[0:00] Amen. I guess to think a little while this evening about these two verses, 7 and 8 in James chapter 5. Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord.
[0:13] Behold, the husbandman waited for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he received the early and latter rain. Be he also patient.
[0:25] Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. If we might have taken as a colloquial title for the Lord's Day morning, a sort of title, When We Are Weak.
[0:39] Paul talked about his own weakness and when he was weak, and the Lord's strength was able to come into play. On the Lord's Day evening, we might think in terms of calling, When We Are Few, Jesus saying, Will ye also go away?
[0:51] And the twelve left to say, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou alone is the words of eternal life. So if it is when we are weak, when we are few, tonight we might think in terms of a colloquial title that might be perhaps, When the Way Seems Long.
[1:09] And these verses in James perhaps sung that sentiment up. And yet one of the things I'd like us to recognise is that what James is teaching here, or the Lord is teaching through James, is not unusual in terms of Christian doctrine.
[1:26] It is not that which James is coming out with, which nobody else has come out with. It is rather that which is a consistent building block of the Christian witness, of those who are called to follow Jesus.
[1:41] It is not a sprint, the Christian life. It is rather a marathon. And anybody who runs marathons will know how much training you have to do.
[1:53] Not that I have any experience of it. But also they know that they need to build up their stamina and their ability to keep going when all their strength seems to have gone.
[2:04] Apparently it is common amongst marathon runners to hit what is popularly known as the wall. And they hit that about two-thirds or three-quarters of the way through the actual run.
[2:16] They can keep going for so many miles and then suddenly everything just gives out. They hit the wall. And the ability to complete the course will depend on whether or not when suddenly they hit that obstacle of endurance, whether they are able to sum up any reserves or any initial injection of strength, to enable them not to sprint on, but just to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
[2:46] Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Now this patience or long-suffering is sometimes referred to.
[2:57] You'll remember, no doubt, that this is part of the fruit of the Spirit. Galatians 5, 22. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.
[3:13] Long-suffering, bearing long with the difficulty or with the frustration or with the time that it seems to be taking for the Lord to come back or for all things to be completed.
[3:25] Why doesn't he put right the wrongs in the world? Why doesn't he sort out the injustices? Why doesn't he come and triumph and all his enemies will see him and we could rejoice then?
[3:37] Well, of course, the time will come. And that same letter to the Galatians, which teaches of the fruit of the Spirit, part of which is long-suffering, also says in chapter 6 at verse 9, Let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.
[3:58] Paul and James in perfect harmony because they are both instructed and inspired by the same Holy Spirit. The author of God's Word is God's Spirit.
[4:14] And I've said so many times in the past, we'll say again, Therefore, the Spirit of God and the Word of God cannot contradict one another. It is not possible for anyone with one shred of legitimacy to say, Well, this is what the Bible says, but the Spirit of God has told me that now we should understand this to mean the complete opposite.
[4:36] Now we should understand in our more sophisticated modern day and age that what God says here, or what His Word says, we should now understand to mean something completely the opposite, completely different.
[4:48] And yet, this is a new thing the Spirit is teaching us. Whatever Spirit may be teaching us to go away from the Word of God, it will not be the Spirit of Christ. It may be the Spirit of the age.
[5:00] It may be the Spirit of Antichrist. It may be the Spirit of the evil one. It may be any number of evil spirits of which there are abundance. Beloved, believe not every spirit, John says.
[5:11] But try the spirits, whether they be of Christ. The Spirit of God and the Word of God will never contradict one another because the one is the author of the other.
[5:24] Therefore, be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. This is part and parcel of standard Christian doctrine. And what James is encouraging his readers to recognize is that what is being required of them and what they are finding difficult is not something unique to them.
[5:46] It's like if you're doing your marathon and then your legs begin to go rubbery and you're getting all wobbly and you can't go any further. I must be really unfit. I must be such an appalling athlete despite all my training, despite all that I've done.
[5:59] Here I am completely collapsing about the two-thirds or the three-quarters mark. And oh dear, this doesn't happen to anybody but me. Anybody in that particular kind of event will tell you this is quite normal.
[6:13] This is what the runners expect to happen. This is what you've got to guard against because it is standard. The difficulty, the weariness and the body just beginning to shut down at a certain stage.
