Instruction for the Church in These Last Days: Keep Looking Up!

The news in our world has, of late, become increasingly worse.  One can take the Bible, open it up beside the daily paper, and see how the signs of the times are unfolding rapidly.  Wars, terrorism, pestilences, earthquakes, signs in the sky, and signs in the sea are not just coincidental occurrences.

Christ said that men’s hearts would fail them for fear as they looked upon those things that transpire in the earth.  Can you feel it?  Can you sense the global groaning and the public pandemonium?  The cosmos is in historic conflict.  The earth is shaking. The enemy is marching. The diseases are spreading. The fear is growing. The wickedness is prevailing. The times are changing. And in the midst of it all, it may seem like the church is losing…but!

But what?!

But, in the same passage of Scripture, Christ instructed us to “lift up our heads, and look up” for “our redemption draweth nigh.”  All of these signs point to an epic, historic, monumental day in history when the King of kings shall return for His church.

If we are not careful we can look around, look down, look back, or even look ahead.  But our attention in those particular directions will not produce hope in such desperate times.  The only gaze for the child of God is upward.  Jesus would have us to keeping looking up.  When the pressure is mounting–keep looking up.  When the news is depressing–keep looking up.  When the earth is groaning–keep looking up.  When your heart is homesick–keep looking up.  When you feel defeated–keep looking up!

Although the earth is shaking, and the enemy is marching, and the diseases are spreading, and the fear is growing, and the wickedness is prevailing, and the times are changing…may I remind you that Jesus is coming, and the church is going, and the enemy is losing, and the kingdom is prevailing.

Why not practice it right now?  Stop reading this for a moment, lift up your head, look up, and realize that this very day holds within it the potential to see Christ in His glory.  What a thought!  May we with resolute, stubborn, and unyielding faith say with John, “Even so, come Lord Jesus!”

Looking for a city, where we’ll never die

There the sainted millions, never say goodbye

There, we’ll meet our Savior, and our loved ones too

Come, O Holy Spirit, All our hopes renew