There Will Be 3 Types of Christians on the Day of Jesus’ Return

Okay, the common attitude of the Second Coming is, why should we talk about it? It's so controversial. It just creates arguments, right? I mean, isn't he just going to come when he comes? If we look back at his first coming and we see the people that were prepared, could we learn something from their example? Two different responses. We have people that are going to be confident when he returns.

Yeah.

And we have people that are going to be ashamed. What's the difference?

Do you think there would be a third group of, like, frustration?

I have not thought about this. And this is brilliant. What we are doing right now is actually preparing our garments for eternity. And our garments are so important. Are you going to be highly decorated? Are you going to be somebody that just gets in, barely escaping through fire? Now, this is the way I see it. Hey everyone, welcome to the Jon Bevere Podcast. I'm Jon Bevere, joined by my son Arden. Arden, it's great to see you today.

Always good to see you.

Yes, we have so much fun doing this, don't we?

Uh-huh, we do.

Wow, we're talking about the second coming of Jesus. And I think we're hitting this in a kind of a different way than maybe you might be used to. We're talking about more about being ready, about being prepared for his second coming. You know, this is something that I've not understood. I mean, let's just talk about a final exam, all right? So I'm in college, you were in high school. Remember your final exams? Okay, now when a final exam was coming, did we talk about the final exam's gonna be on paper? The final exam is gonna be Xerox copy. The final exam is gonna be distributed at 9:30 in the morning by your teacher. The final exam is going to be held in this room. Those are kind of important.

Yeah.

But what's really important?

What was on the test?

Preparing for it. Yeah. And, and, and do you remember, I know me, If I was prepared, I wasn't nervous. Yeah. As nervous. If I wasn't prepared, man, 2 days before that final exam, I am sweating bullets. The morning I woke up, I'm like, oh no.

Or you just kind of accepted defeat, like I would do, where I was just like, whether I study or I don't, I think I'm gonna fail this test.

What's the feeling when you fail a test and your parents see you?

Oh, I would say embarrassment or failure.

Yep, ashamed. Ashamed. Okay, keep those words before you. Let's talk about a court trial. You're the defense attorney representing a client in a big, big trial. Okay, can you imagine trying to wing it? Can you imagine not preparing for it? Okay. I mean, what happens? You walk into that courtroom and the defense, the prosecuting attorney destroys you. You feel ashamed, right? So you're the defense attorney. You have to look with shame to your colleagues because you didn't prepare, all right? Now, think about the most important event of your life other than Jesus is your wedding, all right? Can you imagine not preparing for your wedding, all right? If you're the groom, you don't get the engagement ring, you don't get the wife, your wife's wedding ring that you're gonna put on her during the ceremony, you don't get the venue. What else? You don't get a tux. You don't pick out your best men.

DJ.

You don't get the DJ for the, right? All that, right? All right, you're the bride. You fail to get your wedding dress, right? You let just time go and go and go and go. The venue, you didn't get it. No flowers, no flowers, no reception prepared. The pastor, you haven't even talked to the pastor who's doing the ceremony. Okay, what happens? You're not going to have a very good wedding. You're going to be, you're going to be embarrassed, you're going to be ashamed. Okay, so in the last 3 podcasts, we've discussed why it's important to talk about the prophetic scriptures. Why is it important? The time period, almost to the date, was given for Jesus' first coming, and many were unprepared.

Yeah.

Okay? The timeframe, or more accurately, the season of his second coming has been made so clear. If we look at the prophet Hosea, we look at Jesus, we look at others, it's so abundantly clear, and we're unprepared. All these situations we've discussed, What is the emotion of somebody who is not prepared?

Yeah, ashamed.

Ashamed. A sense of shame. Okay, so now listen to what John the Apostle writes. And now, little children, abide in him, which in the New Living Translation says remain in fellowship with him, that when he appears, we may have confidence Now I remember walking into exams with confidence. I'm going to keep reading from the scripture. That we may have confidence and not be ashamed before him at his coming. Whoa, two different responses. We have people that are going to be confident when he returns. Yeah. And we have people that are going to be ashamed. What's the difference? These guys prepared. These guys didn't. Now If we just say, okay, the common attitude of the second coming is, why should we talk about it? It's so controversial. It just creates arguments, right? I mean, isn't he just going to come when he comes? Why should we talk about it? Why should we even have podcasts about it? Why should we have services about it? Why should we even write books about it? It's just going to happen in some mysterious way, the way God's ordained. None of us are going to get it right, right? So if we have that attitude, we're not going to be diligent to prepare. Let's say, there's a recurring nightmare I used to have, like 10 years after I graduated from Purdue University, and that was, I walked into class and it was a final exam, and I didn't study one lick.

