Acts 1:6-8 – “So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; 8 but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”  NASB

The disciples and the followers of Jesus in that day had a problem with the ‘natural restoration’ of the Kingdom of Israel.  They failed to grasp the full import of the truth that Jesus’ Kingdom was not an earthly one but a heavenly one.  They were looking to throw off the bonds of oppression from the Romans and see Israel restored as a sovereign nation once again. 

Jesus addressed this on more than one occasion and each time He would say, “It is not for you to know….”  On this occasion, He reminded them that knowing the times and seasons of what the Father had planned was not theirs to know but something important was in their immediate future and it would impact the known world.

You will receive POWER WHEN… When what?  When the Holy Spirit has come upon you.  The result of that infusion of power will be your ability to take this message of the gospel that He has given to us. We will take it to our Jerusalem, all Judea, Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.  You will Impact the World more through this than you would if I restored the nation of Israel as a sovereign earthly kingdom right now.  They did not receive that until the Day of Pentecost and the visitation of the Holy Spirit in a mighty way that truly and literally transformed their lives, and those around them, and as a result swept the world and is still sweeping it today.

Sometimes we are so involved and interested in ‘uncovering secrets’ that we fail to realize that the most important thing for any of us is to receive the infusion of the Holy Spirit’s life and power to enable us to take the message of the Cross and the Gospel to the world.  With the anointing of the Holy Spirit, we can deliver the witness of Jesus to the lost and do so with God’s Power which is able to convince, convict, and convert them.  The power that can rescue the lost from their lost-ness and translate them from the kingdom of darkness into God’s marvelous light!

So instead of trying to ‘uncover’ all the hidden secrets of the Bible.  Instead of attempting to establish dates and times for coming events.  Why not leave that in God’s hands and seek to be saturated with God’s life and power through the Holy Spirit and allow the Life of Christ to spill out onto those we come into contact with? 

Our task is to rescue the perishing, not to identify when God is going to do His next thing on His prophetic calendar.  I am not saying finding out what God is up to is bad, but it is not the most important thing to be able to predict what is coming and when.  We are ‘watchmen on the walls’ not simply ‘heralds of coming events’ to show our knowledge and skill at research and interpretation.  We are voices in the wilderness!

May God help us and be with us as we go through this day!