Where Eagles Gather ...

 

A true surprise is not something you could have planned for.  It is something you were not looking for, at least not at the moment it is revealed.  It is misaligned expectations.  You thought you were going to do one thing, and your friends or family surprise you with another.  Sometimes surprises are most enjoyable.  When they are not, we use other words to describe them.  Perhaps a birthday comes and you planned to just spend it in quiet reflection; no parties, no cake, not even presents.  But your co-workers have other ideas.  And so you are surprised, not just by what occurs, but by the fact your co-workers care that much about you, to invest their time and money to demonstrate it.  On the other hand, if your original plans for your birthday were met by an equally unexpected car accident, and you were instantly killed.  That too would have been a surprise, but we don’t use that word, instead we use words like tragedy.  Those who survive you say things like “what a shame”, or “what a loss”.  Everyone knows death will eventually come, but to have it so blatantly interrupt our lives when we least expect it, is not something any of us believe could happen right now.  And so we are almost always unprepared, not ready.  So perhaps for any given event we did not expect, whether we see it as a surprise, or a tragedy depends upon our perspective,

Take the second coming of Jesus for example, if it happened right now, would you see it as a surprise or as a tragedy?  Your life here, in this world, would be over.  If you were saved, your life in the next one would immediately begin.  And for most of us, we don’t actually need to live all the way up until that event occurs.  As we die, it is as if we fall asleep, losing all sense of time, while from our perspective – I was just here, and now the fast forward button is pressed – and there comes Jesus.  So one minute alive in this world, the next minute there is our Savior.  And given how often death is something that greets us unexpectedly, this is not something you could truly plan for.  But neither is life.  As you sit reading this BLOG, you would be literally amazed to look out your window and see Jesus coming back right this minute.  But that is possible.  All the prophecies you think are yet to be fulfilled may have already been so, just differently than you first understood.  The time you think you have from the conditions of the world, and the actual event of Jesus coming could never really be known, or definitively marked on a calendar.  So whether alive (or unexpectedly dead), Jesus could come right at this very moment.  Would you see that with the welcome eyes of a surprise, or with the dread eyes of a tragedy, a shame you did not have more time to prepare, to get right with God, before it does.

Jesus knew when He left his companions the first time, that they would miss having Him with them.  Who wouldn’t?  To have the literal source of love, and life, right within your reach had to be life altering.  It was.  And for the many generations who have had faith in Jesus without ever knowing Him personally in this world, the hope of His coming back to us, to be with us for all eternity has always been the ultimate goal we wait and wish to see.  So all of us wonder, thinking about the big question … when?  When will Jesus return and bring an end to the pains and disappointments of this life, and perhaps bring about the perfection of who we are, for as we sit today that destination is as yet unreached.  Jesus knew this question would overwhelm our minds from time-to-time, so He decided to address it.  In the gospel letter of Luke to his friend about what we believe and why Jesus takes on the subject directly.  Jesus could not tell us when, for only the Father knows that.  But He could tell us what it will be like, so He does.

Picking up in verse 22 it reads … “And he said unto the disciples, The days will come, when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it. [verse 23] And they shall say to you, See here; or, see there: go not after them, nor follow them.”  Oh how His disciples would miss Him after He was gone.  They knew Him personally.  They heard His love every day.  They witnessed it.  Nothing could stand against it, save for those hearts that would refuse to yield to it.  Though the disciples were still imperfect, even imperfect creation could know the yearning to be back at the side of God.  Their longing to be once again with Jesus Himself might make them vulnerable to grasping any hope of seeing one of those days.  Jesus knew that was not going to happen and that they would be lied to.  Wicked men, self-deceived to think they themselves might be the embodiment of the long awaited Messiah, might try to deceive others into believing it too.  The hope of finding Jesus based on the misguided words of others might have otherwise had the disciples following every goose chase that ever emerged.  But here is Jesus saying don’t go, don’t bother, those men will not ever be correct. 

In our day we have what we call “cult” figures emerge.  People who carry a ton of personal charisma, blended with some unique understanding of scriptures, who tend to think of themselves as the right-hand of God Himself.  Our modern figures may not claim to be Jesus anymore (that seldom works), but they may claim to be His prophet, or His mouthpiece, or some other highly elevated position, that in reality they have no right to claim.  If they were truly to be this great in the sight of heaven, they would dedicate themselves to being the chief servant of all, denying all credit, and serving and loving others.  Instead most of them desire to be loved, to be served, to be elevated in the minds of other men and women.  But the warning from Jesus stands.  Don’t go, don’t bother.  It is only a scam.  It is only a deception, for the return of Jesus will come in another way.

