Our Lord challenges us to "discern this time"  (Luke 12:56, NKJV) or as the NEB translation puts it, " in this fateful hour".

The apostle Paul brings a similar challenge before us in Rom. 13:11:  "And do this, knowing the time, that now is the high time to awake out of your sleep, for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed."

To know the time implies to know what´s going on at this time and not just to be observers of some weather forecasts (Luke 12:54-56) or mystical  "messages" from the universe observed by telescopes.

So what do we know?  How are we to interpret the Middle East,  Europe, the apostasy of the church, and Trump´s preferential treatment of Israel and Jerusalem, "the city of the great King" ?  (Mt. 5:35)

The Lord goes beyond futile political discussions and challenges us to understand the time as His time, nay as an incentive for doing what He wants us to do with the talents we´ve got, which relate to the gospel and its cause as Heaven´s ultimatum to a lost mankind.

"Do business till I come" (Luke 19:13), He says, which we believe is the gospel´s business which was with power inaugurated on the day of Pentecost, and its agenda has not changed.  Or has it?

I remember when Billy Graham came to Denmark for the very first time in 1954 as a young man, in a great speech to our spiritual leaders, he said, "We must sell the gospel!"  for which he has been criticized, but rightly understood he was right.  We should be the Lord´s devoted "salesmen".

We try to keep abreast with what´s going on, but only to be set on fire for the Lord´s business at this time.  Otherwise we don´t know our time.

"Till I come!"  Indeed, this is our true incentive in this "business".  Worldly people have asked me, "Do the events in the Middle East  have to do with Judgment Day?"  Similar voices have been raised in TV programs. The unsaved have at times a better spiritual intuition than saved people.

Who are going to give them the answer?  Those in His business only.

Dec. 31, 2017 - jn