The End of All Things (1): Knowing the Time

The Christian must know the time.

Time is the condition of all creaturely existence. Time is intimately and inextricably bound up with space and light and energy, and all creatures are bound up in that tightly woven fabric.

The Christian must know the time.

The Christian must know the time not in the sense of knowing about time scientifically in order to stammer a few things about the nature of its mysteries. But the Christian must know the time in the sense of knowing what time is theologically.

What is time?

Time and everything in time is but the manifestation of what is perfect in the eternal counsel of God. God had all things with him, and all things are perfect before him in his counsel. That is the reality. Time is the manifestation. Time serves as the stage upon which God’s counsel is made manifest, so that the thoughts and purposes of God are made known in the creation and to the creature and are observed and experienced by the creature.

Time then is theocentric. Time itself and everything in time concerns nothing but God, and all things are his works that he made, upholds, and directs to their divinely appointed end of his glory. It is as the apostle Paul says as he comes to the end of the consideration of God’s eternal purpose with men in Romans 11, and the apostle bows himself in worship and doxology to God:

33. O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!

34. For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?

35. Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again?

36. For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen. (vv. 33–36)

Thus the Christian must know the time from that viewpoint. Time and everything in time is of God, through God, and to God. He made all things for his glory, even the wicked for the day of evil.

The Christian must also know the time in the sense of knowing the central event that determines all of time and the central personage who dominates all of time. There is really only one chief, grand, and glorious event that has determined all of time and all that happens in time, and there is really only one person who matters in all of time. To that event and for that person, all other things that occur in time are bent in service. All of time and history may simply be summarized as the coming of Jesus Christ.

All things were made by him because he is the Word whom the Father spoke and by the Spirit brought all things into existence.

1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2. The same was in the beginning with God.

3. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

4. In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

5. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. (John 1:1–5)

All things were made by the Word, and without him was not anything made that was made. He is the light that lightened every man who came into the world. He is the light of the world, though the light shined in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. All things were made by him and for him, and he is the one in whom all things consist and in whom all things will be wrapped up in their final glory and perfection. As the firstborn of every creature, then, he is first in the counsel of God, and all things were appointed to serve God’s purpose with him.

15. Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:

16. For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:

17. And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

18. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.

19. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell;

20. And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. (Col. 1:15–20)

And so also the Spirit says in Hebrews 1:1–4 that Christ is the God-appointed heir of the world:

1. God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,

2. Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;

3. Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;

4. Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.

Christ is God’s purpose, and besides him there is no other purpose of God. Christ is the one whom God announced in the beginning to Adam and Eve in the garden. Christ is the promised seed for whom the church always has looked. His coming explains the entire Old Testament as but a type of the reality that was coming, an impression made by him upon time in the old dispensation. In the fullness of time, he was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of a woman, and made under the law to redeem his people from the curse of the law. And having done all that was his to do to accomplish the salvation of his people and to fulfill all the counsel of God, Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things in order to come again to judge the quick and the dead.

It is this awesome Christ who is the central and controlling personage of time.

Him we meet in the very beginning of the book of Revelation when John saw

13. in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.

14. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;

15. And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.

16. And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. (1:13–16)

It was for this glory that Christ prayed in his humiliation and that God gave to Christ in his resurrection and ascension: “Now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was” (John 17:5). The glory that Christ had with God from before the foundation of the world was the glory that he had as the one who was first in the counsel of God as being God’s purpose and the heir of all things and thus the one whom all things serve.

Christ is the one whom we see throughout the book of Revelation and whose coming will bring to a close this age.

11. I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.

12. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.

13. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.

14. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.

15. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

16. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. (Rev. 19:11–16)

When Christ appears, then he appears as the mighty one who declares the end of this age and the coming of the new and everlasting age.

1. I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire:

2. And he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth,

3. And cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth: and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices…

5. And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven,

6. And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer:

7. But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets. (Rev. 10:1–7)

At that moment there shall be time no longer, yet not in the sense that time itself will disappear. Rather, the mystery of God consisting of Christ and his kingdom will be finished and will appear in its perfection as that house, that building, that city that God always has been building from the moment he announced the coming of the seed of the woman in the Old Testament. Time in its present form will cease and enter into its glorified form as the everlasting age of the new heavens and new earth.