[6:25] Not right at the end and not when you start out, not even halfway. But rather when you get into the stage of thinking, surely not long now, that's suddenly when everything may collapse.
[6:38] Everything may seem as if there is no more strength. Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Jesus himself teaches in his own gospel, like a Luke's account of the gospel, for example.
[6:52] He says, you know, in chapter 21, verse 19, he says, In your patience possess ye your souls. And the context of that is of things going against the believer.
[7:06] He says, you know, ye shall be betrayed both by parents and brethren. And if you're going to follow Christ, you might be blessed in coming from a Christian family. Or you might be blessed in coming from a family which even if they're not red-hot believers, they're prepared to encourage you and strengthen you in your Christian walk.
[7:22] And they're going to give you all the support they can. But it's quite possible, especially in this day and age, that you may prove to be the only believer in your household. And those who cannot abide Christ in their home may turn against you.
[7:38] There have been instances, you know, that, you know, in our own islands and in modern times of people who have been deserted or divorced by their spouses because the spouse simply could not cope, could not abide the fact that their beloved had become a Christian.
[7:58] And could you not, I am not exaggerating, that has happened in cases that I have known of. Where one partner has left the other or chucked them out because they have become a Christian.
[8:11] Ye shall be betrayed both by parents and brethren and kinsfolks and friends. And some of you shall be caused to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake.
[8:22] And this we see to be true in our own day and age. We see how, you know, even that which is of the world, the world will tolerate. Have you ever noticed how much, you know, despite the fact that the amount of terrorism is being done by the followers of one particular religion, one particular prophet.
[8:40] And yet the media and the government cannot do enough to fall over themselves to appease that particular religion. But rather the extremities of one particular religion are used to introduce legislation, so-called anti-extremist legislation, which isn't used against them.
[8:58] But it's used against Christians and Sunday schools and Christian schools and so on, or Jews or whatever it may be. Anything rather than a real target. Ye shall be hated of all men.
[9:09] Whether it's atheists, whether it's Islam, whether it's Hinduism, whether it's Buddhism, whether it's unbelief and humanism in the West, all are against the gospel. Ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake.
[9:22] If you are going to follow Christ, you will find no natural allies save your fellow brothers and sisters. And that is something that we have to recognize as we take on the following of Christ.
[9:36] But there shall not a hair of your head perish. In your patience possess your souls. Later on in that same chapter, of course, Jesus goes on to talk about men's hearts failing them for fear.
[9:50] And for looking after those things which are coming on the earth. And for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. Then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads.
[10:05] For your redemption draweth nigh. Now you might think, oh yes, wouldn't that be wonderful if the Lord would just do that? Okay, now just be honest and press the pause button for a moment.
[10:15] In your own heart, in your own thoughts, I think. If the Lord is to come in the clouds of glory tomorrow or even tonight, would we honestly say, oh thank goodness Lord, thank goodness it is you we've waited so long.
[10:28] Or would we perhaps say, oh Lord, I'm not quite ready, sorry. Would you maybe come next week or next Monday? I'm going to have so many things I need to do first and I'm not quite prepared spiritually as I should be.
[10:38] I'm not how I would want you to find me when you come. So Lord, just pull off a wee bit once a bit soon. I wish I hadn't come just yet. We want to be ready for the Lord.
[10:49] We want him to find us prepared. And with our loins guarded and our lamps lit and with the place swept and garnished and ready to open to the Master when he comes. That's how we want to be found.
[11:01] That's how we want the Master to find his servants. Is that how he would find us if he came back tonight? Is that how he would find us spiritually if he came? It's perhaps of the Lord's mercy that he doesn't just come quite yet.
[11:17] Because when men's hearts begin to fail and for fear and when they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of glory and then we're to look up and our salvation draweth nigh. Would we not have a wee bit of cause to look about us with a wee bit of shamefacedness and say, oh, this is how he has found me.
[11:33] This is the state in which the Lord has come back. This is the state I am in. I am not ready for my Master to find me as I am. There is mercy behind why he holds off as long as he does.
[11:48] Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husband of the man waited for the precious fruit of the earth and had long patience for it until he received the early and latter rain.
[12:03] It's here to have planted a field full of seed. And then the green ears begin to come up in the corn. And you think, yeah, okay, I've got a field now full of green corn. That's great.
