Christ ascended ten days before Pentecost in AD 30 and according to our calendar He has gone for 1,976 human years. However, according to the divine timetable He is twenty-four years short of having been gone two days. Christ did not lie when He said “Surely I come quickly”. He made this promise to His bride through John the apostle in late AD 95 or early 96, which was only 1,910 years ago. 

“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” Titus 2:13

Over the past fifty years, we have witnessed a steady decline in the number of believers who are looking for the soon coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Father had used the crash of the stock market (with the great depression that resulted from it), the dust bowl (with the agricultural shortages that resulted from it), and the Second World War (with all of the hardships, sufferings and deaths that resulted from it) to bring about the salvation of multitudes of believers.

Many of these believers in their hunger for an understanding of the Word of God became involved in prophetic studies. They learned and believed the doctrine of the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. This Bible doctrinal truth had an immediate impact upon them because it gave them hope-confidence that they would one day be eternally united with Christ (cf. John 17:24 with I Thess. 4:13-18 & I Cor. 15:51-57). The doctrine of the “blessed hope” was being taught in local churches across America as well as by radio, television, and home Bible studies.

“For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;” Titus 2:11-12

As Christians, we were saved by the Father’s grace (cf. Eph. 2:8-9) when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Savior (cf. Acts 16:30-31). The Father not only saved us but He has commanded us to be instructed in Christian faith living through the study of the Word of God (cf. Rom. 1:17 with 10:17 & II Tim. 2:15; 3:16-17; Matt. 4:4; Deut. 29:29). As believers, we each have an individual responsibility to deny anything that would prevent us from walking in fellowship with God and to not be overpowered by the attractions found in the secular world.