May we look to God a moment.
We thank thee Lord for that word and
for that comfort that comes to our hearts
and for that assurance that thou dost give
to us.
Now speak Lord for thy servant heareth.
Speak just now some message to meet my
need which thou only dost know.
Speak now through thy holy word and make
me see some wonderful truth thou hast to
show to me for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
Would you please open your New Testament at
the gospel according to Mark and the 13th
chapter and you will need your Bible to
follow this morning.
I hope you have it with you or
you can have access to one as you
listen by radio.
The 13th chapter of the gospel of Mark
and I've taken for a text from which
to commence our message the last verse of
this chapter.
What I say unto you I say unto
all.
Watch.
The words of this text are the climax
of our Lord's message to his disciples given
under the very shadow of the cross on
the slopes of Mount Olivet looking over the
city of Jerusalem.
Whole volumes have been written upon this portion
of scripture which is known of course as
Christ's Olivet discourse.
Many interpretations have been offered and many expositions
written about it.
I have but 30 minutes and my main
concern in bringing this message is to relate
what the Lord Jesus said to current events.
But to do this with any degree of
authority we must consider our Lord's message as
a whole in its setting and you will
remember that it is recorded in all three
of the synoptic gospels in Matthew and Mark
and in Luke.
And it is recorded in Matthew and Luke
in some greater detail than it is in
Mark.
We shall be considering something of what Matthew
has had to say, something of what Mark
records and just one verse of what Luke
records.
So you need your Bible.
But my dear friend let me just ask
you this morning in the first place to
get into the background of this message by
considering the anxiety of the disciples.
This is our first point for consideration.
We shall never understand our Lord's message unless
we get back into the spirit of these
men.
We must know what their question meant.
Look at it in the opening verse of
Mark chapter 13.
Master, see what manner of stones and what
buildings are here.
Verse 4.
Tell us then when shall these things be
and what shall be the sign when all
these things shall be fulfilled.
Why did these disciples draw the attention of
our Lord to the stones of the temple
at that moment?
They'd often been there with him.
It was familiar ground.
Well the answer surely is in reminding ourselves
of what Jesus had just said.
You find it in the 23rd chapter of
Matthew and in the 37th verse.
Immediately prior to this Olivet message Jesus said,
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem thou that killest the prophets
and stonest them which are sent unto thee,
how often would I have gathered thy children
together even as a hen gathereth together her
chickens under her wings and ye would not
behold your house is left unto you desolate.
It was as though the disciples were asking
him, how can such a magnificent place become
desolate?
But look at his answer in the second
verse of Mark chapter 13.
Seest thou these great buildings?
There shall not be left one stone upon
another that shall not be thrown down.
Nothing less likely than that seemed to happen
but yet less than a generation it was
all fulfilled.
The occupation of Rome with freedom of religion
granted to the Jew seemed to be a
permanent condition but 40 years after this it
ceased.
And so four of these men sat down,
Peter, James, John and Andrew with Jesus and
asked him, tell us when shall these things
be?
What shall be the sign when all these
things shall be fulfilled?
Or as Matthew records it a little more
clearly, verse 3 of chapter 24.
The disciples came to him privately saying, tell
us when shall these things be?
What shall be the sign of thy coming
and of the end of the world?
Notice that question my dear listener because surely
in the form in which they asked it
they considered that the destruction of the temple
and the fulfillment of Christ's purpose and the
end of the age were one and the
same thing.
Remember that Jesus had been puzzling these men,
not deliberately, but they hadn't understood him for
months.
Ever since that great moment at Caesarea Philippi
when Jesus said, what think ye of Christ?
Know ye not that the Son of Man
must suffer, must be rejected, must be killed
and must rise again?
Ever since then they had been absolutely out
of harmony with our Lord.
They didn't understand what he was doing.
Ever since he began speaking about a cross
he left them far behind.
They'd seen his entry into Jerusalem, its wonderful
acclamation by the people, then they'd seen his
conflict with the rulers, they'd listened to his
scathing denunciation of Judaism, his sentence of doom
upon Jerusalem and they were absolutely bewildered and
somehow I cannot but believe it was a
very silent little group of men that that
day went out of the city just a
few days before what we know as Good
Friday and went down the hill and through
the valley and up the slope on the
other side and sat down beside Mount Olivet
overlooking Jerusalem and asked him this question, what
did they mean?
