In the opening sentence of the Book of Revelation John states that in
it are related the things which must shortly come to pass. In that
sentence he indicates an attitude toward the events of life which it is
worth while for all to hold. He appreciates the fact that the future is
not remote. With at least some of its events we are face to face. From
none of them are we very far removed. Destiny is no far distant thing.
The processes that build it are continually going on.
The events of life are like the landmarks on a highway. Some of them
may look to be very far ahead, but they are approaching us very swiftly.
We travel the journey of life at great speed. The tomorrows are never long
in arriving. We may not know what the future has in store for us, but one
thing we do know. Whatever it has in store will not be long in arriving.
To the eyes of childhood the day of maturity seems very far away. To
the young the days drag slowly. The time of independence, maturity, and
responsibility seems to creep toward one at the pace of a snail.
One by one the days pass, and each seems to pass a little more swiftly
than the last. Maturity finally comes, and then it seems that the years
that brought it have been altogether too short. Our natures are so
constituted that the morning is always calling for the noon. Then the
noontime is always regretting that the morning has passed by.
Only to the idle and the aimless do the passing days seem long. To one
who possesses a commanding purpose in life they are very brief indeed.
There is never time enough to do a great life work. Few great servants of
their times pass out of this world feeling that they have completed their
task to their own satisfaction.
The worker who has a great deal of ground to cover before he ceases his
toiling often learns this fact to his regret. He is called to his task by
the sunrise, and he feels that the day is long. He goes about his work in
leisurely fashion, feeling that there is no occasion for haste. As the day
wears on he begins to measure his task by the vanishing hours. He begins
to hasten, but the sun declines in the West all too soon. As the shadows
lengthen he grows feverishly hurried, but it is generally too late. The
sun goes down upon an unfinished task. The only thing that would have
saved the day would have been an early morning sense of the swiftly
hurrying hours.
Some years ago a distinguished leader of thought in America remarked in
the last public address he made before he died that the longest time is
short when it is past. His words were true. The years always look long as
they lie ahead of us, but when they have passed we are always saying how
short a time it was.
It has been the human habit to think of the Kingdom of God as a distinct
thing. We have kept it far from us both in space and time. We have so
thought of it in spite of the fact that we were told by Him of Galilee
that the Kingdom is at hand. We have waited and waited for the Kingdom,
sometimes half doubting that it would ever come, and all the while it
was at our very finger-tips. We had only to lay hold upon it, feel it,
realize it, and live it, to make it ours.
We have assumed, too, that eternity lies somewhere in the uncertain
reaches of the infinitely distant future. In this also we have been
mistaken. Eternity has been going on all the while. We have simply taken
a little section of eternity and arbitrarily named it time. It is still
a part of eternity, just the same. Every day that goes by is just that
much of eternity. Therefore, everything that a day holds bears an eternal
significance. Its every event is built into the walls of destiny. All the
issues with which we ever have to do are eternal.
Such is the process of judgment. Another name for it is the law of cause
and effect. Causes and effects swiftly succeed each other in life. The
effect is as inevitable as the cause is definite. Moreover, it is not
long delayed.
I once knew a teacher who had inscribed in large letters over the door of
his classroom these words: “What you are to be you are now becoming.” He
understood this principle. The judgment is going on all the while. We can
never hope to be in the future anything else than what we are allowing
ourselves to become in the present.
The mills of God do not grind so slowly as one might think. From the
larger point of view it may be seen that they do some of their work with
surprising swiftness. We cannot afford to dream away our days in the ease
of thinking that life’s responsibilities and tests lie far in the future.
We are very apt to find ourselves mistaken. Often they lie just ahead.
The events of the life of Jesus came and went with a tragic and growing
swiftness. During the last few days of His life in Jerusalem they seemed
borne upon the current of a swiftly rushing stream. To Him things always
shortly came to pass. The Christ of revelation was the same who had walked
in Galilee. He had the same habits of thought.
This is the reason why He was able to crowd ages into years. Before He had
fairly passed the threshold of maturity, He had already succeeded in
living the biggest life of all the centuries. He simply understood the
nearness of destiny. He realized that time will not wait.
An old Hebrew prophet called upon men to prepare to meet God. We have
assumed that this meeting is to be at an indefinite future date, called
the Judgment Day. We greatly need to understand that our meeting with Him
is not only a future but also a present event. Each of us is repeatedly
face to face with God. All through the years we have been meeting Him
every day and hour. He is the Silent Partner in all our upward struggles.
He is the Inevitable Factor with which we must reckon in all our
considerations. He is the Absolute Quantity to which we must relate
ourselves, and to whose standards we must conform. These obligations do
not belong to some far future time. They belong to the present. We are
not dealing with a static order, but with a progressive one. We are the
children of One who takes into consideration but one tense.
His word is _NOW_.
We are not facing the future in blindness to these things. The curtain has
been drawn back from their real nature that we might behold it. We know
that the events of the future closely impend. The tomorrows are at our
finger-tips. No dam can hold back the stream of destiny. It hurries along
the years so rapidly that there is never too much time to prepare for the
coming of whatever its current may sweep to our feet.
The hand of prophecy never draws back the veil that we may look upon a
lie. The Almighty does not trifle with us. The revelation of the
Scriptures is of inevitable things. The events which they disclose are
more certain than the course of the stars and planets. The sun may falter
in its path, but the plans of God never do.
One of the most serious and significant things the Scriptures disclose is
the fact that the gates of the future are not far removed. They open
directly before us. Even now our hands are upon them. Our feet are upon
the threshold of the tomorrows.
Objectively, this earthly existence is merely a rapid succession of
events. The holidays to which we look forward with expectation, the
meetings for which we can hardly wait, the partings that give us pain,
the joys and the woes that make up life’s intermingling of sunshine and
shadow, the birthdays that register our years, love, toil, death—all are
things that “shortly come to pass.” The years hurry onward. Therefore,
whatever one would do he must do quickly.