Articles
Are We Prepared?
With all the concern for the Corona Virus right now, people are preparing for what might come to be. I’m one for doing just that. On the bottom of my e-mail for years I had a saying from Ben Franklin, “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail” and that’s very true.
It’s good to make preparations for things like this but certainly not limited to this. We keep getting told that a lot of this ‘near panic’ is being driven by media hype. But even if it is, I’m for being prepared for things to get worse before they get better. And I encourage everyone to prepare to whatever extent necessary, in case things get worse simply because of over reaction, or Heaven forbid because it really does actually progress to a terrible pandemic.
But for much more serious reasons than why people are clearing the shelves at Wallyworld, people should be preparing their souls to meet God. Jokingly, I’ve told people when discussing situations of concern like this that there is a 50% chance it will go bad. As I said jokingly, because it either will, or it won’t, thus my 50/50 satire. But when it comes to meeting Jesus, it’s a guaranteed deal. We will meet him at judgment one day, that's a 100% guarantee, not 50/50.
He may come for us through our death, or He may come back while we are still alive, but He's coming for us one of those two ways isn't he? Don't we have the same chance of being called by Jesus before this virus kills one more person, as we do of dying from the virus, 50/50? Yet there seems to be no mad rush to repentance and obedience by the masses, only a semi-panic over a virus. When I made my little supply run a few nights ago, the Bible shelves were still fully stocked at the store, but hand sanitizer was nowhere to be found, and you could have parked a truck where the toilet paper usually is. Some groceries were out of stock, and lots of people doing exactly what I was doing, getting a few necessities just in case.
But how many people filling shopping carts over the weekend even pondered preparing for Christ to come this week, next week, next month or next year? How many people even considered making preparations for that? Or, let’s talk really uncomfortable for a second. Let’s say we get the Corona Virus and die from it! We will meet Jesus even if He delays coming back for decades or centuries. What preparations are we making for that possibility? Are we prepared? Do we feel that urgency like we do the panic over the virus?
Christ’s return has been impending (any day now) for a couple thousand years. “The judge is standing at the door” (James 5:9). Yet people live as if that’s not a very real possibility, “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot—they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all— so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed.” Luke 17:26-30
What should we do to prepare?, “If anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him -- the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day” (John 12:47, 48). God has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:30, 31).
“When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left” (Matthew 25:31-33).
No one wants to be sick or die from a virus circling our globe. And while preparing to stay well is important, absolutely, is it as important as our preparations to stand before God in judgment?