[12:14] I'm going to put in the sickle now. Send in the combine harvester. Gathering my sheaves green and raw as they are. You're not going to have anything to put in your barn at the end of the day because you've taken it in too soon.
[12:25] It's going to be raw. It's going to be green. It's going to be unripe. It will be unusable because it wasn't yet the time of the harvest. We didn't have patience.
[12:36] We've got a field full of something. But it's not actually the corn and the grain and the harvest that we planted or what we wanted because we didn't wait patiently for the right time.
[12:49] Notice how the fruit of the earth is described as precious. The precious fruit of the earth. The farmer has planted the seed.
[13:02] He has invested seed in the ground. Every seed that he has planted is seed that he cannot eat. Not yet anyway.
[13:13] It's seed that he can't now send off to the mill to be ground for flour and sold or make bread or whatever it is. In a sense what he has put into the ground is temporarily lost to him.
[13:25] He cannot sell it. He cannot get the good of it. He is the poorer in one sense for what he has invested in the ground. Everything else that he has got left, yes, he has got that.
[13:37] But he would be so much better in the short term if he could use everything he has stuck down in the ground as well instead of having to invest it into the soil. But that investment of what is precious, what is costing him not to put that off to the market just yet, to hold it back, to invest for next time.
[14:00] That precious, costly seed he trusts and believes will bring forth in the fullness of time a greater abundance than that which has been put into the ground in the first place.
[14:15] Except the corn of wheat die. Fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone. But if it fall into the ground and die, it shall bring forth a harvest. Behold the husband and waiteth for the precious, costly fruit to be out.
[14:30] You see this word, precious, remember that's what we find in Psalm 1, 2, 6. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed. The seed is costing him to put it into the ground.
[14:45] It is wealth that he cannot now gain for himself just now. But he is having to invest. He is having to trust that there will be a harvest.
[14:55] If the harvest is to fail, if there isn't rains, if there isn't, you know, if there isn't the growth, if there isn't sufficient peace for it to grow up on, if the crop gets destroyed, he might as well have kept back that seed and sold it or eaten it or done something else with it, ground it down with a flower.
[15:12] He might as well have used it here and now instead of sticking it in the ground unless there is going to be a harvest. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless, without a doubt, come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him, the return on his investment, because he was prepared to lose that quantity of seed, because he was prepared to give it up so that he might have a greater return.
[15:46] Psalm 116, if you turn back a couple of pages from that 126, of course, says, verse 15, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.
[15:58] And that word translated as precious, it means, again, costly. The Lord recognizes the cost of the death of his saints. And that just doesn't mean martyrdom.
[16:09] It doesn't just mean those who die in terms of this world. It is also, I would suggest to you in all reverence, that I think the Lord recognizes that there is a cost to each individual soul who dies to self.
[16:25] When we follow Jesus, yes, we are born again, but we are only able to be born again to the new life because we have died to the old life. And of that dying to the old life, it's not, of course, an instantaneous thing.
[16:42] If it was, we wouldn't have any more struggle or any more suffering or difficulties with sin or temptation. But yes, it receives a body blow, a fatal blow, you could say, the old man, the old self.
[16:54] But the process of sanctification, the process of making us holy and ripening us and fitting us for heaven, is an ongoing struggle.
[17:05] A struggle of which Paul writes, you know, in Romans 7, what he says, you know, there's a battle going on, the things that I would, I do not, and the things that I would not, and I do. And so there's this ongoing warfare, the spirit rusting against the flesh and the flesh against the spirit.
[17:19] And these two are contrary one to the other, but by the grace of God, the spirit wins more and more, and the flesh dies a little more. It is mortified, literally put to death, the old self.
[17:33] The process of the dying is a long-drawn-out and painful process. As new life comes in, there is a cost to the new life.
[17:46] There is a cost to the dying to self. And the Lord recognizes that costly in his sight is the death of the saints. The dying to their old self is not something that comes by nature to us.
[18:00] It is not a natural thing. It is rather a supernatural thing. It is that which the Lord has wrought in his people.
[18:11] What hath God wrought, as we saw last night, number 23, verse 23. Behold, a husband who waiteth for the precious food to the earth.
[18:22] Costly, but rich and precious because, and only because, of the investment he has made for the future. Of that which he might have expended upon himself in the present.
[18:37] But instead he lays up in store by putting into the ground that which might feed him just now. That it might feed him to a far greater extent for the future.
