It used to bother me that I didn’t have a better awareness of prophecies about the future. I just never could get the time frames down and the flow charts together or an exact understanding of what all those weird looking creatures in Biblical visions and dreams were all about. I felt like a failure that I couldn’t, with a sense of confident assurance, tell people exactly and precisely what was barreling down the pike toward them. Then one day I started reading the Bible a bit more closely.

Did you know Jesus Himself didn’t even know when He was coming back for His Church? In Mark 13:32 He said, “Of that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” As if that isn’t enough, just prior to His giving the gift of the Holy Spirit to His Church He said, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority” (Acts. 1:7). Sounds like dates and timetables and charts weren’t on His agenda.

What was on Jesus’ agenda was the fact that He was coming back, that the world was moving toward a day of judgment, and that as those days approached His people were to know that those days would “lead to an opportunity for your testimony” (Luke 21:13). In that light Jesus said two important things: (1) “See to it that you are not misled” (Luke 21:8), and (2) “By your endurance you will gain your lives” (Luke 21:19).

Instead of His people being preoccupied with “times and epochs” Jesus called them to know that they would “receive power when the Holy Spirit” had come upon them, and that in that remarkable power they would be His witnesses ”to the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:7-8).

Spirit-filled power. Now that’s something worth sinking your teeth into.