In our walk with God, we often look at God’s promise and ask, “How soon can it be?” A number of scriptural situations answer this question.
Therefore also there was born of one man, and him as good as dead at that, as many descendants as the stars of heaven in number, and innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore. All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance (they saw them afar), and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. Hebrews 11:12–13.
Sometimes the answer is not right now. There have been times in the Word when the answer was entirely different. People had to wait. By faith Abraham saw the future, and Jesus said, “Abraham rejoiced to see My day.” The Jews objected that Jesus was not even fifty years old, so how could He have seen Abraham. They could not accept it. Christ said, “Before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:56–58).
God always manifested Himself in the present. In the plan and schedule of God, Abraham had to look for something to come. The answer was not always right now. Sometimes you see the promises afar, and you have to wait. Abraham did not really wait, if you consider it carefully. He was projected through time to see the day of Christ and to rejoice in it. He borrowed the future and walked in it, even though dispensationally it remained for generations to come. Jesus said that Abraham saw His day, and he rejoiced.
Even though the answer seems to be, “Wait a while,” God has a way of upsetting His timetable whenever a man has faith. God has a schedule that is interrupted only by faith. God’s schedule will run like a perfect clock that measures off the generations and millenniums, but once in awhile someone comes along who will not be content to wait for it. He sees it afar off, welcomes it, and desires to walk in it. God grants him faith to pole-vault over the mountains of generations and project himself into spiritual reality; he then walks in a day to come.
Enoch, the seventh from Adam, also saw the Lord. He prophesied, as he walked with God, that the Lord would come with the myriads of His angels (Jude 14). He saw the great coming of the Lord. When he prophesied this, he realized that it would be a time of translation into another realm. He walked with God and was not found, for God took him. By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death… Hebrews 11:5. It was an exercise of faith that shrank the millenniums down and enabled him to reach into an experience that is still future.
How soon can it be that the excellent promises will be fulfilled? The answer from some comes back that you will have to wait; they are afar off. But do you realize that God has a schedule that is interrupted by the faith of His people? Suppose we are not the generation to see Christ’s return. Suppose it is not tomorrow, but a hundred or five hundred years from now. If we believe the Kingdom principles and practice His presence (which is basically what the Parousia is), we have drawn the future (even if it is five hundred years away) right into our present time. The Lord knows that we are experiencing it right now. Although the promises might seem identified in the schedule of God for a time yet to be, the Spirit of the Lord has constantly borne witness that it is right now. The world around us is going through its changes. But we are not children of the night, and we are not stumbling around as victims of this hour. We have come into something very real, and we are walking as children of the day (I Thessalonians 5:5). By the world’s viewpoint we are fools.
We have a faith, we have a vision, and we are moving ahead. While everyone else wants to dig in and entrench themselves for the days ahead, I think of the Word in Luke 19:13, Occupy till I come. His coming (His Parousia) is upon us now; we are reaching into it, in the name of the Lord. How soon can it be? We do not say, “Wait awhile.” We look into the Scriptures to bring it to pass within a certain scope of time.
Matthew speaks of these things taking place within a generation. “Now learn the parable from the fig tree: when its branch has already become tender, and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near” (the fig tree is a symbol of God’s people, used many times in the Old Testament in that regard); “even so you too, when you see all these things, recognize that He is near, right at the door” (it is not afar off, but right at the door). “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words shall not pass away.” Matthew 24:32–35. The margin does not read, “generation,” but “race.” The meaning is used interchangeably that this present generation will not really pass away (those who have been generated—who have been born).
If we look at these things carefully and discern the signs that the Master laid before us, we see that during a period in the end time a number of events will begin to take place; a number of signs will be presented. Matthew 24 speaks about that. The disciples asked the Lord, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” Matthew 24:3b.
Jesus laid out all these signs. As these signs are presented, they come to pass, one after another. When we see them begin to come to pass (the fig tree putting forth its shoots), then we know summer is near. We can study a fruit tree and know by the blossoms how long it will be before summer. We can figure that out in our minds. Christ said that when we see these things begin to come to pass, we will know the time is right at the door. That generation will not pass away until all these things have been fulfilled.
We have seen many signs fulfilled. But has not every generation before us seen some of these signs? Yes, wars, rumors of wars, and many other troubles; but never has there been so much concentration of all these things being fulfilled simultaneously. The prophecy in Luke 21:24, 27 speaks of Jerusalem being trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Then it speaks about the coming of the Lord. Only in recent years has Jerusalem been back in the hands of the Israelis. For hundreds of years, Jerusalem was under the hands of the Gentiles, the Turks. The Crusades to loose the holy city from their hands had to fail. People, including little children, perished by the thousands; many of them were sold into slavery. The Crusades was one of the greatest fiascos and disasters in the name of Christ that ever happened. The history of the Middle Ages is repulsive even to read. If the men behind the Crusades had been real men of God, they would have known from the Scriptures that Jerusalem was to be trodden down until the times of the Gentiles were fulfilled.
Jerusalem is no longer trodden down. Have you noticed how the enemy tries to take Jerusalem out of the hands of the Israelis? The demands are unceasing and unrelenting. Every anti-God force is working for it. Russia is working for it. That little Israeli nation has succeeded in holding Jerusalem. You may think that they deserve it because they are God’s chosen people, but you should know better than that. It is a sign. In Christ is the true Israel, the true circumcision (Philippians 3:3) and seed of Abraham. If any man is in Christ, he is the seed of Abraham and an heir according to the promise (Galatians 3:29). What about the Jews? A Jew when he dies can end up in hell just as quickly as a Gentile can.… there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby ye must be saved. Acts 4:12.