Jesus continues in verse 24 saying … “For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven; so shall also the Son of man be in his day. [verse 25] But first must he suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation.”  So don’t get too happy during a thunderstorm.  This is not the story of the mythical Thor who long dead Vikings hoped to see riding the lightning to their villages.  It is a mere comparison.  Lightning covered the entire horizon.  Everyone could see it.  And Jesus was trying to tell us all that His return would be likewise.  Every eye would see it.  It would not be concealed.  It would not be hidden in some dark room at the far corner of the world for only the few to behold.  It would be in the sky itself.  It would be enormous.  It would light up our world with the ferocity of lightning, and extend beyond the horizons to encompass the planet.  Everyone will witness it.  Let that sink in.  Everyone alive at the time of His returning will be unable to ignore it.  When it happens every eye will be inexplicably drawn to it.  And the event will not be a silent one either.  As lightning is often accompanied by thunder that shakes the rafters.  The return of Jesus will come with a trumpet blast so powerful it will wake dead.  You don’t need CNN or FOX to cover this event to get the word out.  The earth itself will be in a state of turmoil forcing the attention of everyone to look up as it unfurls.  But none of this was to happen immediately.  Jesus was to offer His love and be rejected by many, most of all by the church leadership of His own generation.  The clock was still to tick to offer man a chance at redemption, all men, not just those within ear shot right then.

Jesus continues in verse 26 saying … “And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. [verse 27] They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.”  Yikes. This is the most unfortunate of comparisons.  The days of Noah involved more than a few conditions.  First, Noah was keenly aware the world was coming to a universal end.  While Noah prepared for it, as per the instructions of our Lord, he preached to the entire world who made pilgrimage to see Noah’s folly one of the larger distractions from their day-to-day lives.  Outside of laughing at Noah, life for them was just normal life.  They ate what pleased them.  They drank the best of wines, beers, spirits, and juice.  They got married.  Since morality was not high on their list of things to integrate into their lives, they married “wives / plural” as Jesus points out.  No idea if that meant more than one over time with the phrase “given in marriage”, or meant simply adding to the harem.  Given in marriage may also have referred to a concept of trading your daughters for wealth – effective early human trafficking.  But even though they had heard the ominous words of Noah’s daily warnings about what was coming.  They paid no real attention to them, choosing rather to “live it up”.  Until Noah went into the ark with his family.  And the rains began to pour down.

This is the other less fortunate aspect of the return of our Lord.  Not everyone will be saved.  There are those who have like their predecessors, simply ignored every entreaty of His love, and just gone about their day-to-day lives.  They take one day at a time, unaware the clock is still ticking, and as it reaches zero at the end of all things, their lives are destined to be ended on that day, at least for a while.  The death we all know is coming, comes for every lost soul.  So while they may witness His return, they will not survive the day.  The fast-forward of death that comes for them is only a speedy entry to the onset of hell itself.  That aspect of “not everyone lives” is what some call the Judgment.  But here is Jesus saying, it happened before, when men went about their daily lives.  Notice too Jesus does not call out this generation for their sins, other than perhaps the perverting of the family unit He had designed.  He calls attention to our lust.  But nothing else.  And yet the evil of the generation of Noah was so bad, so intense, and much broader than mere lust, it had caused God to repent of even creating our species.  The reason for the flood.  And while He was imperfect, the offer and acceptance of Grace by Noah and his immediate family.  But literally no one else took God up on Noah’s offer to be saved.  The Ark was big enough.  And if so many people chose to enter it that it overflowed, perhaps the flood would have been stayed all together.  But no one accepted.  And everyone died.  Is that the state of our world today?

Is it even the state of our Christian churches today?  Do we stand on ceremony and tradition, but not on Jesus?  Do we simply go about our lives thinking we believe the right way, but finding our lust leads us from one crime to another?  Do we so casually give our hearts to one after another after another, forsaking the covenant of marriage we make before God, because we believe our love has moved on to someone else?  Life happens.  But life is happening, just as it did in the days of Noah before us.  And the clock continues to tick down, on a generation that pays it no mind at all.  Jesus continues His comparisons in verse 28 saying … “Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; [verse 29] But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. [verse 30] Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.”  Think on this comparison.  Sodom was destroyed for rape, for murder, for homosexuality, for a total abandonment of any constraints.  They did not see it coming.  They were just living lives of plenty they enjoyed.  While their lust was unabated, it provided them a constant distraction from anything remotely related to God.  And the day Lot left the city, it fell to fire from heaven, and killed every resident, none escaped.

It is easy to look elsewhere, to look at “those people” dividing ourselves on any lines that is convenient to our own hearts, and thinking others are this wicked today.  But were we to be true to ourselves, would we find the wickedness of Noah and Lot’s generation finding firm anchor in who we are?  Even within the church, a generation of people nearly indistinguishable from those who predate us by so many millennia.  And all of us just going through life, unaware of our proximity to His return, and frankly not caring anymore, too busy with the cares of just getting through this life.  We eat, we drink, we marry, we change our minds, and we repeat the cycle.  Feed the primaries, to the distraction of greater things.  Completely dive in to our jobs, as if our jobs could ever bring us peace, or build our families for the future carrying any one of them to the foot of the cross.  The danger compounds for even those who work in ministry.  They share Jesus outward with the world, but is His image lost inside the walls of their own homes, as example fades from the exhaustion of what we do every day.

