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All my adult life my mama used to tell me, "Kenneth, Jesus is coming this year."

I would say, "Is that right, Mama?"

"Yeah," she'd say, "He's coming this year. And you had better get yourself straightened out!"

Well, the year would go by, and no Jesus. But each new year here she'd go again... "Kenneth, Jesus is coming this year. You'd better straighten up!"

"Yes, Mama, I know...."

Occasionally, when she started in on me I would say, "Mama, you said Jesus was coming last year. What happened?"

She'd say, "I know I did. He's coming this year!"

I'm telling you nothing could change her, nothing could influence her. I would even get real spiritual on her and say, "Mama, you're not supposed to set dates on Jesus' return."

"The year don't count," she'd say.

So round and round we'd go every year. From the time I was a teenager in school, I was so tired of hearing my mama tell me, "Kenneth, Jesus is coming this year!"

Well, she did that until the day she went home to be with the Lord in 1988. Then, as far as she was concerned, it happened—Jesus came. He came, and off they went together to heaven. The only difference was, she left her body here instead of taking it with her.

Now, I tell you all of that to say this: JESUS IS COMING! I don't know if it's this year. I don't know if it's next year. I don't know if it's next week. But I do know He's coming and it's a whole lot sooner than most of us think.

"Well, Brother Copeland, how can you be so sure?" Read the Word. Then just take a good look around you. It doesn't matter where on this planet you live—there is more glory, more outpouring, more preaching, more Word, more believers, and even more hell on this earth than there has ever been before. It's nothing like mankind has ever seen.

Time as we have known it is over. These are different times we're living in now. And what I'm about to tell you is almost unthinkable, not from a bad standpoint, but from a good one.

You and I have entered into a space of time, a little, narrow band of time, which, in the scheme of all mankind, is the biggest and perhaps the most important block of time since the creation of Adam. We have stepped over—in the spirit realm and the natural realm—into exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think (Eph. 3:20).

How do I know? Let me answer that by taking you back to where all this began.

Time Culminated in Jesus
If you read John 6:5-13, you will get a better understand of this narrow band of time in which we now live. I mean, if there was ever a picture of exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think, this scripture is it…5,000 people eating bread and fish until they were full, and twelve baskets filled with the leftovers.

People today, like people back then, would say, "My, my what a wonderful miracle of God!" And they're right, it was a miracle of God. But this was more than a miracle. On that day, time culminated in Jesus. It was compressed, or tightly compacted, within a short space. The growing time for the seed the little boy planted in Jesus' ministry was instant.

Let me show you what I mean. Go back again and examine what happened on that grassy mountain near the Sea of Galilee. But instead of reading about it in John 6, let's look at the same event recorded in Matthew 14:
And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full. And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children.
(Matt. 14:19-21)
Now, notice what happened: The disciples told Jesus, "There's a boy here with some bread and a couple fish." Jesus asked for the food, and they got it for Him.

He took it, looked toward heaven, gave thanks for it, blessed it, broke it and distributed it among His disciples. They, in turn, took the food and distributed it among the people…and they distributed it…and distributed it—to approximately 20,000 people. Then, they went back and picked up all the leftovers. Twelve baskets full!

What I want you to see is that this whole process of Jesus taking the loaves and fish into His hands, blessing them, breaking them and distributing them, is the whole sowing and reaping process condensed into a matter of moments.

That lad sowed his five barley loaves and two small fish into the ministry of Jesus. Jesus received the boy's seed—planting it in fertile soil. He watered it, then immediately there was a harvest. Not only was there enough to feed everyone until they were full, there was also plenty left over for the storehouse. Whose storehouse? That little boy's storehouse! He was the one who planted, wasn't he?

So what happened? What are we seeing take place before our very eyes?

The reaper caught up with the sower.

"What?! How can that be, Brother Copeland?"

