For believers in Christ it would be the most blessed of all if this year turns out to be the year of our Lordβs coming for His own. How long the present dispensation of grace will be prolonged we do not, and cannot, know. Even St. Paul, who was commissioned to make known the glorious truth of the rapture of the Church, did not know. He never dreamed that God would linger in mercy for more than two thousand years, for in I Thes. 4:16-18 he says:
βWe who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall be caught upβ¦β
Thus instructed Bible-believers in every generation since his day have rightly been on the alert for their Lord to come for them, for they know that βthe days are evilβ and every hour is an hour of grace.
To the Philippians the Apostle wrote: βWe look for the Savior,β to the Thessalonians: β[Ye]β¦ wait for His [Godβs] Son from heaven,β and to Titus he says that we should be βlooking for that blessed hope, and the appearing in glory of β¦our Savior, Jesus Christβ (Phil. 3:20; I Thes. 1:9,10; Titus 2:11-13).
With the Lordβs coming and the close of βthe dispensation of the grace of Godβ so much nearer than it was in Paulβs day, we say to the unsaved: βReceive not the grace of God in vainβ¦. Behold,Β nowΒ is the accepted time; beholdΒ nowΒ is the day of salvationβ (II Cor. 6:1,2).
And to the saved we say: βBuy up the time,β take advantage of every opportunity to win the lost to Christ, for βthe days are evilβ (Eph.Β 5:16) and the day of grace may soon be brought to a close. source
