Awake When He Comes

Perhaps the best test for watchfulness is for times when you could be wrong. We considered the possibility of the person holding on to the pretribulation rapture theology. He has a chart. He knows the order. He knows which stage he will not be here for. And it doesn't happen the way he knew it would...

Jesus told His disciples something else. He sealed the hour and He said so. And then He told them exactly what they would be here for: synagogues, magistrates, delivered up, afflicted, killed. In the same discourse as the door. Before the door.

This parable is not spoken to seekers. It is spoken to a flock He has just told not to fear. To disciples who confess Him before men and expect to pay for it. To Peter, who asked the question everyone wants answered — is this for us, or for all? — and got a steward set over a household instead. If you have charge over anyone, the answer was for you.

The command is not to guess. The command is to be found. Loins girded. Lights burning. Awake. The Greek is a state, not a motion. The same in the second watch as the third. The same whether He seems near or seems late. And when He knocks, the door opens at once — because the servant wanted this all night.

One servant fails, and he does not fail by sleeping. He fails by deciding. My lord delayeth his coming. And on the strength of a schedule he wrote himself, he starts eating the household’s food and beating the household’s people. Then: The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware.

Read that again if you own a chart.

Because the mirror image of that servant is the one who wrote a different schedule — not late, but soon, and before it costs anything. His lamp is lit. He thinks he is watching. But his watching has a clause the Master never wrote, and he has been trained for none of the stages Jesus said were coming, because he was told he would be gone. When the lawlessness arrives on Jesus’ timetable instead of his, that servant is unprepared by definition. Not because his lamp went out. Because it was lit for the wrong thing.

The thief comes only to the dark house. Ye, brethren, are not in darkness. Watch and be sober. The apostles named the cure with the one word the drunk steward lacked.

The stakes are simple. Not when. What He finds. A door that opens at once, or a house broken through. A household fed, or a household beaten. A servant found so — the same in every watch — or a servant caught at a table he decided was his. And for the one who was taught wrong and acted on it, the parable has a category: few stripes. Mercy, and stripes, together.

Do not take this episode’s word for it. Open Luke 12 and read the whole chapter before you read verse 35. Read Matthew 24:4–13 and ask who ye is. Read 1 Thessalonians 5 and Revelation 16:15 and ask where the thief-saying sits. The Bereans received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. Search.

Episode Link:

https://www.rabbitholesandmeditations.com/awake-when-he-comes/