Question
Do you think that the Lord will come for the Body of Christ seeing that God has not appointed us to wrath but to obtain salvation from it before the world is increasingly becoming more ungodly and violent as at the time when the earth was also corrupt before God and the world was filled with violence and as Paul mentioned as Perilous.
Response
It is my understanding that God has not given us any specific identifying factor by which we are able to determine either when He will conclude this present dispensation, or even determine an approximation of when He will conclude it. Instead what God has designed is that from the time that He completed the dispensing of this dispensation through Paul, saints from then on are expected to recognize that they are always living in “the last days” of this dispensation. For since there is no time-schedule for this dispensation, nor any other such time determining mechanism for it, “the last days” of this dispensation are always in existence since the potential exists for God to conclude the dispensation at any moment.
For this reason Paul spoke to Timothy in II Timothy 3 and 4 as one who would be living in “the last days,” because he indeed would be living in them as soon as the Lord completed His final work through Paul. Wherefore “the last days” of this dispensation have been in effect ever since, and will be in effect until God actually concludes it. This is the nature of this dispensation, and this is exactly how God designed that it should be.
In view of this, (and though it may sound peculiar to say it this way), I think that God will end this dispensation today, and I also think that He will end it tomorrow, and I also think that He will end it next week, and I also think that He will end it this summer, and I also think that He will end it in another 50 to 100 years, etc., etc. I think this because to me it is the only consistent thing for me to think in view of the nature of this dispensation.
The determining factor for the concluding of this present dispensation is not in anything that we can either see, or will experience. It is not in the condition of this world, or any other such thing. Instead it is in God Himself. It is in the issue of Him fully accomplishing everything that He has determined He needs to, and wants to, accomplish by means of this dispensation, whenever it may be that that may come to pass. It has not come to pass yet, but it may at any moment.
Keith Blades
Enjoy The Bible Ministries
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