Which is so funny that, like, you always have, 'cause I have the same dreams, like years, 10, well, yeah, that like back in high school, and then it takes me a second even when I wake up, I'm like, wait, I have a family, I work full-time, I'm out of school.

I hate that dream. I have dreams that like I'm going to preach at a church and there's like a couple thousand people there and I've not done a thing to prepare. I've had many dreams of walking into that final exam, not even knowing it's a final exam. And I missed all the days of the semester. I mean, and then all of a sudden I walk in and it's final exam. I didn't even know it was final exam. So I don't wanna be like that on the second coming. I don't think you do. I don't think anybody who's listening to us does.

Do you think there would be a third group of like, frustration or frustrated? And just throwing this out there, because I think obviously correlating it back to school terms is I think there was a lot of people who were like, well, we studied really hard, but then everything we studied for wasn't actually on the test. And do you feel like there's a third group in there where it's like, well, I really dove deep into some of this and it wasn't actually what I was studying, or maybe I was studying a lot of third-party things or other people's ideas on it.

I have not thought about this, and this is brilliant. I mean, this would be to me the people that are like studying all the facts and figures about a second coming as far as dates, as far as signs, but they're taking the security that I prayed a sinner's prayer, and they're not paying attention to 1 Peter chapter 1, which talks about pursuing godly character, right? He who pursues these things will have a grand, glorious entrance into the kingdom. And they've been easily swept away by the false prophets who are saying, don't worry about sin, you're just flesh and blood, God knows that, the grace of God covers you, and they actually use the grace of God to actually not, to encourage people to walk in sexual immorality, as Jude chapter 4, or verse 4 says, and as 2 Peter. So now all of a sudden, you know about that second coming, "but you've taken almost, you've studied all the wrong things. You've taken all, you've put your confidence in the wrong things." I didn't even think about that. That's group 3. So group 1 are the people who are actually like, "Uh, whenever he comes, he'll come. Oh, where's the promise of his coming? Ever since the fathers fell asleep, everything remains the same." That's what Peter said. "Most importantly, know this, that scoffers," and scoffers means people who mock, all right? They will be good at mocking. "Where's the promise of his coming? Come on, people have been talking about this for centuries, right?" And you've got the people, interesting, who do know it's the time of the second coming, but yet they're taking confidence in a false grace, and they're living very worldly.

False teaching.

Because this is not what we're taught by Jesus, by Peter, by Paul, to prepare for a second coming. So they prepared in a wrong way. Wow, okay. Hey everybody, we'll get back to the episode in just a moment. But first, I wanna thank the patrons who make this podcast possible. Your support behind the scenes is critical to sharing these messages. So thank you. To become a patron, just click the link in the show description or go to johnbevere.com/patron. Now, let's get back to the show. My eyes have been opened. I've been taught something. I am so excited. I'm actually writing on this right now. So this is opening up a whole new can of worms for me, Arden.

That's great, I love that.

Okay, Lord, thank you.

And then there's the third, 'cause we highlighted the first two.

Yeah.

And then the third.

Are those who are prepared?

Yeah.

And so that's what we wanna focus on. All right, so now, this is the way I see it. If we look back at his first coming and we see the people that were prepared, could we learn something from their example? Because I look at the Pharisees, the Sadducees, I look at the scribes, the teachers of the law. Do you know in their training, they had to memorize the first 5 books of the Bible? They had to memorize Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. I mean, that's like somebody memorizing the 4 Gospels and the book of Acts. That's crazy amazing. But yet Jesus is this God manifested in the flesh, casting out demons, raising the dead, healing the sick, and they don't know who he is. Okay? But now there were people that knew about his coming. They knew the whereabouts. Like, let's think about this. The Magi, right? They come.

They knew that.

And they knew. Now, there are some that say, and I hope I'm not giving false information, the Magi were from like the Persian area.

That's what I've, yeah.

