The Hour, The Advent, The Need, The Call

What Did Jesus Do?
Jesus Testified.

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is
at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.
Mark 1.15

Most folks think Noah’s flood was about as cataclysmic a deluge as could ever be imagined. But destructive tides have risen and swept away countless millions of souls ever since the days of Noah. The danger of this flood may be greater now than at any other time in history. But I am not thinking of any deluge of water, but rather a rising sea of words in which all the world is awash.

Words are powerful. All too often the destructive and deadly power of words, especially words that are hateful and untrue, flow unchecked to sweep away livelihoods and lives, families and communities, nations and peoples. It should not be any wonder to us when we consider that from the very beginning Satan has employed the deadly power of lying words to ensnare and destroy man, and to assault and dishonor God.

When we think about the state of our so-called “Information Age” with its ever rising tide of cell phones, internet, 24/7 cable and satellite radio and television, it is enough for us to begin desperately searching for an ark to take shelter in. But the way to counteract the deadly threat of empty, lying, and destructive and deadly words is not silence. Rather it is the carefully chosen, divinely inspired, painstakingly preserved, and eternally gracious and true Word of God. Of all the many words we hear and read daily, the relatively few words contained in one book, the Bible, alone have the power to transform, to save, and to sustain.

In Jesus’ day the world was already quite full of deceitfully deadly words. Even those who had been given the Word of God had so mishandled it as to all but render it empty and powerless. But Jesus came into the world to testify. And testimony, if it is to be of any judicial value, requires words, words of truth. The thing that is so amazing, especially in our modern world that is all but submerged under seas of printed, broadcast, and cyber communications, is that so very few words of truth have all the power necessary to completely and radically restore all things.

Take the Gospel of Mark, and the first words the evangelist reported Jesus as saying when he began his public ministry. Fewer than twenty words provided all the testimony necessary to change lives, to change the world. All that was needed was that the words be heeded. The testimony of Jesus was sufficient then, and it is sufficient now, if we but receive it and respond to it.

In the eighteen words Jesus spoke in Mark 1.15 the Lord announced the Hour, proclaimed the Advent, declared the Need, and issued the Call. That’s quite a lot for so brief a statement, but it was and is all that is necessary.

The Hour

“The time is fulfilled…” Have you ever taken an exam and, before you had answered all the questions, heard those chilling words, “Time’s up! Put down your pencils”? I know I have experienced that sinking feeling that comes when you are convinced you have just been torpedoed by a test. When you are out of time there is no turning back the clock, “Pencils down!” time to meet your fate.

Fortunately for us all, the time that Jesus announced was the hour of deliverance, not destruction. At least it was the hour of deliverance for everyone who would be delivered. The world would have no more time to cast about for any other means of salvation, though it has tried. Decision time had come. The hour was arrived, the Savior had appeared. It was, as the saying goes, “Now or never.” Either people would receive Jesus in the hour of his revealing, or they would miss the boat, so to speak, and be swept away in the final cataclysm.

This is not to say that we are all two thousand years too late. Jesus’ hour is not over, there is time, though it slips away every second, to come to Christ. But anyone who thinks there is time to wait for someone or something other than Jesus that will be able to save them, has simply not heard what Jesus testified, “The time IS fulfilled.”

The Advent

“…the kingdom of God is at hand…” Advent means coming, arrival. Jesus testified that the kingdom of God had come; it had arrived in a manger in Bethlehem. And from that lodgment in Bethlehem the kingdom of God would expand its boundaries and grow to reach the ends of the earth and span all generations to the end of time.

Many other kingdoms have risen and fallen in the two millennia since the time of Christ. And many still would presume to challenge the reality and extant of the kingdom of God. But it remains that all other kingdoms are passing away, while the kingdom of God alone endures.

It is a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Jesus testified that it had come. The question implied, and we all must choose how we will respond to it, is, “Don’t you want to be a part of the kingdom?”

The Need

“repent…” Jesus announced the Hour and proclaimed the Advent, he also declared the Need of the world and everyone in it—the need to repent. Repentance is a much misunderstood word, probably because it so out of fashion and little used nowadays. In a post-modern world of relativity an uncompromising and exacting word like “repent” seemingly is out of place. But it was the very word that communicated what people needed to do in the time of Jesus, and, regardless of how much more sophisticated and smart we imagine ourselves to be than our ancestors, the one thing we need has not changed.

We need to be transformed. We need to do a one hundred eighty degree about face. Our minds need to be completely renewed. We have to experience nothing less remarkable than what occurs when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. Repentance is not mere apology or feeling sorry because we have been caught in the wrong. Repentance is the admission that, to borrow a term from Reformed-Calvinistic theology, we are totally depraved. There is no good thing in us. We need the Holy Spirit to come and fill us with the power of the living Christ. Nothing else will do, that is our need. No mere cosmetic surgery, but an extreme and complete makeover from the inside out. That is repentance.

The Call

“…believe in the gospel.” The Hour, the Advent, the Need. What else was necessary to make the testimony of Jesus complete? The Lord had to issue the Call. Hearing that the time had been fulfilled, that the righteous kingdom of God had come, and that absolute and total repentance was needed would have been chilling testimony for guilty sinners to hear. It would have been a pronouncement of doom. The natural, and in fact the recorded, response of many in the Gospels, was to throw up one’s hands in despair and desperately ask, “What can we do?” Fortunately, Jesus had the answer; he called everyone who heard his testimony to believe it.

Only by believing in the testimony of Christ can the words of doom to sinners become “good news” for those who would be saved. By believing the testimony of Jesus we are lifted out of the rising flood of deceiving and deadly words, and safely delivered to the Rock that will forever stand above the peril and destruction of the world.

Now, many witnessed the testimony of Jesus and believed him. Many more heard and saw, and did not believe, and turned away and rejected him. The many who believed were saved. The many more who did not believe were destroyed, and suffer still. The Call—“believe in the gospel,” the good news of Jesus Christ, and be saved.

Testifiers Wanted

Each and every generation since the time of Christ has needed testifiers, people who not only accept and receive the testimony of Jesus, but who will take it up and make it their testimony, regardless of the cost. None of us would be believers today if there had not been testifiers whose words of truth helped bring us into the kingdom of God. Each one of us who claims to be a disciple of Jesus has the choice each day to testify or not. Considering that the Hour has struck, the Advent of the kingdom of God has come, the Need is clear, and the Call has not changed, there is a great want of testifiers. Will you be one? Testifying. That’s what Jesus did.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4