Of course all that they asked could only
come about by our Lord's second advent but
they didn't know a thing about the second
advent.
His future return necessitated first the cross and
then the resurrection but though he had spoken
to them about these things they could never
grasp the truth about the resurrection and they
rejected the necessity for the cross.
They were in revolt concerning Calvary and blind
concerning a risen Savior.
How could they possibly know a thing about
his second coming?
And so if we take this question as
they asked it, they were simply saying this,
tell us Master, tell us, if this temple
is going to be destroyed and if you're
coming to do it in judgment how is
it going to happen?
When is it going to happen?
When is going to be the end?
I wonder if there isn't a very real
sense, beloved friend, in which you and I
are in a position today just where they
were.
Oh don't you long sometimes like I do
just to get aside from it all for
a little while to some lonely place.
We'd have a long way to go for
a mountain but a lakeside would do me
nicely.
And just go beside a lake and sit
down and listen to Jesus talk to us
as he talked to these men.
Because events today puzzle all of us.
We don't understand them.
If God is alive, if he's omnipotent, then
then immediately we have to ask why?
And if he says he's coming then we
say when and how.
Is Christianity on the way out or is
it on the way in?
Is it finished or is it just commencing
its greatest day?
Is this civilization wrecked and ruined or is
it going to usher in a new and
a mighty day the like of which the
world has never known?
These are questions.
Oh that I could sit down with Jesus
today and just hear him talk to me
about them.
I've tried to do that and therefore I
want to bring to you not simply the
anxiety of the disciples and I believe that
anxiety would be deeply rooted in your heart
and mine in some way today.
But I will try to bring to you
the answer of Jesus himself.
The only possible explanation of this Olivet message
is that it has two horizons.
Do you ever, have you ever climbed up
mountains?
I love mountain climbing when it isn't too
hot.
And when you can climb up and you
see a peak and you say that's it.
And you set up, set out and you
get up to that peak and no sooner
do you look over the top than you
find you're only at the foothills.
There's another great mountain further away and between
them there's great valleys and deeps that you
have to traverse to make the ultimate peak.
And it seems to me that this message
of our Lord on Mount Olivet is just
like that.
There's a near horizon and there's a distant
view.
One of them only forty years beyond the
time when he gave this message.
The other that is still future.
One horizon that deals with the destruction of
Jerusalem which took place in AD 70.
The other which touches the end of this
present age and which ushers in the coming
of the King.
Glad day, glad day.
Could it be the crowning day?
That about which we've been singing.
But the burden of this message is not
so much the overthrow of a city as
the end of human civilization without God.
It is the greatest unfolding of God's program
for world history that has ever been written.
And those who attack the authority of the
Bible and particularly the authority of prophecy and
ridicule it and say that prophecy is impossible
are in great trouble with a passage of
scripture like this.
For if you deny its connection with the
second advent because prophecy is an impossibility, then
logically you must deny its connection with the
downfall of Jerusalem.
For if you admit the possibility that Jesus
prophesied something that would happen in the next
generation, you must also admit the possibility that
he prophesied something that would happen two millenniums
ahead.
And the only resource of the higher critic
of scripture is to say that this passage
was actually written after the destruction of Jerusalem
and was simply an account of it.
Isn't it amazing the lengths to which so
-called human intelligence will go to undermine the
authority of the Word of God?
To take that position creates a problem that
is absolutely insoluble.
For nobody, surely, who wrote of the event
after it had taken place would have included,
for example, the 26th verse of Mark 13
and the 25th verse speaking of stars of
the heavens that shall fall and powers that
shall be shaken and the coming of the
Son of Man in great glory and in
great power.
Those things didn't happen then and they haven't
happened yet.
But as our Lord takes his disciples aside
and unfolds the future, will you please notice
how he begins in the fifth verse of
Mark chapter 13, this is what he says,
warning his disciples and says, take heed lest
any man deceive you.
In other words, don't let anybody lead you
astray.
There have always been fanciful interpretations of this
passage in order to fit it in with
preconceived ideas of future events until we wander
far from what the Scriptures say.
I've no doubt you shall receive a lot
of help from your Schofield Bible, but you
will remember, won't you, that Schofield notes are
not inspired.
Will you please notice, will you please notice
that the Lord Jesus takes his disciples aside
and warns them of this possibility of going
astray.