So isn't it interesting Daniel got that vision of the Messiah coming, and it's the Magi that come, but then when they come, they go to Jesus, God warns them in a dream to go back another way because Herod's seeking to take Jesus' life. So Herod goes to the scribes, He goes to the guys that really understand scripture and says, "Where is this king supposed to be born?" And they were able to tell him, Micah 5:2. Bethlehem, right? Now, I don't think these scribes were probably like the scribes that resisted Jesus 30 years later. These are probably godly scribes, because you got the Essenes. And we've talked a lot about the Essenes, but we really haven't talked about them. They're the ones that were really right on with God. They were the ones that were, very pure-hearted. A lot of people think possibly they were in the desert. John came out of the Essene group. They're the ones that protected the ancient Jewish calendar. They're the ones that hid the scrolls in the caves of Qumran when Rome came and destroyed, right, the temple in 70 AD in Jerusalem, and they built a second temple, the Essenes, in the area of Qumran.

[Speaker] Yeah, where the Dead Sea is.

[Speaker] And that's when Titus destroyed that temple in 73 AD, but they had already hidden The scrolls. There were people who recognized his first coming. You were gonna say something.

No, I was gonna say, I remember learning about them too, a little bit in school, and I connected the dots recently of like, even their reverence for the word of God, and how they would write out the word of God, and wash themselves. And I was watching a video, and it was talking about the area of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and they found a building that they had largely excavated, where they believe a lot of the Dead Sea Scrolls were written in back then. And it showed even a tunnel way where a servant would pour water into it. And I remember learning in school how they would write just even one word or one letter of Yahweh's name, and they would just take it and write one letter, and then they would wash themselves clean because they were just continuing to purify themselves, understanding what they were actually writing on that paper, what it would actually be, the holiness of God, and making sure that his name was glorified in that, and that they were not in any way, any way corrupting their writing or what they were doing, which I love that. And I just love that their dedication to scripture, because I think it's beautiful to have that reverence for God. I think a lot of times we don't have that. I've even been challenged of like looking at my Bible and I'm like, wow, I've marked this all up. And I have areas where I'm like, I spilled coffee on this on accident, where my son has drawn in.

When he takes my highlighter, you're reading the word of God.

Like, wow, there's things that we can look at.

But it was a heart posture. You said they reverence the word of God. Now what's amazing is you're leading us right into the guy I want to talk about. I want to talk about this guy named Simeon. Now I personally believe, and I have no proof of this, and please understand everybody, I'm not saying this is true, but I have absolutely no proof. I believe Simeon was in the scene. I really do. Because we read in Luke chapter 2, and this is very interesting. At that time there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon.. He was righteous and devout and was eagerly waiting for the Messiah to come and rescue Israel. The Holy Spirit was upon him and had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen the Lord's Messiah. That day the Spirit led him into the temple. So when Mary and Joseph came and presented the baby, the baby Jesus, to the Lord as the law required, Simeon was there. He took the child in his arms and praised God. Now I want to stop right there because this needs a proper setup.

Yeah.

All right. Here is a young couple that comes to the temple area. Now, the temple area wasn't like a cathedral in Chicago today. No. Very quiet cathedral. You walk into the cathedral, you're like the only person in there during a weekday, right? The temple had buildings around it, all right? It had been greatly, greatly built up. The temple area was teeming with people. It was active. There were sacrifices going on. There were people, you know, bringing their animals. There was multitudes of people there. Here comes this young, unknown couple. Nobody knows this young couple. Now, are they out of— and they got a 33-day-old baby in their arms.

Oh, wait, so this you're saying, okay, wait. This is Mary and Joseph. I'm thinking wrong.

Okay, this is Mary and Joseph. They come into this temple area with a 33-day-old baby.

33-day-old baby. Yeah, which did they go and present him in the area where King Herod was?

They went into the temple area. Okay. They came to the temple.

Which would have been in the city. Would that be the city where King Herod is? Yes. Because I've heard it saying is like they came to the city and that actually alerted the Magi and them coming, they thought, well, or no, well, the angel alerts the Magi they go to where they think he's gonna be, which would be the temple, because he thought that they would be dedicated there. And that's why they have the interaction with King Herod. And then they go and find Jesus, which is kind of further down that route. Yeah, but he was a little older at that point, right?

Yes, he was a child. A lot of people think that the Magi came when he was born. No, that's not true. The shepherds came, right?

The reason Herod killed everybody 2 years old and under, 'Cause there was a time period that had gone.

Yes.

