Living on the Clock in the Last Days

God is opening doors for the Church. Will you walk through them?

I’ve been watching a few Winter Olympics broadcasts over the past week, and one of the hardest competitions for me to get my mind around is luge. The sport itself seems incredibly simple: You lie on your back on a 50-pound sled and hurtle downhill at incredible speeds. It’s a sport of extreme precision and extreme danger.

In luge, race times are recorded to the thousandth of a second, and the difference between a gold and silver medal may be less than half a second. Making tiny, unnecessary movements or slightly less efficient turns can be the difference between merely qualifying in your heat and winning the whole thing.

Luge is all about the clock. Milliseconds matter.

In a 100-meter dash, hundredths of seconds matter.

In the marathon, seconds matter.

The passage of time has everything to do with context. When I was in the fifth grade, that year felt like a decade. These days, entire years pass as if they were months. Decades feel like years. Didn’t I just turn 40?

Job put it best: “My life passes more swiftly than a runner” (Job 9:25).

We are living on the clock, and if it feels like life has been flying past you at breakneck speed the last few years, well, you are not alone.

I believe we have never been closer to the time of the return of Jesus Christ to this earth than we are right now. In Revelation, Jesus has very specific things to say about this to the church at Philadelphia. We could very easily remove the name “Philadelphia” from this passage and insert our own names. These are the words of Jesus to last days believers.

Here are three truths we learn from Him about how we are to live “on the clock” during the end times.

1. God Is in Control

Jesus starts His message to the church at Philadelphia by reminding them that God has all the authority:

“This is the message from the one who is holy and true,
    the one who has the key of David.
What he opens, no one can close;
    and what he closes, no one can open”
—Revelation 3:7

The key represents authority, and God says He will open some doors. He will close others. The doors He closes are closed for good, and the doors He opens will be opened for good. No power on earth can change this.

God is in control of all events in the history of this planet, past, present, and future.

That means we don’t have to be afraid to commit an unknown future to a known God. He is in control of our lives.

2. The Church Has an Open Door

Jesus has given the Church an unprecedented open door. If the key is a symbol of his authority, then the door is a symbol of opportunity. Paul wrote about this often. In 2 Corinthians, he mentions how “the Lord opened a door of opportunity” for him to preach the Gospel in the city of Troas. In Acts 14, upon preaching in Antioch, Paul and Barnabas speak of how God opened “the door of faith” to the Gentiles.

We should pray for such doors of opportunities to open in our own lives. We should all be looking for open doors to share our faith, because the seconds are ticking away. We are running out of time to lead people to Jesus.

It helps to think back to the context of the actual first-century church of Philadelphia. This church existed under Roman rule. The Romans had established Pax Romana, which effectively was a forced peace. Rome had bludgeoned the world into submission.

During this period of forced peace, Rome adopted many of the Greeks’ ideas, philosophies, and religious beliefs. People were experimenting with those concepts. They were searching for meaning. The timing was perfect for the spread of the Gospel.

Compare that to today. I was talking about watching the Winter Olympics—events taking place in China but broadcast immediately all the way on the other side of the world. And I watched those events, on my couch, on a phone that fits in my pocket. Modern technology has created a global village. Television, the internet, and mass communication have made the world a much smaller place.

More than 80 percent of the world population—an estimated 6.65 billion people—now own a smartphone. We can communicate like never before. God is in control and has used the modern age to open doors of opportunity for us to share the Gospel.

But He isn’t going to carry us through those doors. We have to walk through them on our own.

3. God Empowers Us to Fulfill Our Calling

If God calls us to share the Gospel, then He will also give us the strength to do it. This is how He spoke to the church at Philadelphia:

“I know your works. See, I have set before you an open door, and no one can shut it; for you have a little strength, have kept My word, and have not denied My name.”—Revelation 3:8

This wasn’t a negative comment about their weakness, but a commendation of their strength. The people of this church were coming back to life, like sick people recovering from an illness. It would almost imply that a revival was taking place.

Jesus commended the church of Philadelphia for taking little steps. It was a beginning. If God is opening doors for us, we need to take the steps to travel through them. Everything starts with a few little steps.

Time is of the essence. This year, this month, this week, or even this day may be your last opportunity to go through an open door.

Maybe you know someone whose heart is open to God right now because of what they see in the world—wars and rumors of wars, a global pandemic, a divided society. But just because their heart is open now doesn’t mean that it will be open forever. This moment matters, right down to the second.

Will you walk through that door? Will you look for opportunities to share the gospel?

We are on the clock. The seconds are ticking away. The Rapture is nearer than ever, and we don’t want anyone to be left behind.