To my dear ESEPA coworkers, to the graduates, and to their families and friends.
As we celebrate this special evening, let me share a few words from the heart. They are based on this amazing promise in 2 Timothy:
2 Timothy 4:8 NIV – “Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day – and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing [literally, “loved his coming”].”
“All who lovingly long for his appearing” opens the door to non-apostles! “The crown of righteousness for all those who have lovingly awaited his coming” follows these verses:
2 Timothy 4:1-2 NLT – “I solemnly urge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who will someday judge the living and the dead when he comes to set up his Kingdom: 2 Preach the word of God. Be prepared, whether the time is favorable or not. (Now, when we say “preach”, this is certainly not limited to a person standing on a platform on Sundays; we can apply it to presenting God’s message in every context). Then in v. 5 – “Work at telling others the Good News” (NIV “do the work of an evangelist”). In light of his coming, this is your mission, Timothy.
It is in this very context that Paul writes: “the crown for all those who have lovingly awaited his coming.”
It is clear that Paul, as a preacher, as an evangelist, as a writer, had little interest in speculation about the end times, or what we might call finer eschatological points. Every word Paul wrote about the details of the end times could fit in a dozen pages. Yet it is also true that everything he preached and wrote is oriented toward the coming of the Lord. Note in 2 Timothy that what he really wants to see is a focus on life centered on Christ and our dedication to the mission of Christ in the world. His goal is the formation of disciples with this mentality: “all who love his coming” or “all who have lovingly awaited his coming.”
It brings together two themes: the second coming and the mission of the church.
Let’s define our terms:
- By the second coming I mean his appearance, the redemption of his people, the transformation of all his creation, the judgment of those who reject him.
- By mission I mean the full expression of the gospel, although tonight I am focusing on bringing the saving message to those who need to hear it, perhaps for the first time, and inviting them to follow Christ.
These two themes are predominant in my daily life: I have written a lot about the coming of Christ, for example, in my doctoral thesis; and I am conscious of God’s call to his mission, as a missionary teacher, but also working on Bible translation.
My experience confirms the biblical truth that these two themes, the coming of the Lord and the mission of the church, are closely intertwined throughout the Scriptures. We cannot think of one without taking the other into account.
Matthew’s gospel offers examples of this dynamic. During Holy Week, Jesus and his disciples were in the temple, and they saw its complete destruction. Then, on the Mount of Olives, the disciples ask him Matthew 24:3 – “When will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the world?”
Jesus responds with certain “signs” that must take place, but one clue is 24:14 – “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”
So, the apostles wanted a “Bible Prophecy Conference”, and this is partly what they received; but more fundamentally, Jesus told them that what must really happen before the end is the evangelization of “all nations”, of the entire planet.
The apostles wanted a “prophecy conference”, but they were told further on in the discourse:
Matthew 25:34 -36 – “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you whom my Father has blessed, take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’”
If we truly love the coming of the Lord, it is because we love the Lord who is to come and, therefore, we will see him in the faces of the needy around us.
And here is the mission:
19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations
We could cite other examples; let’s look at Acts 1:6-8 -Then those who were with him asked him, “Lord, is it now that you are going to restore the kingdom to Israel? “It is not for you to know the time or hour that the Father has set by his own authority,” Jesus replied. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Again, he moves from a conference on prophecy to a missionary commission.
This phrase of the Lord, “It is not for you to know”. Each of us disciples needs to search our hearts and answer the question: What fascinates me – speculation about the coming of Christ, or love for the Christ who is to come? Paul showed the way when he wrote: “Now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know imperfectly, but then I shall know just as I am known.” (1 Cor 13:12)
The sad news is that there are people who, instead of being fascinated by the Christ to come, are mesmerized by the End of the World, often spending time on things that are not even found in the Bible. [1]
To give some examples: In recent years I have seen people predicting the second coming every time there is an eclipse or a comet; speculating about the coming of the Nephilim; people puzzling over whether the antichrist is Catholic, or Muslim, or Jewish, perhaps from the tribe of Dan; whether he is homosexual; or a computer; etc., whether the mark of the beast is a microchip or a vaccine; or calculating a date for the coming of the Lord (almost every year since I converted to the faith in 1972 and started reading about prophecy!). Or what about breeding a red cow for the purification of the Temple?
Fixation on all this is not proof that someone loves the coming of Christ. A person who loves his coming is the person who loves Christ in his thoughts, words and deeds, who loves the coming of Christ because he wants to meet the Christ he loves. Paul showed the way when he wrote: “Now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known” (1 Cor 13:12).
Search YouTube for the “Book of Revelation”: where are the viral videos about the worldwide mission of Christ? I have analyzed many of these teachers and I notice a tendency in them to boast of having special knowledge, to defame their opponents, to name one person after another as the antichrist, to abandon the world, which God will redeem, to deny the commandment of love. It produces a harvest of anxiety, fear, arrogance. I challenge you: read the book of Revelation from beginning to end, and tell me if love, perseverance, joy, hope and focus on God – instead of terrifying world events – are not its main themes.