[18:49] That he will have abundance. More than each individual seed per stock. Per cluster on every stock that he's able to give. That he can sell it to him.
[18:59] He can be enriched by it. That he can feed himself and his family. There will be more in abundance than what has been put down into the ground. And there will be more in abundance than whatever we may have invested of this mortal life.
[19:15] Into the life which is immortal. Why is the way long? Because the harvest is not yet ripe. The precious fruit of the earth.
[19:27] The husband will have long patience for it. Until he receive the early and the latter rain. Now, early and latter rain is something that we're not quite used to in this country.
[19:39] We think of rain all year round, pretty much. And we have a country that is not dry. That is not, you know, lacking in water or moisture or streams or burns or locks or whatever.
[19:50] Although we have seen on occasion, you know, if you get, say, five, six weeks without rainfall. Just how fragile is our supposedly abundance of water.
[20:01] But in the Middle East and the Holy Land, they depended upon a particular, you know, time of downpour. In both spring and autumn. The early and the latter rains.
[20:13] The one to soften up the ground. And the other to bring forth an ongoing growth just before the harvest. We could perhaps, we might say, spiritualise this a little.
[20:26] We could spiritualise it for the individual. And say that the early rain is that which works in our conversion. And the changing of our lives from the old dead self into the new life in Christ.
[20:40] But the ongoing struggle, the difficulty, the marathon of it, the hitting of the wall. We become dry. We become parched. We become like the Israelites in the desert.
[20:51] And there is a temptation on the one hand either to murmur and complain and say, let's go back to Egypt. Or perhaps to take it to the Lord as Moses did, who produced water from the very rock itself.
[21:04] The early and the latter rain. The latter rain, that which will refresh us for the final stretch. Sometimes this is taken by some commentators as being a sort of collective reference spiritually.
[21:17] That the early rain is the first kind of pentagost. That huge outpouring of the Spirit that brought in so many thousands at one goal. Into the Gospel Church in the Acts of the Apostles.
[21:29] And that the latter rain will be a similar Pentecostal outpouring. Except that will be all over the world. And that that will bring in the final harvest of souls just before the Lord comes back.
[21:42] Well, that would be a lovely thought. And that would be great if that's the way that it is to be understood spiritually. We probably don't need to vex ourselves too much with what will be the case in the end times.
[21:56] We don't really have to worry, I would suggest to you. About whether the correct understanding of the Word of God is pre-millennial, post-millennial, amillennial.
[22:06] Or anything else like that. Leave these things, I would suggest, with the Lord. Because the likelihood is, not that we can predict when the Lord will come back. But the likelihood is that we ourselves will be summoned to stand before the judgment seat of Christ long before he comes back to gather all unto himself.
[22:26] We don't know that for sure, of course. The Lord may come or he may call. But it is likely that we will be summoned as individuals from this veil of time before the Lord brings all things to an end.
[22:38] At any rate, if that is the case, then it means that the time for which we must continue in this race, in this marathon, is in fact far less than we probably consider.
[22:51] Be ye also patient. Establish your hearts. For the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.
[23:02] And there's that reference again to the coming of the Lord. It was there in verse 7. Be patient there for brethren unto the coming of the Lord. And now be ye also patient. Establish your hearts. For the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.
[23:14] It's like Paul writes to the Romans. Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. Time, as God reveals it in his word, is not circular, as some false religions would suggest.
[23:28] That it is a sort of ongoing wheel and we're permanently on this wheel. We come in as one kind of creature and then we live a good life. We come as a slightly higher creature. And then if we're even better, we come as a human being.
[23:39] And then maybe we come as a Buddhist priest or whatever the case may be. But it just goes on and on and on. And the greatest thing you can do is get off this roundabout and just go into non-existence. And that is not what God reveals of time.
[23:52] Time, as the Lord reveals it, is linear. In the sense that it is a line, a straight line. It has a beginning of which we are told in God's word.
[24:02] In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. The earth was without form and void. And darkness was from the face of the deep. The spirit of God moved it from the face of the waters. God said, let there be light and there was light.
[24:13] Time had a beginning. God created it at the beginning. Time has an ending. We read in Revelation chapter 10, The angel who stood with one foot upon the sea and the earth upon the land and held up his hand and swore by him that liveth forever and ever that there should be time no longer.