Glance a moment at the fuller account that's
given by Matthew in chapter 24 and 25.
I must ask you to look there first
of all for a few minutes.
And will you please notice that he speaks
in the first place in Matthew 24 and
verse 2 of the destruction of the temple.
Then in verse 6 he speaks of the
end, the coming of the end of the
age.
Wars and rumors of wars, see that ye
be not troubled, for all these things must
come to pass, but the end is not
yet.
Now will you notice this important principle, beloved?
Immediately the Lord answers these disciples' questions by
separating in their minds his personal future return
from the destruction of the city of Jerusalem.
And in so doing it seems to me
without getting into controversial issues, if I can
avoid it, though it certainly will be difficult
this morning, it seems to me that he
unfolds his program of world history in three
parts.
I have no time to go into this
in detail, but may I give this suggestion
to you for your own study.
For in Matthew 24 verse 5 right through
verse 36 you have our Lord's future program
for the Jewish nation of Israel.
The language of those verses, the reference to
himself as the Christ, as the Son of
Man, the whole projection of thought is there
directed to this nation that has been rejected.
But quite clearly in the 37th verse of
Matthew 24 he begins to speak about something
else, about the future of the Gentile world,
about world conditions on a far wider scale
than the Jewish nation itself.
And this runs right through both in story,
in prophecy, in parable, till you come to
the 30th verse of the 25th chapter, where
the Lord again begins afresh with another aspect
of the future.
And the remainder of that 25th chapter he
speaks of the future judgment of the nations
of the world.
I'm suggesting therefore that he takes the disciples
far beyond their question.
And while the clouds are gathering round him,
and he's walking towards the cross, and he
knows that crucifixion awaits him, he looks quietly
on and views the coming centuries from the
standpoint of his ancient people Israel, from the
standpoint of his new people, the church, the
Gentile, and from the standpoint of the nations
of the world.
And so he looks right through the darkness
into the light, right through defeat into victory,
right through the cross into the glory, and
he spans all history in so doing.
Now I don't wish you to think that
I'm getting into some fanciful interpretation of this.
There are many arguments that I could introduce
at our time to substantiate this approach to
the Olivet message.
Let me just give you quickly one of
them.
One title which our Lord loved to use
concerning himself was the Son of Man.
The Son of Man has come to seek
and to save that which is lost.
But this is a title which never suggested
simply individual salvation.
It suggested much more than this.
It meant everything that is lost socially, socially,
administratively, nationally.
The Son of Man has come to seek
that which is lost, not simply the individual
soul, but a prodigal world, that there might
be a new world in which dwells righteousness.
Our salvation, praise God, is personal, but it's
much more than that.
In this message of the Olivet discourse, this
title, the Son of Man, you will discover
this as you read through your Bible these
two chapters, is used only in the sections
of his message which deal with the Jew
and which deal with the future judgment of
the nations of the world.
It's only used in the sections of his
message which have to do with government, with
his own administration of the newest nation which
had failed, and with his future administration of
all the nations of the world under his
authority.
But in the section of this message which
has to do with the Gentile, there is
no reference to this title, the Son of
Man.
It appears in the King James version, but
it's omitted in the Revised, rightly.
And have you ever noticed that the Lord
Jesus is never referred to in the epistles
as the Son of Man?
In that portion of the New Testament which
is particularly for the Gentile, particularly for the
Church, you never hear of him referred to
as the Son of Man.
This is a title which dealt with the
Jew in his submission and rejection, which deals
with all the world in his future government
of all nations, the Son of Man.
But you never find it in this Olivet
discourse, in the section of it dealing with
the Church.
That's just one little argument for the basis
of our approach.
But now will you come back quickly with
me to the gospel of Mark?
Because you see, if we're to understand, and
remember this is the gospel that we're particularly
considering on these Sundays.
If we understand this chapter, unless you recognize
what I've said, we'll go sadly astray.
Because here we have no account in Mark's
record.
We have no account at all of the
second and third sections of his message.
In other words, Mark says nothing about the
Gentile age and he says nothing about the
judgment of all nations.
His message here is entirely that portion which
has to do with Israel, with the rejected
kingdom.
Notice what he says about them in verses
5 through 8.
He warns these disciples as he answers their
questions.
He warns them of wars and rumors of
wars.
But these, he says, are not the end.
They're only the beginning.
And then in verses 9 through 12, he
gives them personal instructions as to their behavior
in time of persecution.