And he didn't know for sure how long that time period. Yes.

Yeah, okay. All right, so here's this couple, they're unknown, they're coming in doing that something that is relatively common, a young couple bringing their 33-year-old-day boy or their 14-day-old girl to present to the Lord. Yeah. And all of a sudden, out of all these people, here comes this man, up to this couple that he doesn't even know. He lifts up the baby, the 33-year-old baby, and goes, "The Messiah." Yeah. I mean, that's crazy. So here's the Pharisees 30 years later, Jesus, God manifest in the flesh, raising the dead, opening up blind eyes, and they don't recognize him.

They can't recognize him.

Here's a guy who recognizes the Messiah when he's 33 days old. So what does that tell us? What about this guy gave him the ability to recognize the Messiah in his first coming when it was unobvious to most people? Well, here's our keys. "At that time there was a man in Jerusalem, Simeon. He was righteous." There's 3 keys given: righteous, devout, and eagerly waiting. So let's talk about each. The word righteous, it's translated just in the New King James Version. It is the Greek word that means this: righteous not only in affiliation, but you live godly out of that righteous character. So in other words, let's put it in terms that way all of us can understand. He was a man that pursued holy living. He was a godly man who pursued holy living, all right? Now, the word devout is amazing. The word devout here literally means someone and this is exactly what you were just saying, who has high regard for the Word of God. In other words, they treat the Word of God as it means what it says and it says what it means. They have respect for the Word of God. And that word devout, the Greek word, carries with it the meaning of the fear of the Lord. Now, I wanna make this clear. I wrote a book called "The Awe of God," And in this book, I mean, look how thick this book is. I mean, all right, so that's gonna be tough trying to cover the fear of God in just here a couple seconds, but it's not about being scared of God. How can we have intimacy with somebody we're afraid of? And God's number one desire for all of us is to be intimate with us. The fear of the Lord is really more about being terrified of being away from God. The fear of the Lord is called God's treasure. It is Jesus's delight. Okay, if we look at the fear of the Lord, Paul said that we work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We don't work out our salvation with loving kindness. We work it out with fear and trembling. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of understanding. It's the beginning of wisdom. This is found in Proverbs and Psalms. It's the beginning of insight. So here's a man who fears God, who has great respect for the word of God. He loves the word of God. The word of God is primo, right? But he's also a man who's sensitive to the spirit. Because he was led by the Spirit into the temple. So here's the key. You know, Paul said, "I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up." And then Jude says, "Beloved, praying in the Spirit, building up yourselves." It always takes the word of God and the Spirit of God, right? And we have the Spirit of God in a way Simeon didn't even have it. The Spirit of God was upon him. So here he is, he's a man who fears God, he's pursuing holiness, right? Has a great respect for the Word of God. What does this produce in him? Number 3, he was eagerly waiting. So he's not the guy that's going, well, when the Messiah comes, he'll just come when he comes, the way he'll come, it's no use in talking about this, it's fruitless, it just creates a lot of arguments. No, he's eagerly looking for the Messiah. Why? 'Cause he knows it's the time of his coming. Why? Because he's probably a guy who's read Daniel's prophecy. So he's a guy who puts a high premium on the word of God, high premium on living holy. He has a tremendous fear of God, and that creates in him an eagerly waiting. This is why I'm so grieved that for so many years I avoided this subject. I stayed away from this subject because I saw the, I saw how people that twisted it back in the '80s, I saw how their lives became so fruitless. They became so out of sync with God. And I realized I was judging something that is the second most talked about doctrine in the New Testament. It is actually called our foundational or elementary teaching of Christ. The resurrection of the dead is actually a fundamental foundational teaching, it's an elementary teaching. I avoided it because I saw bad fruit. And I, even my, your mom, my wife, said to me, "Are you sure you wanna talk about this?" I said, "Yes, I'm sure," because she saw it too. She saw the terrible fruit it produced. But what I'm seeing now is God talks about it so much because he wants us to be living godly. He wants us to be walking in the fear of the Lord. He wants us to be pursuing holiness. He wants us to be eagerly waiting for the coming of Jesus.