Many Jews today are walking with God. They had to find Jesus Christ the same way that everyone must. They had to seek God the same as anyone else. People should not proclaim that they are Irish Christians, Gentile Christians, or Jewish Christians. There is no difference between Jew or Greek, bond or free, male or female; we are all one in Christ (Galatians 3:28). Yet we see those distinctions carried on. Let us all drop our prejudices completely and come into the one Body that God is making. We read in Ephesians that Christ broke down the middle wall of partition that was between us. He has made “those who were afar off and those who were nigh” (the Gentiles and the Jews) one new man (Ephesians 2:13–16). We are mixed together to come forth as one new creation of God.
What advantage is there to being a Jew? Paul said, “Much, in every way, because to their fathers were committed the oracles of God, the Scriptures (Romans 3:2). The Jews were the channel by which the Law and the Word came. They may have rejected it themselves, but they were the channel through which it came.
You do not need to look for any more signs to be fulfilled in the Jews. There have been signs fulfilled among the natural Jews by the hundreds, but there have been signs fulfilled in the spiritual Israel by the thousands, and this is where the Lord is focused. Watching natural Israel is like looking at a clock to see what hour it is. When we look at the spiritual Israel, we are not looking at a clock to see what hour it is; we look at the spiritual Israel and behold that it is happening. What God has ordained is here. Now it shall spring forth. Now is the time.
We must realize that we are not waiting for a day to come. We do not have to wait. It is here. Even if we have been wrong in calculations, by faith we enter in. In the Word of God, His timetable is interrupted constantly by men of faith, and He brings it forth. Is God interested in that? Does it disturb Him that He has a schedule He must interrupt? He delights in it. He realizes that unless the schedule is changed, unless the days are shortened, there will be no flesh saved alive; so He cuts it short (Matthew 24:22). He said the time will come that you will not pray and wait for an answer, but before you call, He will answer. While you are yet speaking, He will hear (Isaiah 65:24). He delights in blowing up His entire time schedule. He invented time in the first place.
Man has difficulty, even with a watch, keeping track of time. God has it going by systems, day and night, year in and year out. Every once in a while He looks around for someone to interrupt His whole timetable. He finds a man who wholly follows the Lord with all his heart and meditates in the book of the Law both day and night. When the sun starts to go down, such a man commands the sun to stand still until he finishes winning the battle. Would you like to have faith like that? Joshua changed God’s schedule of time. That day was to be a little longer than usual. Joshua won the battle over the combination of kings that had set themselves to destroy the armies of Israel (Joshua 10:12–13). That was a day of victory.
Change your idea that you are set in a certain schedule. Many things may be working against your freedom from schedule, but dare to believe. Dare to reach into it. There is nothing more disturbing than to realize that your life is slipping by and there are too many things yet to be done. There does not seem to be enough time. You must have faith to redeem the time, because the days are evil (Ephesians 5:16). You must have faith to reach in and bring the things of God into reality for your life right now. You are living right now, not tomorrow. You are walking with God right now, not tomorrow. The promises are right now, not tomorrow.
We must not put God’s promises off into the future. This has been the error in the days before the restoration of New Testament truths began to really sweep the earth. Christians would say, “When we get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing it will be.” What about a day of rejoicing right now? I do not think we ought to be preaching pie-in-the-sky as much as we ought to be preaching for the devil to have mud in his eye. We must reach into the Lord right now to bring fulfillment. Let us take hold of instant fulfillment today. This is a day of many instant foods; so also there are many instant promises in the Word. We must appropriate and believe the Lord for them.
Look to these prophecies in the book of Isaiah. “Behold, the former things have come to pass, now I declare new things; before they spring forth I proclaim them to you.” Isaiah 42:9.
“Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder things of the past. Behold, I will do something new, now it will spring forth; will you not be aware of it? I will even make a roadway in the wilderness, rivers in the desert. Isaiah 43:18, 19.
“You have heard; look at all this. And you, will you not declare it? I proclaim to you new things from this time, even hidden things which you have not known. They are created now and not long ago; and before today you have not heard them, lest you should say, ‘Behold, I knew them.’ ” Isaiah 48:6, 7. You have not heard; you have not known. Do you believe God can do that which you have not known or heard?
Many will argue that whatever God is doing must be found in the Book. It is there. It is hidden in plain sight. The Bible is a story, from beginning to end, of God surprising and amazing the people. A good Bible study would be to read through the sixteen chapters of the Gospel of Mark and notice the word “amazed” as it was written in the King James. “They were amazed; they marveled”—look for those two phrases. God was always surprising people. The mark of a walk with God will be that your eyebrows are slightly raised all the time. You may think you have seen it, but you have not even heard it.
Not five percent has been prophesied of what we will see. In the Word of God we find that He was always doing something beyond what was promised. In this day, we will not be disappointed as we press on. People think that the promises were great, but very little happened. We will find just the opposite. It is already on us; we will be surprised and amazed at the rapidity with which faith is answered. We will be surprised at the things God does beyond the scope of our prophetic vision. God will be doing a new thing in the earth. Now it shall spring forth. The preliminary teaching that is coming now to bring forth prophets will be one of the greatest surprises that ever upset the Christian world.
Do violence right now to the kind of faith that is really nothing more than sanctified hope: hoping that something will happen, hanging on tenaciously to the idea that eventually something will happen. Touch the hem of His garment today! Believe that He will explode your unbelief, destroying it utterly. Turn loose the faith that is within you! If you have grown weary in well-doing, or have become ready to fall by the wayside, revive your hopes and expectations. For now are those days nearer than when you first believed.
Let the Lord bless and bring an inspiration to your heart that will be deep and moving in your spirit. Shake off any indifferent feeling, so that your faith will not be passive. Ask the Lord to give you that spiritual grasp of faith that reaches up. Pull the promises of God out of the future and hold them.