Revelation Chapter Three, The Hour Christ Comes

Revelation 3b Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you.

This language hearkens back to Matthew’s Gospel. There our Lord informed the apostles, “Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming,” Matthew 24:42. He also specifically says to the apostles, “Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect,” Matthew 24:44.

The imminence of the Lord’s arrival is a recurring theme in Scripture. In the church age there is nothing standing between the moment we stand in, and the Rapture of the saints, heralding in the seven year Tribulation period. Jesus makes it very clear that His arrival will be sudden and without any preamble. The parable of the ten virgins demonstrates this elegantly. Told in Matthew 25:1-13, Jesus speaks about wise and foolish virgins. The wise had oil; i.e., they were saved. The foolish that lacked oil were not saved. This parable further demonstrates the lordship of Christ over all His creatures, saved or unsaved.

Moving along, the wise trimmed their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom, while the foolish went to fetch oil, came too late, and were not permitted entrance. The bridegroom made their unsaved state plain when he told them, “I say to you, I do not know you,” Matthew 25:12. This is similar language to what Jesus employs in Matthew 7:21-23. There, the unsaved hold up their works as testimony that they belong to God. But Jesus emphasizes relationship, not accomplishment: “I never knew you,” Matthew 7:23.

Believers will not know when the Lord is coming. We are instructed to keep watch, or to perform the good works we have been given to do in His absence, so that when He arrives, He finds us doing them, rather than abstaining from obedience. Sardis is warned that the imminent return of Christ will suddenly come without warning, thief-like, and they will all be caught unprepared. James writes, “Do not grumble against one another, brethren, lest you be condemned. Behold, the Judge is standing at the door!” James 5:9. The idea is that Christ, the Judge, is right outside the room; all that separates us from His immediate bodily presence is that proverbial door, which the Lord will open when the Father’s time is full, which can be any time for us. We do not, and we cannot know. Date setting is misleading, inaccurate, and distracting.

The whole of the warning for Jesus our Lord coming as a thief in the night can be extrapolated here. What isn’t said, or what the Lord did not finish saying implicitly suggests what He told the apostles in Matthew. The unsaved found unawares will be cut in two and his portion (or inheritance) will be with the hypocrites, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, Matthew 24:51. We know the weeping and gnashing of teeth is the outer darkness of Matthew 25:30, or the darkness the rebel angels suffered in Jude 6. Jude extrapolates, adding that these certain false believers will be consigned to the, “blackness of darkness forever,” Jude 13. The outer darkness only and always means the express absence of God’s presence. It is a place of judgment and punishment. The professing Christians who have not believed the gospel in Sardis will suffer this fate when the Lord suddenly returns, and the saints who let them go quietly, without preaching the gospel to them will be held accountable for their tacit complicity.