Gazing into the crystal ball
Acts 1:6-8 - Then they gathered around him and
asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to
Israel?” He said to them: “It is not
for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and
you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and
to the ends of the earth.”
There's always a lurking inquisitive in the human mind to know the
future. And its a reasonable inquisition. If only we knew the imminent, we would have been prepared and taken the
necessary avoiding actions. To the ill-informed, this anxiety drives
to them seek counsel from the sooth sayers
and the astrologers, a misdemeanor punishable by death in the Old Testament. In the modern informed age, we still
see dignified men, kneeling before birds and the like, in the hope that the pea
brain of the parrot will prognosticate of what is to come. We laugh at
such degeneration. But sadly the same phenomena have permeated in
the church of God today, only in a spiritual disguise. In the attempt to know the mind
of Christ, contemporary Christian circles often abuse the
ministry of prophecy and degrade it to one of predictive rather
than prescriptive admonition. This is by no means is an attempt to put God in
box. God is sovereign and He still does use His servants to warn/alert of the
dangers to come. I believe this to be true. But if that becomes the primary in the life of a believer,
then there seems to be no distinction between the prophet and the sooth
sayer. In many parts of the world this has become a good money making business.
John Maxwell says that 95% of what we need to know is already revealed in the Bible. But we are more interested in knowing the 5% than doing the revealed 95%.
But strangely this
quest to know the future existed even in the times of Jesus. In the passage
above, Jesus was about to be taken up. The disciples were probably at the
height of their frenzy, being now in the presence resurrected Christ. What else can they ask for? The most unbelievable
miracle stands right before their eyes and He is about to be taken up In my
mind, the most telling question that one would and should have asked the Lord
is, "What do you want us to do after you are gone". But no, they
asked Jesus what will happen in the future. Strange irony but true.
The Lord had a
rebuking answer, which I had missed in the reading for a long time. If I could
paraphrase it, Jesus plainly was saying, "THAT'S NONE OF YOUR
BUSINESS". “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father
has set by his own authority."
But note what
Jesus wanted His disciples to be concerned with. "But you will receive
power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in
Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Instead of wasting precious times in looking into the future, which by the way,
much has already been said in the Holy Scriptures, Jesus wanted His disciples
to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to be His witness of the resurrected
life. Now this is mind blowing. Live in the demonstration of
the power of the Holy Spirit, bearing the
fruit and the gifts of the Spirit and be a
testimony of His resurrection power to the world. This is what the Lord wanted the disciples to do. Sadly thats what is so much lacking in our churches today. Where is the power that propelled sinners to repentance. When was the last time we heard of, "
Why then
gaze wrongly at the crystal ball? Shouldn't we gaze more on Him and His Word from
where all revelations come and do what He has already told us to do.
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