What If Jesus Came Tonight?

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon's captions — published in summary form; watch the full sermon at the source.

Preached Wednesday evening, May 5, 2021, at Apostolic Pentecostals of Sapulpa, in a revival series — a short, direct thought from a 22-year-old evangelist who warned the church it would not run long. He prayed first for "a reverence for eternity," against the false sense of security that always assumes there will be another day, and read Matthew 24:36-44 (no man knows the day or hour; as the days of Noah were; one taken, the other left; be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh), 1 Thessalonians 4:16 (the Lord descending with a shout, the dead in Christ rising first, the living caught up together with them), and the twin promises of Revelation — "Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown" and "Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me." His subject: "What if Jesus came tonight?"

The sermon holds two edges. For the ready, the return is comfort, not terror: tears and trouble ended, the bride called to himself, eternity with Jesus face to face — "wherefore comfort one another with these words." For the unready it is the worst imaginable day, and it will arrive with no countdown and no warning, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. Nor does the warning wait on the rapture: every person in the room has an appointment with death and after that the judgment, and when either comes there is no time to prepare, no redos, no second chances. Families will be split by it — two in a field, two in a bed, one taken and the other left — and no one will be saved on a neighbor's, a parent's, or a pastor's prayers: "save yourselves from this untoward generation."

Its main target is the word "someday." People live as though there will always be a tomorrow — someday I'll do right, someday I'll get the sin out of my heart — and Copeland has buried friends who promised for years to pray through while time ran out. Mercy is new every morning and goodness and mercy follow all the days of this life, but when life is over, so are mercy and grace; the way a tree falls is the way it lies, and all that remains is regret. He remembers growing up in a daily, healthy fear of the Lord's return — a six-year-old weeping in bed for fear of hell, a boy panicking at an empty house thinking he had missed the rapture — and fears that fear is being lost: not the enemy's spirit of fear, but the fear of the Lord that has kept many a believer on the path when love alone felt thin. Belief that does not move the hands is questioned outright: the church says it believes in a hell of eternal fire where the worm dieth not, yet lives as if it didn't; jobs and ambitions, innocent in themselves, become idols when they crowd out prayer. And the absence of instant judgment is not God's approval — the same God who judged the flood generation, Uzzah, a murmuring camp, Nebuchadnezzar, Pharaoh, David's census, and, in the New Testament, Ananias and Sapphira, is the God who changes not.

He closes by asking the question of each hearer personally — if Jesus came tonight, would you be ready? — as the song "I've Got Plenty of Time" is sung through the altar call, and leaves the response where he says it belongs: the word has gone forth, conviction is God's part, and what each person does with it is theirs.