God’s Town Crier

“Oyez!” “Oyez!” “Oyez!”

As the King’s watchman I must blow the trumpet and warn the people. (Ezekial 33: 3-11.)

Joel 2: 12-14. (NIV)

“Even now,” declares the LORD,

“return to me with all your heart,

with fasting and weeping and mourning.”

Rend your heart and not your garments,

Return to the LORD your God,

for he is gracious and compassionate,

slow to anger and abounding in love,

and he relents from sending calamity.

Who knows? He may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing-

grain offerings and drink offerings for the LORD your God.

“There will be ‘The day of the LORD’…

It will be great; dreadful.

Who can endure it?

The earth will shake, the sky tremble.

The sun and moon will be darkened.

The stars no longer shine. (Joel 2: 10, 11. NIV)

“Don’t be like those who watched Noah build the Ark!

Matthew 24: 37-39. (NIV)

As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking,

marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark;

and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away.

That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of man.

2 Peter 3: 9, 10. (NIV)

The LORD is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.

He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief.

The heavens will disappear with a roar;

the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.

“Just make sure that you are in the Ark (Christ Jesus) when the ‘flood’ comes.”

C.S. Lewis puts it this way:

Well, Christians think He is going to land in force;

we do not know when.

But we can guess why He is delaying.

He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely.

I do not suppose you and I would have thought much of a Frenchman who waited till the Allies were marching into Germany and then announced he was on our side.

God will invade.

But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does.

When that happens, it is the end of the world.

When the author walks on to the stage the play is over.

God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then,

when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else- something it never entered your head to conceive- comes crashing in;

something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left?

For this time it will be God without disguise;

something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistiable horror into every creature.

It will be too late then to choose your side.

There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up.

That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have choosen,

whether we realised it before or not.

Now, to-day, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side.

God is holding back to give us that chance.

It will not last for ever.

We must take it or leave it.

“Oyez!” “Oyez!”

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