return for at least 2000 years they would have been discouraged. And if they thought they had plenty of time, there would not have been a sense of urgency to spread the gospel.
If we examine the Bible as a whole, we see that God reveals things progressively. He did not lay out His whole plan to Abraham and Moses. He told them what they needed to know. Then over time He revealed Himself and His plan through the prophets and the other writers of Scripture more fully. The Old Testament pointed to His plan of redemption and the coming of the Messiah, but it wasn’t until Jesus Himself came to earth that the full plan was revealed. People for centuries have been examining the prophecies about the end times. Many of the prophecies have not made sense until modern times. From 70 AD until the 20th century people would not have been able to make sense of the references to the “nation of Israel” because until 1948 there was no nation of Israel. It did not exist. The promises of God to bring them back to their land from all over the world would not have even seemed possible. The technology needed to accomplish most of the things in Revelation like the mark of the beast, the image of the beast, and the ability for everyone in the world to be able to see the 2 witnesses killed and laying in Jerusalem for 3 days and then resurrected did not exist and could not even be imagined. Someone reading those passages in the 19th century could not possibly have understood them. But now all that technology is in place, and we can understand what those passages mean. There has never been a time in history when Russia, Turkey, Iran, and Syria have been allies so when the Bible mentions them coming together to invade Israel from the north it has always seemed unlikely, but all those countries now have troops just north of Israel in Syria. While they are not exactly friends, they are allies in their desire to destroy Israel. If we examine all the prophecies in the Bible that have already been fulfilled, there is more than enough evidence to conclude that all the rest of them will happen just as they have been predicted. No prophecy in Scripture has ever been proven to be false. They either happened exactly as Scripture said or they have not been fulfilled yet. We can be confident that every word of the Bible is going to happen at the appointed time. Habakkuk tells us that the revelation awaits the appointed time, and it will not prove false. Though it lingers, we are to wait for it because it is certain to come.
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