Simple. Look at Amos 9:
Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt.
(Amos 9:13)
The Word prophesies that there is a time coming when seed time and harvest time will run together. That young fellow sowed his bread and fish into Jesus' ministry that morning, and went home later that afternoon with 12 baskets full—all because time culminated in Jesus. And that, my brother and sister, is the kind of time we're living in today.

Christmas in September?
You and I are now living and operating on a whole new time frame. When we made Jesus the Lord of our lives, we got over into His time schedule and He got into ours. But what I really want you to grasp is that Jesus' time frame and the world's time frame do not function the same.

Oh, we're in the same space as the rest of the world, but we're not functioning on the same schedule—and I'm talking literally.

What do I mean? Well, among other sources, the study notes in the Bulinger Bible explain how the current gentile-ized calendar you and I use is inaccurate and way off-schedule. These sources explain how dates such as Jesus' birthday are incorrect, and have been for centuries.

Now this may come as a shock to you, but Jesus was not born on December 25. In fact, He wasn't even born in December. Jesus' birthday is actually sometime at the end of September.

Of course I realize that might upset your Christmas this year, but I don't think Jesus will mind it too much if you continue to celebrate His birthday three months late. But this does have very significant bearing in our immediate lives. Let me explain.

From the very beginning, God has given us the time frame in which He will work with mankind. It is a seven-day time frame. We see in Genesis that God created the earth in six days, and rested on the seventh. Then He gave mankind dominion. He gave him a lease on the earth.

How long was that lease? Second Peter 3:8 gives us a key. Speaking of the return of the Lord, Peter tells us, "beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years..." In light of that, and a mountain of other biblical evidence, we know that mankind was given a 6000-year lease on the earth. At the end of that time, God would take over and close out the Age with a 1000-year (seventh-day) reign.

Now we know that Jesus was born 4,000 years into that time frame—or on the fourth day. Even with the mess that the gentile calendar created, it is not very difficult to figure out the correct date of Jesus' birthday, because we know the actual dates of other major events such as Herod's birth and death. Besides that, the Hebrew people have been keeping their calendar for a long, long time.

For all practical purposes, 2,000 years have come and gone since Jesus' birth and ministry. Six thousand years since Adam was created. Where does that put us on our spiritual clock?

We have entered that little sliver of time between Adam's lease on earth—and consequently, Satan's dominion in this earth due to Adam's Fall—and the period of time we read about in Acts 2:
And I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke: The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come.
(Acts 2:19-20)
The Millennial Reign
You and I are being squeezed between 6,000 years of time behind us and another 1,000 years ahead of us. The 1,000 years facing us is the millennial reign of Jesus of Nazareth, which is the first time in human existence since the Fall of Adam that humanity will be totally and completely out of contact with Satan.

I'm telling you, Jesus is coming. He's about to rise off His heavenly throne and return to earth. He may not have stood up yet, but I guarantee you He is out on the edge of His seat!

Although we are the ones who are wedged into this narrow band of time, really, it is God Who's being pressed and pushed. And by pushed I mean everything God promised would come to pass during the past 6,000 years must come to pass before the beginning of Jesus' millennial reign. Everything He ever said is coming to pass—and only God could accomplish that.

This sliver of time we're living in is the moment just before the catching away of the Church, and the final outpouring when God can do whatever He wants to do, which includes angels becoming more involved in the natural realm.

You and I are in a moment of grace which, for us, means we are reaping a harvest of 2,000 years worth of gospel seed. For 2,000 years seeds have been sown, and now the Body of Christ—you and I—is reaping that harvest. Think about it!

In addition to that, time has culminated in Jesus. As believers living at the end of time, time for us has been compressed, compacted. Seed time, growing time, harvest time—it has all been compressed into a sliver of time, just as it was for that lad with the five loaves and two small fish.

We are living in the exceeding-abundantly-beyond-all-we-can-ask-or-think time. Hallelujah!