[24:32] Now we can understand that either in terms of there won't be any more opportunity, time no longer because it's all fulfilled, or we could also, I would suggest, equally understand it in terms of there is no longer any such thing as time.
[24:46] There is only eternity. Time no longer. It has a beginning and it has an end. And we are somewhere on this line. We don't know exactly where we are, but in a sense it doesn't really matter because we are only allotted a certain number of days.
[25:04] We don't know how many. We don't know how few. We can know for certain how many are behind us. And we can know with some likelihood or probability how many in our most optimistic guess we might be spared for, but we don't guarantee any of it.
[25:21] So as far as we are concerned, the coming of the Lord does draw nigh. It is getting nearer. Now is our salvation nearer than when we believe. And as, of course, is a mathematical fact, the first 18 years of your life, take all of your life to pass.
[25:37] It seems ages from when you were a baby to when you become a young adult. The next 18 years of your life until you're 36, passing off a lot quicker. And partly because in terms of fractions, that now is only half of your life, 50% of your life.
[25:52] And then the next 18 years after that, that goes even quicker because the fraction is now reduced again. And all the way through your life, you will find, as you know yourself, time going quicker and quicker and quicker.
[26:06] Now it's not that there's less minutes in an hour or less seconds in a minute. The clock is still going around at the same time. But the days and the years are just falling away from us. They're becoming more and more packed with so much to do.
[26:18] And there is less and less time to us. Be ye also patient. Establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.
[26:29] It is nearer now than it has ever been. A new experience or mine. Jesus himself teaches, again going back to what he prophesies about the end times.
[26:42] He says, Now learn a parable of the fig tree. Matthew 24, verse 22. When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh.
[26:53] So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. The Lord's coming is at the very doors.
[27:04] This is why he says, verse 9, No, grudge not one against another, lest ye be condemned. Behold, the judge standeth before the door. To the very doors, Jesus is coming. He's not in the door yet.
[27:14] He hasn't broken down the door. He hasn't perhaps even knocked at night, opened the door. But he's there. He's right there. I don't know if you've ever had this experience. Sometimes you've had this experience that, let's say, you know somebody's due to arrive, but you're so glad you haven't come yet.
[27:29] And then the car draws up outside the house, and maybe you're just struggling out the shower, trying to get your clothes on or whatever. Well, they're still getting something out the boot. That's okay. This is a wee bit longer.
[27:40] Okay, they're just coming up the driveway. Oh, I've got to finish getting everything very tightly, really quickly. And then they ring the doorbell, bring them all over. Oh, how lovely to see you. Isn't it great now? And nobody knows all the stromash there has been beforehand.
[27:53] Because they are at the very doors, but they're not in the door yet. So you've still got the time. Even if the Lord himself and his judgment be at the very doors, there is still time within the door to make ready and to be prepared.
[28:11] Now, this is one reason why he teaches us here that we should not get cluttered. Cluttered with grudging one against another. Cluttered with bearing ill will against one another.
[28:24] Or squabbling or failing to forgive one another. Because all these things add to the weight that you must carry. They get in the way. They obstruct the clear view and the clear vision and the clear road that we need if we are to continue this race.
[28:41] If you're going back to the marathon analogy, it's difficult enough to run it if you're running in a singlet and shorts with running shoes. Imagine if you're having to wear it in hiking boots with a hoping great rucksack on your back and carrying all manner of pots and pans and equipment.
[28:55] It's going to make it so much harder. These things that the athlete would carry in such a case are the equivalent of our arguing with our brothers and sisters or bearing grudges or failing to forgive as we hope God will forgive us.
[29:11] And all this other clutter that we bring with us. All the burdens of our hearts that we fail to give to the Lord. All the grudges that we fail to forgive.
[29:23] All the junk that we bring with us which obscures and obstructs our clear view of the Lord and may poison our relationship with others. Be ye also patient.
[29:37] Establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord that grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned.
[29:49] When it says condemned, it means judged. You know, like in Matthew 7, judge not that ye be unjudged. But with what judge will you judge another? That's the judgment you'll be judged with. If we want people to be harsh with us, that will be what happens if we are harsh with others.
[30:04] You know, do unto others as you'd have them do to you. Lest ye be condemned, don't grudge one against another because the judge himself standeth before the Lord. The Lord himself bears long with us.