Yeah, I think even what you're framing out there is it needs to be the whole thing. Like, I think when you focus in on just the second coming of Jesus Christ, I think then you're going to come— even what we've talked about is you're going to come into it and you'll probably take it and you'll twist it and you'll say, you know, the turn and burn. You could do the different things and there's not good fruit that is being produced out of it. But what you're looking at with Simeon is you're saying, look, here's a man who's understanding the time, feared God. He had a reverence for God's name, reverence for God's word. And he understood the time. Like even what you just said about him seeing a baby, he sees a 33-year-old day, or day, day-old baby. He's able to recognize it.

The Messiah.

Yet there's people who see the Messiah 30 years plus, doing all of these miracles, all these things, and still are yet to recognize it. Why? It's because they're not living in some of those things. The fear of the Lord, these things that you're talking about. And I think it's important that you do say that if it's not just one thing, it's not just that you're focusing in on the fear of the end times. I think it's actually really important and like, honestly, why God had you write The Awe of God. Leading up to now potentially your next books being around these topics is because you needed to lay this as a foundation for people. It's them understanding, like, don't just use the second coming in the wrong way. Don't become flippant with it. I think if you have a fear of God, you're not going to say, well, Jesus is coming back in a year. So why is there any reason why I do anything? Like, he'll come back and that's great. Like, it's just, I don't, I don't need to have kids. I don't need to do this. No. You still fear God, which means you continue to keep understanding what the word, what his plan is for your life. And you continue to keep actively going towards that. And you understand that the time is coming, but you need to continue to keep pursuing him and chasing after the things that God has.

And the wedding example, back to the wedding example, know that it's going to be held at this location. It's going to be on this day. And the day before is this day. And, you know, it's gonna be at this time, but we're not doing the preparations. We're not getting the dress, we're not getting the tux, we're not getting the flowers, we're not getting the minister.

Let's say you treat it as like the person you're about to marry is you're like, well, I kinda like 'em. I don't really know, I'm gonna undecided. If you had 2 days before your marriage, you probably actually wouldn't be living with that ex or would be working with that expectation or working with that diligence or the speed that you need to, because you're kinda, Ah, like I'm back and forth. But when you're like, no, I love this person. I love everything about them. I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with them. You are doing everything in your power in that 2 days to make sure that wedding is going to be made possible. So I think it's even looking at it, that mindset of being passionately in love with God, fearing him, embodying all these things that we're talking about, and that gives you that healthy outlook of being able to look at the second coming and saying, okay, I'm going to do everything I can. I don't care if he's coming back 50 years from now, 100 years from now, 200 years from now, I'm doing everything I can.

I'm preparing. Yeah. And so I look at this and he is eagerly waiting. Now this is interesting. He picks up the baby and he says, Sovereign Lord, let your servant die in peace as you have promised. I've seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all peoples. He is a light to reveal God to the nations, and he is the glory of your people Israel. This is what I love. Jesus' parents were amazed at what was being said about this 33-year-old baby. I mean, that's verse 33.

33 days old.

33 days. 33 years old. Thanks for correcting me. No, you're good. 33-day-old baby. Now, why so amazed? Because Mary pondered these things in her heart. She didn't talk about them. She wasn't around saying, "Hey, I'm the mother of the Messiah." She kept it quiet and pondered in her heart. So now she's like, "Oh my gosh." Here's a guy, I don't even know who this guy is, and he just came and grabbed my baby and said, 'The Messiah.' And this is what's interesting. It's not the only event that happened that day, because there's this lady named Anna, and she was a widow. She was only married for 7 years, and she was like 88, I think. So she had been in the temple all these years praying and seeking God, preparing for the Lord's coming. She came along just as Simeon was talking with Mary and Joseph. This is verse 38. And she began praising God. She talked about the child to everyone who had been, listen, waiting expectantly for God to rescue Jerusalem. Okay, wait a minute. Simeon's waiting expectantly, all the people. She didn't talk to everybody in the temple area. She talked to only the people that were waiting expectantly. So we can see there is something to having an attitude of he's coming, he's coming, he's coming, but it's gotta be accompanied with the right preparation, and the right preparation is pursuing holiness, living a godly life. This is 1 Peter chapter 1. Okay, living a godly life, walking in the fear of the Lord, that creates an eager expectation. Now, Revelation 19:6, you ready for this? This is amazing. Then I heard what seemed to be a voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty pearls of thunder, crying out, Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns! Let us rejoice and exalt and give him glory. Now listen to this. For the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, bride is us. We're the bride of Christ. Remember that he might present her to himself, a glorious bride without having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, right?

Yeah.

