[Note: This is a bilingual sermon. The pastor speaks in English and the content is then rendered in Chinese by a translator. Both languages are preserved as delivered. This is Part A of the second sermon in the Easter 1993 camp series on hastening the Lord's return.]
This second camp sermon returns to the theme of 2 Peter 3 and the possibility of hastening the Lord's return. The Korean church's failed date-setting is mentioned again as a cautionary contrast: the Lord's coming is not mechanically fixed but is responsive to what his people do and who they are. The time calculations — 1995 or 1996 based on the 7,000-year cycle, 2007 based on the 40-year generation from 1967 — remain possibilities rather than certainties, and whether his return comes earlier or later depends in part on whether we hasten or delay it by our faithfulness.
The Promised Land analogy runs through this series: God gave the land to Israel, but they had to fight for every inch of it. The Lord has appointed a time for his return, but we are not passive observers — the responsibility lies with his people to cooperate with his purposes. The first two petitions of the Lord's Prayer are directly connected to this theme. "Hallowed be your name" means that God's name is glorified and made holy through the lives of his people: as John 17:19 records, Jesus consecrated himself so that his disciples might be truly consecrated — his holiness is to be reproduced in us and displayed to the world.
"Your kingdom come" is a prayer that his return would be hastened — a direct petition for what this camp is about. The third petition, "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven," points to what will happen when Jesus comes again: at his return, God's will shall be done on earth as perfectly as it is done in heaven. To pray this petition with understanding is to long for and to participate in the hastening of that day. All three of these opening clauses of the Lord's Prayer are connected to the coming of the kingdom.
The rabbinic sources — G.F. Moore's Judaism and E.E. Urbach's The Sages — record the same teaching discussed in the previous session: if all Israel repented for a single day, the son of David would come. Acts 3:19-21 is the New Testament counterpart, where Peter connects the people's repentance directly with the Father's act of sending Jesus back. The second point of this series is therefore repentance — repentance that begins with the individual believer and extends outward as a message preached to all people everywhere.
# Hasten the Lord's Return (Camp Sermon 2, Part B) — One Holy Day, Vision of the Kingdom Come, and the Church as the New Society
[Note: This is a bilingual sermon. The pastor speaks in English and the content is then rendered in Chinese by a translator. Both languages are preserved as delivered. This is Part B of the second sermon in the Easter 1993 camp series on hastening the Lord's return.]
The rabbinic teaching challenges us personally: can you remember one single day when you lived according to the Bible from morning to night without failing once? When you got up that morning, you were overflowing with love. You were full of Christ-likeness. From morning to night, you lived in a beautiful Christ-like life, and at the end of the day you went to sleep wonderfully. Can you remember one such day? Today is Easter Sunday, which in the Jewish tradition would be called a high Sabbath — a special Sabbath above the ordinary. If all of God's people together lived in the fullness of the Christian life for even this one day — no failing — the Jewish teachers taught that the son of David would come the very next morning.
What would that day look like? It would be a world transformed. You go to the hospital to visit a sick person and find him gone — but not dead: he is standing in the corridor, healthy and strong, declaring that he is very well. You go to the cemetery to lay flowers and find the tombs open — and further along under the trees, you see your loved one walking, smelling her favourite flower. There are no more policemen because they are no longer needed, no more soldiers, and the lawyers are all out of a job because no one is fighting with anyone anymore. The poor who had nothing to eat find that fruit trees are laden with food for them. There will be no more tears in anyone's eyes. The crippled will be jumping for joy. The blind shall see and the deaf will sing. That is what "your will be done on earth" means — the Lord has already told us what his will looks like, and it is glorious beyond imagination.
We can hasten his coming even now by doing his will. But the difficulty is plain: how can we get all the people in one church — never mind all the churches everywhere — to do his will for even one day? It seems impossible. But Genesis 18 gives us hope. Abraham asked God whether he would spare Sodom if there were ten righteous people among all those thousands — and the astonishing answer was yes, ten righteous would save the whole city. Then there is the sobering counterpart in Ezekiel: the Lord said his eye went through all of Israel looking for one person to stand in the breach, and he could not find even one. Not ten, not one. And because he could not find one, Israel was destroyed.
But we are in the New Testament. Jesus has died and risen from the dead, and that resurrection power is now available to every believer. If in the Old Testament not one person could be found, it must be possible in the New — the power is greater, the resources are more. Even two or three in this church who are wholly committed to letting the fullness of God's life be manifest in them could hasten the Lord's return. We are not wild dreamers expecting every believer to live spotlessly; we know that will not happen, not because it cannot be done but because most will not have the determination to trust his power fully. But if even two or three in this church have this desire, that will already move the time of the Lord's return sooner.