He assures them of the presence of his
Holy Spirit.
Whatsoever shall be given you, verse 11, in
that hour that speak ye, for it is
not ye that speak but the Holy Ghost,
and so on.
And then in verses 14 through 23, he
tells them exactly what would be fulfilled in
the fall and destruction of the city of
Jerusalem.
Culminating in the 23rd verse, take ye heed,
behold, I have foretold you all things.
And up to this point, he has told
them exactly what would happen and history records
that it did actually happen.
But then, please notice something carefully.
Verse 24 then says, but in those days
after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened,
and the moon shall not give her light,
and the stars of heaven shall fall, and
the powers that are in heaven shall be
shaken.
Now you're going to be in confusion if
you don't recognize the principle about which I've
been speaking.
For between verse 23 and verse 24, there's
a great big long valley full of darkness.
Sometimes the light shines into it, sometimes the
shadows break through, but it's a great big
long valley, and we're in it right now.
For if you were to read this chapter
as it stands, you would say to yourself
that those days which are recorded in verse
24, then must immediately follow what took place
in AD 70.
But here you've got two of these mountain
peaks in history about which I've been speaking,
and Luke's account of this makes it perfectly
clear.
I'm quoting from Luke 21 verse 24, which
exactly fits into this message at this point,
where Luke says, listen, as he describes the
fall of Jerusalem, they shall fall by the
edge of the sword and shall be led
captive into all the nations, and Jerusalem shall
be trodden down of the Gentiles until the
time of the Gentiles be fulfilled.
And then in verse 25, he resumes exactly
the same record as Mark does in his
24th verse.
So you see, there's a little verse that
Luke puts in to help us there, which
covers a whole period of nearly 2,000
years, the times of the Gentiles.
For Jerusalem today, the day in which we
live, is still trodden down by Gentile power.
It's still, as a country, as a country,
though it is re-established in its land,
it is still threatened by tremendous power around
it.
It is still this, because the time of
the Gentiles is not yet fulfilled.
May I say in passing that one indication
that the time is soon be fulfilled is
that Jews are back there in their own
land again today.
But then in the closing part of this
chapter, notice Mark goes on to speak of
our Lord's personal return, and he ends with
this word, this verse, and while I, what
I say unto you, I say unto all,
watch.
Now beloved, I've attempted to give you just
the outline here, but I want to gather
it together in our thoughts, so that we're
not woolly about it, and we're not worried
about it, and we're not weak about it
in our interpretation of it.
And there are one or two things that
stand out, it seems to me, in the
first place.
He has made it abundantly clear that the
period of history which must elapse between his
cross and his return will be a time
of turmoil and perpetual conflict.
Never did our Lord say that there would
be a gradual ceasing of warfare and strife
by the spreading of the gospel until all
the world would have peace.
He distinctly taught that the whole age until
his return would be marked by conflict and
bloodshed.
Wars and rumors of wars are not in
themselves, he says, the signs of the end.
One day we shall see these things which
baffle us and perplex us beyond measure.
We will see these things to be part
of the process by which the wrath of
man one day will be shown to have
praised God, and the uttermost part of wrath
he has restrained.
For in every world confusion our God is
upon the throne.
There's a crisis in Russia, there's a crisis
in India, there's a crisis everywhere, but there's
no crisis in heaven.
Hallelujah!
Our Lord God, omnipotent, reigneth.
But will you also notice, please, that he
utters solemn warning against false prophets and tells
us that the stress of these days would
in itself produce them.
Verse 22, false Christs, false prophets shall rise
and shall sow signs and wonders to seduce,
if it were possible, even the elect.
Oh, how careful therefore I have to be
and you have to be not to be
moved from my loyalty to the Lord Jesus
by voices that claim to be his but
are not.
And then he tells us in the 25th
verse that the end of this age will
be marked by supernatural signs.
The stars of heaven shall fall, the powers
that are in heaven shall be shaken, and
they shall see the Son of Man coming
in clouds with great power and glory.
But he is careful, note, to tell us
that the time of his return is unknown.
Verse 32, of that day and that hour
knoweth no man, no, not the angels which
are in heaven, neither the Son, but the
Father.
Beloved, listen to me, there isn't a verse
in the Bible which can help you or
help me to fix within the limits of
a human calendar the day on which Jesus
shall come.