"The bride made herself ready." It doesn't say God made her ready. Didn't say the sinner's prayer made her ready. The bride made herself ready. How did she make herself ready? "It was granted to her to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure." Now listen to verse 8, "For the fine linen is the righteous deeds or acts of the saints." So in other words, what creates in us an urgency to be about our Father's business, to be bringing in the harvest, to be living godly and holy is our righteous behavior. That is actually making our wedding dress. And I would say right now, the church in America on a whole, on average, the way people are, I prayed a sinner's prayer, I go to church an hour a week, but the rest of the week live for the world. I don't think they got a bikini yet. If the wedding dress is made out of the righteous acts of the saints, I don't think they even got a bikini. So that tells me we have to do something to prepare. I mean, isn't it interesting that Isaiah says that the great and dreadful day of the Lord is coming, make ready a people prepared for the Lord. There's a preparing. And this is the thing that I don't feel is emphasized. I feel like we emphasize when the test is gonna be, when the wedding's gonna be, we emphasize the facts. But what are we doing about the preparation? Because the bride has made herself ready. So could this be why Peter talks about living pure and godly and holy, adding to our faith virtue, godliness, Adding to that knowledge, adding to that self-control, adding to that patient endurance.

Why?

If you don't have self-control and patient endurance, when somebody mistreats you, you're gonna act like the world. You're gonna get mad, angry, I'm gonna sue you, I'm gonna get back at you, I can't stand you. You know, I got this wall up now, I'm offended with you. You're acting no different than the world. But when you are somebody who's pursuing godly living and somebody mistreats you, what do you do? You bless those that curse you. You do good to those, right, that have abused you. You love your enemies. And so now you are pursuing godly character. And Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, "So you shall become mature sons of your Father." So the bride making herself ready, we're not talking about salvation, so to speak. Our salvation is a free gift. But we have to prepare ourself for the wedding. And how we spend eternity, according to Peter, that grand and glorious entrance will be given us into the eternal by those who pursue these very godly things. What we are doing right now is actually preparing our garments for eternity, and our garments are so important. I mean, are you gonna be highly decorated? Are you gonna be somebody that just gets in barely escaping through fire? Yeah. Are you gonna recognize his coming like Simeon? Are you gonna end up being that servant that says, "My Lord delays his coming," and be like the Pharisees who actually know all the words of the Bible, but they're not pursuing godliness and holiness? They are not walking in the holy fear of God, and now they're fighting against what God's doing.

Yeah.

And I think that's what we're seeing right now.

Mm-hmm.

We're seeing a group of people that are so eagerly waiting for the coming of the Lord, and therefore they are working with great diligence in building his kingdom. They're pursuing holiness. They're the ones that are wise. Yeah. Ooh, we're getting into the wise virgins. The wise. What's the beginning of wisdom? The fear of the Lord. And then you have the foolish virgins. They're the ones who know what the Word of God says, but they don't have the holy fear to obey what the Word of God says. Intimately. They want to find freedom, discover their calling, and improve their relationships. But spiritual growth rarely happens by accident. You need to be intentional to equip yourself with the right tools to help you in your journey. So if you haven't done it already, download our free MessengerX app where you'll get great access to an entire library of courses, audiobooks, sermons, and short daily videos designed designed specifically to encourage you in your faith and help you mature as a believer. Download the free MessengerX app today and take your next step in your spiritual journey. They both have lights. Yeah, they've both prayed the sinner's prayer. We got 10 girls that have prayed sinner's prayer. If 5 are ready, yeah, and 5 aren't, and this is why— where the passion, I believe, of God comes in is he wants his people ready.

Interesting. Do you feel like, like, what would you say to a lot of people that would look at that and say, well, I feel like that's putting bondage on me because I feel like there's some people that look at and hear you say these things and their kickback is, well, I feel like it's never enough. I feel like it's just putting more bondage onto me. Yes, salvation is a free gift. But then you're saying I got to I gotta keep doing more. How would you kind of frame that out? Because I've always heard that rebuttal from people.

So salvation, let's keep it here. Our works and how we spend eternity, let's keep it here. All right, so salvation's an absolute free gift. My works don't earn my salvation.

No, and I understand.

