Times and Seasons

When listening to popular preachers and faux prophets expound on the “times and seasons,” things quickly become. Every week, the church enters a new “prophetic season,” and each new shift in the “spirit realm” brings its own set of rules to the game. This next year, month, or day we will enter a season of deliverance, testing, burden, reward, loss, promotion, or demotion. If we fail to keep up, we will be left standing without a chair when the music stops.

These seasonal changes are announced so often it is impossible to keep pace with the prophetic program. It seems God changes course frequently and without warning. But we must, for did not Jesus command us to know the “times and seasons”?

[Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash]

During my early years as a disciple, it was enough to know we were living in the “Last Days.” The clock was running out, so now was the time to preach the Gospel at every opportunity. If we were in the “end times,” well, what would be the point of discussing the next (and the next, and the next…) “season”? Already we are living in History’s final phase before Jesus returns.

The Apostolic teachings preserved in the New Testament provide a clear answer to the question: WHEN are we? God sent His Son to redeem men “in the FULLNESS of time.” With his death and resurrection and the outpouring of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, the period known as the “Last Days” had begun in earnest.

His followers are the ones upon whom “the ENDS of the AGES” have come. We are living in History’s final season. Ever since the Cross, the institutions and “forms of this world have been passing away” - (Acts 2:17-22, Galatians 4:1-6, 1 Corinthians 7:31, 10:11, Hebrews 1:1-4).

If the “fullness of time” and the “ends of the ages” arrived already with Jesus, what is the point of seeking newer and greater “seasons”?

As for our discerning the “times and seasons” and what the Spirit is doing in this hour, the next one, or maybe next week, well, when the disciples asked Jesus WHEN he would “restore the kingdom,” rather than answer their question, he admonished them – “It is NOT for you to know the TIMES and SEASONS which the Father appointed to His own authority.”

And there it is. “Who can interpret the times or the seasons”? God and Him alone. The disciples of Jesus are called to live by faith, not by the clock, lunar cycles, or the rules of whatever “season” some “co-pastor” or prophetic pretended told you it is - (Acts 1:6-9).

When asked for the “sign of his coming,” Jesus warned his disciples, “No one EXCEPT THE FATHER ALONE knows the day or the hour of the coming of the Son of Man, not even the angels of heaven or the Son of Man.” For that matter, the “Son of Man is coming in a SEASON when you LEAST EXPECT” – (Mark 13:33).

He used the analogy of the “thief in the night” to illustrate the point. The homeowner could certainly prepare his household for the inevitable attack by the “thief,” but he could not know when the thief would strike. Likewise, believers today must always be ready for the sudden and unexpected return of Jesus.

Paul used the same analogy to make his point to the Thessalonians. He had no need to write about “times and seasons” BECAUSE they knew “ACCURATELY” that the “Day of the Lord is coming like a thief in the night.”

Instead of providing “signs” and “seasons” by which they could calculate its approach, he summoned the members of the church to live righteously in the light and remain prepared always for that day’s arrival.

GOING BACKWARDS

One of the silliest fads today is the use of calendrical calculations and prophetic pronouncements based on the Hebrew and even the Gregorian calendars. By decoding prophetic information from rabbinical year numbers and Hebrew month names, today’s prophet wannabes discover what God is about to do in the next “season.”

Yes, the Book of Leviticus details how ISRAEL was to keep the various feasts throughout the year, but nowhere does it teach that lunar cycles or any of the features of the calendar can or should be used as a TOOL OF DIVINATION.

Nowhere in the Hebrew Bible do we find Moses, Elijah, or any of Yahweh’s prophets making predictions or attempting to divine God’s plans from the monthly calendar, the current year number, eclipses, “blood moons,” or the shape of the moon’s shadow. Where in the New Testament do we find Jesus, John, or Peter making prophetic pronouncements from any calendar, Hebrew or otherwise?

As for Paul, he was blunt when he criticized the Galatians for “narrowly observing months and seasons and years,” practices he categorized as “rudimentary,” elementary things that believers ought to have abandoned long ago, vestiges of our pagan past.

To resort to such practices now that Jesus has come and we live “in the FULLNESS of time,” is tantamount to placing ourselves once again in servitude to the “powers and principalities” that remain hostile to the Son of God and his people.

To the Assembly in Colossae, Paul described the observation of “feast days, new moons, or sabbath days” as mere “shadows of the coming things.” They were only “types and shadows” of the coming good things that are now found in Jesus, who is the substance of what they foreshadowed.

[Photo by Marco Meyer on Unsplash]

It would be far better for us to learn and follow what Jesus and the original “prophets and apostles” taught, and the documents we collectively refer to as the New Testament are the only reliable historical sources for that information.

We have all that we need and more in Jesus and his teachings, so why are so many of us seeking answers and guidance in counterfeits and pale imitations of the substance that God has revealed in His Son “in the fullness of time”?

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• Apostasy and Misdirection - (Believers who are watching for apostasy outside the Church will be among the first who are overtaken by it as it operates in the Assembly)

• Serpents in the Assembly - (The Spirit of Antichrist is working to destroy the church from within, especially through deceivers and false teachers)

• Prophetic Blunders - (Time and again, popular preaching on end-time prophecy has propagated predictions and expectations that have not come to pass)