We must insist that it is no contradiction of the statement that Christ is the purpose of God to say that God’s purpose is his church, kingdom, and covenant. Jesus Christ is a corporation. He is not a private figure, and he is inconceivable apart from his people, who were chosen in him from before the foundation of the world. So the apostle says, “Whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29).

The church is Christ’s body, that body politic is his kingdom, and as the very essence of that kingdom stands the covenant fellowship of his people with the triune God as members of his family and as his dear friends through his Son, Jesus Christ. Christ and his church gathered out of every tribe, tongue, and nation is the mystery hid from the ages and revealed now in these last days.

7. We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory:

8. Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

9. But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

10. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. (1 Cor. 2:7–10)

That Christ and his people is the mystery the apostle teaches in Ephesians 5:25–32:

25. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

26. That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,

27. That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

28. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.

29. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:

30. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.

31. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.

32. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

Human marriage is but the impression or stamp among men of what is the great and final marriage that God ordained between Christ and his church. You can say that the very fact of how God created Adam and Eve as a married couple was because of his purpose in Christ. 

God is a covenant God in himself. For the revelation of himself as the covenant God, he decreed to establish with Christ an eternal covenant of grace. In this covenant Christ is the head of the covenant and his people as the body of Christ are its members, the fullness of him who fills all things. David sang of this in Psalm 2:7–8:

7. I will declare the decree: The Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.

8. Ask of me, And I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

This is the decree of the covenant ordaining Christ, his kingdom, his covenant, and his church as the purpose of God. The King James Version is right in translating the Hebrew as “the decree.” It is not merely a decree, but it is “the decree.” It is not “the decree” in the sense that there is no other decree but in the sense that all other parts of God’s counsel serve this one decree concerning Christ. He is the purpose of God for all things, and all other parts are the way in which God brings this central and controlling decree in its perfection.

Thus the Christian must know the time in the sense that from his own time and place in the history of the unfolding of God’s counsel he understands what time it is in the clock of history. This is the particular concern of the apostle in Romans 13:11–12:

11. And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.

12. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.

Our salvation is nearer than when we believed!

The night is far spent!

The day is at hand!

Some say that when the apostle wrote these words that he labored under the misunderstanding that in his own day Christ would come. But this is impossible, for Paul writes later of the expectation of his death and that through death he would be with Christ (Phil. 1:20–25). He also writes to the Thessalonians, who thought that Christ could come at any moment, that the day of the Lord cannot come at any moment, for there must come a falling away first, and the man of sin, the son of perdition, must be revealed (2 Thess. 2–3).

Rather, the apostle speaks in Romans 13 of the advancement of Christ and his kingdom in the new dispensation as Christ comes at every moment and in every event. It is not true that Christ will merely come at some point in time in the future. All the new dispensation too and all its events are but the footsteps of the coming Christ. For the creation as a whole, Christ is always coming, and always he comes nearer. When he comes, then our salvation comes nearer.

For the child of God, there is also a personal application of the truth that his salvation is nearer than when he believed, for the day of the Lord for him will be at the moment of his death, and surely every Christian can say, “I fly away quickly!” His day, the day of his death, and thus the day of his salvation coming nearer comes quickly and is nearer now than yesterday.

Yet it is especially with a view to the completion of the whole purpose of God in Christ and with his church, kingdom, and covenant that the apostle says that our salvation is nearer than when we first believed and that the night is far spent and that the day is at hand.

It has not always been so that the night is far spent. In the beginning God said, “Let there be light,” and light was. He divided the day from the night. And he created a perfect creation in an earthly sense. Adam was made in God’s image, and there was light in Adam’s heart. He loved the Lord, his God. Through Adam and through his heart, the whole creation was consecrated to the living God in love. And the creation was full of light each day as all things transparently and perfectly gave glory to God, their creator. In heaven too there was light. The morning stars sang for joy at the creation of God, led by their leader, the shining one, Lucifer, the son of the morning.