But the evidence that I've truly been saved is I'm gonna have works. James said, show me your faith without your works, I'll show you my faith by my works. Now Jesus makes a statement. He said, when the Son of Man returns, will I find faith on the earth? In other words, am I gonna find people that really believe? What is he saying? Am I gonna find people that really have corresponding actions to what they believe? Or are they gonna be the people that are in bed with the world? Oh, I prayed the sinner's prayer, I'm fine. Or are they gonna be the people that go, I am set apart, I'm not of this world, I'm a pilgrim passing through, my Lord could come any day, I'm gonna live today like today's the last day to glorify him.

To prepare for him.

I'm prepared. I'm prepared for his coming.

I think that's actually a really great way of even looking at it, 'cause what I do, I do think, you know, I see these comments where people saying, well, I just feel like it's never enough, or there's bondage that's all put onto it. But I think what you're even saying is I live prepared. It's not so much that it's bondage, and it's not, it's not. And I'm, even when I'm hearing you saying it's not bondage, like you got to understand, it's, it's evidence. It's, I love how you've always said that it's evidence. It's what you're wanting to see. But I think it's actually even deeper of saying that it's the preparedness for the second coming. And that's not just those who are just sitting by flippantly, as we talked about in in the beginning, which I even said, I largely have been in that boat where I've thought the second coming, it's going to happen when it happens. I don't understand a lot of it, but, you know, I'm excited for it, but we'll see what happens. But that's not living a prepared life. That is very much a passive life. And I don't think God has called us to live a passive life of just continuing to keep going through it. And I think even the tendency of this generation at times can be that was like, well, you've gotta make it make sense to me. Like, let me know why I gotta do this. Make it look like that rather than understanding Jesus is coming back and you have to be prepared.

And it's not that you have to, it's you get to.

You get to.

I mean, Arden, did you feel like you had to prepare for your wedding or were you anxious? Were you eagerly waiting for that day? Yeah, anxious. Okay, so whoever has this hope in him, the Bible says, what's hope? An eager expectation. Whoever has this hope in him, John says, do you remember that? That scripture where he said about having the hope of his coming? Let's read the whole thing again. And now, little children, abide in him. So abide means I continually live in him. I don't visit him once every Sunday. I don't visit him just when I'm listening to a podcast. Yeah. And now, little children, abide in him so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming. He's talking to Christians. Little children. He's talking to believers. Okay, so there's, there's going to be Christians are ashamed. Just like a person who didn't prepare for the wedding day, didn't prepare for the final, didn't prepare for the vacation, all right? Now, if you know that he's righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him. So there's your evidence. Will the Son of Man find faith on the earth? See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God, and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, because we will see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself even as he is pure. So that hope, that eager expectation that Simeon had, that those, that Anna talked to, those who were eagerly waiting. That hope, hope is an eager, confident expectation. It's not a maybe-so word. We dumb down hope in our English language. Hope means a confident expectation. Everyone who has this confident expectation of his return purifies himself even as he's pure. Why? It keeps us energized. It keeps me urgent. I'm 65 years old, Art, and I've written 25 books. 4 or 5 books now. The books are in the tens of millions. I could go, "You know what? Ah, everything's cool." Yeah. Right? But why do I have this kind of energy? Why do I have more energy now than I did 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago? It's because of that eager expectation. Uh-huh. Yeah. And it's got a purifying effect.

No, and I think that's really important if that energizes you. I think you see a lot of Christians that are like, "Man, I just want, I want Jesus to come back. I'm tired." I'm not happy. And he even talks about, what is it? Daniel talks about like, if you can't— or is it Daniel or is it— it talks about it in Jeremiah. Jeremiah talks about it. He says, if you have run with footmen and they have tired you out, then how can you compete with horses? And he's talking about end times, talking about even the comings of the— what Revelation talks about, the white horse, the pale horse. So he's saying, okay, so in this time period of calm, you're already tired out, how do you think you're going to compete when the end times comes? And I think that's really important of it energizes you. You see people, Christians have just feeling like, well, I prayed the prayer, I'm good. Like, that's awesome. That is 100% true. You prayed the prayer, you are entered into the kingdom of heaven. But now you just entered into mission. You entered into something greater.

