“THE TIME IS NEAR”
C. F. Dadd
Revelation 22: 10; 2 Peter 1: 12–15; 2 Timothy 4: 6–8
I am impressed, beloved brethren, with the thought of time. Some of us on the Lord’s day had our minds directed to the Song of Songs where it says, “The time of singing is come, and the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land” (Song of Songs 2: 12). I think it was a very opportune word that came to us. So on Monday we had a further time when the Lord came into the locality and took our sister to be with Himself. You have a sense that the timing all belongs to the Lord. The time of the departure of the saints is very near. I think that is what John has in mind as he writes this in this verse in the Revelation. The word to John is, “Seal not the words of the prophecy of this book. The time is near”. And, beloved, I think all of us, soberly speaking, will realize that the time is very near; the time of the return of the Lord grows very near. So the word to every one of us would be to alert us to this fact, that the Lord is going to come and all of us will have to do with Him.
Peter had a disclosure from the Lord about his own departure. He could speak about the fact that the Lord had indicated to him that the putting off of his tabernacle was speedily to take place. It is a very remarkable thing. Are we near enough to the Lord that He may indicate to us that our tabernacle is soon to be put off? I think our sister as she approached the latter months of her life was very near to the Lord Jesus as to this whole matter, in fact we are told that on the morning of her departure she spoke and sang to the Lord Jesus about coming and taking her to be with Himself. That is a fine thing—what a sense of victory! We began with that in our hymn, the idea of triumph, the idea of victory, and you see one in our sister who went out with a sense of this in her heart, that the victory was hers. Why? Because all has been secured through Christ; Christ is the One who has accomplished everything for God and accomplished everything for men.
So Peter, speaking as he does here, was very much concerned about the fact that while he was present he would remind the saints of certain things. “I account it right, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance”—remembrance of these great and glorious things that Peter writes about in this epistle and had written about previously. His first epistle was written to the sojourners; this epistle is written to every believer, every believer in this room; this epistle is addressed to us, and he would say, ‘As long as I am in this tabernacle, I would stir you up about these wonderful things, about the matter of our redemption, about the matter that we belong to Christ, about the fact that we have been bought with a price and are no longer our own’. It is wonderful to think of this. The question would be a challenge to me and to every one of us as to
whether we proceed every day on the basis of our own will, or are we proceeding on the basis that we are not our own, for we have been bought with a price? Therefore we are to be here as those who would fill out the will of God, walking according to the pathway of faith which was set out in Christ. Our brother’s reference to faith I think is very apropos because He is the Originator and Completer of faith. You might say the whole principle of faith began in Christ and He perfectly completes it.
Well, Paul is about to depart and he realizes this. In fact he says, “I am already being poured out”. The time of his release was very much before him. And as he writes the second epistle to Timothy he is thinking about the continuity of the testimony. He is thinking about you and me as to how we will fit into the testimony as it comes to a close. Where do we stand in relation to all that Paul has written? The test was Paul, and it still is Paul. He could say earlier in this epistle, “All who are in Asia ... have turned away from me”, 2 Timothy 1: 15. He felt it, he felt the day of declension and scattering in which we find ourselves now as the dispensation comes to a close. But it is a time, beloved, when we would be stirred up about the continuity of the testimony. So he speaks to Timothy about these things, he says, “But thou, be sober in all things, bear evils, do the work of an evangelist, fill up the full measure of thy ministry”. He would be concerned that things should continue according to Paul’s standard, according to the standard that Paul had been given from heaven by Christ. So he says, “I have combated the good combat, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith”. I think we can say that about our sister who has departed; she finished the race, she finished her time, and when the Lord took her she was a finished product. It is a wonderful thing to think that a sister such as we have had amongst us could go out in a sense of victory, and too, as looking on, we can say that the Lord had completed His work in her.
Well, may this be much in our minds, that we might go out in a sense of victory. May we have a sense of the victory today, knowing that it has been secured through Christ; it is immutable, it is unchangeable; it is ours, to be secured through faith, and we too can have a testimony borne to us that we have finished the race, have completed things, and go out according to the will of God. We are all going out soon; the time is near. John says that twice in the Revelation, “the time is near”; he says it at the beginning (Revelation 1: 3) and he says it at the end (Revelation 22: 10), “The time is near”. The saints are about to go up. Well, may we be amongst those who go out in victory, for His name’s sake.
Words at the burial of Mrs S. F. Petersen, Plainfield, N.J.
2 October 1987