So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” (Acts 1: 6-11)
I think we are lot like that: standing around looking up, wondering when Jesus is coming back. The last words of our Lord had nothing to do with when He was returning, it was His reminder to the disciples that they (and we) are to be His witnesses “to the end of the earth”.
We do a lot of looking backward, a lot of looking forward and not too much time in the right now. We have been saved by Divine mercy and I think we do an injustice to our calling if we spend all of our time talking among ourselves about how we got saved and when Christ is coming back. There is a whole world out there full of people dead in their sins and condemned. Not a one of them is going to hear the Gospel because you went to a theology conference or based on your millennial position. Is eschatology unimportant? Of course not. Is justification unimportant? Emphatically no! All I am saying is that we should be spending at least as much time in how we are to live as Christians apart from and as witnesses to the fallen world around us.
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