The devil said, I'm going to kill Christians. I'm going to persecute them. I'm going to have them thrown in jail. Thrown into the beasts and the lions, and the church grew like crazy. And the enemy said, the greatest weapon I have against the church is get 'em to fall asleep, get 'em to not expect, eagerly wait for the coming of the Lord, get 'em to get in bed with the world, get 'em to commit adultery with the world. If I can get that, then that lukewarmness, which by the way, that's the final church Jesus talks about, you are lukewarm, that lukewarmness is contagious and it will affect other people. You see, one of the most contagious diseases on planet Earth is not COVID-19. The most contagious disease on planet Earth is lukewarmness.

Yeah, which I think that answers a lot of people's questions of their purpose, 'cause I think you have a lot of Christians that are trying to figure out, well, what's my purpose, all this stuff. It is understanding that they sometimes maybe boil it down to, oh, I got saved, so I just gotta go to church every week, and that's me doing my responsibility as a Christian. But it's no, when you have this eager expectation, it energizes you. Every single situation, whether you're in your workplace, at your family, whether you're around your friends, you're like, I want to talk about these things. I want to, I want to figure out how can we all grow? How can me and you, we sit down with coffee and we, we talk about these things. How can we grow each other? How can I better interact this out with my family? How can I be a better father because of it? How can I be a better coworker? How can I diligently serve the people that God has entrusted me to? How can I diligently serve the people God has entrusted them to me? Like, Just, you're looking at all these things and it infuses your whole life with purpose.

Okay, hope deferred makes the heart sick. Yeah. Okay, he is called, the second coming is called the blessed hope, Titus chapter 2. The blessed hope, right? Yeah. Okay, so hope deferred, if you put that off, oh, he's gonna come when he comes, ah, yeah, they've been saying it for years, makes your heart sick. Which if your heart is sick, you don't have passion, you don't have enthusiasm, and Theo, God within. So you don't live with purpose, like you just said. So that's why we talk about the coming of the Lord. That's why they talked about the coming of the Lord in the first 3 centuries of the church more than anything other than the doctrine of salvation, to keep the church energized when they're being thrown into the arena with the animals, they're being burned on stakes and burned, they are being crucified. They said, hey, we are eagerly looking forward to his return. And that eagerness, keeps us what? Healthy. It keeps us energized. It keeps us laboring correctly.

Yeah, it gives you purpose. I mean, that's one of the biggest things. I was reading a deep dive into depression, and I honestly think that's maybe even a correlation with this generation, is I think you see a lot more people that are navigating depression, anxiety.

Their hearts are sick.

Yeah, and I think it's because we live in such a comparison generation. But you forget your purpose. And it's like the number one thing to get people out of depression is to get them to discover their purpose. That is the number one way to be able to do it.

I did not know that study existed.

It's the number one thing, is they have to have a purpose for what they're doing. So if you're ever navigating that, you have to point them to what is your purpose. And yet here we are, Understanding the second coming of Jesus, the purpose that we have, the energizing that it gives us, and what we get to work towards, what we get to fight towards, what we get to preach towards, like all these things. That's what instills this generation with purpose. That's what you're going to see set people free. That's what you're going to see set people in this state of mind where they're not feeling like, whoa, it was me and I'm just continuing to live in this life where I'm not creating purpose because I don't have a following or I don't have— I'm not doing great things every single day. No, there's so much purpose in your life, which is why preachers, pastors, teachers have to keep talking about this. You gotta talk about the second coming 'cause that is purpose right there.

You know, I think we've given our friends a lot to think about with this one podcast, and I think that's a really good place to stop it. We're gonna pick this up next podcast. We're gonna take it from a different angle, and I think we're gonna continue to strengthen people so that they can have a lot of energy when a lot of other people are coming lethargic. When a lot of other people have become lazy. Laziness is evidenced not by how active we are in life, it's evidenced by how worldly we become. The slothful servant says, my master delays his coming, and begins to live more excessively worldly— parties, takes advantage of other people— because why? He's lost his confident expectation, the blessed hope of the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. I hope you guys have gleaned a lot from this. I hope that you will live like he is coming today and plan like he's not coming for 200 years, because Jesus said, occupy until I come, which means we gotta do business, kingdom business, because he is coming and there are so many people to reach, there are so many people to disciple. Until that happens, let's go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. And your world might be where you're working, it might be where you're at school, it might be your neighborhood, it might be the moms you meet with every week, make disciples. Don't just make converts, make disciples. And a disciple is one who carefully, fully obeys the teaching of his master and follows his lifestyle. That is a true disciple of Jesus Christ. I hope you've been blessed and strengthened by the words of this podcast. We'll see you on the next one.