Night is Coming

More and more these days I am being reminded of John 9:4 --- 'We must work the works of Him who sent Me, as long as it is day, night is coming, when no man can work. Constantly I get emails about revival and people talk about revival at meetings and on a one-to-one basis, so that it seems that there is definitely something in the air, so to speak.

When I was away at the CBC Awards Conference last week, a lady was chatting to me about REVIVAL, pointing out that one of the things that has often signalled Revival in the past has been a surge of hymn-writing, bringing new hymns into existence for people to sing in praise of Almighty God. She wondered whether the tremendous amount of new hymns that have poured from my pen over the last two years, (well, from my PC, actually), may be part of this phenomenon. I don't know, and certainly could not claim such a thing myself, but it is interesting that I have written something like 250 hymns in the last eighteen months. Of course I cannot truthfully claim that they are really mine, for they are the work of the Holy Spirit. All I do is to write them down and deliver them. I very often describe my part in all of this as being just the postman.

It would be very easy to look around at the world today and link it to the words of our Lord, reported in Mmatthew 24. Certainly we have wars and rumours of wars, in addition to which we have famine, pestilence, and natural disasters. We have a huge increase in lawlessness, especially here in the UK. But is this the end that is forecast. Jesus said that many false prophets would come and mislead many people, so perhaps those who forecast that the various things that are happening in the world today are definitely a sign that the world is about to end belong to that camp.

What we do know for certain is that Jesus also said that these things are merely the beginning of birth pains. He was careful to warn that we should be careful to see that we let no-one mislead us. He emphasised that nobody knows when the end will be: But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone (24.36). As Christians we are all tasked with spreading the gospel of the kingdom until the whole world has had the message delivered. That's the work that we have to do, unceasingly, using every means at our disposal. Certainly we all need to be revived in this work, and when it is finally completed then we shall see our Lord returning on clouds of glory.

How easy it is to understand in the light of this the words of John 9.4, for I do believe that the day gets ever shorter, and that the night is coming when we shall mno longer be able to work.