Nothing can be plainer than the language of
verse 33, take ye heed, watch and pray,
for ye know not when the time is.
The Lord deliver us from quarreling about a
timetable.
God give us unity of vision and passion
and burden for the personal coming of our
Lord Jesus soon.
But he will come very suddenly.
This much he tells us.
Verse 36, lest coming suddenly he find you
sleeping.
Matthew puts it quite graphically in his 24th
chapter when he says, when the coming of
the Son of Man shall be, verse 42,
shall be in a field, one shall be
taken the other left.
That I presume is midday.
Verse 41, two women shall be grinding at
the mill, the one shall be taken the
other left.
That shall be early in the morning.
Verse 42, watch therefore, for ye know not,
ye know not what hour your Lord doth
come.
The whole story and the whole emphasis is
the suddenness, the unexpectedness of his return.
May I say to you that it is
sometimes very difficult in this passage of Scripture
to distinguish between what I have called the
near horizon and the distant one.
But I suggest to you, and I am
not a Job's comforter, I would suggest to
you that the world's greatest anguish is not
history, but it is yet to come.
The coming of Antichrist, fulfilling the reference in
Mark, verse 14, and of Daniel 9.27,
the period of great tribulation, the coming of
the Lord after that for his elect Israel,
who will be restored and re-established to
their land in accordance with the prophecies of
Ezekiel 37 and 39.
All these dramatic, world-shaking events are yet
to be.
And it is my personal conviction that the
Lord Jesus will come in grace for his
church before he comes in judgment to the
earth.
What then is our responsibility in the light
of these events, in light of the answer
of our Lord, in the light of the
anxiety of the disciple?
What is our responsibility?
And this must be our concluding thought.
What I say unto you, I say unto
all, watch.
What does Jesus mean by that?
Notice the frequent repetition of this word, watch,
in the last verses of this chapter.
Actually, there are two Greek words used and
translated by the same English word.
Verse 33, watch and pray.
Verse 35, watch ye therefore.
Verse 37, watch.
The second word used in the last two
instances is the positive one.
It means, be on the alert, be wide
awake.
If I could feel my way into that
word, as it were, to understand what our
Lord is getting at, it has a suggestion
of the business house, the marketplace, keenness, alertness,
readiness, initiative.
Watch.
So said Jesus to his disciples, and so
he says to us, be watchful.
Not in the sense of climbing a mountain
and sitting down there and waiting to be
raptured into heaven, not that.
But in the sense of being on the
alert, down to earth, with your feet on
the ground, your heart in heaven, raised in
great expectation that he will come soon.
He would send them to the uttermost parts
of the earth, but they must be wide
awake in their going.
Don't be led away by false prophets.
Don't be alarmed by wars and rumors of
wars.
Watch, says Jesus.
Be on the alert.
And this is the other word, watch and
pray, and this is the negative word.
It means, don't be asleep.
Don't be asleep.
Don't go to sleep when you're praying.
And I don't think that means don't simply
sort of sit back and lapse into unconsciousness.
But it just means don't pray like most
Christians do pray.
Don't pray prayerlessly, without a burden.
Don't say your prayers.
Don't get through like a kind of record.
Don't just churn it out.
Watch, watch the prayer of a man whose
heart is burdened.
My soul, says the psalmist, my soul followeth
hard after thee.
That's how God wants his people to pray
in days like these, with his coming so
soon ahead of us.
Watch.
Be prayerful.
Be alert in your prayer life.
Don't let it become mere humdrum dead.
Oh, watch eagerly.
Be on the alert.
Watching, therefore, beloved, is praying.
Watching, therefore, is working.
And work and pray.
Every man, notice this, every man his work,
verse 34, every man to his work.
And work which is so thrilling when it's
in relation to this great program of God.
Watching is maintaining loyalty to Jesus Christ.
Watching is courage that isn't troubled when things
go wrong in the world and when warfare
is all around us.
Watching is praying that's always seeking for his
kingdom and for his glory.
None of the things that are happening in
this 20th century startle God or surprise him.
They were all known to him long ago.
And what we are seeing, I believe, I
believe with all my heart what we are
seeing are the death thralls of one civilization
and the birth pangs of another.
And it won't be long before these things
are fulfilled and this world civilization, man's superhuman
attempt at running the world without God will
crash and there will be ushered in a
new civilization, a new kingdom wherein dwelleth righteousness
and peace and glory shall cover the earth
as the waters covers the sea.