The third element that must happen before the Lord's return is stated in Matthew 24:14: the gospel must reach to the ends of the earth. If the gospel does not spread there, the Lord's return will be held up — and no one else is going to do it. Excuses come readily: a baby to feed, a fiancé who still has studies to finish, a doctoral programme that will take seven or eight years. But Russia is now wide open — you can stand on Red Square in Moscow and preach the gospel, and no one will stop you. Even Koreans whose English is no better than ours can preach there and be understood. Where there is a will, there is a way.
Broadcasting and literature have a supporting role but cannot replace living people carrying the gospel on their feet. Romans 10:15 speaks of the beautiful feet of those who bring the gospel — it must be carried by people, not merely transmitted over the airwaves. The pastor recounts his own conversion: for years he heard the gospel in a Catholic school and dismissed it as nonsense, not even worth listening to. It was only when he saw the life of one individual — a person in whom the death and resurrection power of Christ was visibly real — that his eyes were opened. Not the words alone, but a life. And something even more powerful than one life is a whole community of such lives shining together.
Romans 14:17 defines the kingdom of God as righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit — and the church is meant to be a preliminary manifestation of that coming kingdom now. It is like an older model of a car that gives you a clear idea of what the new version will look like when perfected. When people enter the church, do they see righteousness — fairness and justice, with no one throwing their weight around, and leaders who are servants of all? Do they sense peace and harmony — like the Chinese scroll seen in Penang airport, which read that harmony between people is the most precious thing, and that a family without harmony is hell on earth? Among the co-workers, even sharing a bungalow together, there is such peace and joy that they break out in loud laughter without knowing how to stop — the neighbours must wonder why these leaders are always laughing so happily.
In the book of Revelation, the Greek word tacky — meaning speedily or quickly — appears seven times, in keeping with Revelation's pervasive structure of sevens. Four of those occurrences refer to the Lord's return, and the first appears in chapter 11:14. The Lord himself says, through this last book of the Bible, that he is coming quickly. He is not merely waiting for us to hasten things — he himself longs to come back to us. He wants to come because he loves us.
# Hasten the Lord's Return (Camp Sermon 2, Part C) — Revelation's 'I Come Quickly,' Maranatha, and Paul's Strategy of Planting Churches
[Note: This is a bilingual sermon. The pastor speaks in English and the content is then rendered in Chinese by a translator. Both languages are preserved as delivered. This is Part C of the second and final sermon in the Easter 1993 camp series on hastening the Lord's return.]
In the last chapter of Revelation, the Lord's declaration "I am coming quickly" appears three times. In verse 7: Behold, I am coming quickly — blessed is he who keeps the words of this book. In verse 12: Behold, I am coming quickly, and my reward is with me to give to everyone according to his work. And in verse 20, the very last occurrence: he who testifies to these things says, surely I am coming quickly. He wants to come. He loves us so much that he longs to return to us. It is we who are holding the whole thing up — the gospel has yet to be preached to the ends of the earth, not merely heard, but preached with power.
The correct response to his declaration is found in the same verse: Amen, come Lord Jesus. The Authorized Version inserts "even so" before this, giving the response a reluctant or resigned feeling — as though we are merely acquiescing to his plan rather than welcoming it with joy. But there is no "even so" in the Greek text. It is simply: Amen, come Lord Jesus. The pastor crossed those two words out in his English Bible. When we understand what his return means — the completion of salvation, the transformation of all things, the coming of the fullness of the kingdom — that direct and joyful response is the only honest one.
The goal of this camp can now be stated simply: go out from here and hasten his coming by praying with your hearts, by doing his will, by preaching the gospel, and by building the kind of church that is equipped to carry that gospel to the ends of the earth. Paul's strategy throughout his missionary journeys was straightforward — he went from place to place and established churches. Each small community became a point of light in the surrounding darkness, a little outpost of the new society, a local expression of the kingdom of God with its righteousness, peace, and joy. A few years after Paul's journeys, looking at the map of that world, you could see light here and light there, and more lights being added as the years passed.
By the fourth century, that light had outshone even the Roman Empire. Can it be done again in this generation? Certainly it can. But it depends on you and me — there is no one else. The co-workers here cannot meet the demands that are already coming in from people requesting them to come; the need is far greater than the available supply of workers. And as you become actively engaged in building his church, the Lord will become real to you in a new way — you will experience his resurrection power in ways you have not known before, because he reveals himself to those who are working with him. Let us be quiet before God in prayer.