But a terrible night descended on the creation, beginning in heaven and through the fall of Adam extending to the earth. A terrible night of sin and guilt and the curse. Man was stripped of the glorious and bright image of God that he bore and took on the image of the prince of darkness to whom Adam had allied himself. The whole creation was subjected to the curse, and under its weight the creation groans and travails. Death reigned! And who can grasp the terribleness of those words. Death reigned because guilt reigned, and guilt reigned because man had sinned against the most high majesty of God, his creator. And the law entered and made man’s night truly dark! These destructive powers took over the ages. Death reigned. “The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law” (1 Cor. 15:56). All men were bound in a terrible darkness.

It was according to the purpose of God that all this came on the world. For the way that he determined for the revelation of his purpose in Christ was the fall, sin, guilt, and death and grace, redemption, resurrection, and glorification.

Sin and grace!

Death and resurrection!

Fall and redemption!

A mysterious way!

A deep way!

It is as the psalmist says: “Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known” (Ps. 77:19).

It is a way beyond man’s comprehension, so that we say with the apostle, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” (Rom. 11:33). It is a way in which God would be glorified both in his glorious grace upon undeserving sinners and in his just severity upon the vessels of wrath.

Already then in Eden the faintest ray of light pierced that terrible darkness that had swallowed up all the light in the world. There would be a seed who would crush the head of the serpent. It was an announcement of God’s purpose in Christ, advancing through history through a titanic warfare and struggle to the victory of the seed of the woman over the seed of the serpent.

Yet one could not say at that point, “The night is far spent.” That faint, initial glimmer of light never receded during the entire old dispensation, but all remained very dark. The seed of the woman was always besieged by the growth of wickedness. The church of God remained yet mired in her sinful condition: Justified by the promise of Christ, yet still full of sin. As to the promise of Christ’s coming, the old dispensation was a time of shadows created by the glow of that light across the events of the Old Testament. The very reality that stood in God’s counsel as the perfection and fullness of Christ’s kingdom cast its light into the old dispensation to create the very people, places, and events of the Old Testament. The glow intensified in brightness, yet never in the old dispensation did the dawn break. In the dark time of Noah, never could he say, “The day is at hand!” The best that could come was a picture in the rainbow that encircled the newborn creation as a promise of what was to come. Even at the end of the old dispensation, Malachi could prophesy only that the Sun would yet rise: “Unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings” (Mal. 4:2).

From the viewpoint of the church of the Old Testament, time had to be filled with many events yet. God suffered the nations to wander and grope about in the darkness and in ignorance, while he narrowed his promise within the sphere of Abraham’s offspring. There had to be Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Israel had to be enslaved and delivered, and the promised land and the inheritance in type had to be given to Israel. The law had to be laid on the promise to hem in Israel to Christ. The judges had to rise, and then David had to come with his kingdom. And then it had to be made manifest that Israel could not bring the promise by the law and that the house of David was a failure. So there had to be Babylon and the return from captivity, when Israel had no king and the temple was but a shadow of its former glory under Solomon and the people were but a tiny remnant. And that dark period had to hold until such a moment as time was full with all that God had ordained. Only then at that precise and divinely ordained moment did the Dawn break, and John was his herald. Zacharias spoke of John and his relationship to the Dawn:

76. Thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways;

77. To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins,

78. Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us,

79. To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 1:76–79)

For the “day” of which Paul speaks under the inspiration of the Spirit is nothing other than Christ and his day. Abraham saw it afar off and was glad. All the patriarchs had that day as their hope. While never seeing that day come, they yet died in faith of the certainty of its coming. Of that Day there were many types in the Old Testament impressed into the soft clay of the old dispensation by the coming reality of Christ and his kingdom.

The Day was coming, advancing with irresistible power throughout the old dispensation, but never did Day break. John the Baptist was the forerunner of the Dawn. His message was “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Then the Day himself came, yet he entered the deepest darkness of the wrath of God against sin, suffering the anguish of the outer darkness of hell on the tree of the cross. And having declared that salvation was finished, the Sun of righteousness arose with healing in his wings.

As far as scripture is concerned, the rest of the new dispensation has been night with the Dawn at hand. The night is far spent. The day is at hand. With the incarnation, cross, and resurrection of Christ, we have come to the very threshold of Day.