[30:18] And that is one reason why he has not yet come back. It is one reason why the way may seem long, but the Lord is holding off that we might be as ready as we would desire to be for when he comes.
[30:40] Jesus said, He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. This is a verse which I wrote down long ago, many years before even I was converted, when life seemed really tough and I couldn't understand why God was letting my life be so bad.
[30:58] I wrote this verse down. He that shall endure unto the end. Matthew 24, verse 13. He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And there's that at the end. You've got to keep going to the end. It's not the person that completes three quarters of the marathon that gets the medal.
[31:13] It doesn't really matter if you come in first or second or 56. If you cross the line, you get the medal for having completed the marathon. He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
[31:27] But in that context, Jesus says, Many false prophets shall rise and shall deceive many. How many are deceived by those who falsely claim to head up Christian church or to be a new prophet for this branch or that branch of the church or perhaps an old prophet to a world religion?
[31:49] By their fruits, you shall know them, Jesus said. Do they point us to Christ or do they point us somewhere else? Do they point us to themselves? Do they point us to the world and enjoyment of all the things in the world and don't worry too much about God and holiness and so on?
[32:03] Or do they point us to Christ? Many false prophets shall rise and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, which of course it does in this day and age, the love of many shall wax cold.
[32:16] You'll think, oh, well, we can still serve the Lord without having to be red hot for Jesus. You know, that's getting a wee bit fanatical, isn't it? You know what? Just be a good person. Go to church. Yes. Duff your hat to the Lord and just be a good upstanding member of the community that iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
[32:33] I remember reading some time ago in a devotional booklet how the writer was saying, we can be quite good about doing the outward things. We can be faithful and diligent and loyal and keep the commandments as much as we're able to and show outward conformity to these things.
[32:49] And we mean it. We're doing our best. We're trying to play the game, as it were. But we have lost somewhere along the line the language of the lover. There is not that intensity of desire and devotion exclusively to Christ.
[33:05] We may love many other things in the same way as the chaste husband or wife may love other relatives or friends and so on. But that love is quite different for the unique faithful love for the beloved, for the spouse.
[33:20] Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. And that he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations.
[33:36] And then shall the end come. Just a few moments ago in the vestry, the elders and I were just chatting about, you know, social media, Facebook, Twitter, all that sort of stuff.
[33:49] And how, although it can be used for great evil, it can also be used for great good. And it is used in this way in many countries which are closed to the gospel.
[34:01] How through this social media, gospel, servers and messages and books and the Bible itself is able to be beamed into countries and downloaded in places where people are prohibited from ever owning a Bible or having it on a shelf.
[34:16] but they can download it and they can read it online and they can drink in the truth of the gospel and this gospel is going further and faster now than it has ever gone before.
[34:29] It's just as though if you had this huge field to reap and there was one guy slogging away with a sickle and then after a little while a few more others joined him with a side and they were cutting down a fair bit more and then they brought in a combine harvest and they're going up and down in the fields like nobody's business and the number of sheaves being baled and brought in it's faster and more than it's ever been before.
[35:20] This gospel of the kingdom shall they preach to all kingdoms of the world and when everybody has heard not everybody will not believe but when everybody has heard and it has reached every corner of the world then shall the end come.
[35:34] As we've mentioned in the past there will come a day when the last stock and grain of the harvest has been gathered in and when that happens there will no longer be any purpose for this world or for the commodity we know as time any more than when you have finished a packet of crisps you don't treasure the empty bag you put it in the bed you dispose of it because the reason why you got that packet in the first place is now fulfilled you've eaten all the crisps you've gathered in all that you wanted the field is completely harvested the last stock is gathered in be patient therefore brethren unto the coming of the Lord behold the husband and waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth and hath long patience for it until he receive the early and latter rain be ye also patient establish your hearts the way may seem long but it is shorter than it has ever been now tonight it is shorter it is shorter for us than it has ever been before there is less ground to cover less time to fulfil less time also to get our affairs in order and to make sure that when the doorbell rings or the knock comes on the door we can open readily and say how wonderful to see you Lord welcome all is prepared be patient establish your hearts because it is not far off now you may feel like you're hitting the wall but there is strength yet because the Lord will supply it for the coming of the Lord
[37:14] Lord to work no what is happening will unhappy to be cared about in the Terra and then to keep up in the family and not now already and to only go and how have will be yes