Jesus then moves His eye to the soon coming destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and the years of persecution that would follow.  This time of death is surely on its way and He does not wish to have any who might choose to believe be caught up in the coming tragedy by concerns of this life.  So He continues in verse 31 saying … “In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back. [verse 32] Remember Lot's wife. [verse 33] Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.”  When the signs of the Romans coming happens, get out.  Get out now.  Don’t try to save anything, just go, right there, right then.  When later persecution comes, follow the same ideas.  Run and spread the gospel wherever you wind up.  Remember Lot’s wife.  She died.  Everyone remembers she was turned into a pillar of salt because she looked back.  But why did she look back?  Her family was with her.  Therefore her treasure was with her.  But was it?  Could she have lost her earthly possessions, her collection of things, that she so missed as to disobey and look back, even knowing what would come of it?  Or worse, could she have been secretly transgressing with another in the city of Sodom.  Sharing her heart where it was not supposed to go.  And now realizing the destruction that was raining down, must she look back even if it kills her, to see if her love interest might somehow have survived all this?  We do not know.  But we know she knew what was expected, what was told of them by God in her own home to her own ears.  And she chose to disobey for some other priority that was just more important to her.

Jesus says to “remember Lot’s wife”.  Are we her?  Even within the church of today, we know what we have been told, but do we do it.  Or do we disobey with hearts fixed on other priorities?  Even if the cost of that disobedience is to lose ourselves in it.  Jesus turns His eye into the hearts of all of us.  For we cannot discern, who is truly obedient, who is truly repentant, and who is not.  To us a group of people may look all the same from a spiritual perspective.  But to Jesus there is a difference in the heart that we cannot see, but that He alone can.  Jesus continues in verse 34 saying … “I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left. [verse 35] Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left. [verse 36] Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.”  It is easier to work our way backwards in this passage.  To have two men working together even in the same field, and have one be saved, and the other not tells us that Jesus discerns hearts differently even when all the circumstances appear the same.  For two women at work grinding wheat, one saved, the other not, re-emphasizes the point.  It also tell us that women are not immune to the process of salvation, nor can they rely upon their husbands or anyone else to be saved.  Their own hearts must be right with God, for God will see into them fully and completely.

But two men in the same bed certainly has modern connotations to it.  Only one reason for that in our age, and it is generally not space constraints.  That looks like choice.  That looks like lifestyle.  Keep in mind we have just been discussing the times of Noah, and Lot, only a few verses before.  So it is entirely possible that Jesus was recognizing the inevitability of two men living in a way that scripture does not advocate as right.  Perhaps an open expression of a sinful life.  But don’t lose the main point.  One of them is spared, the other not.  Even for those of us steeped in sin, the heart of repentance is still different to God than the heart who feels it needs no repentance.  And this is not just directed at the homosexual community.  Again remember the passage of Noah, where multiple marriages were occurring, and where lust was unbound.  The straight community is not immune to errant sexual expression, or breaking the covenants that God has established.  There is as much addiction to wrong-doing in straight sex as there is anywhere else.  But even covered in sin, there is a difference between the heart affixed on Jesus, and the heart that has no time for Jesus or all that “silliness”.

But since Jesus has just talked about people being taken somewhere, the disciples want to know where they were taken.  They missed the concept of judgment of the heart in these words, they took them more literally.  So Jesus answers in verse 37 saying … “And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.”  Does this sound even remotely like the Rapture so many churches hold as doctrine?  Where the body is; what body?  The body of those taken, of those left.  Or perhaps more likely, the body of His church.  Where the body of His church is, the eagles (or angels) will be gathered together.  Perhaps what Jesus is saying, is that the heart dictates our destiny.  If we are willing to open our hearts, no matter how deep we are in sin today, Jesus can save us, can restore us to His body, can surround us with angels or eagles as we have need.  This last passage or answer to the disciple’s question is not about when the second coming occurs, or how, or where we will go at any time.  It is about restoration based in hearts that may be indiscernible to others, but keenly visible to God.

This entire admonition is about - not being distracted with the cares of this life and missing the greatest event of all of history.  Jesus tells us His return will be an unexpected event for most of us.  Will you see it as a surprise you have long awaited, or as a tragedy of something you cannot believe is taking place now.  To be ready for it, we must find Grace as Noah did.  We must seek it.  We must be willing to accept it, no matter the condition of our lives right at this moment.  No man can substitute for Jesus, Jesus will be seen by everyone.  No one will be able to avoid it.  And not everyone lives.  If we judged the numbers based on the comparisons of Noah and Lot’s ages we would say very few lived, very few were willing to find His Grace.  Noah preached for 120 years to no avail.  Is that happening today?  Do we even within the church body look away from the eagles sent to us, and instead focus our eyes on the lusts of this life to our own great and eternal dismay?  God forbid.  Let us seek His grace, to lead us away from temptation of any kind, even if it is but misaligned priorities.  Let us seek to be where Eagles gather, to find safety under His angels, and service within His body.  Let His return become the most important surprise of our lives, being ready in His grace to meet that wonderous event.