If you are a precise, persnickety, pernickety, perfect, particular person there is a website just for you. It is www.time.gov. This wonderful location gives you the official United States time. You can set your time zone. It even tells you just how precise it is. Usually it is within one half of a second. This site is a chronologist’s dream. No longer do you have to scan the short wave bands of your radio listening for the “knock, knock” sound that indicates you are tuned to the broadcasting of the official GMT. Now you can bookmark this site and instantaneously know the time.
Wanting to know the time is not a modern phenomenon. In Acts 1:6-7 we read, “When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, ‘Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?’ And he said unto them, ‘It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.’”
History has seen its time setters. All of them have had to invent fanciful explanations for the obvious failure of their predictions. When one pauses to think about it, it really is not a good idea for us to know the exact time of Jesus’ return. As hard as we might try not to do so we would regulate our behavior in harmony with the announced time. That is not so good. We need to live our lives by the principles of God’s kingdom regardless of when our Lord should appear—that is the key to the abundant life.
Written in 2000