Regarding the main character of this present time for the Christian, it is yet night. It is night because the present state of the world is yet sinful, groaning and travailing under the curse and characterized by death. This night the Christian also carries around with him in his nature, so that he must say about himself, “I am carnal and sold under sin.” He is not carnal in the sense of the man of the world. The things of God are no longer foolishness to the Christian. He delights in the law of God after the inward man. But his condition is that he still has his old flesh; in his members the law of sin still operates and takes him captive, so that the good that he would, he does not do, and the evil that he would not, that he does. And this law holds for the Christian that when he would do good, evil is present with him.

Yet it is not all night. The night is far spent! The day is at hand!

In the dimness of the early light of dawn, though, the Christian still lives by faith and not by sight. He sees through a glass darkly the coming glory of the kingdom of Christ. The Christian does not yet know as he is known. He sees only in the light of scripture, which indeed means that he has “a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place.” Yet he looks to that time when the day will dawn and the day star will arise in his heart (2 Pet. 1:19). He does not yet see Christ face to face and with his eyes behold the majesty of Christ and the glory of his kingdom.

But the day is at hand! As far as scripture is concerned, the entire new dispensation is the last hour of night before the rising of the Sun of righteousness.

Thus the Christian must know the time. He must know that now the clock of history is in its last hour. The coming of Christ is quick. Oh yes, it seems that Christ delays, but he does not. He is working speedily all things that must happen in order to appear in his time on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory in order to judge the quick and the dead. He comes with irresistible power. Like the labor of a woman once begun cannot be stopped, so Christ’s coming cannot be stopped. The church in the new dispensation lives in the hope of the consummation of all things. The church in the old dispensation saw the coming of Christ as a single event, a mingling in her vision of the first and second comings of Christ. Now we understand that Christ’s coming has two great parts to it: his coming in his humiliation and his coming in his exaltation, his coming to confirm God’s covenant and his coming to make perfect God’s covenant. In the first coming he entered into our night to bring the clock of history forward to its last hour. In the second coming he will arise in all his glory as the Day to chase away forever the night that came on the world in Adam, so that the time will come in creation when “there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 22:5). The holy city, the perfected church, will have no need of the sun nor  the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God will lighten it, and the Lamb will be the light thereof. The nations of those who are saved shall walk in the light of it, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory and honor into it. And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day, for there shall be no night there (Rev. 21:23–25).

Now it is the last hour!

This the Christian must know!

For the coming Day calls to his people in the world. “It is time to awake out of sleep!” This is not the sleep of death out of which the Christian was awakened in his regeneration, but it is the sleepy complacency of his flesh that is satisfied with the here and now: to eat and to drink, to count his money, and to make plans for the future. But now the Day calls to his people in the world, “It is high time to get up out of bed and to lay aside your pajamas of satisfaction with this world and of making provisions for your flesh. Arm yourselves with the light of truth, for now the struggle between flesh and Spirit, between church and world, and between Satan and Christ will become truly fierce. It is darkest before Dawn, and into that period we have descended.”

In reminding the church to know the time, the apostle’s purpose is intensely practical. It comes as further ground for the love of the neighbor and for submission to the higher powers and to owe no man anything except that unpayable and abiding love-debt to the neighbor. Knowing the time serves also as a calling. The Day calls to his people in the world of darkness as those who are in the light,

13. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.

14. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof. (Rom. 13:13–14)

No doubt the apostle expresses a similar thought in Ephesians 5:14–17:

14. Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.

15. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,

16. Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

17. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.

Understanding that the will of the Lord is our salvation in heaven and the new heaven and new earth, then the Christian also sets his heart and affections not on the things here below but on the things that are above, where Christ sits at God’s right hand.

A similar thought is spoken by the Lord in connection with his teaching about his second coming: “When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh” (Luke 21:28). All this means that the Day calls to his people in the world to turn from this world, to repent, to humble themselves, and to live as those who are light in darkness and who so order their lives in the consciousness of the coming day.

The events that fill up this last hour is the concern of eschatology. I intend to write a series of articles on eschatology. Eschatology means the study of the last things. It is the study of those things that belong to the coming consummation of God’s purpose in Christ. I do not intend to write an exhaustive series, in part because I do not want it to go on and on. Rather, I intend to treat the main points regarding the truth of eschatology.