Great Responsibility
Now that we have some understanding of these days in which we live, it is vitally important for us to also understand how we are to respond to "such a time as this." Doesn't it sound to you like the Body of Christ is about to have its hands full of harvest?

Sure, God is pouring out His Spirit like never before. But with all that anointing He's placed in and on us, He's also given us great responsibility as the end-time Church.

So, to catch hold of what God is telling His people today, let's look at Psalms 2:
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh....
Ps. 2:2-4)
In Psalms 37, we read:
The wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth. The Lord shall laugh at him: for he seeth that his day is coming.
(Ps. 37:12-13)
As this Age draws to a close, I'm hearing the Lord say, Hey! Give Me a couple of days here. There are a lot of things I've been wanting to do, but My hands have been tied. But now that they're untied, let's have some fun. Let's have a good time—and win billions of souls before we go!

What do you think all this laughing in the Spirit is about, anyway? Well, we just read it in the Psalms. Satan's time is up, and God is laughing at him!

God is having one BIG time of it. He is laughing at the devil all over the world. He's laughing at him in churches. He's laughing at him in meetings. He even has preachers going around preaching and teaching laughing.

The bottom line is, you can go ahead and laugh at the devil, too. He's through! He's finished!

In Hebrews 10:12-13, the Bible tells us that Jesus, "after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool."

Notice that Jesus didn't sit down to do nothing. No, He sat down expecting till His enemies be made His footstool. He sat down, or He entered into God's rest.

Would you please tell me how in the world will Jesus defeat His enemies with Him sitting down? It's simple: He has already defeated the enemy. What's more, He gave you and me authority over the enemy, with the command to go into all the world and preach the gospel and tread on His enemy.

Ephesians 2:6 says God has "raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." And in Hebrews 3 and 4, we are commanded to enter God's rest. Paul says in Hebrews 4:1: "Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it."

The Word is actually saying we ought to be afraid of getting out of God's rest.

"Afraid of it? We haven't even heard of it!"

Religious doctrine has told us to get agitated, sorry, bawl, squall or beat the altar with our fist. Yet all the while, God's Word is commanding us to enter into His rest...and then stay there.

Now I'll be the first to admit that entering God's rest has been the hardest thing for me to get a hold of since I've been in the ministry, though I have done it more on a personal level. I have taken the Word, stood on it, believed God and entered into His rest when I've been faced with an attack of the devil, or the like.

But I'm seeing that God intends for us to rest over the whole thing, over every situation—particularly with all that we have facing us in this sliver of time.

When those hungry folks came up to Jesus, He didn't fall on His face and start sobbing and kicking the dirt, saying, "Oh, God! Oh, God! I just don't know what I'm going to do. There's 5,000 of them—and that's just the men. We don't have enough money. Besides, we're out here in the middle of nowhere. And that idiot I've got for a treasurer...."

No, Jesus just rested in God. He trusted and rested in His Father.

Today, as men and women of faith, our goal is to walk in the promises of God with such faith that, no matter what challenge or need comes our way, we do just like Jesus did when that multitude came to Him: We just smile and say, "Bring the loaves and fish here to me."

Then we take our seed, look to God, give thanks for it, bless it, break it and expect the abundance. Then we just rest.

We are living in the last little sliver of time, a time of great harvest, a time when we can laugh, and a time when we can rest.

So go ahead, laugh. God is. Go ahead and rest, too. Jesus is. But do it expecting. Do it expecting, until your financial enemies, until your physical enemies, until your family's enemies—or whatever enemies—be made your footstool.

Excerpt permission granted by
Eagle Mountain International Church, Inc.
aka:  Kenneth Copeland Ministries

Author Biography

Kenneth Copeland
Web site: Kenneth Copeland Ministries
 
For the last 50 years Kenneth and Gloria Copeland have been passionately teaching Christians all over the world how to apply the principles of faith found in God’s WORD to their lives.
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