And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. (Luke 17:20-21 KJV)

The LORD apprehended me by revealing himself to me and speaking an audible word to me in 1977. “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” Since that day in spring 1977 I have never doubted that Jesus is our LORD, Creator, and the Word of God, but that does not mean that growing in faith has been easy. The LORD has never spoken to me in such a powerful way again and he has only said a few, very few, distinctive words to me in that “still, small voice” we must strain our spiritual ears to hear. Nevertheless that word from the LORD in 1977 accomplished three important things in my life: 1) it established my faith in God, 2) it revealed to me that God wrote the Bible, and 3) it created within me the conviction that I should obey the commands the Bible gives. (Of course, as witnessed in my last series of writings, accurately discerning those commands takes time, patience, and depending upon God.)

When the LORD first spoke to me I believed that he was calling me to be a “preacher” or “minister” and so I enrolled in Bible college. This lasted a couple years until he brought me my faithful wife and set me out on the path he had for me. I became interested in law and the justice of God, went to law school, and became a State Representative for three terms. While I was a State Representative the LORD moved me from a post-millennial, dominionist eschatology to understand that men were never going to “usher in the Kingdom of God” on earth. I realized that men, even men of the “right” political party, did not really want to see righteousness prevail in the affairs of men. The big laws became laws for no better reason than that bribes had passed into the right hands. I have even had to repent of “taking bribes” by accepting dinners with lobbyists who ultimately would ask for my vote on some legislation they either wrote or favored. It was at the beginning of my third term, my fifth year in office, that I knew I would not run for legislator again. And it was that year of 1997, exactly twenty years after God first apprehended me, that he began to utterly change my theology.

First, I began to think about Christ’s second coming again, something I had largely forgotten about when my theology became post-millennial and I began to focus on the politics of changing the world. When you think in terms of good politics you should think with respect to the long term, not short term, solutions. But, in early 1997 I began to really use the internet and found Christian web sites which talked about the imminent return of Christ. Many posts focused on some comet I had never heard of, “the Hale-Bopp comet,” which supposedly heralded his return. I really did not take these writings very seriously, but in early April I went out to a local wilderness area and looked up to see if I could see it. It was a clear night and when I looked up I not only saw it, I was astounded when I did, for it turned out to be one of those rare times when God actually spoke to me.

I had been hearing that the comet was approaching for weeks, perhaps months, by this time. It’s very closest approach to the earth had been, I think, a day or two before this particular night. But, since I was not really convinced that the comet meant anything I did not prioritize learning about it or seeing it at a particular time. I simply went out one night to see it because it was convenient and something to do. But, when I did finally decide to look at it I was amazed. It was perhaps the most awesome sky event I had ever seen. I could see the comet and its tail with my naked eye. But, when I looked at it I had this sense that it was now leaving our vicinity, not coming to it. It was then that the LORD spoke to me and said, “If that had been me, you would have missed my coming!”

That word startled me. I had considered myself a faithful Christian (faithful, not perfect). How could I, then, miss Christ’s second coming? And yet Jesus told me that I might have missed it, that I would have missed it, if the Hale-Bopp comet had been his actual coming. For many years I had not been seriously looking for his coming… my theology and eschatology in fact even prevented me from doing so. But from that day I determined that I would watch for him so that I would not be caught unawares when he came. Almost immediately scales began to come off of my eyes as the LORD began to reveal new truths from his Word, truths which I never even heard of in my prior twenty years of walking with God. The most important of these new truths were these: 1) God expects Christians to live a life of separation from the things and ways of this world, 2) there exists a difference between the salvation of the spirit and the salvation of the soul, 3) food sacrificed to idols relates to false doctrine which we eat and assimilate because of the demonic idols of our own hearts, 4) most of what we call and know of as “the Church” (Protestant, Catholic, Greek, Charismatic, or anywhere in between) makes up what the Bible calls “Mystery Babylon,” and 5) Christ died for all men, not just a few.*

Yes, sixteen years ago I really began to watch for Christ’s second coming and not only watch, I began to preach it! I looked for signs of his approach and I pointed them out. But I wasted hundreds of hours pouring over people’s speculations concerning these supposed signs and foolishly made predictions which never came to pass. I still did not understand what many Scriptures meant and, in particular, did not understand this one:

“An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.” (Matthew 12:39)

In order to understand this verse we are also going to have to understand what Jesus meant when he said, “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” So, 16 years after Hale-Bopp and 36 years after being apprehended by God, now I come to realize that I all this time I been trying to “observe” the Kingdom of God in my flesh and that Jesus really means, “It ain’t going to happen that way!” When will I ever learn?

* I have written and published hundreds of posts on this site which discuss these five theological areas in detail. Use the search tool in the upper right of this page to find them.