Do you love the coming of Christ? Then, as one facet of loving his coming, you will embrace the mission of Christ. In fact, it is a lesson from history: the great missionary movement of recent centuries often had the coming kingdom as its goal.
So how far have we come with Christ’s prediction: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.” The gospel has been spreading much more rapidly in the last century or two, yet after 2000 years, not even half the world has been evangelized for the first time. And 250 new babies are born every minute.
Not all who love the coming of the Lord will be missionaries in other places, of course, nor should they be. But all must communicate the gospel to those who need to hear it and to those who need to see it expressed in our lives, expressed holistically, in all dimensions. We might mention one Costa Rican brother, who came to know the Lord as an older adult and a legally blind man. He freely helped my wife for years, several hours a week, editing her ministry materials in excellent Spanish. That meant that Karen had to dictate it to him out loud, and he would say, recalling it from memory: “Okay, she said this, but I think she wants to express it another way.” He was my age, and he died on Tuesday without warning, after serving the Lord with a specialized focus on preaching the gospel. People who love the coming of the Lord might do such things!
I like a good prophecy conference as much as the next person. But studying the coming of the Lord is not a hobby. People who love the coming of the Lord will do – what, serve soup to the homeless. They build a house for Habitat for Humanity. They fund Bible translation projects. They urge their church leaders to be faithful to the missionaries they have promised to support. They learn the language of a people who have not heard the gospel.
Here’s the good news: the world literacy rate stands at a whopping 87%, which means that people can in theory read the Bible and evangelistic literature. The bad news: of the 7,000 languages in the world today, more than half have no Bible at all. That’s why, as well as being a professor here, my other job is to edit a Bible for a group of 60 million people who don’t have one. And praise God, it has never been easier to produce Bible translations because of computers, satellite links, and even AI.
Here’s another piece of good news: I’ve just seen this report from the Lausanne Movement: “Today, Latin America sends more cross-cultural workers abroad than it receives, with a special focus on North Africa, the Muslim world, the Middle East and India.” Later: “With around 40,000 cross-cultural workers in the field, Latin America is believed to be the third largest missionary force in the world today, after North America and South Korea.” [2] This is amazing! Praise God! Last month I spent time with one of ESEPA’s recent graduates. She and her husband train many, many new missionaries from Latin America in fundraising and communication to help them move abroad.
“Latin America,” he said, “focuses especially on the Muslim world.” One of the graduates tonight wrote in one of his essays for ESEPA: “The Church is on a mission to liberate Creation from the oppression of sin through the preaching and action of the Gospel of Jesus Christ . . . [and that our final goal] is ‘rest, liberation and New Creation’ in the age to come.” He is not here with us; he thought it best to remain in the Muslim country where he works.
Graduates, I will end with a quote from Romans – the Magna Carta, the constitution of our mission. Paul exhorts them in 13:11-12 – “Do all this while you remember the times. It is already the hour when we should wake up from our sleep because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is far gone, and the day is at hand.”
Serve the Lord where he wills, no doubt. But I urge you to explore options that do not naturally appeal to you: to take the Word of God to places that do not have it. This will be an exponentially more difficult task than others you can name (due to barriers of language, culture, opposition to the gospel). Yes, but why not at least consider it? If we truly love the coming of the Lord, it is because we love the Lord who is to come, and if we love the Lord who is to come, we will love what he loves: his mission to the people in the world for whom he died and who have not yet heard the gospel and have not yet seen a Christian bringing love to their cities.
Without delay, brothers and sisters, let us seek the crown of righteousness, which is the Judge’s affirmation, “Well done, good and faithful servant”.
Prayer:
God the Father, you sent your blessed Son to preach peace to those near at hand and those far away: Grant that all people may seek you and find you; bring the nations into your fold; pour out your Spirit upon all people; kindle a fire in our hearts for Christ’s coming, and grant us the grace to participate in his mission; and hasten the coming of your kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
NOTES:
[1] See especially our “Bible Prophecies that are NOT in the Bible.” https://openoureyeslord.com/2017/04/27/bible-prophecy-ch-1-bible-prophecies-that-are-not-found-in-the-bible/
[2] “Today, the continent sends more cross-cultural workers abroad than it receives. Latin America: from missionary field to missionary force. A common characteristic of Latin Americans like Carrillo is their vision of reaching the unreached.” “… Latin Americans are trend-setters, according to Daniel Bianchi, Regional Director of the Lausanne Movement in Latin America. Bianchi explains that an attribute of the Latin American missionary movement over the last 40 years has been its focus on unreached people groups. They have thought a lot about North Africa, the Muslim world, the Middle East and India. For example, a few years ago the World Evangelical Alliance’s Mission Commission conducted a survey that revealed that Argentina was one of the countries with the highest number of workers sent to unreached groups. “With around 40,000 cross-cultural workers in the field, Latin America is believed to be the third largest missionary force in the world today, after North America and South Korea. If so, that represents a remarkable achievement for the last continent to be touched by the modern missionary movement.”
Open Our Eyes, Lord! 
What do you think?