I'm so glad to be right in the
day when we're witnessing death thralls and birth
pangs, right there now.
And the final overthrow and downfall of every
human ingenuity apart from God.
What a little puppet.
Some of these great fantastic machines and these
great philosophies of life will seem to be
on that day when they're brought low at
the feet of our wonderful Lord Jesus.
May I conclude by one question.
Our current events, signs of his return, can
you interpret prophecy by history?
Is it possible for us to know where
we are in the unfolding of human history?
Verse 28 of Mark 13 and verse 29
would lead me to say yes.
Verse 32 to verse 37 would lead me
to say no.
We are not entirely in the dark nor
are we entirely in the light.
We may know but we may not know.
To deny that we may read the future
by the present is to deny what Jesus
says in verse 28 and 29.
When these things come know that it is
nigh.
On the other hand the dogmatic insistence that
the door is even on the latch is
to deny his warning of verse 33.
No man knoweth.
But it certainly seems that the age in
which we live is full of the signs
which are going to introduce the end.
And yet it remains true that we know
not when the time is.
My time has gone long ago.
I said goodbye to our radio audience about
three minutes ago.
I'm going to say goodbye to you in
a minute.
But I want to say something to you
before I finish because this thing is not
theory to me.
This is not kind of mere cold doctrine.
This is life.
This is part of me.
The thing that I've been preaching you today,
the burden of my soul.
What is my reaction?
First, do I speak to some very super
hyper intellectual individual listening to me this morning
who views his Bible with grave suspicion?
How do you feel now?
Oh brother, if there's one thing this thing,
this message tells me, it's this book is
absolutely authoritative.
It is the only authoritative word to which
the human race may turn in this day
of agony and distress.
Everything that our Lord said would happen has
happened and is happening.
Is there any other book in the world
that can do that?
Is there any other one save Jesus who
could tell us about it?
Therefore I say to you, take heed.
Take heed how you regard your Bible.
May you not submit it to your criticism,
but may you be submitted in your soul
to its own criticism.
Take heed.
Watch.
Be on the alert.
You can't afford to be a passenger in
the king's army.
You can't afford to be out of work.
There's no unemployment.
There's no recession in the service of the
king of kings, in the business of the
master.
Why no trades at full boost?
And there's a great need for everybody to
be in on.
You can't afford to sit back in days
like these.
Watch and pray.
And don't be sleepy and unintelligent in your
praying.
Be light, right at work in your prayer,
wide awake in your prayer, burdened heart with
a recognition that you're living in days like
these.
And work.
Work.
What can I do?
Too many people at Moody Church.
I can't work here.
Can't you?
Work.
All right then.
Go back home.
Lift your telephone.
Call your next-door neighbor.
Bring them to church tonight.
Go across the street and witness to your
friend about Jesus.
Tell them that Jesus is your Lord and
your master and that he's coming soon.
Work.
Get a tract from the information desk.
Take it and give it to somebody and
speak a word of bringing back the king.
Work.
Go to it, every one of us, in
the name of the Lord, because soon the
day of opportunity will be over.
And he who is at the door will
have opened it and ushered in his own
and then closed the door.
And it'll be too late.
So glad I'm alive in a day like
this, aren't you?
So glad our God is on the throne.
So glad he's coming back soon.
I'm so glad I'm saved.
Hallelujah.
May you be saved too.
May you know the joy of the Lord
in your heart.
And if anyone today has listened to this
message and just don't know a thing about
it and what we're talking about, and it
seems double-dutch, my friend, I, I remind
you that this same Lord Jesus said, if
any man, him that cometh unto me, he
would in no wise cast out.
And he's able to receive you, take him,
take you to himself this day, and he's
able to come and live in your life
and give you his joy and forgiving grace.
Shall we bow together in prayer?
Oh Father, may these things live in our
hearts.
May we, may we just live in the
light of this great fact that our God
is on the throne and our Savior's coming
back.
Lord, grant that we may not be idle,
but may we go to work for thee.
May we live for thee day by day.
May our lives glorify thee.
May we be watchful and may we be
careful lest we be deluded and taken aside
by voices which are not voices from heaven.
Speak to us, thy people, and speak to
those who are not thy people.
And may this day see fruit for thy
glory.
For Jesus' sake we ask it.
Amen.